4/52

I am late with this week's 52 project contribution and it is not a terribly well thought out contribution either.

We had a bad week.  Not an earth-shattering, awful things happening kind of a week.  Just a nothing ealing quite right, everything proving harder than it ought, everyone being grumpy, out of sorts and difficult kind of a week.  Every day was a grind.  Every day involved difficult behaviour from one or both kids.  Every day demanded more of everything than I actually had to offer.  Every day was shoutier than I hoped and by the weekend we were all pretty miserable.  No amount of DVDs and cuddles, or walks in the park, or biscuit baking, seemed able to improve things.

And, while I'm sure there must have been good moments (because, as I say, nothing objectively awful happened last week and there's always fun moments to lighten the gloom), I can't for the life of me remember what they were and, I discovered when I reviewed my phone for pictures for the 52 project, I didn't photograph any of them.

So this week's contribution will win no prizes at all.  It is, in fact, the only photos I took last week.  I toyed with taking some pictures on Monday when I was having a much better day and when I realised that I hadn't got any decent pics from last week (after all, only I know when they were taken) but that wouldn't be honest and wouldn't be in the spirit of the game.  Plus, I rather think there is a lesson here.

So, we have Mr Man sitting in a tricycle at playgroup (he looks a little uncertain but it is mostly because I stopped pushing him to take the pic and so he is shouting at me to carry on)

And Baby Bird at the top of a very large slide designed for far older children than her but that she scales with the ease of a monkey.

3/52

Here's my contribution to the 52 project this week.  Separate pics of the kids this time.

Mr Man, refusing to go to bed and insisting he is really having far too much fun to sleep.

And Baby Bird where she is happiest, outside running around but most especially, at the top of the slide.

Next week I'm going to try and get the proper camera out (assuming I can find the battery charger...)

A birthday blanket and a birthday jumper

I haven't done much knitting since Mr Man made his appearance, now frighteningly close to a year ago. Well, I say that, but then I had a look at what I did last year.  Given I only got my evenings back from my stay-awake older child some time around November and the little one still wakes me nightly, and, even before Baby Bird dropped her nap, I never managed to get them asleep at the same time during the day, I suppose I haven't done too badly. 

What I knit last year:

Before Mr Man arrived I had a veritable knitting frenzy ):








Two Milo vests (one for each child)

A hat for Baby Bird

I finished a baby-grow for the new bub

I dashed off a lovely little jacket just before he arrived

A cardigan that I gave a skater-ish look to but which disappointingly went from slightly garish but very cute into far more sophisticated than either the knitter or the recipient intended after a wash

Yes, that would be the first 6 weeks of the year (that will be three mornings a week in playschool plus a child who napped for two hours in the afternoon!)

After Mr Man arrived, things slowed down considerably, but I also opted for some long, garter-stitch heavy projects, which skews things a little.  Deliciously easy, but relatively time-consuming knits.

A beautiful Color Affection shawl for me (can't find a finished pic, but this gives you the idea)

A christening cardigan that was only a little bit late

The fronts and sleeves of a cardigan for a very dear friend that I really should have finished much sooner and that I really should see up so that I can post it to its rightful home along with a number of tardy thank you notes for all the kind things she has done for our family (must take a pic before I send that)

A pink cardigan for a little girl who likes star buttons

And most (but not quite all) of a very large blanket that should have been Baby Bird's birthday present but didn't quite make it off the needles in time. 

Written out like this, it is actually a far longer list than I expected. If you take account of the 17 balls of yarn that have been lovingly garter stitched into the second biggest log cabin blanket I've ever been involved in (maybe one day I will tell you about the biggest), that's actually quite a lot of knitting for someone who spent most of the year locked in 3 hour solo bedtime disasters and nursing an infant. 

When I first started writing this post, the birthday blanket was almost complete. I was on the fifth day of knitting the applied I-cord border.
Well, I do only get I do a couple hours a night and did I mention it is a BIG blanket?  That and my darling daughter undid about two foot of applied I-cord while I was making a cup of tea "because I wanted to do my own knitting for myself on my own". Yes, that will teach me to put things away properly.  I am hoping to finally finish it over the weekend. After all, she has promised that all her sleeping problems will be cured by her "wonderful new blankling". 

However, as the blanket is a bit big for carrying around and I retreated to a cafe for some R&R on Saturday afternoon after a car crash of a Friday at the end of a tough week, I'm broke my promise of knitting monogamy until the birthday blanket is done and cast on a jumper for the little man who is not nearly so little as he once was. I need to crack on if he's to get it before his birthday.  I needn't have worried too much about the broken promise. Yesterday morning, while I was cooking porridge, Baby Bird found the first four rows of ribbing and very carefully removed the needle and unravelled the whole lot, putting me right back to finishing her blanket before I start anything else.  On the plus side, watching the latest Star Trek movie (which I actually really enjoyed) gave me the opportunity to finally finish the birthday blanket!  Hurrah!

So now, it is on with the birthday jumper.  I'll just have to give him an IOU for his birthday blanket...  Poor second child. 

{this moment}

Joining in with {this moment} – A Friday [oops... Saturday] ritual. A single photo capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savour and remember.

To see more, check out the comments to Soulemama

2/52

I had great plans of blogging more last week but by the time the kids are in bed and I've attempted to rescue the house I'm shattered.  I'm trying to go to bed a bit earlier, in the hopes that a bit more sleep will compensate for the broken nature of it. Mr Man still hasn't quite got the hang of sleeping through and so there's still a feed somewhere between 1 and 4 and Baby Bird is having, well I'm not sure really. Nightmares? Night terrors?  A fluctuating combination of the two?  Either way, her sleep is broken and consequently is ours.  As she often tells me in the wee small hours of the morning: "sleeping is a little bit tricky, Mama".

So, I'm too tired to write much.  That and the fact that I'm tantalisingly close to finishing the most mammoth blanket for Baby Bird so have been knitting when I do grab some quiet moments.  I'm almost half way round the applied I-cord border - not long to go now.  She has assured me a number of times through the four month making process that she will "definitely stay in her bed all night once she has her pretty blankling [sic]". Luckily for her I won't hold her to it.

Anyway, I'm a bit late with posting this, but I did take the picture at the right time. Here is a portrait of my children this week. Smiley, happy sibling affection for a change, rather than the bigger ones making the littler one cry by being just that little bit too rough...

 A moment to treasure so it's my {this moment} as well as my 52 project contribution again.  Really must stop cheating like this.

1/52

Well, in news that will have surprised noone but me, January 2013, just 6 weeks before I was due to have a baby, was not the best time to start a new blogging project, or a new project of any kind. So I mostly watched the very beautiful 52 Project from the sidelines.  However, I did take a lot of pictures and could, if I could find the time, certainly put together 52 photos of my lovely daughter transforming from tiny toddler into terrifyingly grown-up little girl and 46 photos of my adorable squishy pudding of a baby transforming from a tightly curled newborn into a crawling tornado of laughing destruction.

I still love the idea of this project and had a tremendous amount of fun tracking my friend Julia's highly successful efforts. She is an example to me in many ways, not least in persistence, commitment and cramming more than you think possible into each day.

So, I'm going to have another go.  And here is week 1.  A bit of a cheat probably because it is actually a series, but it turns out bubbles are hard to photograph, particularly with only an iPhone when it is only just getting light outside, and I also felt the series told the story more effectively than any single image.

 The anticipation, the movement, the look of "my sister is the funniest person on the planet". It all made this a perfect moment, occurring a little too early on the only Saturday morning of the year when my husband has to work at the office.  It's the main reason I was taking the pictures - because he misses out on many of these moments and it's nice to share our day when he returns home.

In a bit of shameless recycling, I'm also using this as my {this moment} for the week too. Late as well.  Tsk, tsk.  I know, must try harder.  Let's just focus on the fact that I've actually blogged something!