hello, spring!

Just a quick post this month....

Here is a full family photo, taken during our Passover trip to Portland, OR. By some miracle, all of us are facing the camera!


And then I've got a long, long overdue photo of a sweater I finished April 2008. It is the Norah Gaughan ballet wrap pattern from a somewhat recent issue of Interweave Knits. Turns out that the pattern is available at the Interweave Store. It is the first sweater I made for myself. I used the yarn listed in the pattern, but in a different color.


I may as well post one more photo that shows the nursing sweater I just finished this April. It's a nursing sweater from Louisa Harding's Natural Knits for Babies and Moms: Beautiful Designs Using Organic Yarns. I did not use an organic yarn, and the buttons I chose make it look kind of like a marching band uniform. But it works wonderfully as a nursing sweater!



~jkg

family fun at (gulp) disney world!

Guess where we went to escape the cold weather at home? And as a bonus, our kids got lots of practice identifying the Disney brand and characters!

Fortunately, Meris is old enough (and game enough) to get on any and every ride. Here we are on the Kali River Rapids ride at Disney's Animal Kingdom. Meris got soaked both times he rode.

We spent the week with our cousins, so Meris had an especially great trip. Nothing like a good sword fight to keep you occupied while waiting for dinner.

And last but not least, here's one of the whole family, posing in front of the big hat at Disney's Hollywood Studios (I think).

More to come soon.

~jkg

A short, sweet post, just to (finally) show off (sort-of) a sweater I made for Matea. I finished it a good month or two ago, so it's even smaller for her now than in the photos. Oh well. Perhaps the next baby will get a little more use out of it....

A little about the project: it's from one of the Debbie Bliss books (too lazy to find and give the details now). I used Stork Knit yarn (also too lazy for the details), suggested by my knit guru and sister, best known as Imo Kim. This was supposed to have a little tie instead of a button closure, but I forgot to leave a whole in the side seam for the tie to go through, so my guru schooled me in the way of the button.

Next post should be the blanket I made for Matea... got to take some decent photos of it first, though.

~jkg

california girl

Just couldn't resist sharing this one right away--Matea does appear to be a little California girl.

We took this at Ocean Beach in SF during our Bay Area Thanksgiving trip.

~jkg

matea milestone: feeding the lil' devil

I felt a bit guilty that I had hardly thought about giving Matea her first solid food until about two weeks before her six-month birthday. But as it turns out, she has yet to savor anything other than breast milk. We tried giving her some banana about one week later, but she didn't care much for that, either.

Here is how she reacted to her first spoonfuls of rice cereal.


She celebrated her first Halloween dressed as a devil. Costume is courtesy of Imo Kim.

Meris passed something of a milestone this Halloween, too. He understood quite well that trick-or-treating meant running (literally) from house to house and getting candy. His Scarlet Macaw costume also is courtesy of Imo Kim, with shopping and mailing services provided by Halmi.

Here's a better shot of his costume.


He loved it enough to wear it to Spanish class during the week, and to a coffee shop later that weekend.
Glad he got so much wear out of it!

~jkg

a tiny tug at my heart

This is one of those moments I try to record somewhere, just to be able to remember it for longer than an hour. It's a bit sentimental, but still sweet.

Meris is bouncing on my bed while I nurse Matea. He stops, sits up, looks at me and says, “You know what Risa said when we were outside?”
“What?”
“She said, ‘No following.’”
“Were you running around after her?” (Ariel had mentioned that Meris was playing by himself, trying to join various groups of kids when he arrived at the park to pick him up from school. So I guessed that Risa was part of one of those groups.)
“How did you feel about that?”
“Sad.” Pause. “I’m still sad.”
Conversation goes on for a little while. Meris is lying (laying?) on his stomach, facing me. At some point, he props his chin in both hands and pats his frowning little cheeks.
We talk about which kids are his friends. “Simone is your friend, right?”
“Yeah, Simone is my friend. But she is only one friend.”
“Sometimes it’s fun to have one friend you play with a lot.”
“No, I want to have a lot of friends.” By now, he’s laying on his back.
He climbs off the bed, and basically gets moving again while we talk. I must say something about he wanted to play with Risa, because the discussion ends when he says, “Because she [Risa] is cool and great.”
So it begins.

Also today, we were reading a counting book with lots of flaps that you lift. Meris clearly is learning to recognize the numbers from 11 to 20, but hasn’t quite mastered them. One page has pictures of tiny objects on the flap, with the numeral printed underneath. Meris randomly opens them and reads the numbers. “Fourteen, sixteen, eighteen, nineteen, threeteen.” I interrupt and correct him. He moves his hand one flap to the left, lifts it, and looks at me as he says, “Twoteen?” I can’t help but laugh a little. So cute.

a trip of firsts....

We've just returned from a two-week trip to Portland, Oregon to visit the Goldfarb-Simon clan. We'll start with a cute photo of the three cousins at the pumpkin patch--and all looking at the camera at the same time!

This was not only Matea's first trip to Portland, but also her first time on a plane! And that means it was Ariel's and my first time flying with two kids instead of just one. Luckily for the rest of us ("us" being everyone on the flight!), Matea slept through most of her first flight.



We see so many smiling, happy baby photos. Anyone else up for a change? Here's a more interesting expression from Matea, exploring a lawn for the first time.


Now we've got Meris, sleeping in a "big boy bed" for the first time. We thought he might object to returning to his crib when we got home, but he doesn't seem to mind. Anyway, here he is in all his sleeping glory.

And last but not least, here are a few photos of Mito with the kids, first thing in the morning.