I’m still babysitting. I have decided that the best part of motherhood is knowing what is wrong when a child cries and being able to fix it. It really is satisfying when they wake in the night and you can easily stop the crying with a blanket or a stuffed rabbit or a pacifier. The hard part is if none of those things work.
The children will be home with Ezri today. The doctors at MGH in Boston said they would read her MRI scans and give an interpretation. They also said that if Barrow says she needs gamma knife radiation, then that is what they would recommend too, as the docs at BNI are the experts at treating hypothalamic hamartomas. As far as getting a better MRI, the new technology that is available at MGH has only been approved for ages 18 and over, so it will be some time before it is available to children as young as Ezri.
Now, for the quilting: Here’s a rectangle block quilt. I have drafted and re-drafted rectangle blocks. My goal was to create a block using only one strip width and for it to look like a rectangle, but actually be a square. That simply was not to be, so the quilt blocks have to be pieced in vertical rows instead of the usual horizontal rows. It also requires cutting a couple of blocks in half so that the blocks are staggered on each row. You know I just hate having to match corners if I can get around it, and staggering the blocks makes it a much prettier quilt I think. The instruction sheet is here. This would make a great baby quilt in just the right colors.
Great little quilt, Marjorie! I love the colour play…very pretty and you could really showcase some lovely quilting stitches if you used subtly patterned blenders or solids.n Thankyou for the pattern.
Janet, you’re right about the fabrics and ideas for quilting. I tried this pattern with multiple large print pastels and did not like the result nearly as much as the one with the toned down blenders. It really needs subtle patterns and contrast to show the piecing well. I ended up adding sashing to the one with busy, large prints and that worked well.
Marjorie, you are also right about the mothering skill of knowing what you baby’s cries mean. You learn what they mean through trial and error…stressful but it works. I remember when we had our first, my husband (traumatized by being left alone with the baby for the first time) making some comment that I just knew what to do when the baby cried. I told him forcefully that no baby I knew of came with the required operator’s manual; and if I could figure out what the baby needed, so could he! To this day, I usually can tell if a small baby is crying because s/he is hungry, or tired, or just lonely. It breaks my heart to see a young mom get the signals wrong…usually she is exhausted and trying to get the grocery shopping done, and you can see she desperately needs a cup of tea and a nap!