KCW Day 1

So it's time for Kids Clothes Week again.  This is my third one. In the past, I have sewn much more than the requisite hour per day.   When I thought about whether to participate this year, it occurred to me that, while I might be able to carve one uninterrupted hour a day, I wouldn't get very much done in that time.

Uninterrupted?

Yeah, I was very optimistic.

I did spend a little over an hour yesterday working on two Lazy Days skirts for the girls, but it was far, far, faaaaaar from uninterrupted.  It was more like, spend five minutes measuring and cutting fabric, then spend 49 minutes getting everyone in and out of various princess costumes.  Spend 13 minutes sewing and ironing a couple seams, then spend 33 minutes serving food, wiping spills and throwing in another load of laundry.

So, despite the fact that the Lazy Days skirt should really be a 30-45 minute project from start to finish ... I have nothing finished to show you today.  Better luck tomorrow.

Birthday fun

We had our first party in Georgia yesterday.  The occasion was Jeremy's birthday. We had planned to break out the cornhole set Jeremy built over the summer.  It was far too cold and windy for real play, but the men and kids (15 of the latter!) gamely gave it a try.  I made a triple-layer devil's food cake with dark chocolate ganache (but forgot to use my cool blurry-background lens to take a photo of it).  A good time was had even if the weather stunk.  Happy Birthday J!

In the garden

I have never successfully grown anything. I've never really even tried to grow anything.  I am generally game to try new things - like teach myself to knit and sew, or to attempt all manner of complicated baked endeavors.  But gardening has always seemed intimidating.

I, apparently, am not the only one who doubts my own green thumb. When, upon moving to Georgia, I remarked to my husband that I would like to plant a vegetable garden, he gently recommended we hire a gardener.  I argued, but Jeremy diplomatically suggested that perhaps it would not be so easy to find time to do the necessary research, not to mention the work itself, with a new baby in the house.

So we hired Giorgi.  Last fall he took out the hideous succulents that were encroaching, fungus-like, onto the sidewalk in front of our house and replaced them with tulip and hyacinth bulbs.   Then he dug out a garden plot in the backyard.

This week he showed me and the girls how to plant seeds.  We put cilantro, oregano and basil in between the flowers out front, and two kinds of lettuce, spinach, snap peas and broccoli in the back.

Then yesterday the girls and I did that Pinterest thing where you paint rocks to be your garden plot markers.  Today we put them out in the yard.

Hopefully something will grow.

Little mamas

Somewhere, amid the insanity of adding a baby to a household already bursting at the seams with unbridled toddler energy, I have been trying to find little moments to hang on to.  You know, the little snippets of time that you want to freeze.  The ones that get you through the screaming fits when your kid runs into traffic, or opens the door and walks out of the house without your knowledge or permission (both of which occurred yesterday).  The ones that you envisioned before you had kids.

Thankfully, we had a couple of those yesterday, too.

Gabriel spends most of the day strapped to me in one carrier or another - usually my Babyhawk mei tai or my Beco Gemini.  The girls have started trying to create their own baby wraps with scarves.

Thanks to the confluence of two events - 1) my finding this excellent tutorial for a doll mei tai, and 2) Jeremy taking the kids for a few hours on Saturday and Sunday - I was able to sew this weekend.

And, tada!  Some precious moments:

Home again home again

Jiggety jig.

Today is day 6 in Georgia.  We took a circuitous route home that involved spending 24 hours in Istanbul in order to arrive in Tbilisi at a reasonable hour (4:30 p.m. instead of 2:30 a.m.).

As long as this was going on ...

or this ...

... everything was relatively smooth.  However, whenever the iPods had to be put away, there was inevitably some of this ...

In any case, the extra time and cost to travel this way resulted in negligible jet lag.  Sold.  We will never not travel this way again.