Spring continues to spring and we had a couple really nice days this week. Unfortunately they were work/school days, but still! Last weekend we had our lawn guys come out to weed, trim, and mulch our zillion flower beds and the yard is currently looking better than it has since we moved in. (I could take bets on how long that will last…but I won’t.)
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I’m not sure I ever posted an update on the Orange Theory transformation challenge, which wrapped up right before my birthday. Overall I’m glad I did it, even though making it there 3 times per week was tough at times. I didn’t lose any weight, but I did notice other changes, and going more than just once per week eliminated 90% of the post-workout soreness I used to feel (as I expected it would). When the challenge ended, I decided not to maintain my unlimited membership since 3 times a week was tough, and dropped back down to 8 workouts per month.
Previously I was only on the 4-per-month plan, so 8 seems like a good compromise and going twice per week should doable almost every week. It’ll also give me the space to add running back into my schedule, which I basically haven’t done since December other than the 1-2 miles you do in an OTF class. The only “catch” is that I’ll have to get used to getting up early again to run before work 1-2 days per week. Ha!
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This week I finally got started on the “commissioned” quilt I mentioned earlier — making a quilt from an old co-op friend’s baby clothes. It’ll be simple patchwork, but first I have to make 5.5″ squares…and I need 120 of them! My very first quilt was a t-shirt quilt (way back in 2003, and it remained my only quilt for the next8+ years) but I’d forgotten how much time it takes to prep everything.
First you have to cut the clothes apart enough to make them lay flat and access the wrong side of the fabric. I’ve streamlined this process into 2 main steps — cut up one side along the seam and along the sleeve line to the neck, then cut off the other sleeve. This seems to be the quickest way to let me then open up the rest of the fabric for interfacing. I do have to be careful not to cut too crazily, since some of the smallest onesies barely have enough fabric to get a full 5.5″ block!
Next is cutting 5.5″ squares out of interfacing. I’m using Pellon 906 because I wanted it to be super lightweight, and it’s working well so far. Then it’s time to fuse the squares to the clothes, which can get tedious because the iron needs to sit in each spot for a good 10 seconds to make sure the fusible adheres fully. I’ve been able to get 2 squares from most of the onesies (one from the front, one from the back), and 3-4 from some of the larger items. Finally, it’s back to the cutting mat to cut out each of the 5.5″ blocks.
I’ve worked for ~2 hours each of the past three nights and I still only have 87 blocks. Whew! Almost there though. Sewing will seem easy after all this prep!
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Charlotte had her 2.5 year well visit this week and is lovely and healthy and oh, completely refuses to settle down and go to sleep at night and oh, totally isn’t anywhere close to being potty-trained. SIGH.
Our pediatrician’s potty-training stance for daycare kids is “let the daycare teach them” — one of the reasons that I LOVE HER — but yeah, we should probably get on that. I remember feeling more urgency with Emma, primarily because she needed to be potty-trained to move up to the next room at daycare. But because Charlotte’s birthday is the day after the school deadline (literally, one day), she has an “extra” year at daycare. Instead of moving up to the 3/4-year-old class in August, she’s going to stay with the 2/3-year-olds. She’ll go from being the youngest in her class right now to being the oldest, but we decided it would be easier to do the “repeat” year now.
All that is to say that Charlotte doesn’t have to be potty-trained by August, and therefore I have felt pretty darn lazy about tackling it. Emma was 3 before she had it 100% figured out, so I’m assuming Charlotte will be similar. Maybe she’ll just pick it up by osmosis? I can hope.
As for the sleep thing…
I wish I could figure out the sleep thing. I’ve determined mine is just a night owl. He wants to hang with us until we’re falling asleep at 10. No matter his age, outside of that first six months, it takes an hour to get him to totally wind down and sometimes even more. And we don’t start bedtime routine until 8pm so, that is rough. We’re outside in the evenings, too. Maybe if we weren’t both working and I was with him all day I’d be able to send him to bed at 7pm like some parents I see, but getting home and trying to do a 7pm bedtime sounds insane. Worked as a baby/1 year old, but not now.