In her shoes

My little girl is now walking. She took her first unassisted steps back in mid-December, 13 days before her first birthday.  Even though she took practice steps everyday, she spent most of her time clutching my finger and dragging me around, up and down the hallway, in circles around the living room, all while holding that death grip around my right index finger.

Today, for the first time, she let go of that finger and stoof on her own. After contemplating that for a while, she took some steps: cautiously at first, but solidly and well-balanced. She could turn herself around, she could get herself back up if she fell forward, and when she realized exactly what she was doing, she smiled the biggest grin and clapped her hands together.

So what did iBean do with this new found freedom?  The freedom to go wherever she wished without having some nagging parent attached to her?

She went for the shoes:

SHOES!! Which ones, which ones...

I think I'll take these white and pink ones to match my tights.

Just need to support myself on one leg here...

Ok, one foot in.  Now for foot #2

And pivot and balance and face the audience...

Ta-da!  I'm outta here!

And so it begins.

Happy Pi Day!

It's Pi day! 
Not as in Magnum, P.I, or as in tasty edible pie, but Pi.  Or π = 3.14 (roughly speaking).

As a math nerd, I cannot let Pi day go unrecognized in some way.  So I made pie.  As in sweet potato pie.

PIE!!!  TARTS!!!

It's currently in the oven, but here is the recipe:

3 medium sweet potatoes, cooked
3/4 cup butter
1 3/4 cups white sugar
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tbsp vanilla
1 tsp nutmeg
3 eggs
385 mL can (14 ounces) evaporated milk
2 pie shells (8 or 9 inches).

Mash sweet potatoes with butter.  Add sugar, cinnamon, vanilla and nutmeg.  In separate bowl, whisk eggs with milk.  Pour over potato mixture and stir to combine.

Pour into two pie shells.  Bake at 400˚F for 15 minutes, then lower to 325˚F and bake another 40-50 minutes.
Eat with whipping cream. Or whip-a-hol.  But I cannot be held responsible for what happens after that.

Chef Sarah's pie notes:
If you want a deep dish pie (like me), bake in a 9 or 10 inch pie shell and fill that baby right up to the top.  There will be some filling left over.  Not enough to make another pie, but enough to make 8-ish tarts, which, if you make your own pastry for the pie, you will have enough pastry leftover for those anyway.  My yield today was one deep dish 9 inch pie and 8 tarts, which I made in muffin tins, so they are deep-dish, too.

Happy Pi Day!

Wordless Weds: Reflections

The most beautiful thing I have ever made

If you don't count my kids, this is the most beautiful thing I have ever made.  I have knit a lot of things, most of them pretty sweet.  But this cardigan, known as "A Cardigan for Merry," (as in Merry, a hobbit from Lord of the Rings) takes the cake.  It's the cake, the icing, and the sprinkles on top.

It's DONE!

I started this cardigan in early October 2011, with the intent or finishing it BEFORE my friend had her baby - she was due February 13, 2012.  However, I had never done cables before.  Have you done cables before?  Maybe if I had, I would have known that a first-timer probably should not attempt a 24-stitch 8-row cable pattern like this:

Did I mention the cables are reversible?  That's right.  They are identical front and back.  I had to rip out the first few inches twice until I finally figured out what I was doing.  And for as many hours as it took for me to knit this, I STILL had to refer to the cable chart every. single. row.

That being said, it was also a more difficult knit physically because you knit this with worsted weight (10 ply) yarn on 3.0 mm needles.  Yup.  That's US Size 2.5.  Usually reserved for such tiny things like socks and fingering weight yarn.  The result is a very thick and warm fabric which will keep out the wind on those crisp spring days or sunny fall walks in the stroller.

So after hours (I lost count) of watching Ellen on the PVR while knitting, it's finally done.
Just in time for my 14-month-old to model it for the camera before I wrap it up:

Rockin' the Cardigan!

Can I get the buttons off myself?

All that I have left to do is give the cardigan to my friend. 

Think she'll like it?

I am the 1%

Warning:  This post contains subject matter not suitable for male readers.  Gender discretion is advised.

As you may recall, I had a tubal ligation a couple of weeks ago.  The procedure itself went well, despite my fear of dying a horrible King of Pop-style death from propofol.  What happened after my procedure, was not so King of Pop.  More like King of Poop. Or Queen of Poop.  Or just Boo-urns.

A full 24 hours after being discharged, I had a shower and was checking out my incision when I noticed something strange.  Something black. Like someone thought it would be funny to draw a moustache on my face with a Sharpie while I slept, but then changed their mind and coloured all over my lady areas instead.  Like HOLY CRAP my babiamajora are going to FALL OFF black.  I tried to show Tony, to ask if it looked similar to what my bruising looked like after giving birth.  Tony recoiled in fear, shouting: "Put that thing away!!"
Me: Will you just LOOK?  I want to know if I should go to the hospital!  Is this normal?
Tony: Seriously, I am going to pass out if I look at it.
Me:  Well, some help you are.  Good thing you didn't become a doctor.

So I waited it out for another day, thinking maybe it would go away.  HA! The black plague of death just spread.  I had a bruise around my groin area that was about one square foot.  No joke.  It was up to my belly button and down past my underwear line.  Like if I were to go swimming, people would see my bruise, even if I wore one of those old lady bathing suits with the skirts.  Which I pledge to never wear.  Just putting that out there.

I finally went in to the ER, and lucky me, my surgeon was there.  He looked at my bruise and told me I had a hematoma - a bleed under the skin that was pooling.  And probably still bleeding.  Or clotting.  He told me that he would try to aspirate about 5 or 10 mL of blood and it would probably help.

He got me into the trauma room and tried to aspirate.  It was obviously not really working, as he then said: "I would like to reopen the wound.  Is that alright?"  I was like, HMMM...I kinda like having leprosy and living in fear of my labia falling off, but if you REALLY want to reopen it, I guess I can make my peace with that.  He froze me and reopened my incision, spent some time removing the clot that had formed, and cleaned it all out.  Then he told me to come back the next morning so that he could make sure it was healing properly.  When I returned, he said it looked much better.  YEA!

Only, not so yea!  About three days later, I started to have a bulge between my navel and incision.  It was small at first, but grew to the size of an apricot.  Or a plum.  No, not really plum.  Maybe a plumcot.  Or a chum.  I thought maybe it was just the healing process, you know, swelling and all that fun stuff.  Only the swelling was above the incision.  And was sort of painful, especially because almost all pants ever made rest right in that area.  Except 80s-style mom jeans, which I also pledge never to wear.  Finally, eight days after having the original hematoma cleaned out, I asked a friend to check it out.  Oh, I should mention this friend is a nurse practitioner.  I don't just whip out my black beauty for random people.  Well, not that I know of.  Maybe under propofol I do.

She did not have to look long to say, "There is definitely something pooling there.  It could be blood or just fluid.  I can call the doctor and see what he wants to do." Turns out, he wanted to see me again.  Shocking, I know.  He suspected a seroma (not blood, but a fluid-filled sac), so his plan was to aspirate all the fluid out of there.  He froze me, stuck me with a needle, and lickety split, he sucked 30 mL of blood out of the bulge - SURPRISE! Another hematoma! - and my tummy was once again flat.  I suppose that's the satisfaction liposuction would give you.  Instant flat tummy: BOO-YA! The only problem was he was not sure if that would be the end of it or if it would continue to pool after that. To be frank, I was convinced it was not healed properly and that I would have to be reopened yet again to clean more crap out. Better start my IV now.

Eight days post-second-hematoma-aspiration, I have no new bulges or bruises.  The black beauty has disappeared and all that's left is a red scar, which is still not quite healed.  There were a couple of dissolvable stitches that had decided to NOT dissolve, but just burrow themselves under my healed skin.  Tweezers and scissors fixed that.

With all these complications, Tony has had his more than his fair share of people telling him that if he would have just had a vasectomy, I wouldn't be going through all this. In fairness to him, the risk of ANY post-op complications from a tubal ligation is 1 in 100.  With my luck, had Tony gotten the snip, he would have ended up with black balls, or they would have cut his urethra, or twisted his testicles into a figure eight or something insanely ridiculous like that.  Because when it comes to those odds, they seem to be in my favour. So even had I been given the run down of risk of hematomas, excessive bruising, seromas, bulges, and more, I still would have had the procedure.  Because who ever expects that THEY will be that 1 person? No one. 

But hey, that's me.  I am the 1%.