Piglet update & Liam pictures

Piglet has been really active the last couple days, and I suspect that last night s/he rotated out of the head-down position s/he'd been maintaining at least since the ultrasound. I'm pretty sure that s/he WAS head down at least as of yesterday, kept feeling more than one largish hard object moving around up top (which I'm pretty sure was either butt and knees or the two knees moving independantly at various times). Last night I woke up as Piglet did a really big manuver (which was really uncomfortable, bordering on painful) and today I'm only feeling smaller movements up on top. I could be wrong, it could have just spun hard on it's "axis", and it's not really all that big of a deal if it IS in a breech presentation right now (still have many moons to go before this kid is due to make it's appearance), but if that's the kind of discomfort from a >2lb kiddo spinning head-to-tail I don't wanna know how uncomfortable it's going to be to "encourage" it to do it AGAIN in a few months. I'll talk to the doc at my next prenatal (of course I just had my 24 week prenatal yesterday afternoon) on April 17th and see where the heartbeat is (was low yesterday, meaning most likely given the other "available data" that it was head-down), and if it looks like it's possibly turned then get another ultrasound to confirm and start trying to "encourage" it to go head-down again sooner rather than later. Not comforting that my friend Sharon (Serena's mom) was telling me how her kids had decided to spin to breech toward the end of her pregnancies. I'm not 100% sure how I feel about the idea of attempting a vag breech delivery (even tho that's how I came into this world and my mom is much smaller framed than I am). It's significantly more risky than a head-first birth... at the very least I'd want ultrasounds near the time to figure out what the umbilical cord and placenta are doing, and I'd most likely permit the dreaded constant fetal monitoring thingie if the local hospital has ones like back in Virginia that can go in the water (Lakewood Hospital allegedly has a labor tub that my doc would let me birth in - she's really trying to convince me that the hospital isn't the evil-smelly-stress-inducing place all medical establishments are by nature. I adore my doctor, she's such a cute human being. Now if I could just convince her to catch the baby at our house...). Hopefully it won't be an issue.

Liam went with us to the prenatal appointment (he's gone to most of them due to lack of availability of anyone to watch him while we go - Yeh-Yeh is in China and just really not that into being alone with the kid anyway, Nai-Nai doesn't get home from work until later than we can schedule the appointments). First thing the doctor noticed, of course, is the huge fading bruise on his face. I got pictures of it when it was in it's more spectacular state last week. Really glad this one happened with witnesses around! We had a little dinner party and he decided that it was a really good idea to stand on the edge of one of the dining room chairs at one point... well, the chair tipped and he smacked his face on the edge of the table, getting a nice bruise from cheekbone to tear duct that turned purple at the worst point of impact almost immediately and was several inches long by the next day. I actually briefly considered taking him to the emergency room, but Garvin felt it was fine to just not let him sleep for several hours afterwards to be sure he wasn't disorientated or anything, apply ice, and check to make sure that, after he calmed down, it wasn't so tender that it would imply that it was broken. Liam calms down pretty quick, he'd stopped crying within 10 minutes or so (SOAKING up the attention from all the non-parents at the dinner party who were fawning over him, of course - the other mom in the room and I were both like "oh, boy here he goes again" when he started to fall - "flying squirrel monkey" leaps are a fairly common occurance around this kid - and maintained our composure pretty well after impact). There was at least one other "mandated reporter" in the room (Garvin is one, being a public school teacher and all), possibly two, so at least if we HAD needed to take him to the emergency room it may have been less of a legal defensive posturing needed than what our friends went through last year when their daughter somehow managed to hurt her arm in her sleep (probably caught in the rail of her bed and wrenched that way was the best guess, as I remember). It would have been the same ER so that was running through my head as the bruise developed. The world sucks that the ER docs HAVE to think that way whenever a kid shows up injured. I understand it, but it still sucks. Wish I had a better idea of what to do to try to improve the situation, not like we can really all have constant alibis as parents every moment of the day and night... and it sucks even more that sometimes it feels like that would be a good way to prevent some of the tense accusing looks exchanged in ERs everywhere across the country.

Liam just dozed off as I was typing, so I'll save this as a draft and include pictures below. Sorry for any discontinuity.

Here are a few pictures from February of Liam (reached the upload limit for photos and didn't spot the one of his bruise so I'll have to include that in a later post):

helping Mama crochet Piglet's blanket

Feeding a "berry" (actually a wooden bead) to the pig puppet he got as a Chinese New Year gift

Wearing Daddy's hoodie after getting cold eating the Chinese jello candy thingies


Helping Daddy shovel snow from the Valentine's Day storm

Awestruck wonder at the "nose-man" (he says "snow" when it's falling but it's "nose-man" for some reason) Daddy helped him make (the snow was too light/airy to pack well so Daddy couldn't make a bigger snowman, Liam doesn't seem to mind though).

"Me-um hug nose-man" (the Tigger hat is too freakin' cute for words, isn't it?)

Finished gift baby blanket

Here's a picture of the baby blanket I completed last night (not for our baby, for a friend's baby - not naming names in case the recipient reads this blog by any chance). The center sunflower is from a pattern I found online (the link to which is on the other computer so I'll have to edit to include it later - photograph is on the home office computer). The original square pattern did not have leaves, I created those and then had to figure out how to add the blue around it to keep the effect. It has a 3-dimensional aspect to it that doesn't photograph well - the flower petals stick up and the tips of the leaves curl inward (intentionally). The brown center of the sunflowers use a puff-stitch for dimensionality also. Yarn used was Caron Simply Soft in "chocolate", "lemonade", "dark sage", and "berry blue". It wound up requiring slightly more than one skein of blue, but there's enough of all the other colors to probably make another blanket (which I may, though edged in yellow instead as there's not as much green left).

I'll get instructions up sometime in case folks want them (and so I can refer back to them if I forget how I did it!).

Oh, and whenever I make a 9-square baby blanket, I usually leave openings around the center square to thread the carseat buckles through - this one has those holes but they don't show up in the picture (there's one at the center of each straight side of the middle square). The blanket is a bit on the small side (haven't measured it but I'm pretty sure it's not quite 30 inches), good size for a car blanket or to drape over a carrier carseat while transporting a sleeping baby in bright daylight, or for laying on a baby sleeping in your lap... but not "crib sized". I rarely make crib sized blankets (partially because my kids don't sleep in cribs so I'm not actually certain what the dimensions are, partially because they take more yarn ;) ).

I can be "commissioned" to make similar blankets pretty easily, feel free to ask if you you or a friend is expecting. I work prayers for the health and joy of the child into every stitch.

edit: The original square (sans leaves and the adaptions I had to do to make it square again after that) is at http://www.geocities.com/snflwr1105/GrandmasSunflower.html

Blanket poem

This is a first-draft of a poem I wrote during church on Sunday... may have been longer if my Palm's batteries weren't nearly empty but right now I'm not sure if I'm going to expand it or not, just needed to put it somewhere that I could find it again later! Feel free to comment on it if you feel so moved.



Hands worked magic, weaving a blanket
just for me
as my own hands formed -
miraculously
tiny fingers to tangle in their steadfast stitches
clutch tight
to these threads
holding so firmly to this new life.

(started 2007.03.04.11.04)