Big Steps!

Well, my little Abigail has officially started sleeping in a big girl toddler bed! It all started with her asking to get on our bed and get "under the covers" a lot recently. She really seemed to like pretending to sleep like a big girl! Then I saw a friend post a funny picture of where her son {who is a couple months younger than Abigail} wound up during a nap. It made me start to wonder if it was time to transition to a toddler bed, although I had previously thought I would keep her in her crib til she was like five so I wouldn't have to deal with anything that comes with not having your child contained in a baby jail!

(This was the best I could get before she got up!)

So Tuesday night we hung out upstairs while I took one side off of her crib. We don't have a guard rail or anything, but her crib is like, 6 inches off the ground so I think she would be OK if she fell out. Anyway, we started bedtime like usual, reading a couple books in the rocking chair, then I put her in her bed. She cried and reached out for me with her little sad face and said "yeeesss???" over and over, which is what she does when she is sad and wants to be held. I sat down next to the bed to try to read her another story with her IN the bed to make her feel better, but she climbed out into my lap. We read a couple more books, she calmed down and I put her back in bed and told her she needed to stay in her bed like a big girl. She cried a little more as I was walking out of her room, but she finished fussing after about 10 minutes. {I had the monitor on so I could hear if she got up and did anything} She woke up briefly one time around 4am, cried some, and went back to sleep. This wasn't too out of the ordinary, she would wake up and cry every once in a while before this. She sleeps terribly, like her daddy.

When I went to get her the next morning, she had a baby doll in her bed that I am pret-ty sure I didn't put in her bed the night before. I know she had her stuffed lamb, and her stuffed moose, but I think she must've gotten up and gotten her baby at some point!

The true challenge came at naptime, I ended up having to do a similar routine to our bedtime routine. Before, whenever she got sleepy enough, I would just take her upstairs and put her in the crib. Sometimes she would protest, but she would go to sleep really quickly because there really wasn't anything else to do in the crib! Now it is a little trickier, because she can get up and shake the door knob and yell "momma??" Breaks my heart! I thought maybe she would just play a bit, realize she was tired and couldn't get out of her room, and crawl in her bed and go to sleep. Negative! So after two rounds of her calling down to me, I read her some books in my lap next to her bed like we did the night before. I put her back in her bed and told her to stay there, and she cried again, but was done by the time I got downstairs. All this crying makes a mommy sad! But I know I will thank myself down the road when she's not trying to spend every night in OUR bed. {I really need my space when I'm sleeping, so it's hard enough already sharing my bed with my giant husband who has no awareness that I am even in the bed once he's sleeping!} I love co-sleeping with my babies, but at the same time I am counting down the days til I will night-wean my little Bubba and I can sleep on my own again!

So that's our experience so far, and it has been pretty manageable! Much easier than I thought it would be, actually! Anyone else transitioning now, or in the near future? Or have any fun stories from when you transitioned your kid?

P.S. I have made a tiny bit of progress on the website, updating a couple of the graphics, but I still have a long ways to go!

Just a quick Update

This past week in photos:

I picked out some pulls for our cabinets since the white paint attracts grubby finger prints! Here they are:

I downloaded a free trial of photoshop and have been playing around editing photos all week; here is one of my favorite transformations:

My generous parents are getting Photoshop Elements for my birthday so expect lots more fun pictures in the future, and fancy schmancy graphics here and on the website one day.

Patrick was working overnight all week before last and then spent 3 days in Georgia this past week so I've just been waking up to this handsome little man and about 10 minutes of raspberry blowing every morning. Just imagine that video in the previous post, only right next to your face in bed at about 5:30 am.  Good thing he us so cute or he'd be kicked outta my bed for sure!

Now I'm going to take a minute and brag about how my almost two year old (sniff sniff, tear..) shovels spoonfuls of broccoli into her mouth like it's chocolate cake. She loves "brock-y"! 

That's all for now! Stay tuned because I am going to be making a pair of curtains for my friend soon and will post about it here. Custom curtain orders will be available on the website in the coming months so keep an eye out for that!

Raspberries!

Here is an exciting video of Bubba making his new favorite noise and playing in his exersaucer.

Potty, Pins & Pictures

We had a huge event in our house yesterday. HUGE. Abigail told me "poop!" then grabbed my hand and led me to the bathroom! I plopped her on the potty on top of her kiddie seat cushion, then we waited. And waited. She was all kinds of excited, asking for sugars every 5 seconds, smiling so big I could see all of her teeth. She was SO proud. Except she never actually pooped. But she sure thought about it! I'm thinking this is a big, good step in the right direction toward potty training! With any luck, she will be potty trained to at least poop in the toilet by the time bubba starts eating solids (at which time I will be switching to disposables with him). Then Abigail can go back to cloth since she will hopefully just be using diapers for peeing. Fingers crossed!

In other news, I made this:

I had this frame in her room before; it was black, and had ribbons strung across the opening to clip her bows to. Except Abigail doesn't wear bows because I failed at girly-mommyhood when she was a baby and never got her used to having something on her head at all times. So she just takes them out and hands them to me whenever I try to put bows in her hair. Sigh. Anyway, I found a very small pin of baby feet in an old purse, and I know they were important and that I got them around the time she was born, I just can't remember where they came from...woops. Mom fail #2. Or 2 million. I wanted somewhere to keep it that it could be displayed and not get lost. Ah-ha! Pin board. I just spray painted it and used some leftover fabric from her curtains.

Bubba got a new toy on Thursday.

He loves it! He is past the stage where he is ok laying in his bouncy seat when I need to get things done, and he arches out of his bumbo, which seems a bit dangerous, so we have graduated to exersaucer. He thinks it is the bee's knees. I love it too, because Abigail plays with him in it. Well, mostly she plays with the toys and he watches her while he smiles and laughs. Sometimes he plays with the toys too. It's wonderful. I really have to keep an eye on the dog when he's in it though, he keeps trying to chew on poor Bubba's feet!

In other news, I have discovered photo editing. It's so cool to take my crappy pictures and make them look better! I am trying out a free trial of Lightroom and Photoshop Elements for 30 days to see which I would like to buy. Anyone feel free to weigh in on which one you use, and why you prefer it! I know there are a lot of people out there who are hobby photographers and real photographers, so if you're reading this, please help a sister out!

And because she's awesome, here's a picture of Abigail to round out the day:

Hello Blog-land!

Today is Mother's Day, and so I thought it would be a good day to kick off my newest entrepreneurial adventure! I am starting a website called woodlawnlane.com where I will sell not only the best cloth diapers I have ever come acorss (the AMP diapers from Canada) but also some housewares like fun money envelopes for people interested in starting their own cash-only system to get out of or avoid debt a la Dave Ramsey, made to order curtains and pillow cases, some other items for babies like iron on monthly onesie decals to document babies first year, other vinyl decals for around the house...all kinds of things! I am just starting out on this website and blog now, so please be patient with me as I try to get them both looking nice, while taking care of my two small babies! Keep checking back here for updates about both the website AND my babies! 


Happy Mother's Day!