I've finally made it through my backlog of Arlo video footage! It went back to when he was 15 months old, and it's crazy to see how much he's grown just in that amount of time. I've included the 15- and 19-month videos below; if you click through to Vimeo, you can see the 16- through 18-month videos too.

I'm not sure how much longer I'll keep making these (you can tell the 18- and 19-month videos are already pretty short), but it sure is nice to be able to go back and see Arlo growing up!

As I mentioned earlier, we recently bought Arlo a toddler bed from IKEA, and I sewed a few fitted sheets using the same general approach I used when sewing sheets for his crib.

I made three sheets: (1) a combination of Michael Miller Ta Dot flannel and some white flannel from a thrifted crib sheet, (2) In the Clearing flannel from the Loulouthi line by Anna Maria Horner, (3) Lost and Found by Jen Allyson for My Mind's Eye.

I made a quick drawing to show how I made the sheets, in case it might help somebody.

For each sheet, I bought 2.25 yards of fabric (45 inches wide). I pre-washed it, then cut out squares from the corners to give the dimensions shown in the picture (IKEA toddler mattresses are 63 x 27.5 x 4.75 inches). I sewed up the corners, added a casing for elastic around the bottom, and threaded 2.25 yards elastic through. I sewed the ends of the elastic together and closed the casing. Quick and easy! The sheets aren't perfect--the flannel especially shrunk quite a bit, so the sheet pockets aren't very deep, but it stays on well enough.

Another recently finished Arlo-related project: a toddler cowl. I wanted something to keep his neck warm, and a cowl seemed like it might stay on better than a scarf. I used the bandana cowl pattern from Purl Bee with a couple modifications (details on Ravelry), and I love how it turned out! I might need to make one for myself too--I love my cabled cowl, but it would be nice to have a little more cowl coverage in front for when I wear v-neck tops.

We spent the holidays in Portland this year--our first time since we moved here. I missed seeing my family, but it was nice being able to relax at home instead of traveling with a toddler. We got a living Christmas tree, which worked out well. Arlo and Patches were interested in the low-hanging ornaments on the tree, but we had enough non-breakable ones that we made it through Christmas without any ornament casualties.

Arlo was still a little too young to understand what was going on, but he seemed to enjoy himself. A few weeks before Christmas, we made a batch of gingerbread cookies (good recipe!), and Arlo helped cut out the cookies (his favorite part was eating the cookie dough). I frosted them with a little royal icing while he was napping (I used an icing mix from the Decorette Shop, since I didn't want to worry about egg whites).

We also did a cookie swap with some of the other families that we met at our new parents' group when Arlo was a little baby. I chose to make buckeyes, since those are a favorite of mine. The recipe I used was a little non-traditional, but it tasted good. If I made it again, I'd crush my graham crackers more finely, and I'd buy a little more chocolate, since I ran out about 3/4 of the way through dipping.

Patrick's family (minus Jay and Heather) came to visit for a few days starting on Christmas Eve, which was nice. Arlo was a little overwhelmed by all the visitors at first, but he warmed up to them.

We're still figuring out how to combine our family holiday traditions; this year we did our big dinner on Christmas Eve, which is Patrick's family tradition (I like it; it means I can be lazier on Christmas Day). We had glazed ham (using a Beeler's cooked uncured half ham), mashed sweet potatoes, flaky buttermilk biscuits, fast buttery peas, and kale and ricotta salata salad. For dessert, I made gingerbread with apple compote. Everything was tasty and not too much work, with Patrick and I working together. The only thing I wouldn't bother making again was the apple compote. It didn't add much to the gingerbread.

I mostly followed my family's Christmas breakfast tradition, but instead of sour cream coffee cake, I made a holiday breakfast wreath (along with scrambled eggs, sausage, grapefruit, and orange juice). The wreath was very good (and it's nice to be able to make it the night before and let it rise in the fridge overnight), but so is our traditional sour cream coffee cake. I think we might go back to coffee cake next year.

Arlo's big present from us this year was a play kitchen, which we bought used at Village Merchants last summer, on a tip from Susan. We bought a pots and pans starter kit from Spielwerk, and Arlo's Aunt Meg gave him a wooden food set, so his pantry is well stocked. I want to make him some felt food too--I'm thinking I'll try making a ham first, since that's what he's into these days :)

The first present Arlo opened on Christmas was a wooden peg puzzle, and he just wanted to sit down and play with that instead of opening more presents. I can't blame him--it's a fun puzzle, and it has a school bus on it!

We had a quiet New Year's Eve. We invited a few friends over for a game night and had hors d'oeuvres for dinner, plus chocolate fondue. If we do the same thing next year, I'll opt for more make-ahead dishes, so I can spend more time with our friends instead of in the kitchen! It was a tasty meal though.

• Hummus with carrots, celery, broccoli, and homemade pita chips (cut into wedges, brush with olive oil, sprinkle with salt, and bake at 350F for 8 min. per side)
• Dates stuffed with parmesan and walnuts
• Potato pancakes with creme fraiche and caviar - These were good, but not as good as I remembered
• Pigs in blankets (half made with Yves veggie dogs and half made with Beeler's Lil' Bites) - Yum!
• Mexican chocolate fondue (recipe from Fondue) with mini churros and rice krispie treat balls (there was supposed to be fruit to dip too, but none of it was ripe in time) - The churros were tasty but required too much standing at the stove when I was supposed to be enjoying the company of my friends! If I made them again, I'd use a larger star tip (I used my largest tip, which was only about 3/8 inch), which would also reduce the amount of time it took to make them, since the churros would be bigger. On the bright side, this was my first time deep frying anything, and it went smoothly. I was kind of afraid I'd start 2012 with a hot oil burn, but I avoided that, so yay!

For New Year's breakfast, we did our traditional Dutch babies, sausage, and fruit, with orange juice spritzers. And for dinner, we had braised ribs with black-eyed peas and collard greens on rice. It's a good recipe, but next time I'd probably make it without the ribs, since they didn't add much.

A few weeks ago, I got some unexpected news from the company I've been working for (in varying capacities) for the past seven years. They're having trouble raising enough money to continue 2012 fully staffed, so they're planning wide-ranging layoffs in mid-February. To save money in the meantime, they decided not to renew my contract for 2012, so I won't be working for the next month and a half. I'll find out in mid-February if they'll be renewing my contract for the rest of the year (well, until I go on maternity leave in mid-April). Since I've only been working part-time (~10 hours a week) since Arlo was born, losing my job wouldn't have a huge impact on me, but I'd be sad to lose that part of my identity. It's a good job, and I appreciated being able to maintain my career a tiny bit while staying home with Arlo. I'm hoping for good news in mid-February (but even more, I'm hoping for good news for all my coworkers, who work full-time and have Bay Area mortgages to pay!).

Although my career might be in limbo for much of this year, I think the family side of things will more than make up for it. I can't wait to see how Arlo grows and changes this year, and we're excited to meet baby #2 in May! It's shaping up to be a crazy, wonderful year!

Arlo turned 19 months old a little over a week ago.

He is turning into such a big kid! He took to the BabyBjorn toilet trainer potty ring within a day or two, and we've now retired his little potty in favor of using the big potty all the time. It's so great that he's willing to use it--it's nice not to have to rinse out the little potty anymore.

Since it's getting to be a struggle to put diapers on Arlo, I've decided to try switching him to training pants--mostly because they're easier to take on and off, not out of any interest in starting potty training. I've ordered a couple different kinds of cloth training pants from Etsy, and we're going to start trying them out next week, just around the house during the day. I have no idea if it will work. Apart from the occasional miscommunication, he's got the pooping in the potty thing down already (yay!), but he still pees in his diaper whenever he feels like it. We'll see what happens. I'm not particularly motivated to start potty training in earnest, but it seems like we might as well try switching to training pants now. If they don't work, we'll go back to diapers for a while (Antsy Pants look like a good pull-up-style cloth diaper, if we choose to go that route; I just don't want to spend that extra money unless we have to).

Arlo hit another big-boy milestone a little earlier than I'd envisioned this past month--we switched him to a toddler bed in mid-December. With my growing belly, I was having trouble getting him in and out of his crib (and we wanted to try to move him out of it by August, so that baby #2 could use it), so we decided to see if he'd go for a big-boy bed. Since his room is pretty small (and he'll be sharing it with his little brother), we decided to get a Sniglar toddler bed from IKEA, rather than getting a twin bed right away. Patrick and Arlo assembled it, and I sewed a cozy fitted flannel sheet for it (more details to come in a future post).

We let him get used to having it in his room for a few days before we started offering it as an option for sleeping. He chose to sleep in it after a day or so, first for naps, and then for bedtime too. Despite my worrying, he took to it without any problems and now sleeps in it all the time. So far, he hasn't tried getting out of it when he's supposed to be sleeping, and he seems to be really happy with it. The only problem we've encountered is that it's easier for him to drop his blankie off the side, so we normally have to get up once or twice a night to retrieve his blankie for him. Not awesome, but at least he goes right back to sleep once it's returned. I'm willing to deal with that minor inconvenience, given how well the switch has gone otherwise. Oh, my big kid!

Patches has joined Arlo in his new bed a few times, which is super sweet. She normally keeps her distance from him when he's awake (unless he's got treats), so it's nice to see them together.

Arlo is starting to recognize a few letters and numbers, which is exciting. In addition to the letter O, which I mentioned last time, he can identify D, I, and sometimes Q. He can also identify the numbers 2 and 4 most of the time. Little kids are amazing!

It seems like he has been picking up new words a lot faster in the past few weeks, which is so fun! His favorite words around Christmas were, appropriately, "cookie" and "ham." Around the same time, he learned "more," "yeah," and "no," which made it a lot easier to figure out what he wants. He's also picked up "bye bye" in the past few weeks, and he now tearfully says bye bye to everything he's been playing with before he goes upstairs for his nap/bedtime--bye bye book, school bus, puzzle, shoes, etc. He does the same thing when he's been playing with a fun toy at a store and it's time to leave. The nice thing is that even though he's sad about having to stop playing, he still goes with us without resisting. We'll see how long that lasts. I feel really lucky that he has been such an easygoing little boy so far.

I actually feel like he may be starting to make the switch to headstrong toddler, though we still have it pretty easy. Ever since he learned to say "no" and "yeah," he's been much more assertive and gets upset if we don't comply with his requests. He has also gotten really hard to deal with during diaper changes, as I mentioned above. But I think we still have it pretty good. It makes me a little nervous about how his little brother will turn out, since it seems unlikely that we'll get two mild-mannered babies. We'll just have to wait and see...

Speaking of baby #2, everything is going well so far. I'm 23 weeks pregnant today (time to take another belly picture!). I felt the baby kick for the first time around 17 weeks, and Patrick was able to feel him kicking for the first time right before we went to bed on Christmas (when I was 20 weeks along). I think this is just about the same timing that we had with Arlo. The kicking definitely makes it seem more real, though I think I'm still coming to terms with the fact that we'll be doing the whole newborn thing all over again this summer. Really?

We went in for a follow-up ultrasound last week, to make sure the baby is growing well and to check the location of my placenta. The baby's size looked good (yay!), but my placenta is still low, so we're going to have another ultrasound in 6 weeks to check on it. I'm not too worried, since the same thing happened with Arlo, and my placenta moved eventually.

We've signed up for a birth preparation class offered by one of the midwives I'm seeing (Inner Work of Birth, for those of you in Portland). It's supposed to be good for women who have emotional issues to deal with, such as a difficult previous labor. I feel like I'm getting closer to resolving my issues regarding Arlo's birth, but I think it's worth taking this class. I've also read a couple birth preparation books, my favorite of which was Natural Childbirth the Bradley Way. It's a little dated in parts (I may not have the most recent version), but it contains lots of useful information. I don't think we'll use the Bradley method, but some of the techniques could still come in handy.

Here's a quick craft and food roundup post while Arlo naps…

I've been knitting a lot lately, what with the cold weather and pregnancy tiredness. Here's what I've made, with Ravelry links for more info:

1. Fluffy fishy mitts - so named because I used some beautiful Leethal handspun named Twisting Fishies.

2. Mittens for Arlo and Everett - I used yarn with a very slow color change, so I had to make two pairs in order to get the colors to match. Plus I like Everett and want his hands to be warm too!

3. Bulky pink mitts - made for my coworker as part of the Pay It Forward meme that went around Facebook at the beginning of the year.

4. Toddler sophisticate sweater for Arlo - I love this sweater! The only problem is that the buttons are a little small, so the front tends to pop open. He still wears it a lot though; it makes me happy :)

5. Star ornaments - continuing my new tradition of making matching ornaments for our tree and Arlo's ornament box.

As for food, I don't think I ever wrote about our Thanksgiving meal this year. We almost made it all vegetarian (since the majority of our guests were vegetarians), but we ended up buying a small turkey roast (essentially a bag of white meat; not that appetizing, but easy to cut) so that we'd be able to have turkey sandwiches the next day. We also had lentil salad, golden crusted brussels sprouts, cranberry sauce, buttermilk mashed potatoes, and rolls from Little T. For dessert, we had apple pie (my standard Damn Fine Apple Pie recipe from In the Sweet Kitchen) and pumpkin pie. The pumpkin pie tasted good, but it was a little runny in the middle even after reaching 175F. I think I had the same problem last year. Next year I need to remember to bake it a little longer.

And a list of recent meals worth making again:

• 30-minute shrimp and sausage gumbo - This was fast and tasty
• Pan-roasted flank steak with garlic, potato and blue cheese gratin, and steamed broccoli
• Pasta with hashed brussels sprouts and pine nuts - Mmm, brussels sprouts! This dish came together quickly and was yummy
• Chicken tikka masala - Next time I might try using okra in place of the chicken (I'm still trying to recreate the bhindi masala I used to get at Darbar in Palo Alto)
• Sopa seca with black beans - This was my first time making fideos, and they were good!