Category Archives: Baby

Our Nugget

Our Nugget

After seven long weeks in the Georgetown NICU, our little girl is finally home with us! We could not be happier. She is gorgeous, and super smart, and we are entirely in love with her.

She was born on August 29 at 10:19 p.m. and she weighed 7 pounds, 12 ounces.  About 12 hours after birth, she started spitting up green stuff.  It turned out that she had a hole in her intestine.  She had to be transferred from the hospital where I gave birth to Georgetown University Hospital, where she underwent surgery.  They weren’t able to entirely fix her the first time around, and so she had to stay in the hospital until she had her second surgery on October 4.  Then, finally, last week, she was able to come home with us.

It has been a pretty difficult two months.  Having a baby in the NICU is a miserable experience, even though the doctors and nurses try so hard to make it as easy as possible.  They really are wonderful (and some of them are knitters!) and we are eternally grateful not only that they saved our baby, but that they took such amazing care of her and us for seven weeks when we had to be apart a lot of the time.

I feel like I’m cheating a little bit, since this is supposed to be a knitting blog.  Well, as you can see, there is a FINISHED OBJECT in the photo!  I made Marjorie a Baby Surprise Jacket  out of Koigu.  I’m in love with the little bird buttons.  Fortunately, I made it a little large, so it should fit her for another fifteen minutes or so.  She is growing so fast!

Where Does the General Keep his Armies?

Posted in Baby, Knits, Thoughts, Works in Progress by

….UP HIS SLEEVIES!

For some reason, as I’ve been knitting two sets of sleeves basically nonstop for a while, that joke became way, way funnier.  That’s probably just the Monday punchy exhaustion talking, but I am making good progress on my White Pine sleeve.  I should be done with the ribbed cuff by the end of the day today, and starting the pattern/sleeve shaping.  Since I will be visiting my mother’s glorious yarn shop this weekend (YAY!) I wanted to have the sweater well on its way so I could select some buttons.  I am thinking plain shell buttons for the White Pine, and maybe some wooden or leather ones for David’s Guston.  I want them to be a little rustic, but not too hunter-gathery, or David won’t like them.

I had an amazing weekend.  On Saturday we went for a barbecue at our friends’ apartment, which overlooks U Street in DC.  It was the Pride festival this weekend, so there were a ton of people out in great costumes, and the weather was gorgeous.  Yesterday, my sister took me to the Red Door for a prenatal massage.  The way that they do it is really clever, for those of you wondering.  Basically, when you have a massive pregnant stomach like I do, they have you snuggle a body pillow on your side, and do the massage that way.  You switch sides partway through.  It was glorious.  I think it was the first time since I got pregnant that my shoulders haven’t hurt.  And, thankfully, the gift card I used still has enough for another one!

We also went to Target, where I bought a bunch of new maternity clothes.  I think since this is my first kid, I grossly underestimated how large I was going to get.  I’m 7 months along, and I am outgrowing most of the stuff that seemed impossibly large six months ago.  I bought two maxi skirts, a few t-shirts, a dress, and a maternity swim suit.  If the weather clears up, I’m planning a nice long bob in the pool after work.

Westward

Posted in Baby, DC, Moving, St. Louis, Thoughts by

Hello!

I re-started this blog because I thought it would be fun to write about our last few months living in Washington DC before our daughter is born, and our subsequent move to St. Louis, Missouri.

If anyone is coming to this blog from a non-me-linking-you source, I’m Jillian.  I am married to a wonderful human named David, and we live in Washington DC.  We met on our very first day of law school, and got married last October.  At the moment, I am seven months pregnant with our daughter, whom we are calling Morpheus.  Obviously, that is not her real name-to-be.  You’d be amazed at how many people stop asking me questions or trying to touch my stomach as soon as I mention that we’re naming our baby Morpheus.

My very favorite activity in the world, besides sleeping, is knitting.  Even if you don’t see me knitting at the moment, I guarantee you that I have yarn and pointy sticks within the immediate radius of my arms.  I just feel better that way.  I’ve been knitting for fifteen years (eek), and yet at the moment I am working on completing my very first sweaters.  What can I say?  I have been less than ambitious.  But David is a wonderful audience for knitwear.  He actually wears it, and he tries really hard to remember the talking points about why the item is special and required quite so much cursing while I was making it.  Because of that, I will happily knit size 13 mens socks for him.

Our timeline for the move at the moment looks like this: in two weeks, we are heading to St. Louis to visit, and to hopefully find an apartment to rent starting in August.  My last day at my job is August 16th, and Morpheus is due on August 21.  We plan to have the baby here in DC, and stick around for around four weeks until I’m feeling better and the baby has a chance to adjust to a world with sunlight and a distinct lack of intestinal noises.  Then we are packing up our things and heading west.  David grew up in St. Louis, and he is really looking forward to going back.  I have loved it there every time I have visited, and I’m excited to become a full time resident!

I will say that my father in law gave me a lovely digital camera when they were here last year, and I very much intend to use it to take pictures for the blog.  At the moment I don’t have any, but maybe I will have some Finished Object pictures for you soon!