Camping on Citico Creek

Helloooooooo! Is anybody out there??? Well, hello again! Lots of life has been happening since I posted over a year ago. I may try to post some "catch-up" pictures on here another day...but then again, life hasn't gotten any less busy or demanding since then, so I may not. We'll see. But my biggest blog fan (aka~ husband) has told me repeatedly how much he misses reading my posts and seeing our pictures, so I am making an effort to post for him.

The kids are bigger now, of course. I took them camping this week by myself, since Rodrigo had to work and couldn't get away from that and someone needed to be at home to care for our animals. Violet turned 2 while we were camping. She's such a sweet, funny, little person; and noisy, very, very noisy!  

I bought the kids a couple of packages of glow necklaces and they put on a light show for me after dark. We had the campground completely to ourselves, which was really nice, since I didn't have to worry about our being too noisy or up too early for anyone else! We got up sometime just after 6 in the morning and while I made coffee on the camp stove Matthew and Ethan started the fire back up to help us thaw out! After breakfast we went for  a walk down by the creek. It was still very early with the sun just peaking over the edge of the mountain and the mist rising off of the water. We walked around for a few hours until everyone started to feel hungry again and we wandered back to camp for an early lunch. Later we packed up and headed home. It was a lot of fun, but I was very happy to back in my own warm bed last night! :-)

In her Sunday best

Violet, all dressed up in her Sunday best, 9 months old.

Crawling~ For your viewing pleasure

May I present a one minute video of Violet, now 7 months old, being chubby and adorable and very loud. She started sitting up on her own and crawling nearly a month ago.

My loves

My loves, Violet and her Daddy.

Happy Weekending.

Talking to her Daddy

Violet is such a talkative little thing. She loves carrying on long very expressive conversations with anyone who is willing to talk back. ♥

Lazy Sunday Afternoon

Fresh from her bath. Sleepy heads just waking up from their naps.

practically perfect in every way

10 tiny toes and 10 little fingers. Everything has been counted and exclaimed over again and again during the past 7 weeks. We are all smitten, and quite sure that she is practically perfect in every way!

Claire and Emmett came down with a nasty cold this past week. They are both feeling better this weekend, but now our poor little Violet is feeling a bit under the weather. She has a runny nose and a yucky sounding cough, but thankfully no fever! In those pictures of me in the green sweater holding her, I think her little face looks a bit sick, but she is so sweet I wanted to post them anyway.

In other news, she found her smile! Oh my, it melts this mama's heart to see it! 

In which a doll is born

Our sweet little Claire turned 4 years old this weekend. During the last month of my pregnancy I began working on a special doll for her, a baby doll. I knew I wanted it to look a bit like her new baby sister that was on the way. So with that in mind I set to work. I created a doll with arms and legs that are jointed and can move, to make dressing easier. Plus her new baby would be able to sit up and hug and do all of those fun things you need movable arms and legs for. I embroidered her baby's eyes to match Claire's own eye color as closely as possible. We had a very clear ultrasound picture of Violet at 36 weeks and her face shape was just like Claire's was as a newborn, so I carefully sculpted the new doll's face to have a sweet pointy chin, chubby kissable cheeks and a darling little nose, just like my sweet girls. Her skin is organic cotton, and her hair is a mohair and wool blend. It was a natural white, and we gathered black walnuts from our woods and I dyed her hair with them after I crocheted the little cap to the correct size for her head. She is firmly stuffed with wool. 

Ever since Violet was born 3 weeks ago, Claire has been watching everything I do with the new baby very closely. Doll play in our house has become much more serious business now! Claire has spent the past couple of weeks playing "mommy with a newborn". She mentioned how she wished one of her babies had short soft fuzzy hair, like my newborn. She also told me several times that she would like to have diapers for her baby, so she could change it's diapers. (Lately a very frequent occurrence that she has witnessed about a million times around here!) So I made her new baby a couple of diapers that close with velcro. The diapers turned out to be a very big hit! Claire's baby has had her diapers changed even more frequently than her baby sister's in the past few days. During the time I worked on the doll, Claire had no idea that I was making something for her! She was so surprised to open up her gift on her birthday

With everything that has been happening over the past few weeks I gave myself a break and decided not to make her handmade clothing right now. So she is being dressed in "real preemie baby" sized clothing for the time being. The little pale blue pixie hat with velvet ribbons and the embroidered violets on it was borrowed from my own little Violet Penelope! I made it from the softest cashmere sweater. The pink hat with matching tiny Mary Jane shoes were actually Claire's when she was a newborn! They were made for her by her adoring Grandmother!

Claire and I decided to wrap our new born babies up in their blankets and take pictures of them together. Playing Mommy with my sweet little girl is so much fun. 

Joining in with Nicole at Frontier Dreams today and Linda at Natural Suburbia.