LA photo essay, part 2

After our extended stay in the Memphis airport, we finally made it into LA--ironically the only city in the entire country with cloud-cover. Our whole reason for coming to the west coast was to see my sister-outlaw who is pregnant with her first child (due in June), the first nephew/grandkid in either of our families. Considering her reaction to the pictures of herself from the baby shower ('Oh my GOD--I'm e-NOR-mous!') I've decided not to post any pictures of her in case she's self-conscious. However, in case anyone is interested in exactly how enormous 7-months-pregnant really is, I've provided a reference:

Just imagine darker hair and more dignity.

On Saturday we had the baby shower--the only one I've ever attended that was comprised almost entirely of single, child-less (and let's not forget drunk) people. Only one child was present. She spent the entire time eating carrots, fending of cooing adults and harassing the cat.

Wary friends

Gettin' her drink on

In accordance with true Cali-tradition, we spent some time at the mall:

How we know we're not mature enough to have kids yet (not purchased)

Egg-tastic

You can't go wrong when your shoes have pineapples on them

For our baby shower gift, I made a small quilt. I know--shocking, especially since I haven't sewn anything since the Great Skirt Disaster of 6th Grade in which I sewed each skirt panel in EVERY WRONG COMBINATION/ORIENTATION in which it could be sewn. Each new mistake involved me whining to my mom to help me rip out the seams and my expert seamstress mother laughing and laughing and laughing at me. Well, fifteen years later I was ready to try again, simply to see if it could be done. Frankly, I'm kind of embarrassed that I did something so girly as sew, so I compensated with an overly-complex design (fish, in case you can't tell) and cursed up a storm. Halfway through the project I finally gave in a bought a seam-ripper. (I had hoped that NOT buying one would trick the sewing fates into leaving me alone, but to no avail.) Whatever, now it's done. I just hope it doesn't give the kid seizures.


Of course, emboldened by my success with the small baby quilt I decided that, hey, quilting is a breeze--why not make a big one for our bed? I looked up bed sizes and determined that 90 inches x 90 inches was a goodly size. Just how big is that?

No, not quite. More like 7.5 ft x 7.5 ft--30 3-inch blocks x 30 3-inch blocks. It doesn't sound like much, but I divided some of the squares into triangles, resulting in approximately 1150 pieces. Oh. Dear. God.

For scale.

I have finally come to my goddamn senses. The next kid is getting a gift certificate to Baby Gap.