Happy Friday

This weeks worth of happy...

Happy Friday

This week's dose of happiness

Happy Friday

My moments of happy this week.

The calculator is the number of ounces of breast milk I donated to a baby in need.  Almost 11 gallons. 

I hope you've found some happy in your week.

Today is a New Day

I did not mean to sound so whiny and defeated yesterday.  I can add blogging to the list of things I should not do when sleep deprived.  That list also includes driving, filling out government forms, kitchenering sock toes, and trying to hold a coherent conversation.

I have a special needs child.

That takes me by surprise most days.  I forget she is "disabled."  I forget she has a "birth defect."  I know when I was pregnant I thought I was growing a broken baby.  But now that I know her I don't feel as if she is "defective."

She is my baby.

But the reality is she is a special needs child.  Which means she has special needs.

I thought I understood what that meant.

But I didn't.

It wasn't my fault.  It was just beyond the realm of my experience.  And that isn't good, it isn't bad.  It just is how it was.  I thought that a special needs child just meant they needed different things than a "typical" child, so you gave them what they needed and it was all good.  Meaty was especially sensitive to stimulus as a baby.  He was easily overstimulated, so our house was very quiet, very relaxed, very calm for him.  We avoided situations that would over whelm him.  We adapted our parenting to his specific needs.  I thought this was also how you approached having a special needs child.

I wasn't wrong, but I wasn't right.

Special needs doesn't just mean they have different needs.  They have all the usual needs AND special needs on top of that.  It is having a child amplified by a factor of a billion.  It is more of everything.  More work, more exhaustion, more specialists, more complications.  There is more good stuff too.  More joy, the victories are sweeter because they are even more hard won.  More smiles.  More love.  More support.  I thought I understood what community meant.  I had no idea how surrounded by love my life could be.

It is an adjustment in thinking.

It is an adjustment in the reality of our lives.

We are carving out a new normal.

One that I hope to approach with laughter and love and my usual sarcastic wit.

I forgot to include my sparkly sarcastic wit yesterday.

Exhaustion.

Its a bummer.

Today was much more productive.

Every body got a hair cut this morning.  Except me.  Cause I can't cut my own hair.  I haven't had a hair cut since June 2012.  True story.  They all look good.  Except Bird.  She wouldn't hold her head straight.  Or still.  So now she has a funky choppy layered effect going on in the back that needs some repair.

*le sigh*

I did manage to square up another set of squares this afternoon.

*takes a deep bow*

*pauses to absorb the wave of noise from the cheering crowd*

Only one set of squares left to square up and then I can start sewing the tiny tiny squares into beautiful big quilt squares.

I also sat down and wove in the last few ends of my shawl and my sweater.

*takes another bow*

Let me show you some crummy pictures of my beautiful shawl.

I would give you all the vital details (pattern, yarn, needles size, mods) but I don't remember any.  It is some kind of mohair.  It is purple and green.  It is gorgeous.  And I love it.

It turns out silk and baby alpaca isn't the only kind of shawl Squishy approves of.

Any sort of hand knit pretty will do.

I know how you feel baby girl.

I know how you feel.

The Best Laid Plans

I have small dreams.  

I dream of having a moderately clean house.

I dream of finishing a baby quilt.

I dream of knitting a sock.

A little work each day and my dreams can come true.

It should have been manageable.

But then you wake up and you realize you haven't done a proper trip to the grocery store in three weeks, and the food situation is dire.

So instead of cleaning, you spend the morning nap buying groceries with the baby strapped to your chest.

Then you come home, and pump.  While you are pumping a very helpful daughter puts the groceries away for you.  In all the wrong places.

You prepare to spend the afternoon nap making freezer meals instead of quilting, but The Greatest decides to cut something with a manly knife, something that really should have been cut with a pair of scissors.

You then spend the afternoon nap driving him forty five minutes to the "closest" urgent care facility that accepts your insurance.  Five stitches in his thumb later and Squishy gets to have another forty five minute nap on the drive home.

Evening nap is spent cooking, and cleaning, and hunting down all the misplaced groceries.  By the time Squishy goes to bed you are too tired to knit a single stitch.  All you can do is count the minutes until the final pump of the day so you can fall into bed.

And that was Monday.

The rest of my week has run in a similar vein.  My friend called the other night offering to give me a ride to a meeting for Mothers with children who have special needs.  The thought of getting dressed to leave the house made me want to cry.  The effort involved in making myself presentable would require more energy that I had in me.  Which is a shame.  Because if anyone would understand how overwhelmed I feel lately it would be a table full of women who have children with special needs.

This morning I spent the morning nap squaring up the tiny tiny quilt squares.  I got a third of them done.  

That made me happy.

I spent the afternoon nap rocking Squishy.

For two hours I sat and held my sweet baby.  I rocked her while she slept.  She felt so good in my arms.  At one point I should have laid her down to start dinner.  But I simply didn't want to.  Cereal is a perfectly acceptable dinner.  After all, it is fortified with vitamins and stuff.

When Squishy woke she was so happy to discover she was still in my arms.  

Best afternoon ever.

Now Squishy is asleep for the night (fingers crossed) and I am too tired to knit a stitch.

But that's okay.

There's always tomorrow.

Slow And Steady Wins The Race

I blocked my Hitofude.  I neatly folded it.  Then I lovingly placed it with my recently blocked lace shawl.

The start of a pile of projects of the cusp of being finished, but needing just a tiny bit of finishing work to turn it from a work-in-progress to a finished object.

I have no defense for my failure to complete what I start.

Old habits die hard.

Of course with only finishing work left on my sweater/shawl, I immediately cast on for a new project.

Socks.  A beautifully small project.  Something that will show signs of progress even it I only get to knit for ten minutes every other day.  I'm loving the tweedy yarn.  And something about tweed just begs for cables.  I worry the fancy cables are getting lost in the tweed, but I can't stop.  I must make one more cable cross, must knit one more pattern repeat.

I love this sock.

I've also made the tiniest bit of progress on the quilts.

All my tiny tiny triangle are officially tiny squares.  I do need to trim the squares to "square" them up.  But I'm hoping once that is done the project will start to come together a little faster.  I'm trying to do a little each day.  Morning naps are for cleaning, afternoon naps are for working on the blanket, bedtime is for knitting.  Or at least that is my plan.

Let us all take a moment to laugh at my optimism.  We know all to well how my plans go.

But a girl can dream.

The children are on Spring Break this week.

I should probably abandon my plans right now.

Happy Friday!

Instead of Friday Lovin' I've decided to mix things up for a bit.

I've taken the 100 Happy Days challenge.

The basic idea is you take a picture of what makes you happy each day for 100 days.

Cause we all know how well I did with the February Photo challenge.  Why not up the ante with not just 28 but 100 days.

I like to live on the edge.

The unrealistic delusional edge.

I'm almost a week in, and so far this is what has made me happy.

I would encourage you, gentle reader, to look for chances to be happy as you go throughout your day too.

Six days down.  Ninety four to go.

You Can Dress Me Up...

AWOL...Again.

You know the drill, blah blah blah, busy busy blah, blah blah blah, baby, blah blah blah.

I did manage to sneak way last night for a yarny girls night out without the baby.

It was magnificent!  I ate dinner with two hands.  I had a calzone as big as my head.  I'm am not even exaggerating.  It was stuffed with spinach and artichoke and cheese.  So much cheese.  I didn't have to stop eating once to refill a cup, hand someone a napkin, or to bounce a crabby baby.  And the desserts.  Oh the desserts.  Two desserts were ordered.  Those two deserts fed the entire table.  Why do I  not eat there every day?

Oh yeah, because I'm not independantly wealthy.

Dang it.

I should at least go there for dessert once a week.  Maybe that should be my New Year's Resolution.  You can make a resolution in March right?  It's never too late to change your ways right?

While I was there I finished my Hitofude Cardigan.

You know, the one I started back in November.  I've remembered why I only knit hats, socks and baby sweaters when I have small babies around.  Large projects take entirely too long to finish when you're only knitting five minutes a day.  I need that instant gratification feel from my knitting.  I need to finish more than one object a quarter.

I'm already soaking the sweater to block it

in the vain hopes of achieving that instant gratification high.

In other news I got a pretty pretty box of yarn yesterday (girls night out and new yarn?  it was a big day yesterday)

It is mostly sock yarn.

Here's hoping I can finish a few more pretty things this year.

In baby news Squishy's new favorite thing is now a burper rag.

She clutches it in each hand and stares at it.  She glares and glares and glares until she finally raises the burper rag to her face.   She then rubs her face on it and licks it, and is generally the happiest baby in the world to have her burper rag until her arms drop and the burper rag falls away from her face.  Then the cycle of glaring/licking repeats, and repeats, and repeats.  I am not entirely convinced that she knows her arms are controlling the burper rag.  I'm pretty sure she thinks she is a Jedi controlling it with the awesome power of her mind.

She's not entirely wrong.

Between the teddy rattle with the blanket, and now her deep love of the dirty burper rag I think Squishy is going to be a blankie girl.  I really really have to get her quilt done before she bonds with one of the dogs blankets and claims it as her very own.

Squishy Sunday