About a month ago, I sat down and had myself a little panic.  While looking back through the journal where I keep my project notes, I saw that I was most of the way through Iain’s birthday sweater early July of last year.  Going back a little further, I saw that the same was true for the year before.  This year?  Well, as of this weekend, I picked a pattern and bought the yarn.  That’s right.  Welcome, to Little Home Blessings!  Bringing you your 4th solid year of me freaking out because events that happen on the same exact date, every single year, somehow manage to sneak up on me anyhow.  Clearly for the last couple of years it’s been something other then the birthdays, but it’s always something.

Riddle me this blog reader…why would an otherwise reasonably intelligent women such as myself, under these circumstances, opt to make the quite large (see amusing anecdote below for proof) soon to be 12 year old an entire cabled sweater on sizes 2 and 3 needles?

For those of you who are new here, I should also alert you to the long-standing tradition of me making the stupidest plans possible.  Without fail.  If there is a more difficult way to do something, rest assured, I will find it.  Whether I mean to or not.  I seem to have some sort of subconscious self destructive, crafting death wish.

So why go with that particular pattern you might very well and very reasonably ask?  Hint: because it was the right one.  And I have no better explanation then that.

That’s yarn for all three of my winter birthday babes above.  One sweater a piece, with Iain’s being the most ambitious venture.  I was trying to knit them in chronological order.  I have this somewhat perplexing habit of managing to finish my late February baby’s sweater before my two early January ones.  Technically speaking, that would mean Iain’s first, since he was born in the morning and Màiri Rose not until evening, but The Official Pattern of Destiny was on back order, so Màiri’s hit the needles first.  I’ve gotten just far enough in the last day in a half to be able to say that I think the yarn that I spent way too much money on is going to be just gorgeous.  Wish me luck and fingers crossed and all of that!

**Amusing Anecdote**

(as promised)

So, that beloved eldest boy of mine takes Irish dance lessons, which I may or may not have mentioned here before.  One night, a couple of months back, he comes home after class and is dancing around the living room showing me the new step he learned.  And well, you know how it is with Irish dance, lots of legs flailing about and all of that, so of course I’m watching his feet….and noticing a solid three inches or so of his ankle is showing.  In his brand new dance pants.  The brand new dance pants that I just bought him 2 weeks before.  I point this out with disgust and Iain throws his arms up in the air with equal disgust and says, “I know!  And they don’t even fit in the waist either!”  It’s at this point that he yanks up his shirt to show the belt that he has them bunched up with.  It’s possible that I may have shot Steve a very nasty sort of look and told him this was all his fault.  Hey, you can’t possibly say that the kid got tall and thin from me!  So now I’m both irritated about the waste of money AND about the fact that they keep making things wider and wider and nothing fits my kids anymore.  But mostly I’m just laughing my behind off because I mean, christ, my kid’s wearing a belt with spandex pants (!) and it doesn’t seem to have occurred to him that this might be strange.  Really, when I stop laughing long enough to think about it, it’s not that crazy.  We’re talking about a child for whom “slim” pants slip right off of his hips.  So, I tell him to change out of the pants because I want to know which pair it is that doesn’t fit, the bigger pair or the smaller (oh, it so better be the smaller…but then what about the waist?!?).

The verdict?

They were a pair of my black leggings that someone mistakenly put in his drawer.

And the moral of the story is:

That even though he is still noticeably shorter then me, my 11 year old’s legs are, in fact, much longer then mine.  However, my waist and hips are far wider.

Also, things are not always what they seem when the 9 year old helps to put away the laundry.

~~My last two days of “Week in the Life” will be up soon.  I’ve been having some issues with transferring photos, but I’ll get it worked out.~~