Baby Xander (as opposed to Xander from power rangers mystic force) was born on Feb 3. He weighed either 7.5 lbs or 7 lbs, 5 oz, I don’t remember which. My sister is fine – going back to her teaching job next week. Below is Xander at 2 hours old.

I’ll get a new pic this weekend, and you’ll be able to see how much he’s grown.

My second layette – well, at least the sweater and blankie – have been completed.

The frills remind me of Sigmund and the Seamonsters, but my mother gushed, so I guess they’re cute enough.

I personalized the blankie, but this time with duplicate stitch.

It’s more of a throw, or a breastfeeding cover, but this yarn – Bernat Baby Coordinates (mill end equivalent) – got heavy. I used a double strand on the blankie, and it started stretching too much from the weight of the yarn. I have tons of this stuff. I’m real quick doing some booties in white, with frills, then it will be ready to send to my sister’s friend.

Hot, crowded, but still very exciting.

They loved taking a picture with the Real Power Rangers. Then we went to Burger King with a playground, then dropped cousin off. Now we’re home, they’re in jammies, and watching – you guessed it – Power Rangers Operation Overdrive (Once a Ranger episode) until bedtime.

After bedtime, I’ll do a good knitting post.

When we got up after abbreviated nap, guess what I found? A Secret Pal gift, just for me. Yippee.

I had my girls and cousin help me open, and they were very good at waiting. So, I shared some lifesavers.

From left 2 right: redhead is mine, 5.5 (the kindergartener), blondie is mine, 3.9 (the preschooler), the teenager is mine, 17.9 (the college student), and the 3.9 year old is my niece (the cousin).

Now, we’re off to the surprise.  I’ll post specific thanks later, but I love it all!

Well. What a hullabaloo. I think we remembered everything, and we labeled everything, and she wore the required clothes, and she was there on time. And the 3.9 Yr old was fine, as well, on her second day in the fours class. They’re going to Chuck E Cheese today.

We ended up tightening up the belt, so the shorts fit better. Tomorrow is PE day, so the uniform will be slightly different. And we’ll be taking the 3.9 yr old first, most likely.

I pick her up in 3 hours (8–11:30 this week, 8–1 next week, then finally all day kindergarten with after care starting the tenth). It’s a good thing I have a decent job, and can work from home. Speaking of work, I have enough to keep me occupied until 11ish, then it’s time to collect the kindergartner. House work? Are you kidding? Not bloody likely.

I have 2 babies to knit for - both due in September. My goal is to have knitting boxed and ready to mail on Sept 1.

Here's the Tulip (scroll down) I started last Thursday at SweetLife Knitters Meetup:

Not quite the pattern, but close. Here's the blanket I'll prolly send with it, unless I do something with the matching yarn in time. Lots of finishing, and I prolly will adjust the next one to decrease the amount of finishing. But it's top down, easy (except for the knitting in the round sleeves), and memorizable. And quick. Most likely it will be completed on Thursday, if I can get the size 6 dpns in time.

The blanket is white mill end cotton, and will most likely have one more diamond before I begin the decreases. I may or may not embellish

The other set will appear tomorrow.

I finally had an hour to kill, without kids or husband, on the way home from work, so I went by the LYS. I'm a cheapo, but I found something new at a price I could justify for my expectant sister (due valentine's day). (excuse the crumbs).

Cotton/Acrylic at $5 a ball. This will make either a nice blanket-bootie set, or the tulip sweater and a hat. Or something like that. Plenty of time.

All my yarn is now getting ID'd per skein/ball - yes, these have been duly marked and entered into my current knitting organizer. I'm back to doing my organizer in MS Access to save time on tweaking. Once I'm happy with the final output, I'll  port it to either a fancy desktop app - in Mono, I hope - or I'll webify it. If I webify it, it won't be social, like ravelry, but datacentric, like basecamp.

I was futzing around, and bought StarDock's Object Desktop. So, of course I'm playing with skins, customizing the look of my pc. Here's' what I have at the moment. It's kind of mac like, and the window title is in a weird font, so I may be changing it.

NoNags for members regularly hosts user submitted funny pics on its site. I'm using one of these to test the pic capability.

This sentence should be below the pic.

Imagine, if you will, - oh wait. You probably won't get the reference. It's linked if you want to check it out. From my wild youth.

Anyhoo,  I had to entertain my littel gels and cousin holly yesterday, so we made a cake. Chocolate. Now, a five year old and two three year olds make for interesting cook's helpers. But it fended off boredom, and they loved helping, and licking the bowl. There were a few disagreements about who was hogging the remains, but they are girls, after all. Then after lunch and after teenager frosted the cake, they put sprinkles on it. LOTS of sprinkles.

UPDATE: Pics will be included as soon as I get the teenager to send them to me, and then I figure out how all this stuff works.