Zana’s ChangeLog - Take Two

Happy Birthday to Eleanor!  She is such a wonderful little girl; I can’t believe she is two years old!  We took her to the zoo yesterday as a treat.  She loved it!  It wasn’t a large zoo, but it was large enough for her attention span.  Her favorites seem to have been the foxes and the goats.  Oh!  And the stairs, digging pit, and playground.  She is easy to please.  =)

This morning, she opened her presents.  She loved everything she opened and wanted to play with each thing right away.  That made the actual opening longer than we had time for; some presents were confiscated for later opening as Nathan had to get to work.  Eleanor spent the day running around playing with all the toys she had opened and reading all the books she had received.  It was hard to get her to eat lunch!

Since today was Patriot’s Day, and a couple of our friends had busy mornings, there was a get-together in the evening for celebrations.  Nathan spent the evening last night baking a red velvet cake and we brought that with a candle.  There was quite a bit of a fiasco as they tried to figure out how to light the candle when no one had any matches or lighters.  Apparently, the answer involves a frayed stake, rubbing alcohol, and a hot electric stove.  Good to know.

As to the title of this post, well, that’s how Eleanor currently counts.  She knows the number two, she just never remembers to add it to her litany of numerals.  Hopefully she’ll remember it now that it is her age!

Would you believe it has been a couple of months since I have finished knitting anything? I have barely been knitting, getting maybe a couple of inches on the front of the vest. The lack of progress is a touch depressing, but if I really wanted to have progress, I could pick up any of a multitude of projects that are awaiting the finishing touches. But alas, I am not yet that motivated.

However, it occurred to me that I hadn’t mentioned the project that I did finish a while back. It was a present and I didn’t want to ruin the surprise. The object has since been received, worn, and probably outgrown, but that doesn’t mean I can’t mention it now, right?

It was my first attempt at Elizabeth Zimmerman’s Baby Surprise sweater. Everything I had heard about it was true; the construction is absolutely brilliant! I think I am mostly taken with the minimal seaming needed. I did hit a bit of a snag though. Originally, I was only going to use the red yarn. I only had two skeins, though, and would have run out two rows before the end. I remembered that I had most of a ball of Berocco Plush left over from a previous project and thought it would complement the red well. It wasn’t until after I finished that I realized it had a holiday feel to it. Oh well.

I found buttons at the local yarn store. They were these adorable little aquariums with a goldfish in the middle. I left the buttonholes on both sides so that they can be removed during cleaning.

The recipient? Federico and Oralia’s beautiful little girl. The sweater knit up really quickly, but apparently the post to their town is a bit slow. Oh well. When the little girl is older, she can use the sweater on her stuffed animals.

Would you believe it took me almost a week between starting to write this post and writing this sentence? When it is a choice between getting five minutes of knitting in (out of five for the day) or working on the blog, I have to admit the knitting tends to win.

Edmund had his four month checkup today. Not only has he gained weight and height, he has also gained in weight and height percentiles! At 17 lbs. and 26.5 inches, he is no longer a little baby! At the rate that he is going, I am going to need to start lifting weights in order to be able to hold him! Or I could just continue to do Edmund presses…

Yesterday we attended the 10th birthday party for J. Arthur. He didn’t make an appearance, but it was a lot of fun chatting with people we had not seen in years. It was a bit of a madhouse (a not uncommon state of affairs at Random) and we missed seeing a few people, but it was a raucous good time!  We reminisced about old times, caught up on gossip, and were constantly asked if we knew about the story behind the coconut.

Edmund was a hit as everyone loves seeing babies. Not only did we get a few pictures of him being held by some of our friends, there were other cameras snapping away at him.

It took Eleanor a little time before she got acclimated to the large amounts of people, but she ended up having a lot of fun dancing to music, playing with Blackberries, getting sugar highs, raiding fridge magnets, and charming everyone she met. She was utterly fascinated by the process of making liquid nitrogen ice cream (she better not expect us to do that at home!) and somehow got her own bowl. Twice. Not to mention the chocolate fondue. Did I mention she got a sugar high?

Amazingly enough, the mural my friend Christine and I painted our freshman year was still around. We were so surprised we got a picture of us with it. Eleanor kept pointing at it and excitedly saying “Dragon!” over and over. I think she approved.

There were more celebrations to be had today, but the kids were exhausted and we took the day off to recover. I never expected a dorm reunion could be so much fun!

It has been quite a week. At the beginning of last week, Nathan was finally getting over a really bad cold. That meant, of course, that Eleanor and I started getting sick. For the bulk of the week, my voice had gone walkabout. It had called in sick, but I would not be surprised if it had spent the time gallavanting across Europe as it came back sore and tired. Fortunately, my mother-in-law was in town to help out. Unfortunately, she ended up going home with this very same cold. My father-in-law is visiting now. Hopefully he will be able to avoid getting sick too.

Before he came, my father-in-law was given the task of trying to resurrect Elmo. This Elmo (of the Chicken-Dance variety) had been a Christmas present for Eleanor from my in-laws. She loved it! She would push the button and dance along. When it stopped, she would race over and push the button again. As time wore on, Elmo would stop sooner and sooner. It got to the point where he would only get the first line out before stopping. Eleanor would make a disappointed “Oh” and try the button again. Elmo would repeat the same line and not be able to continue. Worried that Elmo’s life energy had been used up even though he had been around for less than a week, Nathan replaced his batteries. All that was giggles and smiles returned to the house as Elmo was able to finish his routine. But it was not to last. Elmo’s energies once again left him. We knew there was something more seriously wrong with him than a quick battery change could fix. Elmo was hidden in another room with the hope that a specialist could be found. Unfortunately, Eleanor found Elmo before anything was done. She grabbed him, gave him hugs, and was still disappointed by his silence. She was found in the corner leaning against the wall and staring at Elmo. “Elmo … duck … quack quack” could be heard from her lips. Although she did not know the tune or all the words, she was trying to remind Elmo of what he once was.

And such was the situation when my father-in-law arrived. He attempted another battery-change with no luck. Further investigations discovered a faulty connection, or, as my father-in-law put it, “Cause of death: severing of right femoral artery due to congenital defect and excessive flexing.” In short, Elmo would dance and quack no longer. At least not by himself.

Eleanor did not seem to mind too much, however. She thought it quite funny that Elmo had turned into a hand puppet. He is now even lighter and easier to carry around!