A quick look back at March, April, May & June…

Celebrated Dylan’s birthday. My oldest baby is now 19 years old. I remember marveling at how beautiful Dylan was as I held him for the first time.

Haven started horseback riding lessons at the end of May and she loves it! And I love watching her while she rides, she is just so cute.

Another birthday was celebrated, and I sewed a fun and ruffly outfit for my cute little birthday girl to wear to school. Gracen loved waking up to the surprise and wearing it on her special day.

On my 39th birthday I snapped a quick picture with a nearly 5 month old Jensen.

Finn, Gracen, and Mathes all dressed up for Easter Sunday, 2011. Mathes looks shocked he’s getting his picture taken, even though this is actually one of his “smiles” for pictures. Punk.

For Finn’s birthday this year I made him a Super Hero cape and mask….

….and he is off to save the world!

Mathes got a turn being “Super” too.

Ciel had all four of her wisdom teeth removed and a small crowded tooth in front pulled. Poor kid. But she recovered incredibly fast, and had little to no pain afterwards. Here she is with a mouth full of gauze. Next up for her, braces!

Also…Dylan quit his day job to work full time managing local bands and moved out into his own place, and we turned his bedroom into a guest room. (Wanna visit? We now have somewhere for you to sleep!) Finn is pedaling a two wheel bike with training wheels, Jensen was 25 3/4- inches tall and 17lbs. at her 6 month check-up,  I’m trying to figure out a way to own a horse again, Craig is planting a garden nearly twice the size of last years, we got a pair of zebra finches, and we have peaches growing on all three of our little peach trees.

Ok, all caught up? Good.

I took Jensen in for her 4 month check-up today and she measured 23 inches long and weighed 12 lbs. 13 oz. putting her almost in the 50th percentile for weight. Her Dr. was surprised that she hasn’t been sick yet (yay!), and how strong and physically active she is. Seriously, it was like trying to examine a wild animal. She was in a constant state of motion as she kicked, pushed, bucked, and scooted all over the exam table. She was determined to keep moving, there was no way Jensen was going to stay in one spot, she wasn’t at all interested in holding still. Her Dr. got a good laugh out of it as she almost managed to launch herself right off the scale. He wasn’t expecting her strength and activity level to say the least. Ah yes, one healthy and very active baby.

(photo taken by her cousin Adler)

Jensen is 4 months old today, and after a slow start gaining weight, she has turned into quite the little chub. She weighed only 6 lbs. 10 oz at her 2 week check, so you know we’re thrilled to see that at her 2 month check-up she weighed 9 1/2 lbs. , at 3 months she weighed 11 lbs., and now at 4 months she weighs 12 1/2 lbs. Pretty sure it’s all in her cheeks too, their totally chubby and completely kissable! Here is a rundown of her “baby stats”….

-Sleeps from about 10pm-8am in her own bed (a co-sleeper in our room) without waking in the night (heaven!)

-Refuses to nap in her bed during the day though, only sleeping during daytime hours if she is in someones arm (punk!)

-Loves the pure entertainment her siblings offer her at every waking moment.

-Is a very happy, content, and smiley baby

-Loves to stick out her tongue.

-Is a true “Daddy’s Girl”, is happy to fall asleep in his arms and loves the sound of his deep voice.

-Loves to “talk” with all of her baby sounds.

-Giggled and laughed for the very first time Friday night (3-25-11).

-Currently fits perfectly into 3-6 month size clothing (which means she is close to outgrowing that size very soon)

-Still sporting a mohawk since her hair refuses to lie down. No amount of styling can tame it into submission, it’s been this way since birth.

-She rarely spits up, and rarely has diaper “blowouts” (hooray!)

-She still has her hands up to her face all of the time. Just like she did right after she was born, and even before as seen in her ultrasound pics.

-Still the most popular person at our house.

I had a lot of fun sewing Jensen’s Blessing dress, and I love how it turned out. I apologize for the wrinkled dress and bad lighting/pictures, but I have little to no time these days with most of it taken up in caring for the baby along with the rest of my busy brood. I had to just get them taken ‘as is’ if I ever wanted to get this post done. Oh well, you’ll just have to forgive me.

Never having worked with silk dupioni before, I worried it would be a repeat of my nightmarish first experience with velvet. As it turned out it was a dream to work with and I am planning a few more projects using silk dupioni again. Anyways, back to the blessing dress. I used a simple pattern as a jumping off point, and I just made it over to my liking. I changed the sleeves from short, puffed and gathered to a 3/4 length with a ruffle at the sleeves edge and no gathering at the shoulder.

I then shortened the length of the bodice, lengthened the skirt portion of the dress, and added an underskirt ruffle to the bottom hem of the dress that made it look like there was a second layer underneath, and then added pintucks on the bodice front and on the skirt of the dress. (I wish my pictures did the dress justice, they lighting is bad and the wrinkles are really doing more harm here than needed, but I am just going to have to stop fretting and just let it go. I don’t have time to do any better right now, again, I’m sorry.)

 I kept the bonnet simple by adding a row of pintucks along the crown and added a ruffle all around the edge so that it framed her cute face and tied it off with velvet ribbon.

I love, love, love the end result of the entire outfit, it was perfectly classic, modern, simple, and girly enough to suit little Jensen to a “T”.

And to top it all off, Craig’s Mom crocheted the most beautiful pair of little shoes for Jensen to wear with her Blessing dress on her special day. Here she is after the blessing in the little pink dress I changed her into for the family gathering at my house afterwards. I wanted to make sure her pretty little shoes could be seen, her Grandma’s hard work needed to be shown off on her cute little grandbaby.

I made sure to get a quick shot of Jensen with Craig and I right after church, because I knew I would forget to do it later once I got busy. Jensen was ready to be done but humored me just long enough for this shot.

The next picture we took has her howling. Oh well, we were done anyways.

Jensen had a lovely Blessing day complete with gorgeous weather for those traveling from far away to attend, and lots of family, food and fun at our house afterwards as we celebrated her special day.

(A quick reminder that this blog will soon be moving over to www.stitchybird.blogspot.com)

So, after much testing, it has been determined that my son has ADHD and PDD-NOS. Not sure what that second one means? Basically he isn’t Autistic and he doesn’t quite meet all of the criteria for Aspergers either, but he is somewhere in the spectrum (this link on PDD-NOS explains it better than I can). We are feeling very relieved and happy to finally be getting some sensible answers for him. He is an incredibly smart, sweet, and tenderhearted little boy that has a great sense of fun, a deep imagination, and a lot of love for his family. And while he does great at home and seems to be thriving here, school and church are both a drastically different story, and a constant challenge for him and his teachers. So we are hopeful that we can gain the necessary tools and methods to better help him and to understand him more now that we know what we are dealing with. Although none of this changes the fact that he is still my little boy, as sweet, cute and funny as ever. He is just going to face some extra challenges along the way.

(Don’t forget that this blog will soon change locations to www.stitchybird.blogspot.com!)

In the next few weeks, this blog will soon be gone from this web address. I’m switching over to Blogger since it’s free because (duh) free is awesome. So my new blog will be located at

www.stitchybird.blogspot.com

Obviously I haven’t found the time to move all of this blog content over there to the new spot, but in the next few weeks I hope to get it done. So I wanted to make sure to let anyone know that might be stopping by here that this spot won’t be mine much longer. I will let you know for sure closer to the actual time, but I wanted to give fair warning. Thanks for stopping by and reading when I do post (I’m hoping to post more as Jensen gets bigger, you know the drill) and I will be over at my new blog very soon!

No, I still haven’t found my camera, the above pic is from google. *sigh*. I have got to find that stupid camera, and soon.

I just got my new 7 groove pintuck presser foot in the mail today. I am running out to pick up a double needle this afternoon so I can try it out and see if I can get it to work for me. I’m hoping that the blessing dress will only take me 3 days at the most if I go slowly and sew very patiently. This is not the time for impatient sewing, I am determined NOT to screw this up. I also have a fun idea for a pair of cute matching dresses for two of my girls, and it’s simple enough that I just might get it all done by Sunday. And for those of you that have wondered just how I get any sewing done? Let me assure you that the dishes are not done, I am ignoring any and all laundry, the house is in as-is condition, and dinner tonight is a casserole chilling in the fridge that will be heated in the oven by my husband so that I can hole up in my sewing room with as few interruptions as possible. To occupy my children, I let them watch way too much tv, and I have Jensen in her swing beside me so that I can nurse her in between seams. If I want to sew, everything else must fall by the wayside, that’s just how it is these days.

I can’t find my camera, so until I do I can’t post any pictures of my own, so in the meantime my writing will just have to do. Lame, I know. Anyways, I’m trying to make a blessing dress for Jensen. Yes, I have two other blessing dresses I made for and used on my other three girls, but they are both far too big for Jensen. What can I say, she’s a smurf. So my plan is to sew one in a smaller size for Jensie.

To start, I bought 3 yards of Silk Dupioni last week, and instead of paying $75, I was able to get it for only $25 for all three yards (yay!). But, I have no intention of cutting into that beautiful bunch of expensive silk until I have the perfect dress pattern to us it with. So, I am in the midst of using some inexpensive cotton fabric to test out several different dresses, to make sure I not only get the sizing for Jesen right, but the overall look and style of the dress. It would kill me to sew up a dress with any old pattern using that gorgeous silk, just to end up with “any old dress”. I want it to be just right for Jesen. Well, “just right” in my mind at least.

So my first test dress turned out allright, but it wasn’t quite right. It’s a good thing that I have three more dresses cut out and ready to try again. I feel good about my chances of getting it right soon. And whatever dresses I have left I will give to the D.I. so that some other little baby will be able to use them since it looks like I will most likely end up with 3 or 4 dresses made from the same purple print fabric once I’m done.

(pic of silk dupioni courtesy of google)

I like to buy those big bags of frozen meatballs at Wal-Mart, and besides the obvious spaghetti and meatballs dinner, this recipe is my other favorite way to use them. And since it’s so cold outside, it’s even better when you can get a hot meal onto the table with very little effort. Take the time you saved and spend it curled up in front of a nice fire with an awesome book. And if there is no fireplace in your house, then on the floor by a lovely warm heat vent. Either one works this time of year. And yes, I speak from experience.

 Slow Cooker Swedish Meatballs

1 bag of 64 frozen homestyle meatballs (1/2 oz. each)

2 (10 3/4 oz.) cans cream of mushroom soup

1 (10 3/4 oz.) can cream of celery soup

2 or 3 (4 oz.) cans sliced mushrooms, drained (opt.)

1 (1 oz.) packet dry onion soup mix

2 tsp. minced garlic

16 oz. light sour cream

Hot Cooked Egg Noodles

Place the meatballs in the bottom of the slow cooker. In a separate bowl, whisk together the  soups, dry soup mix, garlic and sour cream. Pour over top of the meatballs. Cover and cook on LOW for 6-8 hours or HIGH for 4-6. Serve the meatball mixture over top of the hot cooked noodles and enjoy!

**If you decide to cut the recipe in half, just use one can of cream of mushroom soup and one can cream of celery soup, and then halve the remaining ingredients.

I am currently up most nights with Jensen, snuggling and nursing her while everyone else sleeps. To while away the quiet hours, sometimes I like to browse through the many, many wonderful things etsy has for sale. What would I like to buy, let’s see…

This awesome knitting pattern, it makes me want to work very hard on my truly sad knitting skills.

This fabric would make the cutest pair of summer-weight pants for Jensen.

This would make a great quiet-time toy for Finn and Gracen.

This fabric bundle would be so cool worked into ‘this zig zag quilt’ using these prints as the “zig” and pair it with a solid gray for the “zag”.

Love, love, love this headband for Jensen…

 …and this one…

…and most definitely this one!

 My girls would love it if I crocheted them this cute little bluebird, she even has her very own skirt.

And my two littlest boys would love it if I sewed them this dashing and debonair fox sporting a tie.

And how fun would these zoo animals be for Jensen’s first birthday!

Oh Etsy, you suck me right in every time. There is so much to look at and so much to enjoy.