Baby Benjamin

We are excited to announce that Benjamin Roscoe Wammack has joined our family. He was born on Thursday, April 18th at 8:12 am. He was 8 lbs 2 oz and 20 3/4 in. He is healthy and is already such a wonderful addition to the family.

His siblings love him, and they love to hold and cuddle him. Jonathan is even taking it really well so far. Every morning he asks "where baby Benjamin go?" He loves to know where his brother is and he already will tell him that he loves him. The girls of course love to rock him and want to touch him so much, that eventually we have to remind them that he is not a puppy, you don't have to pet him all of the time.

Now for the photo bomb. Be kind to mom, remember that I had just had the baby and I am scary looking :)

 First time I got to hold him, he was about 30 minutes old.

 Isn't he a perfect baby!

He nursed like a champ his very first time on, and he hasn't stopped since!

 All snuggled up.

 Stretching out.

 The peaceful sleep of a new baby.

 In every ultrasound and any time he has his hands free they are always at his face.

 Eating his hand.

 Crossed eyed.

Feed me more mom!

 Getting ready for his first bath at the hospital, he wasn't too happy to be naked.

 I  love that the hospital is trying to make it so that mom can be more involved in everything when the baby is born. I have never been able to be a part of the first bath, but here they did it in my room so that I could watch. I was also able to be there while he had his first shot, as well as his hearing screening  I am glad that I was able to be a part of all of his firsts.

He really didn't like his first bath and he made sure that we knew that.

 Grandma Wammack came up to be with us while Ben was born and to help take care of all of the kids. This was her first chance to meet the baby.

 The girls excited to meet their new brother.

 Annika got to be the first to hold him and she did not want to let him go.

 MacKayla was loving snuggling with her newest brother.

 I love how happy Arabella looks here, even with a mask on you can see the smile in her eyes.

 Jonathan was very excited to hold his brother for the first time.

 He wouldn't let me take him until he had given loves to his brother.

Grandma looks so happy to be here with Benjamin.

 Daddy helping out with a late night hungry baby. He wanted to eat every hour his second day and after a while mom was tapped out, so he cuddled with dad for a bit.

 Getting dressed to come home.

 Very angry at mom for getting him dressed.

 Mom was so mean that she even put shoes on him.

 He fell asleep on the car ride home. He looks so tiny.

Annika excited to hold him at home.

 Second night home.

 Love sweet little faces while sleeping.

 First bath with mom at home. Still didn't like it, but did better than at the hospital.

 One week old already. He is fitting into the family quite well and is such a sweet kid. He is sleeping fairly well at night, 2-3 hours at a time.

My favorite picture from today. Love ya lots Benjamin!

Johnny's quilt

A friend has said that I am exhibiting the early signs of "quilter's fever," I don't know if it has quite reached that stage yet, but I have enjoyed making two blankets now. I will say that they are an exercise in frustration however. I enjoy the finished product, but the process was frustrating, especially with the most recent one.

Johnny was jealous of Ben's blanket and really wanted one of his own. I had two friends give me some scrap fabric and out of it, I was able to find enough to make a crazy quilt for Johnny. 

 The fabric squares all cut and ready to put together. It is an eclectic collection, but still lots of fun and included a lot of his favorite things.

 MacKayla is my quilt helper and she really liked helping to place the squares out. We wanted to have only one block of each in every row and column. She was great at helping to do it and said it was like a giant Sudoku game (which she loves.)

 Johnny had to get into the picture, here the rows have been sewn together.

 Here is the front of the quilt done, the rows and columns are all put together.

 Johnny went to the fabric store with me to get the fabric for the back of the quilt. This sports one was the first one that we saw, he took it off the shelf and carried it through the rest of the store. We looked at several others, but he really wanted the ball fabric, and as that is his favorite thing in the world, that is what we went with.

 Here is the front of the quilt after it had been quilted. MacKayla helped pick out the stitch that we used to quilt it. I liked that it was a bit more substantial, but that caused major problems when we had an issue. Somehow, despite pinning, the back of the blanket bunched up while sewing and I had to take out the first three rows that I had done, at that point I really regretted not doing a simple stitch. Also don't look at the picture too close up, the stitches aren't even and not quite straight, but hey, it's for a two year old and he thinks that I am awesome.

 

The finished quilt. I was very intimidated to use the bias tape, but it went pretty well. My only real complaint here, was in quality control. The 2 bias tapes were the same size, style, and color, but were not folded evenly. The first one was done just right and was a nice tight fit, the second one was wider and you can tell at the point where the two meet. Oh well, right.

Johnny finally getting to hold his blankie. He watched rather patiently for the making of most of it, but he really wanted to touch it. Finally today as I was putting the finishing touches on he asked if it was Johnny's blankie, and when I said it was he was excited. He is now happily sleeping in his bed with his new blankie. I certainly hope he appreciates it.

First Sewing Project

For Christmas this past year I received a sewing machine, I am not a seamstress, but I thought it would be fun to learn to do some things. The other day I decided that the machine had mocked me enough and it was time to learn how to use it. I started with the manual, yes I am nerdy enough to always read a manual before I do anything.

The problem with the manual is that is expects that you have at least a rudimentary knowledge of sewing in order to understand what it is saying. Now my only real experiences with a sewing machine were in Young Women's when I was a teenager, and none of those experiences ended well. I think most of the time my leaders would have pity on me (or maybe their machines) and would do/finish the project for me. So as the manual is explaining what to do, I am mostly staring at it thinking, huhhh!

In the end I looked at the pictures in their and the diagrams on top of the machine and for the most part figured out the basics of threading the bobbin, putting the bobbin in and threading the tread. The next day I spent a bit of time trying out some stitches and seeing what the machine could do. Honestly, I was having a lot of trouble getting it to look right, but I kept going for a while. I used some fabric scraps from a friend and stitched a few pieces together. They looked terrible, but hey it was my first shot.

I tried rounding the edges as I was sewing, well that didn't look that great. But oh well right!  At least I tried.

Now having accomplished the first night of sewing and not destroying the machine or myself I decided it was time to do a real project. Yes, I know my first attempt sucked, but might as well try to make something real and see what happens, right!?!

I found on Pinterest a great tutorial on making a rag quilt several months ago and she said that it was a great beginners project, so I decided to test that out. Here is her site and here is a picture of the quilt that she made.

I love how it looks and that she simplifies her explanations enough that I didn't feel like I needed a sewing dictionary to understand it.

I guess I could have tried to mimic it more and make a girl quilt, but I decided to try to make a blanket for Benjamin. The other kids can be jealous, but as he will be the newest baby, he gets to have something that is just for him.

So off to Walmart the kids and I went and we picked out some wonderful fabrics that I just loved, so did Jonathan. He is jealous of the sports fabric especially.

 These are the four fabrics and the basic plan of setting them up.

 My very first pieces sewn. Not too bad, the lines are even somewhat straight.

The main pieces stitched.

 All the of the pieces pieced and layed out.

 The flat side after everything is sewn together. 

 The rag side after being sewn together.

 A close up of my awesome sewing, okay, okay, don't laugh too much. It is still a first attempt.

 The rag pieces cut.

 The flat side again after the rag pieces are cut.

A close up of the finished flat side.