My current project list:

This tutu (x two-two) for our professional “first birthday” pics in a few weeks.  (I bought the tulle and ribbon today – four shades of cream/pink.)

This baby blanket for Emma (Chloe has one that she’s claimed already.)  (This one’s a work in progress.)

I’m dying to make these embroidered quilt squares into Christmas ornaments.  (I’m hoping to finish this by Christmas 2042.)

Dying to knit this little jumper (x 2) for the sprogs.  Probably in lilac and celery.  (One lilac with celery accents, the other vice versa.)

But the biggest question is this:  Should I knit Sweater A or Sweater B for the 2010 Knitting Olympics?  Vote early, vote often.

Sweater Candidate A

Sweater Candidate A

Sweater Candidate B

Sweater Candidate B

(Note, I am not the model in either picture.  Nor did I take the picture.  Or knit the sweater.  Or design the sweater.  Or do anything regarding the sweater beyond drooling over the pattern inappropriately.   FWIW,  it should be known that I am dimensionally more similar to model A than B.)

cold and rainy night

knitting needles, snoring dog

apricot hot tea

Made you look.

Deer internet peeplz,

We arr sneeking onto the compooter while mama is at werk and the nannie is lokked in the basemint.  Only temporrarilly, of course.  We promiss to let herr out soon.

We has severral greevances with arr present situashion.

1) We arr being locked in tiny jails everry day at leest three times.  Mama calls this “nap” and “bedtime” but we call it solitarry confinemint.

2) Mama and nannie arr verry unreesonuble, and do nott let us put enything in the little holes in the wall or choo on the wires or clime onto the door of the dishywasher.  We arr just kurious.

3) We arr not allowwed to ride on the dawg or pull her tayle.  We doo not undurstand why.  Shee is a verry nise dawg and it wood be fun.

4) The food is all cut upp into liddle peeses and all soft stuf.  We deemand steaks and appleses and milkshaykes.  They look yummie.  No morr squushy peas!

5) Mama makes us sit fasing bakwords in the carr everry single time!  We jusst want to sea wherre wee arr going and be ebble to exploore the bakseat.

Pleese rescyoo us soon, internet peeplz.  We arr fasing 17 more yeers of this treetmint!

Sinseerly,

Chloe and Emma

This Peruvian national reserve is a sanctuary for vicuñas (camelids, like llamas and alpacas) which are apparently threatened in Peru, possibly due to over-hunting.  (My español is a bit lacking.)  It’s way up in the Andes, close to, um, nothing as far as I can tell.  About halfway as the crow flies between Lima and La Paz.

Gorgeous, huh?

I was hurting for a blog topic tonight and found the coolest feature on random.org.    It will give you random geographic coordinates, and show them on Google Maps.  So, what the heck, I thought, let’s find out what I’m going to blog about! This may become a regular feature, because it’s so damn cool.

Every time a baby’s born at the House of God, they play the “baby bells” which is essentially a digitized 10 second version of Brahms Lullaby.  (And if you have twins, they play it twice in a row.  Ask me how I know.)

Being the cynical ER dwellers that we are, we’ve been developing a list of possible additional ER-specific “bells” for our patient population:

For the patient who’s been in the ER for 6+ hours, most of that time because s/he “couldn’t pee” and refused a catheter, or because s/he continually developed new symptoms, or because s/he was gagging self to try to get admitted for intractable vomiting, etc:

For the drug-seekers and anyone expecting magical healing of their chronic problems in 30 minutes or less:

For the vast majority of codes:

For the psych room:

For the 2 a.m. emergency his & hers STD check:

For the minimally ill who feel they should be brought back ahead of the strokes, heart attacks and trauma patients (because “my doctor called ahead”):

And for all of us night-shift vampires:

Lucky thirteen!

The boos continue to grow and develop at an astonishing rate. I’m always glad to re-read the previous month’s post, as the snapshot of “where we were” even a month ago fades so quickly. Of course, that could be sleep deprivation talking.

They’re crawling everywhere these days. EVERYwhere. Trying to climb up on the couch (and down from the recliner) with mixed success. More small injuries this month than in the three previous, including the dreaded double-head-bonk a couple of weeks ago. Chloe crawls on all fours now (goodbye, froggy crawl!) and Emma’s starting to get her tum off of the ground as well. They’re both pulling up (C to a full stand, E to her knees) and both Emma and I would really appreciate it if Chloe would figure out how to get down, too. (As it is, she stands there and cries until I rescue her.  Particularly during naptime.  This too shall pass.)

Emma’s clapping now, and waving bye-bye, and Chloe has recently picked up clapping too. Particularly when watching the kangaroos on the Baby Da Vinci dvd, which are apparently freaking hilarious. Who knew?

Chloe has a consistent “mama” now, and is working on “dog” and quacking like a duck. I think “diaper” may be in the works for both. Mostly they speak something that sounds suspiciously like Chinese. They understand a ton now, and have developed little ornery streaks that amuse me immensely. The devilish grins while crawling toward the dog food bowl are too funny. (In related news, am considering swapping bowls, and letting Piper have Cheerios and the babies Science Diet, since that’s what they all seem to want anyway.)

They love to turn the pages in their books, and sing along with the radio in the car. They still love to nurse (four times a day, please) and often kiss each other and me when they’re finished. And sometimes decide to switch from one nursie to the other, so that I have a lap full of 36 pounds of wriggling child.

Chloe has eight teeth now, and Emma has three with an option for another upper incisor. It’s been just almost there for a good week. Fortunately, she’s still in a decent humor. They’re in size 3 diapers, and 6-9 month clothes. Size 2 shoes. When I weighed them at work a couple of weeks ago, Chloe was 17# 3 oz, and Emma was 18# 14 oz.

They’re still sleeping 2 naps a day at 2 hours a piece, and 12ish hours at night. They eat almost anything that I put on their trays (recent additions: black olives, scrambled eggs) and love their sippies.

All in all, they’re a daily joy. I miss them when I’m at work, and begrudge my need to sleep sometimes while they’re contentedly playing in Shawshank (after working all night) and wish I had more time, more energy, more everything to give them.

Chloe:

Likes:

Pulling up on the crib rail

Milk

Hamming it up in any/all situations

Dislikes:

Being unable to get down after pulling up on the crib rail

Naps

Mandarin oranges

Emma:

Likes:

Karaoke

Raw tomatoes

Toy xylophone

Dislikes:

Being left anywhere alone

Fish (salmon, fish sticks, you name it)

Things I’d like to know:

1) Why my neighbors have sufficient lights on that I can hardly stand the glare in my dining room. With the blinds closed.

2) The subject of the certified letter sent to me by the IRS (for which the USPS left me a receipt.) Even money says it’s an audit (what with the mondo deductions last year.) Highly unlikely that it’s a greeting card.

3) Why it took me all these years to get into Ravelry.

4) Whether it is, in fact, possible for one average human with a point-and-shoot camera to take a decent picture of one terrier, two crawling infants in flower costumes and four jack-o-lanterns. (Signs point to no.)

In 2006, I did NaNoWriMo. Didn’t finish, mind you, but I gave it a good shot. 20-some-thousand words, if I recall correctly. Wrote a murder mystery, involving some sort of obscure poison. Fun times, but time consuming. But the pressure was nice.

In 2007, I was pissed off at the world in November, and didn’t have much nice to say. Me + IUI = not a love match. Nevah again.

In 2008, I was coping with two premature newborns and lucky to get into the shower before noon. (And for the first half of the month was stretched paper-thin with Emma in the NICU and Chloe at home. Do Not Recommend.)

So this year, I’m dying to try NaNoWriMo again, but we all know how that will end. Sub-10K word count, abject failure and a vale of tears. OK, maybe no tears, but you get the drift. Instead, I’m going to do NaBloPoMo. 30 posts in 30 days, one post per day (minimum.) Surely even I can gust up to that bar, non?