I've Moved!

Figuratively this time! Neighborknitter is now HERE.

In the last few weeks, with my interests shifting rapidly and wildly, I started to contemplate a whole new blog (feel free to burst into an altered Aladdin- "a whoooole neeew blog... a brand-new page on which to tyyyype"- you parents know of that which I sing). I did it, wrote a few posts and it feels like it just might stick. I warn you now, this one has little to do with knitting. Lots more chatter and coffee talk and deep thoughts by Neighborknitter. If that doesn't sell you, it also has lots more pictures of Dory and even a recent one of The Hubba (henceforth to be known as Matthew) and I from last Halloween. Good, good stuff, people.

Again, the new blog is here and goes by the name Good Mama Mojo.

So a big, huge sincere thanks for all the Neighborknitter support. I hope my readers- those few, dedicated folks- do come over and check the new site out.

I've not entirely given up on Neighborknitter. Yet. I think this was one interesting little site, with lots of good stories and lots of good pictures particularly of a few dogs I know. I just think, well, life's gotten bigger, so the blog should too. And IF Neighborknitter is done and I do stop posting knitting pics, I WILL start posting them over on my new blog.

If I ever actually finish any of these projects...

UT vs. Auburn... Huh

We're off to a good friend's house to watch the game. It's Dory's first UT party! We're looking forward to seeing our friends far more than seeing the game, which considering we're in the heart of Vol country and they're Auburn grads is saying a lot...

So instead of focusing on the game I thought, let's focus on adorable babies! One baby specifically and her growth to be exact.


Dory at almost five weeks, first Vols game of the year. She seems to be saying, "Alright Coach Fulmer- show me what you got."


Dory at eight and a half weeks, fourth game. I think the feeling is clear. "You've GOT to be kidding me."

Go Vols.

Sigh

I should have written this post yesterday, when we were still excited and the outcome wasn't decided. But you know what it's like- busy with baby, busy with dinner (first time making cornbread!), busy with baby, busy with dogs, busy with baby....

Instead I can only report, if you've not heard, the Vols did not win their first game of the year. They lost to unranked UCLA in overtime, 24-27. No cute baby pictures or delicious cornbread can change that...







...but they do take some of the sting away.

Firsts!

First Bath:
This was left, literally, in the hands of her Big Daddy. There was no way I was holding our tiny, slippery, wiggly baby over the hard sink and granite countertops. So his job was to bathe and my job was to take pictures and say "oooo, careful!" every two minutes.







First Party:

The party was close family, all celebrating my birthday, but let's be honest- no one cared, least of all me (and that's saying something- I think we all remember stories of birthdays past). This was an excuse for everyone to get together and see Dory.





This is pretty much what people did the entire time. Someone held Dory and the rest of us stood around them talking about how beautiful she is.

First Playtime:






First Grocery Store Visit:
I popped her in the baby sling and off she and I went. No pictures though. People gave me funny enough looks carrying her in sling. I think if I'd been walking around trying to take pictures of us at the same time, we might have been asked to leave.

First Adult Beverage:
Mine, not hers! After eleven months (OHMYGOD that's almost a year) of living the life of a teetotaler, I decided, around her four week birthday, I was chancing a drink.



I nursed her, handed her to Big Daddy (maybe The Hubba's new blog name- it's what I'm now in the habit of calling him), and partook of about ten ounces of one of his home-brewed beers. A red. Delicious. Mind you, I didn't have long to enjoy it. I actually drank it at light speed, assuming the faster I got it into my body, the faster it left my body, and therefore wouldn't influence her next feeding. So, in some ways, even the first adult beverage was about Dory.

I know it won't be this way forever, this complete and total focus on one little person. But for the time, I love it. I thought, when I was pregnant, I'd be glad for the baby to get here so we could start talking about something else. Small backfire there. All we really seem to want to talk about is her. Sure other stuff creeps in. Dave Matthews Band and their sad news. The dogs. The house. The upcoming football season (starts tonight by the way! Hallelujah!). But somehow it always comes back to Dory.

Who probably thinks she's found herself in the house of the most boring conversationalists EVER.

Welcome to the World, Baby Girl!

She's here.

She's been here for almost two weeks.

Born July 29th, at 1:07 pm, Baby B is a beautiful 7 lb, 12 oz Baby Girl. Her name is Dorothy Grace. She has beautiful blue eyes, dark hair that slowly grows lighter every day, the sweetest round cheeks imaginable and the hearts of her parents. We can't look away from her, we can't put her down, we can't seem to do almost anything else. Hence blogging nearly two weeks after the big event. If the option is "Hold Dory" or do... well, something that isn't Hold Dory, Hold Dory wins every single time. I knit for about three minutes yesterday and it was the first time since the night before her birth and, to be completely honest, I was wearing her in a Moby wrap at the time, so it didn't exactly count as not Holding Dory. She's in the Moby as I type this post, so, again, even though I'm blogging, I'm still Holding Dory. This should be the new national pastime, except I absolutely refuse to share.

I won't write more now. Announcing her presence here in this world seems like the most meaningful thing I could say right now. Instead, here are a few pictures from her amazing and illustrious little life.


About an hour after her birth with her Daddy...


Two days after her birth...


And, somehow still getting prettier every single day, one week after her birth...

I know I'm the most prejudiced person on this earth (except her Dad and grandparents) but isn't she just heavenly?

A Bit of Nostalgia

...7...

I have a surprising revelation, one that might shock you: Life can change dramatically in a year. I know, it's startling. Allow me to walk you through this discovery I made today.

Knowing there's a baby coming (has anyone mentioned that? August 2nd, my friends, the general due date), I've been thinking a lot about... reading. Because this is who I am. Basically, there might be a wee bit of downtime between nursing and sleeping (the two things I'm informed I'll do pretty much round the clock) and it would be nice to have some good book to sink into when not otherwise occupied. I'm just weird about this, but I like to have a book handy. I know other experienced moms might laugh and say "Reading, right, that's going to happen." They could be right, but better prepared than staring at a wall with nothing to do. For me, hell is a waiting room with no reading material.

So this book. It has a few requirements. It needs to be interesting, yes, enough to hold my attention, but it also needs to be dull enough I can put it down again without bother, without irritation, not thinking "oh, just two more pages, hold your horses, Just Born Little One." Not really the feelings I want to cultivate towards our first child (or any other child for that matter). The solution being it needs to be something I've read, but still care about.

I think anyone who remembers this blog from last year (and how could you not?) might remember this same month, almost to the day, a little something called Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows arrived in bookstores around the world. Because of this, I remember exactly what I was doing: moving into a new house.

Funny association, I know. But we had just bought this gorgeous home (though I say it myself) in Greensboro and literally the same day that Harry Potter came out, we were moving ourselves in. This was a baaaad day. How could it not be? It was the two of us doing the moving (meaning, The Hubba and about twenty-five percent of another person) and not only that, I insisted we stay up past midnight, to go buy HPATDH so I would have the book first thing in the morning. The Hubba, because he is wonderful and I had bought him a new Playstation game the day before, acquiesced.

But the next day, Saturday, that was a great day. I remember, we got up and unpacked enough to be able to eat food off plates and a few other small necessities and then we both agreed, that's it, we're done, time to relax. We filled the fridge with easy to make snacks and sandwiches and a variety pack of Magic Hat Beer and we hunkered down. He settled himself in front of his game and I settled myself in front of an enormous hardback and that is how we spent the weekend.

I thought about that this morning as I dug the Deathly Hallows out and cracked it open for maybe the fifth or sixth time. Because here we are, almost one year later to the day, and life is a bit different now. We live in an entirely new house. That new house happens to be in an entirely different state. Biggest of all, we're about to have a whole third person living here with us and this could happen today or three weeks from now.

My life is amazing. That's not a brag or boast of any kind. It's completely personal. For what suits and pleases me, my life is amazing. Oh sure, tweaking can always happen, things can always get better. And situations will come up, as they have even this month, that throw you off kilter, force you to make the decision I can be worried or I can be happy- what do I choose? (For me it's about a sixty-forty split leaning towards happy. I'm working on upping that number.) But as life stands right now, I am one of those people who will honestly say, I have got a swell deal. I love my husband, I love my house, I love my dogs, I'm about to have a baby, and I'm pretty darned fond of me too.

So it's interesting to me to look back at only a year ago- a year!- and realize how much has changed. And yet, how little. Because, except for the Magic Hat and the boxes needing to be unpacked, I imagine we'll spend this weekend almost exactly the same way, hunkered down, him with his newest game and me with my HPATDH and it will be two very well spent days. I wish I had some marvelous conclusion to draw from this, to pull it all together, a bit like Daniel Stern, as older and wiser voice-over Kevin, always did on The Wonder Years, but I don't.

I'm just really, really happy and mighty, mighty grateful.

And only a little bit sad over the lack of Magic Hat.

All Baby, All the Time

It does feel a little like that. For instance, I don't know if there's a room in our house right now (except the dogs' room; they won't have it) that doesn't have a stash of baby stuff, either prominently displayed or stuck in a corner. At the moment, I'm sitting at our kitchen table and heaped in front of me are beautiful baby gift bags full of cloth diapers waiting to go in the wash. In our living room, you'd find bags that hold the motley collection of: a Pregnancy Scrapbook, a few baby onesies, a mobile my friend Elizabeth gave us and a second car seat base. The den remains covered up in strollers, car seats, a first car seat base, gift bags, more baby clothes, and some older-age items (in the sense Baby won't need these for several months) we still haven't found places for like the Bumbo Seat and the Baby Einstein Musical Motion Activity Jumper. I'm not entirely sure what developmental skills come from this last one, but I'm betting it has something to do with NASA.

So, for the sake of taking the blog where our home seems to be headed, I've added some new links on the sidebar. These are all resources we've used in our efforts for a natural, family-based childbirth. Our Bradley Method Birth classes, which despite the cost I joked about earlier, I would highly, highly recommend, the Lisa Ross Birth Center here in Knoxville, where Baby will make his or her grand entrance, how to find a La Leche League in your area and more info on cloth diapers from a reliable and non-biased source (that is, they're biased towards cloth diapers but not on types or brands).

The funny thing is, before Baby, we weren't the least bit crunchy. We ate meat revved up on steroids, we drank milk full of hormones, we never considered what types of cleansers we sprayed on the surfaces of our home and I thought epidurals seemed a grand idea, right behind scheduled C-sections. I'd say the closest thing to natural living we had was a fondness for Ben and Jerry's Ice Cream. And then- as the old saying goes- the stick turned blue and suddenly I was a lot more aware of what we put in and on and around our bodies. From foods, to personal hygiene, to home sanitizers and dog food. Yep, even the dogs have gone granola with their Nutro Ultra Dog Food and Paul Newman's Organic Peanut Butter Dog Treats.

Not to say we've done this all at one time or that everything is now completely organic. Oh no. I'd say we're about fifty to sixty percent there most of the time and I feel good about that. If that's as far as we ever get, I'll be fine with it. It does take more money, time, and effort, so we pick and choose what we can do and stay easy about the rest.

Also we've gotten a lot of help from our friends. Preggers Tip: If you're up the pole, as our Irish friends say, and thinking about cloth diapers- register for them! There are tons of great online stores with registries and you might be lucky, like us, and discover you even have local stores selling cloth diaper products- other than BRU, I mean. We've been fantastically overwhelmed by them and have very little left to get.

But these are my pregnancy resources thus far and, overall, I've been nothing but thrilled. I like the fact The Hubba and I have made aware, conscious decisions about how we want to do this, even in the face of some gentle criticism. I love knowing how much thought and time we've put into Baby B's arrival and presence here.

And now I've just gotten too preachy for my own good. If it helps, as I write, I'm drinking a delicious Pineapple-Orange Juice from Tropicana, full of sugar and probably not a real pineapple or orange in sight. And it's given me just a touch of heartburn.

Have a lurrrvely weekend!