Catching Up

Sorry guys, I even did this one on the computer and it still won't do line breaks. Grr. So I'll try to get you all caught up on things here! William went to bed at 11 last night without doing a fake out and getting up half an hour later (yay! progress!) and actually slept until 7:30. Then he went back down for a 'nap' at 8 and is still asleep (it's 11 now) so I've had a very nice relaxing morning here. Got caught up on my sleep deficit for starters! William has been his usual adorable self, charming all the ladies he meets... He's fantastic in the mornings. Definitely a morning person all smiles and giggles- unless like today he decides to sleep in. In the afternoons he starts to get antsy and I usually try to go somewhere with him. He likes seeing new things, being around people, and just moving around in general. Usually it's out with friends either shopping or to lunch, or out for a walk on the trail system behind the house. Last week we went three and a half miles. I just about died on the way back. Urgh. We did get out another day and hit Once upon a child for some bigger clothes for Peanut though- including a cute little polo onesie with an American flag on it for the 4th. We also spent an afternoon out with my VTer in downtown Silver Spring. I'd never been down there before, and it was fun! It's a great little walking district with shopping and restaurants, and they've even got a big fountain for kids to play in. William's going to love it when he gets older. Last weekend was pretty rough though. I caught a really nasty cold and was out of it Thursday night to Sunday. Seth had to take sick leave and come home for me on Friday when I started not being able to keep anything down. Luckly William escaped the plague, but Seth got a light version of it on Sunday, so real fun times around here. Then this past Saturday I was finally going to get into DC and visit the Library of Congress to research that dress since we had a rare day of no other obligations and Seth could take the peanut aaaaand we walked out the door and locked ourselves out. Joy. So the trip got cancelled in favor of sitting outside on the porch enjoying the sunshine (luckily it wasn't too hot out)and waiting three hours for the locksmith to show up. By the time I could have made it into DC at that point, the library would have been closed. The other big thing I've been doing is working on the past couple weeks is losing some of the extra poundage from the pregnancy and what I'd been gaining before that even. I'd really like to get down below 150 again. I wish I could get to the gym like AnnaMarie and Caroline do, but the YMCA is the only gym I've found here with babysitting and they cost $110 a month. I don't know, maybe that's normal for the Y, but it's really expensive. Gyms in general are really expensive and while we could budget that into our expenses if it became that important for us, I'd rather we didn't. So I'm trying to do this on my own now and it's working pretty well so far. I'm using the My Fitness Pal app to watch my diet and change how I eat. It certainly inspires me to cut down the munching during the day. I also got new running shoes! Yay! I'm going to try to start doing the 'couch to 5k' program when Seth comes home in the evenings. It starts you off slow with jogging and walking and works you up to be able to run a 5K over however many weeks the program is. So that should help get me in shape. But as it is, I've already shed about 8 pounds just watching what I eat. I would seriously love to be able to fit into my steampunk Eowyn costume again...

If AnnaMarie needs a nanny to blog more, what does that mean for me?

I do try to write at least once a week though! This past week hasn't been bad. Last night William got up at 1am... and 3... and 5... and then finally 7. At which point I fell asleep holding him in the rocking chair until 8 and made Seth take him so I could get some sleep until we had to leave to go to the airport. He's off in California again for work this week until Wednesday so my fingers are crossed that the peanut will behave himself while he's gone. We've got really good friends here though, so this afternoon I went over to Shannon and Dave's for dinner and tomorrow Shannon's going to come down and go to Ikea with me for lunch and picking up a footrest to go with my rocking chair. Maybe a rug for the basement too. We'll see. I really miss Seth when he's gone but at least the thing he thought they might be doing over the 4th of July is happening now instead of in July. We're really looking forward to our trip up North and for everyone to meet William!

Balticon, Swimming, Etsy and Kickstarter, and Stuffses

So this past week was a big one for William! Memorial Day weekend is our annual geek fest. Balticon is a local convention for all things geek. They've got lots of panels on costuming, the latest scientific developments, writing, readers discussions, movie screenings, and of course the masquerade. It was great to bust out my costume wardrobe though, and to actually fit into them again! And for the first time I didn't have to make a new costume in order to have enough outfits to fill the entire weekend

I bust out the plunderhosen again, and they got several admirers from the historical reenactment crowd. Best of all though, William didn't puke on them! haha.

Seth carried him around quite a bit of the time for the first couple of days. William really enjoys being in the bjorn. :)

We also took him swimming at the hotel. As you know, he loathes bathtime as much as the Wicked Witch of the West hates water. Pool time was quite so bad and while he didn't flip out, he wasn't quite sure about the whole getting wet thing. He was pretty happy when we took him out and he got to sit all bundled up in a towel instead. Unfortunately we only got the chance to take him swimming once during the weekend. The pool hours were pretty late in the morning and didn't stay open long enough in the evening to make going down worth it. Otherwise though, the hotel was super nice. The room even had a separate sitting room area that William slept in. His other achievement this weekend was flipping over! He rolled from his back to his front one morning, and did not like that at all either- probably because his arms were still bundled up snug as a bug. I have no idea how he managed to flip himself over all the way without using his arms though. And then this morning he discovered how to spin around! I put him back in his crib facing one direction after he had breakfast and when I came back for second breakfast a couple hours later he had spun in a circle around to be facing the other direction!

The masquerade was a blast this year. William and I competed in 18th century attire and our sound was from the Lion King. I riffed on the scene where Simba is being shown the kingdom to instead show William the stage and tell him he could grow up to be a master craftsman costumer too before ending with the whole raising him up for everyone to see. He was pretty darn cute and everyone loved him to pieces. We got some serious 'awww' factor going during the performance, though when the lights went out and people applauded then William got scared and freaked out a wee bit. Poor guy. He was a champ on stage though and had the judges eating it up. :) We wound up taking home the 'Best Historical' prize. Unfortunately, we didn't really get any good pictures of the costumes. I'm really going to have to get all dressed up again and get some photos taken so I can show off my work properly. I'm also starting to turn my talents towards monetary gain. I'm going to be starting an etsy store selling things like non-sized historical accessories and costume pieces. 18th century skirts, hip pads, pockets, etc. I'm also going to have things like purses and bags, and whatever else catches my fancy. We'll see how it goes. My goal is to make enough of a profit to afford an embroidery machine- which would be in the $4,000 range. The other thing I'm doing and that's going to take priority right now is starting research on the piemontaise dress. You know, the pale yellow silk with blue stripes one that I've been dying to do forever. Well, I got in touch with the Head Researcher and curator at the Danish National Museum asking for more information about the dress. He sent me some pretty cool bits that I didn't know as well as the title of a book that was written in the 70s and includes information about the dress (and others from the same collection) Unfortunately there aren't any copies for sale pretty much anywhere so using my google fu, I discovered that a trip to the National Archives is in order! I'm excited to get a look at it, even if the text is all in Danish. Google translate will hopefully not muck it up too badly. Step 2 in my research plan of attack is to start a Kickstarter campaign for funding. Kickstarter is a website that crowdsources projects. You put down a monetary goal ($2500 in this case) and the offer rewards at different donation levels. If people donate enough to meet your goal then your project gets funded. If you fail to meet the goal then you don't get anything at all. What I hope to be able to do with this is fund a trip to Denmark to see the dress (as well as some of the materials for the dress itself). My contact at the museum has already offered to let me see the dress up close if I'm able to go, but the exhibit is only up through October. Don't just think this is a waste of time and a stupid hobby though. (Ok, well you can think whatever you think, but don't voice it. shesh.) I've been eyeing a Historical Preservation Masters program at UoMaryland here. I don't have an impressive work resume and linguistics is hardly a logical lead up undergrad for it. But my historical sewing resume is rather impressive if I do say so myself, and if I can write a cool academic documentation to go with this dress then I think it could be a real attention grabber for an admissions board. Admittedly, getting my Masters is still wishful thinking at this point, but maybe in a year or so when William's a bit older then I could give it a go. If I can get in at all. Admissions are really competitive right now and I'm pretty sure my math skills are severely lacking when it comes to taking the GRE. Anyways, besides my plans for the future, we had a fundraiser for the Scouts and Girls Camp at church tonight! It was really cool actually, and one of the best ideas for a church fundraiser I've ever seen. They called on people in the stake to donate goods or services and then held an auction. I put up sewing lessons (Abbey gave me the idea, trying to find someone in her own ward to teach her :) ) and they went for $80! A couple photographers offered up a family portrait session, a lot of the young men offered manual labor or yard work, some people offered things like their bow flex machine that had been gathering dust, or an entertainment center. What we bid on though was a Friday-Monday weekend stay as a beach house vacation property. Recruiting our friends Jake, Earta, Shannon, and Dave, we pooled our resources and won it! Actually, we got outbid (twice). The highest bidder went to $775 but the owner surprised us by offering a second chance to the other high bidders. His generosity alone pulled in over $2000 for the scouts and young women. We're planning on taking our weekend around Halloween. We were going to do Thanksgiving together, but the Navy Band is going to be in the Macy's parade apparently so Dave'll be out of town. But Halloween'll be fun! We'll do a costume party and have an epic weekend of games and movies and yummy food. Good times.