Stephieface

I’m still waiting on the phone call about Danny’s MRI…. granted it’s 10am…. but I am waiting.

While I wait, I devise ways to keep myself occupied, like doing a personality comparisons on the Mister and I based on our coffee…

I always find it a little interesting to see where couples differ (his coffee on left, mine on right). Its also nice to see if you can divine something about someone in something so personal and yet so mundane as a cup of coffee… even down to cup choices. What’s your coffee look like (or tea, I’m flexible)?

Today was Danny’s MRI. I only got home a hour or two ago from it (1:15pm), but left this morning at 7:45am… I was there a while.

I’ve had an MRI myself when I was having habitual bouts of kidney stones, but for whatever reason Danny’s MRi had me terrified. The Mister (being a man) said I really had nothing to worry about and what was getting me so worked up. I really had no words for what I was feeling, but a doodle I made seemed to sum it up nicely… this was how I felt…

Yeah… that’s about right.

One of the most disturbing parts was Danny’s sedation. Because he’s a baby I had to halt feedings of milk by 3am, and clear liquids by 5 or 6am. His last milk bottle was a 10:30om the night before, and he had a juice bottle at 4AM… this worked out well since his appointment was scheduled for an 8:30 am sedation and 9:30 MRI. Thing is, we didn’t get seen until 10 or so and I still couldn’t give the kid anything to eat or drink. By the time they were ready to give him the sedatives he was already pissed off, the supposed sedation time passed by at least 2 hours. He gobbled down the sedative and continued to fuss. They covered him with wires and a sheet then had me hold him to get him to calm down until the sedatives took. They then turned down the lights and left me alone with my screaming angry pissed off hungry baby.

He fussed for 5 or so minutes, until his eyes suddenly sleepily rolled back into his head and he was out… his mouth went slack mid cry, his little tongue sticking out. I started to freak, I had already been warned by a couple of docs and a few nurses that there could be some terrible angry nasty evil side effects of the sedation. I whipped my head around to the machines, making peace with God and praying as hard as I could. His heart was beating fine and his blood pressure was good. I breathed a sigh of relief, still praying because I felt like a terrible mother for allowing the doctors to drug my baby.

You know that gut wrenching feeling when you watch a movie and somebody does something terrible to a baby, where you feel the bile start to creep up your throat from just having watched a fictitious rendition of a horrible unspeakable act? Yeah, that’s how I felt when his little body went suddenly limp. As I sat waiting, I would occasionally hold my finger under his nose to check thtat he was still breathing. My guilt had a taste, and it did not taste good.

Finally they came and lead me into the MRI room (after briefly checking me over for metals), when I divined that there was a nickel in my pocket nurses jumped me from all sides demanding to know if it was Canadian or not… I’m not kidding… Canuck coins can wreck shop in the MRI room.

I laid him down on the table and they began to remove old wires and add new wires and strap him down. Looking at his little body just laying there… I almost threw up twice. They asked if I wanted to stay in the room with him, and I really wanted to, however I began to cry at that point and almost threw up again so I said I’d just wait in the lobby since I really had to pee.

I sat in the waiting room, jittery and nervous. Everytime the door opened my head would snap around, but every parent in there was doing this so I wasn’t being much of an oddball.

They called me back after half an hour or so and Danny was already sitting up in the crib with all the nurses fluttering around him.

I don’t really find out until Monday what the results are, as far as I’m concerned though… the scary part is already over.

I am tired, I am the tired of tiredness that even the most tired would never dream of being.

You may think my weekend was huge, but it wasn’t. My last 24 hours has been.

1. last night I was discovering, with utmost sureness, that there is a mouse living in my stove. Knowing that I love squirrels unabashedly, yet when one moved in I thought this way…. try to imagine how I feel knowing there is a mouse in my house and I don’t like beings of the mouse-like variety.

2. I’ve been awake since 5am sterilizing everything I think the mouse may have remotely/possibly/theoretically ever touched… my skin crawls thinking there’s something living here that I didn’t willingly marry or give birth to.

3. Today was laundry day, I am two weeks behind. There was a lot of laundry.

4. I have to somehow magically get Zach to his mom’s today. I have a car I can use, but no car seats, and no babysitter. I wish Star Trek teleporter technology was a reality.

5. After a year or so of supposing to make Ben a DEATH of Rats toy, I just sat down this weekend and forced myself to knit him… a squid…..

Pattern for Squid-a-licious here can be found in this Etsy Shop.

I had a load of other things to do as well, but I think I may nap in order to prepare myself for my epic battle with the mouse…. its on….. on like Donkey Kong.

Its Easter Holiday weekend, and I don’t have too much to actually say today. So some quick fires:

To those people looking on my site for info about the yarn, laine borgesia dal 1850, I will make the info really simple for you to find…. its discontinued. When I made the Quickie Baby Sweater and Fran’s Hooded Baby Sweater (aka the Diaper Bag Sweater) I used Bernat’s Softee Chunky. The Quickie sweater takes exactly one skein (if you’re stingey with the CO yarn tail) and the Hooded Sweater takes 2 skeins (actually like a skein and a half… but they don’t sell half skeins).

I find it funny that one of the search terms that gets you to my site is: “ninja warrior mysterious hormone cocktail”. I know why this term works, I think its just funny.

Finally I leave you with this to get stuck in your heads for the rest of the day:

Yesterday, a wonderful package arrived…. a Chicco Smart Support Baby Backpack (in blue… which makes sense since we have all boys). So I am all set to carry Danny around when the Family Stephieface starts going camping here soonishly, I may even use it before then since strollers are becoming a bit of a hassle nowadays (especially since I end up carrying him anyways). Once it arrived we started trying it out. The minute the Mister got a look at me and Danny in the getup, he immediately likened us to Master Blaster…….

Cause who run Bartertown? Master Blaster run Bartertown….

(in case you have never seen Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, Blaster is a giant who wears a backpack with a midget, Master Blaster, riding in the back) So I can pretty much guarantee that I will be hearing that over and over this whole summer from the Mister.

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I don’t remember where I orginally found the link, but I recently stumbled upon a site called Tegaki E. Its a neat little site where people post up their artwork and such, and other people are encouraged to comment on it.

There’s a catch though….

You must make the art there on the site (no doing something in Photoshop and uploading it), and you aren’t allowed to type… this means all comments are written with a mouse or a tablet. Doodles grace the comments and you can get some really fun and interesting interactions from all the users there (commentors will occasionally draw extensions of your original, additions, or progressive scenes with your characters in them).

Its alot of fun, and you don’t have to be an artist, some of the pieces with the most responses I’ve seen were mouse written questions or requests. So don’t be afraid, check it out. Here are some things I’ve done on there so far (with a mouse)…..

When someone conplained that drawing with a mouse sucked…

When someone said to be wary of making things with rose petals because rose petals were huge……

Then there was draw your favorite color in the form of a character….

And then there was a series where someone punched someone else in the original (knocking out a tooth)….

and then the original artist drew a comment pic where they were tossing the tooth back to the person it came from….

so then the original artist drew a comment where he was holding “me” in his hand and was apologizing for throwing me (to be fair, I’m not posting that person’s art without their permission) so my reply was…..

It was a fun little unexpected back and forth, it doesn’t always happen… but its fun when it does. So check it out, if nothing else there is alot of fantastic artwork you wouldn’t see otherwise…. be careful though, some of the stuff is NSFW (Not Safe For Work).

Like a few of my blog friends, I recently went to the Children’s Museum. I went with the 3 younger FDs, my SIL, and my nephew Darius. We went last week on Friday, knowing that this week, being Mister Roger’s birthday, that the museum would have been super crowded (Pittsburgh LOVES Mister Rogers, and on his birthday you can get in to some fun kid related things for half price).

We had a good time, I love that you start out in the Mister Roger’s area:

Danny, of all the Flying Diaperinis, had the most enthusiam….

Sam’s favorite part is, and always has been, the climby wall thing… or as I call it “The Let’s pretend We’re Mice in The Walls Climby”. TJ stuck to the one lower level, and as I discovered on this outing that he can be pretty chicken.

I noticed something later when I started looking at photos from the outing, every once in a while I would get a glowy orb in the picture…. and some people believe that the photo orbs are pictures of ghosts manifested and haunting a person. If they are ghosts they either……

a) had a very good time playing along with the kids….

or

b) had a really exhausting haunting with my kids, because they can run anybody ragged…. alive or dead…..

I do however notice that the orbs are mostly in pictures that feature TJ, so I’m thinking about omitting the use of ghost attracting dryer sheets from his laundry (I had thought that I had bought the static fighting ones, so that ghosts wouldn’t stick to him… oh well)…

On the third floor of the museum they have a water play area which the kids thuroughly enjoyed…..

Funny thing though, they have an entire floor dedicated to water play with flowing water, fountains, and pools……. and this is in their bathrooms….

Then, after a quick dry clothes costume change, we let the babies have a good time before we left…

Now, the reason I titled my post how I did is because My SIL, my nephew, Sam, and myself are all sick now and we all were struck down at right about the same time. Luckily, so far, TJ and Danny have escaped unsick. It was still a fun time though.

….If I return all of our packed boxes to the rooms where they were packed and unpack everything? Because, in all actuality, the stuff was moved.

The Family Stephieface has given up entirely on looking for a place to rent, having now discovered that 3 bedroom places in neighborhoods we want to live have starting rent just a little higher than what we can budget (about $200+ more- and that’s not counting utilities). So now we’ve decided to just buy a house, before it was a “maybe we might” and now its a “Yeah, we are” kind of deal. So we’re going through all the things you kind of have to go through and organize before you go buying a house.

Personally, I’d like to live near my inlaws since… well, pretty much all of my inlaws live in one spot (I have only ever encountered this in Pittsburgh, where entire families will live almost all on the same street…. does this happen anywhere else?) so it would be nice to live around them. As well, the FDs’ school is 2 blocks or so from the MIL’s and I really like that school for them. We’ll have to see though.

Luckily for us, our one friend’s mother is a real estate agent (and one of our other friends bought a house through her and told us all about it…. which makes us even more inclined to go through her)- so we have one of those already lined up.

One down side is that because I thought I would be moving (or already moved actually at this point) that I only organized a Terry Pratchett swap and did not participate. However, I discovered that by doing this it made organizing not so overwhelming… so the next time I run a swap I’ll only organize and not participate again- its seems to be a good system so far.

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I wrote earlier that because of nervousness over Danny’s impending MRI, that I broke open my packed craft boxes and got out some knitting stuff….. and I totally did. However, I did not want to totally unpack everything so I’ve stuck with very small projects…. pouches to be exact. I know alot of gamers, so making dice bags is not uncommon for me……

But sometimes I get a little bored, so I decided since the projects were small I could try out things on them that I didn’t know before…. like cables…..

(is it just me, or does the pink pouch look vaguely phallic?) and even more cables…..

But I’m relatively calm about the whole MRI thing…. sure. ( <——- Lie!)

Anyways, if you haven’t tried cables yet… don’t be afraid to… its actually easier than I thought. What made it click for me was the KnittingHelp.com video tutorial (scroll down to “decorative stitches”)… I don’t know what it is about her videos but they click for me where diagrams and such on websites and in books have failed me before. Her ‘Working the Heel of a Sock’ tutorial (located right above the cable video) was the “clicking factor” in me learning how to knit socks…. so overall, if you are stuck on something or have yet to try something check out her videos- they are rather helpful*.

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Back on the subject of my Mister addiction (please no more puking Rachel… the stains! ;P ) I often joke that I have a “type”, but I never really realized it until I sat down and thought about it…… do you guys think I have a “type”?

Yes, even Oliver Reed as wife killing evil dude Bill Sykes in Oliver! I think is kinda sexy…. look at those eyes…. smolder….. smolder………

*the Pink camera icon means Continental Knitting, and the Blue camera icon means English Knitting… and where the icons are combined it means the technique doesn’t matter which style you use.

I was accused of being a Mister junky recently – go ahead and make all the euphinism jokes about injections and such… I’ll wait [because I totally did it myself].

We recently had an improptu gathering at the house, where a number of friends who we don’t see often all stopped by for a visit. During said visit, the Mister broke out the Playstation and started playing rounds of Dynasty Warriors 3. Discussions were had about the different characters, and the Mister explained that there was one character I liked (Xiahou Dun… or known amongst ourselves as “hairbrush man” since his ultimate weapon looks like a round hairbrush) simply because I thought he looked like my Mister. [And its true, I think he really does]. To which I started being made fun of for seeing the Mister in basically everything…..

I think that if my Mister were a Doctor, He’d be like House.

I watch Gerard Butler movies because he looks (to me) like a Hollywood version of my Mister… especially in Timeline (Timeline of course being the penultimate Stephieface movie having Gerard Butler, Michael Sheen, trebuchets, and Ethan Embry- and I only just realized that Lady Claire in the movie is played by Anna Friel who plays “Chuck” in Pushing Daisies… my favoritest knitting related primetime TV show ever).

Ian McShane in Deadwood reminds me of the Mister… mius the hookers and killing of course (but how often he says F#@% is right on though).

The character Noah Bennet from Heroes (Season 2 Noah Bennet, not Season 1 HRG) is, to me, the Mister if we had had a daughter (but we didn’t, so I know this is reaching… but… whatever).

So I sat and suffered the friendly jibes (though it was totally me making the injection jokes, because I’m a perv like that… oh and 12) and then the Mister began to chide our friends…. What exactly is wrong with me seeing the man I love in things I love? Is that such a terrible thing?

I don’t have a Mister problem… I can quit anytime I want to.

Maybe I’ve been a little too dedicated in my search for a new home. Perhaps I’ve spent too much time pouring through websites looking for listings. Its possible that I’ve been a little too diligent in writing all my findings down in a little book, and bookmarking, and highlighting, and………

The other day while the kids were at school, Sam had an emotional breakdown stating that under no circumstances did he want to go back to the “broken house” and that he wanted to immediately go to the “new house”…. and no no no no no no no more “broken house”.

And while I made sure to inform his teacher that “broken house” meant the state of the plaster and not my marriage……. I can’t help but think that somebody’s picking up on my emotions about this house…….. maybe…. just a little…… when he’s not kicking my butt on the toy car racing videogame.

Currently, the Mister and I look like sleep deprived zombies…. which, considering the nature of zombies means we look quite terrible.

This morning was an exercise in who can blame who for the most snoring causing the most lack of sleep. I even try to pull the baby card (the baby card being if I have 5 hours of sleep the baby will have woke me up in exactly the middle of it) and the Mister still thinks he is the most tired of the two of us….. he is so wrong. He is so wrong because I have to get up with the kids in the morning and get them ready for school, I have to wake up in the middle of the night with baby, and then I am woke up by a non ninja Mister who creeps up the stairs like a giant. Sure, I may snore occasionally… but come on!

Its one of those funny couples fights where even if you win, you still end up losing because what you have won is the acknowledgement that you are having barely any sleep. Why I must be so competitive to win this I’ll never know.

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Thanks everyone for the well wishes about my weird headed children. Because Danny is the second kid I have to do this with you’d think I’d be more at ease…. but I am still a mom (and I still wince a little when my babies get shots and feel like the worst mommy ever).

Here’s an odd fact discovered during Danny’s exam…. his head is 9cm smaller than mine, and that’s all. Either I have a tiny head, or he has a huge one…. and being the one who squeezed him out of places better left unmentioned I’m going to go with him having a ginormous head.

I wonder if Danny is going to be a GAP underwear model when he grows up…. he sure is giving the camera a come hither stare.

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I mentioned before that since I was all nervous and whatnot from Danny’s appointment I broke out my packed up knitting stuff. Since I received a new camera from the Mister I felt I needed a little case for it. However, while shopping for cases I basically hated them all and they had about as much thickness and space as one I could make…. so I made one.

The yarn is Peaches & Creme in Licorice, knit up on US5 DPNs. I call it a Static TV Camera Cozy since the colorway after knitted up this way looks to me like static on TV. The button came from something I threw away (but retrieved the buttons beforehand). This is how I made it:

Co 39 (and distribute evenly amongst DPNs)

First row: K1, P1… repeat

Then stockinette st for however long you need.

2nd to last row: needle a) Knit- needle b) K6, k2tog, K5- needle c) Knit

last row: needle a) knit – needle b) K6 sts and place on needle 8… remaining 6 sts slide onto needle c (19 sts on both needles)

Kitchener

PU 12 sts on top edge for strap and continue in this pattern:

(ws) K1, P10, K1 (rs) Knit and repeat as necessary ( I did 9 rows)

Then for buttonhole… (on rs) K4, BO4, K4 (then on ws) K1, P3, CO4, P3, K1

Knit a row,then complete another ws row of K1, p10, K1

(rs) K2tog x 2, K4, K2tog x 2

BO, weave in ends, and add button.

It fits my wee little camera just fine.

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Tomorrow (march 5th) is my birthday, I’ll be……………….. 32. Whew! I never thought I’d make it this far. Our friend Ben is taking me to the Henry Rollins Storytelling show/concert/thingy to celebrate- which should be awesome. The only downside is that the Mister will be working tomorrow…. pout pout.

Alot of people have asked me what I want and they all laugh when I say I want one of these or these. Seriously though, I do, especially if we go through with the Mister’s plan when it gets warmer of camping alot and going hiking…. and if I want to go letterboxing some more. I get laughed at alot for my practicality, but hey at least they aren’t things I’ll regift… right?