mood blanket

I started a new project on New Year's Day, a crochet "mood blanket", along with around 2000 (at the time, it's almost 3000 now!) other people around the world. The idea is to crochet (or knit, if that's your thing) one square a day, reflecting your mood that day, and join them as you go along - so that by next New Year, you have an pretty awesome blanket to love and to look back on your year with. A lot of people seem to be using this as a brilliant piece of therapy to cope with depression, I'm using mine also as a memory blanket. Yesterday Bean had some pretty rough mood swings and we had a lot of cuddles as a result. One of those cuddles he asked me what I was making, so I showed him the blanket and told him the stories behind each of the squares. We cried together over the sad days, and celebrated together the achievements represented for the happy days. He thought it was amazing. Bear just loves wrapping himself up in it! They were very happy to pose for me with it wrapped over them anyway!

I wanted to record some achievements for Bear today. I've been noticing his speech more and more. I thought it was pretty awesome when he came in yelling "Mama! Mama! Burbleburbleburbleburble! (That's his sound for a plane.) Hand! Look!" And he took my hand and took me to the window and showed me where he'd seen a plane in the night sky. Of course you have to be attuned to his sort of dialect but if you listen carefully you can figure out what he's saying. They're real actual words. Most of the time. And he's trying to say more and more words all the time. I loved that at the playpark the other day there was a little girl there called Isla and he tried and said her name first time! From having a very limited range of spoken language the month before he turned two, to in such a few short months having more and more confidence in his spoken language that he's stopping using the signs that he learnt all those months ago. It's brilliant watching him grow and learn!