Parade + Complete: Waldorf Doll!

A couple of weeks ago, E said his first two word phrase, "No more!"  He's also gotten to be quite the stair climber these days, he's getting proficient at walking down them instead of crawling.

We went to a (short) Memorial Day parade on Monday with my parents, and Mr. Muffin was very keen on the marching band.  They even were wearing their raincoats - I don't remember ever wearing those raincoats in four years of marching band!  All of the people and noise were a bit much for the little guy by the end, so it's a good thing the parade was only about fifteen minutes.

This week I wrapped up the Waldorf doll too!  It was quite the project, and I think he came out nicely.  My favorite part was the embroidery for the face.  My least favorite part was setting the sleeves in the shirt.  And the scariest part was trimming the doll's hair!  The instructions had you put in hair that was too long, and then trim, I imagine so that you could cut it to look even regardless of whether the head itself was a perfect sphere.  But the hair took hours upon untold hours to put on, so a mistake in the trimming would have been almost too much to bear.  The hardest part has been getting a nice picture of E with the doll...

A busy bee + Work in progress: Waldorf Doll

Mr. Tiny Muffin is doing all kinds of new things these days!  Here he is sticking his tongue out at dinner:

He's also climbing on to furniture on his own now and working on taking steps standing rather than crawling.  There are many teeth in there now, with new ones coming in all the time.  E's vocabulary has really expanded with new words, in fact his latest one is "new."

 I've been busy making a Waldorf doll for E as well.  As Wikipedia says, "its appearance is intentionally simple in order to allow the child playing with it to improve or strengthen imagination and creativity."  I'm using a pattern from the book Growing Up Sew Liberated and the instructions are very clear.  Even though this guy's arms look rather long, if you put them over his head, they  barely touch - just like E!

 

 I got this great new mug recently too!  It's Corelle, so if anything should happen to it, it seems easily replaceable, whew.

Big Changes and Quick Change Trousers

I mentioned that I thought E was starting to say "mama," and now I really think he is.  He will say, "Mamamamamama" when he wants to give me something, when he wants me to give him something, or when he really wants my attention on something.  Once in awhile he says "Dada" too!

Some other changes are in the air: Mr. Tiny walks more often with his arms at his sides now, rather than up in the air for balance.  I've noticed him picking up things, especially food, with his whole hand when he needs to, instead of always using thumb and index finger.

 

What cute pants you have there, Mr. Muffin!  We have been having a little bit of a tough time finding pants that fit over the cloth diapers, so I sewed this pair for E.  The pattern is Quick Change Trousers, from the book Handmade Beginnings.  I'd read a lot of blogs saying that these pants are great for cloth diapers.  While they are super cute (and reverseable - although the reverse side is a little busy with that circle pattern fabric making up most of it), they are definitely not the answer to our fit dilemma.  The improvement in fit over store-bought sweat-style pants is negligible.

I have another pattern in mind to try, and although I don't think it's as cute as this one, I have higher hopes for it actually fitting.  I might also try making this pattern in knits, I think it would fit well then.

Soft Blocks: Complete!

The idea for these blocks came from this post over at How We Montessori (I didn't realize that I photographed mine the same way until just now!). I'd been wanting to make these for a while, because E's wooden blocks were a bit too big for his hands, although now his hands are just about big enough. I actually bought the fabric that I used in the puzzle ball for this project originally.

The blocks are about 1 1/2" on each side. They're not exactly cubes, but my technique for the corners improved as I went along.

Here we are getting ready for a walk. So cute in the hood!

Also unrelated, I woke up with a headache the other day, and I made some fresh lemon ginger tea. It's a great way to use up lemons that I don't know what to do with. I just squeeze about 1/3 of a lemon (if you don't over squeeze it you can use it for more than one cup of tea) into a mug, put the lemon itself in, add a little honey, then put about 1/2 to 1 inch of sliced ginger (skin removed) into a tea strainer, and pour boiling water over the whole thing, letting it steep about 3 minutes. I also used the ginger for a second cup. Yum!

Puzzle Ball: Complete!

I made E a "puzzle ball" from the book Last-Minute Patchwork + Quilted Gifts by Joelle Hoverson. These toys were all the rage on the interwebs awhile back when the book first came out (yikes, that was five years ago!). Although you often seen them done up in prints, I went with your basic primary and secondary colors, using Kona cotton fabric. Kona seems pretty popular online, but this was my first time using it. Now I see why people like it - it feels more heavy duty than typical quilting cottons, making it great to use for kids' stuff. Just for my reference, the colors that I used were Rich Red, Tangerine, Corn Yellow, Basil Green, Royal Blue, and Crocus Purple. I wish the green were a little brighter, but this one was the best choice that my Joann's had in the store.

Here's the little guy checking it out:

I stuffed it pretty firmly, and it's still a little bit difficult for him to get a hold of, so it's not exactly his favorite toy yet. It sure does look neat though.

What does this super-cool pitcher have to do with anything? The pattern called for you to cut the 5 1/2" diameter circles, and coming in at a 5 1/4" diameter, this pitcher was the closest thing I had. I tend to like to go a little bit smaller than bigger when there's a choice. I'm glad I didn't go any bigger, or Mr. Muffin really wouldn't be able to play with it yet.