Friday, Saturday, and Sunday the kids and I helped move a friend into a new house. Now two women with two small children each makes for one strange working party, but somehow by yesterday afternoon we managed to empty the old house into my truck and haul it the few miles to the new house. We’re all exhausted, so today the kids and I stayed home for some much needed relaxation

Gavin had other plans, though. Rather than relax, he decided to grow up a little bit more. Now does that look like the face of a little boy who just started …

… drinking from a big kid cup like a pro? Or perhaps it looks more like a little boy who can…

… settle down for a nap in his newly converted crib-to-toddler bed. And in fact he settled into it again at bed time, and I only had to chase him back into it once (he was playing with his Tonka truck in the dark). Lately it seems that he is taking huge strides away from baby hood. At this rate he’ll be finished with diapers tomorrow, and in college by Friday.

This is my giant bag of scraps from all of the sewing I’ve done since moving here (so about a year’s worth of scraps). Olga knows that anything in this bag is fair game for her to play with, sew, or snip, so she spends a great deal of time rummaging through it, and then begging me to make something for her. This week she wanted a kitty. She’s been talking about kitties for AGES, and we’ve even talked about getting a REAL kitty soon, but for now, a fuzzy scrappy kitty will do.

The pattern is from one of my favorite sewing sites, put together by a very talented Japanese lady (and translated rather strangely in parts, so some general sewing knowledge is required to decipher some of the instructions). This kitty is actually made from an odd-ball bath towel we’ve had for a while, and which I had already put in the give-away pile. We stuffed the body and head with scraps from the scrap bag.

Olga picked out a couple of buttons (thank goodness I haven’t packed my button jars yet!) and I added some whiskers using vintage six-cord (a very heavy weight thread). And there it is, a sparkling new friend that didn’t cost a dime to make.

Deadline is over at last, and I’m particularly pleased with how well this issue came together. And I’m even more pleased that my cloth diaper article that I’ve been whining about telling you about for ages is finally going to print! Hooray! (And incidentally, it turns out that Ben and Jerry’s Cherry Garcia ice cream is even better than the best chocolate for getting through my writing fits… especially when it’s my very own pint hand delivered by my charming husband.)

So for all of you who have been sitting on the edge of your seats wondering, “When will she finally finish that dag nabbed article,” you can rest assured that it will hit your mail box in mid-August.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to do the happy dance with the kids… and wash diapers.

16 July 2002

What a lucky girl I am.