Photo project

I'm starting one of those photo-per-week projects with a friend. We are posting our photos for each other on Flickr, and following a general list of themes that we found online.

Our first week (this week!) the theme was Summer/Winter. we used it a little liberally and each of us just did Summer. Here is my photo, from the Brooklyn Botanic Garden's Family Night last night.

homemade dusk mask

Need I say more?

so, so long

You may have noticed that there is a LARGE gap in posts. I posted sporadically last summer, and then not at all until this week.

Things have shifted a lot since Eamon was born. Yes, I am married to the same man and live in the same apartment, but I don't do the same things from day to day. Theater has been my passion for many, many years. I still love it, but I don't know how to continue working in it when the pay wouldn't cover child care and the hours are long. More than anything, I want to be there for my son. Theater not only would take me away, but it wouldn't help me provide for him.

Last August, confused about what to do with my life, I went to a career development workshop that my alma mater was hosting for moms looking to start working again. I had been working 1 day per week since Jan 2011 and I had designed the set for a show, but I didn't feel like I had a career or focus anymore.

The workshop enabled me to see what skills I had and how I could best use them, and in late September I launched my new business, Eliza's Eye Family Photography.  The business took up every spare moment I had in the fall, between figuring out how to run it, doing shoots, retouching photos and whatnot - all during Eamon's naps and after he is in bed or when Christopher could watch him. Now that the logistics of the business have been more or less figured out (though of course there is always room to grow), I feel a little more able to knit and read blogs and whatever else I did before. And so I am back.

I'm not sure where this blog will go, or if I will continue it for long. But it might be fun to see where it takes me...

Eamon on the Street

with some captions added by my father (though written by me). Watch out Bill Cunningham!

waiting for Irene

After a few days of warnings, and a frenzied (and over rushed) trip to get groceries yesterday, we holed up today to wait for the hurricane. Irene is supposed to hit New York hard and parts of the city have been evacuated. Our apartment is on higher ground, so today was just about waiting for the storm to hit.

And it was just a rainy day. I imagine we will be stuck inside all day tomorrow, but somehow we were in Hunker Down Mode, and so stayed inside for most of today too.

Yesterday, a book I ordered came, just in time for the storm:

   

Awesome book. It has tons of projects for kids Eamon's age. While Eamon was playing in the other room with Christopher, I whipped up some play dough. (we didn't have any white flour, so it had specks of whole wheat in it. Oh well.)

And later, when Eamon tired of that (which was pretty soon, actually), I pulled out some tempera and liquid starch and we did a little finger painting.

Probably predictably, he was very interested in the pouring of the paint onto the paper, and kept wanting me to add more. Also, he wasn't so into getting the paint on his hands. He really wanted them to stay clean. So I gave him a brush, which he really liked using.

We went for a walk (it had stopped raining), saw some emergency vehicles and an evacuation center (both around the corner) and when we came back he wanted to do more painting. All in all, he made 3 pictures. Each of them took probably less than 2 minutes, but it is satisfying to see him trying these things out and enjoying them.

a monthly feature

It is a cliche, but Eamon changes daily. Everything about him shifts. I blink and it is all different. His hair color (brown to blonde to maybe going brown again). His vocabulary and intonation (apparently any day now he will begin to speak in actual words). And toys and books.

We have hand me downs from both Christopher's sister's kids and Christopher's cousin's kids, and we have received gifts on top of that. We have a lot of stuff. Toys oozing out of boxes, books falling off of shelves. Somehow it never seems like enough; Eamon tires quickly of Toy A and suddenly he will only play with Toy M. I put things away and rotate them, which seems to keep things somewhat interesting, but it is always a game of catch up.

For a little while now I have been thinking that it might be interesting to record Eamon's favorite books and toys on the blog every month. Since he just celebrated his 18 month birthday, I thought I'd start now and try to post around this time every month.  Hopefully this won't become a chore, but will show an evolution of a child's interests. (Full disclosure: I have linked to amazon.com and they will give me money if you buy a product I link to. That is not the #1 reason I am linking there, but I thought I should be up front about that.  My reason for writing this is that I think it will be interesting, not because amazon will pay me. And I hope I present it that way, too.)

So, first off: 

Books. 

Eamon loves books. We are big fans of the Priddy books - they have fantastic pictures of objects and animals and children and they are really great for little people who are learning words. We have a ton of these books. 

But since I am focussing on the absolute favorite RIGHT NOW, I would choose Tremendous Tractors. 

Eamon has been obsessed with tractors (and lawn mowers) since he got to ride on my dad's tractor (and mower) in Maine.

 

He still wears his headphones to the playground in memory of the mower.

Yes, this is a picture from June when we were in Maine, but you can see how he loves his headphones.

  

This book, which I bought recently on, ahem, amazon, is the perfect book for a toddler who loves tractors. There is a rabbit, a chicken (I think it's a chicken) and a mouse who show just how tractors are used. They mow. They plow. They seed. They even haul around some pumpkins. The pictures are beautifully drawn and there are other things to look at too, like the trees next to the field they are mowing. Eamon is particularly interested in showing me the door handle on the tractor on each page. 

Eamon is also very interested in photo albums right now. My iPad has a bunch of photos (mostly of him) and some videos, and we also have a few hard copy photo albums, and one of his favorite things is to look at them. It is fun (though I admit it is getting tiring) to show him each family member and himself when he was a baby. He is clearly storing up who all of these people are and learning names. He also points at tiny things you wouldn't notice, like the out of focus, obscured dog in the background, and does the dog sign. Oh, to know what he is thinking!

Toys

To accompany his tractor book, Eamon has a tractor toy.

 Amazon is telling me that this is a flashlight, which I honestly think is a bit of a stretch. We got it as a hand me down from Christopher's cousin's kids. If you squeeze the red part, the hood pops up, it makes a revving noise and a light goes on. If you let go of the handle, it closes and the light goes off. 

Things Eamon likes about this: he has mastered squeezing the handle, which took some learning. The noise is fun (and not too loud for Mom to be annoyed by it). And it looks a little like a tractor. It also rolls easily, which is a bonus. He likes to roll things these days. I'm not sure he's noticed that there is a flashlight component to the toy, which is fine with me. 

Construction vehicles are a close second to the tractors, and we end up watching a lot of YouTube videos such as this:

little monkeys

I have a friend who has been very, very generous to me. She is a close friend, and she always seems to come up with the perfect present for various occasions - our wedding, Eamon's birth, various birthdays of mine and now, Eamon's. I am less generous, mostly because she is the type of person who seems to have everything, and she also is very clear that (usually, anyway) she doesn't want a gift. Plus (I'll say it) money is a bit tight around here.

Last week, my friend had a baby. And, well, that's as good an excuse as any to knit something amazing for my friend.

A blanket seemed like the most useful gift, something that could be wrapped around the baby in the stroller or car seat, something that would be useful for a few years. I made a blanket for Eamon when I was pregnant (which sadly was lost) and I found the small 2'x2' size more useful than I had imagined. I poked around looking at various patterns, and finally settled on the Sleepy Monkey Blanket (twist collective link). It is an incredible pattern, one that requires a lot of patience and looks impressive. I felt like making something a little more modern would be fun, and something my friend's husband would also appreciate.

I cast on in March, using Berroco Vintage, an amazing superwash wool/acrylic blend. My mother made a sweater for Eamon with it, and it has weathered the washing and wear very well. It also comes in wonderful colors.

The color panels went rather quickly, perhaps because they were fun and varied. They were finished and washed in May, and I presented them at my friend's baby shower as a preview as to what was coming. She and her husband seemed excited about the blanket. There was talk of hanging it on the wall.

I made it my mission to finish the blanket while we were in Maine in June. Unfortunately, the border of this blanket is a little more tiresome to knit. Someone on Ravelry said it was "fiddly," and she was right. It is fiddly. I think if I ever knit this blanket again, I would make the border simpler and a lot more user friendly. I did manage to finish it though, while watching episodes of the amazing Danish miniseries Forbydelsen (yes! knitting with subtitles!).

I washed it and it was sent off.

I do feel rather proud of this blanket. I finished it on time. I like how it looks and I think the colors work well together. It is probably a little warm for a baby, but maybe it would be useful for tummy time or on a chilly fall day in the stroller.