the summer of tie dye

we've been tie dye crazy here the past couple weeks. it started with my cousin's annual "bring your kids & dye something!" party, & ended this weekend with the same cousin returning to my house to help dye a whole bunch more gear while the kids ran amok & generally wrecked chaos & had a fabulous time dyeing our garage.
turns out, i love dyeing stuff! we did t-shirts for grown ups, t-shirts for kids, onesies, socks & pretty much every white cotton fabric item we could find.
i had the brilliant idea to buy some white flannel & dye it to make a baby blanket for a girlfriend of mine who is expecting her first in a couple weeks. i had wanted to sew her a quilt, but my time & motivation is running low & i know i can make a cute flannel blankie with much less effort that still looks good & is nice & soft & cozy. so here are my 2 options:

and :

think either of these is good enough to use for a gift? (obviously the finished blankie will be lined, bound & edged.) emmie keeps carrying these around, so whichever we don't use for a gift i'll use to make a blankie for her. or are these not cool enough to give some one? should i try, try again?

gender.... to know or not to know?

next week is our "big" ultrasound, & i still really want to be surprised come january, but it's SO tempting to find out! plus i'm worried that if it's another boy i'll be bummed out. not bc i don't love boys, i do. but bc i'd feel bad if em were the odd girl out all her life. i always wanted a sister & i wish i could give one to emmie.
one of my good friends in high school was an only girl with 3 brothers & she always seemed sort of out of place & uncomfortable in her own skin. i don't know if that was bc her mom wasn't the best female role model, or bc she wanted to be like her big brother, or if she was just a weirdo, but it's always lingered in the back of my mind as an "oh no" about a girl growing up in a house full of dudes. i worry that another little boy will only want to hang out with his big brothers & em won't have anyone to play her games. i worry that the boys would all game up on her or exclude her, or that she won't think that it's cool to be a girl. i worry about making the twins share a room forever while em & the littlest boy get their own rooms. i worry that the big boys will be nothing but annoyed with a little brother who follows them everywhere. basically, i just worry.
i think i'm going to tough it out & wait til january. this is our last, & i really want that "IT's A ___!" moment. plus, i can't be disapointed with a sweet little baby in my arms, no matter what their gender. so i'm just going to stress about it for months ahead of time, & hope that it could somehow be a good thing for a girl to grow up in with all boys.

(& of course i'm stressing over this strictly bc i have one of those mommy feeling that it's a boy. based on nothing other than my own intuition, which is faulty at best, but sure feels convincing!)

i held the pig hostage.

lovies are pretty much sacred in our house. with 3 kids so close in age, everyone sort of HAS to share everything, & lovies are the one exception. no one else may play with/touch/hold some one else's lovey unless specifically given permission by the owner. val has a grey bunny, emma a Bunnies By The Bay bunny blanket, (i mention the brand bc i LOVE them. LOVE LOVE LOVE. best stuffies ever.), & conrad has a pink flowered sheep that he refers to as a ginea pig. lovies are the only toys ever allowed to leave the house, they can sit at the table for meals, & pretty much have the right to go where ever the kids want them to go.
today, however, i broke a lovey rule & used conrad's sheep/pig for leverage. i feel like the meanest mom in the universe.
it was naptime & he was screaming like a banshee, (one of those fake, i'm not really crying, i'm just being exceptionally noisy & whiney cries), while jumping up & down in his crib. this went on for a solid 5 mintues, upsetting his brother & winding up his sister, until i got fed up & told him to lay down & be quiet or "baby" (the sheep/pig) would go bye-bye. he held the pig closer, gave me the evil eye & upped the volume a few notches. so i made him hand over the baby & marched out of the bedroom. at this point he started crying for real with those big gasping, my heart is breaking sobs. & i only stayed away long enough to change em's pants & put away everyone's toothbrushes before i went back in & gave him the "you get baby back if you're quiet & laying down" line, & he got his baby back. which he then held in a death grip while staring at me as though i'd tried to cut off his left arm. (although he WAS quiet after that.)
i wouldn't have kept his lovey indefinetly, but i was at a loss for how to get through to the kid. & i'd been up since 2am. i feel that excuses a few flaws in my mothering today, right?

sleep baby, sleep!

i have become consumed by gender. does it matter what we have? no, not really. i don't even actually want to know unti the baby is born. i just want to obsess over it continually. i am having the best time getting guesses & playing with all those super-silly old wives tales. yes, i am a dork.

val has been waking up the past several nights at midnight & staying up til 2. he is then exhausted beyond belief when i wake him in the morning & sleep walks through the whole day. he only gets a 2 hr nap & would sleep more if i let him. i called our pedi's office this morning to ask a nurse about it, & she suggested we give up his nap, at which point i politely stopped listening. whatever his problem is, it is NOT that he's getting too much sleep, the kid is pooped ALL of the time. is it a phase? could there be some physical reason for it? i'm not sure, but i'm going to continue to puzzle it out on my own for a while since the nurse was so unhelpful (although well-meaning.) & in the meantime, we're all freaking tired. midnights spent listening to val chatter are not restful for any of the fam. sigh.