A Conversation In Our Bedroom

It was about 7 AM and Jillian opened our bedroom door and sauntered in. Since Daniel's arrival, DH and I aren't particularily bright-eyed in the morning and we were both sleeping when she started talking. Daniel was sleeping in the cradle at the foot of our bed.

Jillian: DADDY!
Me: Shhhhhhhhhhh....zzzz
Jillian (in a stage whisper): Daddy?
Me: Whadda ya want, Jilla?
DH: mumble moan mumble
Jillian: I want to go downstairs.
DH: Go ahead. Go downstairs and play, Daddy will be there in a bit.

She toddles off, closing the door behind her as she's been trained (the cats are super annoying in the morning if they are granted admission to our bedroom).

Three or four minutes pass. We hear her coming up the stairs. We hear her struggle with our doorknob. We both groan to ourselves even though we know one or both of us should just get up.

Jillian: DADDY!
Me: Shhhhhhh!
Jillian (in stage whisper again): Daddy?
DH: Yes, Jillian?
Jillian: Daddy...I want you to come downstairs wif me.
DH: Um...ok...why?
Jillian: Cuz there's no cooking people downstairs and I'm hungry.

Cooking people. That's what we are to her. Excellent.

No post complete without a photos. Here are all the kids:

Claire yesterday en route to "Purple Day" at school. I was glad to sent THAT face to school:


The girl with personal chefs:


My favourite photo of Daniel (so far):


Thanks to Carolyn for loaning me the basket. I haven't gotten any good pictures of the wee one lately because he broke out in a horrible case of baby acne. Poor little cutie. I hope it clears up soon.

My First Starmore

Hey...Daniel here. Mom says this is a big day for me cuz I get to wear my very first "Alice Starmore". Not really sure what that means...gotta tell ya. Considering I'm two weeks old, have never tasted anything but breast milk and Vitamin D drops, never worn socks or even pants and spend the majority of my time looking at the world through my eyelids, I'll resist the urge to tell her that EVERY day is a big day for me and just go with the flow.

Mom's buddy Anne knit this hat (I refuse to call it a "bonnet" - I'm no girl) and has been waiting for a model to show it off. Seems I'm the lucky dude. Mom says it is a bit big yet but she and Anne want to see how it can be improved by my handsomeness so this is my first attempt to show the thing a good time. When I get bigger and it fits right, you might not be able to handle the cute.

Here I am (I'm looking forward to head control):

I surprised Mom by deciding to go with blue eyes. She was convinced, at my birth, that I was brown-eyed like the one they call "Claire". I'm hoping I'll break more hearts with this colour.


The colours of the hat are pretty accurate in this picture. Mom wanted to include this one to show my awesome ATNR (even though she cropped it too close to really show it well). She's an Occupational Therapist...she gets excited about stuff like that.

Mom wants me to tell you that this is the Capillifolium Baby Bonnet from Piecework Jan/Feb 2009 (Ravelry link here). Anne made it out of Jamieson's Shetland Spindrift instead of the Hebridean 2 ply that the pattern called for. If you mosey over to this post of hers, you can see what colours she used for her version. I'll model it again when I'm a bit bigger and knock yer hand-knit socks right off.

Corn

She makes it look soooo good:

Sir Daniel in Pictures

I haven't had a whole lot of time in the last two weeks to do anything that doesn't involve the new baby. I spend a fair bit of time staring lovingly at him. Right after he was born I looked at DH and said "I love him" and DH said "of course you do" and I said "No, no, no, no...I LOVE him" (there was morphine in my system...I was a little punchy but the sentiment is still there). I spend even more time nursing him. He is absolutely voracious. The girls were delicate eaters in comparison. Of course, I also make time to take his picture. Since I haven't done much else, I'll try to entertain you with some of my favourite shots so far:

Here he is at four days old. I couldn't get over how nice his skin was and insisted on taking several close-ups to try and prove to the world that he is perfect:


This is my experimentation with the macro lens. Fun:


Here's the Easter Bunny. I finished the second bootie the night before I went into labour. There is something to the folklore that babies won't be born till their knitting is done:


Here is Daniel with his very proud big sister Claire. That kid adores that baby. She's a bit too young to be trusted very far but her heart is in the right place and she's as gentle as can be:


Here he is with his equally proud big sister Jillian. I trust her even less than I trust Claire. She also means well but has uttered phrases like "I want to open his eyes" and has been seen experimenting with the way his fingers can move. She makes me jittery:


Both girls were absolutely insufferable the first two days we were home from the hospital. They followed him everywhere and insisted on touching him at every opportunity. I felt like a mother hen with a trail of chicks following me around and I could feel my nerves wearing thin. They have since realized that he pretty much just eats, sleeps and poops so the novelty is wearing off.

A cute Daniel/Jillian moment:


Claire had to do a "Show and Share" project for school and had to bring in something starting with the letter "I" so I took a bunch of pictures of the girls with the baby and made up a little book called "I is for Infant" for her to show her class. Here are a couple of the photos that I liked:




This was taken yesterday. I forget how teensy weensy they start out and seeing him snoozing in that nursing pillow he looked so tiny that I had to take his picture.


Lastly, a glamour shot with half of a "milk-drunk" smile:

So far, he has been an absolutely fabulous baby. He almost never cries, even in the dead of the night. He wakes up and chats to himself till I pick him up and feed him. He's not a fan of being naked but is getting used to diaper changes and baths so if he actually cries we know he's really unimpressed (he seems to have some gas issues that ramp him up from time to time). We are all, as Claire would say, super duper ooper happy to have him here.

Daniel Andrew

Yeah...it's a handknit bunny hat (20% cashmere...I'm allowed to spoil him).

Daniel Andrew was born on April 8th, 2009 at 10:37 pm. He weighed in at 6 pounds, 12 ounces and was 19 inches long. We are all pretty smitten with him and, we admit, we call him "Bacon" quite a lot ;)

More after we settle in a bit. They try to starve a girl to death in the hospital (Swill, I tell you! Swill!) and I've got catching up to do.

Easter is Coming!

Last week I had to find something to do to keep the kids busy. They were only in school two days and my stamina is pretty low for outings. It was essential that I find a way to keep the girls occupied or we were all going to drive each other bonkers.

Claire is the sort of child who would rather bake or do crafts than play with any sort of toy or do anything physical. I try to find things that are age appropriate yet intensive enough that it will take up a good bit of time and Easter was a good excuse for a card-making session.

I have had my eye out for a good card idea for a while and one day I saw an "Easter Fun" book at the bookstore and leafed through it. I didn't buy the book but I sized up one of the ideas enough to recreate our version at home.

Unfortunately, I overestimated Claire's scissor skills. I thought I would be able to trace a bunch of pieces and leave it to her to cut everything out and then with a bit of direction she could glue them all together. Instead, I ended up cutting out all the bunny bodies (they were double thickness) and about half of the heads and then fixing up her heads and ears and muzzles. She did do all the gluing and some of the tracing of parts and then spent a lot of time writing out sentiments for the insides. In total, we filled two entire afternoons with bunny card making. A nice, quiet, relatively stress-free activity. Seriously...it was.

Here they are, all lined up ready for Claire to glue her Happy Easter sentiments inside. She though it was important to figure out which card would go to which person and keep his label near him till he went into his envelope.


Here is a closeup:


Jillian decided not to help. This is not her thing. Instead she lounged around in her favourite whale pyjamas and looked angelic:

When she looks this cute, I find it hard not to eat her up.