Mid-December already

Hi everybody!  It's been awhile since I've posted anything on the blog, mostly because I haven't been taking many pictures lately.  But, it's well into the month of December already, and me and Jeff are kind of excited for TongJie's first Christmas with us.  TongJie has no clue what's going on with all the lights and trees and decorations that we see everywhere now.  It's hard to tell what he thinks of it all.

We're getting TongJie a doctor kit for Christmas so he can pretend to be a doctor.  He has to go to Children's Hospital a lot because of his cleft palate, and he's not very fond of the stethoscope or (especially!) the blood pressure cuff.  Actually he just doesn't like to be there in general.  We are hoping that having his own doctor's kit to pretend with will make it less scary when we go there for real.  To go along with the doctor's instruments, I made him a lab coat so he can look legit.  Actually, it's not quite done - I still need to sew on the lower pockets and buttons.  I used a toddler pajama pattern that I picked up at the craft store on one of their $1 pattern sales and lengthened it and added a couple extra pockets.  With the white fabric, it looks like a pretty convincing lab coat.

The more I sew, the more I want to venture out and try new things, so I really wanted to try making a jacket using the same pajama pattern, but altering it so it would have a real lining.  With the fabric store having a 60% off sale on their flannel, I couldn't resist buying some flannel with a cute city pattern (with cars - TongJie's favorite!) for the lining, and then I used some denim that I've had leftover from another project from a few years ago.  I love that you don't need much fabric for sewing clothing for somebody TongJie's size!  I finished up the jacket this morning and I'm pretty happy with it.  Of course, now I have new ideas and I'm already planning how I could do the next project.  TongJie seems to like his new jacket, even though it's kind of big still.  He was there when we got the fabric, and he watched me working on it, so when he sees the finished jacket he signs "mama," I guess to show that he knows that I'm the one who made it.  By the way, the buttons are different colors because I didn't want to buy buttons, so I just used the non-matching ones that we had on hand.  Someday I might replace them with four matching ones, but as a kids' coat I think it looks cute with the buttons that way.

Here are some photos of TongJie modeling his new jacket:

Speaking of sewing projects, I also finished up a baby quilt that I've been slowly working on since July!  It's for our dear friends Abbey and Ernie who are expecting a little boy soon.  I laid it out on the table to take some pictures, and TongJie immediately got all excited and brought some of his cars over to drive on the quilt.

I haven't made a quilt for TongJie yet, but I want to when he gets a little older and can help me pick out some aspects of it like the design, fabric, or color scheme.

What else have we been up to lately?  Well, we went back to Children's - again! - for a check-up for TongJie's ear tubes and everything looked pretty good, except for the excessive amounts of wax that the doctor had to clean out.  TongJie did NOT like that!  We got a prescription for some ear drops that are supposed to help, but I think the earwax is going to be an ongoing problem for him.  We've learned that it's fairly common for Asians to have lots of earwax.

Here are a couple of pictures from the past few weeks: