Baby Shoes

These little feet took their first step a few weeks ago! Ever since they have been taking a few unsure steps a day, but I'm sure they will be full-on running soon.

So things around here have been a bit silent recently. Things around here have also been busy. We moved to the US!! We still aren't settled at all, as in Y has yet to move into our new house, but he did find one! In the meantime, the little boys and I are staying at my parents' house. It has been glorious! I have been taking a little vacation from just about everything, including the blog. But, hopefully I will get back into the swing of things and blog every once in a while.

Anyway, before we left T started standing. It was fine when we were inside our house, but when we went to the park, he wanted to stand, too. When we went to the store, he wanted to chill in the play area with his big brother. Since we didn't have much time to go shopping, I looked online for shoes for him, but I couldn't find any. The smallest I found was 11.5 cm, but he was more like 9.5 or 10 cm. Dude was only 8 months old. Since I couldn't find any, I figured I'd just make them.

I looked online for a little shoe pattern and found this one. Since it looked slightly small, I scaled it up slightly.

Since I wanted T to be able to walk outside in these, I wanted the bottoms to be leather. I didn't have any leather scraps, so I went to my 100yen store (oh how I have been missing this shop) and picked up a leather business card case.

When I got home, I started cutting it up to get some leather for the soles.

Then I sewed the leather soles onto the fabric sole.

I wanted the shoes to have some sort of design, so I zig zagged a little light blue patch on the front.

Then I sewed the two halves of the back of the shoe together. If I were to do these shoes again, I would have picked a different fabric - this one was an interior weight, which was fine, but as you can see in the photo below the weave was pretty loose. It started fraying after a few wears, which was a tad disappointing.

The other thing I would have done would be to make one bigger piece for this back bit and just fold it over. This is where the most of the fraying started to happen, exposing the elastic that was put in during the next step.

Then I sewed the fabric again to make a casing for the elastic.

Then I attached the front to the back and sewed them both to the soles.

I think they looked adorable, but as above they started to fray. They were also slightly small after a week or two. In the end, they didn't last too long. But once we got to my parents' house, my mom went out and bought him a pair. Now he is taking those little steps in style!

Bento Thursday - Ohanami

Right now is my favorite season in Japan - the cherry blossoms, sakura, are out! During cherry blossom time, we often have Ohanami, picnics under the flowering trees. One of the room mothers for K's kindergarten suggested we get together for Ohanami on Monday. I asked K what kind of bento he wanted - Dr. Yellow, naturally. This time, to mix it up a bit, I boiled an egg, took out the yolk, mashed it up and mixed it into his rice to make it yellow. I love how it turned out. Then I added the standard nori windows and stripes. He also requested cucumbers, carrots, green peppers and teriyaki chicken. I got it all ready, showed it to him and he was bummed that the stripes on Dr. Yellow weren't blue like they are supposed to be. I have never done them blue. I ended up getting out my food markers and drawing blue stripes on it. He was so pleased.

My bento was the same as K's, except for the onigiri. I wanted a sesame onigiri, so I made it into a bear. 

Since I was making bentos for K and I, I figured I might as well make one for Y. I left out the cucumbers from his and instead added cheesy salmon and tomatoes. Also, no onigiri - just rice with furikake.

K had such a fun time with his school friends. Only about 10 of them showed up, but a few of them were his best friends. In the morning it was a tad chilly, but it ended up getting quite hot.

Unfortunately, we had to leave a bit early. T was getting restless, we had to get to the bank by 3, and I wanted to pick up Y's birthday present. K was cool with leaving, but asked if we could go back one day.

Just before T was born, I had this huge urge to take K out and do as many fun things with him as possible, while it was just the two of us. Now that we leave in less than a month (probably), I am feeling the same way. During the time we have left, I want to do as many fun things in Japan as possible. So this morning, I made K and I some sandwiches, cut up some carrots and apples, and packed a lunch for T. We stopped by the convini to pick up some treats for after lunch, then we popped on the train, and headed back to the park we went to on Monday. We got there just after 11 and the place was packed. Luckily we found a nice spot in the shade. T tried to eat everything he saw.

K stuck to his sandwich, carrots and apples.

After lunch, we took a walk around. K played at one of the playgrounds, but then he spotted the gigantic bouncy castle. He always asks to play in it, but we always have some excuse. Not today! In the spirit of making his last month in Japan epic, I bought him a ticket. He was on cloud 9. Kids go in for 15 minute shifts. He made the most of his time in there - climbing the walls, running and jumping off of the tubes, going down the slides, and jumping as high as he could propel his little body. He came out glowing (maybe from sweat, but likely from the amazing 15 minutes he spent in there).

He was really hot at that point, so I suggested we get some ice cream - also, to be honest, I can't go to this park during cherry blossom season and not get a cherry blossom ice cream. Ugh. It's amazing.

K took ages to eat his ice cream. Usually I would try to hurry him up, but why? I had to get home to make dinner, but tonight was mostly left overs anyway. K took so long eating it that T fell asleep.

As we were walking to the station, K looked up and said, "Look, mama! We are in a tunnel of sakura!" We were. And it was beautiful.

K had such a fun day and I am so happy. Yesterday we walked out to the gardening store near our house and K fed the fish. Tomorrow his friend from school is coming over. He has been asking to go to a professional soccer game, and I think there is one this weekend. I am debating taking him. It starts at 4, so it will mess up T's bedtime, but part of me wants to just not worry about that and take them anyway. Afterall, I want K to have wonderful memories of Japan. I know we will be back, but not for a few years.

6 Months

To celebrate little T turning 6 months old, we took a family trip to Hawaii last week! Just kidding - it was actually a trip to celebrate our 5-year wedding anniversary, but it just so happened that T turned 6 months halfway through the trip.

For a few weeks now, T has been eyeing food. By that, I mean he gets really upset when people are eating and he's not. I didn't want to start solids until after Hawaii, both for convenience sake and also because I didn't want to deal with an allergic reaction while on holiday, should one occur. I promised, however, that as soon as we got back I would start solids. We got back Monday night, so Tuesday after naptime (and during my unpacking - hence the gigantic mess in the background), T had his first taste of rice. He seemed a bit unsure of it all. Today went much better - I imagine tomorrow will be even better than today. I think I've got an eater on my hands!

He can sit on his own for about 30 seconds now, but can't get there himself.

With a tiny bit of help reaching the top of the sofa, he can pull himself up and stand for a while. He tends to just randomly pick up his hands and topple over though, so I have to be pretty close when this is happening.

Along with solids, I gave him his first sippy up. He seems to like chewing on it, but I'm not sure if he's actually drinking anything.

He loves to roll and scoot around, and his favorite places seem to be under the furniture - any sofa or coffee table will do.

 

K is still an amazing big brother. He dotes on T and it melts my heart every time. While we were in Hawaii, T developed a cough. Whenever K hears him cough, he runs over, pats his back and coos "poor baby".  I think these two will be best friends forever.

 

 

 

One last T-fun-fact is that he has curly hair (in the humidity, at least)!! I had no idea. The day we got to Hawaii his hair curled right up and it didn't straighten out again until the plane ride home. If you look closely at the family photo above, you can kind of see a little head of black curls.

 

Anyway, back to the main post - in preparation for Hawaii I made T a portable high chair. I took photos while making this, but it seems that K accidentally deleted them. Whoops. Additionally, I can't seem to find the tutorial I used to make this, but to be honest it was quite confusing and had no pictures. I was able to work it out, but I was confused most of the time. In searching for the original tutorial, however, I found this one that is the same thing, but very clear and with photos. 

 

 

We rented a house in Hawaii which meant that almost all of our meals were eaten at a dining table in our "home". As a result, T was either rolling around on the floor, asleep, or being held by someone during every meal, so he didn't use the chair at all when we were at home. To celebrate our anniversary, however, we had a huge dinner at the same restaurant at which we had our reception. They had a high chair for T, but he is still so teeny that he kind of flopped around it in. I was able to use this one to strap him in a little tighter. He only lasted in the chair for about 20 minutes, before someone picked him up. It turns out that I probably didn't need to make this for the trip, but I imagine it will be helpful in the near future anyway.

 

 



WubbaNub Pacifier Clip and a Regular Version to Boot!

When K was a baby, he never used a pacifier. T, on the other hand, loves his. A friend gave us a little lamb WubbaNub that T loves when he's playing or just starting to get fussy. To put him to sleep, however, he likes a standard pacifier. This means that when we leave the house for the day, as we did on Monday, we need a whole assortment of pacifiers - we have a few regular ones, but only one Wubbanub and that thing is like gold. On Monday we finally applied for the boys' American passports. We left the house at 8 and didn't get finished at the consulate until 12. It was a long morning and T held it together pretty well. We were all hungry, so we stopped at one of our favorite restaurants that we hadn't been to since I was pregnant with K. It's a lovely Portuguese restaurant, but it isn't really a place for kids. It was lunch time, however, and K is surprisingly well-behaved at restaurants, so we decided to just do it. Just after the entrees were served, T started to get a bit fussy. We gave him Lambie (the WubbaNub), but soon it fell from his mouth to the floor. Game over.

Something had to be done. Since there isn't a little handle on the Wubbanub like a regular pacifier, I was a bit stumped as to how to make a clip for it. I thought about weaving a ribbon through the two holes on the pacifier, but a little ribbon seemed like it might not be too safe. Then it came to me! I could just use elastic to wrap around Lambie's head, kind of like a leash.

Start by cutting 23cm of twill tape and zigzagging back and forth on the cut ends.

Fold one end in half and zigzag it together.

Measuring 7cm down, sew a straight line just to help keep the tape folded. I imagine you could make the strap with ribbon as well, but if you use twill, I recommend also using denim needles - it gets pretty thick.

Fold the zigzagged end to the line you just sewed and sew the little loop together.

Snap the clip on. As a note, I wanted to use suspender clips, but I couldn't find them. I did, however, find clips to hold a little pouch that I figured would work just fine. If you are lucky enough to use suspender clips, I imagine you wouldn't have to fold the twill in half, instead just make a small loop and sew it up.

Now for the other end. Cut a small length of thin elastic (just enough to fit over the pacifier and WubbaNub's head - mine was about 9cm), fold it in half and sew the ends to the twill tape. I sewed two parallel lines just to be sure they were secure.

Using a rectangle of coordinating fabric, iron the edges into the middle and one of the ends in a bit as well.

Wrap the rectangle around the end once or twice, and sew a square around the edges to secure it. Slip it over the WubbaNub's head and rest assured that your little animal isn't going anywhere!

The regular pacifier clip is even easier, but you will need more twill tape - I used 32cm. The end with the clip is the same as the WubbaNub version. Instead of using elastic on the opposite end, however, cut a small square of Velcro and sew one of the pieces to the end of the twill, near the zigzag.

Measure about 3cm down and sew on the other piece of Velcro. Slip it through the loop on the pacifier and Bob's your uncle!

T had his clip on Lambie the entire day today. If I took it off, he got pretty upset. He loved being able to find Lambie easily, even after dropping it while in his Bumbo chair or jumper.

T tends to jump pretty wildly and little by little the twill would start to pop out.

Eventually Lambie would fall, but T would just give the twill a yank and Lambie was right back in his hands in no time. A mama who doesn't have to stop making dinner, wash up her hands, go to the playroom, pick up Lambie, and give it to her baby is a happy mama. A baby who can get his Lambie on his own is a happy baby. Problem solved.

Stroller/Car Seat Blanket

Happy New Year!! Sorry for the lack of posts recently. We were at Y's parents' house all last week and it was glorious. I decided that rather than blog, I would catch up on my sleep. So I did. I slept a lot. It was perfect. Because of the holidays, I have a few posts about things that I have made that are really quite old at this point. But, while they are old to me, they are still new to you! So here we go!!

The weather turned a bit chilly here a few months ago. At that point, T was still tiny (look at him!!) and we didn't have a coat for him. I would just put him in my wrap and then wrap blankets or my jacket around us. This worked fine, but took a bit of time to deal with. Also, as soon as I wrapped him up like that, he would pass out - he was probably two or three months old at the time. The passing out bit wasn't too much of an issue, except on K's school days. I really wanted to keep him awake until the bus picked up K so that we could go home and nap together. I realized that if I put him in his stroller, he would stay awake, but he also tended to just kick the blankets off. So, I made him a little stroller blanket.

I started with a big square of fabric - about a meter on all sides. I used two fleeces (one for the outside and one for the inside) as well as a thick batting.

I layered them all together and then folded the whole thing into fourths.

Using a Sharpie, I drew a line so that the corner with all raw edges was rounded and then sides going out to either end were a bit curved. You can kind of see the line in the photo below if you look closely.

Then I cut along the line and it looked like this.

The batting was a tad small, so it didn't meet up perfectly at the corners, but I just chose to not worry about that bit. I did, however, baste it as well as I could to the inside fleece. I wanted the blanket to be hooded, so I folded one of the rounded edges together so that the blanket was folded diagonally and drew a line across horizontally, then sewed it up. I did the same for the outside piece of fabric as well.

 

Then I sewed it up, right sides together, making sure to line up the seams from the hooded part and leaving a bit of a gap for turning. I turned it right side out and then top stiched all the way around. Since it was to be a blanket for a stroller, I needed to cut slits into it so the straps would fit through. I kind of guessed on this bit, but luckily it worked out well (at the beginning at least).

I cut the slits and then pinned the cut edges together.

Thinking I was all smart since fleece won't unravel, I just zig zagged around the slits. It made a huge mess. :(

The slits ended up super wavy and not nice looking at all. After all the work, I totally ruined it!! Good thing this was in the back, so no one would see it until I took T out. Still, I hated what I had just done and figured there had to be a solution.

I kept thinking for a few days, all the while using it.

T loved it, but eventually he wanted his arms free. Luckily, a good friend of ours sent us a beautiful fleece jacket for T, so he would wear that and then I would wrap up his little body and legs in the blanket.

As soon as we got in to a shop or on the train, I would unwrap him and his little body would feel so toasty. As we both were loving the blanket, I decided that I would make two more - one for our new niece and one for a good friend's daughter, both born at the end of November.

 

I decided that the best way to fix the wavy slits were to use a bias tape of sorts. I didn't want to use real bias tape since the blanket was quite thick and I figured I would mess it up. Instead I settled on strips of the lining fleece. I also worked out a much better way to deal with it. I assembled the blankets the same way I did T's, but before cutting the slits, I drew them on and then sewed around them.

 

 

 

Then I cut them open. Since they were sewn together, I didn't have to deal with pinning that many layers of fabric together.

 

 

Next I cut super long strips of the lining fleece, each about 8 cm wide and sewed them around the slits, about 4 centimeters on either side of the blanket. This was not an easy task - the machine was working it's way through one layer of batting and four layers of fleece. As a result, it didn't turn out perfect, but looked way better than the wavy mess I had made of T's.

 

 

 

 

Not perfect, but better than the prototype. I ended up fixing T's as well and I like it much better now. I made these before each of the new babies were born and gave them away just before and just after their births. We saw our little niece (who was given the pink one) over the New Year and she was using her blanket for her car seat. She looked so sweet all snuggled up in it. Her parents said that it works really well - wahoo!!

 

 

Unfortunately T is over his at this point. We got a lot of use out of it, but he doesn't like being all wrapped up in it any more. Homie's on the move! Also, given that we wait for the K's bus for a good ten minutes and it is freezing, we use a different stroller bag that is down and super duper toasty. He still doesn't much care for it, but it is zipped like a sleeping bag, so he can't bust his way out of it. Too bad, little man!!