A baby update is coming soon (he's crawling as of this week!), but for now, I wanted to tell you about a crafty project I just finished--new covers for our couch pillows! After having good luck with my starburst floor pillows a few months ago, I decided that I wanted to try making a chevron pillow top, and with a little help from our old friend geometry, that's just what I did! (I also put some bears on the backs of the pillows for good measure)

I've outlined all of the steps for making the chevron pillow tops below. The approach is hard to explain in words, but hopefully the pictures will help.

Like I've said before, I'm a novice quilter, so there may be an easier way of accomplishing this (using striped fabric, for instance). My pillow tops didn't end up particularly flat--probably a combination of cutting the fabric on the bias and stretching it to make all the seams line up. You might get tidier results if you use quilting-weight cotton; I used Kaffe Fassett shot cottons, which are beautiful but not very structured.

1. Select the two fabrics you'll use for your pillow top. Cut eighteen 1.5" x 18" strips of each fabric (straight across; not on the bias). I bought a half yard of each of my fabrics, which made it easy to cut my strips, since my fabric was already 18" long.

   

   Note: These instructions will yield a chevron block that's about 15" wide by 19" long. If you'd like your finished block to be wider, make your strips longer (for example, if you use 1.5" x 20" strips, you'll end up with a ~17" x 19" block). If you'd like a longer block, cut more than eighteen strips.

2. Sew together your strips (I used a 1/4-inch allowance for all seams), alternating colors, and staggering the ends of each strip by about 1/2". Stop when you have sewn together 18 strips. Press your seams to one side.

   
   
   
   
   

3. Repeat with the remaining strips, staggering them by 1/2" in the other direction. You'll end up with one right-leaning 18-strip parallelogram and one left-leaning 18-strip parallelogram. Babies find these very interesting, FYI.

   

4. Using the markings on a cutting mat (or a protractor, I suppose), cut the ends off one of your parallelograms at a 60-degree angle from the bottom.

   

5. Line up the cut edge of the parallelogram with the 0-line of the cutting mat, and cut 1.5-inch-wide strips until you run out of fabric (I was able to get 8 strips from each of my parallelograms; if you're lucky, you might get 9 strips).

   

6. Repeat with the other parallelogram. You should end up with 8 strips with left-leaning stripes and 8 strips with right-leaning stripes.

   

7. Take one left-leaning strip and one right-leaning strip, place them right sides together, and sew along the left side, lining up the stripe seams as you go. Do this for four pairs of strips. For the four remaining pairs of strips, do the same thing, but sew along the right side instead of the left side.

   

8. Press open. When you line up the strips with all of the V's pointing in the same direction, you should have four strips that have color A at the top and four strips that have color B at the top (shown here alternating, as they will be in the finished block).

   

9. Sew your strips together, alternating your A-top strips and your B-top strips and lining up your stripe seams as you go. Press open. You're done!

   I ended up with a 15" x 19" block. I cut this down to a 15" square and then added a border to make the top big enough for my pillow.

   
   
   

I made my finished chevron blocks into zippered pillow covers using this handy tutorial.

The pillow backs have bears on them, in case we get tired of looking at the chevron sides.

The first pillow has two appliqued bear silhouettes. To do this, I enlarged this image, printed it out, and traced it onto freezer paper to make a pattern. I ironed the freezer paper pattern onto some leftover blue fabric and then placed that on top of a piece of white fabric (though in retrospect, using more blue fabric as the applique backing would have looked neater). I sewed around the bear outline on the freezer paper (using a short stitch length so the freezer paper would be easy to tear off), leaving an opening for turning the applique inside out. Then I tore off the freezer paper.

I trimmed around the bear outline, leaving about 1/4 inch of fabric and clipping the curves. Then I turned it inside out, ironed it flat, and sewed it onto the putty-colored backing fabric. I repeated this for the mirror-image bear and for the heart. The fabric silhouettes don't look quite as crisp as the original image, but I think they still look pretty bear-like. By the way, this lined applique technique is based on Anna Maria Horner's Love Emblem pattern. I like it!

The second pillow is freezer-paper-stenciled with the Greenland coat of arms. We have no affiliation with Greenland; we just thought their coat of arms was pretty cool-looking (sorry, Greenland, for appropriating your cultural symbols for our couch cushions!). Man, do I love freezer paper stenciling! I should do it more often.

I used the stenciled fabric as the center of a rectangular sawtooth star block. Not as easy as making a a square-centered sawtooth star block, it turns out, but it all worked out in the end.

Yay for new couch pillows!

Hmm, somehow it has been three weeks since I last posted. Arlo turned 10 months old on Friday! I have lots to share, including three weeks' worth of orange chair pictures:

First, the State of the Baby list:

• After some consideration, we night-weaned Arlo a few weeks ago (prior to this, he was waking up once a night to eat). Our sleep books all said that this was a good time to cut out night feeding, and it seemed like he wasn't really hungry; he was just waking out of habit. We spent a few weeks reducing the duration of his one remaining middle-of-the-night feeding, and then the weekend before last, we just stopped feeding him when he woke at night. We take turns with nighttime Arlo duty, and Patrick graciously agreed to take the first two no-feeding nights. The first night, Arlo was pretty mad and cried for a while before going back to sleep. The second night was better, and since then it has gone pretty smoothly. Most nights, he either sleeps through the night, or he'll wake up and cry for a few seconds and then put himself back to sleep. There have been a couple nights when he had more prolonged crying periods and we had to go in and comfort him, but overall things have gone very well.

  I got a little weepy when I put him back to bed after his last night feeding. I'll miss holding my sleepy, contented baby in the middle of the night, his head nodding on my shoulder. But, on the bright side, we're finally getting to sleep through the night, after 10 months of interrupted sleep. Woo! We're living the dream :)

• Arlo has figured out waving in the past week. It's super cute! And since he has mastered that skill, we're now moving on to high fives. He hasn't quite figured those out yet, but we're working on it.

• Arlo is so, so close to crawling--I really mean it this time! He gets up on all fours and rocks back and forth like he's revving up his crawling motor, but he hasn't actually propelled himself forward yet. It's only a matter of time now...

  He also hasn't figured out how to pull himself up on things, but once he's up, he can stand around for a good long time. Sometimes I stand him up in his crib after a nap. It's probably not a habit I should encourage, but he looks so cute in there!

  
  
  

• We got the results back from the household lead test, and they weren't too bad. The swab from the dining room floor didn't have any detectable lead, and the swab from his dusty bedroom windowsill (which I have since cleaned) had some lead dust, but it was below the freak-out limit set by the federal government. So we don't need to move out or mop twice a week, but we should be mindful about keeping the house clean and washing Arlo's hands before meals. I can do that.

• As we head towards toddlerdom, Arlo's moods have started getting a little more mercurial (or maybe that's just the sixth tooth that he's currently cutting--upper left canine). When he's happy, it's pretty awesome, but he's also doing the outraged crying thing a lot--who knew that getting set down on the kitchen floor was so awful? Luckily, it's pretty easy to stop the crying, either by picking him up or distracting him with fun cooking utensils (turkey baster!).

  

• Every so often, he'll wake up from a nap, and he'll look so much older. His hair is getting long enough that it curls at the nape of his neck. I have mixed feelings about this.

  
  
  

Next, general life updates:

• Patrick did lots of garden work the weekend before last. Most notably, he took out our third raised bed and planted two dwarf Montmorency cherry trees in its place. Sour cherries can be hard to come by in the summer, and I'm looking forward to having our own backyard supply (assuming the birds don't eat them first). And now when we read Pie in the Sky to Arlo, it will be extra relevant.

  

• We spent this past weekend at an awesome cabin near Mt. Hood. Susan recommended it to us, and it was great! I especially liked the kitchen, which had big picture windows looking out on the forest. It made me want to remodel our kitchen.

  
  
  

  We stayed in and cooked for all of our meals, since Arlo's nap schedule makes it a little tough to go out to eat. To entertain myself, I decided that I would use as many of the cabin's gimmicky kitchen appliances as possible. I was able to use five of them while we were there--the quesadilla maker, Mickey Mouse toaster, pancake maker, George Foreman Grill, and farm-animal waffle maker. That's a lot of hot, non-stick surfaces for one weekend!

  My favorite appliance was the pancake maker. For some reason, I have a hard time making pancakes at home no matter which tool I use in our kitchen (electric griddle, cast iron skillet, etc.). I can never get them to cook evenly. The pancake maker made the process easy and quick. I don't think I'll be able to convince Patrick to get one of our own (our appliance storage cabinet is all full!), but I'll certainly look forward to using it again the next time we're at the cabin.

  

  Patrick and Arlo had lots of good father-son bonding time on our trip (and I got to take two blissfully long showers and do lots of knitting!). Every morning, they bundled up and went out to say hi to the little creek running next to the cabin, and on Thursday they went on a nice hike together in the rain.

  
  
  

  Patrick had to go back to Portland during the day on Friday because he was called for jury duty, so Arlo and I got some alone time too. The weather was actually nice that day, so we went on a little walk on a nearby trail. Everything was so green and mossy. The next day it snowed, so I'm glad we went exploring while the sun was out.

  I'm still coming to terms with the fact that our vacations are going to be different now that Arlo's part of our family. No more sleeping in or going out for fancy meals, at least in the near term. At times, I found it a little frustrating that we still had to be mindful of Arlo's nap schedule and prepare three healthy meals every day, even though we were on vacation. It wasn't so bad though--we just saved our ice cream eating and movie watching for after Arlo was in bed.

  This vacation made us want a cabin of our own, full of moose- and bear-themed items, with our names on a carved wooden sign out front. But until then, I'll happily go back to this cabin every winter (and maybe every summer too--I don't want to wait another year to go back!).

• We got back to Portland on Sunday, just in time to go to Powell's for Susan's book signing. Her new book, Modern Log Cabin Quilting, is full of beautiful projects. I'm excited to try a few log cabin projects in the near future!

  

  The signing was at 4pm, so Arlo and Patrick were able to come too. They got lots of compliments on their matching shirts. I'm so lucky to have these two good-looking guys in my life :)

  
  
  

And, finally, a little recent recipe roundup, somewhat short on pictures:

• Indian-spiced lentils with mizuna, served over rice. This was pretty good and would be worth making again, but as a side rather than an entree.

• Fettucine with lima beans, peas, and leeks. I added some pre-cooked crab, and I was really happy with the meal. I guess it's hard to go wrong with pasta + cream.

• Steak teriyaki, white rice, sauteed mustard greens, and cumin-ginger carrot coins (recipe from Hungry Monkey). A very enjoyable meal! Arlo was especially fond of the steak (cut up into little pieces) and carrots.

• Marcella Hazan's pasta with leek sauce, sauteed Brussels sprouts, and wild mushroom and sweet potato gratin. When Patrick took out the third bed in our garden, he had to harvest all of our overwintered leeks, and this pasta recipe put them to good use. Super good! The gratin was nice too, but the pasta was really the star of the meal.

  

• I opened a can of pumpkin to make pumpkin and ginger pancakes (not bad, a little heavy on the nutmeg), and I used the remaining pumpkin to make pumpkin-chocolate chip muffins to take to the cabin. I'm not sure how I feel about pumpkin and chocolate together, but these were pretty awesome. I reduced the sugar by 1/4c, and they were still very good.

  

Babbling!

Arlo at Nine Months from Caitlin D on Vimeo.

Here's Mr. Arlo sharing some wonderful toothy grins! (Tooth #5 showed up a couple days ago, much to our surprise!)

• He had his 9-month checkup a few weeks ago, and it went just fine. Patrick and I smiled at each other when our pediatrician told us that we could start feeding Arlo yogurt now, if we felt comfortable with it. Since we're doing baby-led weaning, he's been eating yogurt (and everything else he can get his hands on) for a few months already. So far he hasn't shown any signs of food allergies or any other negative effects from eating so many kinds of food right from the get go. Hopefully things will continue going well!

  We mentioned to our pediatrician that he isn't crawling yet, but she was unconcerned. Our baby books say it's nothing to worry about either. But I'm still worrying a little--just a tiny bit.

• A week or so ago, Arlo started grinding his teeth a lot, which made me cringe. What a horrible sound! Luckily, it lost its novelty quickly, and he stopped doing it after a couple days.

  Now that Arlo has teeth, our pediatrician suggested that we start giving him fluoride supplements, since Portland doesn't fluoridate its water. I made the mistake of searching online for information about dye-free fluoride supplements, which of course led to reading comments about how fluoride is poison, etc. Ugh. I had been hoping to avoid reading that kind of information, since I knew it would just give me one more baby-related decision to feel unsure about. We're still going to give him the fluoride supplement though--we both grew up in areas where the water was fluoridated, and we turned out okay.

• And in related worrying-about-elements news, I picked up a free home lead test at Mother Nature's and sent it in for analysis last week. Since we live in a 100-year-old house, it seems inevitable that the samples will test positive for lead dust. It's stressing me out, but it will be good to know one way or another. It won't be the end of the world if the test comes back positive--there are things that can be done to minimize the impact of lead dust in a house. The problem is that one of the main mitigations is mopping the floors twice a week, and that just sounds crazy! That's way more mopping than we do at present. Anyway, I should wait for the results before I stress out about it too much.

• Arlo has started making this great scrunchy face at mealtimes. I totally get a kick out of it. The best part is that I think he's doing it because he knows it makes us laugh :)

  
  
  
  
  

• Arlo has been doing some great babbling lately. He has progressed from "ma ma" and "ba ba" to "da da" in the last week. It still doesn't quite seem like he's saying "mama" or "dada" with intention, but we can pretend he is :)

• We're still bathing Arlo in a tub that fits in our kitchen sink, but I think it's about time for us to transition to the big bathtub, since he is getting very splashy, and he likes to put the sink sprayer in his mouth. Here he is trying to grab his comb so he can put it in his mouth (a recurring theme these days).

  

• We're in the middle of some fun family visits at the moment. Arlo's Auntie Li (my sister) is visiting this weekend, and his Grandpa Rick (Patrick's dad) and Sunnie visited last weekend. It took Arlo a few days to warm up to Rick (I guess Christmas is long-forgotten at this point), but by the end of the weekend, he was hanging out with him, no problem. It was sweet :)

  

  Rick and Sunnie were nice enough to bring along Patrick's old rocking horse, which was made by his grandpa when he was a little boy. Arlo loves sitting on it and holding the handles and trying to chew on the pointy ear. I love that Arlo will get to enjoy the same toy that Patrick did when he was a little boy. Yay for quality woodworking!

  

Meal planning is still going well, though it can be tiring getting a nice, baby-friendly dinner on the table at 5:45pm every night. I think it helps if I look at my homemaker activities (grocery shopping, cooking, washing dishes, laundry, etc.) as a job. Sure, maybe I'd rather take a nap or watch a movie some days, but as far as work goes, this is a pretty cushy setup. I feel lucky to be living this life.

So, food! For breakfasts, we've been having a lot of oatmeal, yogurt, bananas, and stewed prunes. I put together a slightly fancier breakfast on Wednesday--shirred eggs, toast fingers made with crunchy wheat bread (recipe from Cafe Beaujolais), and cardamom citrus fruit salad. I made the bread and fruit salad in advance, so it didn't take too long to put together breakfast in the morning. The bread was tasty, and the recipe made two loaves, so we've still got a loaf in the freezer for future breakfasts. The fruit salad was pretty good and was a nice change from the bananas and dried fruit that we've been having with breakfast this winter. The eggs were kind of a dud. I think this is the second time I've tried this recipe, and both times the eggs have been undercooked, even though I've left them in the oven longer than specified. I think it must be because I'm using them straight from the fridge instead of letting them come to room temperature. The nice thing is that I was able to put them in a pan and turn them into scrambled eggs without much extra effort, but it's still frustrating to be confronted with undercooked eggs on a weekday morning.

We had two tasty, meatless, and quick-to-prepare dinners recently: (1) pasta with sun-dried tomatoes, ricotta, and peas and (2) sesame broccoli pasta with Papa G's sesame tofu added (the latter was even vegan!).

And we had two nice, ham-tastic, somewhat time-consuming dinners: (1) crepes with ricotta, ham and spinach filling with braised butter-glazed radishes and (2) black beans with ham hocks and dry sherry on fluffy white rice with sauteed mizuna. We ate the leftover beans for breakfast, on top of some green chile grits from the crockpot (recipe from Not Your Mother's Slow Cooker), topped with queso fresco and poached eggs. Yummy! And then I refrigerated the leftover grits, cut them into slices, and fried them up for dinner, topped with kale with bacon and black-eyed peas. It makes me happy when I can turn leftovers into a whole new meal :)

We also had one fishy meal: sauteed cod with coconut red curry sauce, rice and peas, and sweet potato wedges. It was a little tricky coordinating everything so it was done at the same time, but I was happy with the finished product. We got the cod from Flying Fish Co., and it was really nice--firm and moist.

I've made a couple desserts lately. Yesterday, I made a batch of butterscotch-banana pudding, which is so good, but very rich (even using 1% milk instead of whole milk). We weren't going to eat the pudding right away, so I layered it with the bananas and refrigerated it, and although the flavor is great, the texture of the bananas got a little strange in the fridge. I'd suggest making the caramelized bananas right before you're ready to eat the pudding.

I also made a lemon meringue pie (recipe from Baking Illustrated) as an early birthday dessert for Patrick (and if you count his Negroni as a birthday present, then I actually did a decent job celebrating his birthday this year). Lemon meringue isn't my favorite kind of pie (though I happily helped put away half of this pie in the span of a few days), but I love the toasty meringue smell that fills the house while the pie is baking.

Happy first day of Spring, by the way! Daffodil season is in full swing, and it makes our neighborhood walks much cheerier.

A new post is coming soon! I've been feeling a little quiet lately, given the news from Japan. Writing about lemon meringue pie and posting cute baby pictures seems a little silly at the moment. But I'll do it anyway--it's nice to have a little something to smile about after reading all those sobering news stories. For starters, how about a little staticky Arlo head?

Here's our mischievous baby at 39 weeks old.

And here he is all bundled up for a walk with Patrick during some recent cold weather. We used one of my rainbow over-the-knee socks as a scarf for him, and it worked quite well!

There's not much to report since my last entry. Arlo's been doing a lot of cave baby/Incredible Hulk grunting in the past week, which evolved into consonant-heavy babbling today ("ba ba ba" and even a little "ma ma ma," though I don't think I can claim "mama" as his first word quite yet). He has done some babbling in the past, but this seems more intentional, like he's actually trying to communicate something. Exciting!

We've been reading Touch and Feel Baby Animals to Arlo since he was little, but this week he finally figured out what he's supposed to do with it. He'll reach out and stroke the fake bunny fur and tickle the baby gorilla in the book, just like he's supposed to! Too bad he destroyed Pat the Bunny during an early teething spell; otherwise I bet he'd have some fun with it too. (Speaking of destroying books, in the last week he has gnawed a chunk out of the top left corner of almost every board book we own. He's a voracious reader these days. Ha!)

His third and fourth teeth are fully in (and have been for a few weeks), and he's putting them to good use at mealtimes. He's still an excellent eater, and sweet potato continues to be his favorite food--he shovels it into his mouth as quickly as we dole it out.

We celebrated his Inside-Out Equilibrium Day on Wednesday, as planned, with spinach and goat cheese calzones, served with yummy tomato sauce. Labor-intensive, but delicious!

I've been thinking a lot of about Arlo's birth and his first few weeks of life lately. I think I kind of downplayed things when I wrote about them here, because I prefer to remember things in a positive light, and because I didn't want to scare any pregnant women who might be reading along (everybody's experience is different--your labor and delivery could go really smoothly!). The reality is that it was a tough couple of weeks. I was in frustrating on-again, off-again labor for 80+ hours, and it was painful and exhausting and ended with a C-section, which I had been trying so hard to avoid. And then I had a rocky few weeks recovering from my C-section, while also dealing with Arlo's nursing issues--June was not particularly fun. I was so lucky to have Patrick there, taking such good care of us throughout the whole thing. And of course, there were wonderful, amazing new-baby moments mixed in there too. And do I even need to say that it was all totally worth it in the end? It was, of course! I wouldn't give up that experience for anything, even though it was physically and emotionally painful at times.

We'd like to have another baby in a few years (this sometimes sounds like a wonderful idea and sometimes sounds wholly overwhelming, depending on how charming or cranky Arlo is being at the time). I've been thinking about whether I'd like to try for a VBAC or whether I'd go for another C-section. A scheduled C-section seems like a pretty good option, except that I'd hate to go through another drawn-out, painful recovery like I did with Arlo. But maybe it won't be like that the second time around. Oh well, no need to make that decision just yet...

And totally changing the subject, it has been a good week for dinner. In addition to our celebratory calzones, we had:

1. Brown rice sushi bowls (from Super Natural Cooking) with sweet potato-carrot soup. I wasn't expecting much from the sushi bowl recipe, since it's healthy, but it was actually really good! And it has lots of potential for variations--we added sauteed mushrooms this time around. The soup was tasty too.

2. Auntie Nance's Greek scampi, with some chopped spinach added along with the shrimp (next time I'd add the spinach before the shrimp, to avoid overcooking the shrimp). I don't know why I haven't tried this recipe before. It's a definite keeper--easy to put together and tasty! I'd like to try making this with white beans instead of the shrimp. I think it could be a nice variation.

3. French lentil salad with caraway and radish topped with feta; roasted sweet potato wedges; and braised red cabbage. This was a nice, colorful winter meal.

Also, can I just say that I love our camera? I don't think I ever officially mentioned it here, but we bought a Canon Rebel XSi before Arlo was born, along with a 50 mm f1.8 lens, which is a terrific food + baby lens. Now that we've got a teensy bit of daylight left at dinnertime, I'm able to take my dinner pictures in natural light, and they turn out really well, considering how dark it is in the kitchen. It makes me happy :)

I finished my second Negroni shirt! The cotton shirting was much easier to sew with than the flannel that I used for the muslin, and I think I did a better job with the details on this shirt. But I like the flannel version a lot too--I think the darker fabric suits Patrick well.

As with the muslin, this is Colette Negroni version 1 (long sleeves), size M. The only change I made to the pattern was lowering the buttons by about half an inch (the buttons on the final shirt are higher than they were on the muslin, since I had some problems with the facing lying flat on the muslin). I used buttons that look like pearl snaps, since I don't have a snap press.

Like I said in my muslin post, this is a great pattern! I don't know how many more Negroni shirts Patrick needs, but I'd like to make one or two more at some point in the future. The process is almost fun once you know what you're doing (except for cutting out the pattern pieces--all that leaning over hurts my back!). Maybe I'll make him a short-sleeved version in the summer. And then he won't have to model his shirt in super-cold, windy weather. Poor guy!

Arlo pictures! Here he is at 37 and 38 weeks.

And here he is showing how well he can stand (with a little help, of course).

As indicated by the tears welling in his eyes in some of the 38-week photos, Arlo had a rough couple of days about a week ago. I don't know what it was--teething, maybe?--but he was grumpy and clingy last weekend. I was hoping that maybe it meant he was about to start crawling (I'd heard that babies get clingy right before they hit big developmental milestones), but nope. Still no crawling. I'm just glad that he's back to his (mostly) happy self this week. It's hard being relentlessly cheery and sweet when faced with a grumpy baby all day long!

Our baby books make it sound like many babies crawl and say their first word by 9 months. I'm not sure if Arlo will hit either of those milestones by Monday, but he's not that far off. He has been very vocal lately--clearly enjoying all of the sounds he is capable of making. It's entertaining!

He has also been extra cuddly for the past few days, which is so wonderful. When I'm holding him and he's in a quiet mood, he'll put his arms around my shoulders and squeeze me, and sometimes he'll lay his head on my chest for a few seconds. It's the best thing ever. He is also starting to figure out kisses. Lately, when I kiss him goodnight, he comes at me all open-mouthed, ready to kiss me back. What a sweetie :)

Here he is in an acorn cap that I made for him (more information on Ravelry). It started out as a hat for an ex-coworker's 2-year-old daughter, but my gauge was off, so it ended up fitting Arlo instead. Not a big deal, since I wanted to make one for him too.

These pictures make my heart ache a little. He's so beautiful and innocent right now. Oh, my dear baby.

Speaking of knit hats, here's one I made for myself recently--the Jane hat (Ravelry info). It's super cute, but because I have a big head it turned out snug and not as slouchy as I'd hoped. I decided to send it to a friend with a more normal-sized head, and I'm planning on making a slightly larger version for myself.

Last Saturday, Patrick and I left the house together, without Arlo, for the second time since Arlo was born. Back in November, I bought tickets to see The Decemberists at the Schnitz, not knowing what Arlo's sleep habits would be like in mid-February and dreading having to find a babysitter. It all worked out though. Arlo's nanny (who continues to be awesome--yay!) agreed to babysit. Since I'm a worrier, I had my phone on my lap throughout the concert, in case Becca Jo called. I was worried Arlo would wake up at 9pm, realize we weren't there, and cry until we came home. I didn't need to worry, of course--Arlo slept soundly the whole time we were gone, the concert was great, and we were able to stay through the first encore (which included the Mariner's Revenge Song!). Yay for doing something non-baby-related every once and a while!

This upcoming Wednesday will be Arlo's Inside-Out Equilibrium Day (the day on which he will have been out in the world for the same amount of time he was in the womb). The current plan is to wear our underwear inside out and eat calzones (inside-out pizza!) to celebrate :) On a more serious note, I've been thinking about how this also marks the day when my body is supposed to be back to normal (whatever that means), based on conventional wisdom. I have mixed feelings about my postpartum body (I'm sure most new moms do). I could write a long post about it, but I think it would get complainy, and I prefer to write about happy things here. Oh, okay, I'll write a paragraph about it. This is more personal than I normally get here, but I think it's worth writing about for posterity, and maybe it will help any other new moms who are reading along.

Before I had Arlo, I'd assumed that my body would pretty much go back to normal at some point, even though it might take a year or so. Well, that doesn't seem to be the case. My stomach looks very different than it did pre-baby, and I think it's going to stay that way. I have stretch marks, a C-section ledge, and my belly button is located higher than it used to be and it just looks weird (how strange is that? I never thought that my belly button would change when I had a baby!). This website (caution: nudity!) has helped me feel better, knowing I'm not the only one whose body looks like this, but I'm still pretty self-conscious about it. It's made worse by the fact that I've caught glimpses of other new moms' stomachs, and they looked normal. I wonder why their bodies recovered better than mine--was it because I had a C-section or a big baby, or was it just bad luck? I try to stay positive about it--my stretch marks are fading, I was able to lose my baby weight quickly and without much effort, and the rest of my body looks just fine. If having a gnarly-looking midsection is the price I have to pay for having an absolutely amazing, wonderful baby boy, it was totally worth it. Still, I think it will take a while for me to get comfortable with my new body.

I've started going to a yoga class one morning a week (big thanks to Patrick for making this possible by watching Arlo while I'm in class!). In addition to not feeling so great about my external appearance, my core has felt really weak since I had Arlo. I'm able to carry him in the sling without much trouble, but when I'm sitting or standing, I find myself slouching a lot, and I just generally don't feel strong. I bought a book about postpartum ab exercises right after I had Arlo, but I never got around to doing any of them. In fact, the only exercising I've done in the last 9 months has been lots of walking. It's probably time to take better care of myself. Yoga seems like a good start, and once the weather is warmer, I'd like to start going on bike rides (or maybe even start running again, though I'm not feeling at all motivated at the moment).

I've been to two classes so far at my neighborhood yoga studio, and I've felt sore afterward, so they must be doing something. I took a little yoga in college and attended a few work-sponsored yoga classes back in California, but this is my first time going to a yoga studio where they incorporate the spiritual elements of yoga in addition to the physical exercises. The people there are nice, but I'm feeling a little out of my element--there's a lot of bowing to altars and saying "Namaste." I'm not sure if I should do it too (in order to be respectful) or abstain (because it's hypocritical of me to pretend that I believe in that aspect of things, when I'm really just there to strengthen my core). It's probably not a big deal either way.

Okie doke--food roundup! My efforts to plan our meals a little better, for Arlo's benefit, are still going well. It's time consuming (both the planning and the execution), but it makes me happy that we're eating well. I doubt that I'll be able to keep this up long-term, but I'm enjoying it while it lasts.

We've been rotating through a lot of the same foods for breakfast--applesauce, cottage cheese, bananas, yogurt. Here are a few notable breakfast items we've had recently:

1. Egg sandwiches on ciabatta with apple butter, bacon, and a Gorgonzola-cream-cheese spread. This was inspired by the Messenger sandwich served at the now-closed Little Red Bike Cafe (we didn't make it out there before they closed, so I don't know how close this comes to the original). I made the apple butter in the slow cooker (recipe in Not Your Mother's Slow Cooker), and it turned out well. The ciabatta rolls (from New Seasons) were a little too crusty, but I'd try this again on an English muffin. It's an interesting flavor combination!

2. Cinnamon-raisin bread with breakfast cheese and stewed prunes (the first two items were from The Breakfast Book). The bread was very nice, and I liked the combination of breakfast cheese and prunes. This meal took a lot of advance preparation, but it was satisfying eating such a special breakfast on a weekday.

3. Meyer lemon and ricotta pancakes with frozen blueberries added. We ate these yesterday morning when it was all snowy outside. I made them the night before, and then I reheated them in the toaster oven at 350F for 5 minutes. I had some issues with pancake doneness--I always have a hard time finding just the right combination of temperature and time to get beautiful pancakes. They weren't particularly pretty, but they tasted good.

And here's what we've been eating for dinner:

1. Spicy baked chicken, rice and peas, and red split lentils (all from Madhur Jaffrey's Indian Cooking). With the lentils made in advance, this meal came together quickly, and it was tasty and relatively healthy.

2. Pork tinga with potatoes, avocado, and fresh cheese, made into soft tacos with a little shredded cabbage. Yay, crockpot recipe! The pork was a little spicier than I like, but otherwise I was happy with the meal, and it was easy to put together.

3. Pasta with wild mushrooms, pancetta, and gorgonzola. I couldn't find spinach penne, so I used normal penne. I'd try this recipe again with goat cheese instead of blue cheese (I'm not a big blue cheese fan), and I might add some baby spinach.

4. Sweet potato, ginger, and chicken teriyaki skewers (from The Food Matters Cookbook), white rice, and leeks vinaigrette. Trying to put uncooked sweet potato on a bamboo skewer is annoying--the sweet potato chunks kept breaking apart, and I ended up roasting them without skewering. I wouldn't make this recipe again, but it reminded me that we have a good teriyaki chicken recipe, which would probably go well with baked sweet potatoes. I liked the leek recipe--the leeks were from our garden, and the vinaigrette preparation was easy and tasty.

5. Pan-seared salmon (Cast Iron Cookbook), couscous with carrots, raisins, and almonds, and sauteed baby spinach. As I've said before, this is my favorite way of preparing salmon--it's easy, and the results are delicious. We should really make this kind of meal more often--it's simple to put together, healthy, and tasty.

6. Butternut and Gruyere cannelloni with hashed Brussels sprouts. With a little advance work, the cannelloni came together pretty quickly, with delicious results. Because I couldn't justify buying the full amount of decadent dairy products listed in the recipe for just the 2.5 of us, I made a half recipe and cut the serving size from 3 to 2 cannelloni per person (with the extra squash filling served on the side). It was still a very satisfying meal.

I think Arlo is extra cute in this month's video, but I may be biased...

Arlo at Eight Months from Caitlin D on Vimeo.

Wow, Arlo just demolished an entire New Seasons crab cake (heart-shaped!), half a baked sweet potato with sour cream, and a handful of sauteed spinach. It's a good thing we put him to bed before dessert--he's not getting any of my chocolate pudding! How crazy that six months ago we were stressed out about him not weighing enough. That's definitely no longer a concern!

As I mentioned earlier, I've been participating in the MPB Men's Shirt Sew-Along, making a Colette Negroni shirt for Patrick (Version 1, Size M). The sew-along is helping me do a much better job sewing this shirt than I would have otherwise. For instance, Peter had us sew a muslin before making the actual shirt, and I'm sure I wouldn't have bothered to do that if I'd been making it on my own. Not only did I learn a lot from making a test shirt, but it came out totally wearable!

My "muslin" is actually made from cheap gray flannel from Fabric Depot (pocket flaps and cuffs lined with plaid fabric from the Mill End Store). The fabric for my real shirt is lighter weight, and it's possible I should have chosen a lighter weight fabric for my muslin as well, to make any fit problems more apparent. But the flannel is nice and cozy, and it seems like Patrick will actually wear it, so that's a plus.

The only change I made to the pattern when making the muslin was moving the top buttonhole a little lower (and redistributing the remaining buttonholes accordingly). To my untrained eye, the shirt seems to fit pretty well without having to modify the pattern. The sleeves are a little long, but Patrick likes longer sleeves, to keep his wrists warm while he's riding his bike. I'm glad I took the time to make a muslin, because it helped me get familiar with the pattern. And hopefully I got all of my mistakes out of the way on this shirt, so the next one will be even better!

One of my main issues with this test shirt is that I used dark gray thread, because I thought the contrast with the light gray flannel would be nice. Unfortunately, this means that all of my crooked seams are more visible than they would otherwise be. This shouldn't be an issue with the second shirt, because I'm using matching thread and a patterned fabric, so little mistakes won't stand out as much.

I had a bit of a hard time with the pockets. Even though I used a template to press the pocket seam allowances down, the flannel didn't iron well, and so it was tough getting my pocket curves just right. On top of that, I didn't catch my seam allowances all the way around the first time I sewed the pockets on, so I had to do a second round of stitching closer to the edges. I also sewed one of the pocket flaps on crooked, but I don't think it's too noticeable when Patrick's wearing it.

I also had a little trouble figuring out where the button for the collar loop was supposed to go. I originally sewed it in the wrong place (shown in the first picture below). Upon examining Patrick's vintage Pendleton camp shirt (and revisiting the pattern), I realized it was supposed to go under the collar, so I relocated it. It doesn't really matter either way, since Patrick isn't going to wear the collar closed.

I'm so happy with the Negroni pattern--the instructions are really well written and clear, everything is packaged nicely, and Colette Patterns is based right here in Portland (bonus!). The style and cut of the shirt are just right for Patrick. I consider myself an amateur garment sewer, and although some of the steps seemed like they couldn't possibly be right, everything magically came together in the end. Pretty cool! Peter's detailed sew-along posts have also been really helpful, and it was nice to break down the sewing into more manageable chunks, rather than trying to tackle the whole project at once.

I got a nice break from sewing this weekend, but it'll be back to the sewing machine next week to make the official shirt. I'm hoping that the sewing will go a little faster now that I've been through the pattern once before.

And while we're on the subject of Patrick and crafts, here's a project that Patrick just finished. We picked up this old frame at Lounge Lizard a while back, with the intention of turning it into a chalkboard for our kitchen. Patrick cut a piece of plywood to fit the frame, applied three coats of chalkboard paint, and mounted it in the frame. I love it!

Oh my, who knew that sewing a shirt could take so much time? I've been following along with the Negroni sew-along for the past 10 days, and it has left little time in the evenings for anything else. But the good news is that I am done with my test shirt, and I'm really happy with it (pictures forthcoming, once I get Patrick to model it).

Let's get straight to the baby pictures, since I know that's what many of you (family members, at least) are here for! Here's Arlo at 35 and 36 weeks old.

It has been 2 weeks since I posted a real update, and all sorts of new stuff has happened since then:

• The 8-month sleep regression (or some other sort of sleep unpleasantness) descended on us the same night that I mentioned it in my post. For about a week, Arlo had extra wakeups at night, as well as some short naps. It actually wasn't all that bad compared to when he was tiny, but I was still not a happy camper when he wouldn't go to sleep at 3 am! Patrick is much more patient about middle-of-the-night baby soothing than I am. I admire that. Anyway, Arlo's sleep is pretty much back to normal at this point--most nights he only wakes up once (somewhere between 11pm and 2am) for a feeding. I can handle that.

• Arlo is still eating three solid food meals a day with gusto. He really seems to be enjoying himself, and I'm totally happy with our baby-led weaning experience so far.

  
  
  

  The only downside is that with all this solid food, he doesn't have as much interest in milk. He's still nursing in the morning and after naps (and he has a bottle from Patrick before bed), but he's definitely not drinking as much milk as he used to. It makes me worry that he won't be nursing for much longer. Hopefully he'll give me a few more months before he weans himself completely. I want to get my money's worth after overcoming our feeding problems in those first few months.

• Arlo's top teeth are coming in, but they don't seem to be bothering him too much (unless that's what caused the sleep problems last week). Last week, he was biting me a lot while nursing, which was not fun. He'd get an impish gleam in his eye, and start to clamp down, and I'd have to unlatch him right away to avoid being bitten. It seemed like he was doing it out of boredom, so I started wearing necklaces, and that seems to have helped distract him. It's also possible it was related to his teeth coming in, since he hasn't been doing it as much in the last few days. I'd be happy to have that phase behind us.

• Arlo seems to be figuring out this whole potty thing. We put him on his little potty after every nap, and he has a little basket of toys and books to keep him entertained while he's sitting there. Sometimes he just sits there, every so often he'll cry and want to get up, but most of the time he'll pee or poop after a few minutes. It's pretty cool! I've heard of EC'd babies holding it and waiting until they're on the potty to go, but Arlo doesn't seem to be doing that--he's still generating lots of dirty diapers too. It's possible that he's trying to tell me that he needs to go, and I'm just not noticing his signals. Who knows. He certainly won't be going diaper-free any time soon. But hopefully if he's comfortable with using the potty now, it will make potty training easier later on.

• Arlo still isn't crawling, despite lots of trying! It seems like he'll crawl any day now, but we've been saying that for a couple months. He's able to get around (albeit slowly) with a combination of rolling, backwards scooting, and rotating on his tummy. He has a pretty impressive system worked out!

  

• Within the last week, he has figured out how to clap his hands, which is super cute. We, of course, respond by cheering and clapping our hands, which seems to amuse him. He has also been testing out the different sounds he can make. He squeals loudly and loves to blow raspberries (how handy that he's so drooly from the teething right now!). He's so joyful and full of life and energy. It's a wonderful thing to behold :)

• Patrick took Arlo on his first hike, to Tryon Creek State Park, this past weekend. Arlo got to touch some moss and lichen (it's a family tradition). Patrick wore Arlo in the Boba carrier, a recent acquisition. He likes it better than the Sleepywrap, but I still use the Sleepywrap most of the time--I find it a little more comfortable for front-wearing than the Boba. The Sleepywrap is getting pretty snug on Arlo these days though, so I think I'll have to switch over to the Boba soon. One nice feature of the Boba is that it can be used for back-wearing, which is useful now that Arlo is getting heavier. But I'm a little nervous about maneuvering Arlo onto and off of my back when we're out and about. I'll have to practice with him over the bed.

  Arlo also went to his first museum this past weekend--we went to the Portland Art Museum for free, thanks to our bank. He was content to look at the exhibits (with occasional happy hollering) for a couple of hours before he started agitating to go home. Not bad at all!

• For the past few months, we (mostly Patrick) have been trying to figure out the best way to transport Arlo by bike once he's big enough (it's not exactly clear what constitutes "big enough." An XS helmet fits him now, but we'll wait until he's 9 months old to put him on a bike, and we probably won't do much riding until the weather has warmed up and he's over a year old). I'm looking forward to riding a bike again after taking last summer off because of pregnancy/new baby adventures! I have a feeling that Patrick will be the one chauffeuring Arlo by bike most of the time, at least to start. He's a more confident cyclist than I am, by far.

  We were hoping to find a cargo bike that both Patrick and I could ride, but Patrick is a lot taller than me, and bikes that are big enough for him are a little unwieldy for me (also, I'm a bike wuss and am very attached to the step-through frame on my bike). After some test rides and much deliberation, we ended up buying a Big Dummy from Seven Corners, which will primarily be Patrick's bike, at least until I get more comfortable on it. We also picked up a used CoPilot seat to put on my bike, though I think it will take me a while to feel confident biking around with Arlo. He's my precious little baby--I don't want to put him in harm's way. But I also don't want him to miss out on fun summertime bike rides because I'm being overly protective. We're still figuring out the balance that will work for us...

• Two weeks ago, Patrick and I instituted a weekly family game night, in an attempt to spend more time interacting with each other and less time looking at our computers after Arlo goes to bed. For the time being, it's no babies or cats allowed, since Arlo would try to eat the game pieces, and Patches likes to sit in the middle of the game board and knock everything over with her tail. Patrick did some research online about which games are best for two players, and we ended up buying Bohnanza and Ticket to Ride: Europe at Guardian Games (even though I don't consider myself a gamer, it warms my heart that there is a place like this in Portland, where people can be totally nerdy without shame). Both games are fun, and it's nice hanging out with Patrick and talking about something non-baby-related every so often :)

• I made ice cream earmuffs, using Lee's Double Scoops earmuff kit. Super quick, fun, and they make me smile every time I see them :)

  

Now that Arlo is eating with us at every meal (and actually consuming the food instead of smearing it everywhere), I'm trying to spend more time planning what we're going to eat. Dinner has to be ready around 5:45 every night--any later than that and it cuts into Arlo's bedtime routine. It's going well so far. I'm sure there will be days when we feed Arlo yogurt and Cheerios for dinner and then get takeout after he's in bed, but I'm okay with that.

I've been trying to change up our breakfast routines a little, since Arlo can't eat my standard Grape Nuts + milk breakfast. Here's what we've tried lately (lots of recipes from The Breakfast Book and the porridge chapter of Not Your Mother's Slow Cooker--yay for hot cereal in winter!):

• Creamy rice porridge with raisins (NYMSC). This was very sticky and dense. Even though the recipe said to serve it without any accompaniments, I think it would have benefited from some milk added at serving time. I liked it better cold from the fridge the next day, strangely enough.

• Granola breakfast bread, cottage cheese, and homemade applesauce (bread and applesauce recipes from The Breakfast Book). The bread was a little bland on its own, but it was nice toasted with butter and jam. The bread freezes well, which is nice. I like the cottage cheese + applesauce combo, and it's Arlo-friendly too!

  

• Crockpot pumpkin-cornmeal mush with chopped dates (a combination of recipes from The Breakfast Book and NYMSC)--very nice!

• Banana bran muffins with granola and walnuts mixed in (The Breakfast Book). These are good and relatively healthy, and they freeze well. Perfect for mid-morning snacks!

  

And here's a sampling of dinners we've eaten lately:

• Crockpot vegetarian chili and skillet cornbread (both from NYMSC) with steamed broccoli. Very nice, but I'd cut back on the sugar in the chili a little bit. The black olives only went on my portion of the chili--Patrick is not a fan.

  

• Pasta with tuna and arugula, roasted delicata squash. The pasta was quick, healthy, and pretty tasty--definitely worth making again.

  

• Quinoa-black bean enchiladas, carrot-raisin salad. I was really happy with the enchiladas. They were tasty and pretty healthy, and Arlo loved them! The only downside is that the enchilada sauce we used was pretty high in salt, so next time we'll have to look for a more baby-friendly sauce. Or just not worry about the occasional salty meal...

• Squash and bean enchiladas with green tomato sauce (yes, enchiladas twice in one week! I can't get enough melty cheese during these gray winter days). I made this recipe back when I was pregnant with Arlo, but I think it was when I was in the haze of morning sickness, so I didn't post about it. This time, we had these enchiladas courtesy of Susan--she brought us a little enchilada kit consisting of filling, sauce that she'd frozen at the end of summer, and tortillas. So nice!

• Slow cooker chickpeas with chard (another recipe from NYMSC) on top of brown basmati rice. This was healthy and tasted pretty good. Next time I'd try adding shrimp or fish at the end of cooking to make it a little more filling.

• Sesame noodles with spinach and salmon (from The Food Matters Cookbook), baked sweet potatoes. Given my track record with recipes from this cookbook, I wasn't expecting much, but this was a fine meal (and very colorful!). It was also quick to put together. The baked sweet potatoes are easy--poke with a fork and bake at 400F for an hour. Arlo is a big fan of orange vegetables--he'll eat as much sweet potato as we're willing to share. I'm enjoying this while it lasts, since I realize he might not always be such an enthusiastic eater.

Today is Arlo's 8-month birthday! I love that little squishy face :)

Our activities this morning were somewhat festive--we walked around our neighborhood, got breakfast burritos (not our favorite breakfast burrito place, but the best bet when somebody had a super-short morning nap and is likely to have a meltdown if he has to sit at a restaurant for too long--thanks, 8-month sleep regression!), and took pictures of Arlo wearing the raglan sweater I just finished for him. I've been working on this sweater since October (it's the same yarn I used for his sweet baby cap, which he outgrew a few months ago). But then my mom made all sorts of great sweaters for him (thanks, Nana!), and Christmas knitting intervened. Also, I don't really have the dedication necessary to knit sweaters (even baby sweaters) in fingering weight yarn. I lose interest while I'm knitting the body. Next time I'll try modifying the pattern to use worsted weight so it will go a little faster.

The sweater pattern was originally written in Norwegian, and it took a little effort to get my hands on an English version. But I'm glad it all worked out, because I'm really happy with this sweater. It's basic, but the buttons at the neck add some interest. I'm planning on making this pattern again when Arlo is bigger.

(More information about the sweater is available on Ravelry)

Here's Arlo at 33 and 34 weeks old--only a few days away from being eight months old. I know I keep saying it every time he hits a new month, but my, how time flies!

Arlo's still not crawling, but it seems like he could start any day! Lately, when he's on his tummy, he has been pressing his forehead to the ground and sticking his butt in the air while trying to get his knees underneath himself. Every time he does it, Patrick and I hold our breath, thinking that maybe this will be the time that he starts crawling. But then he loses his balance and rolls to one side. It's not that we're particularly eager for him to start crawling; we're just excited for him to figure it out. I think he'll be really proud of himself when he does (and we certainly will be too!).

Although crawling isn't happening yet, Arlo has totally mastered rolling and pushing himself up when he's on his tummy. He has also started scooting himself backwards on his tummy, but it seems to infuriate him--that's not the direction he wants to be moving in!

Apparently, we should expect some sleep regression around 8 months, but for now, we're doing pretty well. Arlo has been taking some excellent long naps (like 2+ hours long), but not consistently so. Sometimes he still wakes up after 45 minutes and won't go back to sleep. It would be nice to know in advance when the long naps will happen, but I'll take what I can get :)

Based on our sleep books, I'm gradually cutting out his third nap, which means he tends to be cranky at dinnertime. We try to have dinner before he goes to bed, so he can eat with us, but it's no fun when he breaks down into frustrated crying because he's tired. It seems that the recommendations from Baby-Led Weaning (push bedtime later so everybody can eat dinner together) and Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child (make bedtime earlier when the third nap goes away) are at odds in this case. Oh, books.

A few weeks ago, we decided to cut back to only feeding Arlo once a night. We started by cutting back on how much time I fed Arlo during his second night waking. He protested a little bit, but he still went right back to sleep after eating. Then, one night, we just didn't feed him when he woke at 4am. That first night, he cried on and off from 4-5:30am, with Patrick comforting him. The second night, he only woke to feed once, at 3am (skipping his normal 11pm feeding). The third night, he ate at 11:30pm and then slept through the night until 7am. The fourth night was similar, with a feeding at midnight and sleep until 6:30am. And on the fifth night, he slept from 7pm-6:10am, with no night feeding at all. Whoa, buddy! If I'd known that was going to happen, I would have gone to bed at 7pm and enjoyed 11 hours of sleep!

That one magical no-waking night was about a week ago, and since then, Arlo has been pretty good about only waking once a night. When he has woken a second time, he has gone back to sleep without much trouble. The only non-ideal thing is that he's all over the place in terms of when he wakes up--sometimes it's 11pm (nice, because that's normally when we go to bed), and sometimes it's not until 3am. I'm not complaining--I'm happy with the amount of sleep we're getting. And this gives me hope that before too long, we may get Arlo to sleep through the night without any feedings. The idea of night-weaning makes me a little sad, because it's one more sign that my baby is already growing up, but I'm sure the solid 8 hours of sleep a night will make me feel better :)

Arlo's two bottom teeth have arrived! They seem awfully teensy, but maybe they're not fully erupted yet. He's already putting them to good use at meals (and he's only bitten me during nursing a few times, luckily). Here he is digging into a burrito from Laughing Planet. Normally he's happy to just get bits and pieces from our plates, but every so often he insists on getting right into whatever we're eating. Although I don't enjoy baby drool on my burrito, I acceded to his demands, because I love him (and because a baby eating a burrito is cute).

Arlo definitely seems to be eating more these days (as opposed to spitting the food out and/or smearing it around). It's impressive! And--if you'll allow me to spend a paragraph talking about baby poop, which I try to avoid doing since I know nobody but me cares about such things--we're definitely seeing a difference in his diapers. No more inoffensive breastmilk poop--things are looking and smelling much more grownup these days. Luckily, Patrick installed a diaper sprayer on our toilet a few weeks ago, and it has come in handy in rinsing off cloth diapers and Arlo's little potty (yes, we've caught a few poops in the potty--very exciting!). Okay, that's all the poop talk. Thanks for humoring me!

I don't think I've mentioned that since we started baby-led weaning, we've been offering Arlo water with every meal. He has become a champion water drinker, though mostly he prefers to stick his hands in the water and splash it all over the place. He has his very own two-handled cup (a present from his Aunt Kate), and he has gotten very good at steering it to his mouth when he wants a drink, though we hang onto it too, to prevent major spills. He also has his own little fork and spoon. If we load up the spoon for him, he can get it into his mouth with very little mess (except for the times when he decides to rub the back of his head with the spoon instead of putting it in his mouth). He can also hold his bottle all by himself during his bedtime feeding.

I'm still impressed at how quickly he has mastered the skills required for eating. Now that I've resigned myself to the fact that he's going to make a mess, I really enjoy eating meals with Arlo. It's so much fun watching him explore new foods!

Speaking of which, here he is exploring the beet and fennel soup that I made recently. The soup was kind of boring (pretty, but not filling), but watching Arlo eat it (and wondering where he might fling it) was very exciting!

We gave Arlo a (de-salted) pretzel a few weeks ago, and he ate the whole thing, which totally surprised us. The pretzel was easy to hold because of its shape, and this inspired me to make some soft pretzels for dinner last week (recipe from Baking Illustrated), accompanied by a batch of beef stew from the Cast Iron Cookbook. The stew was nice, and the soft pretzels were awesome. I made plain, cheddar, and cinnamon-sugar pretzels. Yum! Arlo went to town chewing on a plain pretzel and a big chunk of beef from the stew.

Recently, we decided that it was time to try introducing Arlo to peanut butter, to see if he's allergic. I have no reason to think he will be, but it's still a little scary, since peanut reactions can be so bad. We started him off with Orangette's soba with peanut-citrus sauce, with the carrots and greens added to the soba while it was cooking so they'd be easier for Arlo to chew. He handled the peanut sauce just fine, but our pediatrician told us that it's the second exposure to peanuts that usually results in allergic reaction (if one is going to occur), so we need to feed him one more peanutty dish before we can relax.

Rounding out our list of recent meals, we have curried sweet potato soup with goat cheese biscuits and broccoli rabe and orecchiette with white bean-anchovy sauce. All recipes were easy, tasty, and pretty healthy--hooray! I'd make the soup and the pasta again, but probably not the biscuits, since we have other biscuit recipes that we like even better.

And since Sunday was National Pie Day, I took the opportunity to finally try making Alicia's sour cream apple pie (I've had it bookmarked for years!). I used my favorite all-butter pie dough recipe. The pie was very good, but I prefer straight apple pie. We still gobbled up this pie very quickly and happily, don't get me wrong!

The biweekly Arlo update is coming soon! In the meantime, here are a few pictures of the new Mixie dress I just picked up at Mink! I've been waiting seven months for them to get more Mixie dresses in (even though I've been wearing my first Mixie dress with leggings and a sweater all winter, Mixie doesn't officially make wintery clothes; thus the wait). This, plus the fact that daffodil shoots are starting to peek out of the ground, must mean that spring is coming soon!

Family portrait: me, Arlo, and Honest Abe:

Photoshoot outtake (Arlo really wanted to put the camera remote in his mouth):

This dress doesn't have pockets, but it is nursing-friendly and machine-washable (and super soft!), and I liked the stripes, so I bought it anyway.

I love both of my Mixie dresses! The design seems pretty simple, and I'm tempted to buy some knit fabric and attempt to sew myself some dresses in this style, but I'm intimidated by sewing with knits. I think the key to making this kind of dress look good is using the right kind of fabric and cutting it so that it drapes nicely, and I have no clue about how to do that.

I'm intimidated by sewing clothing in general, actually--apart from my maternity potato sack dress and some costume sewing in years past, I haven't done any real clothing sewing in almost 10 years. But I've been inspired to get back into garment sewing by Colette's new Negroni shirt pattern--I think Patrick will look good in it! Coincidentally, Male Pattern Boldness is hosting a Negroni sew-along in February, and I think it will help keep me motivated. I have my pattern, notions, and the fabric for both my test shirt (the gray flannel, with plaid accents) and official shirt (the maroon ring print). The pattern is so beautifully packaged, and I love the white shirting from Bolt. Now I just have to muster up the courage to take scissors to both of them!

Arlo at Seven Months from Caitlin D on Vimeo.

I made another floor pillow cover last weekend, but instead of making another zig zag cover, I tried something new. Inspired by this quilt block, I decided to make a pillow cover with a repeating starburst pattern (after the fact, I found out that this is commonly known as a spiderweb block). I think this block is typically made using foundation piecing, which gives clean results, with all the points and edges matching nicely. But I wanted something faster and easier, and I was willing to sacrifice perfection to get it (even though I tend to be a perfectionist in some aspects of my life, I'm a half-assed crafter--I don't know why!). It seemed like I could get similar results by sewing strips of fabric together, cutting them into triangles, and sewing them together--eight triangles per starburst block and four blocks per pillow top. The end result is a little wonky, but that doesn't bother me much. I'm just happy that my approach actually worked. Yay, geometry!

For my materials, I used ~1/3 yd each of seven fabrics (click on the zipper picture for information on the fabrics I used--I love the little skeleton key shirting fabric!), one 22-inch zipper, and a 26-inch-square floor pillow insert from IKEA. I used a 1/4-inch seam allowance throughout.

First, I cut out my fabric strips. I used varying strip heights--the tomato fabric was 1 1/4" tall, seeds and deer were 1 3/8", birds and plaid were 1 3/4", keys were 2 1/2", and navy dots were 2 5/8". As long as your strip heights add up to 12 5/8", it should be fine. My fabrics were 44-45 inches wide, so I cut 7 strips of each fabric to give me enough triangles for the pillow cover.

Next, I sewed the strips together--first the navy dots and tomatoes, then the plaid, and so on, to get the layered rectangle shown below.

Next, I cut a bunch of triangles from the layered pieces. I wanted isosceles triangles with a 45-degree angle at the top. I created a cardboard triangle template, approximately 9 1/8" tall and 7.6" wide, using the 45-degree angle markings on my cutting mat (a protractor would work too). I used this template to cut out my triangles--32 of triangle A (on the left) and 32 of triangle B (on the right). I forgot to take seam allowances into account when making my template, so you might want to make yours a little bigger. As long as you have the 45 degree angle on top, it should work.

I did each of the following steps with the pattern A triangles to make one side of the pillow cover, and then I repeated them all with the pattern B triangles to make the other side of the cover.

First, I took my 32 pattern A triangles and sewed them together in pairs, like so:

I then took two of those double-triangle pieces, laid them right sides together, and cropped one side to make the pieces 7 inches wide. I then sewed them together along the side that I cut. (This is hard to describe in words; hopefully the pictures help!)

Next, I took two of these pieces, laid them right sides together, cropped them to 7 inches wide, and sewed along the side that I cut. This gives one starburst block--a quarter of the pillow cover.

I then sewed my four starburst blocks together to give me my pillow top (and Patches decided it looked like a good place to take a nap, of course).

After doing the same thing with my pattern B triangles, I took my two pillow tops and my zipper and made them into a cover using this tutorial.

That's it! Hopefully it made sense!

Here's Arlo at 32 weeks old, in a styling track suit from his Great Aunt Linda!

I think I say this every week, but Arlo is such a joy these days. He's happy and smiling most of the time, and he seems so excited to explore his world and learn new things. This is such a great age!

Our first two mornings with our nanny, Becca Jo, went really well. I spent most of the first morning showing her all of our routines (and Arlo took an awesome 2-hour nap!). The second morning, after Arlo's nap, I handed him off to her and went upstairs to work. They had a great time together! He only fussed a little bit, and it was mostly when I was within view. I'm glad he made the transition so easily; we must have caught him before stranger anxiety really kicked in.

I think having a nanny two mornings a week is perfect. It gives me some time to focus on my work, but I also get plenty of quality time with Arlo. I feel really fortunate to be able to work from home part-time like this.

We're still doing just a tiny amount of elimination communication, without much luck (not surprising, since I'm not putting much effort into it). I put Arlo on his little potty after most naps, and he'll sit there happily for 5-10 minutes, playing and smiling at me. He's able to sit there unsupported, which is nice, but every so often he'll lunge off without warning, so I have to stay right next to him so he won't bonk his head. Every few days, he'll actually use the potty, but I don't think he associates it with the cue sounds; it seems pretty random. But whatever; it's still one less diaper to change, so I'm happy. And I figure it might help with future potty training if he's used to sitting on the potty.

Arlo's still not crawling, but his leg strength and balance are improving. Previously, he could stand if we supported him under his arms, but in the last few days, he's been able to stand on his own while just holding onto our hands for balance. I wonder how long it'll be before he figures out how to pull up on things. That will be fun!

Arlo's adventures with solid food are going really well. We're still using the Baby-Led Weaning approach, and he's getting good at chewing and swallowing. He still gags on too-big bites every so often, but he's always able to deal with them on his own, by either spitting the food out or swallowing it. It's still nerve-wracking, but not as bad as it was at first.

He has gotten much better at picking up Cheerios and other small foods within the last week. It's so cool to see his fine motor skills improving. I didn't think it would happen so quickly!

We definitely have to do more laundry and dishwashing now that he's eating at almost every meal. Each meal generates a dirty bib, dirty dish towel, and sometimes a food-encrusted outfit (when he decides he no longer wants to wear the bib). I learned the hard way last week to save the bath and change of clothes until after lunch (creamed spinach, yum!).

His first tooth continues to emerge slowly. You can just barely see it in the picture below. It may not look like much, but it's a sharp little bugger. No more putting our fingers in his mouth!

One of the moms at our baby group mentioned feeding her son prunes and yogurt, and it sounded good to me, so I made a batch of stewed prunes with tangerine. They turned out so nicely that we've all been eating them at breakfast with yogurt. The tangerine rind adds a nice marmalade flavor. We used the last of the prunes this morning to sweeten a bowl of Cream of Wheat. Not quite as good as brown sugar, but more baby friendly.

Recent meals have included skillet tuna noodle casserole (from the ATK Family Cookbook) and beef fajitas made in the crockpot (from Not Your Mother's Slow Cooker Cookbook). I didn't think I was a fan of tuna noodle casserole, but this was really tasty! The fajitas were nice too, though the filling wasn't particularly authentic. But it was easy to prepare and tasted fine, especially with a little sour cream and salsa on homemade tortillas (made by Patrick using Alan's recipe--yum!).

While perusing the bulk bins at People's Coop last week, I came across some delicious chocolate-covered pecans, a bulk item I'd never seen before. They're great for snacking, but they're also very good chopped up and added to banana bread! I used Patrick's mom's banana bread recipe (with butter instead of shortening), with great results. A note on the bin said that the pecans are a seasonal item, so I'd better go back and get more before they disappear!

And apropos of nothing, here are two pictures of moss in our neighborhood. I love how green Portland is at this time of year (though I would certainly welcome some snow too!).

Arlo is 31 weeks old and looking like a big kid! Have I mentioned that he's really good at sucking his thumb now? It took him a couple months to figure it out, but now he's a thumb-sucking pro.

Happy new year, by the way! We celebrated quietly at our house with Lee, Pete, Star, and Grant (and a sleeping Arlo). Patrick put together an excellent fondue spread--cheese for dinner and chocolate for dessert. Pigs in blankets were once again my favorite cheese dipper. The chocolate fondue actually seemed like overkill; none of us could eat much of it because we were full of cheese. Maybe next time we have fondue we should opt for a less rich dessert (but chocolate fondue is so exciting!).

After dinner we played the Back to the Future card game. Like many people my age, I have a soft spot in my heart for Back to the Future, so playing the game made me happy. Patrick and I actually ended up buying and watching the movie a few nights ago too. Now if only I could get The Power of Love out of my head...

After dessert, everybody else played a geeky cooperative board game while I washed dishes and folded laundry (one of my coworkers mentioned that it's a Japanese tradition to start the new year with a clean house, which appealed to me). Don't worry, I took a break from folding laundry at midnight to kiss Patrick :) It wasn't very glamorous (except for the fondue!), but it was just the kind of low-key celebration that I wanted this year. I'm glad we got to ring in the new year with friends.

Patrick set up Arlo's new high chair a few days ago, and I'm really happy with it so far (it's a Keekaroo, similar to the Stokke Tripp Trapp but less expensive). Previously, we had been feeding Arlo on our laps, which made mealtimes kind of stressful, what with all the fork-grabbing and food-smearing. Our meals are slightly more sedate now that Arlo has his own seat. We've also moved breakfast back into the dining room (we'd been eating breakfast in bed since Arlo was born, but now that Arlo's eating with us, we decided to change venues in the interest of keeping our sheets oatmeal-free).

Arlo had two fun food milestones this week--his first spaghetti and his first Cheerios. I don't think he actually got any Cheerios in his mouth (still working on that pincer grasp), but he had fun pushing them around his tray. He had better luck with the spaghetti.

Arlo is so close to getting his first tooth! It's his lower left tooth--I can't tell if it has fully broken through the gums yet, but you can definitely see a little white ridge and feel something sharp if you let him gnaw on your finger. It's so suspenseful. How much longer do we have to wait before it comes out?

As I mentioned earlier, I've been doing a little work during Arlo's naps, but now that it's January I'm increasing my hours. As planned, we've hired a nanny (Sittercity made the process surprisingly easy), and she's going to be watching Arlo two mornings a week while I work in our home office. I put off hiring a nanny for a long time, because I didn't like the idea of somebody else taking care of Arlo. Early on, I had this irrational fear that if we got a nanny, Arlo might love her more than he loves me, but now I feel secure in my position as The Mama. The woman we ended up choosing seems like a great match for us, and it will be nice to be able to focus on work for a good chunk of time without actually having to be away from Arlo. I feel really lucky to be able to work from home.

As an added bonus, Arlo's nanny is willing to do some evening babysitting, so Patrick and I will actually be able to leave the house and go on dates every so often. I hadn't been looking forward to finding a babysitter, so it's nice to have that all taken care of too.

Arlo is seven months old today--my, how time flies! He's still working diligently on figuring out how to crawl and erupting his first few teeth. I'm happy to wait a little longer on the crawling (we haven't childproofed the house at all yet), but a break from the teething would be nice!

Here he is at 29 and 30 weeks. We took the 29-week photo a day early, because we were busy driving down to California on his actual 29-week birthday. We took the 30-week photo in our hotel in Ashland on our way home. As you can see, Arlo is really good at sitting up on his own at this point.

We spent the last week and a half in California, visiting our families, which was great! We decided to drive down instead of flying, and I was a little worried that Arlo's sleeping would be messed up by the long car rides and unfamiliar surroundings. He cried a couple times in the car, and he had a few extra middle-of-the-night wakings, but all things considered, he did great! When we were in the car, he napped in his carseat with a blanket draped over the handle, and when we were at our hotel and with family, he slept in his Pack 'n' Play. We kept our normal sleep routines (book, song, and blankie), which I think helped preserve his sleep schedule. Or maybe we were just lucky :)

When he was awake in the car, he was pretty easy to entertain. When he got tired of staring out the window, I handed him Freddie Firefly (or hung it from the carseat handle), which kept him entertained for a surprisingly long time. I only had to dig into the rest of his toy stash or sing "The Itsy Bitsy Spider" a couple times. The hardest part of the trip was changing Arlo's diaper in the car. The passenger seat of our Matrix folds down into a little table, so Patrick changed him on a Thermarest on top of the table. It was a little unstable. Arlo kept trying to roll around the front seat in the middle of messy diaper changes, but Patrick kept him pretty well contained, and our car upholstery made it through the trip unsoiled.

We split the drive over two days, stopping over in Ashland. We only got a quick glimpse, but I would like to go there again when we have more time to explore. We stayed at the Ashland Springs Hotel, a nicely restored old hotel located downtown. We ate dinner at Larks on the way down to CA and at Standing Stone Brewery on the way back. Both meals were good but kind of hurried, because it was close to Arlo's bedtime, and he was super wiggly and grabby. We also had a nice breakfast at Morning Glory, with only a moderate amount of baby food-grabbing.

Not surprisingly, this vacation was much less leisurely than our pre-baby adventures. I learned a valuable lesson our first night in the hotel--when traveling with a baby, you should always book a suite. We failed to do this and ended up in a small queen room, with just enough room for Arlo's Pack 'n' Play next to the bed. That meant that after 7pm, all the lights had to be off, and we had to be very quiet. I ended up sitting on the cold, hard bathroom tile, knitting, since it was the only place in our room where we could have a light on without waking Arlo. Luckily, we were able to upgrade to a suite on our way home, and it was a much nicer experience (we even got to watch a little TV after he went to bed!).

After a quick stop in the Bay Area and a lunchtime visit with my coworkers, we headed down to my mom and Alan's house in Atascadero. My dad, Vicki, and Lianna all flew out from Colorado. It was so nice to have everybody together for a few days! Our family has been through some tough times this year--both Lianna and Vicki were diagnosed with cancer and went through treatment earlier this year, and I'm ecstatic to report that they're both in complete remission now!--so it was extra special to spend time together. In addition to being reunited with his grandparents, Arlo met his Auntie Li, great-grandma, and great-aunt Susie for the first time. Luckily, he got over his stranger anxiety pretty quickly and enjoyed hanging out with everybody.

Auntie Nance couldn't join us, unfortunately, but we all got to talk with her over Skype, which was lots of fun :) And she sent a big batch of her annual Christmas cookies, which we thoroughly enjoyed.

We kept things pretty low key--Patrick and I didn't endeavor to make a big Christmas dinner this year (though we certainly ate well--Arlo got his first taste of Alan's homemade tortillas, and he seemed to like them very much!). My mom made her traditional coffee cake for (early) Christmas breakfast, Arlo wore his Christmas jammies, and we lounged around the living room and opened presents.

Arlo received so many thoughtful presents from both sides of the family. My mom knit him a little stripy sweater that is almost an exact replica of a sweater that she made for me when I was a baby. I love it :)

We kept things simple with our gift-giving this year and mostly gave homemade jam and photos of Arlo. I packaged them up in brown paper bags decorated with little paper snowflakes and butcher's twine. I like how they turned out.

I managed to make a few knitted gifts this year. I made Vicki a pair of mitts, similar to the pair I made for Lianna last year. I used Malabrigo wool, so they're soft and cozy.

I offered to make Lianna a hat, and she requested a pointy earflap hat, inspired by Arlo's sweet baby cap. I ended up modifying the Thorpe pattern to add a point, and I'm pretty happy with how it turned out.

After a couple days at my mom's house, we drove up to Palo Alto to spend Christmas with Patrick's family. Arlo got to spend lots of quality time with his Grandpa Rick and aunts and uncles, and he got to meet Oscar, Jay and Heather's cute little dog. This was his first time being in close proximity to a dog, and it went well!

I haven't found really good sushi in Portland yet (admittedly, I haven't been trying very hard), so I wanted to visit Akasaka while we were in town. We ended up going twice (my sushi cravings cannot be denied!), and we got yummy burritos at La Cumbre. Arlo got to try some fun new foods at Akasaka--tobiko, agedashi tofu, and pickled ginger (he ate a whole slice, possibly unintentionally). Arlo is way more advanced than Patrick and me--we didn't try sushi until college!

Patrick's family's tradition is to have a big dinner on Christmas Eve, and although Arlo didn't get any ham (delicious, but too much salt for a baby), he did enjoy munching on green beans, rolls, and scalloped potatoes. He also got to watch everybody make pie crust cookies and helped by drooling on the container of sprinkles.

I decided a few months ago that I would make Arlo's Christmas stocking, but I didn't start knitting it until the first night of our road trip. Luckily, it was made with worsted weight yarn, so I was able to finish it in time for Christmas Eve. I'm really happy with how it turned out! I put Arlo's initials on one side and his birth year on the other, the same as Patrick's stocking. I'm thinking about lining it with fabric so it won't stretch over time, but it's not like it'll be used very frequently, so maybe it's fine as is.

I may have mentioned before that Patrick and his siblings all have ornament starter boxes that their Grannie made for them when they were young, so that they'd have special ornaments to hang on their trees when they were grown-up. I love this idea, and I decided that I'd like to make an ornament for Arlo each year (and make one for our tree at the same time, so the ornaments will be familiar to him). This year, I knit two little snowman ornaments. So cute!

I wasn't the only one thinking about ornaments. Patrick's family made Arlo a starter kit of Christmas ornaments--some from the family collection, and some new purchased and home-made just for him. It was such a thoughtful present! Serendipitously, Patrick's cousin Kelly sent Arlo a special family ornament as well. It's just so nice to have these little pieces of family history to enjoy every year. I'm sure Arlo will be glad to have them when he's older.

Arlo had a lot of presents waiting for him on Christmas morning. He opened the first one (with his Aunt Meg's help), but then Patrick and I took over.

We headed back home on the day after Christmas. Patches seemed ambivalent about us being home--I think she was enjoying her baby vacation, especially since Lori takes such good care of her when we're gone!

I'm torn about what to do next year--it would be great to have a non-traveling Christmas, since we haven't gotten to experience Christmas in Portland yet. On the other hand, I loved visiting our families for the holidays. Everybody is so sweet with Arlo, and it's great seeing him interact with them. Maybe we'll end up trading off years--one in Portland, one in California--similar to what we did when our families lived farther apart.

Seeing all the beautiful scenery on our road trip (and learning that Arlo handles traveling pretty well, at least for now) made me want to go on more adventures in 2011. I'd like to start taking annual family trips to the same places every year--maybe rent a cabin in the winter and go camping in the summer. I really like the idea of establishing new traditions that we can share with Arlo (and any future siblings) as he grows up. It makes me smile to think that something we haven't even started doing now might be commonplace and comforting to Arlo eighteen years from now. I'm excited that we have the opportunity to shape his childhood--I hope we do a good job!