First of all, I got this cross-stitch pattern for my 16th birthday, but I mostly only worked on it during General Conferences, to keep my eyes and hands busy. When we found out we were expecting Evie, I decided I'd better get cracking on it, because I wanted to get it done before the baby came. I went from only having Noah and part of the sea serpents done, to finishing it all in about 9 months. I was a month late, but that was because I couldn't find the gray Wisper thread I needed for the second Yeti. However, it is now completely finished, and I just need to wash it, mount it, and frame it. Hooray!
Next, we have Todd's Father's Day presents. Since we're moving in just over two weeks (and we'll both be gone for at least half of that), I gave him his presents today so that he could at least look at them for a couple of days before packing/moving them. One thing he got was a framed picture of Evie. When we were in Colorado, his sister Jenette took me to get pictures taken of the baby. We got multiple sizes of this picture, which was our favorite, all for $10, and the Father's Day card picture was a promotional freebie. Then I took a salt-dough cast of Evie's two month-sized hand so that he can forever remember how little her hands are! The paint kind of warped the cast, but oh well.
For his card, I rediscovered my computer's Paint program, and had fun making this picture of our family. Then, on the inside, I held Evie's hand and "helped" her sign her name on Daddy's card. On the top, I put crayons in her hands and let her scribble with them to make her own picture for Daddy. She's still not coordinated enough to actually grasp the crayons yet, but it was fun! I've been so excited for weeks to give Todd his Father's Day presents, and he loved them!
Yesterday, I played in my Paint program again, and drew this picture of Evie. I'm obviously no artist, so I'm both impressed by how it turned out, as well as a little depressed. Apparently, my program was set to save my pictures as Jpeg files, which compressed them and made them fuzzy, but I'm too discouraged to do the whole thing over, so it shall remain a floating head forever.Last of all, in my Creative Writing class last semester, we had to write a couple of poems, and one form we tried was the villanelle. That format is HARD!! My initial attempt was about chocolate, and somehow it ended up being about rage and murder. Todd was shocked: he kept saying, "Wait. YOU, a WOMAN, wrote a poem about CHOCOLATE, and it ended up being depressing? How did that happen?!" No idea. But everyone else's poems were depressing too, so maybe the format just lends itself to depressing poetry. However, in the middle of the night, I had two lines running through my head. The syllable count was right, so I had to get up at 2 in the morning to write it down before I lost it. I guess that my love for my (at that point, still unborn) baby saved this poem from being depressing. After she was born, I had to tweak it slightly so that it fit her better, but this is my finished product:
Precious Baby
Smoky brown eyes and a cute button nose:
That nose is all mine, but she's got Daddy's chin.
Ten little fingers and ten little toes
Ever increasing, my love for her flows;
I ask myself daily, "What did I do to win
Those smoky brown eyes and a cute button nose?"
Fingers curled 'round mine as she drifts in a doze,
Feet kick at the blanket she's wrapped snugly in:
Ten little fingers and ten little toes.
Her fluffy dark hair is just begging for bows
And I melt at the sight of her toothless grin,
Smoky brown eyes, and a cute button nose.
It's quicker than lightning, the rate that she grows
Her elbows, her belly, her head, knees, and shins,
Ten little fingers, and ten little toes.
Her own baby's the cutest, every new mother knows.
But mine is so perfect it is almost a sin--
With smoky brown eyes and a cute button nose,
Ten little fingers, and ten little toes.
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