First Bath

A quick LO I did last night of Annabelle's first bath.  She is by no means a fan of bathing, but the first one wasn't as rough as we thought it would be.  The hardest part was pulling off the band-aid from her shots earlier in the day.  I love this photo we got of her all wrapped in her hooded towel, and it's the first picture we took where her eyes were wide open. I used some new Sass, some MME, a Basic Grey Hopscotch blossom, some Studio Calico white mist, and some of my beloved alphabet stickers.

I love how big the pacifier looks in her mouth!  Wow, how fast they grow...

They tried to make me go to rehab...

Serious. Alphabet. Addiction.  Today's score from my favorite scrappy store:

4 sassafras beauties, 3 perfect basic greys, and cosmo cricket's yummy yellow tiny type.

 

Wordless Wednesday

those cheeks!

those thighs!!

I *heart* 3 day weekends

Who doesn't, really.  But this weekend was particularly productive.  Friday night we went to Walmart.  Wild, I know, but then it was off the weekend's to-do list.  Saturday was a restful family togetherness day.  Sunday we hit up the malls with my niece and did lots o' shopping.  Today, it was just Annabelle and I at home. Today alone, I:

• cleaned my whole house, bathrooms included
• emptied the dishwasher
• scooped the litterbox
• sanitized botttles
• got a perfect check-up at the dentist (thanks for babysitting, Aunt Rosie!)
• played with my sweet, sweet baby girl
• baked banana bread
• made dinner (so what if it was mostly leftovers?)
• checked in with my parents and my smf
• burned a love song cd for my love
• created this

So satisfying. Hope the extra day in your weekend was fabulous too!

Saturday Scrapping

Inspired by this gray day.

Happy Love Day!

Wishing everyone a love as blissful as this... :)

Almost all product is the newest Sassafras line, Paper Crush.  Yum!

Weekend Love

I thought I loved weekends before, but now?  They are uninterrupted time with Shanni and Annabelle.  They are clean laundry, visits to Grandma and Grandpa, and strolls through the neighborhood.  They are sleeping, cuddling, and crafting. They are utterly priceless.  And this weekend gave me the chance to create a Valentine for my family. Thanks, weekend.

Figuring it out...

So I've officially been back to work for one whole week, this being the start of my second.  Tonight I was able to come home, spend some love time with our sweet girl, eat dinner, bathe the baby, listen to a bedtime story, put the baby to sleep, prep the overnight bottles, grade two assignments for school, and update this blog.  Now that is a damn productive evening if I do say so myself.

We've been working on building an evening routine.  Annabelle usually has a bottle between 6 and 7, depending on how her day went.  Today marks exactly a week that we've worked to take a bath after that bottle, read a story, quietly rock in a mama's arms, then lay down. Every night, she has spent an hour or more griping and whining, spitting out her pacifier and hollering until one of us would come and plug her back up.  Until tonight.  After our bath, Mama Shanni read us Children Make Terrible Pets.  Then I laid her in her bassinette all swaddled up and she hasn't made a peep.  That was at 7:40.  It's now 8:10.  Hooray!

Shannon is still off this week, and I believe that is making this back-to-work transition easier for me.  But it's still not easy;  I miss Annie and being home with her every single second of the work day.  And as soon as I get home, exhausted though I am, I just want to soak up every single moment with her.  I even get up to do the early morning 3am-ish feeding, not because Shannon won't do it, but because I want those extra minutes to hold her and hear her and look at her precious face. I'm figuring out how to live with less sleep, how to handle this incredibly difficult working mom stuff, how to adjust our household routines. How to love my family *this* much.