October 2010-1st Half

*Let's just cut to the chase with the whole Amaia said/Solia did essay because all I can remember about October is making lots of outfits for these girls...

Amaia:
*Started calling me 'Em'-that's what Justin calls me after all.
*Got this set of animal bowling pins for her birthday-she's been taking them potty, and then wiping them and flushing for them when they are done.
*She's started talking to her Teddy-doing crazy stuff and saying "Teddy watch me!"
*She calls the scriptures "skippurs"
*When she wants to go for a walk, she asks to go strollin' (thanks baby signing time!)
*She likes to say that Solia's sleeping, except when she says it, it comes out like she's got a wicked accent: "Solia's slape-ing"
*Except for it's more like "So slape-ing", because she's shortened Solia to So: So wake, So sleep, so tie-ing (crying). She used to do this for Amaia to: Mai wake, etc.
*She's started that impatient bounce kids do when she really wants something
*She's started to 'sing' hymns with us at church-and loudly too!
*She's got faces-a mad face, a sad face, and a happy face. At any given time you can ask for one of the above and you'll usually get it
*If I get on her case about doing something she's not supposed to, she'll put on her super sad face, and very slowly come and give me a hug while saying "Oh, sorry Em"
*We got Robin Hood recently (the Disney version), and she calls it the "cock-a-loodle-loo" movie because at the beginning is that rooster singing that song

Solia:
*Sleeps through the night! Unless Justin's home. No kidding. I think it's becuase he likes to freeze us out at night.
*Got Solia's ears pierced right after the she got her shots. Super cute!
*Solia smiles now!

Here are the pictures.
Solia Only-Lots of Smiles:

At the mall on the carousel:

Girls 365 Project Photos

Girls Not 365 Photos-IE Ones that didn't make the cut, but are still cute :)

Amaia Only

September 2010-2nd Half

Sorry guys-Justin had the video camera in London for most of the month of September (I guess only 2 weeks, but still) so we don't have any video for this month. But don't worry, there's plenty in October. If I ever get around to it....

Amaia:

*Will be playing with toys/something and will inform me that "Amaia's busy right now"-apparently she's not to be disturbed.

*When Amaia kisses Solia, I always tell her how sweet it is. Now every time she kisses/hugs Solia, when she's done, she'll go "aawwwww, dat's so sweet!"

*Amaia started to say "really, really" (except she pronounces it 'reedy, reedy') about everything: She has to go potty 'reedy, reedy' bad, or, her lunch is 'reedy, reedy' hot and she needs to be 'pareful', etc.

*We've been teaching Amaia about the Sacrament-that that is what those boys are doing when they walk around during church. She got up during Sacrament meeting one day and practically yelled "boys walking-pass uh sac-a-ment!"

*she calls 'spaghetti' 'spuh-daddy' and asks me to sing the 'spuh-daddy' song (on top of spaghetti....)

*Amaia will baby talk to Solia in the cutest little high pitched baby voice that gets more and more high pitched the longer she talks to her. Most often "HIIiii Punkin, you awake?!?"

Solia:

*Rolled over for the first (two) times from her stomach to her back.

*She's starting to stay awake longer during the day and sleeps almost 8 hours on most nights

*She really hates it when I touch her nose (like to get a booger)

FYI

I added a LINK on the right over there --------> that goes straight to an album on Facebook where I upload all of the 365 pictures, in case anyone wants to get a bigger/better look at any of the pictures. I'm not very blog suave, so I have no idea how to make the link/button bigger or flashier.
Sad Day.
:(

September 2010-1st Half

Hm. well. as you can see, we were obviously too busy with a new baby and....ya well my excuses end there. Pretty much all I've got it is what I wrote down about Amaia (and some about Solia, but let's face it, she's still pretty boring).

Hm. Well it looks like my list of things is pretty boring.

Oh ya! We blessed Solia this month-and Justin was in London most of this month. Hence the lack of creativity in the girl's 365 pictures. And it was his first time out, so I was probably overwhelmed or something which is why I don't have much written down about this month.

Anyways.

*She likes to say "Oh feekin' gosh!"

*We taught her our names, and she says "Dustin" and "Elimy"

*If something is twisted, crooked, inside out, sideways, upside down, etc she calls it 'being tazey (crazy)"

*Backwards is "back ways"

*She always says "kank you eeehm" (I'm no longer Mommy, I'm Em).

*When I go to give Solia her pacifier, Amaia will yell at me "No Solia Need It!"

*I managed to get Solia's hair done up in hairties for the first time-before 2 months!

*When Amaia answers yes/no questions, she says 'nnnnnnnnnnnnnope!' and 'yyyyyyyyyep!'

*When asking to watch Baby Signing Time, she asks for specific ones: 1) The Food One, 2) The Car One, 3) The Night Time One, 4) Peach So Soft :)

* Walked around for a while saying "Oh snap!"

Mostly family pics from Solia's Blessing:

Just Solia:

Just Amaia:

Girls Together

365 Project

And that's it.

August 2010 Video

So. The reason I didn't put this up is I really wanted a clip from this movie to show you what Amaia was trying to do. Because it would have made no sense if I didn't put it in. So when I first made the video, I had just ordered the DVD online. I waited for it to get here, ripped it onto my computer, and converted it. I did that all twice. Both times most of the pixels were grayed out in huge square chunks. Anyways. So I tried to use my capture program, Snag It, to, well, snag it. And I got the video-but no sound. Then, I got the genius idea to just record it with my video camera like some teenager at a new movie release. And for all intents and purposes, it works. Just forgive the giant reflection of myself in the tv :)



and enjoy (by following this link to YouTube):

http://youtu.be/ajiVuSDFpn8

August 2010-2nd Half

Alright well I don't have a video with this one. I have a video made, it's just not done, and I'm waiting to get a movie in the mail so I can add a clip from it (for reference). But I didn't want to wait until it got here to post this post.
Things of note:
*Amaia says 'freakin adorable'-about herself, of course. After the one time Justin said it.
*Amaia's learned how to open doors, lock doors, and unbuckle the top part of her carseat buckle-all in one week.
*If she does something she's not supposed to (ie, make a huge mess with something) she'll start cleaning it up to 'make mom happy now'.
*Solia took her first shower-straigt from sponge bath to shower. I think we bathed Amaia in an infant tub all of one time, and of course she pooped in it and it was just gross. We showered her up until a couple months ago and now we only shower Solia.
*I've been trying to get Amaia to watch movies other than The Lion King. After a couple times she warms up to a new one, but every time I put a new one in for the first time, we'll get half hour into it before she comes whining that "Amaia no yike dis one"
*She's learned to say stop (SOP!!) and go away. She'll even tell inanimate things to 'sop', like if she knocks over her lego tower she'd go 'sop knock ofer!' and totally freak out on it.
Here are the pictures:

Just Solia

Some of the girls together, but not the official 365 photos

these are the 365 photos for the last two weeks

Just Amaia

And like I said, no video, but I'll get it posted as soon as I can. It probably won't be before the 1st september post though....sorry :S

My First 'Tutorial'-Ribbon Bracelets

Sorry for the terrible picture-it's hard to take decent picturs of your own wrist...
The idea for this came from my inability to remember which side I'm supposed to start with when I nurse the baby. I could have just used a hair tie, but they always leave huge dents in my arm especially when I wear them while I sleep. I decided to make this super simple ribbon bracelet.
You will need:
-Elastic (I used one of those super long skinny balloons in a pinch, but it doesn't turn out as pretty)
-Ribbon of your choice-just make sure that it's wider than the elastic you picked
-Sewing machine AND needle & thread
-scrap of yarn (about 6+ inches)
-button to match/coordinate with your ribbon

Go for it:
1. Measure around your wrist with your tape measure and add 1/2 inch. Cut your elastic to that length.
2. Stretch your elastic and measure it fully stretched. It doens't have to be stretched as far as it can go, so don't strain yourself :) Some elastics (like my 1/2" black stuff) only stretched to 11 inches (with my 6 1/2 in piece of elastic) while my 'baby soft' 1/4 inch elastic stretched to 12 easily.
3. Cut your ribbon that lenght (of the stretched elastic).
4. Here I used a lighter to melt the ends of both my elastic and my ribbon as a fray check.
5. Knot your yarn into a circle.

6. Fold over the end of the ribbon and pin the elsatic in it, trapping the yarn under the loop of ribbon, shown above.

7. Place under your needle. Make sure your top thread is white (to match the elastic) and the bobbin thread matches your ribbon. Using a zig-zag stitch (or a straight stitch will work fine too, but your ribbon will fold up like a clam after a while), sew your ribbon to the elastic, (making sure to back stitch over that little flap of ribbon at the beginning to secure the elastic) stretching the elastic with your right hand and using your left hand to pull the yarn out the back, so that the whole thing actually feeds through. You should stretch the elastic so that it's the same length as the ribbon.

8. When you get to the end of the ribbon back stitch again.

9. Now make sure you've got your ribbon all faced the same direction so that it's not twisted, and overlap the ends, with the raw end on the underside and the pretty folded flap on top. You'll want to do this 'upside down' so that you are still sewing with the elastic up so you don't get white thread all over the top of your ribbon.

10. Take your needle and thread and sew your button right over top of your stitching so you can't see it. That's it!

August 2010-1st Half

Question: Anyone else feel dumb as they're trying to figure out how to start a new blog post? I always sit here for like 10 minutes running over different 'opening lines' in my head, trying to make them sound cool, but also trying to not make it obvious that I thought too hard about it. I wish I was more creative, then maybe it wouldn't be so darn hard....

Life's been good the past couple weeks adjusting to life with the new baby. Justin stayed home the first week after we came home from the hospital. He was suprisingly helpful around the kitchen (although he didn't cook much), claiming that 'his sink' was to never have a dirty dish in it. My mom came after that, and then his mom came.
Sadly, my days of being pampered are over. I was telling Justin that having someone come to help you can in some ways be anti-helpful. (Not that I don't appreciate it!). Hear me out: You go from taking care of one (or two, etc) kids, and also doing the laundry, cooking, cleaning, etc. You're used to it all, got it all figured out. Then along comes another kid. Now instead of having to adjust to having 2 kids (or 3, etc) and cleaning and cooking, your mom comes into town and she takes care of the older one, and the cleaning and the cooking, etc., leaving you to just take care of the one innocent, not-troublemaker little baby and lounge around and read/sleep all day. Then she leaves, and it's BAM! right in your face two-kids-and-all-that-other-crap.

I guess it's good that newborns sleep. Like all day.

Anyways, I promise my list of stuff is shorter than it was for the last post:
*Amaia's obsessed with the "5 Little Monkeys" song. Just ask her what the doctor said and you'll get an excited "No more monkeys jumping on the bed!" with accompanying hand motions.
*So we finally gave Amaia her busy book, but since we gave it to her as a present, she calls it the present book. And the swimming suit she got for her birthday is a 'present swimming suit', etc.
*So in June (I think) I posted a picture of this wire photo display thing we have in Amaia's room. Well on the side closest to her bed I hung a Pass Along card with a picture of Jesus coming out of the tomb (I think) on it. Anyways...every time we say prayers, we'll both say 'amen'. Instead of Amaia repeating it (like she used to), she'll point to the picture and say "Jesus up there...Amen!"
*She constantly asks to "watch dhoom" (Dhoom 2-a bollywood film that's totally awesome and you should go watch it sometime. Netflixers might be able to find it through the instant view thinger still)
*Everytime I change Solia's poopy diaper, she asks to look inside to see her poo. I mean really? Come on, now Amaia, that's gross :)
*Solia winks all the time (I'm sure not on purpose) and it's always with her left eye.
*Amaia finally pronounces Solia's name better. Instead of So-lee-uh (which is how's it's supposed to be) she says So-wee-uh. It's super cute.
*Did I mention how much Amaia adores her little sister??? I was scared she would be rough with her (she went through a very short hitting phase a few weeks before the baby was born) but only one time have I had to tell her to not hit/squish her, and ever since then she hasn't. She's constantly looking for her and has to 'see Solia', and she gives her kisses all the time. Like all the time.
*Solia is otherwise uneventful, of course. She sleeps all the time, which is going to come bite me in the butt here in a few weeks when she won't sleep at night. She actually spits up, which is quite a change from Amaia, who never spit up or even burped after nursing, but it's not like spit-up-every-where-I-need-a-new-shirt-now like some babies do.

Those of you who are my friends on Facebook have probably seen these pictures before. If not I'll explain: Justin and I started a 365 Photo project with the girls. (Hmm....did I explain this in the last post...? Oh well). Every day for the next year (starting the day Solia was born) we're going to (try) to take a picture of the two girls together. These sort of projects are supposed to help you become more creative photographers, because after a couple months you've run out of ideas and have to come up with more creative things to do picture wise. Because who wants to see 300 pictures of them just sitting next to each other?? So this first collage is all 'official' 365 pictures from the first two weeks of August:

Some shots of Solia alone (and fear not-I actually took more pictures of her alone than of Amaia alone. I refuse to let her be that second child who never had any cute pictures of jsut her when she was a kid!):

Here are more pictures of the girls together. Some of them were taken at the same time as the 'official' 365 pictures, but didn't make the cut as the cutest one of the bunch. Others are just random pictures of the two of them:


Just Amaia:

Stay tuned: hopefully I'll get the next post up in a decent amount of time!

**I edited the 'Solia' post to include a short list of things about Solia from the first couple days of life. Head back to that post and check it out-the new stuff is in RED**

Solia J Colby

Yay I'm going to get both posts done today!
So. Like I said, I still ended up going in Friday morning bright and early to the hospital, as planned. Amaia stayed the night at our friends, the Kearns, house. That way we didn't have to worry about waking her up and getting her dressed just to ditch her over there. Even having that to not worry about, I still was getting up at 5:45 to do my hair and face (yes I wore my make up, even though they said not. Anyone who's surprised doesn't know me very well). I didn't sleep very well the night before. I don't think I was scared, but every time I woke up I had to check my clock, because I thought for sure I had slept in past my alarm and we were going to be late. But we were actually a few minutes early.
Once we got in, I got stuck with tubes and wrapped up in wrist bands, and stripped down and had to wear one of those awful hospital gowns. I was freezing and tired so the quiz I got from the nurse (do I have any prosthetic limbs, glass eyes, dentures, etc).....let's just say I must have passed because they let me go in and get sliced up. Between my shivering and yawning and half asleep-ness, I'm nut exactly sure what I told her. We were supposed to have the surgery at 8:30, but we got pushed back to make room for a lady who'd been in labor all night with no luck.
Once she was done, they wheeled me in, gave me a spinal and then laid me down. I thought it would take a while for the drugs to take effect, but like less than a minute later my legs were numb and I didn't even know it when they put a catheter in until she told me. Justin got to watch the whole thing (over the top of the blue shield thing, but he still got to see it all). We even got some of it on video, but to spare you the naked (albeit so covered in blood you can't really tell) bottom half of my body and the nice sliced open midsection I was sporting, I didn't add any of that to the video at the bottom of the post, so don't worry about censoring or anything. It's just harmless (even boring, dare I say it) video of the baby.
Anyways, they didn't let Justin cut off the cord this time, which he mentioned to me after the fact but I couldn't tell if he cared or not. He already likes this one less than Amaia based purely on the fact that Amaia is his California baby but this was was born in Texas ;)
I surprisingly didn't pass out this time, like I did last time. I was sure I would but I felt fine. When the doc pulled the baby out, she told me I'd feel a lot of pulling. Boy was she not kidding! It felt like some one had grabbed my huge pregnant belly and lifted my entire body off the table.
After the nurse and Justin took off with the baby, I got to sit and listen to the doctors chat it up while they sewed me up with over 20 dissolvable-can't-see-them-on-the-outside staples.
We got to go back to the recovery room, where the nurse did her thing with the baby. She bathed her in the sink where I could see, and then I got to nurse her. She actually latched on right away and had no problem with it at all. I was feeling super sick though. Apparently it's a side effect of the morphine they put in the spinal block, but I was vomiting for a couple hours afterwards. At first it was just clear foamy spit like stuff, and then it turned acidy. I couldn't even take a vicotin or anything because I just threw it right back up, so the only thing to help with the pain of heaving with a sliced open middle were those weak sauce IV painkillers. It got better after a couple hours, thank goodness, and I was able to take some real stuff and get some rest.
We spent the entire weekend at the hospital. We only stayed 2 nights post op with Amaia, and they literally kicked us out after the second night even though we really really (or at least I did) wanted to stay becaues Amaia had been admitted to the NICU for jaundice treatment and was going to have to stay the night. This time, we were goign to go home Sunday morning. My doctor was ok with it, I was ok with it since I hadn't had any problem getting up and around to use the bathroom and stuff (I had a lot less pain this time around), but Solia was dropping weight like crazy even though we were nursing all the time and she was latched on and sucking just fine, so they made me use a pump to get every last drop and then feed it to her after she nursed. We had to stay Sunday night so they could check and make sure she didn't lose any more weight.
The first day the Kearns brougth Amaia to visit us and then Saturday and Sunday Justin drove home to shower (since he would rather do it at home than in the hospital) and both times he brought Amaia back with him to visit. It was during that time that we did the 365 photos for the first 3 days (the two of them from July are in that second photo block down there). We finally got shipped home Monday morning.

*Sigh...* So I wrote a couple notes of the few things I noticed about Solia in the two days of July, but I forgot to add them. Here they are now:
*A list of the things Justin says she looks like, in the order he said them: Richard Nixon, Emperor Palpatine from Star Wars, Gollum from Lord of the Rings, Yoda, and finally just an old man (although I had to agree with him on that last one-don't tell!)
*As far as we can tell, she's got her dad's light hair and eyes, but mom's super long fingers and toes.
*She squeaks when she sleeps.
*Amaia calls her eedle (little) baby sister or suh-wuh-wee (which is also how she pronounces 'celery'...)
*Solia has the tiniest little dimple on her left cheek that you can only really see when she's crying or grimacing (which makes it hard to get a pic of it because you know she's not holding still during those times)
*She's got a little red birthmark on her bum which I find very cute :)
Here are some pictures:

and the video:

July 2010-2nd Half w Video

*whew* ok. I finally have a minute to get this done. Mom's got Amaia at Chuck E Cheese and the baby is asleep. During the last two weeks of July we had Amaia's birthday party (which I already posted about)....and that's about it. I spent the last half of the month finishing that busy book (which I also already posted about), and getting a few random odds and ends tied up around the house and cleaning the house so it was spick and span before the baby came.I was a wreck because I thought for sure this baby was going to come early-and so did the doctor. Even spending all day Thursday cleaning and vacuuming the house didn't put me into labor. We still ended up going in at 7:30 Friday morning to the hospital.Anyways, here's some of the stuff Amaia's been doing-and this list is a doozy so brace yourself:
*She got a Mr. Potato head for her birthday. Her favorite thing is to take all the pieces, stuff them in the back, and then dump and repeat. If the back door is closed, she'll come ask me to 'open pay-tato bum'. :)
*I think we might have already mentioned this, but just in case-when she helps with the laundry she'll use the dryer sheet to wipe the lint off the lint trap. Only now, she will pull it off piece by piece and shake the lint into the trash can before going back for another piece.
*She started saying 'yes' instead of 'yeah'. Only it's super cute, because she sounds like a mad scientist when she says it, because she draws it all out like 'yeeeeeus'. Add an evil laugh at the end and you get the whole package deal
*She's learned all about traffic lights-she'll tell me 'red dop' when she sees a red one, and 'deen do!' when we pass a green one. And she thinks yellow lights are orange :)
*When it's time for prayers at night (and at nap time too) she'll make us all kneel down. No standing or sitting cross legged (like I tried to do becuase it was getting to where it hurt to kneel). She even makes her teddy kneel down, which doesn't always work out very well.
*We all have heard about how independent she's been, but now every thing is "Amaia do it sulf'.
*Her hair is getting so long that it's constantly in her face when it's left down. So she'll come ask me for 'hairties out of face'. And then once I pull it back, she'll get so excited because "Amaia see now!"
*If I make any sort of pained expression or sound or anything, it's either a) because 'mom back hurt', or b) I need to be more 'pareful' (careful)
*Sometimes she'll come up to me and tell me that she's sick. And then she'll go get 'wrap up bankey' and that makes it aaalll better.
*When she pulls a book off the shelf to read to herself, you can always tell which books I've read to her and which I haven't. Her favorite is the "Hand Hand Fingers Thumb" book, and she'll look at it and go 'dum dum dum' and other stuff like in the book. Then she'll pick up a book I've hardly ever (if at all) read, and she'll just make up the randomest noises, not even trying to look at the pictures and tell the story from that.
*Started walking on her tip toes every so often-even running like that sometimes
*When we go shopping, if she's got her blanket, she'll always ask me to fold it up to make it into a pillow. Then she'll lay it on the handle and lay on it.
*She's such a little pain-in-the-neck sometimes-she'll be just about ready to do something she's not supposed to (like dump her cup out onto the carpet). She'll look at me, ask 'dump it?', and sit there waiting for an answer. And then as soon as I say no, it gets dumped. Grrr.
*This is one of my favorite things that we leraned this month. You know how some kids get a kick out of mom flying the spoonful of mashed potatoes like an airplane and making flying noises, and then the plane lands in the kids mouth, right? Well with Amaia, we do animals. I'll scoop up a bite, she'll pick an animal (say a chicken), and then as I'm flying the spoon to her mouth I get to say 'bak bak, buh-gock!' as it lands in her mouth. She thinks it's hilarious and we can usually get her to eat all her food that way.
*Her favorite song is the "Waving Flag" song from the World Cup. Or as she calls it-the Soccer Ball Song. Every time she's in the car with Justin she'll ask for him to turn it on for her, and then she'll dance all crazy.
*It's not more. It's 'mow-er'.
*She recognizes and can name numbers 1-5, 7, 8, & zero. And the Letter U.
*So this one time, it was like 9:30 in the morning, and Amaia was asking to watch the lion movie. I thought it was too early, so I showed her the minute hand on the clock and told her when it got to the top, that we could watch the movie. Somehow that's morphed into '5 on top', so when she asks for it and I say no, she'll say we have to wait for '5 uh top watch lion movie'. Don't ask where the 5 part came from-I have no idea.
*thank you is now 'kank you'
*So back when we were learning colors, when we would do the 'brights' batch of laundry, I would hand her the wet one from the washer and say what color that item of clothing was, and then she would take it and put it in. Then after we learned the colors, I would just say "Amaia's shirt" or "daddy's sock", etc as I handed her each item. Apparently she got sick of it, because about halfway through the batch one day (and this has happened every time since) she told me 'mommy no talk'. :(
*When she colors with her markers, she'll put the cap on the back end of the marker. She figured that out all on her own, cuz I certainly didn't teach her that.
*Every time she pulls up her underwear and pants, she'll say "amaia pup it". That's her way of saying she wants to pull them up herself.
*a napkin is a 'man kin' and a vacuum is a 'dap oom' and squeaky is 'goinky'
*So one day, early in the moring, I brought Amaia into our bed. She looked out our soaking wet windows and thought it was raining outside, so of course Justin taught her all about condensation. She repeated the word perfectly. Then a few days later, Justin had a bottle of ice water that was all wet on the outside. She points to it and says 'condensation'! Holy crap she sure picked that up fast.
*Every night when we put her in the shower or into her PJ's, she freaks out because she doens't want to put her underwear and pants into the dirty clothes basket. We still haven't figured out what she would rather have us do with them...

Here are the pictures. Some of just Amaia:

Random Pics:

Here is the YouTube link for this month's video:

http://youtu.be/TIlhD9lgU4M

Check back in a little bit for the pics (and maybe video) of Solia's grand entrance!

Amaia's Busy Book

Well I did it. I started this project beginning of July, took a hiatus for about a week right before Amaia's party (so I could work on stuff for that) and 'finished' it yesterday. I put that in quotes, because as I was going through my pictures I saw a few things (that I won't point out) that I'd like to fix someday, but at this point I've got better things to be doing.

Here is the front cover. It's a little more boyish than I was planning for, but oh well. I have to give Justin credit for the design of this page. Each 'page' is two pages sewn together, back to back, around the edge. It's got a 2" strip of black 'leather' (folded in half, with raw edges in between the pages) that I used to bind the book together. I put 3 button holes in each black strip (there are 9 pages total, I think, so a lot of button holes). The 'rings' are a piece of ribbon with a button on one end and a button hole on the other, just looped through all those button holes I made. That way, if I want to take a page out, I just unbutton the ribbon loop and take the one page out. Then on the other side I've just got the two buttons on the front cover, and two elastic loops sewn onto the back cover to help keep it closed (because there's a lot of stuff in there!)


This is the I-Spy page. I cut the hole out of the page, sewed the clear plastic vinyl stuff over the holes, and then edged the holes with the ribbon. There are 2 layers of the plastic-one on the back that goes all the way around (to make the pocket) and the other on the front with a slight opening at the top so that I can switch out the pictures after a while. Now I just have to find enough small things to make another one! I swear used everything I already have in that one...

This page has 3 strips of the 'pokey' velcro. The letters are just scrapbook paper mounted onto cardboard and then covered with contact paper, with the fuzzy side of the velro on the back. Pretty ghetto, I know, but I didn't like the look of the store bought cardboard alphabets, and now these are a little waterproof if someone decides to chew on one. The pocket holds the rest of the letters and it done up with three sew in snaps.

Here are my buckles. Pretty self explanatory, I guess. Just had to make the fabric tubes and sew them down. I'm a little sad bc my overalls buckle up there only comes off if you hold it at just the right angle, and I doubt any kid's going to figure it out. Oh well.

Shape matching. I bought a package of iron on denim patches. Then I made two copies of each shape-one out of the denim and the other out of a gray fabric. I sewed the velcro onto the gray piece and then sewed the two shapes together, so you can't see the velcro stitching on the top. Then I traced the shapes on the back of the page and used that as my outline for where to stitch the outlines. Again, more ghetto fabulousness. I'm sure there's a more efficient/better way to do it, but I improvised.

Here is my puzzle page. He's a lion, in case you can't tell. I liked how the two fabric coordinated, but in hindsight I wish I would have done a bigger contrast. It's sort of hard to tell what he is. I ended up hot gluing the velcro to the back of the pieces so you coudln't see the stitching because I forgot to add the velcro until after the fabric was already fused together. Each piece has a small piece of velcro on the page, where you attach it, but if I did it again I'd just put a grid of velcro so the pieces didn't have to be so exact in order to match up.

This is one of the first pages I finished, and I hate it :) My shoe lace is too short, I couldn't find a nice outline of a shoe anywhere so I ended up tracing my shoe and then shrinking the image. So it just looks funky. And it's boring. I couldnt' think of any way to spruce it up.

Here's my dinosaur page. Like the letters, these guys were printed off, mounted on cardboard, and contact papered. They've got the pokey velcro on the back so you can pick them up (and the trees and sun) and move them around where ever you want. Sort of like a mini flannel board.

This is one of my favorites. A little barn (the tree has little red brad 'apples') and when you open the barn doors....

you get little animal finger puppets! Don't mind the pig, he was the original-not-as-good pig, but I lost the better pig after I used him in the I Spy picture. Even after a 100% reorganization and cleaning of the craft closet and room, I still can't find him. So the ugly pig gets a turn for a while.

Clock. Eyelet in the clock and then a brad to hold it all together. Just puff paint on the numbers with that fake black leather making the hands.

Flower buttoning. I tried to make each button different (since I couldn't find them all the same). I just used scraps from my pile to make the flowers and then used my buttonholer on my machine to make the holes in each one.

Here's the first page I ever made for this thing. I like the text but I don't like the rest of it. The mirror I 'salvaged' from a foam craft mirror thing, and it got all scratched up in the process of removing it. And then my ribbons all not even. And then I found out that you could just buy those not-glass mirrors at the craft store plain, and I was sad :( That would have been so much easier.

Same idea as the I Spy page, but I put pictures in, that can be rotated when I feel like she's getting bored of the pictures I've got in there.

She got magnets on the back side, and each piece of clothing has a magnet as well.

Probably my favorite page is the cow page. I was originally going to cut out the spots from the white leathery stuff and put different textured black stuff in the holes. But then I saw this one page in someone else's busy book that had little flaps with numbers, and underneath was that # of small items. So i merged the two ideas, and I love it. I'm sad my barn is crooked, but hey. What can you do? Each flap has something different underneath. Here's what's under the 7:

for the rest I just used the smallest random things I could find. Like the 2 has a pair of googly eyes under it, the 10 has 10 mini brads, and the 8 has these little black buttons. You get the idea.

Tic tac toe. Ugh this page sucked! anyways, it's got a magnet behind each of the 9 cubes, and each of the 10 game pieces (you guessed it, paper with (no cardboard) and contact paper on the outside) has a magnet as well. Then you just store them all in the zippered pouch when you're not playing, so you don't lose all the pieces. Oh, and I hand stitched around every single one of those petals on the flower. Just FYI :)

Crayon roll-I didn't make the 'back' like you would a traditional crayon roll. I just used the page itself as the back, and sewed the pocked onto it. The little envelope is made out of sew in heavy interfacing and then I cut paper to the size of my envelope and hot glued the top together to make a little note pad.

The back cover. Just to point out-all my pages are made from felt (by the yard-I think). Or wool felt. I dunno. All I know is, I bought a whole bunch of it because I was going to make one of those super long trench coat things out of it, (along with the heavy sew in interfacing that I used on some of the pages, and that I put in between the cover pages to make it a little sturdier) and then I changed my mind and went with a dark gray with a sew in interfacing. Which I still haven't finished, for those of you who saw me working on it at sewing group like forever ago. The Outside covers are just plain old regular felt that I bought in squares at Hobby Lobby, but it worked out ok because I had the stiff interfacing to keep it from being so floppy.

So there it is! Took me forever, cost waaaaay to much, but it's cute! I plan to wrap it up for Amaia so she can open it at the hospital. Which is in 2 DAYS BY THE WAY!!!

Yea yea, I told every one I wasn't going to make it my c-section date. Boy did I shove my foot in my mouth. But it works out because I got tons of stuff done (like Amaia's party, this busy book, laundry, vacuumed the car!...) that I really needed to get done. And I still have more to do, so she better not even think about it!

Well I did it. I started this project beginning of July, took a hiatus for about a week right before Amaia's party (so I could work on stuff for that) and 'finished' it yesterday. I put that in quotes, because as I was going through my pictures