Gold Finch and a Rescue

We had a bird (not this one) get caught in our squirrel proof feeder the other night.  I went out to hang diapers and glanced over at the feeder and saw a little sparrow dangling from it.  I ran inside and grabbed some gloves, thinking that I was going to have to dispose of him, but when I went to move the little bird body, he flapped his wings!  It was horrible.  He was dangling by his neck out of the stupid feeder!  

I was pretty upset by this.  All during my pregnancy I would sob whenever I heard or read about any animal that got hurt or killed and I think that's still sort of lingering.

Anyway, I got my husband and we took the feeder down and moved it to the grass.  I held onto the little bird body and tried to gently ease him out, but his beak was caught under the lip of the feeder hole.  My husband opened up the back of the feeder and tried to dislodge him with a stick.  Nothing.  I was so afraid that we'd have to leave him to suffer or, worse, put him out of his misery.   

I was still holding onto his little body (trying to give him some relief by holding him level with the feeder) and we were discussing the possibility of transporting the bird to the Wildlife Rehabilitation Center, when, all of a sudden, the bird wiggled loose and flew off!  I guess he just needed some help so that he could get his head out himself.  Yay!

And our neighbors rescued a little fledgling from the jaws of their pooch tonight.  

It's a treacherous world out there our fine feathered friends.

Saturday Indulgence

The baby has settled into a routine of eating around 5am and then sleeping until about 9am, so mornings are the only time I get to myself.  Unfortunately, weekday mornings are spent working, so on Saturdays, I like to head out of the house.  I put the monitor on my husband's bedside table, though I'm pretty sure he'd find a way to sleep through her hollering, and I go to the Farmer's Market.

And I eat gelato.

That's right.  Around 7am, almost every Saturday, you can find me scarfing down a cup of Chihuahua Chocolates' gelato at the St. Paul Downtown Farmer's Market.

Here's today's sampling:

Strawberry Rhubarb, though I guess this is technically sorbetto.  Still delicious.  Still in my belly.  Not in yours.

I've also tried their chocolate-hazelnut and their coconut flavors.  The chocolate one was super good, but I've decided to try all flavors over the course of the summer.  You do realize that nursing mothers need as many calories as a rower to sustain breastfeeding, don't you?  

Today the baby did not want to go back to sleep, so I hauled her to the market (where she promptly fell asleep), and I ate my sorbetto while maneuvering the stroller down the lanes and around the people.  

And the stroller is a pretty awesome way to store all purchases.   I always have to get my gelato first, so that I can go fill my arms with goodies, but with the stroller I could load it up and still have my gelato.  Today the stroller was filled with:

pretty flowers

corn

fingerlings!

Crafting Kitty

Snap to it!

I've always used Dritz products for installing snaps.  I tried those pliers and the metal snaps, but it is so hard to manipulate them.  I tried doing it by myself at Christmas when I made a hipster bag, but I was 7 months pregnant and felt that I'd inadvertently push that baby out with each squeeze of the pliers.  I had to enlist the help of my husband to get that snap installed.  And if I wasn't using the pliers, then I was using the hammer tool to insert snaps.  But you can't use that unless you are outside on the concrete, because it will surely dent your wood floors.

Ugh.

Enter the Babyville Boutique pliers and plastic snaps.  I bought them with a 50% off coupon at JoAnns, but otherwise I think they cost like $20.00, which is pretty steep for a tool, but the first time I used it without the aid of any man or woman, I fell in love!  I think it has to do with the fact that the snaps are plastic and the plastic bends easier than the metal dritz snaps.  Plus the snaps come in all sorts of pretty colors.

Anyhoo, the plier set from Babyville comes with a bunch of things:  different sized snap parts, screwdriver for installing said parts, awl for poking through your fabric, and pliers, of course.  The snaps come separately.  

Anyway, you mark out where you want the snaps to go, take the awl, poke it through the fabric and you've got your little hole for the snaps.

 Then you put the snap parts into the holes.  I just followed the directions on the back of the snap packet for the order of the snaps.

After placement, you squeeze them together with the pliers, like so:

Do it to both sides and you've got some nicely installed snaps.

I made bibs for my drooling monster and it was lickety-split getting them all installed.

I don't know if they will stand the test of time.  I'm sure those metal dritz snaps were made to last decades, but installation of them also feels like it takes decades.  So yay for pretty plastic snaps!

Have a Nice Day

I found this little greeting card at Rewind in N.E. Minneapolis for six bucks!  Some of the flowers are flocked and it even comes with a little pop out stand in the back.  It goes so well with the nursery...from the flowers to the colors to the brown-haired, blue-eyed gal on the card!  I want to get it framed and add it to the collection of art in this area:

But the picture is an odd size, so I can't just order a frame.  I think I have to go get one custom made.  Hopefully I can find one that is inexpensive (yet colorful!) at Wet Paint.

Kneighborly Knit

Our neighbor gave this to our little gal:

 Isn't it lovely?  She's super talented.  Check out all the different stitches in the sleeves:

I wish I knew how to knit.  That would be fun, but I suppose I have enough crafts on my plate to last me a while.  But maybe I can convince the neighbor to teach my daughter to knit!

Burp!

There are at least three gross things that I was not prepared for with Baby:

1.  Baby boogies.  For such a teeny nose, these are much bigger than I anticipated.  They keep coming out -- just like a magician's magic scarf.
2. Toe and finger lint.  Those little crevices collect oodles and oodles of lint.  Good news:  Now that she can suck her fingers, she's cleaning them on her own.  Toe sucking is imminent.
3. Behind the ears.  You know how you were always told to clean behind your ears as a kid?  Well, there's a reason for that.  First, it seems to get pretty dry back there, but one day I noticed a funky smell.  When I looked I saw that it was a bit inflamed and sort of, well, cheesy.  Ick.  My mother-in-law said that it's because milk dribbles behind her ears when she spits up and to take care of the chronic dryness, she suggested petroleum jelly.  We picked up some Burt's Bees Baby Jelly (minus the petroleum) and it's cleared up nicely.

And, of course, there's the poo, but I knew that was coming.  I did not realize, however, that it would be the consistency of soupy French's yellow mustard. 

And then there's the spit up.  The white, curdled, sour spit-up....blech. 

Before Baby I would have dry heaved at just the thought of spit-up, but now I've become so used to it that I'll even attempt to catch it in my palm if I see it coming and don't feel like having it dribble down our clothes.  Since that method is pretty gross, I had to make some burp cloths, which is what I did from 10:30 to midnight last night.

I was considering writing a tutorial, but I found one had already been done here and probably some other places.  I don't do any measuring when I make these, so I wouldn't be a good tutorialist anyway.  Anyway, I use prefold diapers to make these burp cloths and I just fit a piece of cotton or flannel to match the stitching along the middle section of the prefold, like so:

And then I press the edges in about 1/4", pin them, and topstitch them:

I made a few batches earlier this year and gave them to the girls that I met in my prenatal swimming and yoga classes:

And here's the collection I made last night: