Well we all had quite an exciting weekend! Julius, Will, Dany and I all went to my parent’s house for the long Thanksgiving weekend! We were joined by my brother, my sister in law and my nephew as well as my sister and her girlfriend. Julius had lots of time to play with family while crazy Aunt Lexi and Uncle Will got to hang out with a slightly squishier baby nephew who is very smiley and giggly!
It has become apparent that Will loves babies. It’s really very cute. When he’s around any 5 month old baby he always asks to hold them and remarks how Julius isn’t that snuggly anymore. It’s true to some extent – at five months they are still squishy so they mold nicely to your arms but aren’t as fragile as earlier in their life so there is less need to be so delicate with them. Perfect snuggling age. At a year though, or actually even at 10 months when he was crawling, Julius comes over and demands snuggles and hugs from you. Squishy babies can’t do that; they instead complacently sit there and marinate in your love or else cry until you figure out snuggles is what they need.
Speaking of marinating, Julius had lots of delicious food for Thanksgiving (or as I called it, Turkey Party)! He loved mashed potatoes and gravy, my aunt’s tourtiere, corn succotash, and pumpkin soup, though he didn’t seem to like the turkey. He kept throwing it on the floor (presumably for the dog?) a practice he does when he doesn’t like something. He doesn’t seem to be a chicken fan either, unless it’s slathered in something. I guess he takes after daddy in that regard. Either way I am just overjoyed he likes his veggies!
You know what else Julius loves? Bath time! He loves to splash in the tub and play with his tub toys. For his birthday I got him this bath set that comes with 3 floating “water bugs” and a little net to catch them in. He loves it! He carries it around with him everywhere, in the water and out. On top of that he spent at least 30 minutes trying to capture the bugs in the bath the first time he used it. He first used the net, but then the bugs would float out of the net and “escape” whenever he put the net underwater. He became suspicious of the integrity of the net and instead captured them in his hands and put them in the net. Unfortunately the bugs continued to escape when he’d release them into the net. The darn things just wouldn’t stay put in the net (thanks to flotation). Eventually he skipped the net altogether, and just captured the bugs with his hands and stuck them underneath his legs to hold them down. Of course they’d float back to the surface anytime he moved so this didn’t work 100% of the time either. Watching Julius play with the water bugs was the most hilarious thing I’ve witnessed in a long time.
At the end of bath time we wrap Julius up in a hooded towel and give him lots of snuggles! We used to use these tiny hooded towels we had when he was a baby, but by 6 months he was too long for them. At that point we upgraded to a hooded towel we got from a family friend. One towel is just not enough, so I thought I’d make another one, this one with a fun dinosaur theme!
Hooded Dino Towel
What You’ll Need:
- Two full size towels
- 1/8 yd green fleece (mine was scrap)
- black and white machine or hand embroidery thread and supplies
- Pattern for scales here
- Cut a 12”x21” piece of towel so that one of the long edges is the finished edge of the towel.
- Fold piece of towel in half to form a 12”x10.5” rectangle.
- Pin along the unfinished edge adjacent to the fold, curving slightly at the point.
- Set pinned towel aside and cut 8 scales, adding .5” seam allowance all around.
- Pin and stitch two scales together leaving the flat side opened.
- Notch along curve and clip seams.
- Turn scale right side out and repeat for other 3 scales.
- Insert scales between the two pieces of towel you pinned. Re-pin.
- Stitch and serge along the towel edge and curve
- Embroider eyes onto either side of the towel. (I used a machine and this pattern I made, but you can do this by hand)
- Fold full size towel in half. Wrong sides together, pin the bottom of the hood to the towel, lining up edges. Stitch, slightly into the fluffy part of the towel, past the edging.
- Trim the unfinished edge of the hood.
- Fold hood up so the unfinished edge of the hood is covered by the edging of the towel. Pin.
- Stitch close to the edge of the edging to enclose the unfinished edge of the hood.
