I adore colour!

So why is my latest haul from Japan all black and white?

There are heatwaves affecting some cities in Australia right now. Sydney hasn’t copped it yet. But nonetheless, I took this photo in my car yesterday afternoon as I picked Henry up from preschool.

I case you are having trouble reading it, it shows that the outside temperature was 46 degrees Celsius. That’s 115 degrees F for my northern friends. It wasn’t actually that hot outside, it was only 38 degrees C (100 degrees F). But you know how hot cars get in the sun.

Which reminded me of Ava. A tragic, tragic story.

Please, please, please remember AVA’s rule. Nobody should have to go through what her family has been through. Nobody.

Thank you for all your well wishes after my last post. They were very much appreciated, and I felt a little less alone under my large pile of laundry. Emmeline is much better. And now I am sick. Blah, blah, blah. Boring. Let’s get to something pretty.

I managed to make some blocks for Meg before I caught Emmeline’s thing (whatever that is – the swab test showed nothing growing – could be viral) for her month in The Beehive.

Meg asked for ‘mosaic-y with a bit of wonk’. My first block I made all square and perfect and mosaic-y and then I realised that it needed a bit of wonk. So I slashed it on a few angles and sewed it back together. How’s that for improvisational piecing?

It’s 10.5″ square. I kind of like it.

Then I couldn’t help making something mosaic-y with no wonk. I made it small, so it’s lack of wonk maybe won’t stand out too much.

It’s a little tiny 5.5″ square block. And it took 13 squares to make this tiny block. I think it looks quite jewel-like.

Aren’t these fabrics lovely? I just can’t wait to see the finished quilt.

My daughter sure knows how to party.

She celebrated the start of her 12th month by throwing a 5 night, I repeat 5 night, long fever party. Clearly she needs little sleep to get through her active day, and her bedroom bears all the hallmarks of serious partying.

There are mattresses thrown on the floor for guests needing somewhere to sleep at 2am.

There are syringes clearly left in full view.

And even the drugs, if I hadn’t already had my suspicions.

There are half-drunk bottles laying around.

Battery operated devices.

And sheets and clothes covered in vomit.

{It’s okay. You’ll take my word for it, won’t you?}

——-

Diagnosis? Tonsillitis AGAIN. That’s her third bout in about 5 weeks. We’re hoping that the onset of summer, and putting the winter virus season behind us, might help, but in the meantime she has had a swab taken from her tonsils last week to try and identify exactly what we are dealing with.

I’m tired. No more tired than any other mother with young and/or sick kids. And indeed if tonsillitis is our biggest problem then I am the luckiest mother around. But, still, tired. Hence the lack of posting. I’ll be back as soon as I can.

Dear Emmeline,

Happy 11 months, my love! How quickly we are approaching your first birthday!

It’s been a delightful month, my sweet.

You know, I have never really understood when mothers gush about how in love they are with their babies.

Love them? Of course. Without doubt. Enormously. You may, in about 12.5 years, refuse to ever believe that, but I do. With every fibre of my being.

In love with them? I’ve never been sure about that.

But then your mother has never been one to fall in love with the ‘bad guy’. Oh, you will probably know all about those one day, and I hope you can resist them, they are nothing but trouble. Apparently.

My loves, before, and including, your Daddy, were all good, kind men who treated me well, respected me and never treated me badly. I was never the type to fall in love with the “treat ‘em mean and keep ‘em mean” kind of guy.

I could never see the allure of being treated as anything other than well. Which is probably why I have a hard time falling in love with my babies, because I have to say, in your infancy, both you and your brother haven’t exactly treated me with kindness, placidness and a good night’s sleep. And you shouted at me. A lot. I’m not fond of being shouted at. Much.

But now I get it. I feel like I have fallen head over heels in love with you this month.

Since you started to crawl at last, you have been a different child. You have been so much happier with your new found freedom. Cheerful! Delightful! Cuddly! Endearing! Charming! Funny! If you were any plumper and rounder I would want to roast you. With brown sugar on top.

Your new tricks this month include clapping. I love how you clap with your left palm facing up. It looks like you have learned to clap at the opera or the symphony.

Pointing! That chubby little index finger loves to point.

Signing! We did baby sign language with your brother and it was a great success. It enabled him to communicate with us well before he could speak, and reduced his toddler frustrations immensely. You can already do the sign for ‘water/drink’ and I think you have just about mastered ‘finished’ for when you have had enough to eat. You have your own sign for hungry, which is smacking your lips together. Henry translated that for me. “Because, Mama, it is like when she eats, see? Mwah Mwah”.

Oh, how you love your brother. Now that you are on the move, you have been playing chasings with him from one room to another and the laughs from both of you are enough to send me as high as a kite. He’s a wonderful brother. You are a lucky, lucky girl.

On the medical side of things, you and I are still on the Elimination Diet. It has turned out that I am probably more intolerant than you are, so it’s taking a bit of figuring out how to proceed. I don’t have any further results for you this month. A new development is that I have been taking you to see an amazing woman who, through some ‘alternative’ methods, has diagnosed you with gut problems and some issues with your primitive reflexes that were stopping you crawling. After your first visit with her, and some slight adjustments, you were finally crawling within 36 hours. I am excited to see further results as she continues to treat you.

You have two new teeth – your top two! They look big! They have made you grumble a little, but it hasn’t been too bad. I think that another two, on either side of those, might be on their way too.

Your routine hasn’t changed very much. You sleep about 11 hours at night, about 1.5 hours at lunchtime, and a quick 17 minute nap in the morning. I think that you sleep about 3 hours less in a 24 hour period than your brother. All babies are so different!

You are able to take a little formula during the day if needed, but you aren’t so keen. I will need to try a bit harder to encourage you to drink it, I think.

We are gearing up for your first birthday party with much excitement. It hardly seems real that a whole year has gone by. But I think of how far you have come and how much you have changed, and I can’t see how all that could actually fit into a year.

Baby girl, your smile and those eyes, they light up my every day, and I am so proud and lucky to be your Mama.

We love you, sweet girl.

xxxx

Here’s what I’m working on at the moment!

A quick baby quilt for a baby shower on Sunday week. I have long wanted to make a boy quilt with the Alexander Henry 2D Zoo in Pool, and it’s as good as I had imagined.

I’m practicing paper-pieced star blocks for Lara for Around The Block. This one will go in my own Katie JumpRope star quilt, then I’ll make one for Donna and then for Lara.

A dolly quilt for a little girl who recently turned two.

Halloween bags to hand out at our big family picnic on Sunday. Henry’s determined to wear his scary mask and his even scarier purple fluffy bat headband (don’t ask!) so I thought I’d go along with the theme and make party bags for his cousins.

And today I am working on the filing. This is about a third of my filing pile. It goes back over two years. I should be ashamed, but I’m having a hard time caring. My accountant reads my blog (oh how many of you can boast of that, eh?) and I am hoping she will just tell me to throw it all away. But there is something terribly comforting about being able to view your electrictiy bills neatly filed in chronological order for the last 10 years.

Not that I’d know. I can only imagine how comforting that would be.

A selection of the grey fabrics being stockpiled for my grey and green quilt in my round of Around The Block.

From left: Kei Daisy Dot (Japan), Flea Market Fancy grey seedlings, Calme* (Japan), Elephants on grey (Japan), Botanical Pop by Jackie Shapiro, Kei Honeycomb Dot (Japan), Come Stai by Yoshiko Noda (Japan).

* That’s the only writing on the selvedge and I can’t remember where it came from!

Belinda chose some space and flight themed fabrics for her take on the Retro Starburst quilt from the Material Obsession Book, the first one.

This is a big block, at 18.5″ square, but I’m really happy with the way it turned out. The emphasis was to be on contrast, and I think I nailed it.

If I say so myself.

In addition, I made a wonky log cabin, a 9.5″ square with the leftovers. I think these blocks might be destined for the back of the quilt, or maybe some cushions, etc. This was fast and fun!

Here is some of the sewing I did in the first-week-back-to-preschool frenzy.

Louise’s blocks for her round in Around The Block.

Such pretty fabrics. I can’t wait to see this one finished!

School holidays, that is. Thank goodness. Henry’s preschool runs on school terms and whilst I know that many mums love the lack of routine that school holidays brings, it’s, well, not for me. Being so restricted with Emmeline’s sleeps at home means we are here at home a lot, and the first week was cool and rainy and, just, ugh.

Emmeline has been sick again, with another bout of tonsillitis, and pure misery has been her middle name. Now that she’s on the mend, dosed to the hilt with antibiotics and probiotics (my mathematical head is telling me that these should cancel each other out, but a health professional I am not), teething has taken over and one of her top teeth is through and the other is looking like it’s on it’s way too.

Super action heroes at the park

We also had some lovely visitors for a few days, all the way from the sunny northern state, which was, seriously, heavenly. I didn’t get to talk about or show or crap on about half the crafty stuff I had wanted to (and we did a tremendous amount of crafty talk, so that’s saying something). These visits always go too quickly.

So I guess there is no need to explain why it’s been quiet at the chalet, is there?

In a more positive light, the minute the damned child my delightful son was safely ensconced at preschool for the 6 minutes hours that they tend to his every need yesterday, I started to sew again and life is looking decidedly brighter again after getting some time to fondle some fabric.

Results of that are still to be photographed, but will be shown ASAP.

Actually I did do a little bit of sewing while Donna was here. I told you she inspires me to sew. One of our mutual friends is 37 weeks pregnant, and as is our tradition, we chose a fabric range and made co-ordinating baby things.

This is the first time we have had a boy on the way, and we chose the Cogsmo by Cosmo Cricket range. My contribution was a quilt, so I made a sample block and cut all the fabric months ago. Many months ago. It has been glaring at me, and I at it, for a long time.

Everytime I saw our friend’s belly get bigger, I would wince at the thought of how behind I was.

Donna made a Mail Sack bag from Pink Chalk Studio. And a Wee Wonderful robot which is so perfect for this fabric. And she gave them to me in August (August!) when I winced again about how much I had to do. I’ll let her show you them herself.

So then she arrived in town last week, and I felt rotten that I hadn’t finished my part of the gift in time to give to our friend now, together. So on Sunday morning I neglected the kids for a while, fed them when required, and started to sew.

I finished the quilt, the entire thing, from pieces of fabric, to a quilt top, to basting, quilting and binding before 4:30pm, just in time to meet our friends at 5:00pm for an early dinner out.

The back

How pleased do you think I was?? The new owner is happy and those dastardly pieces of fabric can’t glare at me anymore.

In other news, Miss Emmeline’s multitude of illnesses have prevented me from starting the food challenges until today. (When you are looking for reactions to food, you have to be able to assume that she is otherwise well). I don’t know if you know this about me, but I suffer from a lot of headaches. Usually daily. No wonder I get grumpy sometimes. I know that bananas and chocolate give me headaches, so I have been dreading the amine challenge which requires one to consume copious amounts of, you guessed it, bananas and chocolate. Do you know, and I don’t know why you would, that in the 67789 32 days I have been on the elimination diet, the only headache I got was my stock-standard-hormone-induced-night-before-that-time-of-the-month one. So by my calculations, that’s 31 headaches less than usual. I felt so GOOD. Even if I felt like Pamela.

So at 7:30am this morning, I started with the salicylate challenge. I gorged myself on a juicy ripe delicious peach, straight from the garden of Eden and all it’s evil temptations. Added some diced peach to my cereal, poured some apple juice ( Juice! JUICE!). I was excited about the week ahead! 7 days of salicylate heaven! Nectarines! More peaches! Peppermint tea! Stewed apple and rhubarb! Lychees! Apple juice! JUICE! The fridge was stocked. I was ready!

By 8:30am I had a blinding headache.

It took less than an hour for my dreams of apple juice to float right away. So who really is the intolerant one in this house, huh?

So although the original plan was to challenge Emmeline through me, that has been abandoned, and I’m giving her small amounts directly.

I don’t really know what this means for me. Am I destined to be limited to pears if I want to avoid my daily headaches for the rest of my life? If you have any experience with adult intolerances, I’d love to hear it. I think. Maybe I don’t really want to hear that I can never enjoy a juicy peach again without reaching for the painkillers. Be tactful, okay?

Oh and if you are still reading, and I can’t believe it if you are, here is your reward. It has been a big day at the chalet. Peaches, headaches, JUICE! and then this:

The baby one is crawling. All it took was a bowl of potato chips in her line of sight and she was off.

And if that wasn’t exciting enough for one day, she also now claps. On request.

Clearly she has inherited all of my intelligence and talents along with my intolerances. And my love of potato chips. (Oh stop it, of course I didn’t give her one. I just used them as bait). Because, you know, crawling at 10.5 months is so incredibly amazing, she must be super clever.

Oh, and one last thing. Click over here and take a look at the first quilt top from Around The Block. I am so very proud of this group!