Baby Carrier

I've always wanted R to wear a baby doll. I think it says something about the world when a man wears a baby. My man wears his baby, and my baby will wear his baby as a man. We're being the change over here.

I've gotten R to wear his baby a few times.

I decided that he should have a Mei Tai carrier like his one for his birthday.



There are a few patterns online, but this one looked the best and most helpful.

Pattern:


I spent an entire evening on Bevery Fabrics (a night well spent, I think!) and picked out these fabrics.

For the straps, Kona Cotton - Turquoise:



For one side of body, Spring Street - Raindrop



For the reverse side of body, Roar Cotton - Lion Toss Burmuda



Of course, days after I placed the order, they wrote to say the Raindrops one was out of stock. Great.
After a great many tears, I swapped it with Spring Street Cotton - Green (same company, so the colors are close).




I took a day off from work to put it all together (since I can't seem to get my act together to sew any other time, plus it gets really dark in here in the evenings). Now, I took a ton of pictures of the process, because I was so proud of myself for officially following a pattern, but I can't seem to find any of them. There was a crisis with a corrupt SD card at one point, so I think that's where they went. :(

But I do have pictures of the finished product!

He knew exactly what to do with it when he opened it! He started saying "Max! Back!" and pointing to his back!

Matchbox Car Parking Garage

So I have a little boy. He plays in dirt and scrapes his knees and LOVES LOVES LOVES Cars and Trucks and Things that Go. His 2nd birthday was all about trains, and now my house is overcome with very tiny modes of transportation that need to be wrangled.

Here is how we WERE storing the cars and things, in a "Cars and Guys" bin.

I wanted something like this:


Some other DIY found on the internets:










So here are some of the things I have lying around the house:


(these are such sturdy boxes, I hate to throw them out)


(There are from the dog food shipments)

Now, what I don't want is saggy shelves like these, which is what you get when you just use tape (as I found with my cardboard play kitchen).




But I had this great idea! Poke holes and use shish-kabob skewers as reinforcement.









Note: Watch out for those sharp pointy ends! I accidentally left this unfinished on the floor, and little boy decided he needed to walk between it and the couch and wound up with some nasty scratches on his legs :(

Cut ends of skewers and tape to box, then tape bottom of shelves to skewers.

Now, Parking Garages need ramps of course. I cut off the box flaps and fashioned a few crude "outdoor" ramps -- I don't think the child is "gentle" enough for inside ramps.

I cut some car-sized holes in the sides and attached a ramp to each level (tape to inside of box).








To finish, park Cars (and planes, trains, boats, etc.)!



I'd like to paint it or cover with a fun-colored tape or something, but we'll see how it holds up first.

Grandparent Christmas Gifts

So, apparently as the Mom, I'm responsible for gifts FROM the baby TO other people, like the grandparents. I always liked the tradition where my mom gave us a new Christmas Tree ornament every year, so this year we made hand-print ornaments for the grandparents.

Cue Pinterest, and new and better way to do EVERYTHING.

I found a bunch of really cute hand-print christmas-type pictures.













How cute would these be as little hand-print dough ornaments?!

I found this recipe for beautiful hand print dough. It looked smoother than regular salt dough, and all the comments were so good!



It was a complete disaster. I thought I had pictures of this crumbling, talcum-powder-like dough, but I think that was part of the Corrupt-Camera-Gate, so those are probably lost. But believe me, disaster.

So we tried again with just regular ol' salt dough. It was easy and adorable. Baby was so psyched to help add the ingredients and stir everything together. He got really into making the hand-prints and was totally patient when I kept making him push it harder and harder.



We even did one for the puppy!



They came out much more solid than the "fancy" ones.



We spent some time painting.







And Glazing.



And making pretty.



The snowman is my favorite ... which is why I kept it for myself.