First day of school 2015

Summer was over way too quickly!

 

Eleri is starting 1st grade. She will be in the same class for all of lower elementary.

 

 

Her locker is on the bottom. Perfect for her.

 

 

Bye, Mom. I have things to learn.

 

 

Niall is starting 5th grade. This is his second year in upper elementary.

 

 He plans to have an excellent year.

 

Rowan is starting 8th grade. This is his last year at Sterling Montessori. 

 

He is a good sport about having a stalker mom.

 

First and last day pictures

Time flies so fast

First day of school

 

7th grade. Holy cow.

4th grade. Much too fast!

 

Kindergarten. Oh, my heart.

She was beyond ready. Me? Not so much.

Introducing KinderDance

Eleri's new class at the community rec center

Happy Little Christmas

We did it on the actual day, but the pics are late because of life happening and stuff.

This year, Eleri got the fève!

 

She wanted to crown herself, but that's not fair, so she crowned Rowan.

And with that, Christmas is done for another year.

In other news, later that same night, Rowan was also officially made Tenderfoot.

 

We like to stay on our toes around here.

And for Mom:

Santa visit 2013

Rowan asked for a Telescope. Niall asked for Snap Circuits Extreme. Eleri asked for a Minnie Mouse umbrella.

I've been fretting the evening away though. Sally started out the trip with us, but somewhere somehow she went missing. Eleri has no clue because of the backup Sally, but I've been completely over-emotional about it. I'm hoping Sally is located. We still have 2, and Eleri is unaware, but no one else will know just how important Sally is. I know I'm anthropomorphizing my daughter's stuffed friend, but I can't help it. I want all the Sallies here where they belong!

Big News!

This just happened.

Now she is five

 

It's hard to believe, isn't it?

 

Eleri has had a great birthday. She got lots of presents, had a party with her friends, and in general feels like a special little person. What more can we ask for? Birthday photo set located here: Eleri's 5th Birthday

We also got the news from the endocrine doctor. Everything looks the same as it did before, so we can keep on as we're keeping on, and they'll see her again in April. :)

It's hard to believe that next year she'll be in kindergarten. Crazy. What am I going to do without my little shadow?

The birthday starts early

Eleri got a bit of her birthday fun early this week. We had to take the van to the shop for the scary noise it was making (no big deal, heat shield is now tightened, yay!) and I had taken her car seat out just in case we needed to put it in the green car to get somewhere.
I'd been planning to turn her forward facing for her birthday but I didn't want to install her car seat rearfacing only to turn it forward in less than a week, so we turned it early.

 

She loves it. She keeps saying "weeee!" and says that she loves looking forward. She looks so BIG to me now!

 

Putting her forward facing meant that we needed to drag the other seat out of the shed to put it in the van, so she could be behind the driver. More convenient for me during the day - especially since that door is the one that works well. The one on the passenger side is stupid and takes an act of congress to get open, and we all know how well that's been working lately...

But to get the seat out of the shed, John had to take a bunch of the outside toys out to get to it. One of those things was the bike I'd been saving for Eleri's birthday. She saw it and there was no going back. So, another birthday present early. She loves her new bike, too!

 

 

Enjoy the little things!

 

We saw the endocrine people today. I found that shirt about a month ago. Isn't it perfect for her?

The good news - Eleri has grown 2cm in the last 5 months. We no longer have to cuff the legs of the jeans that we had to cuff twice last year. Hooray!

But her growth velocity is still only at 4.8cm a year. They really want it to be at least 5cm, but since it's almost there we can do a little more watchful waiting, maybe. They took 3 tubes of blood today to run some more growth hormone tests. If she's at the same level as she was last time, or has gone up, we'll continue to wait and watch. If her level is lower, they want to go ahead with the full growth hormone stim test. They'll call with results in a couple of weeks and we'll go from there.

Official Stats

Height: 92.9cm or 3 feet and 0.58 inches
Weight: 13.1kg or 28lbs 14.1oz

The one that taught me about gauge

I cast on this sweater 2ish years ago. I went to the yarn shop with Fran, and we saw the sweetest little sweater. She loved it and bought the pattern and yarn, and then handed it all to me and sent me on my merry way with it.

I knit a gauge swatch or two, figured I had it, and started knitting. I knit the fronts, the back, the sleeves, and then thought they might be easier to sew together if I blocked them first, so I threw them in the bath.

That's where I got my big lesson.

You see, the yarn was completely different after it had gotten wet. WAY different. It GREW. A LOT. And suddenly the reason I didn't get gauge on the needles the pattern recommended was pretty obvious. Because it grew once it got wet.

I skipped that step where you're supposed to wash your swatch the way you'll wash your finished item. I'd done that over and over again, and the swatch never really changed with washing. It might get a bit thicker, but the size was always pretty much the same - but then the fiber was always the same. I usually just knit with straight wool, or a wool and acrylic blend, or plain old acrylic. This was a fancy blend of merino, silk, and cashmere. It didn't do what I was used to, and there is where I fell down.

Faced with a way bigger sweater than I wanted, and having to do a bunch of seaming while matching up stripes, I stuffed it in a bag and walked away from it. But I did remember the lesson and made sure to wash the swatches when I cast on for bigger sweaters for me - you better believe that!

Finally, I took the pieces back to Fran and handed them over. I really do hate seaming, and she said she'd be happy to put the pieces together for me, but she was not going to knit that ruffle.

I got the pieces back from her this summer, and finally sat down yesterday to do the last bit. That ruffle went on for ages, but everything else was done, and even though the sweater was way bigger than I originally thought it would be, Eleri was now the perfect size to fit it, so I needed to get cracking before there was a chill in the air.

She picked out the button after her nap, and here we are.

2 years later, it's a perfect fit!

The Harry Potter Project

So, it's been a while since I blogged. I could keep telling myself that so much has happened and I have to catch up, but that's overwhelming and only leads to me putting off updating. I've decided, instead, to just jump in now and post about today.

Our house is small for a family of our size. 1200square, and we can now say that we are definitely living in every inch of it. See, the boys have been chafing each other raw with living in the same room. It's not unheard of, and really not something I can blame them for. It's tight in there, and they have such different personalities. It's not easy!
But we only have 3 bedrooms...

John told me about how when he was a kid, and he and Dan were at each others throats, but they only had 3 bedrooms, his parents converted the dining room into a room for him until Ben moved out. We don't have a dining room, and we have a LONG time until Rowan goes to college, but it was a good idea - repurpose a spot for someone so that everyone has their own space.

One day, it hit me. We have a walk in closet in our master bedroom. That closet has a window. We don't actually USE the clothes in the closet most of the time. Most of the time, we use the clothes that are in our dressers. Half the time we can't even walk into our closet because of all the shoes on the floor. John's shoes are boats. Have you seen his feet?

I thought, and measured, and took everything out, and measured again. I thought some more, and climbed into the attic to measure the crib because it converted to a toddler bed and was smaller than the car bed. It would work if I took a shelf out and we figured out where to stash some clothes. John thought it was a pretty good idea, even though it looked like our closet had thrown up all over our bedroom.

I felt kind of bad about it. It seems very Dursley to stick a kid in your closet, even if it's the smallest kid in a good sized closet. But it has a window, right? Harry Potter didn't have a window.

We took out the shelf and spackled the holes. I found a mostly full can of purple paint, "Italian Fantasy," in the shed, so I painted it. I also had an extra vinyl Eleri that my friend made me when she made the one for the dress up station. The dress up station does not fit in her new room, but the spice racks I got from Ikea do, and they make nice little bookshelves.

She's spending her first night in there tonight. I just tucked her in, and she's smiling so big her face is about to crack. I wonder how long it will take her to fall asleep?

 

Looking in from our vanity area

 

I had to use the iPad to take pictures. I couldn't back up enough with my camera!

 

 

 

Take a picture of me sleeping!

 

 Take a picture of me building!

 

The fairy lamp isn't plugged in, but it's pretty.

 

The steps are from Mom, since Annabelle doesn't use them.

 

I think this is going to work out really well. Now we just have to get our room looking this good! 

More dancing

We've been extremely busy around here. Lots to catch up on.
Have a dancing video to tide you over.

We love dancing class

Thursday mornings, when I tell Eleri that it's dancing class day, she responds with glee.
So much fun! She's getting better at it, too.
Enjoy!

Sewing fun

I will always be glad I learned how to sew when I was in high school, simply because I can do things like this.

Pixie-ism

Eleri has been asking me to put her hair in waterfalls lately.
What are waterfalls?
To the uninitiated, they are piggy tails.

Waterfalls are much more glamorous, don't you think?

 

She's sitting on the new window seat. That will be another post when it's closer to done.

Practicing for the big day

Eleri will be dancing at the Raleigh Irish Festival for St. Patrick's day. The little guys are SO CUTE. I can barely stand it. I nearly burst every week.






and more cuteness

Dancing Queen

This morning, Eleri had her very first ever dancing class. We found a small dance company in Raleigh that does Irish dancing for fun only. No competitions or trophies or a bazillion costumes and fees. Fun and culture = just what we were looking for.
She LOVED it. She loved it so much, she cried when it was time to leave. She wanted to stay all day!
I only had my iPod with me for pictures. This was our trial class so I didn't want to show up with the huge camera and all. It took her about half the class to figure out that she wasn't supposed to run around skipping everywhere, and after that she was super good at following along and doing what her teacher was doing. Her teacher said that she did great - especially for someone who had never set foot in a class before today.
I was in raptures over the cuteness. Here it is hours later and I'm still grinning.
Coming soon: an Etsy store to fund Eleri's dancing class. The company takes paypal!
For now (grainy ipod) pictures of the cute

Eleri Style

We have GOT to get this child into a dance class.

Dancing