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I finally finished the star-ghan I was crocheting for Sienna! Took me 2 months! I could have kept going with it and Yves wanted me to make it bigger but I think it’s a good size.It fits the crib well for now!

I also made this coffee cup:

Can you guess what it’s hiding?

har har har! The pattern is here.

I also joined a swap on swap-bot. I haven’t swapped in a long time but since it was an amigurumi swap, I knew it wouldn’t be a problem to fulfill. It was hard to settle on something to make for my partner, since she likes everything, so when I came across this jellyfish pattern, it reminded me of the jellyfish shot from the NY Aquarium a couple of weeks ago. I hope she likes it! I made another one to send to Zack since Tammy thought it was super cute too.

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Last Sunday, the 7th, we went to Coney Island. Not because it was Astroland’s official last day forever but because that was where the electronics recycling was being held. We had an old pc and a couple of printers to get rid of. We decided to take a walk along the boardwalk anyway since it was so nice out and I remembered today being the demise of Astroland. (Now there are talks about the city keeping it open, I’m not sure!) There was a few news crews there but we were gone before the crowd came and Astroland opened for the day.

I tried to get a group shot of us with the Cyclone in the back but she was getting cranky by that time. She’s still adjusting to the midday nap. This is the best one I got.

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On Wednesday Zack came over! Oh yeah and Tammy too! 😉 It was a beautiful fall like day in the 70’s so we hung out in the back area for a little bit. Then we went upstairs for some lunch. Tammy and Zack brought over some Hungarian apple strudel and turnovers. YUM! It was cute to see Sienna interacting with Zack. She would touch him real quick or poke him and once almost stepped on his head! Oops! It was nice and relaxing as sometimes when we meet at a restaurant, it feels a bit rushed. I hope they come over more often!

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I realize that I don’t post much about the animals and since Sienna was born, less attention has been paid to them. Well,, Neo doesn’t care. He wants to be left alone but now that Skippy has been living with him for about 3 years, he’s not so scared of Neo and sometimes even tries to be playful with him. Much to Neo’s chagrin. Anyway, here are some recent pictures of them. I try to get a nice group shot of Sienna with them but it doesn’t seem to work so well. I’ll keep trying!

Neo on my craft table (Yves was probably vacuuming) sitting next to one of Sienna’s favorite animals, Gorilla.

Sienna and Neo

The closest thing to a group shot!

Sienna helping me bath Skippy

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Last Saturday we took Sienna to Sunset Park. She hadn’t been there since last September! How she’s grown since then! The playground area is really spacious with shade so we will definitely come back to this one! I was surprised by how many people were there as we were there pretty early, mabye by 9:30? (And yes, we did go for bahn mi afterwards!) It was also nice to go in the park area with such beautiful views of the city!

Yves dressed Sienna that morning and I copied her! Yves had on khaki shorts too but he didn’t have a lime green shirt.

Sometime Sienna needs convincing or help to slide down the slide!

The sound of her laughing really makes my heart soar!

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So, ever since vacation at the shore, we’ve been trying to figure out Sienna’s nap schedule. For the past 2 weeks, I’ve been trying to do away with her morning nap. I’ve been trying all these different times for the afternoon nap and this week have decided to try to get her down by 12:45 with limited success.  Actually on Monday, she was the one that wanted to go down at 12:45 by being a super cranky miss but at least she slept a good 2.5 hours. I tried to follow suit the rest of the week. We would do our errands or go to the park in the morning, get home and have a bottle and lunch and then I would put her down.  Most times she would fall asleep on the way back home, anyway between 11:15 and noon. Once she wakes up from this, she seems full of energy again as if 15 minutes was all she needed. I was thinking of pushing up her nap to between 11 and 11:30 (another mom also suggested this) but I don’t know if that schedule would work for us. Would I give her lunch before? Or lunch after? Sigh…I was wondering if I was overthinking this so today decided to go with the flow. She seemed tired this morning so I put her down a little before 9. I had a doctor’s appt. at 9:30 so when I left, I told my parents if she’s still awake by 9:40, take her out and go to the park or something. (The last few times I relented and put her down for a morning nap, she didn’t want to take an afternoon nap-I know that makes it 1 nap a day but I rather her sleep in the afternoon!) Well it turns out she did not stay down this morning. When I came back, we had lunch and so far, she is quiet in her room and I’m assuming she is sleeping at 1pm. Cross fingers!

On another note, here is a cute video I took of Sienna eating a nectarine. She’s really digging in! (I usually cut up the fruit into bite sized pieces for her)

Eating a nectarine from Lisa on Vimeo.

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Saturday we took Sienna to the New York Aquarium. This was her first visit so we weren’t sure what her reaction would be. We were hoping she would get excited and amazed seeing all the fish and underwater life. She was more like ‘yeah, that’s cool. What’s next?’ or ‘I wanna run around!’ I guess she won’t be a marine biologist! HA! But she is still young. I can’t remember the last time I was there or if I ever even went there but it was relatively small. I actually got excited by the fish and seals and walrus sightings. I could have stayed a little longer than the hour and 20 minutes but I’m sure we’ll go back once Sienna is a little older. We wanted to get tacos for lunch but the taco stand I had in mind didn’t open for another 30 minutes when we got there. Sienna had fallen asleep so we didn’t really want to wait around. Instead we headed over to Golden Krust bakery for patties. She woke up when we got on the subway and tried hard dough bread for the first time. I’m not surprised that she liked it!

Sienna touching a big hermit crab!

We got Sienna a super soft stuffed turtle

Asleep at Golden Krust!

Enjoying Hard Dough bread

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Wednesday me and Sienna had dim sum with my parents, my grandmother, my 2 aunts and uncle. They came into Brooklyn and we went to the same place we had gone to on my birthday. I think the name is East River? Or something like that, I forgot to take notice. I remember it because it’s in the old Saturn dealership building. Sienna had been cranky earlier in the week with not wanting to go down for naps and her molars coming in. She was her usual self at dim sum. The food tasted a little better than when we first went and seemed to be more variety. The place was totally packed, which is so surprising for a Wednesday!

Dim Sum with Grandma from Lisa on Vimeo.

I think it is totally cool that Sienna gets to meet her great grandmother! She was acting her usual shy self when Great Grandma came up to her. It’s a shame that I am not as close to my grandma and aunts as we could be. When I was younger, I want to say around 11 or 12 although I could be wrong on the age, my mother stopped associating with her parents and brother and sisters. The reason is still unknown to me to this day. No one would tell me why all ties were cut off. They did not start speaking again until maybe around 2000? It was right before me and Yves got married (as my aunts invited themselves to our Vegas wedding.) Our first dinner back into the family was held in Queens and pretty awkward. Some hellos and idle chit chat with my aunts and I’m not even sure I got hellos from my cousins. But whatever. I figured as more get togethers were held, the awkwardness would go away, I mean I’m not surprised. It had been years! They don’t know me and I don’t know them. I confess that I envisioned being able to finally have aunts to go shopping with or just to grab some food or just to bitch to about my mother. That never happened. And the awkwardness never went away. For the most part, dinners consisted of idle chit chat and then they would just converse amongst themselves. After awhile it seemed pointless to even attend these functions. We started turning them down more and more and accept just once in awhile to show ourselves. Which is such a shame really. I realize that my family is very private and that’s fine, it’s just too bad I’m not part of the family.

Hmph, well I don’t mean to be debbie downer, I kinda went off on a tangent a bit. Happy fun times will continue in the next post! HA!

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Today and Monday Sienna had a playdate with Nico. No pictures from today so these are from Monday.

This sequence cracked me up. There was an Elmo doll on the bench and we put them on the bench so we can take pictures of them. Top left: Sienna finds Elmo. Top right: Sienna shares Elmo with Nico. Bottom left: Sienna is chagrined, why did she give up Elmo? Bottom right: Oh Elmo, I’m sorry I left you! Nico: I’m outta here!

Sienna goes into the sprinklers. She never went into the sprinklers before, she usually would stand right outside the sprinklers and look at it. This time she went in. Starr said that Nico normally doesn’t get as wet as he did on Monday. We think they influenced each other. Notice in the next pictures that Sienna is wearing different bottoms. I thought she was done getting wet when I changed her. Clearly she wasn’t! At least I put her in water shoes.

Monday was also the 2nd day we tried the one nap a day schedule. It seemed to work out ok. After being at the playground almost 2 hours, Sienna was tired and fell asleep on the way home. Once home, we had lunch and then I put her down where she proceeded to stay awake for an hour before finally falling asleep and slept for 2 hours. Tuesday she surprised me by basically telling me she wanted a nap a little before 10am (she motioned up and then put her head on my shoulder, pointed and said go) Wednesday was also a 2 nap day. Today was a one nap day and showed signs of weariness by noon. I put her down after lunch around 12:45, checked on her half an hour later to see she was still awake (but quiet!) I told her nap time and I guess she fell asleep shortly after. So I guess I’ll just take each day as it comes.

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I’ve been making stuff here and there and have not been good about posting them so here they are! Back in June I was obsessed with finding a nice headband pattern to crochet so I can wear it as a sweatband when I exercise. I printed out a whole bunch but did not get very far with a lot of them for one reason or another. I finally made this

I did have trouble with it because the pattern did not make sense to me. The creator of the pattern was kind enough to answer my questions on it but then never replied back when I had a follow up. I was told by a super knitter/crocheter from the craft meetup that I did it correctly and that the pattern was a little confusing! Whew! Not just me! I am also working on a blanket (starghan) for Sienna that is well on it’s way but I have not taken pics of it yet.

Yesterday I finished up the Year of the Pig t-shirt pillow. Most of Sienna’s old clothes were given away but there were a couple of things I didn’t want to part with, namely this year of the pig shirt. It’s a little lopsided but hey, I’m still a sewing novice. I realized after the fact that it would have been cuter and easier to keep it as a t-shirt and just sew up the openings. Oh well!

And last but not least, my Gocco projects. I finally relented and got a PG-11 that came the week after my birthday. I did not play with it until this past Sunday. It was quite humid on Sunday so I believe that made my original stick to the master. I was totally bummed about it. Questions posted to the yahoo and flickr group were made. It was suggested that I rub a little warm water to get the bits off. It worked!

I’m not totally happy with how it came out but since it’s the first print on my own machine, at least I got over the first print hurdle. Later in the week I made another one.

I ironed out some of the carbon in the printout before flashing the master and this time it didn’t stick! I tried 3 different types of paper with the lower right one embossed. It’s a little better technically but still not super thrilled. I’ll get there!

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