Knocking off and Knocking out

When you have just a little bit of fabric and just a little bit of time, what do you do?

Look at cute dress and shirt tutorials online and make your own knockoff version of a simple pattern, obviously.

I may have bought this fabric simply for the delightful exuberance of the pattern since I don't remember if I had had something specific in mind. There was just enough to make a shirt for my tall little girl. It is lined in a white linen/cotton blend.

It is a little snug, which is what happens when you are making up a pattern and have limited fabric but it will also be a darling summer dress for Inessa next summer. I can just picture her toddling around in it.

Button from Grandma Sherri's stash that she generously passed along to me. Not only do the kids love playing with them, often there is just the right button or two to finish off a project.

Purple Girl

Despite the reality of hand me downs from big sister, I hoped to have a few things that Nessie could look back on as uniquely hers. To differentiate, I've been inclined to go for things that are purple rather than pink even though she looks just as lovely in pink as Ellie did.

Some time ago, I was given a bag of yarn that included a couple of skeins of purple wool, almost a lilac color. It seemed the perfect yarn for the first handknit for Nessie. Given my current state of continual interruptions, a lace knit didn't seem feasible so cables it was.

Nessie's Antler Cardigan:

These buttons have been in my stash at least since we moved from our old house. I'm so pleased that there were enough to use here. I'm not particularly happy with how the placket turned out but you learn something with every project, right?

Summer Dancing Bird

 When a three year old dresses herself in character, you have to wonder how colorful she is on the inside too.

"I'm flying!"

This is my view a lot of the time.

For the record, that is butterfly shirt, pants, swimsuit, sash, cape, wings, necklace and rainbow headband. Fully decked out!

A 3-year-olds eye view

We took a trip to Seattle Children's for blood draws for Elanor and Peter. While we were waiting, Ellie had some fun figuring out how to take pictures.

Litter brother is on my level:

 But Daddy is bending down to fit in the view:

First selfie:

Mommy is a blur--or is it in a blur? I'm not so sure which:

Peter gets the phone:

Summering

Sisters:

The glory of spaghetti face:

"Beez, beez, beez give me the camera, mommy!"

Outgrowing the tricycle:

Floating in the breeze:

Practicing for Auntie Dodo's wedding:

Cuddle time:

Skipping the sunburn at the park:

Snuggler:

What's in a Name

We have gotten a lot of questions, quite justifiably, about how we came up with Inessa's name. After all, hardly anyone has heard of it.

We started out with a set of criteria that we use for naming all of the kids.
1. interesting, preferably spiritually oriented meaning
2. alliterative first and middle names
3. classic or traditional but not particularly common; naming statistics over the last 100 years gets consulted frequently
4. fits in reasonably well with the other kids' names
5. contains a nature reference that may be somewhat obscure; Elanor is a flower from LOTR and Peter means rock
6. doesn't sound too weird with our last name; everyone else's last name sounds so much easier to match than one's own--but they feel exactly the same way.
7. Minimal unfortunate nicknames. This is impossible to avoid entirely of course--someone will always think of something.

Jonathan starts connecting with the baby by browsing through name lists pretty much as soon as we know that we are expecting. I prefer to wait until we know the gender to start narrowing things down. So around the beginning of January, we were both on the hunt.  Irene had been on our short list of girls' names for Elanor because Jonathan liked the meaning (peace or peaceful) and I had liked it ever since reading George MacDonald's Princess and Curdie as a child. We went through some lists to find another name starting with I to match it, coming up with some real gems like Iphigenia, Ingeborg and the oh, so popular, Isabella. We were starting to wonder if either Irene wasn't a good choice or we would have to drop one of our criterion.
When I came across Inessa, I was initially hesitant because I had never heard it before--something that Jonathan has had trouble accepting in the past. However, the sound was lovely and the meaning was interesting--it is the Slavic variant of Agnes, which means pure or chaste. More people have heard of Inez or Ines which is the Spanish version. Jonathan liked it so we rolled Irene Inessa around in our mouths and ears for a few days. After a while, it occurred to us to switch the names and we both decided that we liked the sound of Inessa better as the first name.
In the final part of the evaluation process, we did a search for Inessa to check to make sure that there weren't any terribly unpleasant associations or people with that name. When first item that came up was a link for a butterfly entomology site, we discovered that Inessa is a genus of skipper butterflies--a perfect way to fit in that nature reference and one last confirmation that this was the right name for her.
We planned to call her Nessie but didn't think of Miss Loch Ness Monster until after she was born and the paperwork submitted but I don't think that we would have changed our minds at that point anyway.

And after all that, Ellie insists on calling her Nugget.

Peanut and Nugget

Welcoming Inessa Irene

Now that Inessa is two months old, it's time to introduce her.

Working on those smiles!

Because everyone loves a detailed and personal birth story, right? For the record, I am now three for three with the water breaking prior to onset of labor (PROM, for the technically minded).

Just as with the beginning of labor with Peter,  we had lain down for the night and were chatting before praying and turning out the light when, oh dear, that tell-tale little gush that signals that the night is not going to be as peaceful as we had thought. Mindful of the frantic cleanup and mad rush to pack the birth center bag from last time, we had agreed to pack ahead of time (mostly done!), put a towel in the bed (just in case!) and finish whatever prep before labor started (even if it meant a hour less sleep for everyone). So we paged the midwife, called Elsa to come on over and then waited for contractions to start. We woke up (!) the next morning, feeling a little sheepish that nothing had happened and we had hauled Elsa over here without needing her to watch the kids overnight. We spent a lovely, peaceful day going to our midwife's office for a NST (during which she was so active that she kept moving away from the monitor and, while it was clear that she was doing fine, we had a hard time getting a good trace) and a discussion of our options while the kids went to the zoo with auntie, having a last lunch out together at Cedars, emailing friends asking for prayers and afternoon naps all around. I was, of course, convinced that nothing would be happening for a couple more days and we would have to go through all manner of interventions to get labor going but for that day, we would just let things go however they were going to go. While out walking, we saw a beautiful Painted Lady butterfly and felt that this was one last confirmation that we had chosen the right name for our little daughter--more on this later.
Elsa surprised me by making dinner and I felt that I was ready for a little bit of alone time after an involved day so I went off into the office to watch the second half of Bend it Like Beckham which I had started a couple of nights previously during one of my bouts of late pregnancy insomnia. After realizing that I had counted five or six contractions over the course of those forty minutes, I came to the conclusion that I would, after all, be in the 86% of women who go into labor spontaneously withing 24 hours of PROM. By the time that I emerged from my movie to rejoin the family, I was having to breathe through the contractions, a sure sign of real labor for me. I was in no rush, thinking that it would be a few hours before we would even need to consider going to the birth center for active labor and delivery but as the kids finished dinner, Elsa whisked them off to my parents house, leaving us free to concentrate.
One of the things that I appreciated about this labor was being aware of the progression of each stage. I have a distractable phase, a breathing phase, a singing or humming phase, a rhythmic phase and then pushing--which has its own set of sounds. I know that by the time that I hit the humming phase, I am definitely in active labor and the rhythmic phase with very little break between contractions indicates transition. So we didn't really have to wonder about when to call the midwife and let her know that we'd like to go over to the birth center and we didn't feel nearly as rushed or anxious about how fast labor was progressing--it was fairly clear the time frame that we were on as things unfolded. No wild speeding on the freeway this time!
We checked in with our midwives a couple of times before agreeing that it was time for some supervision and that it would be better to be in the car at this stage rather than any later. With the midwives coming from Seattle, there was just that bit of extra traffic for them to work through and we needed them to be there to let us in and get things set up. We left for the birth center (30 minutes away) around 8:00 and pulled into the parking lot just as I switched phases into transition.  Getting through the doors and into the warm water was wonderful! I didn't realize how much Jonathan was concentrating on driving and helping me get through the contractions until we got there and realized that he needed to take a short break so that he could be there when the baby was actually born. Fortunately, one of the midwives was able to lend a (literal) hand to keep me on track. Our baby girl was born after approximately 30 minutes of pushing and about an hour after we arrived. The first thing out of the water that she did was sneeze!

Freshly born

Meeting Daddy

Cozily dressed for the car ride home

If everything is going normally, it is customary to go home from the birth center within several hours after delivery so we headed home around 2:00 am. It is a little strange to make a car trip so shortly after giving birth, with a new baby in the backseat no less, but so wonderful to be snuggled up all together in our own bed and able to relax. I don't know that it is wonderful enough to make me ever want to just have the baby at home, but I don't miss the hospital stay one bit.

First morning at home

The older kids (so strange to think of them that way!) spent two days playing and wearing out my parents before coming home on Saturday night. They were excited to meet their new baby sister but even more excited to see their own beds again.

Our family of FIVE!