new emotions and a new quilt

Well, we're hanging in here in the land where no one sleeps. But just barely. If it weren't for the fact that Hubs is still off on sick leave from work, and that my mom is a saint, I don't know how I'd do it. The Little Dude seems to be over the worst of the croup (fingers crossed) but we still had a terrible night, and another difficult day. Boy, was that kid cranky today. I keep telling myself that he's tired, and probably has a crazy headache, and a very sore throat and is not able to articulate those things well. But really, it mostly came out as anger and frustration on his part. There were many, many melt downs today. Three in the space of the 15 minutes before nap time. But I've got to hand it to the kid; he 'uses his words'. Which is parenting lingo for expressing anger verbally instead of hitting or breaking things. There is not much violence on his part, he doesn't try to hit us or anything like that, but he will go from zero to sixty in the emotion department on a day like this. One moment he's quietly playing with a toy and in the next second there is a howl of inarticulate anguish that would imply that the world as he knew it was ending. Or he couldn't get his new tractor hitched to its cart. Probably much the same thing when you are three. But we've been working on his ability to name the emotions he's feeling (I've been reading a new parenting book; Raising Cain: Protecting the Emotional Life of Boys, which is influencing this dialog) and quite accurately he'll stamp his foot and wail "I'm feeling FRUSTRATED!" Whoo. I'll say. Or, not without its humour, at the top of his lungs he'll yell "I'M A LITTLE BIT ANGRY!!!!!" I hear that.  

But there have been some nice moments today. After a long night, with many wake ups, and a good solid hour of time from 1 - 2 a.m. spent trying to soothe/comfort/help him sleep, I was going to sleep in. Hubs had taken the boys to the kitchen for breakfast, and I was trying to fall back asleep. L.D. ran down the hallway and into my room, where I fully anticipated that he was going to climb up and jump on the bed and then be difficult about leaving me in peace. But instead he opened the door and quietly padded up to the side of the bed. I opened a bleary eye and peered groggily at him. And he leaned over and kissed me and said "I love you as much as anythings." Which, though grammatically vague, was still very, very sweet. 

Anyhow, I can't have another non-picture post, and I've got a new quilt going on that I want to show you. Even though I haven't really gotten to work on it in the past couple of days, I'm still pretty happy with it. 

Its another Star Wars quilt. This one is a commission, but I still have a lot of freedom to work with it. All that was required was that it involved Star Wars. No problem. Its all made from vintage bed sheets again. And this layout is not how it will look in the final version. There will actually be blue sashing between each block, as can be seen at the edge of the one on the bottom right. This was just to ascertain the arrangement of the patterend piece of each block. 

These are such fun sheets really. Its all fussy cut, which means that each block is carefully lined up and cut out to feature a motif. It takes longer than random batch cutting, but makes a much nicer effect I think. I didn't know it was called fussy cutting, until I was reading someone complain about how they hate fussy cutting on another blog, but that's how I do so much of my work, and I really do enjoy it. 

Anyhow, I hope to be done it next week, and I'll have pictures of it the for you, with all the blue sashing in between the motifs. I'm almost done, just getting the binding sewn on it, but I haven't had time to take more pictures. 

And now I'm off to sleep. Glorious sleep. Though for how long, who can say. I'm just hoping for a stretch longer than 3 hours. Here's hoping. 

Comments

[Hannah]

Nice!! Like the ewoks... just as impressive as LD's verbalizing of emotions!

[Marcia Van Drunen]

Oh, illness. And my kids tend to sleep when ill (exception: the first night of a cold), so I can ONLY IMAGINE the degree of tiredness all the way around on your end. And croup, again!? Does a child have a greater likelihood to get it again once they've had it? Bummer on that one. But sweet quilt! I love all the pictures, indeed, stories on it. May you soon all be well-rested. Ah, duty calls on my end. Hugs to you!