Patterns

So a lot of people have been asking me if I have patterns for the hats I've made, and I thought I would share what I know.
First of all, the premie hats- yes, I did steal a pattern for these hats because I wasn't sure exactly how small small should be on a premie sized head and I wanted to find someone else who had already tried it. This pattern here for premie hats is VERY simple, and if you are like me and don't know which letters stand for which stitches, just google them and you can figure it out. If you are visual like me, google the stitch under "google images" and you'll find lots of help. Or stop by my house and I'll show you myself. :-)
The other hats I'm sorry to say I don't have a specific pattern for, I sort of just made it up as I went, but followed the same pattern somewhat as the premie hats. For example, the premie hat has you start with six around the middle and for the next 6 rows, you increase 6 stitches each time, each time making your "double" stitch further apart (if you read and understand the pattern, this will make sense)- so by the end of the 6th row, you have 36 stitches and you just continue on with 36 around for 7 more rows (so you end up with 14 rows all together). I applied the same thing for larger hats, except I started with 8 and increased by 8 each time instead of 6. When I felt like the "crown" was big enough for whatever sized head I was doing it for, I would just stick with that number stitches the rest of the way until I thought it would be long enough too. And a word to the wise, the thicker your yarn, the larger your hat will be, even if you do the same pattern with the same sized hook (all of the hats I've done so far is with a size "H" hook and it's worked well to keep a tighter stitch even with thicker yarn).
I have a couple of other patterns I experimented with (aka made up) today that I'm trying in different sizes- for girls. I'll post pictures tomorrow, it's late now and too dark to get a decent shot of one. :-)
Craig is in Utah tonight picking up our car! He'll be back tomorrow in the early afternoon. I can't wait to take a spin in it. I'm kind of nervous to drive a bigger car- I didn't get my license until I got married and have only really driven one car that entire time (which is the Honda Accord we have now). A larger car to me just means I have to be super careful not to hit anything. It's like being pregnant, in a way- you aren't really aware of how big you actually are and keep bumping into things. Except with a car it's just more expensive.
Also- at my appointment with my doctor on Thursday, we went over sort of a lot of stuff. First of all, she told me randomly WAY too much about a sex ed presentation she did at a high school once to help "scare the pants on" the kids. Not only did she scare the pants on me, she scared my kids and future kids out of the public sex ed programs schools offer when they are old enough to be offered to. Her descriptions of the slides were gruesome enough (she's my doctor, somehow I assumed whatever she was saying would be relevant to me eventually, I don't even remember why she brought it up in the first place, but it turns out she apparently just had some time to waste that day...)- I didn't even have to see them to know that I would never want to ACTUALLY see them. Yuck.
When that was done, she moved on to things that were actually relevant to me. My cervix, as previously mentioned, is longer again, which she was excited about, but I'm starting to funnel a little bit. Funneling is when the cervix starts to peel open from the inside and makes sort of a V shape when fluid starts to enter into the open part. Except mine wasn't V shaped, it was U shaped, which apparently is odd. She decided that it was probably the clot pushing it's way in there and that's why it was more of a U instead of a V, because if it were fluid, it would be a V. So, as usual with my appointments, a little up and a little down. She decided that I didn't need to do weekly ultrasounds anymore- in fact, so far all the ultrasounds have done for us on a weekly basis is make us worried over nothing. "Oh dear! My cervix is short! But...I didn't go into labor...and look, it's lengthened out again, great!! Oh wait...no, no it's short again!! Aaaannnnd...I didn't go into labor...and it lengthened out again, fantastic!! Oh poo, it's shorter again!" and so on, and this all while I'm on bed rest, so obviously anything I'm doing is not making it worse or better. Instead, I will just have a check up with Dr. B every two weeks with no ultrasound. Basically the only time we need to worry is if I'm showing real labor symptoms (spotting, bleeding, broken water, lots of rhythmic, hard contractions, etc...), and knowing I have a short cervix, since I've been so up and down, shouldn't be a reason to worry. I'll still do the monthly growth measurements for the baby until it's born, but other than that, I think my ultrasound picture collection is going to dwindle for a while (I have probably close to 50 or so pictures already, maybe more, they give me a few each time I get an ultrasound).
I think I've been doing really good with this bed rest thing- I have my moments where I just want to say "really? I don't feel like this is necessary", especially when I miss out on things that I love to do and think too much about the things I want to do this summer and probably won't be able to (swimming, going to the zoo, driving my kids to Denver to see my parents, visiting the Children's Museum, just getting out and going places we've never gone to before). And to be honest I think the most frustrating thing is that everyone else thinks I need to be more careful all the time, and then I sort of feel like a jerk if I ever try to convince them that whatever I'm doing is okay- as though I'm convincing them that it's really okay to put my baby at risk, it's no big deal. Especially when I know that my being careful means inconveniencing someone else to do said activity for me. But I just think that the point is that when it's all over, I'll be glad I did it. And I find ways to occupy myself in a safe way- truth be told I've always favored quite, low key activities (like crocheting, ha ha) over bigger ones anyways. For so long anyways...
Okay, now I'm just stalling because it's late and Craig's gone so I've got the house to myself and I hate going to bed alone (did it for 19 years without him, don't know why it's a problem now but it is!!) Night!