He’s in afternoon kindergarten. The bus is supposed to arrive at 12:14. Last night we packed his school bag and hung it up by the front door. By 10:30 a.m. today he had dressed himself (handsomely, I might say), with his name-tag lanyard already around his neck. by 11:15 a.m. he was eating a well-balanced lunch and by 11:54 a.m. he was brushing his teeth.  Plenty of time! My plans are working!

But then (as always in my house) one minute before we were going leave, there was a clothing mishap, and he had to change. Then I noticed his handsome shirt had a hole in it. And his new socks looked ridiculous with the shorts he had to change into. So we had to come up with a brand-new First Day of School outfit, and I should have bought him new clothes, and nothing matched, and it’s 92 degrees outside and all his summer clothes have been through a summer of playing and camping and marshmallows, and I can’t send you to school in that! And why don’t these socks fit? and why didn’t I think to buy you a new outfit and then forbid you to wear it until 12:01 p.m.? You’ll have to wear this. Hurry! Shoot, those socks won’t work either (“But mom, I really don’t think we have time to change.”). Where are your shoes! COME ON LET’S GO!

Run out the door, hoping for enough time to snap some photos before meeting the bus at the end of the block, forgetting a crucial element: Mackie. And he needs his shoes on to come with us down the street. And he can’t find them. Tear through the basket of shoes by the door until I find something that will fit his feet. OK COME ON LET’S GO. Snap a picture in front of the house; it’s blurry. RRRRRUMBLE. What’s that noise? The BUS? Already? 10 minutes early? Shoot. WAIT WHERE IS IT GOING? HEY! BUS! We’re still a block away and the bus isn’t stopping. Isn’t it supposed to stop? RUN RUN RUN. By God my kid is not missing the bus on the first day of school. As God is my witness! Et cetera. Yelling at Mackie over my shoulder to wait right there on the sidewalk, I’m just going to get Owen across the street to catch the bus. Not a good idea. Mackie is crying, Owen is maybe freaking out a little but still running faster than his 9.5 -months pregnant mom, we jay-walk (jay-run) across the street to the corner, the bus keeps driving forward — did the driver even see us? STOP DRIVING, YOU STUPID DRIVER. We reach the bus and Owen runs right up the steps and disappears. The bus sits. And sits. And sits. What the rock? The bus sits. I at least try to find the top of Owen’s head through the windows, and my heart is pounding, and the baby is protesting this little sprint. My neighbor reaches my side, having escorted Mackie across the street to stand with us, because she’s an angel (and what was I thinking, leaving him on the other side of the road?!) and he’s crying, because his mother and brother just ran off without him to catch a bus, and baby, I’d cry too.

The bus sits. WHAT THE HELL. Why did I run? If I had known the bus was just going to SIT THERE, across the street, stressing me out; if I had known it would be 10 minutes early, I could have planned everything 10 minutes earlier. We still would have had a last-minute emergency, but at least I still could have, would have, taken my sweet time and kissed my big boy goodbye, taken a picture with my cell phone to send to my mother, soaked up the importance of such a big day — the first day of school! Leaving me, on a bus! Doing his own thing! — instead of trying to catch his eye through the window, consoling my youngest, feeling like this is not the way the first day of kindergarten is supposed to happen. Instead of standing here, panting, heart racing, cursing my own inability to be safely early to anything.

Realizing that my boy, if left to his own devices, would have been calmly standing at the bus stop, 15 minutes early, in mis-matched socks and a clean (albeit holey) shirt.

I have been having false labor pains since Tuesday. I came home from work that night convinced that I’d be holding my baby by Friday. Ha! Good one! Oldest trick in the fetal playbook, don’t you know. Contractions and dilation mean nothing. You shouldn’t believe you are in labor until the nurses are pestering you to sign the birth certificate.

I decided to check my archives to see how it all went down the last time I went into labor on my own: five years ago, with Owen. Well. He was born Jan 5. On Dec 23, I was 2 cm dilated. On Jan 3, my contractions were 20 minutes apart. So basically, I was in labor for two weeks. Which means that, as my due date is not until Sept 14, I should abandon hope of going early with this one, dammit. No matter how ready I am.

Most of the time you can find me on the couch, panting, with my feet on the coffee table, counting down the days and lifting my shirt away from the taut skin of my belly, which has stretchmarks in a rainbow of colors, including two pinpricks of red where I swear the skin just gave up and split.

But aside from all these physical complaints, I’m excited. We are excited. We are forever talking about this baby. The kids like to talk to her through my navel. I like to imagine holding her and feeding her and rocking her. The overall atmosphere in our house is one of joyous anticipation (tempered, during Iain’s and my more realistic moments, by what I confess is the sheer terror of someone who has become accustomed to sleeping at night). But mostly, we are really happy and really excited and really eager for her to get here and join us. (And OK, fine, no one moreso than me.)

First, I finally finished the vintage-sheet quilt that I’ve been working on for a hundred years. I used store-bought quilt binding, which is wider than I like, and machine sewed it on the front and hand-sewed the other side to the back.

I also brought out a few yards of vintage binding I bought at a garage sale in the spring to bind a regular birds-eye cloth diaper. I saw a similar project in Lotta Jansdotter’s Simple Sewing For Baby, which I love. I used my vintage Kenmore’s binder attachment to sew it on.

Land sakes, what a cool little gadget! It makes it look so professional and catches it perfectly on both sides. Not bad for sixty years old.

Then I sewed a little doll baby with a removable fleece diaper for Mackie. I used the pattern from Anna Maria Horner’s Handmade Beginnings (also a fabulous book). Sadly, my version of this doll (which was so cute in the book!) came out scary. What looked like a good substitute for linen came out grey and gross as “skin,” and I obviously misread the arm directions or seam allowance somehow, resulting in flipper arms. Thankfully he seemed to like it regardless. I even sewed him a little sling to put her in, though that seems to have vanished. Maybe it will reappear once he sees his sister riding in one.

Finally, I sorted my gallon Zip-loc bag of vintage 2” squares (also picked up at a garage sale) into lights and darks, added a few cuts from my own collection, and divided them into two paper bags for random piecing. I decided to go with alternating light-dark nine-patches, which will eventually be turned into a lap quilt for the living room. I hate fussy piecing and advance planning (as you can probably tell from the vintage sheet quilt) and I like things to look like they came from somebody’s grandma’s house, so this is turning out well.

Pardon the crappy cell phone picture.

Anyway, that’s what I’ve made so far. My To-Make list is stupidly ambitious (not to mention long), so I’m counting it a victory that at least I got this much done!

I don’t believe baby girls need 100% pink decor, but I thought 100% blue might be a little unfair. I figured that since her room is already painted blue, and so far all her Baby Containment Units are blue, that it would be nice if I tried my hand and updating a cover to be something just a little more girl-friendly. Just a tad.

This project was stupid easy and quick. I traced the old cover, which thankfully had no seams, onto freezer paper for a stencil, and cut out one muslin backing, three layers of poly batting, and materials to piece the cover. The cover was just two seams all the way down the line. Then I sandwiched it all together and bound it (kind of sloppily, I confess) with some vintage quilt binding I’d picked up at a garage sale earlier in the summer. Three long buttonholes — two at the shoulders, one at the seat — allow access for the straps. Now I just have to tack on elastic loops and hooks or buttons for this to wrap around the arms of the swing seat, and I’m done.

Ingredients:

• Ikea RITVA curtain remnants for “linen”
• Wild Thyme in “birds” by Carolyn Gavin for the center panel

I finished this yesterday, and today when I sat down at my machine to tack on the elastic loops, my presser foot wouldn’t lift. I thought the foot was broken at first, but then I realized the lifter was doing jack-all, just flapping around. I took the whole side of the machine off. I sat at my sewing table in the dining room, surrounded by tiny screwdrivers and machine pieces, going DURRRR. Google helped not. My manual suggested (rather contemptuously) that I seek the nearest Singer dealer for service. I was thisclose from running out the door to buy a new machine (I am NESTING! I have THINGS I need to SEW! I am also CRAZY) when Iain came in from his workshop.

Not only does he build furniture, but he fixes sewing machines! Ladies and gentlemen, my husband.

He tightened one screw, said something about “the piston,” and finished his pizza bagel on his way back out to the shop.

PHEW.

Short story is, I can continue sewing baby things without resorting to my vintage Kenny (she doesn’t do zig-zag) or dropping bank on an overpriced new machine. Score!

So, what next? Crib sheets? Finish the vintage-sheet quilt? Crib bumpers? Flannel receiving blankets? I can’t decide!

I am 34 weeks pregnant. I have anywhere from 3 weeks to 8 weeks left to go (at 37 weeks, they’ll let labor progress without intervention; it’s 42 weeks before they make noises about inducing).

We still have a bit more preparation to do for baby, but if she came tomorrow we’d be mostly OK.

No belly pics right now because I can’t find a shirt that covers my entire baby bump anymore. I wonder sometimes if maternity designers have ever seen a real live pregnant woman. I think they base their designs off of regular models with PMS.

Iain has been building us more furniture. This time it’s a few pieces from a woodworking magazine. I’m super excited to see how it comes out. Our agreement is: he builds it, because I’m no good at math and being exact, and I will do the stain and finishing. So if you have any favorite stains/tips in that regard, let me know.

The boys have been  playing with Legos pretty much nonstop and singing Christmas songs in the most annoying voices they can think up. There’s not too much else I can say about that, except to convey my pride that I haven’t tossed either of them through the window yet.

“… um. Eggs are for cooking. What do you want an egg for?”

“Well, ninjas in the old days used to take an egg and poke holes in it with needles and blow out the insides and then fill it with broken glass to use for a weapon.”

“…”

“I PROMISE I wouldn’t throw it at any PEOPLE!”

(This post was just going to be about books I am reading but I had to show you this miniature that Iain made to show me what my new bookshelves will look like when he builds them. Cue: “Awwww.”)

Anyway. Books I am reading/have recently read:

1. Nurture Shock, Po Bronson. Reminds me of a great Weird Al tune called Everything You Know Is Wrong.
2. Still Life: Adventures in Taxidermy, Melissa Milgrom. A Mary Roach-esque trip down Dead Animal Lane.
3. Twelfth Night, William Shakespeare. Crossdressing, mostly.

So! Now you go. I’m due for another visit to the library and I need  you to tell me what to get.

Check out my smartphone post on Meylah.com, and also this one about top iPhone apps for online biz types. Did you know there’s even an Etsy app? You do now! Bam!

I love these homemade cards from Amy at Angry Chicken. It’s an old post of hers from more than a year ago, but the idea still makes me smile. I found this today while browsing old archives while procrastinating.

And lord knows my kids say enough awesome things to be quoted on a blank card.

I haven’t made anything by hand in what feels like months. Well, except for a few things in the kitchen, but that’s not very exciting (ham casserole which went straight into the freezer) and frankly it is too damn hot to cook. Maybe it’s too damn hot to do anything. I certainly don’t want to touch yarn or handle a quilt when it’s 85 degrees INSIDE the house and about 112 degrees in the bowling ball hanging off my belly. I am not even really inspired to do anything but sit on the couch and complain and stare at the laundry basket that has been in the living room for a week.

But cards I could do. As long as I don’t have the laptop on my lap, making my legs all sweaty.

» angry chicken: homemade cards.