Some Craftiness and a Tooth

So before I forget, since I haven't written any of these dates in his baby book yet, Joseph cut tooth #8 on Friday!

Another first this week - swim lessons! We signed him up for a short spring break parent & child (or two over-excited parents and child) lesson, which meets for 30 minutes Monday-Thursday this week. So last night we packed him up and headed over to the pool. The water is rather chilly, even though it's indoors, probably because it's normally an outdoor pool that the city just covers with a dome durting the non summer months, so no heater. Joseph was a little fussy about the whole thing before "class" started, but once we got him moving, he was much more excited about it. He particularly liked the parts where he got to splash in the water, and be dragged around on his belly like a fish... I think we might have the makings of a future swimmer!

The best part? He came home, eat a lot of dinner, slept for 13 hours, woke up happy this morning and didn't fuss while actually eating his breakfast! If 30 minutes in the pool each evening is what it takes for him to start eating, then that's what we'll do!

And this is a little late, but I went a bit overboard with the craftiness for our Disney trip. Besides the group tshirts we all made, I wanted to make a few more things that I knew would come in handy. Last year when I was traveling with Joseph by myself, one of Joe's sisters suggested taking a small pillow so I had something to make the baby sleeping on me trip more comfortable. Great suggestion, but it was really hard to have one more bulky thing to carry on the plane.

This time around, I decided just to make my own pillow, with an attached loop so I could secure it to my diaper bag when it wasn't being used:

It took about 5 minutes to sew and since I couldn't find the travel pillow I bought last year, I just used the stuffing from an old pillow and filled it while we watched a tv show one night. So much easier, and it definitely got used!

I bought an umbrella stroller off craigslist for $10 for the trip, so I didn't have to worry about our nice stroller getting damaged on the plane or potentially lost at the parks. I have learned that I hate trying to push a stroller while carrying/wearing a bag, and found a tutorial online for a messenger bag style diaper bag with smaller straps that could be secured to the handles of the stroller.

I found some fun all weather fabric, a good pattern (since I'm not ready for most freehand sewing projects yet) and spent a few days the week before the trip putting this new diaper bag together.

Best part? I was able to completely customize it for everything I wanted. I have two deep pockets on either end, sized perfectly for water bottles or sippy cups, a large pocket on the back, two large pockets on the inside, and a few sewn in d-rings for attaching toys/keys/etc with carabiner clips.

You can see in both the pictures the black webbing and bright pink clips, my solution for being able to adjust the straps for both the skinny umbrella stroller handles and the much larger bar on our jogging stroller. The stitching certainly isn't perfect, but it worked out great for the trip, and I'm still using it at home.

Next up? Pictures of the quiet book I made for Joseph. MUCH more time intensive and still not completely finished, but I'm really excited about how the pages I've made so far have turned out.