Baby Smiles

It seems that Michael smiles more and more every day. Sometimes I'll be holding him while reading or doing something on the computer, and I hear his pacifier fall out, and look down to see him giving me a big baby grin. Mostly his smiles are for me and Keith, but he's starting to give them to other people, too. 

Capturing that smile on camera is difficult though! Partly because I'm bad at taking pictures, and partly because he insists on *really* smiling just before or just after I push the button--or on turning his head away at the last second. 

Yarn Along--Finally!

I have, in fact, been knitting recently--oftentimes with a baby sleeping across my knees--but it's harder to get up and chase sunlight around the apartment with a camera while holding a five- or six- or seven-week-old, and also my husband often takes the camera to work with him.

But today, Michael has slept through my shower, my lunch, and my doing the dishes, and he is STILL sleeping, so I am taking full advantage of that fact. :)

My pre-birth knitting projects (like Michael's elephant) haven't budged in the past month or two. But I did cast on a shawlette (Cloud Illusions by Book Knits) and a cowl (To Infinity and Beyond by Joji Locatelli).

The latter is for a knitalong; I'm using Malabrigo sock in the colorway Persia. Mmmmm, Malabrigo. ;) This skein was an impulse buy: I couldn't not have that color. (There may or may not also have been enablers in the yarn shop with me telling me that the color was "so you, Rosemary!") The problem with buying yarn on impulse because it is too beautiful not to is that then the pattern must live up to it: it has to be perfect, and perfect for this particular yarn. And of course, it must use only one skein.

So far this cowl fits the bill. It has cables and lace in a pattern that I feel works well with the variegated colors of the yarn.

My Kindle Touch has been getting good use, especially since I can borrow e-books from the library. Style, Sex and Substance is a wonderful book, and I'm really glad I bought it. It's worth the money. (How could it not be, with Jennifer Fulwiler and Simcha Fisher contributing?)

And now I'm off to see how much else I can get done while baby is sleeping.

(See what other people are knitting and reading at Ginny's yarn along!)

almost a year ago ...

Yesterday Keith and I went to the wedding of two of our friends. We were supposed to go to another wedding last month--but then I went into labor a few hours before the ceremony, so that didn't happen. So this was our first wedding this year, and our first Catholic wedding since we ourselves got married.

It was quite beautiful--both the ceremony and the reception. The bride was gorgeous, the Mass beautiful, and the reception quite lovely. And it made me super nostalgic. As we pulled into the church parking lot, I saw the bride standing outside the church getting ready to go in and wait, and it immediately brought me back to waiting outside the church at my own wedding, first in the limousine and then in the foyer as, one by one, my bridesmaids processed in, until I was left alone with my Dad. And then going through the doors and seeing Keith, and feeling the smile glowing on my face ... such intense emotions!

The bride and groom's exit from the reception was very sweet. One moment they were slow dancing, surrounding by a ring of friends; the next they suddenly broke free and made a mad dash out of the hall, hand in hand, and everyone chased them out to stand in lines along the drive and wave as they left.

And I remember those emotions, too. How for days, you and your fiance/husband have been surrounded by other people, with perhaps a moment here and there to yourselves; how this huge and jubilantly loud day suddenly ends in quiet, with just the two of you, driving, alone. The intense intimacy of that alone-togetherness, by comparison to everything that's happened before. How you are so familiar with and to each other, and yet ... in that moment, sitting side by side and driving, there is also a shyness, a difference, because now you are husband and wife, and while you know this person so well ... you also know so little. There is so much more to learn, and you will never exhaust the otherness of your spouse's personhood.

So yes, even today, I am still feeling nostalgic. (Keith just laughed at me for paging through our own wedding photos on Facebook.) And you know, we attended that wedding with a baby in tow. Which is crazy. And which only emphasizes the fact that that particular moment of our lives is over. We will never get married to each other again. Watching other people live through those moments makes me so happy for them, and so grateful for the beauty that I have been given in my own life.

A Moment for Blogging

I received an early Mother's Day gift today. From Michael. ;)

Those who know me may know that I have a bad reputation when it comes to keeping Kindles intact. But someone still believes in me. :) 

It's a Kindle Touch, which is different from what I've had before, and I've had fun this evening learning how to use it. (Amazon has a lending library for Kindles now! Yay!) It's very easy to use one-handed, which is great for nursing sessions. 

I'm hoping to get back into blogging soon. Slowly but surely I am finding a new rhythm for my days--not necessarily a very regular one, but I've managed to stay on top of laundry and the dishes most days, and today I even started winding a skein of yarn for a new shawl, and wrote a letter to my cousin. Michael likes to sleep almost exclusively on me, which makes getting things done very difficult! (And sleeping. It complicates sleeping, a lot.) In many ways, it is hard to believe he's been with us for only three and a half weeks ... it's getting harder and harder to remember what life was like without him. 

And that, I imagine, is how it should be. 

The Littlest Callenberg

At 5:31am on Sunday, April 15, Michael Augustine was born.

Today he is eight days old. Already he is getting bigger: his cheeks are chubbier, his arms are starting to fill out. Sometimes I still look at him and wonder how on earth this little person was inside of me. (And how on earth I managed to push him out.) 

We are settling into our new life here, taking it slowly and quietly, and sleeping when our beautiful boy lets us. 

Last Week at Pitt

I kept wanting to title this post something about going out with a bang, but it would sound like a really bad, really tasteless joke.

My school is having some problems with bomb threats. As in 40 in the past three weeks. At first it was mostly the building where I teach and one of the other main class buildings--handwritten notes left in bathrooms. Some classes had to be canceled, and once I had to teach outside. But it has since spread to many other buildings (including dorms) and now it's always a batch of them, as in three or four buildings at a time. It's very frustrating.

I am only teaching for one more week, and I'm really hoping that the alarms don't go off and force me to climb down 23 flights of stairs less than a week before my due date.

In the meantime, several of my students have notified me they won't be around campus for the rest of the semester because they don't feel safe. I don't blame them (although I really don't think a bomb will go off), and I expect several more will leave campus before the week is up. I will accommodate them the best I can, but it makes things rather a pain in the rear.

We'll see how things go!

PS--Sorry about the weird font changes lately! I'm not sure what's up with that.

Getting There

Keith and I attended our last prenatal class at the hospital last week. The topic was how to care for a newborn, which included things like swaddling, changing diapers, and bathing. Everyone was supposed to bring their own "baby" to practice on--a doll or a teddy bear.

Well, neither of us had a doll or teddy bear (well, I have a teddy bear, but she doesn't really have legs). So we brought the only thing we did have, which was a stuffed elephant I'd been knitting for Baby C.

I knit like mad the night before to make sure our elephant had all four limbs. But he had neither ears nor eyes, which makes him look like some sort of muppet or other unidentifiable creature. (Keith didn't want to carry him in the hospital.)

The pattern is Elijah by Ysolda Teague. It's fun to knit and absolutely adorable, although I think that I need to knit any future stuffed animals from some sort of wool rather than cotton, as bits of the stuffing are showing through at my increases.

Maybe he'll get his ears before Easter.

Other projects I hope to finish this week: my manuscript (by tomorrow or Good Friday, hopefully, so that it can be printed and bound on Easter Monday or Tuesday), my grading, and some cleaning. And then baby can come as soon as ever he pleases.

This is how I'm spending my Holy Week ... say a prayer for me!

Yarning along with Ginny at Small Things.