Since Nathaniel was nice enough to grace us with extra long naps this weekend, I was able to do a bit of finishing. I have had a few things on my plate to finish for several months now including my german garden, two coffee/tea LHN pieces and my seasonal dragon RR. Last weekend, Nathaniel and I went out to Joann’s to look for fabric for a baby shower quilt for my sister’s shower in October. We didn’t find anything for that, but I did find a cute sampler of fat quarters that inspired me on how to finish my dragons. I also picked up some cubes and viola…here they are!

I really like how they turned out. Maybe next weekend I will frame my two LHN pieces:) Hope you all had a great weekend!

I am not quite sure where the summer went. Last thing I remember, we were saying goodbye to our students and digging in for a boring, pleasant summer. Today the kids all came back to school and the chaos begins. Even Nathaniel had a “first” at school today. It was his first day in the Infant B classroom. He is crawling, pulling up and starting to cruise so he can’t be with all the tiny, immobile babies any more. Fortunately three other babies are moving up with him, so he will have some buddies. The teachers and parents were all a bit teary this morning. I can’t believe he is going to be 9 months old on Friday. Here are some cute pictures of him.

Here he is in a gigantic pile of diapers. Note the crazy hair.

Here he is later that day after his first hair cut. He was very well behaved and looks sooo handsome.

Here is some of my recent stitching. I have been working on Cafe Latte. Yes the border is off. I will be fixing that later:) I really like stitching LHN pieces.

And I also started on Glenna’s RR. It is not much, but it is an Elizabeth Design piece.

I do have some goals for the month of September. I would like to:
1. Post to the blog at least twice a week.
2. Finish Cafe Latte
3. Finish Glenna’s RR
4. Work on Bordeaux Sampler
I also plan to work on learning how to digital scrapbook this month. Allen signed me up to take a class on how to use Photoshop CS3 to scrapbook. It starts tomorrow night and I am looking forward to it:)

Well hello there all. It has been a busy week. It is the last week of summer break before the rest of our staff gets back so we have been busy trying to tie up loose ends. Tons of fun…not!

Today when I got home I found a lovely surprise in my mail. It was an early birthday gift from the lovely Carol. She stitched me an adorable floss tag. We both love our black kitties:) Thank you so much Carol…I love it:)
Now another picture in honor of Carol. I know how much Carol loves the Boston Red Sox so I thought of her when I pulled this outfit out of a box of outfits a friend passed down to Nathaniel. Check out Nathaniel’s new digs.

Sorry the picture is so dark, but we get funky light in his playroom.

I have also been doing a little bit of stitching along the way. i am currently working on Frappuccino by LHN. I really enjoy stitching their kits.

Well off to watch the rest of Batman Begins. Have a great Saturday!

Hey all…
I really am alive and kicking. Life with an eight month old baby boy is a real adventure and he is keeping us on our toes. He started doing a very effective army crawl last weekend and can get anywhere in a jiffy. He stands well with only minimal support and is trying really hard to pull up to standing. He can get his tushy a good inch or two off the ground, but then his arms give out. According to my mom, I was walking by ten months old, and with his current progression I would not be surprised if Nathaniel is does the same. Here he is after a swim at Nana and Papa’s house at the lake.

And here is Wendy’s Neighborhood RR. I did a part of the Counting House by Little House Needleworks complete with sheep. It was a fun stitch and I hope she likes it. I can’t believe that most people’s neighborhoods are only one person away from being done. Glenna’s arrived today and I am the last stitcher. I plan to get to it as soon as I finish up the Frappaccino piece I started 4th of July.

I am so excited…I have a finish:) On Friday, I finished Nathaniel’s birth sampler. My goal was to have it done by his first birthday and I more than made it.

Now I need to start on a Christmas stocking for him. I also have to start working on another birth sampler as Nathaniel will be joined by a new cousin at the end of the year. My little sister is expecting her first child around Christmas. It is exciting that they will be almost exactly a year apart. It will also ease my missing the teeny baby days already. We are way past that stage already. Nathaniel is almost seven months old and almost 22 pounds.

Today we took Nathaniel on his first trip to the zoo. We met my mom and sister and BIL there and had a great day. We saw tons of animals, but Nathaniel was most interested in the pigeons and the waterfall:) He had a great time.

I have been such a delinquent blogger lately. Things continue to be busy in our home. Last weekend, I had the world’s worst tummy bug. I didn’t even get sick like that while I was pregnant. Allen was very sweet and took great care of Nathaniel and me. I am pretty sure that Nathaniel missed at least one meal that day. I guess I need to make a basic schedule for him to keep in the house, just in case something like this happens again. Allen tends to rely on me for all kinds of schedule keeping.

This past week I also learned a bit of what it is like to be on my own with Nathaniel. Allen had a radioactive iodine scan to see how well the radiation treatment he had last July worked. This is part of the follow up after having the thyroid tumor removed in 2005. It is no big deal for him, but it means he can’t hang out with us (especially Nathaniel and the kitties) for a couple of days. It reaffirmed how much I appreciate what a wonderful husband and father Allen is. I also realized how much Nathaniel really LOVES his daddy. When Allen got home, Nathaniel would light up and then get upset when Allen wouldn’t hang out with us. They are two peas in a pod. I am more and more in trouble every day.

This weekend Allen’s dad and his fiancee came to visit us. We had a nice weekend despite the heat and losing power for the second time this week. Nathaniel had fun with Granddad and I got some good stitching done. I am now about 3/4 done with the baby sampler. I plan on finishing it up and then working on Wendy’s Neighborhood RR. I should have both done by the end of the month:) YEAH!!

Here is Nathaniel’s birth sampler so far:)

And a couple of pictures of the man himself. Hard to believe that we celebrated his first half-birthday on Thursday:)

So this weekend was my first Mother’s Day and I had a lovely weekend. Allen’s mom and her husband came to visit us which was a nice treat. They had not seen Nathaniel since Christmas and needless to say he has changed greatly since that time. They really had a great time with him. On Saturday, they babysat while Allen and I went to the Melting Pot for dinner (Yum!!). My MIL just love spending as much time as she could with Nathaniel, so I had a ton of time to stitch. That was my main Mother’s Day gift:) Allen and I are also planning to buy ourselves a small video camera as our first Mother’s/Father’s Day gift.

So here are the fruits of my Mother’s Day stitching. First Deb’s RR. I finished the house and just need to do my little person/signature and tombstone. I am proud of how early I got it done this round

After I finished Deb’s House, I pulled out Nathaniel’s birth sampler. I haven’t worked on it in a while, but would like to finish it soon. I am about halfway finished at this point and really like how it is turning out. I think I am going to try and get at least one more band finished before moving on to something else and will probably rework my “rotation” and make this my focus piece for a while.

Allen wants me to blog about what he is doing. He is currently playing Grand Theft Auto IV and his character is taking a taxi ride through Star Square. He just got a girls number and is very proud of himself:) Allen is just a child in a 30-somethings body! I am so in for it when Nathaniel is old enough to start getting into trouble with daddy…and I wouldn’t trade it for anything:)

After several days of wanting to throw my camera and my home phone through a window, I have finally gotten at least the camera to cooperate. Unfortunately, my phone still breaks ever time someone calls it. Kind of defeats the purpose of having the phone, but our service provider doesn’t seem to understand that. AAAHHH how frustrating.

On to better things. After having a memory card error for almost a week, I was finally able to retrieve my pictures off my camera. While we were visiting Allen’s grandparents two weekends ago, I was able to do a bunch of stitching on Alchemical Romance. I am now almost to the halfway point on that piece. I love stitching on it as it feels like a bunch of tiny little finishes.

I have also been working on Deb’s RR. She really picked some pretty houses for us to stitch. This is one of the Morbid Pithies which you can find at theworkbasket.net. Deb also provided us with really pretty fabric to stitch on. I wish pictures did better justice to all the beautiful fabbies I have seen over the years.

Well, I should be off to try and get a bit of stitching in before bed…and maybe some ice cream too:) Bad Leslie!!

My “little” boy will be five months old on Monday (he really isn’t that little…he is a solid 19 pounds, but has grown alot in length, has lost at least two chins and has a neck now). The time has just flown by. Nathaniel is really thriving. Overall he is content and happy and already has his parents propensity to be curious and thoughtful. He is really having fun learning about how cause and effect works with his toys. Developmentally he is doing very well. He can consistently roll onto his side both from front to back and back to front. On three occasions he has rolled all the way over. His legs are amazingly strong as he is starting to support his weight with assistance and when on his tummy will push himself an inch or so across the floor. Nathaniel loves to hear his own voice, particularly at 6 in the morning, has a beautiful laugh and is just starting to try rice cereal. I am so proud of my sweet boy:) Take a look at some pictures we had done of him and of the three of us. They are the first formal pictures we have had done since Allen and I got married almost four years ago.

In other news, I have been stitching a bit. My time is so stretched with Nathaniel and the craze of fourth quarter of the school year at work. By the time Nathaniel goes to bed at 8, I am drained and don’t have much energy for anything. Work should start slowing down soon as we get closer to summer so I am hoping to get more stitching mojo. Currently, I am about half finished with Deb’s neighborhood RR and did four motifs on Alchemical Romance last weekend while visiting Allen’s grandparents. I hope to post pictures tomorrow, but it is contingent on my finding my little camera. It is still packed among all our stuff from the trip:) Traveling with a five month old is an adventure and seems to require a trailer:)

Woo, it has really been a long time. So long that WordPress has changed the look of the posting page. It has been a busy week. I had a ton of assessments all due last week at work which was a bit draining, but it is all done now. We are also working on getting everything together for Nathaniel’s christening which is this coming Sunday. I am not big into entertaining so it is a bit overwhelming for me. Despite all that, the little dose of anti-anxiety I started last week seems to be making a difference. I still have a good bit of nervousness and sleeping still isn’t perfect, but I am not feeling the almost paralyzing fear I was a few weeks ago. It is so freeing and I have more energy. Thank goodness:)
I am really going to appreciate that new found energy because Nathaniel is getting more and more active. His week of crankiness seems to be over (with no tooth) and he has been at least calm, if not visibly happy most of the time. He is finally showing signs of pushing up on his hands, although he is still pretty content to lay on his stomach and chew on his hands. On one occasion he actually almost rolled over. He has his four month check up tomorrow and I am exciting to see how the doctor thinks he is doing.

I unfortunately don’t have any stitching worth showing. I am still working on the grass on Deb’s RR. A few days ago, I did have fun tea dying some fabric for CCN’s Sweet Treats and LHN’s Heart of Americs. I really like how they came out…especially the one on the left.

Since I just mentioned I didn’t have much to show stitching wise it is not surprising to hear I didn’t do too well on my March goals. Oh well:) My April stitching goals are to make progress on Deb’s RR and Nathaniel’s birth sampler. I want to finish it before his first birthday:)