I am obsessed with knitting. OBSESSED. Which is a really strong feeling for someone who’s only knit two badly misshapen baby washcloths and knows almost nothing. But my plans are huge – HUGE I TELL YOU.  I’ve already ordered several balls of yarn, a bunch of needles and a pattern for a hat and scarf that is FAR too ambitious for my very minimal skill set. Luckily I have that set of moms in the Mother of Purl group who can hold my hand through the beginning stages and the vocabulary and remind me not to knit with the long tail AGAIN because I won’t get very far. I don’t think time is going to be a problem because knitting is a perfect evening activity. It’s just as mind numbing and calming and just as easy to do while watching crappy TV as Bejewled or Tetris or Twitterstalking but you actually have something to show for your time when you’re done. And hopefully the things I have to show are adorable little baby socks and accessories. If you have children, better start practicing your “It’s beautiful! I love it!” face because there is a really crooked baby hat not too far in your future. YOU’RE WELCOME.

There’s actually a fairly high chance I’ve just spent a bunch of money on a hobby I’m going to give up or get tired of in a couple months. Quitting my hobbies is sort of my hobby.

I’m not really prepared to be the mother of a 7 month old. How did my baby get this old?! I don’t know why I never really got past 6 months in my head, but for some reason it never occurred to me time would keep going. I think it’s because 6 months was supposed to be our big milestone, the end of the exclusive breastfeeding and the moment when I no longer had to be Baby Evan’s only source of food. SURPRISE. Motherhood lesson #1: babies don’t give a crap about what you want. Really though, I don’t mind that much. He’s old enough now that he has to be really really REALLY hungry before he starts screaming, so I’m able to get some baby free time while E gets daddy time. I even missed bedtime last night so I could attend the mom’s knitting group at Papoose and made my first baby washcloth. Or at least I WILL have made my first baby washcloth when someone shows me how to finish it. I don’t think it will work very well with a knitting needle stuck to one side.

As for milestones…we have achieved forward momentum. It’s not really crawling, since he still hasn’t figured out how to get his knees under him while in motion (although he can get up on all fours while stationary and rock back and forth as if he’s trying to will his body forward). No, Baby Evan gets around by sort of half dragging half kicking his way across the floor, in a way that could only be described as “desperate gun shot victim crawls for safety” or “injured animal attempts escape”. Although I doubt either of those would move at the incredible speed Baby Evan can reach. There’s this corner of the kitchen where he always pauses and looks back, as if daring me to remember closing the baby gate, right before he disappears towards the HALLWAY OF DOOM, which holds the dog food, a bathroom and the basement stairs. In the 7 month old mind, all those things should be explored with one’s mouth. Unfortunately, the gates can’t do anything about his amazing ability to find the ONE piece of paper or bottle cap or dog kibble or dust bunny on a floor covered in baby toys and immediately try to eat it. We should send the babies to Afghanistan and say “Whatever you do, DON’T put Bin Laden in your mouth.” BOOM! Problem solved.

Our new nighttime routine is going…well, not really WELL, but better than I expected. More nights than not we make it past midnight before a feeding and until 4 or 5 am before the only way to get any more sleep is bringing him to bed with me. I’m hoping we get down to one early morning feeding followed by a couple extra hours of sleep by 9 months, so I’ve started checking stuff off Dr. Sears’ causes of nighttime waking list. We bought a space heater to keep the nursery warm (it’s now the most comfortable room in the house). We dress the baby in a cotton onesie before putting on his cozy jammies so they won’t itch. We set up the humidifier to help with his congestion. We play the Baby Go To Sleep cd on repeat all night. Even the worst insomniac in the world would fall asleep in that room, and yet it’s not quite good enough for my darling babycakes. The GIANT GLARING PROBLEM with this plan is that all the eating Baby Evan was doing at night now happens during the day. And I think his top teeth are coming through. So lets just say our days are  mostly spent topless.

As fast as the last 7 months have gone, the next couple are going to just fly by. We’re going to Pennsylvania to be godparents to my best friend’s baby next weekend, the weekend after that we’re going to Virginia (shh!! it’s a surprise party for my grandmother!), then it’s Thanksgiving. We don’t know yet how our holidays are going to play out or where we’ll be but I am ridiculously excited for Baby Evan’s first Christmas. The excitement on his face when he realizes all that wrapping paper those presents are for him to eat to play with is going to be fantastic.

For your viewing pleasure, a baby escape. He made it from the carpet to that spot in the time it took me to turn on the camera. If you listen carefully you can hear his cackle of laughter as he disappears:

I got two awesome things in the mail on Wednesday both thanks to Twitter. For something I resisted so hard it sure has turned out to be awesome First, I got the swaddle set I somehow won for registering with bTrendie through a twitter friend’s tweet link (if you’re interested in joining, mention it in the comments and I’ll email you an invitation):

The hat is so sweet it's rotting my teeth. He's too old now to use the blanket as an actual swaddle but it's huge and soft and will make an excellent stroller cover.

Second, I got an absolutely gorgeous hand-made sweater. It was made by the friend of my lovely mommy blogger friend Mama Jade, who posted a picture of her adorable baby J wearing it on Twitter and offered it up for sale. It came in the mail today, and I am in L O V E.

How cute is that sweater!? It has a zipper up the back and it fits him perfectly.

Twitter FTW!

When I first found out I was pregnant I immediately went into list-making mode, creating Excel spreadsheets, Word documents, scribbles on the back of receipts, filling notebooks and day planners full of things to buy, things to do, things to attend. I searched Amazon for other people’s lists of baby gear must-haves. I read dozens of reviews and mommy blogs to find the BEST bouncy seat and the BEST swing and the BEST crib mattress and crossed stuff off my lists as I went.

But nowhere in the great interwebs or the parenting magazines or the advice books did anyone say this:

BUY A BETTER WASHING MACHINE.

Now, I realize some of you are going to curse me soundly for complaining about my old washer when you still have to haul all your clothes down to your building’s shared basement laundry – or worse, to the laundromat blocks away. Let me just say, I’ve been there too. But having My Very Own In-House Laundry was absolutely #1 on my list of Things To Do Before Getting Pregnant, followed by Have A Really Embarrassing Vegas Story and Drink A Beverage That Was Previously On Fire, so I feel like maybe I should have been more specific. Maybe my list should have said My Very Own Washing Machine That Actually, You Know, Launders, Spins and Doesn’t Leak Water All Over My Floor.

We bought the old washer four years ago when we suddenly found ourselves renting a house with hook-ups and the nearest laundromat twenty miles away. We paid $35 at a yard sale. I think we’ve definitely gotten our money’s worth out of that purchase, even including the $30 E spent replacing the water pump a couple months ago when we first considered buying a whole new machine. But there were so many other things to spend money on, cute things with teddy bears or little sailboats or smiling monkeys on them, why throw out something that was still working?

On Sunday, the machine stopped draining, and yet somehow still managed to leak a couple inches of water into the tray we had very wisely placed underneath. I decided it was time to send my $35 washer off to the Big Appliance Shop in the Sky. A quick trip to Bernie’s and one medium sized dent in our savings account later, the new machine was on it’s way. They delivered it Tuesday morning (and took the old one away, thank God). And now…WOW. Never in my life have I been this excited to do laundry. I washed every dirty article of clothing, bedding, towel and pillow in the house. And everything is so CLEAN. CLEAN AND NOT SMELLY! Not only is the machine (a GE Profile, for the record) super energy efficient (estimated yearly operating cost: $22), the dryer takes half as long as it used to now that the clothes go in with most of the water already spun out. And did I mention the CLEANING? Tuesday morning there was a really terrible stealth poopsplosion that resulted in yellow baby crap smeared across several articles of clothing and what I thought was a permanent stain on the changing pad cover. But my new washer was all “I GOT THIS” and the poop is GONE. It never occurred to me that the old washer was such a piece of crap it was actually failing to clean stuff and a new machine would improve my life this much. I feel like I’ve just discovered cheese or chocolate or yoga pants. Other magic features: a digital time remaining display, two presoak settings, and no agitator post in the middle – which means I can fit a whole comforter in the drum. Do you understand now why I’ve written an entire post about a washing machine?!

Now if only I could get E to agree to buy the matching dryer too…