Be my valentine??

Give me a cuddle!!
Look at me! I can stand!Don't you just love what I've done with my cheeks? Soo kissable!!
The top photo, Marie is in a dress my mom made for me when I was a baby!

3 1/2 months

and this is her favorite activity - napping and nursing together, at her pleasure.I'm quite surprised it was only a couple weeks ago that she slept 8 hours straight. I have been lucky with 3 hours straight lately. I think she is teething... is that possible this early? She has the symptoms.

I am loving her mornings. She wakes happy, and the first time she sees me or her dad, she has a big ol' smile for us. What a wonderful greeting. Today the baby and I slept in until 8:30 together!

Pizza

Yesterday I wanted to make a pizza in the shape of a Möbius strip. But where would the toppings go?

Afterthought

Oh, maybe you wanted to see the baby too:In contrast to the last post, her sleeping habits took a turn for the worse this week. I think we started feeling like most new parents feel. Mostly, clueless about what to do about it. I like what my good friend Becky said. Every family and baby is different, and whatever we decide to do, do it with confidence!

Victory!

Before:And after:
One pair of wool longies, and one wool soaker, from a sweater that fit me weird. I mostly went by the instructions here. It cost me nothing, excepting the cost of the sweater which I bought a few years ago for a few pounds at a thrift store/charity shop in Scotland. It's real Shetland wool; however, I don't feel guilty cutting it up because directly under the "Real Shetland Wool" boast on the tag, it says "Made in Hong Kong".

Hopefully this will be a good solution to night time cloth diapering!

My cheeky monkey

About time for another photo! She is 3 months now, and last night she slept 8 hours without waking for a feed! We weren't even trying for that yet. She is totally ahead of the game. She must have read all those baby books on how to sleep through the night, and how to be a good baby.

Thanks to my Aunt Joyce and Unkie Coke for the adorable hat!

Frost at Midnight

A beautiful poem, read and loved by me today, as I nap and cuddle with Marie on a winter day back in Seattle. Shared by Kate, a knitting blogger I've recently begun following.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Frost at Midnight (1798)

The Frost performs its secret ministry,
Unhelped by any wind. The owlet’s cry
Came loud—and hark, again! loud as before.
The inmates of my cottage, all at rest,
Have left me to that solitude, which suits
Abstruser musings: save that at my side
My cradled infant slumbers peacefully.
‘Tis calm indeed! so calm, that it disturbs
And vexes meditation with its strange
And extreme silentness. Sea, hill, and wood,
This populous village! Sea, and hill, and wood,
With all the numberless goings-on of life,
Inaudible as dreams! the thin blue flame
Lies on my low-burnt fire, and quivers not;
Only that film, which fluttered on the grate,

Still flutters there, the sole unquiet thing.
Methinks, its motion in this hush of nature
Gives it dim sympathies with me who live,
Making it a companionable form,
Whose puny flaps and freaks the idling Spirit
By its own moods interprets, every where
Echo or mirror seeking of itself,
And makes a toy of Thought.

But O! how oft,
How oft, at school, with most believing mind,
Presageful, have I gazed upon the bars,
To watch that fluttering stranger ! and as oft
With unclosed lids, already had I dreamt
Of my sweet birth-place, and the old church-tower,
Whose bells, the poor man’s only music, rang
From morn to evening, all the hot Fair-day,
So sweetly, that they stirred and haunted me
With a wild pleasure, falling on mine ear
Most like articulate sounds of things to come!
So gazed I, till the soothing things, I dreamt,
Lulled me to sleep, and sleep prolonged my dreams!
And so I brooded all the following morn,
Awed by the stern preceptor’s face, mine eye
Fixed with mock study on my swimming book:
Save if the door half opened, and I snatched
A hasty glance, and still my heart leaped up,
For still I hoped to see the stranger’s face,
Townsman, or aunt, or sister more beloved,
My play-mate when we both were clothed alike!

Dear Babe, that sleepest cradled by my side,
Whose gentle breathings, heard in this deep calm,
Fill up the intersperséd vacancies
And momentary pauses of the thought!
My babe so beautiful! it thrills my heart
With tender gladness, thus to look at thee,
And think that thou shalt learn far other lore,
And in far other scenes! For I was reared
In the great city, pent ‘mid cloisters dim,
And saw nought lovely but the sky and stars.
But thou, my babe! shalt wander like a breeze
By lakes and sandy shores, beneath the crags
Of ancient mountain, and beneath the clouds,
Which image in their bulk both lakes and shores
And mountain crags: so shalt thou see and hear
The lovely shapes and sounds intelligible
Of that eternal language, which thy God
Utters, who from eternity doth teach
Himself in all, and all things in himself.
Great universal Teacher! he shall mould
Thy spirit, and by giving make it ask.

Therefore all seasons shall be sweet to thee,
Whether the summer clothe the general earth
With greenness, or the redbreast sit and sing
Betwixt the tufts of snow on the bare branch
Of mossy apple-tree, while the nigh thatch
Smokes in the sun-thaw; whether the eave-drops fall
Heard only in the trances of the blast,
Or if the secret ministry of frost
Shall hang them up in silent icicles,
Quietly shining to the quiet Moon.

Thaigers

Oh my GOODNESS. Just LOOK what we got to do yesterday!

There are very few things left that I ask of life. This was probably one of the best 3 days of my life, including my wedding day and the day I gave birth to a precious baby (who did not get to pet the tigers).
Big tiger. Actually only 19 months old! She liked the belly scratch.
This adorable baby tiger was the same age as my little baby, and about the same size. They both have orange hair, and they are both so cuddly and adorable!!!!!!!! Can I take it home?? Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah I love it.