Saddest Little Girl on the Playground

Yesterday was finally a nice day in Wisconsin. Warm enough outside that when Moodles got all crazy and started pouncing in the dogs and jumping on the couch, I decided to take her to the park to let her "get it out of her system." It was the saddest thing ever.

My child needs practice going to the park. There seem to have been two main issues. Item the first: Moodles does not enjoy wearing shoes, and because she has such chubby feet, I've had trouble getting shoes in her size that will go on her feet. Thus, up until recently, I've not been terribly good about putting shoes on her, and when I do, she either takes them off immediately or sits around forlornly, giving me dirty looks suggesting that I have crippled her with horrifyingly complex torture devices. Item the second: When Moodles finds a rock in the house, she tries to eat it. Being a reasonably responsible parent, I do not let her, and usually make her give me the rock so that I can dispose of it. Thus, when we went to the park, it was not the frenzy of running, flailing, and gravel tossing I had envisioned. My poor child. First I put SHOES on her, and then I took her to the park and set her down in a hill of gravel, which was an even more strange surface to be on than in shoes alone. She did not run. She did not smile. She just stood there looking at me for cues.

So I ran away from her and came back, to demonstrate the playfulness that she was supposed to be feeling. She sighed deeply. Then she leaned over and picked up a single particle of gravel and handed it to me. Then another. Then more resounding sighs, as though to say, "Mother. We are NEVER going to get this cleaned up in time to play before bed time."

**facepalm**

After about 10 minutes of unsuccessfully trying to engage Moodles in play that wasn't quite so forlorn or serious, another little girl came to the park to ride the swings. She was about two and screeching with glee every time her Papa gave her an under-dog push. Moodles observed this very seriously, but did not approach. After the little girl left, I put Moodles in the swing to see if maybe she would like that more than the slide. (She seems to have a problem with the slide, wherein no matter which way I put her ON the slide she ends up coming down head first, looking like an unflappable butler going for a ride in the Batmobile. Not panicking. Just... completely unflapped. And up-side-down.) She eventually gave me a giggle for the swing, but other than that the playground was a complete flop.
 
Obviously we need more practice. We got home and she seemed relieved to be there with her doggies (which she went back to tackling) and her sofa (which she is darn near jumping off of these days.)

**headdesk**

Better Late than Never

I'm sure some of you who signed up for socks back in February have
noticed that you still have no socks.

I am still working on them, but now they take rather longer, because
I'm no longer working with commercial yarn. I am now SPINNING the yarn
in a vain attempt to de-stash a couple pounds of the raw wool I have
lying around the house... Then, because I like making new friends and
working on collaborative things, I am sending the yarn ALL OVER THE
COUNTRY to be dyed by someone else. THEN, when it comes back to me, I
am making SOCKS.

So.

These are the socks I made for Gwyneth with yarn dyed in Florida by my
friend Elizabeth. Aren't they pretty?

Sign Language: This is not the ASL you're looking for...

So, since it became clear that Moodles understands more words than she can say, I've been trying to teach her some ASL, so she can communicate more things to people other than Mommy, Daddy, and Grandma.

This morning, I was THRILLED because when as soon as she got up, she  was signing "milk" at me... or so I thought. I poured her some milk and handed her her sippy, and signed "milk."

She signed back "MILK!" but then threw the sippy on the floor and hit me in the knee.

"No, GENTLE." I told her.

She rolled her eyes and *patted* my knee. Then she *hit* my knee and signed "milk."

"But I gave you milk and you threw it on the floor. Right there."

"Milk." *hit, hit, hit*

"GENTLE."

*sigh, pat, pat* And then she ran off, leaving me to pick up her milk and follow. She went to her book collection and picked out a book and then waited patiently for me to sit down in the reading position. I
sat, and she handed me the book. "Milk."

Oh.... Riiiiight. "Hand, Hand, FINGERS, THUMB. You were showing me FINGERS, THUMB, weren't you? I am sorry, sweety. Your Momma is 'Dum ditty dum ditty dum dum dumb."

**For those of you who are not familiar with the book, it's about a bunch of monkeys with drums. She wasn't hitting me. She was doing the drumming part of the book that we do every time we get to "dum ditty dum ditty dum dum dum."

Hybrid diaper cover tutorial:

So, after months of experimentation, and half a dozen or so diaper cover designs, I've come to a final design that I'm really happy with. It's not so much a specific PATTERN that I like as these techniques will work with MOST of the patterns in my pattern stash. It's the functional elements that I love. So, lets have a look at what I've got:

Sorry I sound all breathy. I accidentally spent an hour and a half listening to JVC after Moodles switched the channel and I was too busy sewing to find where she put the remote and go back to NCIS.

What does this design have that I like? Leg gussets, and front and back slide/splash guards, a wipeable PUL interior, but very little of the rubberized side of the fabric is in contact with the baby's skin, AND front and back elastic to guard against poor fit and poo-splosions.

So lets talk about what I did. (I learned these tricks from other ladies. I just figured out a method of combining all these features that works for me.) First I cut out my pieces. I have 1 piece of black flannel cut to the actual shape of the diaper, and 1 large piece of PUL that is traced on the fold, but instead of putting the pattern piece directly against the fold, I put it 2" from the fold, thus giving me 4" of extra PUL for the middle of the diaper. This extra PUL will be used to form the leg gussets. Here I've overlaid my flannel normal sized piece on top of the PUL piece so you can see the extra width I'm talking about.

I also cut pieces of PUL in the NORMAL PATTERN SIZE that duplicat the FRONT and BACK of the diaper to form the splash guards. Here is a picture of all my pieces cut out. You can see those extra front and back pieces in the picture. These extra pieces also provide stiffness in the waistband, and substance for the snaps to grab onto.

Also in the above picture, you can see that I drew in the elastic lines for the gussets. Normally, I just go 2" from the outside edge of the PUL, but because this pattern (Tighty Whitey Hipster) is hip snapping, my original lines wouldn't work once the gussets were in place... They'd end up interfering with snap placement. So I re-drew my lines, and the ones I used are the ones with fuscha stars on them. The next step was to 3-step zigzag my lastin down along the drawn lines with the lastin and the stitching on the OUTSIDE EDGE of each line. I did my sewing on the non-shiny side of the PUL, since I want the shiny side to be toward the baby for this part. (Remember to stretch the lastin as you sew!) Then, I folded along the lines, I sandwiched the lastin between layers of PUL, and added 1 line of straight stitching along the outside edge of the lastin (not sewing through it) on the shiny side of the PUL. Doing the leg gussets with one straight seam here, will reduce the number of needle punctures through the PUL in the wet zone.

Next, I pinned the extra front and back splash guards to the body of the PUL, shiny sides together. The leg gussets become 1" deep pleats at this point, and I fold the tops of each gusset ridge toward the center of the diaper. Then I stitch the splash guards down with DOUBLE the seam allowance I was using previously. (So if I was using a 1/2" seam allowance before, I do these seams at 1".) This will "seal up" your wet zone like a dam so that other seams that go through the cotton layer won't wick.

Then, going back to the normal seam allowance, I sew the cotton flannel to the diaper PUL, right sides facing together. The view you see of the PUL in the above picture is the RIGHT SIDE of the PUL part of the diaper. The pink arrow shows the space I left in the seam to turn the diaper right side out after I add my elastic. In this view you can also see how the leg gussets are pleated toward the middle at the front and back of the diaper.

Here is a close up of the two previous seams. You can see how the "dam seam" is toward the inside, and the seam that goes through the cotton fabric is now outside the "wet zone."

The next step is to sew my lastin to both leg seams, and the back and front stretch zones. I 3-step zig-zag my lastin to the PUL side of the seam allowance, and this causes the elastic to roll IN toward the baby.

Then I turn and top stitch my diaper. I top stitch from pink star, to pink star in this picture, along the leg seam. Make sure you don't sew through your lastin! In the places where I was sewing along the previously made double width "dam seam," I sewed right through the same line, because I was NOT sewing in the wet zone. I do not top stitch the front and back elastics, because they are in the wet zone. As long as you top stitch the wings on either side, this seam will still look tidy, and if you sewed your lastin to the PUL side of the seam allowance, the seam will roll in.

Then I added my snaps. Since there is a nice PUL splash guard, and I'm not putting my snaps in the wet zone, I can do all my snaps LAST and still have "hidden snaps." I just reach up under the splash guard on the front of the diaper to place my hidden snaps, and the hip snaps in the back go through all layers of fabric.

 

TADA!