Before Griffin was born, I made him an alien eyeball hat. It was great, but it turned out to be too small for his giant noggin.

Today I finally found my big bag of felt after an empty-out-the-closet search, and I used some of it to turn the alien eyeball hat into an alien eyeball stuffie!

Jag suggested the felt mouth. He’s a happy jolly alien.

Look out, Griffin!

Griffin tries to ward off the alien attack.

I’m still managing to cook now and then. HT had a sale on lamb shoulder chops last week, so I marinated them in an orange juice and rosemary mixture, pan-fried them, and made a sauce from the drippings. (The recipe I adapted is here; I left out the pineapple juice and onion and added thyme, and added some butter when reducing the sauce.) I also made some roasted potatoes and mixed veggies. Was very tasty, and would’ve been even better if someone had been a little less screamy at dinner time. :-/

I ordered a bunch of dyeable baby clothes from Dharma Trading, along with some Procion MX cotton dyes, and had myself a little dye party today. I haven’t done any dyeing at all since I found out I was pregnant with Griffin (I had wanted to err on the side of caution, given the chemicals involved).

I had a blast! Jag was home today, so he was able to do baby duty while I played around out on the deck.

I used a low water immersion technique to get some texture and color variations, with varying amounts of success. Next time I’ll be more aggressive with the fabric scrunching and use some more rubber bands. The clothes I ordered were all 12-month size, because I want him to be able to wear them for more than a few weeks.

I always forget to wear gloves. 🙁

It’s cheapest to buy the gDiapers gPants in a 6-pack, but the colors suck: you get 3 orange and 3 off-white. (You can buy the other colors individually, but at $18 a pop, it’s pricey.) The gPants are 100% cotton, so I dyed the 3 off-white ones to make them a bit more interesting. He ended up with a pink waistband on the red pants, but we think he’s confident enough in his masculinity to pull it off. 😉

I dyed two sets of tshirts and shorts…

…and some rompers…

…and more shirts…

…and a cute collared onesie…

…and some long-sleeved shirts.

I was a little disappointed in how dark and greyish the “teal” dye turned out (maybe a reaction with our hard well water?), but otherwise I’m thrilled and will probably do another batch soon.

And lastly, here’s a picture of Jag feeding Griffin, accompanied by a few friends. 😉

It’s amazing what you can get done with a kid strapped to your chest. Like make a big ole shepherd’s pie!

I used this recipe from Epicurious with the following changes:

• added 3 cloves of garlic when boiling the potatoes and mashed them in
• added a thin layer of shredded cheddar cheese between the meat and potatoes
• used Guinness in place of the broth
• added Worchestershire, minced garlic, oregano, rosemary, thyme, marjoram and salt and pepper to the meat mixture (because it would have been mighty bland otherwise)
• used green beans in place of the peas, since we were out of peas.

It was deeelish! Highly recommended. Can be made without a kid strapped to your chest, too! 😉

Speaking of, here are the obligatory Griffin pictures for today.

According to my blog, around this time in 2009, Jag and I had just returned from a relaxing vacation in James River State Park. If you had told me then that in a year’s time I’d be celebrating Mother’s Day with my husband and 7-week-old son, I would have laughed hysterically.

Even when we first saw his picture last August, it was pretty hard to believe.

And now we have a strapping 13lb 10.5oz boy who just started wearing 6-9 month clothes.

And auditioning for Sister Act: The Musical.

Thanks to Jag, I got to use my spinning wheel for the first time in 8 months or so, had Dunkin Donuts for breakfast, and ate my favorite meal from Bandito’s for dinner. (Yay San Antonio burrito with salsa verde!) And then there was the Edible Arrangement full of chocolate covered strawberries. It was a good day.

Thanks to my sweetie, I was able to finish up some long-neglected spinning this weekend! This is a 3oz blueface leicester/bamboo/firestar batt spun on a drop spindle into roughly sport weight singles. No clue on yardage yet. It’s soft and drapey and I’m thinking it would make a great lace cowl. When I’ll have hands free to knit again, though, I have no idea!

EXTREME fiber closeup!

And now for the obligatory Griffin update. On April 23, Griffin broke the 12lb mark. Today, 9 days later, he weighed in at 12lbs 15.5oz. IS THIS INSANE GROWTH RATE NORMAL???? He did not sleep well last night (hungry every 2 hours) and has been acting growth-spurty all day today (constant feedings, super cranky, etc), but sheesh. A pound in 9 days just seems…extreme.

Jag realized this morning that Griffin is going to outgrow the Pack n Play bassinet at 15lbs (which at the current rate of growth means within 18 days, hahaha), and after that there are two options. 1.) To remain in our bedroom overnight, he’ll have to start sleeping in the BOTTOM of the Pack n Play (or we could start cosleeping, but that’s another can of worms) or 2.) he’ll have to go sleep in his crib in the nursery, which means using the baby monitor, and I’ll have to get out of bed and schlep down the hall a couple times a night to feed him. Let’s hope he’s down to one feeding a night before this happens!

At least his hands are still small!

Here’s a little video showing him starting to “talk” to us…the cooing just totally makes me melt into a puddle every time.

Breaking news: Griffin is still cute. 🙂

He tips the scales at 12lbs 10oz. He’s outgrown the newborn napper on his Pack ‘n’ Play and is nearly busting out of the moses basket we keep downstairs (which is kind of a problem!). He’s starting to coo adorably and smile, and is becoming more interactive.

Jag went back to work yesterday, so I’ve spent the last 2 days at home alone with the baby. I’m not as insane as I feared I would be. In fact, I’m getting a lot done, thanks to the sling and the mei tai that let me lug Griffin around while freeing up my hands. On the past 2 days, I’ve managed to get the following done:

–Take a shower
–Do 2-3 loads of laundry, one of which is always cloth diapers/cloth wipes
–Load/unload dishwasher
–Make myself lunch and eat it
–Feed Miranda her special wet toothless kitty food
–Scoop the litter boxes
–Clean up cat barf (sigh)
–Go to the potty when I need to (until you have a baby in the house, you have no idea what a challenge this is!)
–Take a 20-minute nap
–Get the mail/paper (and read the paper!)
–Get online to chat on irc and read Facebook/email
–Water the plants on the porch

Oh yeah, and take care of Griffin. 😉

The worst part of the past 6 weeks has been the sleep deprivation. I don’t really mind the diapers, the screaming fussy periods, the fact that he pees on everything, or the fact that I’m a 24-hour snack bar, but the 2-6 hours of interrupted sleep a night is real torture, especially over an extended period. Luckily, we’ve just discovered that swaddling really helps him sleep more soundly. (No company seems to make receiving blankets that are big enough for swaddling, so we’re using single-thickness approx 42″x42″ cotton flannel blankies that I made.) Last night he slept a solid 4 hours during his first stretch and for 2-3 hours in the periods after that. We’re hoping to keep that up for a while and build on it. Getting at least a 3-hour period of uninterrupted sleep really does make a huge difference!

Here’s Griffin modelling a lovely green sweater made by Carrie Anne, who is married to the sysadmin who took over my old position at Duke. Social networks are crazy things. 🙂 Thanks so much, Carrie Anne!!! We love it!

There’s plenty of room and stretch in the sweater and I have every confidence he’ll be able to wear it in the fall.

Griffin was not in a good mood when we started the photo shoot…

….and things just went downhill from there.

He weighed in at 12lbs today,..maybe he’s feeling a bit bloated? 😉

Jag took charge of Griffin and gave me an hour and a half of uninterrupted sewing time today, part of which I used to whip up a ring sling for carrying Griffin. (Yay clearance fabric from fabric.com!) Jag has to head back to work next week, and I need a good way to deal with getting stuff done while being alone in the house with the baby. The mei tai carrier we have, although it’s great, will be more useful when Griffin has better head control, and I find the Baby Bjorn hard to use without assistance. The ring sling is a lot more versatile in terms of ways Griffin can be positioned in it, and he can nurse quite discreetly in it, which makes it a great choice if I need to take him somewhere. Also, mommy can actually go to the bathroom without trying to find a safe place to put the screaming baby down first. Ahem.

Griffin took to the ring sling right away; he really seems to like being upright enough to bob his head around and see things, and the sling supports his neck when he needs it. I also like that I can see his little face at all times and make sure he’s breathing well. Not only did I get to play with my drop spindle for the first time in months and months, his evening fussy period was a lot less fussy while he was riding in the sling. I even managed to get him to fall asleep in it and successfully extracted him without waking him up. He’s been asleep in his bed since 9:45pm. Mwahahahaha!

To make the sling, I used a home-dec-weight 100% cotton (sturdier than quilting cotton, but not stiff like a canvas) and this pattern from Maya Wrap. (The rings are special very sturdy rings from slingrings.com.)

Yesterday our friends Abby and Aaron, who unfortunately moved away a year and a half ago, were in town. They stopped by the house to visit and meet the baby. Abby had knitted this stupendously cute hippo as a gift for the Grifflet. I can’t wait til he’s a little bit more into toys so he can start loving on it.

The hippo looked vaguely familiar when I saw it, and Abby pointed out that the pattern is from this book, which I had laying out on the coffee table. Duh.

I’ve been (very slowly) working on a different pattern from this book, a knitted snake in self-striping sock yarn. I picked the simplest possible pattern to work on, but it’s been slow going because I so rarely have both hands free to do anything these days. One-handed knitting is not really a possibility, unfortunately!

Our “little” Griffin just got back from his 1-month checkup. He’s 11 lbs 9.5 oz, which is 96th percentile for weight, and 23 3/4 in long, which is 98th percentile for height. Me and Jag, we grow ’em big, apparently! The doc also commented on the size of the baby’s feet. Wonder where he got those. 😉

In diaper news, we read some reports online that people were using regular prefold diapers stuffed into the gDiaper covers instead of buying the “official” gCloth inserts, so we switched to cloth last night and it’s actually working very well, with fewer leaks than the disposable pads (at least so far). Very interesting! So our cloth diaper investment may yet pay off, although I’m going to have to find a home for all those too-small diaper covers (which were unfortunately the most expensive part of the purchase).