I made one loaf of whole wheat bread this morning to serve as a snack during baby club. This was the first time I baked a loaf soon after the dough rose, before refrigerating it. It turned out a little lighter than previous loaves I've baked. I also added a little rosemary to the dough, and it gave the bread a nice flavor.

But one loaf wasn't really enough. Those kids really can't get enough of the stuff, they kept wanting more and more slices, but I eventually ran out. Next time, I'll bake TWO loaves. That ought to do it. I put out both butter and hummus, which was good since one of the mothers can't have anything with dairy, so the hummus worked for her.

But overall the baby club meeting went well. Terry hung out the whole time, which was unusual, but everyone seemed to tolerate him well enough. It's not that he was disagreeable or anything, but we usually don't have men around during the day, so it was just different.

The kids liked all the toys, so that worked out, and there were plenty of toys for everyone.

William really likes the little girl Dorothy. He kept crawling after her, following her around the room, and "talking" to her. She is a very advanced talker (just turned 2 and has been speaking in complete sentences for a while now) and Terry said she thought it was hilarious when William was trying to talk to her, since of course he's just babbling. She was less amused by William groping her-- I think he was trying to use her to pull up to standing, but unlike adults, where all he can grab is our legs, he'd try to grab her arms or head to pull up on. Not cool. I think he was trying to pet her, too, since he was patting her like he pats Rambo. Very cute for us to watch, but he did seem to be annoying the little girl. We told her she could always run away from him since she can run faster than William can crawl, and reminded her that he's just a baby so he doesn't know how to act right yet.

I found it interesting that William seemed to take a renewed interest in his own toys when there were other kids playing in the room with him. It wasn't like he was trying to take toys from other kids, each was mostly playing with things from whichever box was directly in front of them, but he was pretty interested in the toys in the box nearest him.

It might have been that he was excited to play with toys since the other kids were all playing with toys, but I think it also might have been since he's not used to playing with certain toys in the TV room. We don't spent a whole lot of time down there in that room anyway, so the room itself must have had some novelty factor. But I took all the toys from all over the house, and gathered them all in boxes and baskets and carried them all into the same room. I think seeing a toy that has always been in the nursery appear downstairs in a box was pretty exciting for William. Highly unusual. I'll have to keep that in mind for the future. Periodically shuffle which toys are in which rooms so William won't get bored with them.

One of the moms was surprised we had so many toys when William hasn't even had his first birthday yet. That is apparently when most kids get lots of toys. It hadn't occurred to me that W already has many toys, since I really haven't bought very many for him. But I suppose we have received many, many hand-me-downs. One of my girlfriends in NYC has a son three years older than W, so at my shower she gave me pretty much ALL the baby toys and books she still had in her apartment, since her son had outgrown them. Plus we generally borrow a toy or two every time we visit my mother (she has TONS from watching the twins for their first year), and none have yet made their way back to her house. Although it is time to start swapping out. She has an entire 3rd floor for toy storage, and we really don't have anywhere to store old toys. The garage is pretty full with our own stuff (golf clubs, camping equipment, Christmas and party decorations. . .) so there's no room for boxes of toys. And you can only get to the attic by pulling yourself up through a little hole in the ceiling, so we reserve that for just the 2nd floor heat pump and TV antenna since it's so hard to get up there.

I'm glad I saved all my baskets. After consolidating households, we had a surfeit of baskets, but I did not let Terry get rid of any of them, figuring we'd use them for something. Have we ever-- the baskets are what we use to hold the toys in every room. The nice thing is that they already match the decor, and we haven't had to buy a toy box. I'll probably eventually put up some sort of shelves in William's room-- all the "how to organize" books say toy chests are problematic since the kids never know what's in the bottom, so a lot of toys never get played with, but if everything is on low shelves they can see every toy and reach every toy, and strings don't get tangled, etc. But we'll have to move out some of the extra furniture in that room before I do that. It's pretty crowded just because I haven't gotten rid of his baby things yet.

After baby club, Terry and I decided to have a picnic lunch since the weather was so nice. I also found out from one of the other moms that there is a playground in Old Trail that has baby swings! So we took our sandwiches and drove out there.

I'm pretty happy with that park! We were probably only there 30 minutes or so, but we chatted with a grandmother watching a 5 and 3 year-old, and a mom with a 9 1/2 month-old girl baby, and there was also another mom there with her 3 year-old and 19 month-old boys. The grandmother lives in the neighborhood there, and says that little park is always busy, so now that the weather is nice it should be easy for William find other kids to watch. He doesn't really play with other kids yet, but he does avidly watch them, and Terry and I think he learns things faster watching older kids do them than by watching Terry or I do them.

While we were at the park, we pushed William fairly high when he was in the baby swing. He really seemed to love it, he was giggling and laughing. Although I could tell when he was getting tired, since I noticed he started slumping down in his seat. Terry was at first hesitant to push William high, he's a worrywart. But then he later saw the mom pushing her 9 1/2 month-old girl just as high, but the girl wasn't holding on to the edge of the seat with both hands like William was, she was leaning forward and waving her arms around in delight. So I think Terry understands that kids don't really fall out of those baby swings, even when they're not holding on. I generally prefer watching William when Terry is not around, since he sees peril everywhere, and is kind of a drag. None of the moms I hang out with is uptight about that sort of thing.

I volunteered to host baby club this week. But I did that before I took a good hard look at the rooms I was planning to use. They're not as clean or well-organized as I thought they were.

Terry helped out by straightening them up while I was out with William this afternoon, but it will probably be up to me to vacuum tomorrow-- Terry doesn't know that he should vacuum the crumbs from the sofa cushions, etc., so I'll probably want to do that even if he vacuums the floor.

I thought about making the bread dough tonight for the whole wheat bread I usually make, so I would just have to pop a loaf in the oven tomorrow morning. But I decided to watch the Sex In The City movie instead. It's not like I really have any other food to fall back on to offer my guests. I thought I had plenty of cashews, but when I looked in the can there weren't many left-- I guess Terry has been snacking on them. I have crackers, and there is a chance that I have cheese that is still good, although I haven't checked.

I used to be very conscientious when I hosted events, going through checklists to make sure I had done everything necessary to be a good hostess. Since I have ADD I really need to go through written lists for stuff like this, I totally cannot remember otherwise. But it's been so long since I've invited people over, I have no idea where my lists are anymore. Probably on my old laptop somewhere. I guess I'll make new lists. They'll be different anyway, now that people bring kids with them when they come visit. I need to prepare in new and different ways than I used to.

I'm not really unprepared to host, everything is adequate, I'm sure. It's just that I am unprepared to meet the goal of hosting the best baby club ever. Which is fine. The whole point of the get-together is for it to be easy for the moms involved, not for there to be any pressure to roll out the red carpet when it's your turn to host. But it's not my nature to do things plainly, although admittedly it is often my practice.

I ran some errands on Saturday, including a stop by the fabric shop to get material to make a ballet skirt. I was in luck-- prom fabrics were on sale, so I picked out 1.5 yards in two different sheer fabrics. I figured I'd make a skirt in white as a practice skirt, since I already had white thread in my serger, I wouldn't have to fool with re-threading the thing. The other fabric I got is sheer pink with satin pink daisies on it-- very pretty.

Here's how my first skirt turned out:

It didn't take too long to make, but I can't say it was easy. Although it did turn out to be easier than I expected it to be, since I expected it to be a nightmare to work with the sheer fabric.

I spent a fair amount of time doing the math to figure out how big to cut the circle skirt, and then to decide how I was going to cut it evenly since it's not a true circle-- ballet skirts are short in front and longer in the back. And they are wrapped, with the overlap in the front.

Fortunately, I did the math correctly, and the skirt was reasonably close when I held it up after I cut it out. I did have to change the curve down from the front, and shorten the sides, but I purposely cut it out a little too big so I'd have room to make shape corrections. I also had to even it out the second time around. I guess the first time the fabric slipped when I was cutting it, since one side was way different than the other. That's pretty much the sort of thing I expect when working with slippery fabric, and so that part was as difficult as I expected. When I adjusted the cut, I put A LOT of pins in the folded fabric, and that worked. I did my best to pin in the parts that I would cut out, since I didn't want holes in the sheer fabric of the skirt.

I was just going to use the standard overlock until I read the manual for the serger. The rolled hem threading was the same as for the standard stitch, minus one thread and needle. Since I felt comfortable taking a thread and needle OUT of the machine (I am still not so sure about putting new thread INTO the machine, I don't have my owner's class until later this week), I went ahead and gave the rolled hem a try. I tried it on a scrap, and to my amazement, it worked perfectly the first time!

I put a rolled hem all the way around the skirt, then used my regular sewing machine to attach the skirt to a ribbon for the waistband (I used an overlock zigzag). The ribbon didn't want to stay lined up on my waist, so I then made some loops out of ribbon and hand-sewed them to the waist to keep the wrap-tie looking neat. I had wanted to put in a buttonhole for one side of the wrap, like on a normal wrap skirt or dress, but I tried sewing a buttonhole in the ribbon (practiced on scrap), and it was impossible for me to get it to look good, so I settled for the loops.

And that's it! I was able to put the whole thing together yesterday afternoon. It took less than an hour, excluding the hand-sewing. I think hand-sewing all the loops probably added another 30 minutes to an hour, I wasn't watching the clock so I'm not sure.

I wore it to ballet class tonight, and got many compliments. I think for the next skirt, I'll aim for slightly less overlap in the front, and I'll have the skirt come up shorter in the front as well, so there is more of a pronounced difference between the front and back lengths.

I think elastic would be better for me than just the wrapped ribbon, and I mentioned that to the other ladies in class when we were in the dressing room. The consensus from the ballerinas was that only kids skirts have elastic since it's much easier to put on, but all adult ballet skirts are wrapped.

I gave that some thought during the drive out to Bunko after ballet class. I figure that the main reason elastic is to be avoided is because it would create gathers at the waist that would spoil the look if it was a typical elastic waistband. But I had a brainstorm-- what if I could create a skirt with a hidden, floating elastic waist, underneath the traditional ribbon of the wrapped skirt? I might not even need elastic the whole way around, I might be able to just put it in the front, where the overlap is. And while I didn't think of this earlier, it just occurred to me I could still keep it a wrap skirt (rather than a faux-wrap) if I had a hook or button or something for the elastic. This may be something I might need to try several variations to see what's comfortable. I could just mock-up some waistbands without the skirt and wear them around the house to see if they stay put during normal activity.

I'm sure once I start playing around with the ribbon and elastic, I'll figure something out. Sometimes it's easier for me to just DO something instead of trying to work it out on paper or in my head. But I do know that having just the ribbon tied around my waist holding my skirt up was just a tad less comfortable than I had hoped. It's got to be reasonably tight so it doesn't creep up my belly to near my ribcage. I suspect slimmer dancers don't have the same problem, so the ribbon is fine for them. But I'm going to figure out a couture solution for myself.

We switched up our routine a bit today, so Terry took William starting at around 2:30pm. I was tired from watching him since 9am (he was good except when I was trying to cook lunch, when he was whining and getting on my nerves), so I played a few computer games. Then I decided to take advantage of the quiet house (Terry took William for a walk) and got to work on that chair reupholstery project.

I finished tacking down the fabric on the front side of the back of the chair. It was tricky due to the shape of the frame, but I got it done. Then I decided that I was so sick of looking at the unfinished chair that I went ahead and put the trim on the front before I put the new fabric on the back of the chair.

I feel much better about it now because I can position it in my sewing room so I don't have to look at the back of the chair. And since the front is now finished, I don't have to be confronted by a torn-apart half-finished piece of furniture every time I pass through the room. It still IS a torn-apart half-finished (well, 2/3 finished) piece of furniture, but at least I now have the illusion that it is done.

William is sleeping now, so I won't work on it tonight-- much hammering is required for the next step. But maybe I'll rally and get it done tomorrow. Wouldn't that be great?