First Few Blocks

Despite my longing to sit down and start cranking out shop hop blocks, a few other things keep getting in the way.  Cleaning house.  Laundry.  Grocery runs.  Taking kids to karate and various doctors.  I did manage to make five of them--a couple of them are very fussy and required to be made with the iron-on adhesive.  One of them is a 3" high bird, complete with little tiny talons.  I don't know how long it'll last, but I hope it'll be permanent.

I finished the blocks for the baby quilt.  I need to set them--not sure if I'm going to sash them or not, but I think I will--plus a border or two and quilt it up.  The baby shower was last weekend and due to the shop hop, I missed it, but I will get this to Diana and Miguel very soon!  I should probably make this a priority over the shop hop blocks, eh?

HOWEVER, I also have this quilt for Judy to work on that I need to have ready by July 9th meeting.  This is a round robin that she and a few friends worked on, so this is her personal quilt, not a store sample.  The tricky part is quilting around the 3-D flowers.  She gave me thread to work it, although I don't think I want to use it on the back due to the color difference; the thread is a pale lavender and the back is creamy white.  Mistakes will be brutally obvious.

The other day I took a couple of girl scouts out to the beach to look at ocean life.  Unfortunately, I didn't know enough about tides to be able to adequately read the charts.  Next Tuesday during the full moon should be a much better day for getting out to see all the oceanic life on the rocks.

Cammie did find a hermit crab that she placed on a rock covered with sea lettuce and we patiently waited for him to emerge...

And just before we left, we found some live crabs running around the rocks.  There are two itty-bitty ones in this picture...can you find them?

We were hoping to find some sea stars while out there, but this is the only one we could see from the water's edge.

To add to the watery discussion, we adopted these tadpoles from Kelly's parents.  They have a pond full of them, with hundreds of more eggs hanging off the lily pads, so we scooped a dozen or so and brought them home in a mason jar.  They're now living outside in Cammie's aquarium.  The fish she had gotten several months ago all died, so it's nice to be able to repurpose it as an outdoor habitat.  We threw in a few pieces of lettuce (which is, apparently, what tadpoles eat) and they are growing well.  Eventually we'll have a dozen little froggies living in our neighborhood...we already have frogs from a pond down the street, and I really enjoy the sounds of their croaking at night.  I don't know if they're going to be the same kind of frogs, but it'll be interesting to see how they turn out.  And, no, I didn't transport them far, so I won't be introducing a new species to this ecosystem...his parents live about an hour away.

Yesterday I took Ben to his well-check appointment (only six weeks after his birthday) and he's gained nearly 4 lbs since March.  NICE!  He's creeping back up the charts for height & weight, too.  No longer languishing on the bottom of the charts, he's above the 25% mark for both and is more height-weight proportional.  These night feedings are doing the trick!  He takes in nearly 1000 calories a night.  If only I could figure out how to get that done in reverse...taking away a few hundred calories while I sleep.

Friday....it should be a nice, relaxing day.  We'll see how that actually turns out.  Maybe I can crank out a few quilt blocks, or start on Judy's quilt, or do some laundry...ideally, all of the above.