Out and About

When you have a baby, your life can quite easily slip into revolving around them. You like to be home for sleep time, be somewhere convenient for feed time… and before you know it you find yourself housebound.

I tend to go a bit crazy when that happens to me. I get mopey and over it – especially if the weather is foul like it has been so often lately! I need to talk to big humans, and to be out, having a life. This week I’ve been making more of an effort to do that. I’ve been walking into town, exploring parts of of it that I haven’t before, and enjoying the fresh air and exercise.

Today, I got really brave. I decided to take the two kids off to the beach (and for a spot of shopping) on my own for the day. Eeek!

I let Reuben have his morning sleep nap at home, then off we set. First we went to a shop that my sister discovered a few weeks ago, that sells all types of bulk food.. grains, bread mixes, flours, dried fruits, nuts, lollies…. it’s all kinds of great. I loved looking at everything, even if I was slightly distracted by the baby strapped to the front of me sleeping (see we don’t have to be at home after all!), and the three year old who wanted to touch everything. The bribe promise of the beach was enough to keep her going, and before too long we were off!

It was such a beautiful sunshiny day today. Mayana was insistent that it was a warm summer day, but the water definitely reassured us all that it’s still definitely winter.

We sat on the grass near the sand, and Mayana ran on the beach and collected shells and built “tainer castles” (with her container, since we left her bucket at home), and chased the ducks (who were actually seagulls) and had the time of her life.

After a feed, Reuben laid happily on his blanket, in the shade of his pram and enjoyed the feeling of grass and sand between his toes for the first time ever. My poor winter baby has very rarely been barefooted, and he seemed quite happy to be sock-free for a while!

Mayana came back for the occasional snuggle, and to tell ‘Reubsi-Cubes’ that when he got a big boy he could play in the sand with her too!

Reuben didn’t seem to bothered by the fact that he was confined to his blanket though.

While Mayana played, he got uninterrupted Mama time.

Before we left, Reuben and I wandered down onto the sand so Mayana could show us some highlights. These included a large piece of driftwood that Mayana was convinced was the tail of a big huge whale. It did in fact look quite whale-tail like.

Reuben loved poking his toes into the warm sand, and cried when I picked him up.

Mayana gathered her spoils, and I told her that she could choose three pieces to take home with us to add to the incredibly large amount of shells that she already owns.

I had such a lovely time with my favourite kids today, and I’m going to keep my eyes and mind on the memories of the beach… and not the scream-fest that happened when we got home. This was the second afternoon in a row that I’ve ended up with half an hour of two screaming crying children who desperately need to sleep and yet refuse to. But. I’m not going to think about that. I’m going to think about sun and sand and waves crashing and smiling babies with happy toes and carefree three year olds laughing and twirling and running.

It’s a much prettier picture.

{3 Months}

My darling Reuben

I can hardly believe that three months has gone already. You are such a part of our lives sweet boy, that it’s hard to imagine that you’ve only been around for thirteen weeks.

This months it feels like you have ‘grown up’ so much. You no longer live by a cycle of eat-poop-sleep. You have lots of happy awake time now, and you are learning new things every day. You smile a lot. Especially at strangers. You are such a flirt when we are out and about, and I even have shopkeepers asking for cuddles!!

You are getting bigger, slowly but surely. You are a bit over 4.5kg now, not too far from doubling your birth weight. When I look back at your sister’s weight records, she was nearly a full kilo lighter at this age than you… so people who give me a hard time about how small you are don’t know what small is!

Baby Maysi

Baby Reuben..

You’ve put yourself into a bit of routine lately. It’s quite flexible – it has to be because unfortunately our days cannot always revolve around you! However you are happy to have your sleeps in the pram, car or sling (oh how you love the sling!), and even if we’re out you still follow your little routine to a degree.

You had been almost sleeping through the night, but over the last week you have reverted to waking a few times (last night was more than a few times *yawn*) to feed. Our lovely child health nurse, Alison, assures me that you are right on schedule for a growth spurt, and that you are busy working on increasing my milk supply. I hope you’re done with that soon!

Another fun thing you have learned this month is that you can control your hands! You think they’re just great, and you delight in getting various fingers and/or thumbs into your mouth and having a good old chew and suck. Sometimes you get a bit over zealous and stab yourself in your gums with your nails, or make yourself gag but shoving your hands too far inside your mouth. When this happens you look at me as if it were my fault!

You also like to grab things with your hands. Sometimes it’s my hands (or Papa’s or whoever happens to be holding onto you), and they also tend to go straight into your mouth for a munch. Just in the last few days you’ve shown a lot more interest in your toys, and you like to hit or grab them or, of course, put them in your mouth.

Playing with your toys in the car…

You are drooling like crazy, and when I had a look in your mouth the other day I spotted two tiny white teeth under the surface of your lower gum. Mayana cut her first teeth at around four months, I wonder if you will beat her, or if those teeth will sit there taunting us for a few more months!

While you smile freely and often, you still haven’t figured out how to laugh yet, and I am so looking forward to the day when you do. You like to make happy coos every now and again, but you’re not much of a chatterbox just yet (give you time, I’m sure!)

Mayana is still one of your favourite people in the world. She makes you so happy, and you give huge gummy grins whenever she enters your line of vision. You seem to miss her when she has her days at kindy, and when she gets home you will not let her out of your sight. You love it when she sings to you, and watching her play is your new favourite  pastime. I know you just can’t wait to be able to get down there and join in! We have been putting you in the bumbo occasionally, and that gives you the opportunity to get a little bit more involved in your big sister’s games – or at least a little closer to them!

Your sister loves to sing to you..

Another favourite activity of yours is bathtime. It doesn’t matter whether it’s in the tub or the shower, you just love being in the water. We have a little towel bath stand that we lay you in in the bath, and you grin and squirm and kick like crazy. If your sister happens to be in the bath with you, you look so happy you could just about bust! In the shower you snuggle into me or Papa, and when we let the water run over your back and head you close your eyes and enjoy the sensation.

Reuben, I just love your guts buddy, and I am enjoying getting to know you. I know that this next month is when you will really start to become super alive and alert, and I’m looking forward to learning more about your personality.

I love you, my precious Sunshine.

Mama

thirteen

Today is a pretty auspicious day. Not only is Mr Reuben 13 weeks old, but today also marks 3 months to the day that he came into our lives, on that unexpected morning back in April. Amazing. I’ll write a proper three month post very soon, but for now, enjoy these photos from the thirteenth week of Reuben John’s life.

We’ve had a pretty cruisy week this week. Lots of hanging out at home, catching up on washing… boring stuff like that. It’s good though, it’s meant that we’ve been able to get Reuben into a better routine, meaning that Mayana and I get to have a bit more focussed time together.. so everyone’s happy.

Reuben moved into his cot this week, and doesn’t seem any the worse for it. He looks so tiny in there, and Mayana is excited to have her brother all officially moved into their room with her.

He also had his first go in the bumbo. He is probably a little small for it yet, but he enjoyed the opportunity to be sitting upright and thought he was very clever.

I just love this kid, and his personality is starting to shine through more and more. I can hardly remember what life was like without him in it.

Make a Quilt!

Seriously, I have just finished a quilt for Reuben’s cot (which he’s moving into soon!) and I thought I’d show you how to do it so you can make one too! It’s the easiest quilt ever… if you can sew in a straight line then you can make it… and seriously it wouldn’t even matter if you couldn’t sew in a straight line, you could still make this quilt look good!

Also, as far as quilts go, it’s quite inexpensive to make, since it’s made completely from flannelette. So as far as I’m concerned, you have no excuse not to give this quilt a go!!

I’ve made other quilts using this technique but always smaller. I have a rainbow one that I use with Reuben.. it goes everywhere with us and sits in the pram or highchair or on the ground for a playmat if we’re at a friend’s house. They’re soft and thick enough to be comfortable. They also wash and wear really well, because the more you wash them the better they look!

Okay. So the first thing you need to do is choose fabric. I got this cute cot panel with jungle animals a few months ago, and decided to chop it up for the purposes of a cute quilt. For this blanket, you need to cut out lots of squares, all of flannelette. The quilt is made of four layers. So make sure each of your patchwork squares is a stack of four layers.

To be honest with you I didn’t even use a tape measure for the project. The size of my squares was based on the animal pictures from my original panel. The other blankets I have made had much smaller squares. You can do it however you want! And I ripped my fabric. I don’t usually do that because it makes your fabric fray (especially with flannelette) but in this quilt, that turns out to be a good thing, so go ahead, tear it. It feels good, doesn’t it? Okay. So make your stacks of squares, and lay out your quilt to get it into a design that you like. Now you start work on the squares. Half of your squares are going to have your fluffy, frayed design, and the other half are going to be plain. Obviously, I made my animal prints the plain ones, but like before, do what suits your fabric!

For your plain squares, you want to sew across them, from corner to corner like a big X. This really is just to hold all of your layers together. You don’t want them to come apart. If you are using printed squares, choose a light coloured cotton that will blend in. If your squares are plain, you might like to choose a funky bright colour to make it part of your design.

Your alternate squares are going to have the funky fluffy frayed look. To achieve this you have to follow a couple of steps. In all the other quilts I’ve made like this I’ve only used this diagonal idea. Basically, you need to sew straight lines about 1.5cm apart. They can be narrower or wider if you want, but you need to make sure you can fit your scissors in-between the lines.

Because the next step is to cut in-between each of your sewed lines.

For the love of God, please don’t cut straight through your square. You need to make sure that your bottom layer stays intact, you only want to be cutting through the top three layers. Otherwise, your whole square is going to end up in pieces, and you will probably end up in tears. Not that I’m speaking from experience or anything.

Once you’re done, you’ll have a sore hand, and a square that looks something like this. See the pretty blue layers in-between showing through? Make sure that your inside layers are a nice contrasting colour, because you will see them.

For this quilt I got a little shmancy and sewed some different designs in my fluffy squares. You can do pretty much any design you want, just remember that you need to be able to fit your scissors between the lines.

Trippy huh?

Next, lay out all your squares and get ready to sew them all together! I like labelling my squares, because I have a three year old who likes to rearrange things.

Okay. Sewing together. The thing with the quilt is that you don’t want to hide your seams. They’re part of what makes the thing look so darn great. So when you piece your quilt together, the trick is to sew with the ‘wrong’ sides facing each other, and the ‘right’ sides out.

You probably want to give about a 1.5cm seam allowance. Make sure you’re catching all of your layers, and try really hard not to let your cut strips bunch up or fold over.

I usually sew up each row, then sew the rows together. Make sure that you have your rows facing the right way up when you put them together, because there’s nothing more frustrating than having to unpick a row when you find you have an upside down giraffe. Again, not speaking from experience or anything!

Ta da! Now there are only three more steps…. the first one is that you need to sew a ‘hem’ around the entire edge of your blanket. Not a real hem, this quilt is far too cool for boring things like hemming. Just sew a line about 1.5-2cm all the way around the edge of your blanket.

Your second-last step is to do little snips around your ‘hem’. You want to cut about 1.5cm apart or so, and don’t cut into your hem line. This step just helps make the fraying on the outside not get too out of hand.

Your last step is to wash your blanket. Seriously, this is an important step, as it starts of the fraying process and makes your blanket look awesome. If you can put it through the dryer too, even better.

And there you have it! You might like to tidy up some of your edges, and some of the longer strands on your frayed squares will need to be trimmed. This is seriously one of the easiest quilts you could make.

{And in case you’re wondering this is what the back looks like}

Now, what are you waiting for?? Go sew!!

ten/eleven/twelve

 

The weeks just keep flying on by, and all of a sudden, Baby Reuben is now 12 weeks old, and only a few short days from reaching the three month mark. How is it possible for time to move so quickly?

Week 10

Week 11

Week 12

As you can see, Reuben is just as gorgeous as ever, and we have had a busy few weeks with trips away, visitors and meeting new friends.

I love my precious boy!