Yarn Along: Its a Girl!

~ Two of my favorite things are knitting and reading, and the evidence of this often shows up in my photographs. I love seeing what other people are knitting and reading as well. So, what are you knitting or crocheting right now? What are you reading? Take a photo and share it either on your blog or on Flickr. Leave a link below to share your photo with the rest of us!

~Ginny at Small Things

 

Do you remember when I said I needed to hurry up and get buttons for my Coffee Bean sweater?

I told me so!

I grabbed these darling sheep at my favorite LYS on Thursday while we were waiting to find out if we had been chosen to be the parents of a beautiful baby girl born the day before. I didn't want to jinx things by buying pink ...

I sewed the buttons on at 4:45 a.m. on Saturday before getting in the car to drive to Florida . . .

But despite my efforts our new daughter left the hospital on Monday evening in the little ivory Cashmerino hat I finished at Christmas time: the sweater is much, much to big for her current 6lb13oz.

As for reading, will it surprise you that the only thing I've been reading are the sweet and funny expressions on her little face?

Have you ever had your momentous knitting plans foiled by a baby's or child's size?

Wishing you all a Wonderful Wednesday!  With thanks, as always, to Ginny for hosting!

Fitness Friday: First Love

We all remember our first love (and first kiss, and maybe even the first time we ever held hands with someone special).  No matter where life takes us, that person and moments shared with them will always have a special place in our hearts.

In a similar way, despite the types of exercise I tend toward these days, a little part of me still holds a lot of affection for my first fitness love.  I was in law school and discovered that I no longer had 90+ minutes a day to spend at the gym (shocker, right?!).  The solution was to work out in my living room before the hubby was awake and the rest of the day's responsibilities kicked in.

I am not really sure how I found The FIRM workouts, but they were my first fitness love.  The workout videos (yes, VHS!) were based on the successful studio classes founded in South Carolina on an AWT (Aerobic Weight Training) theory:

The FIRM’s signature class and the most effective, AWT delivers a combination total-body workout that blasts fat and reshapes your body like no other workout can—in fact, it burns up to three times more fat than cardio alone. Upper body and lower body moves are sequenced in an alternating pattern to improve cardiovascular fitness and burn fat while you shape lean muscles.

(From The FIRM studio's website)

I loved the way that the workouts got so much accomplished (cardio, upper body shaping, lower body toning, and abdominal training) in an hour or less.  I also loved that I only needed to stash three or so sets of weights under my apartment couch, rather than the enormous range of weights some other home workouts require.

Although the workouts, originally formulated in the 1980s, had a leotard and legwarmers reputation (like the ones worn in the first FIRM video workout, above), they underwent a modernization in the early 2000's.  At the time I discovered them, the workouts centered around the (in)famous Fanny Lifter.

 

When stacked together, this 14" tall box slays the "butthigh" (Billy Crystal's word for that area where the buns meet the thighs) like no other!

When I graduated from law school, my present to myself was a pilgrimage to Columbia, South Carolina to take classes at the actual FIRM studio. I took three classes in two days with two of the stars from the videos I did at home - it was geeky fitness bliss!

For reasons that I suspect are related to marketing and reaching a larger audience, the Fanny Lifter seems to have been abandoned in more recent years, however the FIRM still has some great workouts to offer.  They have also tended away from 60 minute workouts and begun offering shorter (10-30 minute workouts).

Below is a full 10-minute AWT workout for you to try from The FIRM's recent release, Zero in Ten .

And another free way to get your FIRM sweat on: if you should ever find yourself in the neighborhood and in the mood for a studio class, your first one is free!

So tell me: what was your first fitness love?

Disclosure: this post contains some affiliate links.

Yarn Along: Hats = Baby Crowns

 

~ Two of my favorite things are knitting and reading, and the evidence of this often shows up in my photographs.  I love seeing what other people are knitting and reading as well. So, what are you knitting or crocheting right now? What are you reading? Take a photo and share it either on your blog or on Flickr. Leave a link below to share your photo with the rest of us! 

~Ginny at Small Things

It's so nice to take a break from a monotonous (if beautiful) baby blanket to make some quick, easy, satisfying little baby hats!  The last batch were for others' babies but these ones will stay right at home.

First up is the demanded requested hat for Moose's "baby".  The yarn is from someone else's stash (I seem to be a repository for random yarn and accessories from people who are giving up knitting . . .) and I have no clue as to its origin.  I adapted the Adventure Hat to cast on less than one would for the preemie (30, I think) and did a basic roll brim and beanie top.

I also knit up a Cabled Baby Hat in green Swish Worsted, in case our baby should arrive by Christmas.  And you can bet your sweet needles that there will be a little red bow added on, should we be blessed with a girl!

I'm not even moderately ashamed to say that my book reading stalled this past week with the much-anticipated (by me) arrival of this month's Vanity Fair magazine featuring Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge (a.k.a. Kate).  Only disappointment was there was really nothing "new" to me in the article . . .

What are you knitting and reading?  Come join the sharing at Small Things! 

Roll With It {Mindful Mothering Mondays}

It's been an "off" couple of weeks in our house.  First, Moose came home from school with a random fever (that, thankfully, never became more).  Just as we were fully recovered, I got bitten by a brown recluse spider (that, thankfully, never necrotized).  Add to that a big change in a friend's schedule (with temporary loss of weekly playdate) and the end of gymnastics, and our routine is really off.

I am so Type A (I think the hubby has used "rigid" more than once in our ten years of marriage . . ).  I openly admit that I don't do great with disruptions to the Force.  And here I am, mothering a very spirited child who thrives on predictability!

But, as Lydia put it so poignantly in her Mindful Mothering Monday post last week:

The way that I approach my life is a lesson plan for my children in how to live.  What am I really telling my children?

I want Moose to be more adaptable than his mommy.

I want him to move from "uh-oh" to "it's ok" to "what next?" much faster than I do!

And it's not just enough to give him the words.  Kids, I am learning, are like animals - they smell fear and the feel the disconnect between our words and our actions.  I need to believe it, too!

The photo in this post looks like nothing more than a kiddo playing with some dirt, rocks and a truck at the park, but it are so much more.  It is a testament to an exercise in rolling with it.  I took this photo of Moose playing shortly after my spider bite (reeling from dizziness, I got us from the grocery store, where it happened, to the park; I was waiting for my symptoms to subside so we could get the rest of the way home).

The random car is not ours. ("Honey, don't touch that, we don't know who it belongs to."  "Ok, you can play with that, but we'll need to leave it here in case the friend who lost it comes back to look for it.")

But the random car is a metaphor for how I am trying to change the way I look at breaks in routine and spontaneity - as opportunities to explore and play and try something new or different.  We may need some hand sanitizer later, but it's not the end of the world.

Once again, so thankful to Lydia for hosting this weekly round-up of encouragement for moms!

Fitness Friday: Gold Medal Fitness

Yes, it's only been five days since The Games ended (you know the ones - with the rings, the ones that you can get sued for using the name without paying royalties).  Despite the fact that, every time I turned on NBC's coverage, some iteration of volleyball seemed to be on (nothing against volleyball players - it's just that, were I from a different planet and relying solely on American TV coverage, I would have sworn that was the only sport), I'm having a little withdrawal.

One of the great things about The Games, though, is that it makes us mere mortals want to give our workout routines a little boost.  While training is surely tailored to a competitor's individual sport, two areas of training are pretty universal:

1) HIIT - High Intensity Interval Training (Cardio)

HIIT (generically speaking, short bursts of very intense activity followed by a brief recovery, rinse and repeat) really deserves its own Fitness Friday Post.  And there are TONS of HIIT workouts out there (free and paid) of varying degrees of difficulty.  Here's one by Kristen of Perfect Fitness TV inspired by The Games and do-able for us mere mortals



2) Abs/Core

You saw the six-packs.  I don't think I really have the sell this one.  

I was delighted to see that Lolo Jones singled out one of my favorite YouTube exercise instructors, Cassey Ho of Blogilates, as the creator of one of her go-to ab routines!

I used this one a lotbit.ly/NJsPIERT @sarahdaignault: @lolojones what is your favorite ab workout?
— Lolo Jones (@lolojones) August 16, 2012

And you can do it too!

Go you!  

(And afterward, maybe treat yourself to a Gold Medal pedicure!) 

Do The Games make you want to take your fitness level up a notch?  

Image credit: McKayla Maroney

Yarn Along: Ready for Baby

 

~ Two of my favorite things are knitting and reading, and the evidence of this often shows up in my photographs.  I love seeing what other people are knitting and reading as well. So, what are you knitting or crocheting right now? What are you reading? Take a photo and share it either on your blog or on Flickr. Leave a link below to share your photo with the rest of us! 

~Ginny at Small Things

Above is my artfully-arranged photograph du jour.

And here is the photo I really want to share:

It's done!!  The baby's sweater is done!  All it needs now is a wearer!

Actually, it needs to be washed and blocked a little.  And I need to find some really great buttons.   

Will you help me?

What I would really like to do is get two sets of buttons - a boyish set and a girlish set - to have in reserve and ready to sew on when we are matched.  I can't bank on having time to get buttons once we are matched - with Moose, he was born on a Monday, we matched on Tuesday, and picked him up on Wednesday!  Those of you who visit from Ginny's place are all creative and knowledgeable about sourcing beautiful, unique, hand-crafted or lovingly repurposed crafting items, so if you happen upon this Yarn Along post today (or tomorrow, or when life slows down at the weekend . . .) I would be so grateful if you would leave a comment and tell me where you like to source really great baby sweater buttons!

Oh, and yes, I've just started reading Garlic and Sapphires: The Secret Life of a Critic in Disguise , the August selection for the Kitchen Reader book club.  Sadly, Death Comes to Pemberley is beginning to slow its pace . . .

What are you knitting and reading?  Come join the sharing at Small Things and have a beautiful Wednesday!

Disclosure: this post contains some affiliate links.

Fitness Friday: Anatomy of Nirvana (or The Best Live Yoga Class Ever)

I recently had the great pleasure of attending a dear friend's first public yoga class.  Erin was nearing the end of her required 200 hours of teacher training and, after weeks of practicing on her fellow trainees, invited some friends and colleagues out on an exceptionally  humid Georgia morning for a {free} class.

When I say the class was perfect, I'm not just being biased. Unlike most yoga classes I've taken this one didn't immediately begin with break-neck sun salutations.  Rather, Erin eased us into the morning practice with some slower poses - both standing and on the mat.

Once the juices were flowing, she progressed to more challenging poses, but rather than sticking to a preplanned agenda, she seemed to be constantly taking the pulse of the class - suggesting a modification if she noticed one person struggling or encouraging another person to tackle an advanced variation if she thought they were ready.  Her philosophy was Montessori-like: she was there simply as a facilitator or guide, not to demand or require.  Each person's  practice remained his or her own.

She even took requests and included two of my very favorite poses: triangle and pigeon!

By the end of class, I had muscles quivering all over.  Paradoxically, my body felt both calm and invigorated, having pushed myself both body and mind.  It was perfection!

It is rare for me to take a live yoga class.  It is hard to find the time away from family and business obligations, and at ~ $15 per class, it's a treat I can't afford to indulge in too frequently.  But each time I do, I am rewarded not only by transitory feelings of physical satisfaction, but I invariably take away something to use on my own: a slight variation in a hand position that gives new life to a pose, or the courage to tackle a more challenging pose for the first time.  In short, even if each class isn't as perfect as Erin's, it is worth every penny.

Every week, I endeavor to leave you with something you can use - a tip or an exercise sequence - that you can try without having to spend any money.  Today, I am encouraging you to take a live yoga class AND, you may be able to do just that without opening your wallet!  September (only three weeks away) is National Yoga Month and studios across America are offering free yoga classes!  For example, last year I took advantage of NamasDay - a special yoga event at one of my favorite lifestyle chains, Exhale, AND they will celebrate the occasion again with free yoga classes on September 20.

So do your homework now (the Yoga Health Foundation has a search feature for participating studios) and get ready for some special bliss come September!

Namaste!

Photo Credit

Yan Along: Junior Raveler

 

~ Two of my favorite things are knitting and reading, and the evidence of this often shows up in my photographs.  I love seeing what other people are knitting and reading as well. So, what are you knitting or crocheting right now? What are you reading? Take a photo and share it either on your blog or on Flickr. Leave a link below to share your photo with the rest of us! 

~Ginny at Small Things

Progress on the baby blanket continues (aided greatly by a 90 minute wait at the doctor's office on Monday!).  Since it looks pretty much the same (except bigger), today I am sharing instead a photo of Moose making a "hat" for his "baby" (the Gloworm).  He snatched this fun rainbow yarn out of my squeaky yarn stash and set to work at unrolling it and wrapping it around her.  I have since secreted away the yarn to make a real hat for his baby. I'm hoping the preemie size of the Adventure Hat will work.

I am half-way through Death Comes to Pemberley and thoroughly enjoying it!  While not pure Austen or pure P.D. James, it has enough of both to make it satisfying to me as a fan, and is such a well-crafted mystery in itself that I learned the hard way I can't read it immediately before bed . . .

What are you knitting and reading?  Come join the sharing at Small Things! 

Disclosure: this post contains some affiliate links.

Letting Him Fall {Mindful Mothering Mondays}

It started in January, when we offered to buy him a tricycle.

No.  Moose was unequivocal.  He didn't want a tricycle.  He wanted a bicycle.  Like Daddy.

So the Handy Manny bike and Cars helmet found a place in our garage, and Moose set himself to the task of learning to ride - some days with more patience than others.

Then the day came that everything clicked and he "got" it.  And he took off.

The trouble is that he hasn't quite figured out the brakes yet.  He has figured out that he can't pedal backward (like on the tricycle at daycare).  But he hasn't figured out that the obnoxious jolting when he tries to to drive backward is how he is supposed to stop.

Instead, he takes a last-minute turn.  Drives up onto the grass.  Pulls his feet off the pedals altogether.

And each and every time I cringe.  I position myself to grab the handlebar if the bike starts to teeter.  And show him how the brakes work.  Again.  And encourage him try.  Again.

Except today.  I let him fall.

I saw it coming and I let it happen.  He was going slowly.  I knew he wouldn't fall hard.  But in a split second, I decided that he needed to see what would happen when Mommy didn't swoop in at the last second.

There wasn't even a scrape on the skin.  But the look of surprise on his face said it all.  And the next go 'round (yes, he got up and, after some hugs, declared that he wanted to try again), he actually looked at me when I explained the brakes.  He pensively tried them out on a flat part of the cul-de-sac. 

It's such a fine line, isn't it?  We don't want them to be truly injured.  We don't want them to have such a bad experience that they don't want to try again.  But sometimes, I think we need to let them fall so they can figure out for themselves how to make it - all of it, all of life - work for them.

So pleased to be linking up with Lydia again!  Please hop over for more Monday mothering encouragement.

Fitness Friday: Moose-rcise!

As last winter approached, I worried that my all-outdoor-all-the-time Moose would get cabin fever.  Really, living in Georgia, I need not have been so concerned: a jacket and some rain boots got us through just fine!

The real test has been this summer.  With heats approaching triple-digits almost daily, it has been hard to keep him cooped up during the hottest part of the day.

Yet I know that Moose's mood is SO much better when he can be active.  So for today's Fitness Friday, I'm sharing Moose's favorite ways to keep moving - even in the heat.

          1. Dance!

Moose has a thing about music (ever since his early days, when Daddy Moose and I spent our nights doing laps around the room and singing every song we've ever known).  Turn on some music and he's ready to dance!  His current favorite is We are . . . The Laurie Berkner Band .  I mean, who can sit still when "We Are The Dinosaurs" is on?



          2. Yoga (or "Whoa-ga" in toddler speak)

We started baby yoga with Moose when he was small and had some pretty chronic gas issues.  We continued it until he became mobile because he seemed to enjoy it as a bedtime routine, and brought it back last autumn after I read that it can be an effective tantrum tamer.

Don't expect a full yoga practice from your tot (and definitely don't expect to get your zen on with them!).  But Moose is good for 5-15 minutes, depending on his mood.  He enjoys his Yoga Motion DVD but really gets into this "Bug Yoga" segment from Yoga in My School:



          3. Gymnastics ("Nastics")

I signed Moose up for gymnastics through our county parks and recreation in January as part of my worrying about winter.  I went into it with zero expectations, which is perhaps why I've been so delighted with the enthusiasm he's developed for it!

He gets just the right balance of playing (jumping with ribbon wands, diving in a foam block pit) and actual gymnastic instruction (loves the rings, ambivalent about the beam) to promote fun as well as gross motor skill development.

          4. Water Play

Indoor or out, water is always a hit.  We picked up our Little Tikes Beach Ball Sprinkler on clearance at Walgreen's last August and it has been worth every penny!

When summer showers get in our way, a large storage container of water and bath toys on the kitchen floor don't provide quite the physical activity, but plenty of giggles!

What are your little ones' favorite ways to beat the heat?

Disclosure: this post contains some affiliate links.

Yarn Along: Already August!

 

~ Two of my favorite things are knitting and reading, and the evidence of this often shows up in my photographs.  I love seeing what other people are knitting and reading as well. So, what are you knitting or crocheting right now? What are you reading? Take a photo and share it either on your blog or on Flickr. Leave a link below to share your photo with the rest of us! 

~Ginny at Small Things

Work continues on the baby blanket for our hopeful addition.  Yesterday evening I changed over to the fourth ball of yarn (of eleven total).  Having smaller-yardage balls certainly gives the impression of quick progress!

I had some time to kill (!) after an out-of-office meeting last week and made a stop at the library.  I am usually a major proponent of libraries, but our local branch has always had a dismal selection so I'll admit I haven't even bothered looking there in ages.  Imagine my surprise that they had Death Comes to Pemberley by P.D. James! I realize it has gotten poor reviews, but so far I am enjoying it immensely!  (And for the record, of the dozen or so books I looked up in my browsing, this was the only one they had - so I'm afraid that it was just a lucky break and not a tide change at the library).

What are you knitting and reading?  Come join the sharing at Small Things! 

Disclosure: this post contains some affiliate links.