Blog hijack

Hi! Still here. I got a new toy last week -- a new sewing machine -- so I haven't had much time for blogging. Frankly, I have no idea what Molly's been up to. Here's what I've been doing.

Twill bag with hand applique leaves to hold Molly's rags.

Cowl-neck shirt (too tight with baby belly, so no modeling)

Another shirt, this one actually fits now. Bonus!

Another cowl neck shirt to fit now and post-baby, just needs hems and edge stitching.

Maternity jeans (doubles as belly shot, right?)

Just a little sample of the new baby's diaper stash. I'm shooting for a nearly free newborn and small stash from scraps and materials I already have around (then I won't feel so bad if we opt for disposables in our sleep-deprived madness).

But seriously, life with Molly has been fantastic lately. It's so exciting to watch her learn and grow. We had her 3-year check-up today and everything was perfect. No more doctor anxiety here. She's in the 75th percentile for height and weight, which is actually lower than I thought based on how tall she is compared to all her friends.

We've pretty much settled on the Waldorf preschool for next fall ... put in our application last week. We'll be doing the mommy-and-me class there this winter/spring (for as long as I feel up to it) because I really enjoy it -- it's so calm and they have mommy crafts and Molly's getting to be good friends with the kids who will be in her class next year. We just had a play date at Jadon's house yesterday and it was really nice. It's fun to be making mom friends outside of our neighborhood.

Here's just some of the stuff Molly's been up to while I've been sewing.

Catching up on 16th Century French philosophy ... just kidding. But she has been more interested lately in pretending to read books, both her own and ours.

Drumming for Daddy while he graciously agreed to come to her "dance studio" class in her bedroom.

Polishing her Dutch spoons from Beppe. Montessori classrooms have kids polish silver for some educational goal I can't remember, and it always seemed funny to me. But Molly really got excited about the spoons so we finally got some polish at the grocery store. She had a good time with it.

Molly's grocery list.

This was a big surprise last week. Molly has been into pretend writing lately, particularly writing grocery lists. These are almost always lines of zig-zag nonsense. Cool enough. Well, I sat down at the counter to make my own grocery list and Molly sat next to me and asked for paper. I gave her a scrap and she wrote this. I helped her sound out the letters in "milk" and she came up with "mil" all by herself. I had no idea she knew how to make an i! She didn't know about the k, so I wrote one on my own paper and she looked at it and copied it -- also surprising because usually she gets easily discouraged when trying to write and doesn't like to try. The word below milk is onion (she made m instead of n). Obviously I wanted to save the paper and this really annoyed her. She wanted me to put it in my purse and use it at the grocery store. Silly Mommy always misses the point.