— 1 —
I’ve been reading more than usual over the last 6ish months and I enjoy it a lot. However, it’s also one of the first activities to go when life gets busy. This year I’ve decided to read a little — for fun, that is, and blogs don’t count — every day.
I’m using Elise’s neat chart to track it, although it doesn’t matter whether it’s 2 hours or 2 minutes, and I’m not going to beat myself up if I miss a day. As it says on the chart, progress > perfection.
— 2 —
I’ve been working on my mini quilt for the Schnitzel & Boo swap this week. I came up with this modification of a pattern from one of my quilting books
On the left is what I originally planned to do — mixing in 1 different print into each of the smaller hexagons. But then I laid it out like on the right, with each smaller hexagon formed by a single color and I think I like that better.
— 3 —
This week at work has been…unexpectedly slow. After two weeks off I thought I would have some catching up to do, but I guess everyone else was also enjoying their time off, and all was quiet on the ISS.
— 4 —
Yesterday was “Frozen Day” at Emma’s daycare and appropriately enough, it was 31 degrees when we left the house. She looked pretty cute all bundled up and carrying her (empty) backpack, which she insisted on taking.
When we got to daycare, she actually hugged Anna and Elsa (two of the teachers in costume) but it was so quick I didn’t get a picture — and then she wouldn’t go near them again. Silly toddlers!
— 5 —
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Last night Emma had her first swimming lesson of the year — and her first lesson without me in the pool with her! Her instructor told us in December that she was ready to move up to “penguin” level, but warned us that she would probably cry for the first week or two.
But she didn’t! It went SO well! It helped a lot that she was with the same instructor, and the other little girl was in her class last quarter. She did such a good job, and kept looking over and smiling and Jose and me. I was totally bursting with mommy pride. So awesome.
(I also totally had a “my baby’s growing up so fast” moment. But she is! She’s getting so big!)
— 6 —
I bought a new camera! (I’ve only been talking about it for more than a year.) I was considering several different Canon DSLR bodies and weighing features vs. price. I finally decided to go with the 70D. It should feel and operate very much like my 20D (vs a Rebel), it was released just over a year ago (vs. the 60D, which was released 4+ years ago), and it’s relatively affordable (vs. something with a full-frame sensor).
I’ve had my 20D for a decade, so I’m pretty excited for the upgrade — low light capability in particular. It should arrive today!
— 7 —
Last weekend we got Emma a belated Christmas gift that was too big to deal with in North Carolina — a tricycle. After perusing the aisles at Toys ‘R Us, we actually chose this bike that can be converted from trike to balance bike and back as desired. Such a cool concept! But the part that secures it in trike mode was missing, so we had to wait 3 days for a replacement to arrive. And then last night after triumphantly putting it in safe trike mode…we discovered that Emma isn’t QUITE tall enough for it yet. Her feet just barely reach the pedals, and not well enough to really ride effectively.
Whomp whomp.
It’ll be perfect once she grows another inch or two. Until then, it’s back to the story for a tiny cheap trike.
I’m so jealous that she’s learning to swim. It’s so hard to motivate for that around here with our weather, and even the indoor pools are freezing!
It was actually pretty cold here yesterday, never got above 40 degrees. We debated whether to go or not, since the pool is what I would call semi-indoor — as in, there is structure all around it but the material is comparable to a heavy duty tent. They keep things warm enough with heat lamps, and the water is well-heated. (You can see the steam rising off the water in the video.) The temperature on the pool deck yesterday was probably ~60 degrees.
Love Summer’s swim. Both of my kids have gone there. When we pass it my daughter still says after almost a year “mommy that’s my swim lessons!” So glad that she did well in her first class by herself.