Introducing Sprog!

Baby 11 weeks 6 days 002
Originally uploaded by ajkretchun

Well, they tell me this is what is growing inside of me, making me tired, and well....crabby. Pretty crazy if you ask me. This was when our Sprog was 11 weeks and 6 days old. Roughly the size of a small lime I am told. However because I am slow at posting we have reached Jumbo Shrimp size!! Perhaps we are done with the produce comparisons?

For those of you who are looking too hard- the top photo is just a closer look than the bottom one.- and is a profile shot.

Newport Rhode Island

We spent a wonderful long weekend exploring Newport Rhode Island. What a beautiful and relaxing town it turned out to be. Certainly what we needed. Before leaving I was wondering if perhaps we should stay home. K's car began burning oil three days before we where to leave. My car needed tires and we had to squeeze that into our pre-travel plans, and then we found out that our friends who where traveling with us would be delayed due to a death in the family. We looked past the run of bad luck and proceeded with our trip.



We arrived in Newport on Sunday afternoon. It was a bit cool and cloudy at times but still we had time to check out Thames Street before we stopped to get ready for dinner. I found Bella an adorable harness at a shop called Salty Dogs and we also bought ourselves a Newport-esque Christmas orniment for our tree. For dinner we went to the Brick Alley Pub which is also on Thames. They had a fairly large menu but I decided on having a bacon cheeseburger with fries and K had the lobster roll. We both enjoyed what we had picked and headed back to our condo before Soprannos started.



Our first full day in Newport was much busier. We walked through Newport, all of the way from our condo to the Chateau-sur-Mer. It turned out to be about a two mile walk but we really enjoyed being able to see parts of town rather than just zooming past it in the car. During this walk we peaked into the International Hall of Tennis. What a beautiful tennis court! We toured the Chateau-sur-Mer based on a recomendation by a friend. K and I both really enjoyed the tour. After our tour we walked back to our condo to wait for our friends to join us. I was pretty exausted at this point and was ready to sit and do some waiting. Once our friends showed up we had lunch at the Red Parrot along Thames street. They ordered a bucket of steamers and it seemed to be never ending! I didn't participate in eating them. There was something about them that didn't look appetizing to me that afternoon. After more shopping we had dinner at an Italian joint called Sardella's. Our friends eat regularly at a place near their home in Hoboken NJ, and the owners of that place know the owners of Sardella's and recomended that we try it. The food was very good, and we really enjoyed dinner there.

Our last full day in Newport was another busy one. After getting ready we headed back up to Bellevue Avenue to do some more site seeing. We took a walk along a portion of the Cliff Walk, and ended up at The Breakers. The Breakers is the Vanderbuilt family summer home which we decided to tour. It is the largest of all of the Newport mansions and was quite impressive. Surprisingly it only took two years for the structure to be built! We stopped for a casual lunch at a place called O'Brians Pub. They where one of the few places open for lunch on Tuesday. Our last notible stop on our trip was to the Black Pearl Restaurant. We had reservations to dine in the Commodore's room. Everything about it was wonderful. I can see why they get such good reviews!

Figs

Why is it that when describing the size of an embryo or fetus the books and web sites tend to relate everything to the size of fruit? I am not talking normal fruit. Kumquat stage has come and gone without me even coming across a kumquat in the produce isle. Today I find out we are in fig mode. Yes. My sprog is fig sized. Turned out we had figs in the cupboard left over from some Italian themed basket K brought home from some event. I don't know what to do with figs, so I photographed them so that you have the pleasure of imagining how big sprog is this week. Ballband dishcloth shown for scale...

Lets hope the baby is more attractive.

In other mother-related news I received quite a cute present from K's grandmother on mothers day... recognize that handsome fella? Now he doesn't look like a fig...

Ravelry

A recently found friend, Julia of Knitterly Things, invited me to check out a new website called Ravelry. It is a knit and crochet site which is an online community, stash organizing, needle/hook list making, blog linking, photo (flickr) sharing, project progress keeping mecca. They are still in beta testing mode but it seems like a really useful and fun way to keep track of your knitting or crochet and make new friends. I have begun to play with it a bit and really like how you can journal what you have knit in great detail and link to others who have made the same project. Thanks Julia!

Also, I am officially "out" now about our new addition to the family. For those of you who have not been told yet- I got knocked up. Thankfully by my husband. We are due in December and I am sure it will come up in future posts. Might as well officially mention it now! I even broke my knitting drought with another Petal Bib from OneSkein.

Oh yea...and I have a Flickr account now too. I have been considering using it for a while now but Ravelry's integration feature pushed me over the edge! Plus it allows me to post pictures here without filling up my blogger space usage. Link to my pictures over on the left.....

Meow?

I have had cats in my life as pets. They all loved sunning themselves in the windows. So much so that my parents white cat Noah is actually in the front window in the picture on the Allegheny county assessment page. However never in my life had I had a dog which enjoyed the same thing. Mo loves to sun himself. So much so that we have to remove him from the sun on especially hot days to keep him from over heating. On this particular day I didn't get to opening the front door quick enough for him and he managed to crawl onto window sill. I always thought they looked a little cat like- but I didn't expect the behaviour to follow!

Bathroom preview

Due to popular demand I decided I better get over my lack of ambition to photograph our finished bathroom. The project left us without a shower for an entire week, but let me tell you it was well worth it. I wish I had taken before pictures, but I was so disgusted with the old bathroom I didn't want it to remind me how neglected it had become. Now... these pictures are not the best. You will have to come for a scheduled tour to see the big picture and paint which is yet to be chosen.

The tile is my favorite part. They are 3x6 ceramic tiles sometimes called subway tiles laid in a brick pattern. I was inspired by a house I grew up in with a similar tile pattern. The room is small, and we tried to keep the budget down but the whirlpool tub was a splurge for us. After using it I am certain it was a good idea! We are also waiting on a custom order vanity top/sink. The all white one in the picture came with the vanity. We ordered one that is just cultured marble- however it is in a grey granite pattern. We are just waiting for it to come in. Also waiting on a replacement window for the room.

Hope you enjoyed the sneak peek!!