Emma Grace – Page 3 – Elizabeth Smillie

February 6, 2010 Elizabeth

Do you remember this post from last fall? A very kind friend from California read it and sent us the pattern. It was so sweet of her! I found an extremely good deal deal on the material the day after Thanksgiving ($1.49 a yard! so amazing!) and made up the jammies for Emma a week or two later.

The pattern arrived with a paper doll that I’m going to hold on to for Emma to play with in a few years. It is also made of thicker tissue than your usual pattern, sturdy enough to be used over and over as she grows from one size to the next. The instructions are incredibly clear, and I even learned a new technique for making narrow ties (no more turning to the “right” side. it saves so much time). I am now a huge fan of Oliver + S!

Emma loves her new jammies, and looks just adorable wearing them. It has taken me a while to get some good photos of her actually in them, though, since the lighting is pretty bad in our apartment in the morning when she is at her most photogenic. This morning, however, we have a ton of snow which brightens everything.

Thank you, Tammi, for the pattern. It really was so sweet of you!!!

December 23, 2009 Elizabeth

Emma is tall enough to pull our DVDs off of the shelf, and last week we added it to the “no touch” group. She had been gravitating to the shelf more and more and I would often find her on the floor happily surrounded by – and chewing on – the movies that she had pulled off the shelf.
So, now Emma is learning to obey some more, and the DVDs are staying on the shelf (mostly).
Because of that I spent a moment putting them back into alphabetical order this morning. It had been bothering me a bit that they were all “messed up” and now they are back in order (for now). So nice.
Of course, I expect to find them spread out on the floor with our baby girl happily in the middle of them again ………… but it’s nice for now.

a new heirloom

December 16, 2009 Elizabeth

I finished knitting Emma’s dress a few days before Thanksgiving, just perfect since I had been imagining it as her holiday dress for this year. It is a rather simple pattern, once you figure out how the yoke is laid out. :) I found it in The Expectant Knitter and knit it up in Pattons “Grace” cotton yarn instead of the silk that the pattern recommended and like it just as well. It is light enough to to be a Spring dress but heavy enough to keep her little belly warm this winter, too.

want one?

December 15, 2009 Elizabeth

I put a large bowl of clementines on our coffee table, thinking that even if Emma could reach it she wouldn’t be able to damage them (the worst she could do would be to suck on the fruit). Well, our little one has longer arms than I thought! And now she spends several minutes after each nap standing at the coffee table under our window pulling clementines out of the bowl and either dropping them or handing them to me. And sometimes she lets me keep them, too. :)

our teething babe

December 2, 2009 Elizabeth

The past few days have been filled with lots and LOTS of Emma holding, Emma comforting, and trying to find ways to relieve her discomfort.

So, when I heard her pull out the basket that holds our CDs tonight – which is usually a “no touch” item – I ignored it and let her play. She wasn’t being destructive, just curious. She pulled most of the cases part way out and slid them back in, playing with a few colorful ones that caught her interest. It kept her busy and distracted for quite a while.

Now the thing is, she is happy but I feel bad that I was inconsistent!

as water through fingers ….

October 3, 2009 Elizabeth

teething, originally uploaded by Lizi Beth.

I love being a mother. I really do. Mothering a smiling and joyful (and willful …) baby is just so wonderful. Sometimes when I look back at my day, though, it seems as if all my effort accomplished nothing. True, the laundry has been washed, dishes done, diapers changed. But at the end of the day it is hard to tell because all of that “doing” is waiting to be done all over again. There are no marks of achievement when is comes to housework.

Emma is teething just now, and today she just wants to held as she sucks her thumb or trills to me as she plays with my hair. It is difficult to get much accomplished while carrying a nearly 20 pound baby, and combined with her want for more nursing and less “real” food, I am feeling a bit tired! So we have been sitting at the computer and I have been catching up on reading blogs as Ems absorbs comfort. As I was reading I found that this woman’s post from last week was good and very timely.

It reminded me of the story of how David’s mighty men went down to Bethlehem to get him some water from the well, and instead of drinking it he poured it out on the ground as a drink offering (II Sam 23:14-17). Of course, David had a purpose for pouring out the water – to him it represented the life blood of the men who had brought it for him – but I have always seen it from his men’s view as well: they so wanted him to have this water that meant so much to him, and then he poured it out instead of drinking it. All their effort gone. But their effort wasn’t gone. It was being used as an offering of praise.

The blog author was convicted about her setting “seen” accomplishments as idols in her heart. It was so good to read her transparency. I stopped to ponder: Can I go from needing a visible, tangible product of my labor to allowing it to be poured out before God?