3 months old

Dear Hazel,

Today you are 3 months old. You are no longer in the "4th trimester" and are now an infant instead of a newborn. You're growing so well that we've had to pack away a bunch of your clothes already and even though it's sad that you won't fit into those tiny onesies anymore you just get cuter each day.

Your favorite activity is staring at your left hand. Usually it's in a fist, but once in a while you examine how your thumb and index finger open and close.

This month has been one of lots of development for you. You consistently sleep for two 5-hour shifts during the night. What's not consistent is what time you go to sleep, but we'll figure that out someday.

A couple of weeks ago, you learned how to suck your thumb and even though you don't always find that thumb again, I know you'll get it down eventually. You also learned how to roll from your back to your tummy! Everytime I put you to sleep on your back now, you eventually roll onto your tummy and sleep that way. Your parents and grandparents never tire of seeing you roll back and forth to get your momentum going and then heave yourself over to that tummy. You can even lift your head all the way up to see your surroundings.

I'm so proud to be your mama and can't wait to see all the things you learn this coming month.

  2 months old

  3 months old

Wedding Ceremony

Thanks so much to all you dear gals for helping me pick out my necklace and earrings. I ended up picking necklace #2 and earrings #13.

Now, onto the good stuff. I just saw this popping up on all sorts of blogs and had to play. This site (Wordle) takes whatever text you plug in and gives you a picture of the words. The larger words are those that show up most frequently. So, since I have wedding-on-the-brain I copied the wedding ceremony text from the Book of Common Prayer.



Isn't it beautiful? I love the reminder of which words show up most frequently.

Help me choose

Could you gals help me decide whether to wear any of these necklaces and/or earrings for the wedding? My dress has allover lace and looks somewhat vintage. I don't want the accessories to detract from the dress and am looking for something delicate and vintage-looking. So, do ya'll like any of these? Please vote in the comments.

NECKLACES

1) View Listing: http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=12072312

2) View Listing: http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=12126224


3) View Listing: http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=10531563

4) View Listing: http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=12322095

5) View Listing: http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=11564393

6) View Listing: http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=12179225

7) View Listing: http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=12269137


EARRINGS
8) I'd get the set of earrings and necklace.
View Listing: http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=11509605


9) View Listing: http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=12228920


10) View Listing: http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=9736075

11) View Listing: http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=11885928


12) View Listing: http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=12231517


13) View Listing: http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=12295060

I have finally lost it

It's been sooo long since I've last posted (August 2007!) that only a post so amazing would allow me to come back into the blogger universe. Well, I may have one.



These look like normal lemons, right? I seem to have an unlimited supply of them since my fiance's family has a whole tree of them in their backyard and I can't just let them fall to the ground unused. No, I must find uses for every single lemon from that tree. Well, a girl can only eat so much lemon curd and lemon meringue pie takes so long to make. So, I present to you, my dear faithful readers, my latest idea!

Lemon Underwear soup!

Word is that lemons have great whitening power and I just happen to have a small pile of whites that could use some whitening. So into the heated pot of water and fresh squeezed juice of about 15 lemons went my dingy whites.



And, just in case you doubt my lunacy, look closely at the above picture for the Jockey tag. Yeah, there is no hope for me now. I'm definitely going to regret having restarted this blog aren't I?

My brother's wedding

Wow. Have I really been gone a month? Looks like I've been traveling through lala land and the Nation of Twiterpation a bit too long. Well, I'm actually still there, but I wanted to get a quick picture up here from my dear brother's wedding in Oregon last month. My long-term readers may remember that I went to TWO weddings last year for my brothers. This makes three. And yes, I have no more brothers. So three sisters-in-law is all I get. Anyway, I'm working on a proper slideshow of all pics, but here's my favorite.




Enjoy!

Michigan and Indiana Recap

Check out this short slideshow of my trip to Indiana and Michigan. I always love visiting the Midwest and being reminded that there is sooo much green in this world. But, of course, I'm ever so happy to be back home!

Knitting in Michigan

This purple blog of yarn is my latest traveling knitting project. It's a little shrug/sweater that I'm creating as I go. I got the basic measurements from Peony Knits and threw some yarn in my luggage just before hopping on the plane to Indiana/Michigan.

I'll be back in a little while after I finish my presentation for this conference I'm at.

Meanwhile in this corner

Let's take a quick break from our normal scheduling of craftiness and Midwestern oddities to explore this interesting idea.

Joel Spolsky from Joel on Software has lately been describing the business processes of getting an innovative software created and to the market. Today he was describing the software developer's frame of mind in the final debugging phase where they attempt to find and fix every single. tiny. detail.

And as you fix more and more of these little details, as you polish and shape and shine and craft the little corners of your product, something magical happens. The inches add up to feet, the feet add up to yards, and the yards add up to miles. And you ship a truly great product. The kind of product that feels great, that works intuitively, that blows people away. The kind of product where that one-in-a-million user doing that one-in-a-million unusual thing finds that not only does it work, but it's beautiful: even the janitor's closets of your software have marble floors and solid core oak doors and polished mahogany wainscoting.

This has nothing to do with knitting or sewing but everything to do with my work and my dissertation. I've always loved how Joel talks about searching for and conquering all the details of a project to create that final masterpiece and it seems to apply so perfecting to my dissertation. I can't wait to get to the phase where I'm dissecting the raw data and putting it all in an order that makes sense to non-librarians and wows my advisers. But, before I get to that wonderful phase Joel is talking about, I believe that there's a different and darker phase: the stuck in the middle of the forest feeling lost phase.

See, I think I'm in that forest at work and at my dissertation. I hope know that what I'm studying will be valuable to someone someday, but right now I'm surrounded by large abstract ideas, like "change management" and "library assessment" that mean too many different things. Before I can get to the fun tasks of saying that, "My library is successful because we teach students to research and here is the proof," I need to figure out how to measure that students are actually learning.

Argh, I heard a long time ago that people tend be promoted to the level of their incompetence, and maybe this is mine right now. Joel's post is like a pep talk to me that eventually I'll figure out how to understand and measure terms such as "transformational change" and that I'll eventually even have my masterpiece of a dissertation. Until then, if you hear me whining about this process some more, please remind me of that quote above.

The Crossroads of America

Can you tell that I'm in the Bible Belt? You usually don't see cards like this one in Sunny California. At least, not at the local Kmart.



In case I haven't talked to you in person, I'm in Indiana right now. I'm visiting friends at Purdue University for the next few days and then driving up to Grand Rapids, MI (Road Trip!) for a conference.

I've got mobile blogging all set up and who knows what Midwestern peculiarities I'll stumble upon. Stay tuned for more fun pictures of tractors, hand-painted signs and fields of wheat.

By the way, if anyone knows of cool knitting groups in Grand Rapids, please share with me. I have much procrastinating of my dissertation to accomplish.

My Excuse

Dear Interwebs,

Please excuse Erica from posting on her blog today. She had such an amazing birthday yesterday (the big 30!) that she is still loopy in the brain. She also cannot post today since she is expected at lunch soon with her gal pal and then later tonight must meet the person responsible for her loopiness for Movies in the Hollywood Cemetery. She promises to come back to the blog soon when her brain gets out of the clouds.

Until she returns, please also wish her sweet twin sister an equally Happy Birthday!