Here's Baby's pilot cap knit up in the second half of the Eco Duo hank I used for the rainbow pullover. It used probably three yards shy of the whole hank. Perfect. Except that the hat very nearly fits the three year-old, who has an uncommonly large head, so this one is maybe for Baby's second fall and winter. In any case this yarn is insane. It is The Softest Thing. One day I will knit myself an entire sweater out of it.
We're now in what will probably be the baby's birth month, and I'm beginning to feel very quiet and inward. I had a bug to clean house today but not in a rabid way, just steadily and gently getting things done. I'm at 36 weeks today and the Braxton-Hicks contractions started a bit ago, which feel like a firm but polite reminder that we're spending our last weeks together as this version of our family.
It's unbearably bittersweet: holding my youngest girl for the last times as the littlest one, savoring the two girls as the remarkable dyad they have become, spending quiet nights with my husband. It's hardest right now and, for me anyway, a time of very real grief, because I don't know him yet. It may shock some people but I didn't quite love my babies until I'd had a day or so to actually hold and see them. I did then, of course, as much as it is humanly possible to love, but in the here and now I find myself warily awaiting the arrival a stranger that happens to live inside me.
It's a soft time, though. I'm knitting. Getting the house pulled together. Enjoying the girls, and finding extra reserves of patience and kindness for them. Making silly decisions with my husband, like exactly which boots the baby should have (these in 0-3 months and then these in 3-6 months). He's going to be a little Waldorfian fellow with soft leather boots and knit pilot caps and soft wool sweaters and an amber necklace, of course.
Everything drops down to a simmer now. We make and tidy and find a rhythm and wait.
When he comes we will be ready to keep him warm.