Choke On This

The other part of my 3 day weekend involved ending some waffling and starting some waffling.

We had waffled about the idea of buying a small chest freezer for the kitchen. I say small--it's 5.0 cubic feet. It seems small because I grew up with one of those humongous ones that you could put a body in.

The "freezer choking" death of our circa 1983 refrigerator pushed out of the waffling stage.



Oh she's a beauty!

I had to fill her up immediately with 6 gallon freezer bags of waffles for the boys--banana, blueberry and bacon cheddar.

Yes, I might have gone a little crazy.

And then perhaps, because tempering eggs and cream no longer makes me nauseous, I might have made two quarts of chocolate peanut butter cup key lime pie (one quarter of each) to fill the freezer as well.

Don't worry, there's healthy chicken boobs and frozen veggies in there too!

Because growing babies love boobs and broccoli.



Our 35 week ultrasound picture. Next time we see her, it will be for real!

FO Wednesday

Good grief.

I love and I hate four day weeks. It's great having Monday off, but it SUCKS when your employer tries to cram 5 days of work into 4 days.

Bah!

But here's what I accomplished in the knitting realm this weekend.

First up a little baby hat for Baby Bez 3.0.



I hope it fits her. But given the weather we're having this "winter" I don't think it's going to be a problem even if it fits her for just a microsecond.

Like the yarn?

I also spun that. It used to look like this:



That's the polwarth my Youngest Younger Sister gave me for Christmas from her trip to Australia last fall.

I love the way it spun up. The pink isn't too obscene and is tempered nicely by the blue. Perfect for a mother of two boys expecting her first girl!

Next up, the second knitted baby gift for a coworker.

At Scheister, Shafter, Conniver & Dodge, the law firm I work for, so far the Class of 2012 babies include 2 girls and 2 boys.

One is Baby Bez 3.0; one is the baby boy I made the Grandma's washcloth blanket out of that super soft yarn for a few posts back; there's a fellow secretary expecting a boy around the fourth of July; and finally our IT guy's wife is expecting a baby girl about a month after Baby Bez 3.0 shows up.

I didn't have the patience to knit IT Guy another baby blanket (nor did I have enough yarn).

So when I saw this pattern, I had to buy it.



Hee hee! Adorable!

I think this will be a big hit with IT Guy's wife. He said someone gifted them a knit blanket over the weekend and she couldn't get enough of it, and he couldn't wait to bring this little computer home to her.

I'm just excited to give it to someone who enjoys the value of a hand knit object!

If There's An Entry...

...It must mean that it's Monday!

So what did I do this weekend?

On Saturday I baked some of these.



But I baked mine for 10 minutes and didn't frost them. I put them in the freezer and the boys can have a few for breakfast heated up and drizzled with some maple syrup.

Can't be any worse than the plethora of sugar cereals being funneled into my house (or trash can) by Upstairs Neighbor Lady, right?

Speaking of the freezer, in the morning, I went to pull some sausage out for Sunday dinner and noticed that "Hey, this is already thawed!"

Lovely.

Our 1980something refrigerator decided to go belly up.

Nice.

Did I mention I went grocery shopping on Friday?

Landlord was working, so he had his brother come out to look at it. He tried to tell me that I was "choking" the freezer with food.

Um, yeah because full freezers are inefficient freezers. (Insert eye roll here).

So he pulled a few loaves of bread out of my freezer, unplugged it, vacuumed the coils, and then, after convincing me that his wife did the same thing to the freezer and when he did all that, it worked again--plugged it back in.

And it was *GASP!* still dead.

Good grief.

That was about noon.

At 4:30 p.m., which is was approximately 12 eggs, a box of butter, a jar of mayo, a half gallon of milk, and a box of ice cream sandwiches later, they brought the new fridge.

I was instructed though not to put any food near the back vent of the freezer lest I choke it again. If I follow those rules, that means I will basically be able to use 1/3rd of the freezer space.

Do you ever get the feeling like you're the only sane person walking around?

While I was waiting for the Landlord to show up with the new fridge and while my food slowly perished I worked on some things to match this--



Oh my god! Real knitting!!!!

Remember The Other Pregnant Girl At Work? She's having a boy, if you remember your Monday posts well.

I wanted to make her something--and my friend Double L had just gifted me a TON of the softest yarn ever.

This is just a simple "Grandma's Washcloth" pattern done in Paton's Bee Mine in various stripes. But oh so soft!!!

And what did I make to match the blanket?



Some delightful burp cloths. Actually the pink one and one of the yellow ones are for something else (not me). Stay tuned for that.

I also made Baby Bez 3.0 a couple of receiving blankets:



And finally a handful of these mini-burp cloths that I made based on a set of burp cloths that Discoknits gifted me waaay back in the day when Moochie was born.

I like their little travel-size.

It was an uber-productive weekend overall.

I find that I'm not much of a nester really. I have no intentions of cleaning when I reach the ends of pregnancies.

Instead I turn into this hyper Martha Stewart.

I remember with Moochie I went on a huge baking spree.

Only 6 weeks left of this incubation--I wonder what the hyper Martha Stewart nesting urge will create next? Ha ha!

My blog has become invariably a litany of rants and weekend wrap ups!

But I'll be honest, the weeknights and boring baby blankets don't make for great mid-week blog posts.

So here you go: here's what I accomplished this weekend.

I did a little sewing and made some cushions for the rocking chair that Auntie Jaywalker gave us this last summer when we met up at Howe Caverns.



The rocking chair will eventually land in our bedroom after Baby Bez 3.0 is born.

When Moochie was a pup, I just sat in bed feeding him.

But that's because Squirrel Gables was built in 1920 before the Queen Sized Box Spring so our bed was pretty low to the ground due to the fact we couldn't get our box spring IN the house. (In all fairness we didn't realize they sold split box springs...and even if we had, I wasn't about to replace a 4 month old box spring with a NEW box spring!).

With the Great Yicky Icky Invasion of 2011 our new bed has a box spring again (and hermetically engineered box spring cover) so it's kind of a climb to get back into bed.

However, I'm kind of clumsy with newborn babies--as Dr. Mad Scientist will tell you when he regales the story of how I fell down a small staircase with Chunky in my arms when we were bringing him him home for the first time. (He obviously was OK).

Yeah we could co-sleep, but I can counter Dr. Mad Scientist's story about me falling down the stairs with Chunky with a story about him letting Moochie roll OFF the bed as an infant.

So yeah, awesome revamped rocker it is!

This rocker is pretty comfy as-is, but the thin little fab cushions will add a bit more comfort for those 2 am feedings.

I sort of went overboard ordering the fabric for this project; I forgot how much wider home-dec fabrics are.

There might be some recovered couch pillows in our future.

And would it be tacky if I wanted to make one of these out of the extra fabric as well? I mean whose purse doesn't match their couch???

Finally, what would a weekend without baking be?

A sad weekend indeed.

First up were some super simple and super American classic Magic Cookie Bars.



And then, ever since I got pregnant, I can say the one thing I've been craving has been soft pretzels.

Given the time of year it is (we just finished up what was "Birthday Week" at my house growing up--Younger Brother's birthday was Wednesday, Dad's birthday was Friday and Younger Sister T's birthday was Saturday--we always used to have homemade pretzels for Dad's birthday to break up the cake-monotony) and the fact that I attended a farewell send off for my old boss here (thankfully I wasn't the only visibly pregnant person in attendance at the bar!) and the pretzels were abundant--I had to make my own!



It's been a real effort not to eat them all at once!

Tres

Baby rambling today. If it's not your cup o'tea, you've been thoroughly warned!

Today marks week 33 of the incubation of Baby Bez 3.0.

And because she's our third kid, and I'm 33 years old, and it's the third trimester, I'll let you see a picture.



As of nearly 3 weeks ago I've only gained 9 lbs this pregnancy.

Also divisible by three. Ha ha!

Tell you what, this time around is so much easier than the other two.

With Chunky I didn't know what to expect.

With Moochie it had been so long since we had had Chunky it seemed like the first time all over again.

But this time with--ha ha--a little over a three year gap, it's not so bad.

I can still put on my shoes. I can still shave my legs (which given this "winter" we've been having means I am still getting some miles out of my maternity dresses). And I am still taking the stairs--all 100 of them every morning, and if I'm lucky again when I come back from lunch.

I am also still knitting.

Right now I've got a blanket on the needles for a girl at work who is technically due a week before me, but is being scheduled for a March 16th extraction.

I won't lie, the comparisons between her and I at work are getting quite tiresome.

I'm sick of hearing how big she is and how little I am.

I'm sick of hearing how she looks sooo uncomfortable and I look like I've got a "food baby" (which I guess is a term that insinuates I just look like I've eaten a large meal).

Just because we happen to be fertility buddies and happened to get laid around the same time doesn't mean we're identical.

She's having a boy; I'm having a girl. Now that I've carried both sexes I can say yes, they do carry different. I don't care if that's scientific or not.

I get the impression she's older than I am (or started working for her attorney when she was 13 years old...in which case we're the same age). Yes. That makes a difference. As I had Chunky at the age of 23 and now this one at 33, like it or not, age makes a difference!

She's built slightly different than me. Before we were pregnant, she carried her extra weight evenly spread all over.

Me? I'm a textbook pear. Big hips and ass.

And she's an inch or so shorter than me. And I'm only 5'2".

I'm not sure what it is that makes people think that because a woman is pregnant, it's a free pass to comment on her weight.

I personally try to stay away from it. I also try not to tell a pregnant woman she looks "cute."

Because those comments usually come at the end of your pregnancy when you're ready to just be done and have your little body-hijacker out of you. "Cute" is no how one feels!

Ok, sorry, that was a little bitchy. Can I blame the pregnancy? Ha ha!

Sweet Goodbyes

Cookies and farewells.

Today was the last day of one of the attorneys I worked for four years before they broke us up last May.

She's moving on to a better job--in-house counsel for a Typical New Jersey Company. It will be good for her and I'm sure she'll love it.



Because she'll no longer be getting Bezzie baked goods at work, I baked her an exclusive batch of s'more whoopie pies.

Totally worth the trip to the crunchy-granola aisle to find graham flour!

The other sad farewell is to Knitcircus.

I'm not sure what I'm going to do not having to brainstorm a cookie recipe every four months! :-(

They'll be transforming to a newsletter type format meaning Knitcircus. Not quite the same, but better than nothing I suppose!

Go check out the Knitcircus blog for more info and to sign up for the newsletter.

I raise up my cookie to you former boss and Knitcircus!

Parting is such sweet sorrow!