Cover

This was an enormous project, and I'm warning you, before you look at these pictures and really want to do your own carseat cover, you must be 110% committed and really ambitious!!!! It is a ton of work ripping out all the stitches on the old carseat, pinning, cutting, pinning, sewing, unpicking, re-sewing, fighting with the sewing machine, rethreading the needle, breaking the needle, spooling the bobbin, fighting with the fabric, stabbing fingers with pins... etc. But in the same breath let me also say that if you want to do one, I will totally help you with every step along the way, because it is SO worth it. This was my first one, and there are definitely things I will do differently next time (because, yes, there will be a next time), I'm not thrilled with the sides - but I am ABSOLUTELY positive that this is THE hardest carseat cover I could have done. It was very complicated, but gave me a good challenge - it was like a jigsaw puzzle. A jigsaw puzzle where I was deciding the final picture. And believe me, it is FAR from perfect. But if I can do it - you can too.

This....

turned into...

THIS:

I may still add some fabric in the bottom front corners - the final cover was, of course, slightly smaller than the original so the bottom corners don't quite match up. I don't know if I care that much, and I need a break from sewing. But all the snaps match up, and that's the important thing. 

And if I can do a cover this complicated, then I can definitely help you do an easier one (or any one, because this one was CRAZY), like an infant carseat. I even have a piping foot for my machine, which makes me insanely happy. Also, as with anything, the more you sew, the better you are at sewing, so get crackin'.

Upgrade

I've been dreaming about her - the Other Woman, as I call her - for years... Now here she is. My Mother's Day gift. I've been dreaming of her for years. Since using my mom's so often in her kitchen, I fantasized about the color, the shape, what I would make for my family. Now it's finally here!!! I actually thought I would have to wait a few more years before she would become my very own. We bought a hand held mixer just after we were married, and of course that died quickly. One attempt at whipped cream and that puppy was finito. So for three years, give or take a little, we've been using - I kid you not - a mixer attachment that we saved and Trevor's cordless drill. I have been the laughingstock of anyone who has seen me mix. And still no whipped cream, thanks to the fact that the battery doesn't last long enough. It's all very comedic, really. And I thought the drill would be by my side for a while longer... but the battery no longer charges, and it's cheaper to buy a whole new drill than an extra battery. That's planned obsolescence for you. Our world really is a messed up place.

But on a brighter note, I got a smokin' good deal on the all-steel-gear transmission 575 watts of super mixing POWER (take that, planned obsolescence!) from amazon.com (ordered to the border). Only a couple of the models actually have steel gears and gear housings in them, and there's no way I'm buying a mixer with plastic moving parts.

So now, without further ado...

Eight

My baby girl Rachel is EIGHT months old today! I can hardly believe it. I KNOW eight months of my pregnancy did not go by this quickly. Time really does fly when you're having fun. And when you have a baby AND a two year old.

I've got to be quick, the kids haven't had breakfast and the TV can only hold them for so long. A quick recap from April and May so far:

Rachel is doing baby-led weaning - NO MUSH FOOD!!! She feeds herself real-people food. Let's see if I can remember what she's had so far (not in this order!): banana, avocado, bacon, Baby Mum Mums, cheerios, veggie straws (before you get on my case about the salt, you should know that she only gets ONE when she eats them), bun, orange, rice, peas, carrots, green beans... barely anything makes it into her stomach, because with this feeding method she learns to chew first and swallow later - most of it just falls back out of her mouth after she's chewed it for a while. But it is fantastic for me not to have to spoon feed her, she loves feeding herself, and because so little of it makes it down, it introduces the food very gradually. I will probably never go back to the puree way of feeding a baby.

Grant goes on the toilet sporadically, but nothing serious in the way of potty training. I'm waiting for the summer, when he can just run around in his birthday suit.

Rachel is not crawling yet, but she can scoot herself backwards on her tummy. She hates it.

Grant finished his gymnastics class and received his first ever medal! He wore it ALL day.

Rachel has her first tooth! It is just barely coming in, but it's definitely there - her right front one on the bottom. It's insanely cute, of course, but I'm wondering where the other bottom one is?

Grant loves singing "Jesus Wants Me for a Sunbeam". Last night we went to dinner at Trevor's grandma's house and he was pretending to play it on the piano.

Rachel has started tracing/pointing and things with her pointer finger, and it is so sweet I could just burst. I forgot how cute it is when they do that. She likes to touch my wedding ring, and I told her she could have one of her own but not for at LEAST twenty years.

Grant is CRAZY about being outside. We don't have a backyard and he NEEDS one. He'll only come inside if I promise he can go "outside again" later, or bribe him with candy. He got his first skinned knee leaving Moms and Tots on Thursday! I told him it was the first of many, many skinned knees. 

This weekend we are going to see Thomas at Heritage Park! I hope Grant loves it!

Weekend

I got in last night around 8 from a wonderful no-kids, no-husbands, mini-vacay weekend. I don't know if I've ever had so much girltime fun. The drive to and from Calgary was at LEAST as fun as the actual conference itself.


Five of us piled into my van Friday afternoon to attend Time Out for Women. Really, what Mom doesn't need a time out? I remember a woman speaking at General Conference a couple years ago and mentioned that her daughter was at the time in her life when "her greatest blessings were also her greatest challenges" - and I knew exactly what she meant. Sometimes, I ask Grant if he wants a time out when he's done some naughty and sometimes he'll reply with an enthusiastic "Ya!" My feelings exactly. Well, in spite of repeatedly trying to teach my toddler that time outs are a bad thing, I LOVED my time out. I am very grateful that I have a husband who could take some time off work for me to leave on time, and was actually willing to watch our kids! This was, of course, his first time being with two kids overnight - a big step, if you ask me! Way to go honey!


All of the presenters were amazing, I absolutely couldn't pick a favorite. It surpassed my expectations on every hand. I have gone to Women's Conference a few times before, and there are inevitably some speakers I liked more than others when it's over. But not here! It was like a Best of Women's Conference sort of deal. But I do have one thought that I can't shake to share with my blog readers (if anyone is still out there reading this!).


Hilary Weeks mentioned that she was out to dinner with her daughter Megan, on a mother-daughter date. Megan was happily telling her about a game of tag she had played that day, giggling as she recounted it. And Hilary thought (I'm paraphrasing here) - this is the only chance I get to see my children as children. We will all know each other eternally as adults - so this is our honor, our privilege, our sweet, exquisite piece of heaven - to see our children as children!


President Joseph F. Smith, in Gospel Doctrine (pg.455) taught that all spirits are in adult form - they were adults before their mortal existence, and they are in adult form after death, even if they die as infants or children.


What a tiny speck of time that they - and we - experience as children in the grand scheme of a Heavenly Father's plan. The eons and eons of eternity that have been and will be are so vast that we cannot even begin to measure how short this lifetime is - and childhood is a fraction of that life. How I love that am a mother, that I get to live in a home with my little babies who are, by all accounts, most likely eternally wiser and grander than I. I love their innocence and their purity. A wonderful friend who is a fabulous example to me said something on her blog a couple weeks ago that I also cannot shake, and I hope she doesn't mind me quoting her sweet words that echo my sentiments so precisely: I adore the fact that I'm merely their guardian while on this earth, and eternally we're equal and old souls.


I feel an increasing urgency to protect, teach, encourage, correct, and love the heck out of my children as I try to give them the very best of myself. I often hear the spirit whispering "Your children only have one childhood." There is no going back, no rewinding the clock, once the day is done it is gone, never to return. Rachel will be 8 months old tomorrow; she'll never be seven or six or five or four or three or two months old ever again. Grant will be two and a half this summer, the years go by so fast and then they're gone.


Our children chase after us for our attention for only a short, short time - and then they move on with their lives and we spend the rest of our lives chasing them - a lesson I know my father-in-law has learned the hard way. 


I don't know how best to end this post, it just seems to keep going on and on. But I do know that this weekend has strengthened my resolve to take care of myself, my husband, my children, my home, and given me the lift I need to continue when I'm elbow deep in poop and puke and I wonder what was I ever thinking having children.


Next year I'm going to go to Women's Conference, maybe you'd like to come?