Happy Birthday, Eli and Aryeh!

On Friday, some of my very favorite small people celebrated their third birthday. Elijah and Aryeh are the twin sons of our most beloved friends, Katie and Aaron. Because their birth story is so especially amazing and outrageous (Katie and Aaron were only anticipating the arrival of one baby when Katie went into labor, and didn't learn of their second son's existence until he was born, five minutes after his brother), I've been thinking about it a lot during the past week.

Mostly I've been thinking about it while working on the boys' birthday gifts. I decided to make them some bean bags for their birthday, and I started putting them together last weekend. I'm generally the kind of person who leaves everything until the last minute and then sits down and does it without getting up. But that approach doesn't really work out especially well when you add 3 young children to the mix. Because my time allotted for crafting is mostly restricted to Zeben's nap and then after all the kids are asleep at night, I've had to learn how to work on things gradually. This was a good project for that approach because there were several different steps.

First, the choosing of fabrics. Then the ironing and cutting.

Next, the cutting out of letters.

I then sewed the letters on to the fabrics, working a little bit every night. It wasn't until yesterday that I finally got a good chunk of time to devote to the project, and that's when it all came together. Usually when I make bean bags for kids, I make one bean bag for each letter in the kid's first name. Most little kids really love to spell out their names, so this makes the bean bags a little extra fun (and also opens up the possibility of playing letter games with them). But since "Elijah" has six letters, and "Aryeh" has only five, I knew that that would not be an acceptable solution this time (gifts for twins must always be of equal value). Luckily for me, incorporating the boys' middle names solved the problem. The final results:

I also made little sacks for storage (which doubled as gift wrap).

After the boys' gifts were done, I started working on a gift for their Mama. Katie has, on many occasions, hinted (not-so-subtly) that she'd like me to make her a Mei Tai. The fact that I hadn't made her one before now is pretty inexplicable. I've promised her one (actually, I've promised her TWO) several times, but for some reason I just never followed through (this is one of the reasons why I don't sell baby carriers). But when Katie brought it up a couple months ago (and even went so far as to pick out which fabrics from my stash that she wanted me to use), I realized that it wasn't too late and decided I would make her one in honor of her third anniversary of giving birth. And, since babywearing is not just for babies, maybe she'll even still get some good use out of it with her boys before she has a new baby to strap on.

This one is kind of a cross between my usual "Happy Baby Carriers," and the Kozy Carrier. I really like the way it turned out, all of the edges are very neat.

Zeb and Lena enjoyed testing it out.

Zeb's expression is a good reflection of how I feel after this burst of craftiness. It feels so good to be able to make things for people. And to know that even if the things I make aren't essential or the most favored, that still they are full of my love. And I hope that Eli and Aryeh and Katie will be able to feel that.

And now it seems, it is time to pack. There will be no more crafting until after the move. Hopefully this birthday bustle will tide me over until then.