open for business.

it's up! please head on over to my online storefront: weebits hand knits. good stuff over there! please let me know what you think...

coming tomorrow (hopefully)

i've been working my little tail off and though not everything is done, i decided not to wait any longer. my online knitting shop will be opening its virtual doors tomorrow! please check back for more information. until then...

a lil sumthin', sumthin'

almost ready to tackle the "big bridge"

getting ready...

down they go!

watching the river. we played "pooh sticks"

some pictures from last weekend. no. not last weekend. the weekend before last. apparently i'm behind. as usual. we took elijah and his bike over to the little bike path on the other side of ripon. you'll probably recognize it as i've done a couple photo shoots there recently. he wasn't thrilled about having to ride down the big-ish hill at first but with daddy at his side and a lot of reminders about brake operation, he made it down just fine. he loved watching the river slide by underneath him and talked about the big bridge for days. in fact, he still talks about it. looking forward to longer days so we can take him over there after john gets home from work. i'd take him myself during the day but john freaked me out with his homeless people stories...so we'll just have to wait until he can come with us.

on an entirely different note, just a heads up that i will be taking the week off from blogging and my blog reader. a bit of a sacrifice, i know, but i really want to get my knitty shop up and running by the end of the month. i only have a few more prototypes to finish! and i know that if i leave the blog stalking alone for a couple days, i will have no problems finishing them. i have a product photo shoot planned for thursday and am planning to work on the website this weekend. hopefully it will all go as planned and i can show you all the fun stuff i've been working on by monday! so...don't miss me too much. here's to being productive!

on a rainy, january day...

elijah and i just came in from a very successful puddle stomping session. our feet got soaked (despite the protection of boots), our fingers turned numb very quickly (from fishing snails out of the puddles) and i wondered why i spent time on my hair this morning. but we're warm and cozy now with bellies full of soup and bread. a fun activity for a dreary day.

have you heard of project 365? it's kind of the "in" thing in the scrapbooking world right now. the basic version of it requires you to take a picture a day for 365 days. i did a mini version of this last year. and i seriously considered going full fledged with it this year. there's lots of great reasons to do it. the most obvious is just simply the fact that you will have a recorded moment for every day of the year. that's pretty cool. but it can also help you improve your photography skills, stretch you creatively and teach you to look at everyday moments in a different way. these are all great things. however, i knew that, while it would be cool to have a picture a day at the end of it all, i most likely wouldn't be able to keep it up with a newborn. so...i settled on an alternative. and i'm pretty excited about it. i posted a calendar right next to my computer where i am bound to see it at least once a day. in each little square, i write a tiny tidbit from our day. most of the time, these tidbits are pretty begnin. sometimes, when i'm feeling less than creative, they can be quite boring. but other times, these tiny morsels of anaya life serve as a memory springboard and they help me remember the pieces of a much larger, more precious story. examples are as follows:

1 january 2009: went out for chinese food to celebrate the new year.
8 january 2009: elijah fell asleep in my arms. will this be the last time he does that?
17 january 2009: bike ride over the "big bridge".
19 january 2009: family walk to the park this morning.
and today's: blissful rainy day. perfect for puddle stomping.

sometimes i will have pictures to go along with my tidbit (like today). but most of the time, i won't. and that's okay. these will be organized by week into an album where i can add photos and layouts as they get printed/completed. hopefully, at the end of 2009, i will have a fat scrapbook/journal of our year. i'm excited about this. for me, this is easier than a photo a day (i know that sounds weird coming from me). i'm not worried about being creative; i'm simply documenting our day in a few words. if i forget a day, that's okay because most likely, i can remember back even if it's been a couple days (i've already had to do this once). it's not like a photo; you can't go back in time and redo that day just so you can take a picture. this is going to be cool...i can feel it.

randomness for a thursday.

maybe you'll think i'm weird but i tried an experiment with my dishwasher the other day.
you know how you see in dishwasher (or detergent) advertisements the dishwasher full of really dirty dishes? the ones with baked on food and crusty leftovers? i thought, "there is no way a dishwasher can actually get that stuff off". well, after seeing one too many of those advertisements, i decided to try it myself. i filled my dishwasher to the max with seriously dirty dishes. let's see, there was a couple plates with dried tapitio (the hot sauce my hubby puts on everything), a plate with dried bean burrito, a mixing bowl with crusty frosting in it...you get the picture. gross-ness. i turned it on and waiting patiently. and lo and behold, when i opened it up, the dishes were clean. all of them. except for a wooden spoon that had been encrusted with chocolate cake batter. but even that was mostly clean...just a few remnants of chocolate in the grooves (it's an old spoon). so. all that to say...we don't rinse our dishes in this household any more. :o)

how's that for a random thursday post?
now i'm off to celebrate our 4th wedding anniversary. happy day to us!

an update of sorts.

so...i just cleaned a smearing of poop off elijah's hands. considering the fact that he's two years old and this is the first time i've had to do it, i'm thankful. but still. YUCK! i am also thankful he didn't get it on anything. i think he was kind of grossed out by the whole thing. whew.

it feels like spring here in the central valley. the sun is kissing the earth with a march-like 65-70 degrees. it's good for my carrots, i suppose, but i am sincerely NOT ready for spring. aside from my own personal bent, we just reallyreally need some rain! if we don't get it, things are looking pretty dusty for the summer months. i've never lived in an area that can experience drought but if this keeps up, i'll be able to check that off my list.

speaking of my carrots, i haven't blogged much about my garden lately. i wouldn't exactly call it a garden at this point...it's mostly just weeds with a couple rows of carrots and onions and a couple lettuce plants. i picked a head of butter lettuce and a few carrots (they're still pretty small, but oh so sweet!) a couple of days ago for a salad and i'll tell you what, there's not much better than fresh produce from your backyard in january. i've been debating back and forth about what to do for this growing season. i definitely want to do something...but maybe not quite as ambitious as last year. i checked out the book "the edible garden" and have been perusing its pages over the past week or so. i think it's inspiring me to do more than i can handle though. i'm pretty sure i'm going to separate the growing season into three manageable pieces (it kind of already is): spring/warm, summer/hot, fall/warmish. for the spring and fall seasons, i'll be a little more enterprising with my planting but for the summer months (may through september), i'll mainly stick to low maintenance veggies like corn, cucumbers and tomatoes. this is altogether to do with the little bun that's cooking in my tummy right now. i don't want to have to worry about things like weeding when all i'll want to do is catch up on sleep and laundry. oh...and showers. (speaking of baby, planning a baby related post here soon) i might join a local CSA during those months to supplement or just take weekly trips to the farmers market (which i like to do anyways, a couple times during the summer at least). we'll see what happens. for now, i'm going to get my husband to do some rototiller work out there, plan what goes where and figure out a drip system for watering. no more hauling buckets!

been feeling domestic lately. the pictures above are evidence of that. don't know if it's to do with the pregnancy and early nesting setting in or the time of the year or what but i've been baking and knitting up a storm. i made some orange marmalade last weekend, along with some hearty wheat bread. they are fantastic together! the marmalade was a bit more of a project than i originally anticipated, mainly because it never actually gelled up like it's supposed to. i think perhaps that had to do with the type of sugar i was using. not sure raw, organic sugar is up to the job of jam making...maybe just the cheap, granulated stuff. i'll definitely have to play around with that before i do any major canning/jam making in the future. this was just an efficient way to use up the plethora of oranges we had before they started to rot.

as far as the knitting goes, my needles have been clickin' away for the past few weeks. and i'm almost ready to unveil my projects. i had been planning to open a store front on etsy.com but after i did a bit of research, i decided i'm just going to host another blog that showcases the items i have for sale. they will mostly be baby related items but i am planning to add some accessory type pieces along the way as well. i'm hoping to have this up and running by the end of the month. you'll definitely be hearing more about this soon!

i'll leave you with a sweet tidbit from our weekend. friday night, elijah slept over at his grandparents house. a wonderful treat for mom and dad! not only did we get some alone time, but we got to sleep in! a rare blessing. when john's mom finally brought elijah back home in the morning, he was his typical happy little chatterbox of a boy. i was still in bed (awake and reading) when he came upstairs chattering the whole way. just moments after elijah had joined me on the bed, the little baby inside me seriously started dancing! it was almost as if he/she recognized their big brother's voice and was saying hello in the only way they can. it might have been just coincidence but i'm choosing to believe that it wasn't. oh...i'm so excited for these two! what fun they'll have together...

just one.

wanted to share this sweet shot before it gets lost in the shuffle.
we had spring in january today.
it was almost 70*!

belated christmas pictures.

i promised christmas pictures...so here they are...

just the three of us...

the whole gang.

e riding his bike over at the park on christmas day.

mom and dad hold up the school wall. (it was blustery and cold!)

the lovebirds.

john and dad figure out dad's memory card for his phone

elijah helps daddy.

a little bit of the chaos.

elijah opens his "big present". a tool table all his own. it's very cool.

and that's it.

soon to be...

yay for lots of photo shoots! i got to shoot troy and rachelle and their soon to be baby girl this past weekend. here's a few...

holidy update.

ah christmas.

i've had a few days to look back and reflect. what a busy, relaxing, family-filled time. i love christmas.

it was a busy time because well...it's christmas. it's always busy. but mainly because we drove down to the los angeles area the weekend before christmas for my brother's graduation. 14 hours (round trip) in a car will certainly take a bite out of your holiday festivities. but regardless of the crazy traffic and the long drive in the car, it was great to see luke graduate and to hang out with him on campus for a bit. we also got to meet/hang out with heather's family (his financee) which was good times as well.

once we got back home though, things shifted into high gear. presents to finish and wrap, cookies to bake (thanks luke and heather for tackling that!), my birthday party to prepare for...we were busy. i tried to sit back and just soak up as much family time as possible since i don't get to see those precious people nearly enough. it wasn't easy to put aside the pressing holiday matters so some things slipped a bit but it was such a special treat to have the majority of my family there for the holidays that i didn't really care. (peter and erin couldn't make it...bummer. but maybe that's better because i really don't know where they would have slept!) it was the first time we've been together for christmas in a long time.

christmas day was of course filled with too many presents and too much good food. elijah was completely spoiled...as predicted. it seemed like he got so many more new toys simply because his birthday is so close to christmas...our toy room is overflowing. on my to-do list for this week: sort and organize! a little boy does not need so many playthings...no matter how cool they may be (especially considering all he really plays with are the toys with wheels, the planes, trains and automoblies. oh...and the tools with which to "fix" said toys...if you call banging on them with a hammer "fixing"). for christmas dinner, my mother was a dear and made a huge pot of clam chower for us...the yummy alaskan style. it's my favorite...john's favorite too. way better than turkey with all the trimmings. come to think of it...my mom did most of the cooking that week...maybe that's why it was so relaxing!

pictures to come soon.

how engaging.

so.
my littlest brother is getting married in june.
guess who they asked to do their engagement photos?
sweet!
here's a few of my favorites...

the two year mark.

the big boy on his birthday: 16 december 2008

i know all mother's think their child(ren) is amazing. i am no exception.
seriously.
elijah has got to be one of the smartest, funniest, most athletic two year olds i've ever seen.
seriously.
can i just brag for a bit?

here goes:

my little guy is stringing four to five words together into sentences. the typical amount for a two year old? two to three words. yup. like i said. genius. he's also a little walking parrot so you've really got to watch what you say around him. with us, that's fine...most of the time. i caught myself calling something "stupid" the other day and realized i probably shouldn't say that word again if i don't want to hear it coming out of my little man's mouth. on the other hand, this parrot-ness is quite fun too...i got him to say pepperoni the other day when we were making pizza and it's the cutest thing in the world. the way he say avocado is pretty cute too. he is a little chatterbox; he's always talking or singing about something. i'm finding myself having to make a conscious effort not to tune him out! i'm also trying to use words he doesn't already know in order to increase his vocabulary. he picks up on the new words pretty quickly too.


elijah has moved beyond simple kicking and throwing. now he's on to dribbling (the ball with his feet...think soccer, not basketball) and catching. he catches a ball thrown to him more than half the time (closer to three quarters) and probably a little less than half the time when he throws it up in the air himself. big stuff, i'm telling you. he's also jumping with both feet (something he's been doing for a long time now) but not just up and down. he can jump over things as well as up onto a step or down off a step (like the curb). this is generally something they don't start doing for another 6-12 months. something else he's doing (and has been for about three/four months), is riding a two-wheeled bicycle (it has training wheels of course). this even surprised his pediatrician. according to her, pedaling a bike is typically mastered by three year olds.

also...at his two year old check up, his pediatrician commented (after asking all her questions about typical developmental stuff) that most people would be thrilled to have a two year old like elijah. and we are. thrilled and blessed to have such an incredible little man in our midst.


he's learning to recognize colors and letters. if you ask him what color his car is, most of the time he'll tell you it's orange but in the past couple weeks, he's been branching out into other colors when i ask him to try again. he recognizes the letters O, E and J everytime and most of the time gets Z, B and A. he can count to four in english and sometimes to five in spanish. he's beginning to recognize shapes as well. he always gets moon, star and triangle right but a circle can sometimes be a moon (which is totally understandable) and a square is pretty much always another triangle.


you getting the picture here? this kid is smart AND talented (and pretty darn handsome).

the only thing he/we struggle with is sleep. he refuses to nap most days but he's still just stinkin' tired. when he does nap, it's not for very long and he always wakes up sobbing. not sure what that's all about. nighttime isn't much better. though he goes to sleep on his own now, he inevitably ends up in our bed sometime during the night. this does not provide adequate sleep for any one involved. starting on monday though, when john goes back to his normal work schedule, we'll be moving him into his big boy room across the hall and there will be no-more-mister-nice-guy from mom and dad in the middle of the night. it will probably mean a couple weeks of really crummy sleep but in the end, we'll all sleep better. plus we won't have to deal with it when the baby comes.

speaking of baby, just these past couple weeks, elijah has really begun to acknowledge the baby. he says hi to the baby now and kisses or pats my stomach. that probably has something to do with the fact that i'm showing now; it makes it more real to him, i suppose.

a cute story from a couple weeks ago: elijah and i had just sat down to dinner. john wasn't home yet but since we were hungry, we were eating without him. elijah asked to do "amens" (he loves to pray! especially at dinnertime and bedtime). i told him that since daddy wasn't here to do amens, either mommy or 'lijah had to do them. he said, "no mama. 'lijah.". so i said okay, grabbed his hand, bowed my head and waited for him to begin. here's what came out of his mouth: "Jesus. Tanks. Food. Amen." so stinkin' sweet.

that's all i can think of for now...i'll leave you with his height/weight stats.

height = 34 inches tall
weight = 27 pounds (though he feels MUCH heavier)
he's an average weight for his height but he's in the 30 percentile for both on the charts. not surprising considering his lineage.

oh...and one last thing. we have finally sucessfully given up the pacifier. hallelujah!