Listening

I just put the girls down for a nap a little while ago (Alice is NOT interested), and once again, Helen insisted on napping with Alice in Alice’s room.

For a little while, I got to listen to Helen soothe Alice through the baby monitor. Then I got to listen to both girls giggling happily. Now I’m listening to Alice’s tired crying.

Mommy doesn’t care. Their naps were worthless yesterday, and they WILL sleep today, dammit. Besides, I have a fabulous loaner machine in my possession to play with until my machine gets fixed, so I’ve got some bells and whistles to explore.

(If there were a baby monitor transmitter in here and YOU were listening, you’d be hearing some manic giggling right about now…)

UPDATE: 2:41pm. Alice woke up after finally getting to sleep… She had a whopping 25-minute nap today. Mommy is NOT. HAPPY.

Another Blasted Project

Well, a friend showed me these last night, and it just makes me snicker to think of our kitties in one of them.

So. As soon as I’m done knitting the butternut blanket I started in February (only about 6-7 inches left to go on that, if that much!), I’ll perhaps start one of these. Not sure, though. There are other projects in the pipeline ahead of it.

Nice thing, though — it’s not too difficult a pattern, so it would be a good thing to work on at Vestry meetings (I need something to keep my hands busy so I don’t strangle the windbags who make the meetings run so long)… So I’ll probably do one just for grins.

Hey, Jerry — maybe I should make a purple one to give Claire so her kitties have somewhere to lounge in her studio?

Broken

My sewing machine is broken. Well, I could probably still sew with it, but the tension might go a little weird on me because a belt popped off — worn on one side. Not worth the risk. Same thing happened last year and it was a MESS when I quilted with it in that condition.

It broke Saturday night, just in time for the holiday weekend.

I will arrive at the quilt shop tomorrow morning at 10am, with Helen, Alice, and my sewing machine. I really hope that she can fix it tomorrow… I was on a ROLL quilting my Fibonacci quilt. 🙁

Jerry suggested I camp out at the quilt shop tonight so I’m there as soon as Mary gets there in the morning. I don’t think that’ll be necessary; I’m sure she’ll see the desperation in my eyes when I do get there.

It’s due for its annual cleaning anyway, so I guess this was the sewing machine god’s way of telling me to take it IN already. I’m about 3 weeks late for that. Oops!

Ready or Not

This afternoon, after lunch but before naptime, Helen (and Alice) and I went outside to play. Helen donned her new Finding Nemo bicycle helmet and rode around on her new Radio Flyer tricycle, and then she wanted to go swing. So we took off the helmet and went to swing for a while (Alice always starts squealing and kicking when we get close to the swingset — she loves to swing), and then Helen wanted to play Hide and Seek.

She’d go to the fence, cover her eyes, and count while Alice and I hid. “Ready ‘r not, Here I COME!” There are only a handful of good hiding places in our backyard, but Helen was having SUCH a wonderful time. And the weather was cool and breezy, so it was very comfortable to be out there. After I had exhausted all the hiding places (and she was counting to ten faster and faster), we switched roles. Alice and I would go count to ten and Helen would hide.

Helen is not very good at hiding. Partly because she wants to be able to see who is trying to find her, and partly because she giggles. All I had to do was look around wildly and she’d giggle. If I hadn’t already spotted her, the giggles gave her up.

Her favorite place to hide is a large bush in the center of the yard. She pretty much climbs into the middle of it. And giggles.

I *love* that she’s getting to an age where she’ll play games like this. SO much more fun than just wandering around the yard picking up leaves.