The One About Inori

About a week ago, I gave Chubbs the bottle. Usually he screams and refuses to take it. That morning, he took it, chewed on the teat and was happy to hold it.

I walked away for awhile and when I came back to him, he was sucking from the bottle!

He had never done it before and has always refused the bottle until that day. He was 13 months and a few days old.

I refilled his bottle with more formula and he drank everything again. And another. And the 4th.

That day was the day I stopped breastfeeding my little baby.

Sunshine wanted to join her brother in the happy bottle session so I made her more milk too that morning:

It feels a little weird and sad not to breastfeed anymore. But yet, I’ve been tired and his teeth hurt me from time to time. We didn’t expect it to last for more than a year. We thought we’d breastfeed till he turned 8 months or so…. so these 13 months has been quite an achievement! Sunshine was only boobed for 2 months (I had to return to work then).

Anyway, I’m relieved as milk supply had been dwindling due to infrequent feeds and I was worried that Chubbs wasn’t getting enough calcium. Sure we give him lots of veges but children this age need much more calcium for their bones to grow.

So it’s a bitter-sweet moment for me. I don’t know if we will be having anymore children so he might be the last baby I’ll ever breastfeed. And I’m glad I did it. It helped us to form a strong bond and I’ll miss his snuggling up to my body every night. He still sleeps beside me but because he no longer drinks from me, he prefers to place his foot in my face instead of snuggling.

:/

Anyway here’s some pictures of the kids.

We gave him an apple to gnaw through church service. It really helped in keeping him quiet!

Look at his big eyes!

Peekaboo mummy?

Chubbs understands what ‘ball’ is. If you tell him to get the ball, he would. Notice Nad running away in the back? Lol.

Huh? Where daddy go?

Hi from my butt!

Cheeky bugger.

Chubbs is rather agile for his age we think. He’s able to climb up and down our bed with ease. A few days ago, I turned my head for a few moments and imagine my shock when I turned back to see him sitting on the dining table!

He had crawled up a stool, up the chair and then up to sit on the table! Amazing.

I’ve sewed a kick-ass bag which I love so much but the sun is hiding behind the clouds now so I’ll take pictures another day.

I will leave you with a link to a funny video of my heartthrob, Kimura Takuya. The guy who I’ve been in love with for about 15 – 20years!

Donguri Korokoro

It’s funny because everyone thinks he’s going to sing an emotional song but the song he sang, Donguri Korokoro is actually a children’s song. It’s about an acorn which rolled down the hill and fell into a pond. A loach (carp) then says hi and invites the acorn to play. The acorn is happy and plays with the loach but after awhile, starts to miss the mountain. He embaresses the loach by bawling.

Our daily temperatures now average from 0 to 15 degrees celsius.

We do love the cold and use heating sometimes which can be quite painful on the pocket. We (all four of us) usually just huddle together under 3 thick quilts, each wearing 3 to 6 layers of clothing and socks to sleep. That way we don’t need heating while we are asleep!

My school requires me to travel quite a bit to their campus for my Chemistry practicals. The campus is about 4 hours drive away from where we live.

I dread going everytime because although Nad is the one driving and he never ever complains, I dislike long car rides. I’ve had car sickness since I was young. My mum had to time my meals – no food within an hour before going in the car or bus… either that or bring lots of plastic bags to catch whatever I throw up!

Because of this, I cannot knit and I cannot read in the car and I find it a waste of time, just sitting there, doing nothing.

I dislike driving as well… because it comes with a huge load of responsibility. The lives of your husband, your kids and yourself in your hands. *Shudder*.

I would cast on a project that requires only stockingnette stitch or simple stitches so I won’t have to look at the pattern or the knitting just so I can knit in the car but I already have SO MANY WIPs going on… urgh.

Anyway. I digressed. As usual.

These few mornings have been so cold that we have had frost on our garden beds, our lawns and even our windscreen!

Nad was wiping/chipping off a layer of ice from the windscreen with a rough glove.

Most of my friends just pour warm water over their windscreens.

Almost the entire journey to school was covered in fog.

This was what it looked like from afar:

And when we’re in it:

Some parts look like scenes from a creepy horror movie.

It’s been much colder than this nowadays. I’ve had it flash 0 degrees for the past two days.

We also saw something interesting… well.. not REALLY interesting but I thought it gave the term ‘Moving House’ a whole new meaning.

Literally.

Moving. House.

This is the 2nd time we’ve seen people move their houses this way. The first was an old weatherboard house and we could look into the front door as the truck past us and see kitchen cabinets still attached.

Haha, why don’t they just build another house instead?

Maybe they like their old house too much?

I needed to get some homework done and desperately needed Sunshine and Chubbs to leave me in peace.

Nad brought Chubbs out to the library that day and I thought of something to keep Sunshine occupied.

With these ingredients:

I made play dough!

If you google around, you’ll find heaps of recipes for making home made play dough. McKenzie’s cream of tartar also had the recipe printed on the back! How thoughtful of them!

So I mixed the ingredients together:

Set it on medium heat.

Sunshine chose the pink food colouring.

This is how it looks like when it’s ready. It will congeal and become rubbery-ish.

QUICK, what do you think of when you see the word ‘PINK’????

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I think of  ‘elephant’.

How many of you think the same? Lol.

I made a pink elephant to test the new dough. It was great to work with!

Sunshine had fun:

So I managed to do some homework with her occupied with the pink dough. But oh! The temptations!!!!

I started to play with it too!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

(Pardon the horrible picture. The sun goes down very early nowadays and it was dark when I took this photo.)

I also made a spastic person which reminds me of Lulu.

Just kidding.

And then I made peas in pods.

Yeah.. I had fun.

I did manage to complete my homework though…. (at 1am). T___T

Sunshine rolled some of the dough into fat strips and proudly declared, “Mummy it looks like poo poo!!”

Funny little woman, that girl….

I also gave her a plastic knife and spoon so she could practice her motor skills, cutting strips into tiny pieces. She puts them in her toy teacups and pretends that she’s cooking. (Please supervise your kid when they handle knives! Plastic or not!)

Because I’m nice, I’m going to list here the recipe for the dough:

- 1 cup plain flour
- 2 tablespoons cream of tartar
- 1 tablespoon cooking oil
- 1/2 cup salt
- few drops of food colouring
- 1 cup water

Mix all ingredients into a pot and put over medium heat. Stir until mixture congeals. Bring it off the heat and leave to cool. Err.. then you play with it.

There you have it – safe, cheap, homemade play dough for your little kid/s!

However safe it may be though, I don’t reckon you should encourage any child to eat it. :S   Chubbs isn’t allowed to play with it as he is only interested in putting things into his mouth right now.

I store the dough in an airtight food container and it’s been keeping well for 3 days so far. I reckon, like PlayDoh (the ones you buy in stores), it would dry up over time and all you have to do is to moisten it with some water.

Or make more in another colour.

There once was a girl woman young woman who went into a local yarn store (despite her owning a yarn store herself……and even if she didn’t have a yarn store, her personal stash was enough to be a store and she had no yarn stash), she came across this particular wool.

It wasn’t blue.

I had to state that first just in case you’re already shaking your head, thinking that since I’m such a sucker for blue items, I bought the wool because it was blue.

ANYWAY.

It wasn’t blue. It was light beige. It wasn’t merino (my absolute absolute absolute favourite kind of fibre). It was only 50grams in a ball but cost a whopping $9.50.

Now a 100g skein of Malabrigo Worsted only costs $13.90 (from my store… ) and if you double that $9.50 (it’s $19 for those who can’t double it – don’t worry, I needed a calculator as well because it was just in front of me and I only had 5 hours of sleep last night so I’m not judging you), that’s like……… a lot of difference. Because it wasn’t Merino. And because it wasn’t blue. And also I found it rather scratchy. But then again, anything not merino and is scratchy to me. I even find Cascade 220 (which I knitted my Central Park Hoodie in) scratchy. I don’t know why. Maybe I got sensitive skin.
And because I grew up in a family that believed in thrifting (actually.. just my mum… my dad splurges… don’t ya, dad? I know you are reading this… hehehe…) and Nad too is a very very thrifty person, I would have put that ball of yarn back into it’s shelf.

Did I forget to mention that it was also scratchy?

BUT!

Somehow… that beige colour was beckoning to me. And with Sasha by my side… she wasn’t the best person to go into a yarn shop in…. I mean… she doesn’t splurge… she’s more self-restrained than I am… but her problem is that she CAN’T restrain others!

The conversation might have been like this on that day… (it was in year 2008 I believe….)

Me: You have to stop me from buying any yarn that I don’t absolutely love, okay?
Sash: Okay.
Me: Oh look!!!! Should I buy this? I like the colour but I don’t LOVE the colour… and I don’t like the texture and I don’t like the price.
Sash: Don’t get it then.
Me: But I kinda like the colour.
Sash: Okay. Get it.

See? Doesn’t take much to get her to cave. *Pout*

Anyway… I bought 3 skeins ($28.50) and started a cardigan for Sunshine.

I didn’t like the way it behaved. It was scratchy, it was flakey, it was rough (on my tender hands), it was scratchy, it was flakey.

I knitted on it with full steam……. determined to finish it before my hands get calluses. And in my fervour, I picked up way too many stitches on one side of the cardi and as a result, both sides of the button/buttonhole panels do not match.

I got fed up. There’s no way I’m ripping back with this stupid wool!

Let’s just say it was banished and never saw the sun for more than a year.

Until a week ago, my mum was helping me get organised and we came upon the dreaded cardi again.She lovingly stitched on the buttons (which were all that it needed, really, to be considered as an FO).

I grudgingly weaved in the 3 ends I’d left and decided to try it on Sunshine.
It still fit her.

(I can’t seem to get her to pose nicely for a photo anymore.)

With the buttons, you can’t really tell that one side is longer than the other.

It’s not so scratchy in this bitter cold weather (same goes for my Central Park Hoodie…. the colder it is, the less scratchy wool feels to me). But er, I don’t think Sunshine really likes it because she was begging me to take it off her.

According to my Ravelry page, it says that this project was

…..except that we don’t eat pork.

Haha.

Umn…where was I? Oh yes.. Markets!

I was at handmadehobart with a bootload of yarn today and thoroughly enjoyed myself!

First of all, some pictures (from left of the table to the right):(smooooshy Malabrigo!)

(Pricelists and free knitting patterns. The Honeycomb scarf pattern was snaffled up in a short time!)

(My smooshy handdyed yarns.)

(Smooshy smooshy!)

I met many lovely people (stall holders and customers). Among them (in no order of preference), Jess from Jeka B Handmade, Meika from Wee Threads, Kathy from abeautifulramble and Penni, our lovely organiser.

My very interesting, talented and funny neighbours were Holly from Hiiragi HQ, Emily from Emily Snadden Design, and 2 lovely ladies from Jasmine Rose Boutique. (They had a wee little baby in their arms… my uterus was clucking away at all the tiny babies at the market!)

Holly sat behind us and we kept jabbing at each other as the space was rather tiny (and I’m not exactly the most adroit person around). If Nad hadn’t brought the kids outside to play for most of the time there, there would be 10 elbows and knees in a very small space.

She’s such a talented young woman – her handmade dolls are soooo cute! (Although they are deadly and certainly do not want you to think of them as ‘cute’). I love her drawings and we share the love for Johnny the Homicidal Maniac and Lenore. Not many people get these indie comics! (The only other person I know is Sasha!)

I got quite a bit of knitting done on the handspun shawl (only about 50 more rows to go before cast off!!!!! —– except that there will be about 1000 stitches in a row by the time I get to the end… -___- ;  )

I’m crossing fingers that I would be able to whip up more handmade stuff to sell at markets… maybe in July? I have quite a few projects planned.. I just need to get organised, get childcare (so that I can sew in peace!), quit school… etc.

Nah, just kidding… I won’t quit school… although it’s been a pain to me recently. I got about 3 assignments to complete in 2 nights. Assignments that take about 20 hours each to complete.

I can’t fit 3 x 20 = 60 hours into 48 hours (that is, if I don’t eat, sleep, pee). Go figure.

Okay….. on to happier stuff….

Sunshine was really really really well behaved this whole week, getting on with toilet training very well (she loves her new toilet bowl insert and would rather use it than the potty), she behaved VERY well in Church yesterday, sitting on the chair beside me throughout the entire service without behaving like she had ants in her pants.

So I bought her this at the market today:

Oooh! What’s in there?

Blocks! (Bought from Silver Nutmeg & a Golden Pear Designs)

{Does anyone know where I can get these kind of blocks in a set? I love wooden toys!}

Sunshine LOOOVEES her blocks. She stacks them up in different configurations everytime and says, “Look, mummy! SKY SCRAPER!”

Since she loves blocks, I got more to add to her collection.

I have to go off now. It’s dinner time!

I wish I had more time with my hobbies. Knitting, spinning, sewing, making books…. Sigh.

Kids take up SOOOOOOOO much of your time! When will they be more independent, I wonder?