The dinosaur beanie

After learning to crochet, I tended to focus on simple patterns like scarves.  Now that I am finally a bit more comfortable in my crochet skill and ability to read patterns, I decided it was time to make something for Liam.  While scrolling through on Pinterest I saw a link to a crochet monster hat and decided to check it out.   Once on the site, I found a tutorial for making dinosaur spikes (Liam is slightly obsessed with dinosaurs).  Here is the site for the spikes:  The Boy Trifecta (totally awesome blog, by the way).  Once I showed Liam the dinosaur hat idea, he flipped out and demanded it have spikes and stripes and eyes and a nose.  I wasn't quite up for that, but I agreed hoping he would forget about it once he saw the finished product.  I decided to search Ravelry.com (an awesome site for knitters and crocheters) for the perfect beanie pattern.  I found it here:  Ravelry - Brr Baby Beanie  The best part is, the pattern was free :)  I made the beanie and added a lime green edge to the entire beanie using a simple single crochet.  Then I made 5 spikes using the pattern (although I stopped at round five so the spikes were smaller).  I attached the spikes and voila!  Liam put the hat on and transformed into a roaring dinosaur.  He wore it to school today and was quite proud.  

Rawr!

School Days

Liam is officially a pre-schooler!  Before we moved to Kansas I decided I would keep Liam home until Kindergarten,  partly because of how expensive preschool is and partly because I am a former preschool teacher and love being with my boy.  He is a very smart little guy and loves to learn, which is really fun for me.  He also loves to be around other kids, but seems to do much better around older kids than kids his own age.  Once we moved to Kansas,  we noticed Liam was having a tough time when we had play dates with kids his own age and was moving rapidly into a "it's mine" phase.  We heard from a friend that there was a preschool here in town that was twice a week in the mornings and we were beyond excited for Liam to get a chance to socialize, learn, and have fun.  We also learned that Liam had to be potty trained and within 2 weeks he was ready to go (gotta say, I was in shock at how quickly the boy did this, overnight and all).  School started this month and Liam loves it.  Honestly, the hardest part of Tuesday and Thursday is trying to convince him school is over and it is time to go home.  He comes home babbling on about his friends and show and tell and the good-bye song.  He lets us know that he doesn't like to share (no surprise here) and that he loves to play with the trucks.  He assures us he is listening to his teacher (hopefully) and he can't wait for the next birthday party so he can have more cupcakes.  Thank you to his teacher Jana for making his school days so much fun :)  It is a wonderful feeling to watch your baby growing up and loving life.

                                                 

Here he is on his second day of school.

My Super Hero

Meet Lightning Liam.  I made this cape and mask without sewing (happy Mommy!).  All it took was some fabric, felt, ribbon, an elastic headband, scissors and hot glue gun.  

Boys are wonderful.

Ikea Spice Racks?!?!

So here is an idea I found on Pinterest and decided to try out.  After moving into our new house and getting Liam's room set up I was pretty happy with the results.  The only thing it seemed to need was a place to store all of his books.  The kid loves books.  So I found this idea on Pinterest to buy 3.99 Ikea Spice Racks and use them as book shelves.

 I LOVED them and to make it even better, they were cheap.  Here was the problem...I live in the middle of nowhere.  I used to live about 3 minutes from the Ikea.  Sigh.  So I called my fabulous Mother in law!  She happily agreed to venture to Ikea and get me the racks and bring them when they came to visit, I was excited.  So a few weeks later I had the racks and decided I would paint them to match Liam's room.  I got a couple of cheap bottles of paint from Walmart and they were dry and ready to hang in about an hour.

A couple of days later my Mom, Marianne and her husband Louie came for a visit from California, so I enlisted Louie to hang them up for me.  We decided to have all but one on one wall and hang one right next to Liam's bed for his "bedtime stories".  It turned out wonderfully and Liam reads even more now than he did before.  Check out the end result!