What Happened?

I can't believe its been 2 weeks since my last post. I've been busy with this and that (work and family). Ayame went to the doctor on October 25 to get her shots. Yes, a bit late but we had insurance issues. Anyway, she cried a lot when they gave her the shots (5!!! I'd cry too). She weighed 14 lbs 6 oz (up 5 lbs since the end of July). She is now 25 inches long and her head measures 40 cm. They told me that put her in the 50 percentile (not too big, not too small). She was grumpy for a little bit, but a dose of baby Tylenol helped.

On October 29, my cousins A & D & their mom, Tita V came for a visit. We met up with them for dinner in South Boston. It was fun to see them again. I hadn't seen D or Tita V since 2001 and A I saw during Thanksgiving 2004. Ayame loved the attention! Ayame & I met up withem again on the 31st at Quincy Market and did a little bit of window shopping. I had Ayame in her costume. So cute! She did pretty good that day. She only screamed once. I should have known that would happen. She HAS to eat when everyone else is eating. Other than that, it was great. She didn't mind the subway, she smiled at everyone and even managed to take a nap while on the Baby Bjorn. T then met up with us at the hotel and we headed home.

I'm still working on Coffee Menu by LHN. I just realized that I still don't have a progress pic for it. I'll have one tomorrow, I promise. I've gotten quite a bit done on it. Its a very relaxing piece and I usually work on it while watching TV with T.

Oh! Today I got a wonderful surprise from Tami Lynne. :) She sent me the 2007 JCS Ornie issue. Thanks so much Tami!

The Art of Cleaning

I don't think there is anything quite as depressing as cleaning the bathroom and the kitchen. If ungratifying was a word (and its not), that would be the best way to describe the two chores. It doesn't matter how much effort I put into it. It doesn't matter how many hours I spend cleaning (when I could be stitching instead). The kitchen and bathroom will remain clean for a grand total of 30 seconds before it gets messy again.

The bathroom isn't so bad. Its a smaller space and is easier to keep up with. I love that we don't have those awful sliding doors for the tub in this apartment. So cleaning the shower/tub is quick and mostly painless. The floor on the other hand is a constant work in progress (along with the floors in the rest of the place). My hair is still shedding. Its been chopped off (removed approximately 13 inches, maybe more), but it is still shedding. There is always hair everywhere. There is hair falling off while I'm cleaning off the hair that's already on the floor!!! It drives me absolutely nuts!

Is it just me? Surely this isn't normal. I'm hoping that there are kitchens and bathrooms out there that remain relatively clean during the day. And I'm talking about real kitchens and bathrooms here, not showrooms.

What are your kitchen/bathroom/overall cleaning secrets?

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In baby news, Ayame has decided that she is done with sleeping through the night. Ugh. This started on the 13th. She got spooked Friday night and didn't sleep until midnight. The next day I had to wake her up early because we were going to Gloucester to meet up with MIL, Grandpa, Grandma and Aunt M. She was grumpy all day, grumpy all night and hasn't slept through the night since. She still takes her regular naps, but now just wakes up in the middle of the night. Last night was probably the craziest one yet. She went to bed around 10 (usual time), but woke up several times. She woke up around 2 and was up until 3:30. Then woke up again around 4:15. This usually isn't bad. I'll change her diaper and feed her and she's happy. Well last night, she was so ridiculously happy that she had to tell her friends, the stuffed fox, the stuffed elephant, the stuffed butterflies and the rattle all about it. Baby just talked and talked. First it was cute, then it got louder and louder and louder and she was waking up T who had to go to work in the morning. So I took her outside and laid her in the bassinet which we kept in the living room. I slept on the couch. I think she finally slept around 5:30. I thought that was it and she was going to sleep until 9:30. WRONG. Woke up again at 7:30, back to sleep then up again at 9:30. She's taking a nap now. I hope she sleeps at least 3 hours. Babies need sleep and mommy needs quiet time!

Baby ready for Halloween!

Inspiration!

Lo and behold! Happy Dance number 14 for this year!


I stitched it on a piece of hand dyed linen purchased from The Needle Hive using DMC 3865. The design is called Inspiration and ***I*** designed it! :) Yes, I am so proud of myself. I originally designed it to be a little bigger, but I excluded the outer bits. It looks so light and delicate right now and the waffle stitches that I was going to stitch on the outside would just make it too heavy, distracting from the delicate center. Anyway, I had so much fun designing this piece. I have DH to thank for inspiring (yes, pun intended) me to design. :) He encouraged me to try it and I did! Sooo much fun! I have a couple more designs in the works. They still need a lot of tweaking though. What I really love about this is that I am trying out new-to-me stitches and I get to experiment with textures.

No, Spot of Coffee isn't finished yet. It sat on the scanner until I had to take it out to scan Inspiration. Oh well. I will try to work on it some tonight and this weekend.

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Noreen, I buy generic diapers from Stop and Shop. Each pack costs $6.99 (48 pieces for size 2). Sometimes I buy Pampers or Huggies, but only if I have a coupon and if it comes out to be less than $6.99. I've also tried Walgreens' generic diapers, but SNS is still cheaper. I tried generic wipes, but I didn't like the ones from SNS. They tore easily and even the unscented ones still smelled a bit. I much prefer Pampers Sensitive Wipes.

Weekend Recap

We didn't go to Salem but we did walk around the mall and had dinner out. It was so much fun to get out of the house. Ayame loved the mall and was just fascinated with everything she saw. She did really good and wasn't fussy at all. She fell asleep when we got to the restaurant and I was looking forward to a nice dinner. Ayame had other plans. She woke up and was sooo fussy. I ended up changing her diaper twice and she ended up drinking 3 servings of 3 oz of formula one after the other. I still got to eat so it wasn't bad. And the entree I picked (steak tips) was really good. We even managed to get some dessert! It was a bit frustrating that Ayame started fussing, but I still had fun. :)

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DH and I tried Brunswick Pro Bowling for the Wii. To say that I was disappointed is an understatement. This game has nothing on Wii Bowling. Yeah , you can customize your character, but you can only play your character in career mode. If you want to do 2 players, then you're stuck with a set of characters. It was also very frustrating to play. My character didn;t swing when I wanted to, and it was difficult to control the swinging and releasing. It was not worth buying.

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I stitched a little this weekend. I still haven't finished Spot of Coffee. But I worked on 2 projects. One is my attempt at designing and the other was finishing TW's Beginner's Whitework Ornie into an actual ornie. Photo coming soon! I stitched it in 2005 back when I had no idea how to finish ornies. There wasn't much fabric to work with, but I managed. :) I like the end result and I will be finishing all my other unfinished ornies soon.

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Have you ever had a Pluot? I tried one for the first time last week. It tastes really good! Its a hybrid fruit made of 3/4 plum and 1/4 apricot. It is very very sweet and very juicy. The skin is very smooth and the fruit itself is very fleshy. I can't really compare it to a plum or apricot though as I don't think I've ever had a fresh apricot and I can't remember the last time I had a plum.

The fruit was developed by Zaiger's Genetics in California. They have also developed Aprium (3/4 apricot, 1/4 plum), Plumcot (1/2 plum, 1/2 apricot) and coming in 2008 to a grocer near you... the Peacotum (peach, apricot and plum). The Peacotum is supposed to taste like fruit punch. Can't wait to try that one!

Postpartum Hair Loss

Before giving birth, I read somewhere to expect some postpartum hair loss. Fine, whatever. No problem. I've been told more than once that I have enough hair for 3 people. I pity the poor girl who has to wash my hair at the salon, and I feel totally horrible for the poor girl who has to blow dry my hair. But I digress. No one told me CHUNKS would fall out! I'm not even exaggerating. I showered and there was hair EVERYWHERE. Really scary. After doing some research, I found out that an insane amount is to be expected. I still have a lot of hair, but I think it would be less scary if my hair wasn't so long... the clumps falling out wouldn't look so alarming... I hope.

In stitching news, I am still working on LHN's Spot of Coffee. I realized last night that I cut my fabric wrong. I went by the measurements given on the chart. The only problem is the model was stitched on 32 count. I'm using 24 count. My right and bottom margins will be smaller than I'd like (about an inch), but it should still be okay. *fingers crossed*

A New Look

I decided that it was time for a new look. I'm sticking to the coffee theme, but the look is completely different. I also did a blogger upgrade. I kinda like how you can just drag and drop blog elements.

I know I promised a scan of my latest happy dance, but I'm still waiting for UPS to deliver my new power supply. The old one died back in Buffalo and I mailed it back to Antec a couple of weeks ago. Thank goodness I have kept all our receipts since getting married. We bought the power supply last year and its still under warranty. I cannot wait to get my PC back.

Not much is going on. I'm currently working on LHN's Spot of Coffee. This chart went AWOL on me several months ago. I looked ALL OVER for it. I finally found it last week while looking for a different chart. Somehow, this tiny chart decided to join all my kits. I have no idea how it ended up there as all my charts are on a hutch, and the kits are in a chest. Oh well. I'm just glad I found it. I also found the other chart that went AWOL a couple of days later.

Oops! House is on. See you guys next time!