Stephieface

I’ve spent the better part of this week watching a TV station I’m not sure I’m supposed to have. I’m addicted because of one show, and one show alone……

Ninja Warrior!

Its like watching my own personal station of train wrecks…. I simply cannot look away. Aside from the awesomely painful looking wipeouts and slipups, I love that the bestest of the bestest competitors are just average dudes. They aren’t professional athletes or olympians… they’re just dudes- dudes you might know, dudes you could be married to. They’re just….. guys….. and that is what I love best about the whole show.

The show even has regular contenders and what they call the ‘Ninja All Stars’…. the All Stars aren’t necessarily winners (of which in 10 years the show has been on there have only been 2 winners…. period) but guys who compete often and compete well…… like:
Toshihiro Takeda who is a fireman
Shingo Yamamoto who is a gas station manager (and competes in his Mobil Gas uniform and khakis)
Bunpei Shiratori who is a government clerk
Shinji Kobayashi who is a garbage man (a garbage man people!)
and my favoritest Ninja Warrior competitor of all freaking time……. Makoto Nagano who is a fishing boat captain (and a cutie)And these men progressed further than US olympic athletes (jumping and tumbling athletes being beaten at…… jumping and freaking tumbling by garbage men and fishing boat captains!).

I watch the different episodes with a fever… I wonder how the Mister would fare… I wonder if he would be a freaking giant at 5′10″. I love the announcer who mocks the contestants as they compete (for example, in one season there is a tranvestite who the announcer refers to as the “mysterious hormone cocktail”) while equally cheering them on.

Want to see why I am so addicted? Watch this clip from the show. This is all Makoto Nagano going through the 4 stages of the competition.
Stage 1: Note that the first log he climbs up rolls from side to side- just so you know (he goes up it so fast it appears stationary), and the one bridge thingy spins
Stage 2: Note that he’s swinging from real chains there people, actual pinchy your hands chains. He also has to Spider Climb, do a log roll, jump on to a chain thingy and spin it around to the platform on the other side, and pick up and go under 3 weighted doors (you see the weight of the door in the corner)
Stage 3: Note this is the Hell stage, its the longest (which is why no time limit) and its all upper body. The body prop (second challenge thingy) has gaps to try and knock you off your balance (you can’t really tell this since the obstacle is see thru glass) – additionally note that the curtain… is just a curtain there is nothing there but fabric. Additionally, the ledge climby thing that looks like this ___——___ the ledge is only 2 inches wide, he’s supporting himself on his fingertips.
Stage 4: Note (since you may not know japanese and may not watch the US subtitled version) he has to climb straight up between those walls, after 15 seconds passes the two walls are supposed to start pulling away from one another, then he has to climb another 30 feet of free swinging rope.

He makes it look mad easy, but its not (he is just that super suave). They also change up challenges once they’ve been defeated by a season’s worth of players, so even if you compete every year its never the same course twice. If you listen during the video, you can see and hear him talking to someone off screen… he’s talking to the other All Stars who are giving him encouragement and advice (as well as the usual man like “You can swim right? Cause we’re not coming into that pool under there if you fall in and saving you”).

I wish the US had shows like this, where the only real competitor you have is yourself. Never have I loved the every man more… seriously.

Mind you, I’m not a knitting pattern writer of epic proportions like Knit&Tonic Wendy, or Stefanie Japel. I write small patterns for small things, like the knitted DEATH of Rats. Most often as I’m making something, inspiration comes in the form of something I have read…. like Terry Pratchett novels, Girl Genius online comics, or random dollar store novelry about vampires. My current project on the needles is yet another car seat/stroller blanket (the last one being this star blanket here), this time inspired by Piers Anthony Xanth novels. I’m hardly close to being done (I think I’m at 1/8 maybe), but that’s my current knitting- pattern to follow shortly this week.

It wasn’t until I had kids of my own that I valued the wonder that is the Carseat/Stroller blanket. I thought all baby blankets could only be huge and ginormous- after having Sam I discovered how wrong that could be. For starters, Sam refused to sleep in a crib as a newborn. I would change him, feed him, and get him to sleep….. then slowly lower him into his crib only to have him wake screaming bloody murder the minute his little body touched crib mattress. To get him to sleep in his crib he had to sleep on his belly… totally against what the doctors and PSAs tell you to do (“put your baby to sleep on their backs- or they’ll suffocate/SIDs”). So when the Mister or my MIL would place Sam in his crib on his belly peacefully sleeping…. I would wake up every 5 minutes in frantic panic checking to see if my baby was still breathing. After a week of hardly any sleep…. see waking up every 5 minutes in addition to breastfeeding a little boobhound…. the stress of allowing Sam to sleep how he obviously wanted to got to me.

So I put him to sleep in the only thing I had besides his crib at the time….. his carseat…. and there he slept for the first 3 months of his life. This was super convienient…. he was super portable (even if he was sleeping like a baby log)- if I needed to go anywhere I only had to click his seatbelt and go, no moving him around. Most carseats have a curved bottom, perfect for rocking a fussy baby when you’re half asleep from exhaustion… it has a handle and everything.

He was sleeping on his back in something he would actually sleep in, he was close by, he was safe and warm, and he was all cuddled tight and happy. Life was bearable again, the only issue being that his blankets were too gosh darn big. They were made for a baby sleeping in a crib…. not a baby sleeping in carseat with easily 1/4 of the space. While the blankets I had made for great covers (my kids, as babies, are like baby birds… they sleep in their carseat and the big blanket covers the whole seat like a tent- they go right to sleep) I couldn’t actually use one on the baby, there was too much fabric. I would encounter the same issue with strollers… the blankets would drag, get caught in the wheels, and fall out on the dirty ground because there was just too much blanket.

Then one day I had an idea… why not make a small blanket, just big enough to cover the baby in the carseat? I sewed the first version ever, which was $1 a yard flannel from Walmart. It was about 18inches x18inches and it was perfect. Since then I’ve made quite a few small blankets just big enough to cover baby while in the carseat or stroller, so if you have ever wondered why when I make “baby blankets” they seem so wee……… now you know….. its because they are wee.

*By the way, doctors say that you shouldn’t let baby sleep in their carseats because of how they sit in the seat, and how this isn’t good for their backs because of the angle. However, when it comes to newborns, mommies, needing sleep, and general all around mental health of everyone involved I say whatever works…. works.

There’s a Name That Colorway contest over at Knitting Up a Storm, go check it out!
“NAME THAT COLORWAY” RULES:
1. First, come up with the perfect colorway name. Jokesters might gain extra merit, as long as it’s to good humor. Post on THIS post’s comment page ONLY!! Thanks.
2. Post these rules on your blog & your colorway idea. That way, no one will use something like it, by mere freak accident. Who ever finds out about this contest on your blog must refer you on this comment page below, before participating in the contest. (This is kind of like Lotus’ Knits contest idea. But we will use a poll too…)
–>If you see your name (or blog address) on my comment page below, you can add another colorway name idea! The more referals for you, the better! Good luck to you all!
3. The top 3 best names will be put on a poll, so you all can vote!
4. Contest ends: Sunday, July 29th @ midnight!

So, the sooner you comment, the better chance you have of getting another go. lol.

Last year I made a dumb decision… I cut my hair myself…. and its been a whole year since my hair has been touched with a sharp implement of any type, by anyone. So, when faced with the fact that I have terrible never ever able to wear it down mommy hair I decided to go and get it cut professionally.
But where to go? Its not like I have a salon I visit like clockwork and a stylist I tell all my secrets to.

This was solved instantly when the Mister mentioned that he needed to get a new tire for our van (but never actually got to it). Where can one go for a tire and a haircut all at the same place?

Oh yes… Walmart.

I’ll be honest, I expected the worst. I only ever see old ladies in there getting their hair repermed and recolored. How would I, a 30-something hippy punk mom of 4, look when I left there? I was a little more than nervous, but decided to go ahead anyway. So off I drove to the nearest Super Walmart and in I walked into their hair salon where a young lady named Tammy immediately took me in and got to work.

Let me say this, in the 6 years that the Mister and I have been together he has only commented on a new haircut once… and that’s because I was in tears when I picked him up from work and he could easily see what was the cause (“I’m growing my hair out” apparently meant “Please chop off all you can” to that particular stylist). When I got home, he looked at my hair appraisingly and said “Wow, it looks really good”… which means it looks fanfreakinttastic in Misterese. So in the end, I have to say it was the best $13 (and that’s with a shampoo) I have ever spent.The picture is crap, but I assure you the haircut is not. AND just because I believe in photo honesty…. Same haircut, this morning, before coffee:But look- I have eyebrows again!

Probably my favorite part of my own last post had to be the pic of evil Danny….well I say it was a pic of Danny- it was really of a picture of Danny’s evil twin Manny (you know he’s an evil twin because he has a mustache and a goatee and sports a evil looking monacle). Evil twins can be a hassle, I should know…. I have my own evil twin.

She lives in Dormont which is a small community right outside Pittsburgh city limits. This is no lie, nor is it an exagerration…. she does actually exist. I don’t know her name, but I know that people I know have seen her and swore it was me. I even had a debate with an old coworker who swore that I was in a restaurant 2 booths away from him and how could I be so stuck up as to not acknowledge him (I wasn’t even there, I was working that night). A friend of mine saw her walking down the street and chased her down screaming my name, wondering what he had done to piss me off since I was ignoring him. I mean, sure, she does kind of resemble me but you’d think my friends would know she wasn’t me….I don’t wear a monacle.

Last night was the first “bad” night with Daniel. It started yesterday when I was making dinner… he woke up and would just not be consoled by anything. He cried all through dinner, he cried all through both episodes of Hell’s Kitchen, he cried after the Mister came home from work.
He cried long after everyone else went to bed. He cried lots.

Now, I’m no newb when it comes to taking care of babies. I know the following routine like second nature now….
Baby cries
1. Check butt
2. Check tummy
3. Check for needing to be held
4. Check for older brothers possibly pinching his arms when I’m not looking and maybe whispering that he’s fat in his ears to hurt his feelings
…. Its rather simple.

However, last night- no matter what I did, Daniel would not stop crying. I checked for a fever, I changed all of his blankets just in case one was too fuzzy and was pissing him off (and subsequently changing the other just in case it wasn’t fuzzy enough and was pissing him off). I checked for gas (you know cause they have that wee little gauge with the “E” and the “F” on it [he was at half a tank]). There was nothing that I could divine was the cause of his (and therefor my) distress.

He stayed up all night, and by ‘All night’ I mean that he finally went to sleep at 8:30 this morning. This morning, just in time for the other kids to wake up.

Daniel 1 : Mommy 0

I revealed to the Mister that with this experience I now know that if I ever get captured and interrogated by Nazi Babies, I’ll break about 6am.

Though, after a cup (or five) of coffee this morning, I may have figured out the source of his pissed offedness……. he has a double crown:And he just knows that it will make his hair stick up all uncool in highschool- as if being the youngest brother of 4 wasn’t going to be hard enough.

The Mister and I were talking this morning about something that has us completely excited (and… as we are married I bet you can guess what I’m not talking about [ha!])…. 300 is coming out on DVD at the end of this month. If you listen hard enough in the silence of a summer evening, regardless of where you are in the world, the sounds of my squeeing can be heard.

Meanwhile, I saw this on the soon to be released schedule for DVDs:Voyagers!

What is Voyagers you may ask…. well you’ll probably ask since you aren’t an 80’s TV freak like me (seriously… my sister once called me up with a vague description of a show she was trying to remember from when we were kids saying “It had these two ladies and a guy, they sang songs, and I think there was maybe an elephant” to which I cut her off and replied “Yes, that was Sharon, Lois, and Bram’s Elephant Show…. which came on Nickelodeon right after Pinwheel”… you should ask me about Manimal some time… or even…. Simon & Simon…. maybe Jake and the Fatman if you’re feeling plucky). Phineas Bogg and this fuzzy haired kid would travel through time (for all of a whole 20 episodes since it was cancelled after one season) to fix events where history gets messed up or needs a push. While I can hardly remember any of the episodes… I do heartily recall the insane 6-year-old’s crush I had on the guy that played Phineas Bogg… I mean really…. I had some serious taste as a 6-year-old:I can even recall that year when we went to the Easter Egg Roll at the Whitehouse, the Voyager kid was there signing autographs (back in the day you were given a wooden egg and all manner of different celebrities were there to autograph them) yet sadly not the Phineas Bogg guy…. which made me an unhappy little 6-year-old (but I was quickly revived when I was handed a Cadbury egg and a Peter Porker/Spiderpig comic).

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In other news, today I received a package in the mail from Donnaz! She ran a contest on her blog a bit ago, about why her apartment is named Rhett. You can read my sadly incorrect but still freakingly awesome answers in the comments of the posts. While I did not officially “win” the contest (that was no-blog-rachel [who now has a blog]) I did manage to score myself some brownie points with my aforementioned freakingly awesome answers and Donnaz sent me a prize anyway. How awesome is she?
Do you want to know how awesome she is? She totally spoiled this self proclaimed stitch marker ho with…. you guessed it…. stitch markers! (woo hoo!) You’ll have to pardon the ooky pictures though, the stitch markers are freaky awesome- but my camera might be on strike or something because I couldn’t get a really clear picture of them for the life of me. And believe you me, I tried.
She sent me a purple and black set:
She Sent me a brown set:
And she sent a super awesome teensy tiny dice set:Which are by far my favorites and will make the Mister very jealous. Wherever did you get such teensy weensy dice Donnaz? Muhahaha, I will be the envy of my people (my people being nerds, freaks, and geeks) for having dice stitch markers… or as my people call them “d6’s” (d6 meaning “that dice with the 6 sides”). Here are the d6 stitch markers with a full grown d6:AND, to add to my nerdiness factor, they are black and blue which were the Mister’s “colors” when we used to LARP and his character name was “Chance” (Chance:Dice… you get the connection? I am such a geek). She also included a little red, white, and blue something for my recent independence:Also in dice. You’ve made this Stitch Marker Ho very happy!

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If you are one of those people for whom Friday the 13th (today) is a dreadful, terrible, awful, no good, very bad day… I leave you with this to brighten your triskaidekaphobia:

Wow…..the weight loss gurus were right………. the difference a whole 10lbs can make……..

Here is me at the beginning of June (I got a bit bigger, but have no end of June pics):

Here is me right now, 4 days after birth:
Seeing these pictures kind of makes me feel like that Barbie doll that came out in the early 90’s that was pregnant and she came with an accessoried flat belly (that you could just pop off the prego belly and pop on the flat one) so she could play tennis or go out on the town in a slinky black enemble after just having twins.

Thank you everyone for your happy well wishes! I feel downright spritely now that I don’t have a Daniel hanging off my spine…. and I can see my feet!!

Jenica asked about the delivery and the tubal ligation in the comments of the last post…. so here goes…..

Well, first here’s an obligatory pic of Daniel…. then we’ll get to the answer:I’d been having contractions on and off for awhile… some were Braxtons and some almost had me willing to walk to the hospital. This would be pregnancy #1 that I never had a visit to the hospital with false labor- woohoo! Saturday, I had been having contractions all day- but they were random and were as far from regular as you could get. Starting Saturday night, the contractions were getting pretty distracting so I went to bed early…. you know just in case.

Whenever I do anything just in case, whatever the “case” was never happens.

About 1am I woke up and started timing them…. they started coming pretty regular- lasting a minute and were 7 minutes apart. They did this though for a while, so I told the Mister to go ahead and go to sleep and if he hears me screaming and banging on the wall of the stairs to the bedroom that it was the real thing- though, I doubted that it was. I got bored in between contractions so I started doing things like getting Sam and TJ’s clothes together (just in case), took a shower and shaved my legs (just in case), ate a small snack (just in case), changed the garbage bag and started writing a grocery list of stuff we were out of (just in case), and made sure the cell phones had all the numbers of family we would need in them (just in case).

About 5am the contractions started getting really distracting… ie, painful…. so we woke up the Flying Diaperinis, got them dressed, and shuttled them off to their Aunt Rachel’s. By the way, on the way to Rachel’s we discovered the lair of the ice cream man (I actually passed his house with the truck parked in the driveway!) and in between labored breaths my “happy place” became plotting revenge on the ice cream man. Then it was off to the hospital.

We got to the hospital at about 6:30am. They signed me in and hooked me up to the monitors in triage. I received another ultrasound because the doctor wanted to check on Daniel’s fluid… it was a quick and dirty ultrasound (all business) so I wasn’t able to get a sneak peek. They were worried because they said his fluid was low and signed me in. I was still only dialated at 4cm though. So they hooked me up to an epidural and I was shuffled upstairs.

There I stayed for a while, being checked every now and again to see how dialated I was. The new doctor decided to break my bag of waters, then made a remark about how could the other doctor think I was low… the fluid was endless! I was leaking fluid until the birthing began.

Around 2ish I started feeling the contractions through the epidural… even though I made sure to do my pancake flips every hour. (With TJ, I fell asleep on my right side and no one woke me to flip so all the epidural ran to one side of the body- so I felt the contractions on one side and absoloutely nothing on the other) About 2:30 I felt like I was going to poop all over the bed with every contraction…. this told the docs that it was “time”. So they had me start pushing, and once I started I didn’t want to stop!

Nurse: Okay, you can relax now and take a cleansing breath
Me: No! I want to push!
N: Ummm… okay
(pushing)
N: Okay relax a bit and get ready for another contraction
M: No I want to push! I have to push!

This went on for the 20 minutes of labor. At one point they wanted me to look in the giant cooking school mirror they had set up so the birthing mom can see… but I was a woman on a mission and wanted to stay concentrated on taking the biggest poo of my life (this is why the Mister affectionally refers to the FDs as “turds”) and refused to look.

Then, out he popped, and the poo was over. They plopped him all greasy on my stomach- which was the first time that ever happened too. It was awesome.

For the whole time we were waiting for me to dialate, the docs kept worrying about my iron levels. Would I need a transfusion? Could they actually do the tubal ligation safely? While they debated about that after the birth I snuggled up with Daniel. At 3 they shipped me off to the OR for my tubal.

The tubal ligation was weird. The room was cold, I was numb from the boobs down, and couldn’t move at all. They wheeled me past the blood they had on hand… just in case. They put me in a hairnet. They put a sheet up like a lean to tent over my head so that I couldn’t back seat operate. They tied my arms and legs down…. making me feel like I was being prepared for the soap opera version of a lethal injection. I was awake and could hear the two docs talking through the whole thing. Then it was done and I was wheeled back to my room where the Mister, my mom, and my MIL were waiting with Daniel.

Hours later I was snuggling the little bug and eating a Subway sub. Tukey with cheese and bacon… always my after birthing favorite.

Already people are remarking about how different I am after this birth than the other two. With the other two, I’m still in a sleepy sad sort of state. With this one I feel completely different. With the exception of needing the odd nap here and there, and being restricted in activity by stitches and doctor’s orders… I feel freaking awesome and energetic.

One thing may be the iron supplements I have to take 3 times a day because the Docs say I’m Iron Deficient. One thing may be that now I know if my Mister holds my hand, there won’t be a kid #5. One thing may be that I decided to bottle feed Daniel when I breastfed the others. Who knows what it could be- I’m just glad that it is.

Most people celebrate Independence Day on the 4th…. me, I’m celebrating it on the 1st from now on.

Would you like to know why?

Because the 1st is the day I earned my freedom…. my baby belly freedom that is!

Meet Daniel Benjamin!

Daniel was born on Sunday July 1st at 2:50pm. Daniel weighed in at a hefty 10.6lbs and was an impressive 21.5inches long! Imagine (if you will) if I had made it past my due date of July 12th… instead of giving birth, I would have simply just exploded and there he would have been…. kinda like a phoenix, but messier.

Marvel at his red chubby cheekness!! See his mommy loin bursting size! Be amazed by the fact that I squeezed that puppy out in 20 minutes! Amazed I say!

Cause I totally am.

Its completely worth not being able to poop or having to walk like I have watermelon shoved up my ass…. so completely worth it.