Weekend Kat Blogging: A Happy Mother’s Day

It was a beautiful today.

The sun was bright; it was a cool seventy-one degrees, and there was a gentle breeze.

A perfect day for gardening.

Zak and I got up (Morganna was still at a campout at our friend Torquil’s place) with Kat, and decided to go pick up a few herb plants and some chile pepper plants, so I could put start my deck herb garden. So, off we went, Kat in tow, and I picked up two kinds of Thai basil, some Genovese basil, some Mexican basil, chives, catnip, thyme, oregano, marjoram, rosemary, a lettuce-leafed basil, some sage and some tarragon. We got to visit our friend and doula, Angela, who was having a plant sale to benefit the local Birth Circle, a non-profit group which has a long-term goal of starting a freestanding birth center in Athens.

Then, Dan and Morganna came home, and Heather came over and all of us (after the campers had a shower) went to eat dinner at Casa Nueva.

It was there that Kat gave me my Mother’s Day gift: she sat up in a high-chair for the entire meal, and tried refried beans for the first time, and absolutely loved them!

Kat has progressed mightily in the past week. She has begun babbling, especially in the afternoons and evenings. She makes all of the pre-verbal sounds like “lalalala” and “babababa,” and has had “conversations” with us, that consist of her making sounds, then us answering her, either in words or sounds, and her making sounds back, while grinning the entire time.

She can drink water out of a regular glass or cup–she hates sippy cups and will have nothing to do with them. She still hates juice, but will drink water happily. She can sit up for long periods of time on her own, and her balance is amazingly good. She can lean forward, pick something up, then lean back to examine it. She can lift herself up to a sitting position from laying down.

And she is interested in EVERYTHING! She watches everything we do, and tries to help with as many things as she can. She watches me cook, plant flowers and herbs, and she likes to watch me sew.

Ah yes, sewing. You will notice she is playing with fabric in these pictures. That would be the quilt top for her quilt which I finally finished piecing this week.

This is the quilt I had all pinned together and was going to piece–and woke up to get up and start sewing, and my water broke and I was in labor.

All last week, I step by step, finished the piecing. And when the top was done, I carried it triumphantly in to the sunporch where Zak was playing with Kat, to show it off to him.

Kat took one look at it, and her eyes bugged out at all the colors, and she leaned forward, both hands reaching for it, her fingers making grasping motions. “Ah-ah-ah!” she cried, her grin huge.

Of course I let her have it. It is hers, after all. And she played with it, chewed on it, and hid under it for about a half hour. (She loved playing peekaboo with the quilt top, as you can see–I think it was the sunlight coming through all the brilliantly colored batiks that really got her.)

Now all that is left to do with the quilt is to pin baste the top to the batting and backing–both of which are cut and pressed and ready, and then I need to quilt it on my new sewing machine, and then trim the batting and backing and bind the edges. I am in the home stretch!

And yes, have no fear–I will definitely post pictures of the finished quilt, along with the new sewing machine. And, I will post pictures of the new projects as they come along.

So, life is good, and Mother’s Day is wonderful. Dan and Heather gave me a lovely handmade green beeswax candle in the shape of a cluster of asparagus, Zak gave me herbs, Morganna gave me a flower, and Kat showed me what a big girl she has become.

I hope that all the other Moms out there have had as blessed a day as I have.

11 Comments »

RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URI

1. Ah…the perfect day. Happy Mother’s Day Barbara!!

   Comment by Maureen — May 13, 2007 #

2. Lovely day, Barbara! And what beautiful pictures!
   I hope Morganna enjoyed her campout, too.

   Comment by Hadar — May 13, 2007 #

3. I love seeing her every Sunday. It does sound like you had a perfect day.

   Comment by Kalyn — May 13, 2007 #

4. A most joyous Mother’s Day to you Barbara!

   Comment by Kirk — May 14, 2007 #

5. Happy Mother’s Day Barbara. Look at Kat, in the middle of all the colorful quilt fabric! She looks adorable

   Comment by mandira — May 14, 2007 #

6. What a joyous, glorious, gorgeous post for Mother’s Day. I see that Kat loves the same sort of colors that I do. Obviously she’s a young lady with a fabulous sense of color so maybe she’ll be a painter when she grows up. As always, I love your posts about food, about your family and your life.

   Blessings Be!

   Comment by Nancy — May 14, 2007 #

7. Thank you, everyone!

   Hadar–Morganna had a blast at the campout. Had my allergies not been acting up and Kat was a little older, I think I would have gone, too, and had fun. But–that was not to be. Maybe we’ll go on the next one in October.(Even though I didn’t go, I sent Morganna with food from our freezer–two soups and a chili. She shared and made lots of friends.)

   Mandira, Nancy–Kat loves brilliant colors. That is a genetic thing, I suspect, as both her father and I adore color and as artists, we both use bright colors. In fact, the design here at T&S is surprisingly subtle, considering that Zak designed it. But, it is unusual, and gets across the feeling I wanted the blog to have.

   Anyway, as for Kat and her quilt–it is almost all batiks from Indonesia and Bali, and includes eight blocks with painted batik dragons on them. She loves th dragons, and stares at them–before stuffing a bit of quilt in her mouth and biting on it.

   It was a wonderful, wonderful Mother’s Day. The best part was having two happy, healthy daughters home with me, and my friends, husband and cats with us, too.

   Comment by Barbara — May 15, 2007 #

8. She is so adorable! Such round pinchable cheeks!

   Comment by Steamy Kitchen — May 15, 2007 #

9. What a miraculous, stellar child. Or, more accurately, a pair of them.

   Comment by Mary Ann — May 15, 2007 #

10. What an adorable little darling! Who needs Kay to celebrate mother’s day when we have Kat?

    Belated Happy Mother’s Day greetings to you Barbara.

    ( Kay, the jewelry shop – we were bombarded with jewelry ads during Mother’s Day weekend)

    Comment by Indira — May 18, 2007 #

11. What a cutie she is! Just found your blog via Habeas Brulee. Looking forward to reading more.

    Kitt (who also goes by Kat)

    Comment by Kitt — May 20, 2007 #

Leave a comment

Name (required)

Mail (will not be published) (required)

Website

XHTML: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <code> <em> <i> <strike> <strong>