Teaching moments are hardly ever convenient.

Ambrose Carl Robertson has been begging for me to sew something with him since he was three. He's almost six, so I think I've neglected this request for too long... but it never seemed to be at the right time and what exactly do you teach a 3, 4, or 5 year-old child to sew, and and and... this run-on, stream of thought just goes to show that we had it comin'. We did it at last.

I had never made a pillowcase, but it seemed easy enough. It is. Well, it is if you don't still have foggy baby brain and have a chunky, hungry baby who wants to eat or be put down for a nap every time you start to make progress. I don't want to say Jonah keeps me from sewing these days, but caring for him and getting things done around the house certainly don't amount to hours of free time to create something.

So, with daddy home to pitch in on baby duty Ambrose and I finally plugged away nearly all Presidents Day. It took that long to explain each step, figure out how to do it and then teach it (we made it with a band so it's ever-so-slightly more complicated), and then let him do everything that he could possibly do himself.

We did it though! Not without incident (we sewed it the wrong way making it look like a tiny sleeping bag the first time)- but we did it!

At one point in the day, as I was picking out seams on the band and Ambrose had ditched me for a bit to watch the Smurfs I huffed to Thomas, "This is not what I had planned for my day!"

And, of course in hindsight, I laughed at my bad attitude. When you have three kids- you don't have "your day" anymore. You basically sign that away when you choose to get pregnant. "My day" at this stage is for them. These teaching moments are all around me and sometimes I ignore them because, frankly, it would have taken me less than an hour to make this pillowcase on my own. But look at that pleased little face up there-- we spent our day working on a whale pillowcase and he loves it. He'll use it until it falls apart and we can fix it together then too.

It will need to be fixed at an inconvenient time and we will make time to learn how to do it- together.