There is no Knowing

The last few days Max has largely managed to get by with only an hour or so of nap in his whole day (compared to the 3-4 hours he normally takes across two day time naps). Although it has caused him to be a little temperamental it was really me, and therefore Jeff, that suffered. I guess I need my quiet time and having that denied me too many days in a row made me quite ... not nice. Actually this post pretty much sums up what I'm like without at least one hour a day of quiet. My most common outburst is that I'm going to put the cats outside (sometimes on the roof outside our bedroom windows) or that they will have to go live in the garage.

Today Max decided to get up at 6:30 for a bottle of milk, and considered getting up to play until Jeff gently informed him that it was actually still sleep time, and that he should just get some more sleep. Surprisingly he actually did go back to sleep and stayed that way until just after 9am.  Since I knew that there was no way he was going to take a morning nap after sleeping in so late I decided to drag him out to the store. I think I succeeded in finding some shorts to wear to the fountain on Sunday, so I don't have to wear maternity shorts or bluejeans.

There is no way that I could have predicted that he would fall asleep in the car on the way home and still want more nap once I got him inside. Normally once we hit the front door and he sees his stuff and his cats the nap is forgotten. He's all sunshine and giggles and want to crawl around. Today all he wanted was to lean on my shoulder until I could get him snuggled down into his crib. I did not look a gift-nap in the mouth, I just laid that baby down in his probably dirty diaper. He hasn't had lunch yet, so he won't sleep too long and it will get changed then.

Is there ever a time that kids get more predictable in their schedules? So far the longest that I've had Max stick remotely close to a schedule is about a month. Even then it's not always the same wake and sleep times, but more then same length of time that he wants to be awake before taking a nap, and nap lengths that are somewhat consistent in length. It makes it really hard to plan day time events when I don't know when the heck he's going to be awake!

Speaking of which, he's probably going to wake up soon. Time to curl up on the couch with my knitting for a few minutes and enjoy the peace, that way I can be smiling happy mommy fun when he wakes up and is ready to play.

A Pile of Socks

I've been knitting away on Sock Madness again this year. Don't know if I've mentioned it or not, and if I spend time looking at the very few blog posts I've done this year to find out if I'm restating myself then I'll probably run out of time to post at all.

I've managed to make it through 4 rounds so far, which is further than I've made it any other year that I participated. I owe my success to Jeff for helping to watch Max, and my competitors that kept cheering me on when I almost got knocked out during round 2.

Round 1 was a sock knit sideways, flat instead of in the round, and then seamed together to make a tube. After that the toe, heel, and cuff are knitted on and wah-lah you have a sock!
This resulted in vertical stripes on the sock that contrasted with the rings on the bits knitted in the round. It was a new technique for me, and even though it was kind of fun, I'm not really keen to try it again right away.

Round 2 was colorwork. I don't think I've ever had more fun knitting a two color sock. Something about the pattern just felt good in my mind and hands as I worked. In case you can't tell from the picture they are covered in coffee beans, and you KNOW how I love my coffee. The funny thing was that I think it took me a week to knit the first one and only two days for the second.

Round 3 was just fast. The bright sunny colors just sang to me after all the blues I'd been using. The pattern stitch was super easy to memorize, and it didn't seem like I had to work very hard at all to finish this pair in 5 days. The heel construction was a new one for me, and I really like how they look.

Round 4 was nuts. I've never knit knee high socks before, and I don't know if I could have every finished them if I weren't racing against 14 other people to finish the round in time to continue in the competition. For the most part they are just a plain ribbed sock, but there's one large cable motif on the outside of each sock, and swooping decrease of the ribbed portion on top of the foot. It's going to be a lot of months before I can wear these, unless it's freezing when we visit Iowa this summer, but you have to admit they are impressive.

That's it for now. We're going to start round 5 sometime next week, so I might have something else to show you soon. I hope this post makes sense, but it was written while Jeff was watching robot chicken, so if anything is complete nonsense blame him.