{this moment}

A new Friday ritual (for me). A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember. 

Inspired by SouleMama

 

If you're inspired to do the same, hop over to SouleMama and leave a link to your 'moment' in the comments for all to find and see.

30 days of lists

I'm addicted to lists.  Really.  I make lists of groceries, what needs to get done, long-term goals, things to make, even a list of pantry staples.  I read about this 30 Days of Lists thing on a blog that mentioned it just in passing in a comment.  The more I read, I realized it's exactly what I thought it was: 30 days of lists that are shared amongst the participants.  Each day we get a new prompt for our list.  If you don't like that one, come up with your own.  How could I resist?

So, all you list junkies, you've got two more days to pre-register for some cool stuff.  The list-making commences on 1 September.

Updated to add: I'll be sharing my lists here, and linking up to the 30 Days blog.  So come back and see what goes through this crazy head of mine.  *grimace*

flutterflies

That's what Scooch calls butterflies.  A year or so ago, we gave a gift to our niece of one of those butterfly kits.  It comes with everything you need but the caterpillars, which you have to order when you are ready to start.  While our niece used her habitat for housing a host of other critters and collections, but not butterflies, I have since thought about getting our own caterpillars to grow and release.  I wanted to wait until Scooch was old enough to have a bit of an idea of what was going on.  Lately, there's been an ad running on tv here for the kits, and every time Scooch would say something about it, so I decided it was time.

Our box arrived on a Saturday morning, and it was lucky we were still home (we're usually out enjoying getting out of the house).  I tore into the box like a kid on Christmas morning.  It came with two containers of 5 caterpillars each.  The bottom was covered in their 'nutrient', and that is what they would eat until they pupated.  Also in the kit were instructions, a butterfly life cycle poster, a glossy card with stickers (Scooch's favorite part), and the hatching habitat. 

Unfortunately, we had to keep the caterpillars in as constant a temperature as we could find in the house.  I had hoped to be able to keep them on the sill in the kitchen where we could watch them better, but that was a definite no-no.  So I kept them in my studio, where not much action took place recently (unfortunately), and the temp can stay pretty constant.

Scooch and I checked on them each morning, watching them grow and crawl around.  They spun webs that they crawled on and slept in.  The only bad thing about living in a little container, is that all their poo had to just hang out with them.  Sorry, TMI probably.

About two weeks after their arrival, one [much bigger] caterpillar crawled up to the top, hung around up there for a bit making preparations, and then stuck his (her?) little feet to the top and hung upside down.  About 24 hours later, he (she?) started shaking and twisting around.  The caterpillar skin split around the head area, and as the chrysalis underneath wiggled away, the skin slipped up to the top.  When it was finished, the skin had shrunk all up.  It looked like a tiny little version of a caterpillar, hanging from the top near the feet.  You can almost see it in the photo below.  The chrysalis in the center of the photo has a dark thing hanging up at the top in front of it.  That's the discarded skin.

One by one, the other 9 all pupated and we ended up with 10 newly formed chrysalids.  I was so happy to see them all make it to this stage.  Unfortunately, one of them fell and had to lie in all the poo until they had all finished pupating.  I moved them into the hatching habitat, which was a little unnerving.  They all started wiggling and shaking to ward off prey.  I thought they were all going to fall off before I could get them attached to the habitat.

Then, about a week and a half later, two butterflies!!  It's a little yucky after they hatch.  There's this bloody looking stuff that drips all over as they stretch out and enjoy being able to spread their wings for the first time.  Here is one that just hatched.  They pump blood into their wings under pressure to get them to flatten out and harden.  It happens pretty quickly too, within a few minutes.  Sorry these photos are hazy.  It's hard to take clear photos through the habitat since it's a white mesh.  I tried taken photos through the clear plastic top, but since it was always a bit wrinkled, all the photos looked like they were warped.

We kept the butterflies for two days before letting them go.  I fed them oranges and sugar water sprinkled on flowers.  Once we let them go, they all hung around on the ground for a while.  Then, one by one, they started to fly away.  Three stayed in the grass after we went inside for dinner, but we got to watch 4 fly up into the wind and out of our garden (we had already said goodbye to 3 early birds previously).  Hopefully they were able to stay close by since many of our neighbors have lovely flower gardens.  However, with all the wind and rain we've had lately, I shudder to think what's become of them.  Normally, they should live 3-5 weeks after hatching.  Check out the one down there that tried to hitchhike on my leg.

All in all, this was a fun little project.  If I were ever to do this again, I would have to have a big tank for the caterpillars, and a much bigger area for the butterflies.  I felt bad that they were so confined during their short little lives, and would want to make things more natural for them next time; including real food instead of manufactured 'nutrient'.  But that could potentially turn into a really big, really expensive project.  So unless I decide to become a butterfly whisperer or something, I'll probably just leave it all to nature and the great butterfly conservatories that have the proper facilities.

Oh, in case you're interested, they are Painted Lady Butterflies, and we got them here.

i'm back and so fired up!

New monitor.  Check.
Blog posts backed up for weeks.  Check.
Photos downloaded.  Check.

I'm all ready to resume regular posting!  And hopefully, even more regular posting than normal!  The new monitor arrived and wasn't in the house 5 minutes and I had it unpacked, put together, plugged in, and had blogger open to my posts page.  I am sooo ready to get this blog off the ground!

So!  I'm still getting photos edited and added to posts.  In the meantime, here's a little tease of what's to come; including a whole week long treat!

I'm still here.

Well this monitor situation is really getting on my nerves.  I've got posts backed up like crazy, all just waiting on photos.  I can't plug my netbook into my pc because the vga port on the netbook is output only.   I just wanted to let all you millions of readers know that I'm still here.  My efforts to get this blog off the ground are really blowing up in my face lately.  Hopefully I can make a go of it soon...

sleep training and dead monitors

Both of those have been mucking up my blogging lately.  First of all, we're finally sleep training Monkey.  I had read two different books, and been posting on boards all over the 'internets' looking for suggestions.  To catch you up since I haven't posted much about it: Monkey can't go to sleep without me.  For the past few months he and I have been sharing an air mattress in our extra bedroom.  It got to the point where we were both so sleep deprived, every aspect of our lives were affected, and we just needed some sleep.  So I gave in and just brought him to bed with me and we both slept, well, like babies.  So I just got used to doing it that way and let it go on a little too long.  When I finally got tired of having to go to bed at 7:30pm (Monkey's bedtime), I decided to ramp up my efforts to get him into his own bed. 

There were two problems we were facing.  First, Monkey couldn't fall asleep on his own.  He needed me to get him to sleep.  Second, he was used to having me there next to him all night.  Most sleep solutions out there suggest one of two ways: let them cry for varying lengths of time, checking on them in various ways, until they finally wear themselves out and crash; or stay in there with them and baby the heck out of them until they eventually are coddled to sleep in their bed, without crying.  I knew I wasn't about to let him cry again.  We tried that, three times, and we all ended up more stressed and tired than before.  I also didn't like the no-cry sleep method because I didn't think he should be coddled so much just to get to sleep.  So I opted for a split between the two. 

First, we spent a week in our shared bed, letting him put himself to sleep.  He would roll around and fuss and chew on the covers and eventually fall asleep.  For week 2, I put him in his own bed, but stayed in his room, reading in a chair.  So he still had me in the room, but I wasn't helping him get to sleep.  Here's where our plan went a little off track.  I am so happy to say that Monkey is now sleeping in his own bed, 100% of the time.  However.  He is still having great trouble getting himself to sleep.  There are times when I have to help him get to sleep by rolling him onto his side and giving him something that smells like me; or even rocking him to near-sleep on really challenging days.  I would just let him be, except that sometimes he screams so loudly that he wakes his brother.  Those are the times I 'help'.  It's not quite as smooth as all that, but we're getting there, one precious day at a time. 

So, during that first week where I was letting him put himself to sleep, with me laying next to him, I had to go to bed whenever he did.  So naps and 7:30 bedtimes for me for a week.  That meant that I could only get things done around the house while Monkey was awake.  So no blogging. :(  To be honest, I think that first stage ended up taking two weeks or more because I was waiting for something to get fixed outside Monkey's window that would bang and wake him up.

Now that Monkey is finally in his bed and sleeping on his own and I have both naptimes and bedtimes free after he goes to sleep, I was hoping to get caught up with all the blog posts I have half-finished.  Well, now the monitor on our pc isn't working.  Luckily I have this little netbook so I don't feel completely cut off from the virtual world, but pretty, photo-riddled posts will have to wait until we get a working monitor. 

Hopefully I'll be back blogging normally again very soon!

i cheated

Remember this post, when I said I was going to translate a French pattern, all by myself?  Ha.  Yea.  Um...  So after spending waaay too much time going between Babylon and  ChezPlum's French Knitting Dictionary (which is really a great resource!), I decided to ask the lovely Sylvie at ChezPlum to do the translation for me.  I was in the right direction, but Sylvie got it done much faster and more efficiently that I did with my severe lack of retention of the four years of French I took in high school.  Besides, let's face it; I really can't afford to be spending time doing stuff like that right now.  I've started sleep-training Oliver, which means that I'm only available to do anything while Oliver is awake.  Ugh.  So until he is sleeping as he should (in his own bed, by himself), it was really nice to have someone do something for me for a change.  So far I've only found one little blip that I was able to correct quickly.  This little bolero is still taking far far too long to complete, being that I have about 30 seconds of knitting time each day lately.

In the land of sewing, I've got fabric cut for these pants for my big boy, these pants for my little boy, and a top from this book for myself.  But alas, they'll have to sit in a neat little pile, collecting dust like the rest of the house, until this sleep thing is taken care of.  Being that little Monkey is so sick right now too, it's going to take much longer than it should.