Take three: Twinkle Vintage Cardi

Awww! So cute!




This is my third go at this pattern. I made 2 previously for expecting friends. Out of delicious cashmere.
Bub's Twinkle is made with Dalegarn Baby Ull - not quite as delectable . . . but still functional. I started this sweater before we knew the boy was a boy, WAY back in July. Lost my steam due to tiny stitches and black yarn. Just finished it on Monday. It looks great on him!

I love him, fun and games, and the plague of 2011

Sweet Pea is still very much enamoured of her little brother. I'm glad she doesn't hate him, but I wish she didn't love him so violently!
She simply doesn't understand that 1 month old babies are 1) easily overwhelmed, 2) incapable of playing with their adoring big sisters.
For example, I put him out on his quilt for some 'play time' last week. This is what I wanted play time to look like:

This is what it looked like when Sweet Pea was done with him:

Life is not completely devoid of play time, mind you. There are still couch forts a-plenty

And shoveling is apparently a good time . . . .

And she loves to read stories to her little brother at bedtime.

As is tradition for the month of January, our household has been struck once again with the plague. Wonderful got it first, then I came down with it. We suspect Sweet Pea is next as she has the warning cough and has been sneezing a fair bit. I sincerely hope she skips it - while we're fairly certain it's just a cold, it's the worst cold I've ever had. I had to call in reinforcements to take care of the kids yesterday so I could just lie in bed and fight off a fever of 39.5 (Celsius - that's 103.1F). If our little man gets it, I'm pretty sure he's screwed and will need admission to the hospital. I'm crossing everything I have that he's getting adequate anti-bodies from my milk and he'll skip it. So far, so good. He doesn't have a cough, and he sneezes infrequently. We seem to be on the right track! If Sweet Pea does, in fact, contract the plague . . . I don't know. It's a terribly high fever, and a lot of dehydration. Here's hoping both of the kids come through no worse for wear.

Time flies?

It's been 3 weeks since my last post. Almost a month since the birth of my son. There have been a lot of surprises, a lot of sweet moments, and a smidge of regret.

I'll be honest. There have been times when I have looked at my small son, and my not-so-small daughter and thought to myself 'I made a mistake. What was I thinking, having another child?'. These moments were largely in the first 2 weeks, when my hormones were unstable and I was struggling with Boy-zooka's weight-gain. I certainly don't feel that way anymore, or most of the time.

At first, Boy-zooka appeared to be doing just fine. He was lazy, he was a little jaundiced, but otherwise he seemed just fine. He wasn't fine. At his three day check up, the midwife noted that he was losing weight. This was the start of a 3 week battle to turn our son's nose-dive around. It was exhausting, disheartening, and it just about broke me. Every other day a midwife would be at our home to weigh our small son. Every other day, he lost a few more ounces. We supplemented his nursing sessions with expressed breast milk, he lost weight. We fed him more frequently, he lost weight. He would fight the breast so forcefully that I would give up after 45 minutes of attempting to get him latched - often I would be in tears, every time I felt rejected. Finally, we gave him breast milk in a bottle. He loved it. I cried through every bottle feeding, and finally decided to cut him off the bottle altogether since it was making his already poor nursing skills even more lax - but he got what he needed from those bottles. He started nursing better and better. On Christmas Eve we saw his first weight gain - just as I was about to give up on nursing altogether. In the end, Boy-zooka needed to nurse every hour or hour and a half and he required a top-up of 1 ounce of expressed milk in order to gain weight. On his three week birthday, he finally surpassed his birth weight by a whole 2 ounces. Tomorrow he will be weighed again. I'm both interested and wholly worried to find out what the scale says. This boy would rather sleep than eat. He would rather sleep than anything. This would be fantastic if 1) his weight gain were acceptable and 2) he didn't abandon this ideology every night around 3am.

The fight to nurse my baby certainly came as a surprise to me. When Sweet Pea was born, she took right to nursing - there was no fight, no learning curve . . . nothing. Just a hungry baby and an eager new mom. Boy-zooka, however . . . he feels differently.
Other surprises:
Boys pee A LOT. A LOT! Every time he pees in his own face, Boy-zooka gets really pissed off (Pissed! Ha!). He once peed in his own ear. It was rather amusing.
Sweet Pea loves her brother an awful lot. More than I thought she would. She loves him so much that I fear for his safety. She has no idea how destructive and rough she is!
Laundry for 4 is infinitely more voluminous than laundry for 3. It helps that one of us pees or pukes on everything. It's shocking. Absolutely shocking.
Days with 2 kids go by so fast. I'm always changing, feeding, or snuggling someone. There is so much to do that adding anything (like making dinner or doing the dishes) just seems ill-advised at this juncture. I'm trying to get out more, so we're going to have to figure this out and fast. I've been able to figure out some knitting time, and I get a shower almost every day now . . . so that's progress.
Recovery for baby #2 has been a complete nightmare. I didn't expect that. It seems that due to the speed of Boy-zooka's delivery, some stuff was really messed up. I still feel bruised and tender in places - and it was almost a month ago now. Apparently firing a baby down the birth canal is less of a good idea than easing said baby down the birth canal. Duly noted.

Sweet moments are primarily on Sweet Pea. She says and does the most charming things. She gives Boy-zooka the most tender, loving kisses I have ever seen. She desperately wants to play with him.

Some of the sweet moments are just between my Boy-zooka and I.

With one month of living in the big world just a few days away for my wee boy, I finally finished his blanket. When I gave it to him, he immediately pulled it up to his mouth for tasting. Apparently it passed the test.

It passes my test as well. It's a hand-knit I can be proud of. The FO is lovely, although I don't look forward to blocking it with each washing. The lace chart just about made me lose my mind - the symbols and legend just never really came together for me.

It's remarkably tiny, and if I were to do it again, I'd likely buy a third skein of the yarn and go for a full sized blanket. That said, it's a great size for car seat cuddling or snuggling in the swing. The smaller size also makes it great for carting around. I hope he likes it!