Table Transformation

Let's see if I can get this post written up in the next 20 minutes before Abigail gets up from her nap. Bubba is already crying from the other room, but if you read anything I say on facebook you know that's a sore subject for me right now. The boy is just boycotting sleep. Anyway. I have a table. It's from Ikea, and it's great. Very simple. It's this one, the Stornas table:

 Buuut...it's dark brown. I am obsessed with painting anything and everything white these days, so a few weeks ago I decided on a whim to paint the bottom part of our table white. Just the legs, and those boards running under the table top. I used the same paint that I am using on our cabinets, which claims to be a paint & primer in one. Don't believe the hype. It's not true. I don't know how they can even put that on their label and not get sued for false advertising. But I digress. I put on two, maybe three coats, and after a couple weeks there were already chips and peeling places. I decided it needed some REAL primer to really hold the paint on there.

Earlier this week, I got down and dirty and sanded off all the paint. What a pain. {but I learned my lesson! I will always prime first!} I painted on some kilz from the can. I would have loved to just used the spray paint but I couldn't get the table outside, and even if I could, there was nowhere to actually do it. So I just used a craft sponge brush and painted it on.

Then I taped up everything, used some aluminum foil, and some sheets, and whipped out my awesome paint sprayer to make the paint nice and even all over and avoid brush strokes.

Here was my little setup:

Don't mind Abigail's weird face, I guess I caught her mid-chew. This is what my house looked like for a couple hours, but luckily I did get it all cleaned up before Patrick got home from work. 

I didn't have anything else I could think of to use, and didn't want to run to Lowes just for drop cloths and stuff, so I taped foil around the edge. I felt pretty resourceful. 

I really like the white. I have big plans to sand the top and re-stain it a cherry color. Patrick says we can't do that right now though because the other furniture in our dining/living area is espresso colored and it would look weird. I agree, so I guess I'll just have to do something about that, huh? ;-)

Here is a random photo of my new owl from Goodwill. He was $1.99, and had some dirty spots on him. I gave him a couple coats of white gloss spraypaint, and a coat of spray polycrylic and now there he is on our mantle. 

Just want to take a moment to announce that Abigail can draw circles! Kind of. If you look in this picture, she is actually drawing spirals instead of just the zig-zag scribbles she usually does. And the best part is that she does it when I ask her to draw circles. I'm glad she's learning. I know she is very observant, and smart, but I just get so worried because she was so slow to talk, and still am a little worried now that she doesn't ask questions. But I'm sure I am just being paranoid. 

From a Tired Mommy

This is a poem I found that was just what I needed to read right now:

This sentiment is something that I am really struggling with right now in my life. I feel like this time with my kids is slipping by so fast, and I am so tired that I find myself just "existing" and trying to stay alive long enough to make it to bed time. And bed time isn't even that much of a reprieve because I have not slept all night in two years. There was one month when Abigail was 10 months old where she slept all night, but then I got pregnant, and even though she was sleeping, I began having lots of insomnia and night waking very early in my pregnancy that lasted til the very end. And then obviously I have a baby who wakes up several times a night now. I. am. tired. I feel like even saying it with periods after each word is still an understatement. Like, understatement of the century.

Not only am I tired, but for 6 months I have been co-sleeping with T Patrick and if you have ever breastfed in the "side-lying" position, you know how your neck feels when you wake up after falling asleep that way. If you have never fallen asleep breastfeeding like that, just imagine sleeping on your side with your bottom arm all the way up under your head ALL NIGHT. So my neck and my trap muscles hurt always. And I am always having stingers in my neck. So much painful nerve things going on, and soreness, and it is just interfering with my ability to participate in life.

On one hand, I have a husband who gets frustrated with piles of laundry and things around our house. See our house tour to see just why he is always frustrated with me. On the other hand, I have a beautiful two year old who, when I open the door to let her occupy herself in the backyard while I get things done around the house, or just rest, comes to me and says "hand? hand? hand? hand? hand?" because she wants to walk around our back yard holding my hand. It breaks my heart that most of the time, resting or cleaning takes priority over playing with my little girl, who will only be two years old for 340 more days. And don't get me started on my sweet little boy. I could just bite his little cheeks all day long. He is the cutest thing ever. So squishy! And growing so fast. I love my babies. But I'm not enjoying them as much as I want to. 

If anyone reading this didn't already know, I live in Washington state. My parents are in Oklahoma and Patrick's parents are still in Louisiana, where we are both originally from. I don't have a lot of time to make friends up here, and the good ones I have made have all moved away in the last year. One of my closest friends from up here hasn't left yet, but lives about 45 minutes away from me. I don't know any of my neighbors, because I don't have the energy to try to meet them and maintain a friendship with them. So this means that I have NO help. I am with two small children day in, day out, without a break once in a while to take a nap, paint a cabinet door, or get a pedicure. Or just have a couple hours with no responsibility. No constantly being on guard for a toddler about to get into something she shouldn't be, or a puppy thinking about peeing on the floor, or a baby that may or may not be crying waking up from a nap. It can get exhausting to always be "on duty." And yes, I have my husband here, but he is tired too. He gets up for work at 4:50am and is out the door by 5:15 every week day, and often works weird overnight schedules and weekends. And he does help out and give me breaks every now and then, but it's not the same as having my mom live down the road and being able to come help me out when I'm having a rough day. I am completely on my own. 

I am not trying to complain really, just putting it out there. I know lots of people make it through life every day with two kids 19ish months apart. I just feel like it is SO HARD. I don't know how other people do it and make it look so easy. I'm writing this so when my kids are older, and I am sad that I didn't enjoy them as much as a should have when they were little babies, I can read this and remember how difficult it was and not be too hard on myself. 

Oh, and back to not having time or energy to appreciate my babies...we are currently trying to get Bubba to sleep through the night. I feel so guilty about letting him cry so much. I am of the opinion that sleeping through the night is a developmental milestone just like rolling, crawling, sitting, etc. And I don't think you can make a baby sleep all night if they're not ready any more than you can make a baby crawl before he is ready. Despite that belief, I am going to give "cry it out" the old college try, because I am just at a loss with the sleep deprivation and neck pain. 

To make a long story short, does anyone want to come spend a few hours at my house, a couple days a week, so I can take some breaks, do some chores and have the rest of my time to spend enjoying my beautiful, smart, sweet, adorable babies?? 

Let's Talk About Vacuums

This 1980's hideous awesomeness will soon be coming to live at my house! And I am actually SUPER excited about it!! My current vacuum just bit the dust a few days ago, and my parents were nice enough to foot the bill for the majority of this bad boy from their dealer in Tulsa. It will be shipped to my house for FREE and have a TEN year warranty! I cannot begin to tell you how excited I am to have a vacuum cleaner that is guaranteed for TEN YEARS! Can you tell how excited I am?????!!!!!

I can't believe I am so excited about a vacuum cleaner. I think that's how you know you are an old lady. Excited for a vacuum cleaner at age 25. But guess what. My mom has had her vacuum like this for 25 years. WHICH MEANS....I could still be using this vacuum cleaner when I have grand children. Sah-weet! Looking at my record so far with vacuums (two for about $200 in the last 4 years) this vacuum cleaner will have paid for itself in like 8 years, and anything after that is just awesome free vacuuming!!

Since I burned everyone's eyeballs with that hideous vacuum photo above, here is a picture of my little fruit thief at the grocery store:

I turn my head for 5 seconds to grab some peaches, and I must have had the cart too close to the produce, because when I turned back around she had taken a nectarine and already eaten two bites. At least my girl loves good food! It could definitely be worse!

Freebies! and a Miracle

Sorry for the tease in the title, but this post is not about freebies for any readers...I'm not famous enough for that yet! (However, if anyone reading this would like for me to review something, or use my blog to promote something feel free to contact me!)

What I'm talking about is all the free stuff I scored at Lowes yesterday! I went in just to price out having two more pieces of glass cut to match the piece I stole out of an old 11x14 frame and used in my new homemade frame. I asked the salesman about acrylic too, because I thought maybe it would be cheaper.  Well it turned out to be a LOT cheaper, because he had a bunch of scraps already there, and cut me two pieces for free! :-) Abigail was with me, and also got a free wooden toy to put together at home. It was their kid project for the day, and the lady who was taking the toys to set up walked past us and showed it to Abigail. It was a "Kung Fu Panda" on a stick that swiveled. Not the coolest toy ever, but Abigail was excited about the "PADA" so the lady gave us one to take home. Patrick put it together, and now this guy lives on our kitchen table, until it winds up on the ground and Stewie eats it.

And now for the miracle...

Abigail held her bubba all by herself on the couch yesterday for a few whole minutes AND SMILED while I took her picture!!! I am so excited! This NEVER happens!

Our photo shoot started like this:

Looking at the TV like usual, trying to figure out why the picture and sound goes away every time mommy gets out the camera.

Then she miraculously looked at me and did THIS:

And THIS:

(No, they are not the same picture...I promise. But I do have about 5 more that look just like these two. Just call me Patti Perkins. (That's my mom, and for those of you who don't know her, she is camera-crazy. For real. (How many parenthetical notations can I make inside eachother?? Should I stop?)))

Then when I thought we could call it done and had turned off my camera, she started giving Bubba the cutest sugars ever! So I pull my camera back up and by then I kind of missed the moment. I asked her to give him some more sugars, but all the pictures I got just look like she is torturing him. But here they are anyway for your viewing pleasure.

Disclaimer: No babies were harmed during the making of these photos.

Abigail is TWO!

My little baby turned 2 years old on June 27th! This post is a little late, but nowadays everything I do is a little late. Anywho. Her actual birthday was not all that exciting, since most of her friends have moved away, so no party. (Such is the life of an "Army Brat" right?) Her birthday was on a Wednesday, but we waited til Friday to celebrate since Patrick was off work. He surprised Abigail (and me!) by coming home from the store with a Dora cake! (Just so everyone knows, I had planned on getting her a small cake too, he just beat me to it!) That afternoon we went to Jumpin' Jacks which is an indoor play place with a bunch of bouncy houses. She had a lot of fun, and really held her own bouncing with the bigger kids. She had a blast on this HUGE slide thing, and climbed up the super tall ladder all by herself! Her favorite thing to do though was pretend to drive the car video game. 

Catch Up Again!

So I am a little behind on posting projects and such because we took a week to visit family back home in Louisiana and to get T Patrick baptized in the same church we got married in, and his sister was baptized in (St. Patrick's in New Orleans). I have read on blog land that you are not supposed to announce that you are leaving your house unattended for a week to the entire world via internet, so I didn't say anything here :-) I am still photography-shy from a childhood full of camera abuse by my mother, so sadly, I didn't bother people for too many pictures. But here are some that I did manage to take:

Here is four generations, Patrick, his grandmother holding little Patrick, and his mom, post baptism. 

Our family with Tpat's God parents, Patrick's little sister Jolie, and his cousin Mathew. 

Abigail and Patrick's cousin Stephen having fun in the pool! She LOVED the pool! She is totally fearless and walked right out to the edge of the diving board at the deep end several times (way to give momma a heart attack Abigial!). She jumped off the side of the pool into my arms for like 10 minutes, loved it when I lifted her up out the water and splashed her back down under it...she was like a fish! 

Overall we had a great trip and the kids did really well flying all day both times. It was nice to get to see family, and to be able to have our little boy baptized into the Church! 

In project news, I have started the tile around our bathtub and it looks awesome! I am so excited! Here is a sneak peak:

This picture was taken with my phone, so the quality's not great. Not that I make great photos with my fancy camera yet either! lol

That is just the back wall, obviously, and I have now done the same thing to the two side walls. All that is left to do is rent a wet saw on the next sunny day to cut down the pieces I need for the corners and edges, and then grout. Yay! This was actually a pretty quick and easy project. So far, anyway...we'll see how my attempt at using the wet saw goes. I made sure to take lots of step-by-step photos and will do a detailed post of how easy it is to do this very soon. 

Today, Patrick is off work and we are taking Abigail to an indoor bouncy house place for her birthday! I am so excited, she LOVES bouncy houses! She had her two year check up at the doctor yesterday, and is 26lbs and 34in tall. To put that in perspective, she weighs only 6lbs more than her 19 months younger brother. He is such a chunky monkey! We also discussed her lack of quality sleep with the doctor, and have an appointment this morning for an Xray of the soft tissue of her neck to see if anything is going on there, maybe causing sleep apnea or something. I am hoping for some answers so I can have my sweet little girl back, instead of this cranky super-tired toddler that drives me crazy!

That is about all the updates I have for now. Stay tuned for more progress on the tile, as well as a revelation I had about painting cabinets, AND some new bathroom storage. Exciting stuff, I know!!

Cloth Diapers

So a few days ago, we were having some family play time after Patrick got home from work. I was holding Abigail and she laughed really hard about something, the throw-your-head-back-from-laughing-so-hard kind of laugh. Well I turned to look at her, and to my horror, see that one of her beautiful little front teeth HAS A CORNER MISSING. WTF. I know it's a baby tooth, but she won't be able to get fake stuff put on for a couple years at least, I assume, unless it's normal to knock out your two year old to perform a little cosmetic dentistry. WHICH MEANS...every picture I have of my beautiful smiling baby girl for the next couple years will have a large chunk of tooth missing. That's assuming of course that she starts looking/smiling at my camera one day, otherwise, I guess it's not a big deal at all. Has anyone else ever had this happen? What do you do? Does insurance cover things like that, or is she stuck til she loses it?

In other Abigail news, I've decided I really don't like throwing $40ish smackaroos in the garbage every couple weeks, so I decided to try to get Abigail back in cloth diapers. I stopped using cloth on her soon after I found out I was pregnant with baby #2 because my morning sickness couldn't handle scraping poop into the toilet. Although I routinely puked during poopy diaper changes even with disposables. Anyway, now that I am sans morning sickness, and plan not to have it again for a while, I want to get her back in cloth. Why is that a big deal, you ask? Well, I've never really cloth diapered a solid-eating toddler before. Abigail had a slow start with solids, so her poop didn't smell bad til she was about 10 months old, when she really got the hang of eating. Coincidentally, that's about when I got pregnant and stopped using cloth on her. So I asked around on facebook in a mom group I'm part of, and someone mentioned "flushable liners." Duh. So I ordered an $8 roll of 100 flushable liners. These, to be exact. I feel much better about flushing $8/month down the toilet than throwing away $40-60! Plus I won't even have to use them every time, since she generally only poops once a day. What? You don't care how many times a day my daughter poops? Oh, sorry. Anyway, I've never used these before so I am quite curious to see how they turn out! I will be back with an update, and hopefully it will be good news!

Also, now seems like a good time to remind anyone reading that I sell cloth diapers! Check out my website at www.woodlawnlane.com to see what's available for special order. I will be making a post on here soon dedicated to what inventory I actually have in stock for anyone interested in that also. Things are moving along, slowly but surely, as I figure out just how I want to set up my business this time around. Thanks for your patience!

Desk Before & After

It's finally finished! Between the crappy weather here in Washington that makes it impossible to spraypaint outside, to the time I spend running after my two kids and dog, to timing my painting just right so Abigail won't be going in her room for a while {that's where I've been painting this thing, since it has the most space/fewest things to cover up, and don't worry I have all the windows open and the vent on} anyway, all that to say it's been tough to get this thing finished up! But it finally is finished! As a reminder, here is the before, which I had already stained black:

I primed it with Kilz:

 {by the way, that's an awesome price at wayfair, this stuff is about $10 or $12 bucks at wally world!}
Then I let it sit for a couple days to "cure" since apparently you're supposed to do that for increased durability {a.k.a. your paint won't chip off as easily}. Then I coated it in a bunch of thin coats of Krylon Ocean Breeze spray paint. I waited about a day in between for it to "cure" as well, since this is going to be in a kid's room and will probably get beat up on quite a bit. After lots of patience, here is the final product!

I LOVE it. I am obsessed with this color. If you didn't notice, it's the same color I used to paint the frame for Abigail's pin board. I would probably spray paint her walls this color if we weren't moving. Well, and that would probably be crazy expensive. Anyway, I'm really loving how it turned out and and definitely on a furniture painting kick. Also, don't mind the boring white duvet. Her duvet cover is on backorder til August. Sad mommy :-(

Hopefully soon my next project to share will be my friend Lindsey's curtains!

Catching Up

Last weekend I was lucky enough to talk Patrick into going to the peninsula for a quick hike. We went to Lake Cushman and walked around an "easy" trail that still kicked my butt since I was carrying 18lbs of Bubba in a ring sling. {I dug through the attic to find my mei tai, but it wasn't in any of the boxes I looked in, so ring sling it was...Patrick needed the Ergobaby for Abigail.} Anyway, I survived, but my back may never be the same! We walked about a mile to a rock river bed where Patrick stopped to let Abigail play for a while. The rock bed was at the bottom of a 5ish foot mud cliff...like, almost vertical mud straight down. Not the kind of thing I wanted to slide down with Bubba and not be able to get back up. Ring slings aren't exactly made for scaling muddy cliffs. {If you're completely lost and wondering what a ring sling is, here is Abigail in the same sling-in-question as a teeny baby: https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=785081443502&set=a.785081288812.2367144.17112016&type=3&theater} Here is a great one from Maya Wrap, but you can find them cheaper on Etsy:

Anyway, Patrick walked out about half a football field away from me, and started unbuckling the Ergobaby. Well, he unbuckled the waistband FIRST (???) and when he moved his arms to unbuckle the straps Abigail fell straight down onto the river rocks. Poor baby wasn't happy. I screamed like a crazy person when I saw her fall, and then I was so sad when she was crying and I couldn't go make her feel better! I eventually did make my way down there though, and snapped some pictures of Abigail spending some quality time with her dad. Here he is teaching her how to throw rocks with proper form:

 And here she is giving him some smooches:

{OK, so she missed during this particular shot, but she usually gets him right on the lips!}

And here is a picture I really like, even though I didn't really get Abigail in focus, and she's not looking at the camera...

On our walk back from the river bed, we encountered this little guy:

Yep that's right, folks. That there is a slug that someone used as an ashtray. Please forgive the lack of focus on the actual slug, I was in a hurry and forgot I had switched to manual focus while taking pictures of Abigail. Anyway, this poor little slug was just making his way across the path and I have to say it was one of the strangest things I've happened upon in my life. I yelled for Patrick to come back {he is the world's fastest walker, so naturally he was several yards ahead of me} and he actually plucked the cigarette butt out of it's head. It must have been there a while, because there was lots of slug goo that came out stuck to the tip, like it had been healing around the cigarette. It really makes me lose faith in humanity in general to find things like this. Why would you put your cigarette out on a poor little slug? Sigh. 

On a lighter note...

Another bright idea I had recently was to make some homemade playdoh. I got a wild hair up my you-know-what a couple weeks ago and decided to make playdoh with Abigail. I made a special trip to the store to get flour, since we don't keep it in the house {we try to keep a "paleo" pantry so I am not tempted to do things like make a random cake or batch of cookies and eat it all the same day...not that I do that...}. I ended up picking a recipe that needed to be made in a a pot on the stove, so I made it while she was napping and planned for her to help me knead in the food coloring to color the dough. She was a little less than impressed. I should have known, this girl got a tiny tub of playdoh when she was trick or treating and I was so excited to play with it with her when we got home, but she cared more about the container than playing with the squishy good stuff. I guess we are still a ways off from enjoying "bigger" little kid activities like this. I think I've decided I would be OK with just skipping this second year. Nothing good happens during year 2, they throw tantrums, they can't play "for real" yet, you have to potty train...what a bummer! Come on, THREE! Oh wait, she's not even two yet...sigh. I hope this year goes fast. Anywho, here is the best picture I could get while she was pushing a cookie cutter into the dough:

{notice that she is still not looking at me?}

 One "bigger" little kid thing she does like to do is play with puzzles. My mom sent this alphabet puzzle recently and she tried to play with it, but once she took out ALL the letters, she got a little frustrated!

And now, my first DIY project to post on here! We got this pine computer desk from one of my favorite local furniture stores, The Woodshed. They sell unfinished wood furniture. It's super solid and a great little desk. I stained it black, because at the time we were loving espresso colored furniture. {My tastes have since changed, and I am slowly but surely trying to get our furniture to be lighter, and airier (??) feeling} I decided I wanted to paint this desk a fun color and put it in Abigail's room as a nightstand and also for future schoolwork, since we plan to homeschool. Below is a photo of the desk after I sanded it to get it ready to be primed:

So there you have it! That is all that we've been up to lately. I will post a reveal tomorrow to show the finished product of the desk, so stay tuned!

A Couple Things

Cute things first...I have been meaning to write about this for a couple days now, but Abigail has started tickling Bubba while he is standing in his exersaucer, and saying "tickle tickle tickle!" It is SO darn CUTE! She sounds more like "teegull" and I just love that she likes to play with him. She is also obsessed with giving him things. She will hand him anything and everything, and say "here go, baby." When he doesn't grab whatever she is trying to give him, she will grab his hand and try to force him to hold whatever toy/thing she has. It's great. {Side note, she says "baby" after just about everything. I call her baby a lot of the time, so whenever she falls, or knocks something over she says "s'OK baby" ("it's OK in abby-speak) or "sorry baby"} She is also really enjoying pretending to sleep everywhere. She grabs her blanket, lays down, and says "night night momma" then squeezes her eyes shut.

"night night mom. Blanket???"

 She is really getting to be a fun age, aside from the terrible twos attitude that creeps out sometimes...I can't wait til she is a bit older and can really start doing fun activities like painting, coloring, playing with playdoh, playing with barbies...I seriously can't wait to PLAY again!


In Bubba news, he is seriously trying HARD to crawl. He is really strong and can lift up his chest easily during tummy time, and today he even lifted up his belly off the floor. Like I totally saw daylight under his tummy. My big strong boy is definitely following in his daddy's footsteps. He is also wearing 12m size clothes. At four months. Crazy. Speaking of four months, he had his check-up on the 5th, and weighed in at a whopping 18lb 5oz! He will be 20lbs before we know it! He was also 26.5in long, and his head was 43.5cm around. Both of those put him in the 85th percentile, but he is off the charts for his weight! Basically the 99th percentile, since I'm sure he isn't the heaviest 4 month old in the world. He is one big dude! Daddy is proud. {And mommy, too.}


I am also really excited to say that two days ago I got my first Etsy order for the monthly onesie iron on designs!! I am so excited! OK, it's not THAT big of a deal. But it kind of is. Anyone else want month by month onesie iron ons for their babies?! Visit my shop at http://www.etsy.com/shop/WoodlawnLane.

More Big Changes!

Well this has just been a big week for my BIG little Abigail. After a couple nights of failed story time, I decided to get her a real TWIN bed! When I tried to put her in her bed, tuck her in and read her a story while kneeling next to her toddler bed, she would always want to climb out to sit on my lap for story time.  Then one afternoon, we were in her room cleaning when Patrick got home from work and he came upstairs to find us. He thought he would lay on her bed with her and hang out for a bit. Well, the board under the mattress on her toddler bed bowed down so badly, it practically touched the floor. Clearly it was not made to be supporting huge men! That was when I decided we needed a twin bed. 

So we got this one: 

It definitely does not look white in the photo, but I called the manufacturer and they assured me that it was indeed true white. So I ordered it, and it came OVERNIGHT because wayfair.com is awesome. It took no time to put together, and looks so cute! I will post real pictures later when I get her bedding situation figured out. So far, Abigail loves being able to cuddle in bed at bedtime/naptime! 

Our next big change: forward facing in the car!! She is a couple weeks shy of her 2nd birthday, and starting to get annoyed a lot more in the car. So I decided it was time. Patrick and I are looking for a new, smaller car {more about that soon!} and were planning on driving about 45min up north to look at some, and I thought it would be the perfect time to try her out forward facing. I brought her out to the car, set her down in the seat, and she sat there looking around, then whispered, "woooooow!" It was so cute! She was VERY excited to be able to see a whole new view from the car! Plus, we can finally see eachother in the rear view mirror. {I never could get her little mirror to line up with my mirror in order to be able to see her face when she faced backwards}. So far she is having a great time facing the world, but she hasn't figured out yet that she needs to hold onto her blankets better because she can't reach them when they fall she throws them on the floor! Cause and effect, baby. Maybe one day she will learn. 

In Bubba news, he had his four month check up yesterday afternoon. My huge little man was 18lb 5oz, which is around the 99th %ile. My son is bigger than 99% of four month old babies! Crazy! {Abigail was consistently 50% for weight} He has remained steady on his 99% curve since birth, and is exclusively breastfed so the doctor isn't worried. She said he will just be a HUGE man! Which we knew already. Anywho, he was 26in long, which puts him around the 85th percentile. And his head circumference is also in the 85th percentile, but I don't remember how big it was. Possibly 43.5cm. Basically our Bubba is one big dude. And will probably continue to be that way. 

She gave me the go ahead to work on night weaning, and start introducing solids to help him make up the calories if he doesn't nurse more during the day. {He wakes up to eat A LOT in the very early morning after I bring him in our bed for his first night-time snack around 1 or 2}. My new goal for now is to start putting him back in his own bed after he eats, so as not to be tempting him by having him sleep next to the all-night open bar! We will see. I don't plan to do anything serious until we get home from our trip to Louisiana because it would be silly to make progress then shake it up by going out of town. I am looking forward to getting more sleep in the very near future though! But I am sad for all of the crying to come, as well as the fact that my little baby is already growing up on me! Slow down babies!!

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!

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: