The year of the hat

In my little queendom of knitting, 2011 was the year of the hat. The first project that I completed back in January was this fish hat for Aidan:


The last project I completed in 2011 was also a hat for Aidan:


In between those two hats were 22 other projects, 15 of which were hats. Why so many hats? I like knitting them, we need hats in New York winters and they make great baby gifts. Nine of the hats were part of Project Amelia, providing hats for babies who did not come home from the hospital.

So while I do not plan to knit so many hats in 2012, there are two more in the works that will be completed early in the year: a lovely cabled hat for James and a fun sock yarn hat for me. But I also plan to complete the dreaded ribbon vest for my mother (I pledged to her that she would have it by 31 January. Of 2012) and the lovely pink wrap for my Aunt Eula. After that, who knows?

Happy 2012!

Pork malfeasance

After we took Mom to the airport yesterday to start her journey back to Knoxville, Aidan and I went to Denny's for a late breakfast. Build Your Own Grand Slam breakfasts were just the antidote to a chilly, gray morning and we both earned membership in the Clean Plate Club.

The people in the booth behind us left just before us and as we passed their table, Aidan said, "They committed crimes against bacon!" They had not eaten all of their bacon, which is a travesty of culinary justice in Aidan's opinion; he is, after all, a great fan of bacon.

He was still shaking his head in disbelief as we left the restaurant.

Snow behind

We woke up on Saturday to find snow on the ground, and while that is normally not news in central New York in December, it was our first snowfall of at least one inch this winter season. And it was barely an inch, with the tips of grass blades poking through. Our snowfall this winter season is a whopping 1.7" of snow.

I'll say it again: 1.7 inches of snow so far this winter.

Compare that to last year when by this time we had received 71.7" of snow; I wrote about the 40+ inches of snow that fell between December 5 and December 9. Even an average year boasts about 27" by this time. And while it will feel very weird to not have snow on the ground on December 25 - weather experts at Cornell University give only a 68% chance of a white Christmas - most people are not complaining. We know, after all, that there will be snow sometime soon.

So while we are snow behind, that is okay with us.

Deck the balls...

Deck the halls with sparkly, not schweddy balls! Back in September, I made my first knitted ornament, and over the weekend, I completed the twelfth and final ornament. The glass ornaments were sold by the dozen, so it made sense to me to use all twelve:


I used four different types/colors of sock yarn:


Once I got comfortable with the pattern, I played around with the bead placement:


I will use the ornaments mainly as teacher/staff gifts as well as a few for friends and family. If there is one left over, I will hang it on our tree:


And now for a word about Schweddy Balls: I looked for this flavor of Ben & Jerry's ice cream at Wegmans for weeks with no success. One day I went into Tops for one or two items and, on a whim, checked their frozen food case. Schweddy Balls! We tried it...not bad, but certainly no Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough.

O Christmas tree

Isn't it lovely?

We are very excited to have our first Christmas tree in three years. Yes, that is correct: the last time we had a fully decorated Christmas tree was in 2008. In 2009, Aidan and I left Georgia just before Christmas to join James in New York, only bringing some of our possessions; Christmas decorations were not part of the items that made the trip then. And because we left before Christmas, I did not go to the trouble of putting up a tree and then taking it down again before we left. James had a tree for us when we arrived in New York but he only bought a few decorations for it.

Last year, we moved into our new home just before Thanksgiving and had not yet unpacked our decorations. And, since we spent Christmas in Michigan with my brother and his family, we did not add to our unpacking workload by putting up a tree.

On Saturday, we drove out to a local tree farm and cut a Frasier fir. James has long wanted to cut his own tree, so he was excited to play lumberjack. We brought it home and got it set up, then yesterday we decorated it. It was such fun to unpack our boxes of decorations and to reacquaint ourselves with the ornaments. We don't have a fancy-schmancy color coordinated or theme tree; our tree is a lovely mishmash of ornaments that have special meaning to us. There are ornaments that Aidan has made over the years, ornaments that we purchased while on trips and even a few ornaments that were on our family tree when I was growing up. Some are elegant, some are obviously homemade and some are downright kitschy but we adore them all.

I sat in the darkened living room last evening, sipping wine and enjoying the lights and sparkles. It was not until that moment that I realized how much I had missed our Christmas tree.

Not for the faint of heart

Warning: this blog post contains talk of bodily functions – proceed at your own risk.

Parenthood is not for sissies; it can test your patience, your nerves, and sometimes, your gag reflex.

We have not been a well bunch. The last ten days have seen all three of us dealing with colds, and on Tuesday night I got the Headache from Hell that laid me flat until well into Wednesday. Then in the wee small hours of Friday morning, a figure appeared by my side of the bed. “Mommy, I’m going to throw up,” Aidan announced.

I managed to shake myself out of sleep and say, “Then go to the bathroom!” He got there in time before, sure enough, throwing up. After he finished and I helped him clean up a bit, he told me that he didn’t want to go back to his bed but wanted to sleep in the guest room. With me. I understood that he wasn’t feeling well and needed comforting, so I agreed. What a night. Aidan got up two more times during the night to vomit and even while in the bed, he was restless.

Going to school was certainly not an option. His stomach continued to be uneasy and by 9 am, his gastrointestinal tract joined the party (er, potty?). I am shocked that Homeland Security did not come a-knocking because the stench in the bathroom was most definitely a Weapon of Mass Destruction. The exhaust fan was completely overwhelmed so despite temperatures in the upper 30s, I had the bathroom window wide open.

Both ends calmed down around noon and the poor child was hungry. I allowed him to have a plain piece of bread, a banana and some water. All seemed to be well as he sat down to play on the computer around 2:30. I was around the corner in the kitchen when I heard an odd noise. When I asked Aidan about the noise, he said “I threw up again.” And boy, did he ever. I honestly think that is the first time I ever had to clean vomit off a wall and I hope it is the last time. I am very thankful, however, that he turned away from the computer because I do not know how I would have cleaned bits of partially digested banana out of a keyboard.

Dinner for Aidan was plain rice and saltines, which did manage to stay down. He got a good night of sleep in his own bed and today is back to normal. If only we could recover that quickly.