A mish mash.

I've been terribly neglectful of my blog.  Only 1 post in October, and none for November until today- the 23rd.  I have actually been busy though.

A recent picture of Mercy and I, showing off the back-carry in our mei tai

I am in the process of enrolling in the local community college, right now I'm just waiting to hear back about financial aid.  The first year for the most part is going to be pre-reqs like math, science, lit, and writing. I want to become a lactation consultant.  To do that I need to take a bunch of medical classes, and to take those I need to take a bunch of math/science classes.  I only just recently (relatively) decided I wanted to pursue a career as a LC.  In the time span of about 2 days I had several different people come to me for breastfeeding advice, and I was able to provide them the information they wanted.  It was pretty awesome and made me realize that its something I would love to be able to do for more people.

The same goes for car seat safety. I've also been looking up information on becoming a Child Passenger Safety Technician.  I'm very passionate about car seat safety, I've been made fun of over how important it is to me, but its not something I will apologize for.  Its a very important aspect of parenting, and sadly one that many parents are uneducated about.  7 out of 10 child seats are being improperly used. I'd love it if I could do something to help bring that number down.  Unfortunately the next class in my area won't be until March so I'll have to wait til then.

Enjoying her buckle block.

 Other than that (and child rearing) I've been doing quite a bit of sewing.  I made a toy for my daughter, it is a soft block, but because she absolutely LOVES buckles (like on high chairs, or in grocery carts, or the chest clip on her car seat) I decided to add some buckles to the block so she wasn't constantly asking me to take her to the car so she could buckle her baby doll into her seat.  She loves the block and it certainly occupies her for a good amount of time.

Matching shirt and skirt

I also learned how to sew shirts and have been having fun sewing them for my girl, and also matching pants.  I even ended up sewing up some things for people other than my child this past couple weeks.  A family friend asked that I sew her daughter some pants, and I also received an order for 3 diapers that have been sewn up and sent off to their new home.  Unfortunately I lost the memory card for my camera so the pictures of my crafts are all from my cell phone, and I didn't get a picture of the diapers before they left.

So there is just a general update on what I've been up to, I hope everybody else out there is doing well and hopefully I'll be able to get back on the ball of posting regularly.

Sleigh bells ring...

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• I'm unusually excited about winter/Christmas time this year.  

I'm excited for my family's holiday traditions.  My family has painted ornaments for several years, now our tree is entirely homemade ornaments, its pretty awesome.   

Me, Christmas of 2008.  Chris wanted a picture of Mercedes and the snowman he painted.

Since getting married,  my husband and I started a few new traditions.  He likes building gingerbread houses so we did one last year and will do another this year.  We spent our evenings painting ornaments or building the gingerbread house and drinking hot chocolate with marshmallow snowmen and whipped cream.  (and almost every night I'd either leave the whip cream out, or my ninja cat would get the marshmallows out of the cupboard/off the counter and strew them about the house, resulting in one or both having to be purchased again.)  I think this is one thing I am most looking forward to about this years holiday season, these evenings with my husband.  I got very excited when I saw the bag of marshmallow snowmen in the store last week, in just about two more weeks he will be on his way home from Florida and we can share some hot cocoa again.

Last year for Mercy's first Christmas she was 10 months old and we did a homemade handprint ornament for her and I'm looking forward to making another one this year, they are a lot of fun to make.

My family also opens one present on Christmas Eve.  I remember Christmases as a little girl, me and my sisters would ask if we could open just one present and our parents would act like they were going to tell us no, but they still always let us. 

I'm always interested in more traditions though, do you have any that your family does that you'd be willing to share?

I am definitely more excited about Christmas this year than I have been other years.  I might even listen to Christmas music, which I usually don't really like.