Christmas morning with a 17 month old!

Merry Christmas!  

Daughter loves her new pillow book, kitchen, table, and little people Disney princess set. We need to get rid of some of her toys!

She loves pillows!  It's crazy!  So I was very excited when I found the pillow book for her :)

She's starting to fold her hands on her own before we tell her that we're going to pray. 

She loves patty cake. She only claps and waits to be tickled, but she smiles the whole time. 

She enjoys brushing her hair. She usually just knots it up more, but it's cute to see her try. 

She likes to brush her hair with mama's brush. When she can't find that,she grabs Mookie's brush....

She enjoys getting her teeth brushed. 

She has a molar on top and one on bottom on her left side. 

Christmas with my family

We has a lot of fun at the lake this weekend. Merry Christmas!

Mock transfer passed!

For some reason I was nervous about passing... Things have changed (they were weird enough to begin with!) but I managed to pass "with flying colors".

Anyway, we sort of made it into an anniversary trip. We had a whirlpool suite and a day to relax and go hiking before my appointment. 

So we had a lot of fun :)

I didn't sleep well either night. We flew and I hate flying. And then the stress about the mock....

If you don't want to read about my strange anatomy, stop here. 

Anyway, as always, my anatomy surprised them (even though they've been in there before) so they had some difficulties. Dr Keenan had a resident there who was taking her first shot at the procedures with a retroverted uterus. Ouch. I understand that she needs to learn, and I'm ok that she had to learn on me, but I'm in pain. 

Yesterday I was pretty miserable. And we had a layover that took over 3 hours... And there was ice on the road when we finally got back to ND. We didn't get home until after midnight. 

This morning I woke up in pain. Bad pain. I took more ibuprofen. 

De Keenan prescribed prometrium for my  weaning off the Estrace. But for that I need to make it to a pharm... So it's not going to happen until tomorrow at the earliest. 

My parents are on their way out with Daughter. So excited to see her!  I'm in a lot of pain... So hopefully she's up for a lot of snuggling and reading today. 

What a day!

I woke up at 3 am and couldn't sleep.  Nerves about the weekend and Monday, I guess.  I often have trouble sleeping when there's something to be nervous about...

Anyway, got back to sleep around 6:30 and figured I'd get an hour in before Daughter wakes. 

My alarm for Estrace woke me at 9!  I checked the monitor- Daughter was still sleeping!  Wow.

9:00- let Mookie out
9:20- Daughter wakes, I smell pee.
9:21- notice her diaper is around her ankle in her sleeper
9:25-changed and in new jammies (she'll get a bath shortly, so why dress her?)
9:30-breakfast and laundry (the bedding isn't going to clean itself!)
10:00-supposed to do conference call.  Postponed to next week!  Go to run bath...
10:01- step in dog poo outside the bathroom.  Apparently Mookie couldn't wait until I woke at 9...
10:05- clean dog poo.  Run bath.
10:15- get Daughter in bath.
10:30- get Daughter dressed, let Mookie outside.
10:45- hear the UPS truck... rush out to get Mookie back inside.
10:48- Our UPS guy tells me how lucky our dog is because he actually got run over!  Avoided the tires, but ran right under the truck!
10:50- come back inside with packages, smell something...
10:51- notice poo on Mookie
10:55-run another bath
10:56- say "no!" when Daughter opens the toilet to swish her hand around...
10:57- wash Daughter's hands
10:58- console Daughter who is then bawling
11:00- get Mookie into the bath.  Try to keep Daughter out of his face.

Goodness.  It's not even noon!  God, grant me patience!

Good thing both Daughter and Mookie are so cute!

Estrace... grrrr

I had forgotten the wonderful side effects.  Without being too gross and spelling them all out, I'll just say that I have most of them.

But my mock/consult is next week! 

And Daughter and I have colds.  Mat thinks he is getting it, too. 

Pinwheels on the Horizon

I finished the quilt with Horizon by Kate Spain for Moda.

I named it Pinwheels on the Horizon

Not the best pic, but I was in a rush. 

Now to give it to my friend :)

Our little Linus loves to read :)

She's been walking around with a blankie while sucking her thumb lately. So cute!

She's really into books :)  

True Blue quilt :)

I got my Folklore True Blue quilt back from the long arm quilter. Yay!  I love it!

Daughter loves it, too :)

16 months!

Daughter is 16 months old! 

She just started saying a new word this morning...

But her favorite word is still "No".  She knows what it means but she doesn't know that she should listen when she hears it. 

Her words are now dada, mama, pop, no, yes, up, puppy, wow, woah, ok, what, e-i-e-i-o (ok, not a word, but ridiculously cute), num num, love, you... and maybe a few more that I can't think of right now.

She's still in mostly 12 month clothes.  She wears 18 month occasionally...

She's very curious.

Loves baths and water.

Won't wear shoes.  If I do manage to get them on her, she won't stand up... if I stand her up she cries and won't move.  She wears slippers everywhere!

Loves bead necklaces!  My cousin lent her one and she wears it almost every day.

Has 6 teeth and 2 more cutting through.

She loves to get into mama's purse when it's left within her reach.

Loves Lefsa!  She had it for the first time on Thanksgiving.

She's our little blessing :)

Venison!

Yum yum yummy yum yum. 

I love venison!

My grandpa got a buck this year and he only want half of the meat. So he gave us the other half!

Mat ground/cut up the meat. 

We still have roasts left over from last year, so this year we just did chops, burger, and stew meat. 

Horizon quilt in the making...

I'm making a new quilt from the Horizon line by Kate Spain and Moda. 

I started with charm packs of Horizon and some bleached white charms.  Sewed them together all around the edges (Jenny Doan's HST method)

 

Then I (by "I", I mean Mat;) cut them diagonally

And I (really, I did this) pressed them open...

 and voila!  Half square triangles! (HST)

There are many different layouts...

We decided on diamonds... But there are still different layouts!

I took a vote and it seems like I'm going with the final layout :)

Such a fun quilt!  I'm totally into HST :)

The hormones are starting to get to me...

I'm moody and bloated.  I forgot all about this!  I'm only on Estrace now... it will get worse as I prepare for the actual transfer and after, adding lupron and Progesterone into the mix... not to mention an oral contraceptive (OC) which last time completely screwed me up.

THis time we're going to ask for a different one, hopefully it will be better.

All this for baby!  How could we resist when the first is this cute :)

And yes, that's a quilt top I finished last night.  The pattern is Cut-Up and the fabric line is Papillon by Moda.  I did it with 5" charm squares, not 10" squares...

It's the same pattern that I made for our twins we lost.   Freedom and Liberty quilts

I'm teaching Daughter to appreciate quilts!

2 years in the family!

We adopted this little cutie two years ago! 

When we adopted her she was tiny!

And now we're going to go back to get a sibling!  Crazy!  A few short years ago we had no idea how or if we would have children.  Embryo adoption is such a blessing!

Good weather for quilting!

Igot a lot done this weekend!  

I pieced my MILs Christmas present (that she requested from a magazine)

Not quilted yet, but it will happen soon enough. 

And I finally got the binding sewn onto the piano runner.

Above is a pre-binding shot... Below with binding.

I'm so excited about all the stitches my new Janome MC 6500 can do!  Fun!

Daughter's first homeschool day at the library!

We went to meet some other homeschoolers in the area, but the librarian set out some crayons so that Daughter and the other toddler there could participate. 

It was great!  They made dream catchers. Daughter colored... And wandered... And colored some more. It's nice that they have a homeschool day program at the library. 

There was only one other family there, with 5 kids. The mom was very nice and said that more families are usually there. I'm looking forward to next month!

No thanks

I went to get Daugter out of her crib this morning. She was standing, smiled, and said quite clearly "no thanks".

She really did want to be picked up.  But it was just totally cute :)

She loves to read :)

It begins!

I start my Estrace tomorrow!  

Our mock transfer and consult is only a month away :)

Nieces birthday!

My nieces birthday was on Saturday. I've been waiting for some pics to post about it.

It was a blast!  Minnie Mouse themed and everything was so cute. My sister went above and beyond with the decorations and Nieces outfit.  So cute!

It's always so much fun to see Daughter and Niece play together.  They're best friends!  Only 3 months apart I think they'll be close for life :)

This is the pillow quilt that I made for Niece for her birthday.  She loves it!  It makes the perfect mattress pad for toddlers.  Just the right size for crib or pack n play. 

Here's a pic of Daughter on hers 

So they're cousin quilts!  What fun :)

My mom bought the fabric for each of the quilts and I made them both for their respective birthdays.  They're minky, so not easy to sew on, but they look awesome and they're well loved :)

Play date with other NEDC babes

This Saturday we got to visit with some friends with twins from NEDC. It was a blast!  Daughter had fun playing with the twins and Mat and I visited with their parents.

We are so lucky that we met each other!  The mom and I have met a couple times before, once with Daughter. This is the first time the whole families got together. 

I'm looking forward to Daughter growing up with EA friends :)

One step closer to my disappearing pinwheel quilt :)

Around this there will be sashing and plain pinwheels. I like it!