Just Because

 So, my little guy has been growing steadily over the past few months. Eight actually. Today he is eight whole months old. How did that happen? He is such a joyful, happy baby. I'm so lucky to have two kids that are happy babies. I'm a little sad to admit how fast Gus is growing out of everything. Including his diapers. It's taken me way longer to let go of his itty bitty newborn diapers than I'd like to admit. I just like looking at them. He was so wee little. But, I finally decided that it was time to give up those first newborn sized diapers and so I sold them. I packaged them up  and put them in the mail yesterday. Just because I added these:

I figure, I like surprises. And I like little bitty knitted things. So. I figure the ladies getting the diapers would like this stuff too. Aren't these just so cute? They each took about an hour from start to finish. I magic looped them both because I thought that the double pointed needles were too fiddly. I used a pattern for the longies and made up the soaker pattern. It took a couple of tries but I finally got it right. So when the Mamas open up their diaper boxes this is what they'll see:

. While I was knitting these up my husband wanted to know what I was knitting them for. Well, I tried to explain to him, they're for cuteness. "Huh?" was written all over his face. Just for fun, I tried again. "I may have married a crazy woman." flashed in his eyes. (I know because I've seen it there before) I sighed and gave up. I think that he just doesn't understand the fun of a simple, little surprise or doing something just for the fun of it. Or knitting for cuteness's sake. Oh, well. At least I have friends who understand. Right?

Cucumber "Sushi"

I'm always trying to come up with new and inventive lunches for Chickadee. I'm lucky in that she will try just about anything and likes almost everything including sushi. The other day I had a flash of inspiration and came up with a great idea. I can't put sushi in her lunch I can put fake sushi in there. What I came up with was a hollowed out cucumber filled with rice, veggies and cream cheese. Here, I'll show you what I mean. . .

First you start by slicing your cucumber in half. Then hollow it out like so. I used the business end of a potato peeler to do the job.

Next, choose your filling and start slicing. I used red pepper, carrots, asparagus spears, rice, cream cheese and avocado. You want long, skinny slivers.

Step 3: Stuff your cucumber. It helps to go from softest to hardest ingredient. For instance, I started with the rice, mashed that down with a butter knife, added the avocado, then cream cheese, then peppers, asparagus and finally the carrots. Hint: If you can't get something through, feed it in alongside a carrot. Works like a charm. Trust me. It's also helpful to really pack stuff in there. The more jammed in there it is the better.

 

Slice your cucumber into little sushi "rolls"

Pack up and enjoy for lunch! These were fun and they tasted really yummy! The two things I learned from this are: 1. Sometimes I have good ideas and 2. I need a new cutting board. (Mostly for taking good blog pictures)

When I look at other blogs my thoughts are usually like this; "Hey, that's really cool. Maybe I could do that." Then; "How much time did that take?" And finally "Doesn't she have kids? Where the heck were they while she spent x hours doing that and taking pictures for the blog?" So in case you were thinking that too, these didn't take that long (like 20 minutes or so), Katie was sleeping and Gus was here. . .

"helping". So now you know and you can relax and enjoy your "sushi". 

The thing about a blog is

That you have to understand how they work. At least sort of. When I started this blog, on the first day I looked at the stats and saw that seven people had checked it out. "Yay" I thought. Seven whole people checked me out! Then the second day eighteen people had looked at my new blog. "I rock" I nearly shouted. By the third and fourth days I was up in the thirties even. The proper booty dance ensued. Use your imagination and yes, I am that good. 

Then came the fifth day. Sad, sad fifth day. Fifth day was when I noticed the "Don't track your own page view" icon. Yep, I probably should have noticed that before. And then turned off my own looksies. Sadly this was not the case. How many times did I check out my own blog? I don't really know. I do know that the more page views I saw the more I looked. Darn that little icon barely visible right there, smackdab in the middle of my screen! Just. . .darn.

The moral of the story is if you're going to start your own blog beware of the "Don't track" button. You can decide for yourself whether you want to turn off your own views or not. As for me, I think I'll keep tracking, you know, just for now. And if you are reading this. Thanks. I love you man.