Blankets

When I was pregnant with Abbie I had high expectations of myself. I found a cute cross stitch blanket kit with lovely animals that sort of matched the theme of her room. So I set out to finish it before she came. GOOD THING SHE WAS LATE. But I finished it before she was here and it was a great baby blanket. It was huge when I was working on it, seemed like I would NEVER finish.
I made her another blanket, her sweet heart blanket. I had some material I bought probably 6 years before she was born. It has hearts & musical notes and the words to “you are my sunshine” After I had her I knew I had to use it to make another blanket. I decide to quilt around each of the hearts. Ok the hearts are an inch or so in size and I’m guessing there are a couple hundred on the blanket and it felt HUGE. Maybe it just felt like that, but there’s a lot. So I quilted and quilted and quilted. Finally I finished it. I have no idea how old she was. but I finished it and she LOVED her sweet heart blanket. It’s pretty big, not quite big enough for a comforter, but covers most of the top of her twin size blanket.

When she started at Kids First she chose the cross stitched blanket to take with her. I was worried that when they washed it every week they wouldn’t be as careful with it as I had been. I worked LONG AND HARD on that and remember feeling her move beneath it as I was desperately trying to finish it thinking she’d be there any second. Ok, so I was way wrong, but anyway. I was hesitant to let her take it, but it’s what she wanted so she took it.
Last night picking clothes for the next day she told me she needed to wear long pants to school because her legs got cold at nap time. When I asked her what happened to her blanket she told me she was too big for it. Too big for that blanket that took me probably 6 months to finish? What did she want instead I asked, thinking it meant a trip to the store for a blanket, but she said her sweet heart blanket was big enough. Looking at it I thought it couldn’t be bigger than the other blanket, just didn’t seem like it, especially when I held it up to her. Looked just like the animal blanket.

So we took it to school this morning and did the swap. The sweetheart blanket was the same size as the animal blanket… the last time I saw it next to her. She’s grown. It’s odd how things like blankets are what make me see how much bigger she is. I remember the first time I laid her on the animal blanket how tiny she seemed and now it’s not even big enough to cover her legs.

Well now I know how old she was when the animal blanket became too small, how old will she be before the sweet heart blanket is too small?

I’ll say one more thing about blankets. When she was born we had so many hand made blankets I thought we’d never use them all. Each one has been named and loved more than I ever thought possible. We treasure each and every one and I’ve decided it’s my new gift to mom’s, something handmade to love their baby with and to remember the hands that made that wonderful gift.