Sleep deprivation

Lack of sleep is not my friend. Not just my lack of sleep either.

Stripped bed, drawers cleared of all contents

Noah has decided lately that he doesn't need naps. I whole-heartedly disagree. His behavior indicates that he needs them, yet he refuses and decides it's a better idea to destroy his room by stripping the bed, emptying the dresser, and getting into anything and everything he can. Several weeks ago, his antics resulted in knocking down the dresser and busting a hole in the humidifier tank. Good times.

A moment of rest. After destruction,
of course.

So, I attempt to have him nap, he continues to refuse. August most days thinks that half an hour's snooze in the car is sufficient for his own napping needs. This leaves him wonderfully refreshed to play the entire time Noah is avoiding naps in his room. With the two of them and their lack of sleep, they don't always have the best attitudes when the joke of nap time that I'm continuing to delude myself exists is over. I'm getting exhausted.

Turns out I need naps that I'm not getting too. Last night's insomnia doesn't help much either. Noah's internal alarm clock does not make exceptions for sleep I miss at night, no matter the reason, which for me, has been all to often recently. =/

Coffee, anyone?

Back to the daily grind...

I had hoped that a weekend away would help to reboot my toddler whose behavior seemed to be escalating to new heights of physical outbursts, but I was sorely mistaken. While he had a great time with his grandma and was relatively well behaved while there, returning home meant returning to his previous state. Oh well, the adventures in parenting...

At least we had a good trip. The traveling portion was filled with fewer cries and fussings than I anticipated, likely due to leaving at an ungodly hour so as to take advantage of sleep opportunities. We arrived at our destination only a few hours after the boys normally awaken in the morning and we only stopped twice to switch drivers and acquire sustenance.

We did the normal visits with the relatives and had a few extra activities like stopping at the natural food store which was also home to a small yarn shop. I have never seen such a huge collection of natural fiber yarn. I picked up some wool with plans of making some longies (pants that also act as a diaper cover) for wee man. I'm excited about the project. We also visited with a friend of hubs' and Noah had the opportunity to pet some goats and meet his first horse, so that was cool. With the exception of getting mauled by mosquitoes while we were there and August running a fever part of the time, it was a good trip.


So now it's back to the daily grind, keeping the kids from torturing each other and attempting to keep them free from horrible injury. Ah, life with toddlers...

Worst Blogger Ever...

I'm not sure if the problem is too many blogs, too much going on, or just plain laziness. Perhaps a bit of all three. It's seriously been almost two months since my last post and I can guarantee that this one will be neither riveting nor lengthy. You'd think that in that time period, I'd have all kinds of things to report and therefore I'd have at least a short novel, but no.

The summer so far has been low key. Not much change from our normal routine. So, what then, have I been doing? Well, here's the abbreviated version:

Female watermelon bud.

I've been keeping up with my container gardening. I've harvested about 8 or 10 cucumbers, 7 or 8 tomatoes, several beans (black-eyed peas, lima beans, and pintos), and some of my basil, oregano, and sage. I also have some peppers growing, I've sampled a few jalapenos and I'm just starting to see some bells show up. I have a watermelon plant that just got it's first female flower bud and a sweet potato plant that is doing who knows what under the dirt.

The boys have been doing their thing, making messes, getting into trouble. August has been working on teeth lately. I recently got him a teething necklace and no, that doesn't mean a necklace he chews on. It's an amber necklace that is supposed to help with pain due to natural acids that are in the amber beads. It's a super cool concept though I don't know that I can say I can tell a difference in his disposition as a result. At least it's one more thing I can do to try to avoid drugging him. Noah is still being Noah. Wild man. He is constantly surprising me with new phrases that come right out of my mouth. It's wildly amusing.

One of the gifts I made recently

I've been keeping crazy busy with diaper cakes. The orders are coming in regularly, along with some I've done as gifts. I also recently had a mama blogger review a pair of my shoes which was super exciting. I opted to do a giveaway too, so I'll have another pair of shoes to make up soon.

Aside from that I'm keeping up with my regular mommy meet-ups, mall trips, play dates, and meetings. Same ol', same ol'.

Hey look, I managed to type up quite a bit. I guess life isn't as hum-drum as it seems sometimes. =)

My little one is a year old today...

I can not believe it's been a year since my precious wee baby joined our family breathing on his own. 8 lbs 5oz of cuteness was born a year ago today at 6:31 PM. He was precious and started life as a champion nurser, knowing exactly what to do. He has turned into an adorable curious toddler who loves to explore and play with dirt. Of course he still loves his mama and checks back in for frequent nursing sessions, but he is incredibly independent.

This weekend we celebrated his birthday with a party. We had family and friends celebrating with us at a train themed party. It was a lot of work, but I think it was totally worth it. He won't remember, but he'll have plenty of pictures.

I had a lot of help to prep with my in-laws, some college friends, and my friend Laura. The food was the normal party fare - veggie tray, fruit tray, ham & cheese tray, deviled eggs, etc. I also made a cake, cupcakes, ice cream and cookies which was a bit overboard for dessert, but I wanted to make sure there was enough cake for everyone and I had ordered the train cookie cutters and wanted to make sure they got used. 

Decorations were a bit minimal, but hopefully, they were effective. I had railroad crossing signs in the front yard which my friends helped make and I drew a train track on the front walk in chalk. We had railroad signs sticky-tacked to the walls. The mantle was displayed with a banner of pictures of August throughout his first year as well as a slightly larger picture of him from a few days ago. I also set up a toy train and some play train engineer gear that we'd received as party favors. Thanks to the boy's great-grandma, we have several train blankets that were draped on the back of the living room couches and chair.

I didn't plan for much in the way of activities. I hoped that people would entertain themselves/each other. After sharing my musings about having a smaller house, a friend recommended using backyard space for small activities like chalk and bubbles and this sounded like a good idea. I picked up some no-spill bubble containers which were fantastic, and I offered a box of chalk. I also made a train out of large boxes. The engine had a door the kiddos could climb into and one of the cars with holes cut in the side was complemented with homemade hacky-sacs to create a bean bag toss game. For his birthday, August got a slide climbing toy from his grandparents so that was also set up in the yard. Noah's toddler slide was also set up. The final kicker was a toddler-sized mini bounce house that a neighbor generously leant us. It was amazing and I think the kids really had fun.

I made party favors as well, which I feel probably could have been better, but oh well. I included a train matching/memory game that I found online and printed up. I also printed my own sticker sheets with train stickers. For a little treat, I added chocolate train candies that I made up with some train candy molds I ordered. The favors were placed in paper bags decorated with train stickers. I would have liked to add more things to the bags or offer a cuter favor package, but there was only so much time. I also had more ideas for the party in general, but again, time was not on my side. Well, that and I didn't get started nearly soon enough.

We had a pretty good turn out, not too few, not too many. The house wasn't crazy crowded or empty and it appears I had just the right number of favors. I was so happy with how it all turned out. Now, I get to sit and be reminded that I no longer have a baby. =(

Time just keeps on going...

Walking around

Well, it apparently has been over a month since I last wrote anything up. I feel like things are status quo, but I suppose there has been quite a bit of change. The biggest thing is that August is walking now.


Let's see, what else...

Homemade tortillas

Homemade ravioli

I've been going a little crazy. My friend Laura tells me I'm becoming a sheep because I'm adopting more habits similar to the moms in our mom support group. In this case it's related to food and dietary habits. I've starting watching what we eat a lot closer. I'm trying to get away from processed foods. It's just that so many things can just be made by hand and though it takes time, often the fresher version is better. On my list of things I've opted to make instead of buy are ravioli (although to be fair, I think I've bought the canned kind once and never any other kind), tortellini, tortillas, tomato sauce, loft house sugar cookies, enchilada sauce, and sandwich bread. I've also made fruit snacks and fruit roll-ups for the boys, but I'd never purchased those for the kiddos; and I've been harvesting my own chicken stock, though that was something I rarely had in the house as well. I have many other things I want to try to make as well. For now, I'm trying to use up the items I have in my pantry before making their substitutes. It is a little hard though. Now that I've decided I want to be smarter about the way we eat, it's hard to eat those items, but that's ok. Otherwise, I'd feel like I wasted the money on them. My biggest thing is that for the packaged items we currently use, I want to find good substitutes for them rather than remove them from our diet. I feel that if I do that, I'm more likely to keep from purchasing them than if I try to remove them entirely. So far, it's been good.

My container garden

I've also started up a pretty decent garden this year. I've purchased a few seeds, gotten seedlings from friends, and used some beans I had and sprouted them. It's been about a month since I started. I tossed some of the peppers I tried to sprout which never came up, but I've had decent luck with most of the other plants. Good growth on a bunch of them, though no flowers yet. The only thing I've been able to harvest is some Swiss chard given to me by a mom in our mommy group. I really can't wait to see how everything does.

So, yeah. That's us lately. Add in an Easter egg hunt and crawfish boil last weekend and aside from that, it's been just about normal. Here's to more normalcy. =)

Busy, busy...

The holiday season hit me like a Mack truck. Before I realized it, I was going crazy trying to get things done. I had gifts to purchase, boutique orders to fill, travel plans to make, and things to look forward to and plan after the holidays. So, yeah, it was like I got caught up in a tornado with one kid in each arm and no clue how to hold on to anything else.

My sibs and I with my mom and her sister.

I did manage to get through my list of Christmas gifts. Of course, since this year we took our first ever family pictures, those became the gifts for many of our family members. I also had a few gifts that I made by hand like a scarf for a friend, slippers for a friend's kiddo, and earrings for my sister. We actually were able to go up to Dallas and have Christmas with my family which was awesome and my mom was crazy giddy about it since all my brothers and sisters were there and all my mom's grandkids. The weekend after Christmas, Taran's parents came to visit so we had a second Christmas celebration, complete with turkey dinner. I was giddy to have a real Christmas celebration at our home. Since the past couple of years we haven't been able to go anywhere, we didn't do a whole lot and it felt just like any other day to me. Not this year! It was fantastic!

Just before Christmas, I had a diaper cake I was working on. It was a huge challenge since I had to hand make many of the items on it. The gamer/geek/StarCraft theme doesn't lend itself easily to diaper cake making due to the sheer lack of available baby items of that theme so my only choice was to not fill the request for the theme, do a shabby job incorporating random stuff, or make it myself for a clean cohesive theme related cake. I picked the last option since I'm not all about putting forth half efforts on these. In the end it turned out great, but it was crazy time consuming at a very busy time of year. I managed though and I couldn't be more proud of the end result.

Nursery set for one of the mamas.
My first rag quilt. It came out awesome!
I was so proud of myself!

Just after Christmas some of the moms in my mommy group threw a baby shower for two moms that were expecting babies. I had to hurry to get gifts together for these mamas. Since both were cloth diapering mamas, I couldn't very well do a traditional diaper cake which is my stand-by gift, so I opted to make each mama a set of nursery items including a blanket, blocks, hat, and burp cloth. I put them together in cakes for them. They turned out adorable. The extra kicker was that I was able to use a lot of materials I already had (with a few new ones) so I cleared out some of my craft purchases which have been taking up space on our dining room table. Yay!

During that time period, I also had an order for two pairs of shoes, my first shipped order for my baby boutique! Super exciting! Shortly after the baby shower, I had an order for another diaper cake which I had to get to my friend in less than a week. Fortunately, this theme was much easier, but so incredibly cute and I was super excited to make this cake too!

Speaking of all that with my boutique, I reached over 100 fans on Facebook. I decided to hold a drawing for a discount on a next order as well as an auction. I put several items from my inventory in the auction and added a few more new things that I made up recently like burp cloths, crocheted hair clips, and a baby beanie. I wanted a good variety in the auction which turned out great. Several items sold which is also super exciting. Next time I run and auction, because I'm sure I will, I'm going to do some more publicity so that hopefully I get a few more bids and sales.

You'd think that after all that, things were slowing down for me, but no. Last week alone, we had appointments for August, Simon (the cat), and Noah. August is 9 mo old! I can't believe it. His appointment went well and we got a good report, so to speak. Simon had his appointment Thursday and he also is doing well. Noah went to the ENT for a recheck on his tubes on Friday. One tube is out, the other is in place; everything looks good.

In my spare time (really? That exists?), I've been working on shortening my stack of "to read" magazines. I've also been working on a few crochet projects like some plush veggies and other ideas for hair clips for the boutique.

As if I didn't have enough to do, I've taken on this need to clean obsessively. I think it's a mix of having family come into town and an urge to watch the show "Hoarders" that is putting me into clean-up overdrive. My house is cleaner than it's been in a long time. And even after the in-laws left, I've lost a bit of momentum, but I've still done some of that nitty gritty detail cleaning that we all like to put off like wiping down the cabinets and cleaning the appliances and baseboards.

Ok, well, this blog post is WAY too long. It actually was written over a couple of days and now I need to go bake cookies!