I have heard from other parents that this was a possibility, but I always just thought, "oh no, that wouldn't work in our house", but consider me proven wrong. Yesterday I left Ruth for over 25 minutes of quiet, independent play at the bathroom sink. She washed her hands, she filled up cups, she splashed about. I, of course, couldn't resist the photo opportunity and ruined the whole thing. As soon as she saw the camera, R was through with the water and was glued to my side, begging to "see the baby". Ah well. At least I got the pictures, and next time I'll know to just leave her be.

I finally managed to finish, and even more impressive, photograph another of my Citronille patterns for R. I found the sleeves on this one a little tricky, so I'm not totally wild about how it turned out in the end - with some weird tugging and pulling around the shoulders - but R likes to wear it (after a period of much coaxing) and that makes me happy.

When R was a baby I would take pictures of everything: eating lunch, going for a walk, laying on the bed, doing nothing at all. The albums from her first few months are organized by week, with hundreds of photos in each. These day's I'm lucky if I take any pictures at all. I can partly blame the lady herself, who is far more interested in the technology these days and will promptly request to "see the baby" in the camera as soon as it comes out, before any pictures are taken. I am resolving to take more pictures in the coming months - to remind myself to take my camera out more, and to get the lady used to the lens.
These photos were taken the other morning while eating breakfast. Isn't that hair wild?!

We celebrated R's second birthday last week with two parties, two cakes and lots of balloons. It's hard to tell in these photos, but she was really excited about the whole thing. She's the last of her little baby friends to turn two and she's been going to other kids' birthdays for months. She couldn't believe it was actually time to sing happy birthday to her (and she made me do it about 50 times). It's so funny - she was such a serious baby, it was really hard to get a smile out of her for anything. She was always just staring, looking around, absorbing it all. She's not like that at all now. She's silly all the time, full of giggles and wackiness, but man does her serious side come out in moments like these. She was so straight faced with the cake and presents, like this was her job and she was going to make sure to do it right.
There were, of course, a few things that brought out a grin - I mean who can't help but smile when they try a harmonica for the first time?

Happy birthday little r. At two days and two years.

R and I got back to painting today and made this little cat mask. She was very proud of her work and made almost all of her stuffed animals try it on. Meow.

Ok. So maybe it's a year later than I wanted it to be, but my gosh, I finished that needlepoint. I can't really believe I managed it, and find it even more unbelievable that I am feeling anxious to start another one.
The illustration is based off one I found on the website of Chris Silas Neal, but of course can't find again. I am not an illustrator, so I knew I was going to have to steal from someone else for this, but wasn't sure where to look. I browsed around a while, not really drawn to anything until I saw this, and I knew immediately it was the one. I really hope he doesn't mind.

I was bouncing off the walls when I pulled the final stitches through, but when I stepped back to have a look at my work, my heart sank. The whole thing had gotten itself all stretched out of shape and I thought for sure itwas ruined. Do you see that slope in the photo above - devastating, right? Well, fortunately, wrong. This being my first needlepoint project, I had no idea that this is totally normal and all it needed was some good old fashioned blocking. Lucky for me, I am collector (hoarder) of craft books of all kinds and found a great tutorial in my Complete Guide to Needlework. A few simple steps, some major pulling and about 50 thumbtacks later, the piece was straight. Now all I have to do it get it framed. . . I'll see you back here with that in another year.