Turning One

We had a small family party to celebrate Elanor's first birthday.

Ellie wearing the dress that I wore when I turned one.

She was fascinated by the flame but I helped her blow it out.

First sugar--a dulce de leche cupcake. Delicious!

Actually, she didn't really understand that she was supposed to eat it and mostly played with the crumbs on her tray while the rest of us enjoyed ours.

She remembered how to open presents and, in typical toddler fashion, considered the wrapping quite as good as the contents.

She got tired before the party was over and finished opening her presents in her pajamas. The stroller was quite the hit as was the baby doll that we got her. She sat in Jonathan's lap shyly trying to make friends with it. Of course, she now drags it around by the ankle. We hope that this is not a preview of how she will react to the new baby.

Happy Birthday, small girl!

Cheerio!

The silly things we do to make mealtimes more fun for everyone...

Beach Outing

When you think of a beach outing, you don't necessarily think of blankets and jackets but that is how it is around here until summer actually starts on July 5th. However, a sunny day on a weekend is too good an opportunity to miss.

Ellie wants to walk everywhere---but requires both hands held at all times. We tried to get her to look up at the camera but she was busy watching the ground to make sure that it didn't get away from her.

Oooh! Bark!

She also tried to eat rocks. She is quite familiar with the "not in the mouth, Ellie. Icky!" command now.

Walking down to the beach. Jonathan held her when a train went by underneath us and, while she wanted to be interested, she clung to him pretty tightly too.

Bear Chair

Jonathan's grandfather was a pastor and has become a talented woodworker in retirement. In fact, when we visited his home in Ohio shortly after we were married, I was vastly impressed by the extent and incredible neatness of his basement workshop. Ellie was blessed by this very special package that arrived for her a couple of weeks ago.

She was quite intrigued and tried to make friends with the bear. Then she discovered that it rocked and tried to push it around the living room.


When we put her in the seat and rocked her, she was thrilled.


She is still working on figuring out how to get in and out of it by herself. Now she also goes into her room to show me how well she can rock the glider chair in there too.

Joy Doodle

I have been between projects (other than baby, house-hunting and packing) for the last several months. I finally realized that the awful empty feeling that I had been having was at least partly due to not allowing myself a creative outlet. I had finished all of the Christmas projects and not had the energy in the early stages of pregnancy to start something new. Once I did, there was so much other stuff going on that I didn't have the time for the slow development of an idea that I usually need in order to get something started. So I decided to just take a scrap of muslin and the leftover threads in my needlebook and just try out some stitches. It didn't have to be pretty. It didn't have to have a recipient or a purpose other than just to remind myself how to do them and break back into creating. It was so freeing to just put some threads into the fabric and not feel any anxiety about how it was going to turn out.
Of course, once I got about halfway done, a design did start to emerge that necessarily introduced some boundaries to what I could represent with those stitches. But by that point, it didn't matter anymore.





The edges of the fabric are just outside the edges of the photo so using it for anything would be a challenge. I'm thinking that a very carefully hand stitched border from some of the leftover golden silk from my flower girls dresses would frame it nicely though.

Snips and Snails

Eckling v2.0 is due September 14th. Elanor is getting a little brother.