7 Months Old

Today, my baby girl is seven months old. How is that possible?! The time has just flown by. I looked at her yesterday while she was sitting in her stroller and she looked SO BIG! She can sit up on her own now. She scoots around on her butt, slower than molasses, but she's moving nonetheless. She hasn't quite gotten crawling down, but does like to move backwards and in circles when she's laying on her belly.

She loves food!

 She's super eggsited about eggs!

Loves to try new things. Likes to pick the crumbs up off of her highchair and is really investigating how all of her toys work. She is so amazing!

Happy 7 Months Old to my beautiful little bean! Mama loves you!

Ribbit, Ribbit

Oh my goodness, how cute is this?!?! I decided to get extra creative and made my little bean a froggy hat. She loves it!

To make the hat:
Cast on 50 stitches of green yarn (I used a heavier, thicker yarn)
Knit 2 rows
Purl 2 rows
Continue on in this way until you have knitted at least 6-8" of material
Cast off

Fold the material in half and sew the two opposite open edges using the same green yarn
Turn your hat inside out

For the eyes:
Cast on 10 stitches with green yarn, leaving a 3" tail
Knit 10 rows
Cast off leaving a 3" tail
This is ONE eye
Repeat for the second eye

Cast on 7 stitches with grey or white yarn, leaving a 3" tail
Knit 8 rows
Cast off leaving a 3" tail
This is for ONE eye
Repeat for the second eye

Cast on 5 stitches with black yarn, leaving a 3" tail
Knit 6 rows
Cast off leaving a 3" tail
This is for ONE eye
Repeat for the second eye

Place the black knit square/oval on top of the grey/white square oval and center it like an eyeball. Using the tails of black yarn, sew the black square onto the grey/white square. Then repeat the same on the green square. Make the second eye the same way. Once the eyes are assembled, use the tail from the green yarn to sew the eyes directly onto the top of your hat. TADA, Froggy hat!

I considered (after the fact) making a rim with a red tongue on it. Since I am not that skilled at knitting, the rim and tongue will have to wait!

Guten Morgan!

Hello my friends! We are currently on vacation in Germany. We had a wedding in northern Germany over the weekend, which was so gorgeous and now we've ventured to southern Germany to visit with a friend from the US and her family. I love the Germans. I love the way they enunciate and pronounce words. I love that I can understand 99.9% of what is said because of how they speak. The dialect in southern Germany is hilarious. They say things like "moyen" for Morgan (good morning) and call Karotten - "Möhre". Learning new vocab is always good...maybe it will help me on my upcoming German exam?!

Alexa has been awesome. She is quite the little traveler. She's 6 1/2 months old and has been in six countries (Austria, England, USA, Czech Republic, Germany and Poland)! She loves meeting new people and checking out her new surroundings. She's a bit rough on the vacation sleeping a.k.a she doesn't sleep at all. Girlfriend hung out until midnight the other night! She doesn't even get super cranky, she just isn't interested in missing out on anything.

I hope everyone is having a great week!

Alexa's Favorite Toys - 6 months

In the last month and a half, Alexa has really started playing and interacting with her toys. She shakes rattles, knocks over block towers and of course, puts everything in her mouth! Pictured below are her five absolute favorite toys these days.

DwellStudio Stuffed Animals · Fisher-Price Stuffed Animals · The First Years Blocks, Stackers & Sorters

The Oball that we have is even cooler than the one pictured here because it rattles!

Her soft blocks are not only good for stacking (my job) and knocking over (her job), but they're also soft enough that if she falls over she won't get hurt. Apparently, they also taste pretty good since she's always got them in her mouth!

The pink rattle is great because not only can she make lots of noise by shaking it all around, but the opposite end is perfect for gumming and teething on.

Her stacking cups are my favorite. Such a simple idea, but so many fun games to play with them! We stack towers (my job) and she knocks them over (her job), plus we play hide and seek by placing smaller toys under the larger cups. We say the names of the colors while we stack too. Alexa likes to practice pretend "drinking" from the cups as well.

Her all time favorite toy of the moment is the Fisher Price Puppy, or puppy as we call him. She got the Fisher Price Puppy as a gift from a friend of the family when we were in the US and it is such a great toy! At first I thought it was bulky and would never be played with, but I was seriously wrong. She loves all the songs and rhymes the puppy sings and pretty much everywhere you push on the puppy starts up some kind of interactive game, song, poem, or other learning element. She even gives puppy a hug when he asks!

My Little Pumpkin

I love knitting little baby hats! They are so super cute (even when they are ugly or dorky looking). Plus, Alexa is nice and lets me try all the hats on her. Having a cute hat model sure does make the projects more fun! I decided that I wanted to make her a couple of holiday hats, starting with a pumpkin hat for Fall and Halloween. I am even toying with the idea of making a jack-o-lantern hat! Well, before I get ahead of myself here is the pumpkin hat...

I started off by buying bright orange yarn for the hat and a light olive green yarn for the stem and leaves. I had watched a couple of YouTube videos and saw how other people made the hats and worked on the leaves. Since I am seriously a beginning knitter I decided to just wing it. I don't know how to read patterns or do any stitches other than knit, purl and a slip stitch, so I went with what I knew and made up my own pattern!

Based on other online baby hat tutorials I knew that I would need to cast on at least 40 stitches, which is the size for a newborn hat. Since Alexa has a bigger head than that I decided to do 50 stitches and see what happened. I also measured her head (16") and knew that I would need to knit at least 8" of knitting so the hat would be big enough. (I'm pretty sure all of you knitters out there are dying from my lack of knitter's speak...sorry!)  It took me about three days to finish the hat, about six hours total knitting time.

No pumpkin hat is complete without a stem and a leaf! At first I just made one leaf, but I thought it looked pretty dumb...

 

A friend suggested that I just add a second leaf and TADA! Super cute pumpkin hat!

Hat Pattern:
Cast on 50 stitches of orange yarn
1. Knit 1 row
2. Knit 2, Slip 2 for one row
3. Knit 1 row
4. Knit 2, Slip 2 for one row
5. Knit 2 rows
Repeat steps 2-5 until you have 8 inches of knit material
Cast off
Fold your rectangle in half the short way and sew the left side and right side closed, you are left with one side open
Turn your material inside out - Tada! You made a hat!


Leaf Pattern: (I made 2 leaves)
Cast on 7 stitches of green yarn
Knit 4 rows
Knit two stitches together and then finish knitting that row (you now have 6 stitches)
Knit 3 rows
Knit two stitches together and then finish knitting that row  (you now have 5 stitches)
Knit 2 rows
Knit two stitches together and then finish knitting that row (you now have 4 stitches)
Knit 2 rows
Knit two stitches together and then finish knitting that row (you now have 3 stitches)
Knit 2 rows
Cast off

I sewed the leaves onto the hat using the tail of yarn from when I casted on and the tail from casting off.

Stem:
Cast on 5 or 6 stitches and knit until you have about 2 1/2" of material. Fold in half the long way and sew the open sides. Sew onto the hat on a short side.

Baby Antics #6

I have found that the less I sleep the more I get done during the day. This is because if I stop for even a split second I will fall asleep standing up.

Shopping for Winter Jackets ALREADY?!

I cannot believe Fall is already here. Where has this year gone? It has seriously flown by. I can't believe Alexa is already 6 1/2 months old. I just can't handle how fast she is growing! I started looking around for a Fall/Winter Coat for her and that is when it hit me...she is going to be moving around this winter! Whether it is crawling or walking (or both! YIKES!), my little bean is going to be on the move and therefore, I not only need a warm winter coat for her, but it looks like I'm also going to need snow pants! Just imagine the adorable pictures I'm going to be able to take!

Here is the super cute jacket and snow pants that I found from Carter's. I figured that since she pretty much has everything from the Spring/Summer 2013 line, we might as well carry on the cute clothing right on into Fall/Winter 2013.

Carter's Girls' Outerwear