Sunday, August 22, 2010

Happy Birthday, baby girl!

This nutty face is SO HER.

Today my baby turns 5. It's hard to believe that she's so big, although she acts so much older a lot of the time that sometimes we forget that she's not the same age as her sister. She's such a smart girl who is also a total nut. She's very funny - and a complete ham; if something makes you laugh, you'll definitely hear it again. She loves to tell jokes, although she doesn't actually understand punch lines yet. ("Knock, knock. Who's there? Otter. Otter who? Water! Like otter, water!") She loves to read - chapter books, picture books, signs in front of her, anything in front of her face, really. She thinks anything she writes should be spelled correctly, but she rarely puts spaces between the words. She is extremely precise (and expects you to be precise, too). She loves to dance, listen to music, draw, play pretend. She spent the afternoon being a horse riding detective super spy (a change from yesterday's princess detective super spy), and she told me an elaborate story about her laser that could freeze the bad guys. She loves to travel, but when we're home, she'd just as soon stay in the house and play. She wants to go to Rome, New York and Paris. (Apparently Rome "is pretty". I believe the Statue of Liberty and the Eiffel Tower are the reasons for the other two.) She plans to be a world traveling horse trainer when she grows up. (Although she is pretty much terrified of most animals.) She's either silent or really loud when she talks, with not much middle ground. She's sweet and kind, and I love her to pieces. Happy birthday, baby!

Thursday, August 12, 2010

Pajamas

For some reason, my kids are convinced that you can only wear pajamas once before they need to be washed. I think it's a remnant of A's toddlerhood, when she would eat breakfast in her pajamas, and they therefore were immediately disgusting. At any rate, we have to have lots of jammies around here. I'm a big fan of Carter's super soft cotton jammies (although A is about to be too big for the sizes they make, sadly). M has recently outgrown most of her sets, so I went digging in the hand me down box. Rather inexplicably, there was only one pair of PJs in the next size up. So what does someone with a lot of fabric decide? I should make jammies, of course!

I actually ended up being totally lazy, though. I was at Target right after making this decision, and I discovered they had tanks and a couple of t-shirts on clearance for under 1.75. Clearly I can't make t-shirts for that price (well, if you discount the fact that I already own a fair bit of knit). So I picked up a couple of tops for M and one for A, and then I just had to make shorts. I also decorated the t-shirt (it was plain and boring). I hit my beloved Burda shorts pattern and voila, three sets of pj's:

Eventually I'm going to have to buy or make more, but these will do until it gets cold. And at the present rate, that doesn't seem likely for a long time!

So far both girls are enjoying school. M can't wait to be the "special helper" in class, and A is busily collecting "cents" (by being good) to earn the privilege of reading a story to M's class. As always, the bus is the most frustrating part of the experience, but hopefully that'll get better after this week.

Monday, August 9, 2010

Sniff, sniff

My babies are both off to school. I can hardly believe that my little tiny babies (well, okay, kind of big, fat babies) are both in elementary school! Here they are in their new outfits:


They were pretty excited, so hopefully the day will be excellent!

Saturday, August 7, 2010

School outfit

M's wearing her polka dots for the first day of school, but A wanted a dress. (Also, I figured they didn't really need to match on the first day of school.) She picked out some ballerina fabric that came from my haul from Iestyn's trip to Japan. After some pondering, I decided to go with the Frida pattern from Modkids, and I found some pretty pink that would match with the ballerinas.

Of course, being me, I couldn't possibly follow the pattern precisely... Actually, I really couldn't, because the sizes only go up to 6-7, and A is more of a 7-8. So I had to enlarge the bodice a bit. And I didn't really like the sleeves - the sticking out bit is cute and all, but it was way too much. Oh, and it's supposed to have ties on the side, but then quite a lot of the side is just open, and that's not very appropriate for school. So, there were changes. And seam ripping (and mild cursing) and then more changes. But in the end, it's pretty cute:

Action shots will have to wait until Monday, when school starts. (Yes, Monday. August 9. It's absurdly early this year. It's hard for me to believe that summer's essentially over, even though it's still 90+ degrees outside.) I'm really happy with the way the dress turned out, although I'm not entirely certain I could replicate it. And I need to make a pair of comfy black shorts to go underneath, but that won't take long. (I'm procrastinating because I don't want to change the serger thread...)
I thought M wanted a skirt from the rest of the ballerinas, but now she tells me she wants a "kid purse", whatever that might be. So we'll see. At any rate, I should have more sewing time once the kids go to school, so there may be a big increase in posts here!