Growth Chart

I thought I would get this post up before all the craziness ensues.  Tomorrow evening Kevin's family, my mother, my sister and her little boy are flying in to have a birthday bash for the girls a month late.  Don't ask why; that is just how this whole crazy birthday party day evolved over the months.  Wish I knew then what I know now.  I would have planned it much better, but I'm sure it will all turn out fine nevertheless.

Then a week from today, the girls and I are flying to California for three weeks.  We will miss Daddy but it will give the girls time with their grandparents.  I need to start packing but I've been so busy getting the house ready for company and planning the birthday party that packing hasn't happened yet.  I did manage to pull out the suitcase today though, so that is a good start.

I have almost finished both growth charts.  I still need to embroider numbers on the ruler portion of both and sew something to hang both by.  I also need to finish the binding of T's.  It is about a quarter of the way stitched down and shouldn't take long.

D's growth chart

This was my first time machine appliqueing and it sure does make that part of the project come together quickly.  Mistakes come faster too though so concentration is a must.  I got the idea for this project and the patterns for the flowers from the Fons and Porter website.  I also made one for my nephew for Christmas that had only one flower, a caterpillar and a grasshopper.  I was so rushed to finish it in time that I did not get any good photos of it unfortunately.  But the grasshopper looked really cute.

For each growth chart, I painstakingly marked the ruler lines and then machine sewed each of them line by line with two strands of thread (pink/purple for D's and pink/orange for T's and dark green/bright green for cousin H's).  The ruler starts at 2 feet which is the level I will hang it at and goes to over 5 feet.  I plan to use a fine tipped sharpie to mark the girls' progress.

"3" for 3 years old or for 3 feet tall

I used felt for their names.  Had I planned ahead it would have been out of another colorful material, but I added their names much later (I've been working on these since last fall) and had felt on hand at the time. 

Labelled so there is no confusion.

My goal is to finish them and hang them before we leave for California in a week.  Having family around to watch the girls will hopefully give me time to work on them.  But I have a lot to do and not a lot of time.  I hope I make it.

New Sensory Experiences

I finally bought one of the little plastic kiddie pools.  I didn't even know that they made them in pink.  So now my girls have a girlie little pool.  One of these days we might actually fill it with water and use it as a pool.  But for now its sole purpose is to contain messes.

For example, keeping play dough off the carpet.  I found a quick and easy play dough recipe on Pinterest.  So I made them a batch of purple play dough, but I doubled it for obvious reasons.  

I'm trying to do more sensory experiences with them because of Tess' dislike of frosting and paint on her hands.  But she had no problem with the play dough.  I was hoping they would squish some in their hands and go all out.  Instead they mainly picked up a piece and then dropped, and then picked it up again and dropped it.  But they liked learning to crawl in and out of their new pink pool. 

For their next new thing a week later, I took a cue from a friend and let them play with flour.  I opted for them to be sans diapers since I didn't want flour all over the diaper covers.  But notice I was careful about object and hand placement so I could post them on here.  I did get a great double moon shot though that I can embarrass them with when they are teenagers.

They were a little concerned when I started sprinkling strange white stuff on their legs, but they quickly learned to ignore it while they played with all their new toys (i.e. Tupperware, wooden spoons, measuring cups and a basting brush).    They spread it around a little and dusted it off their legs.  They even tasted it and made faces.  I don't like the taste of raw flour either. 

They had fun.  It kept them busy and tired them out on a long day when Kevin was on-call.  And it wasn't really messy.  A quick rinse of their "toys", a spray out of their pool outside and a sweep in the kitchen was all it took.  Oh . . . and a bath for them, but it was bath day anyway. 

4th of July

Happy Independence Day!

We were hoping to BBQ and it would have been nice to see some fireworks but we are not doing either today.  So sad, I know.  Kevin should have had the day off since he is in the clinic this month but he got scheduled on-call.  He'll be back today at 7pm so BBQing is out.  Last year the girls were still in the hospital, but we had a great view from their room. We were able to see the fireworks over the capitol building.  The girls go to sleep at 7pm so no fireworks unless we can see them from our house.  Between the hills and the trees, I don't think that is likely.

So instead, to celebrate we've done the next best thing.  I dressed the girls up in their 4th of July outfits and took pictures. 

 I have learned to not wait for a good shot.  Usually I see a great shot where they are both looking at the camera or doing something cute and I press the button too late to get it.  So now I just take shot after shot after shot without waiting and hope that a few of them turn out okay.  I took 50 photos of them today.  About 5 turned out really well and another 8 were acceptable.  D's smile in the above photo was the only one I got. 

I almost got T to smile, almost but then she changed her mind.  Her expression in this one though is so adorable.  Just want to squish her chubby cheeks. 

The bows were gifts from the girls' Leila but the rest of their outfit I made.  I took two 18month onesies which ran really small in size . . . the girls stopped fitting into them lengthwise at 11 months.  I made ruffled the sleeves out of patriotic scrap material using this tutorial: Ruffled Sleeves Tutorial.  For the matching star applique, I used some techniques I learned with quilting.  I had to sew it on by hand since the onesie would have made turning around the edges difficult on the machine.  Perhaps next time I do an applique like that I will make a tutorial.   

D as a young Rosie the Riveter. 

 The skirt is a handkerchief cut down the middle and sewn up the sides (which I thought was very clever of me).  For each outfit, I cut a onesie in two horizontally right above the leg openings.  Then I gathered the handkerchief skirt in two spots, one at the top and one about 2 inches down.  The top gathering I sewed to the bottom snap portion of the onesie.  Then I sewed the next gathering to the shirt part of the onesie. This extended the onesie by a little over an inch.  I also didn't have to make diaper covers that matched because the onesie still snaps down. 

Since we are not going any where today, they will instead get to wear the outfits tomorrow and be very patriotic for story time.   I hope everyone has a happy and safe 4th of July.