Hard to believe it’s December 31st…

Dom 👦

Where to start? December has been a fun month as we prepared for Santa’s visit. Our Elf on the Shelf, Henry, joined us again after Thanksgiving. Dom enjoyed reading his story multiple times the first week or so after his arrival (it was a required book during our bedtime reading during that time). Every morning he’d say “Where Henry?” so of course, we’d look for him and he always loved finding him. He got so excited about all of the Christmas lights and decorations everywhere and often asked to go to Depot (Home Depot – a home improvement store for those of you unfamiliar) to see everything set up in the store. Our town does a tree-lighting on December 1st and it’s walking distance from our house so we went for the first time, and he loved it. They also had a petting zoo and he was happy to see a “Dommy Donkey” (Dominic the Donkey, you know, that Italian Christmas song? I’m pretty sure I mentioned that he loved that song in another post). He loved celebrating Christmas with his cousins and we all had a really nice day.

In the way of development, he no longer calls a helicopter a “cocka”, but now calls it a “hellacoppa”, so we’re getting closer. He also can say, without prompting, the whole alphabet & count from 1-12 then says 14, 16, eleventeen. He started triggering our Amazon Echo dot when he says “Awexa” (Alexa) and tries to ask for songs to dance to (“play ‘magine dragons” was the first thing he asked for .. and she shuffled songs by Imagine Dragons, haha!). He’s getting better at saying “thank you” without prompting and also started saying “you’re welcome” and “excuse me” more regularly.

He’s had 2 ear infections this month (currently going through the second one, for which he has to take Augmentin and it’s the only medicine he doesn’t like, so it’s a bit of a challenge at times to give it to him). This makes the 5th or 6th ear infection this year, but no talk of tubes yet. Related to this, he’s still having some really crappy sleep (in the last 2 weeks I can confirm definitely 1 night that he slept all the way through, but honestly can’t remember if there have been any others)

Lastly (to try to keep this post at a digestible length), he loves watching Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (with Gene Wilder), especially the Violet Beauregard scene. One night at dinner he turned to me and said, “I got a blueberry for a daughter.”  — completely unrelated to what we were talking about. He also asks me to sing the Oompa Loompa songs at bedtime. Silly boy.

Oh and one more thing, this morning, without prompting, he leaned into me and said, “I love you, mumma.” 😍

Books/Reading 📚
Books completed: 2
Books in progress: 3
Year Goal: 26/24 (Completed in November)
Historical Fiction Challenge: 7/5 (Completed in August)
What’s in a Name Challenge: 2/6

I met my Goodreads challenge in November and am planning to set a goal of 30 books for next year. I joined a Beat the Backlist challenge for the year, which I recently posted about here. I have a page set up to track the books that I read for this. There’s also an Instagram challenge with weekly prompts that I’ll attempt to do.

Crafts 🎨

Sewing

Sewing projects completed: 3
Sewing projects in progress: 1

It was another productive month for sewing! I made 1 more initial pillow and gave all but 2 to the recipients (haven’t seen the other 2 yet) and they all loved them. The “B” pillow (picture in November’s post) was a big hit as my nephew put his head right on it after he opened it. So cute! And as mentioned in recent posts, I made the fabric basket and a pin cushion for my #stitchingsanta parcel.

The one item in progress is my Rita muslin, and I’m actually so very close to finishing! I just need to stitch the elastics and hem it. (I decided to remove the Sorbetto from my “in progress” count above since I haven’t done anything with it.)

Knitting

Knitting projects completed: 0
Knitting projects in progress: 1

Haven’t touched the hat for my friend’s baby. Hoping to wrap that up within the next few days, too.

I’ll be making a post for #makenine2018, something I haven’t done before, so be on the lookout for that.

All in all, 2017 has been a good year. I really look forward to what 2018 has in store for us! (And I’ll be posting a look ahead soon)

Happy New Year, everyone! Wishing you a year of fun, laughter, happiness, good health, and love with all your loved ones!

I’m a few months behind, so I’ll sum up July, August, and September here to catch up. So be prepared for a longer post than normal…

Dom 👦
Man, the downside to being behind 3 months of updates is that there’s so much going on! Dom is so funny. I know I’ve said that every month, but he really is. I think he likes to make people laugh. His little personality is totally shining through and he’s a lovable and loving little guy. As noted in past months, his vocabulary continues to grow at an amazing rate (his daycare teacher says she’s surprised by all of his words). He’s saying numbers in order (oddly enough, it’s usually the later numbers: 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13). 8 seems to be his favorite, he says it all the time.

He also likes to ask for “one more” with his little finger up in the air, which sometimes turn into “I want 8.”

He likes different juices, which is good for variety. And he loves all kinds of fruit: blueberries, bananas, watermelon, grapes… those are his favorites. He also continues to eat his veggies without a fuss (corn, carrots, and peas being his favorite). He loves pizza. Thursdays at the daycare are “pizza day” so all the kids yell “Pizza Day!” And now Dom calls all pizza “pizza day.” He does go through little fussy periods from time to time, but they usually only last a couple of days.

We did some blueberry and apple picking and had a lot of fun!

He enjoys Mary Poppins, and often asks to listen to or watch “Super,” “Step in Time,” “the animals,” (when the animals sing in “Jolly Holiday”), and especially the penguins. He’s still a big fan of Fitz and the Tantrums and still loves listening to “Handclap,” though “Roll Up” is his preferred Fitz song right now.

He did get an upper respiratory infection in July and that wasn’t fun to deal with (we also had to do albuterol nebulizer treatments at home), and that whole ordeal lasted a couple of weeks, along with some really crappy sleeping. Since then, our sleeping hasn’t really been great/back to normal (we’ve been having stretches of nights in a row waking up in the middle of the night).

“Mickey Clubhouse” is his favorite show. He has Crocs with Mickey Mouse heads on them and he calls them his Mickey Clubhouse crockies.

He’s also currently in a hitting phase 😔 which we’re dealing with, but it makes me a little sad that it’s happening  (though I suppose it’s better than biting…)

We kept up with our monthly table coloring, which you can see below.

I think I may need to start doing Dom updates separately from these monthly wrap-ups…

Moving along…

Books/Reading 📚
Books completed: 12
Books in progress: 0
Year Goal: 22/24
Historical Fiction Challenge: 7/5 (Completed in August)
What’s in a Name Challenge: 2/6

I haven’t read any books toward the Back to the Classics Challenge, and I don’t anticipate reading anything to qualify anytime soon, so I’ve removed that from here.

One of my best friends started reading the Outlander series at the beginning of the summer, which I read a number of years ago. She started asking questions about things I didn’t really remember, so I started re-reading them along with her. We finished the 4th book in September. And truth be told, there was a lot of stuff I had forgotten, so it’s been good to re-read. And we’re also watching the 3rd season of its television counterpart.

Crafts 🎨

Sewing
Sewing projects completed: 1 (1 in progress)

I finally made another one of the diaper pouch/changing pad combos! It was waaay overdue (2 years overdue, to be exact) for the intended recipient, but I think she liked it when she got it. ☺Wasn’t even my intention for the pouch fabric to match the changing pad fabric so closely.

The project I’m working on is an initial pillow for Dom. You may recall I made some a few years ago for some nieces and nephews. I’m finally getting ’round to making them for Dom and a couple of nephews/friends. They’ll be Christmas gifts.

I almost said 2 in progress because I started getting the pattern sorted for the Colette Sorbetto top, tunic version (I’ve been drafting a separate post on that, but can’t tell you when it will go up since I haven’t done more than trace & cut out the pattern)

Knitting
Knitting projects completed: 1 (2 in progress)

I still haven’t touched the cabled hat pattern by Purl Soho.

But I did make a hat intended for a friend’s new baby. But I think the yarn I chose was too bulky because it came out almost fitting me. So I thought about who I could give it to and ended up giving it to the little girl that the above diaper pouch was made for! And she loved it (she wore it during her nap in the day I gave it to her).

So I’m working on another hat for a 5-month-old. I’m trying a new pattern and like it so far. Will share pictures once it’s done.

Earlier in the summer, I made a plan of what I wanted to do (for both sewing and knitting) in 2-month chunks of time (though I did lump June-July-August together). Needless to say, that plan went out the window, as I really haven’t dedicated any time. However, I do plan to re-organize myself (and the sewing room) and will work in bits and pieces and take my time, rather than expecting to complete x number of projects in a given amount of time. I hope that helps me work through some things but also improves my construction.

Baking/Cooking 🍽
Still nothing new here. I’ll probably remove this as a category for the rest of this year…

Weight Loss🏋
Weight lost as of September 30th: 1.5 lb gain (since June 30th, some fluctuation each month). Need to have better focus. Will figure it out… (I hope)

Life is busy, but I hope to get back on here a little more regularly (again).

Happy fall! 🍁

 

How was your summer/beginning of fall?