New Friends

Yesterday Clara and I visited my friend Ira who just gave birth to a daughter a few days after I gave birth to Clara. The idea was for me to bring lunch over, for us to sit down while both of our lovely little ladies napped to enjoy said lunch and after maybe have a nice conversation while our babies sat quietly... Yeah. That didn't happen. Instead, we took turns feeding our very boisterous daughters as quickly as possible to end the loud cries of discontent, then we ate our own sandwiches savagely, managing to drop only bits onto our children as we ate because, let's face it, putting the babies down was not an option.

The girls had a great time meeting each other though. They are going to be friends. They have no choice.



Here you can see they were jamming out to what I imagine to be the melodic sound of a friendship in the making.

Overall, the visit was a success. Ira and I were able to spend some time together, the babies were in the same condition when I left as when I arrived and best of all, we got to eat our yummy favorite, Paradise Bakery.

Juggling Clara to take this outing was a challenge, but totally worth it!

A Few of My Favorite Things

I have all the grace of a one legged duck.

My craft room shares a wall with Mazer's nursery and while I thought that was a great idea while pregnant, I'm realizing my lapse in judgement now. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the proceedings of textile crafting, the fabric must be prepped before use and when you have a newborn, the only available "free" time is nap time. I know I should be sleeping when the baby sleeps, but I have been itching to work on my new project. So today during nap time I decided to wash and iron all my new fabric in preparation for the new week; the splendid new week that is going to go perfectly as planned so I can get my sewing on! Daydreams aside, I, of course, tripped over my needy dog who has the incessant urge to roll onto her back just as I am walking by thereby leaving only the wall to catch my fall; the aforementioned wall that housed my sleeping baby on its other side. As you can imagine, Clara woke with a start and screamed for the better portion of an hour. I was determined to get my ironing finished today, so I multitasked as all good mommies learn to do.

But this post is titled "A Few of My Favorite Things" and not "How I Managed to Ruin a Perfectly Wonderful Afternoon". I am a "bright side" person. I am a "roll with the punches" type gal. So, in order to fulfill the tasks I had set out to complete, I combined a few of my favorite things into one productive, sunny day. I strapped Clara into her harness, which satisfied her need to be held and my need to have free hands. Then I spent her nap time (she eventually fell asleep because at that point she was overtired) ironing my new fabrics, drinking my Hansen's Cherry Vanilla Creme soda, and singing loudly to a shuffled playlist of Taylor Swift (consider yourself lucky I didn't captured audio!) As you can see from the picture, I am also wearing my favorite sweat pants, which are far too big for me but have a drawstring and were worn backwards all day. Thank you Grammy and James for visiting and not telling me.

Anyway, all this to say that I feel as though I am starting to get the hang of this "mommy" thing. Every day I am able to complete more of the items on my To Do list, and while I still have my share of blunders, I think I am turning out to be a pretty awesome mom.

Hobbies

One thing I've been told over and over again is to continue doing whatever you liked to do before baby, after baby. Perhaps this is to stave off boredom and perhaps it's a way to help mommy keep her sanity, either way, crafting is much cheaper than therapy. So, in order to please Confucius (or whoever it was who blessed me with this little tidbit of wisdom) I started making plans for new and magnificent sewing projects today.

The first rule of sewing is that you must have an enormous stash of amazing fabric at your disposal, always (Ok. The Sewing Bible may not actually list that as the most important rule of sewing, but it's the one I've convinced Brent is most important and it leads to him buying me fabric, so deal.) Anyway, I have a multitude of projects that I've had whizzing around in my brain for the past months; things I would like to make Clara, things I would like to make myself, things I would like to make even though I know they will probably end up in the bin for Savers... And all of these projects require new fabric, so that's what we did today. We went fabric shopping as a family!

Now, as you might imagine, Brent is none too fond of fabric shopping, so I had to shop at warp speed. I was amazed at the deals I found!



I discovered all these goodies at Wal-Mart in their $1.50 bin. There is just no beating their clearance rack for fabric, aside from maybe finding treasures at SAS, but that takes a lot of time and fighting lightrail traffic. I am thinking these would work great for a simple patchwork quilt. I have one that I LOVE from Urban Outfitters, but it's dry clean only... and I don't follow directions well. Let's just say I don't think it will be around much longer.



These beauties were remnants on clearance at JoAnn's. Now normally I don't come across many fabulous finds at JoAnn's, but today Fate was smiling down on me. It was as if the clouds parted and the angels sang leading me straight to beautiful sale fabrics. I have some special things in mind for these babies, but I'll post more about those when I actually get around to making them.

Clara was perfectly peachy on our outing. I strapped her in my little Beco harness and toted her around the stores. I got a few smiling faces directed toward my little girl and a few scathing glares directed at me, no doubt for taking her out in public so early, but we had a great time! I think she's going to be my partner in crime and hopefully she'll learn the art of the puppy dog eyes early on so we can go cause a ruckus with daddy's credit card!

Delusional

Clearly, I have been delusional.

Since Clara's birth, I have been operating under the assumption that after all the pep talks I gave her in utero, Clara has decided to sleep through the night every night for me. It started with our hospital stay. Clara slept nearly the entire time we resided in room 319. That is where my hopes started to build. For the first two weeks of life, Little Mazer slept soundly, waking only once per night completely ravenous. I would feed her cautiously (caution is the best approach for breast feeding moms) and lie her back in her crib where she would unquestioningly lull herself back into slumber with her cute little gurgles and whimpers. It was as I started to expect this behavior that change found us. Week three had begun!

This third week has been exhausting. No longer do I have the luxury of telling people, "oh yes, I am very tired. Clara only slept seven hours straight last night." No. Now I am on the opposite spectrum, that of the mothers with colicky children and whose alleys harbor stray cats who scream at each other in the moonlight. Now, I understand what it means to be sleep deprived, and it is not the same deprivation that comes from staying up late playing video games or having water balloon fights at midnight at summer camp. This is an entirely new sensation.

Clara has decided that she no longer wants to be put down, that her little tush is too valuable to be strewn among brightly colored blankets and sheets with little foxes on them. Instead she feels the necessity to lie on a bed of human flesh, something far more posh than the animated cotton stock lining the bed we've arranged for her. I've tried letting Clara cry herself to sleep, but it appears as though she has inherited her mother's stubbornness and would rather cry to make her point than give in and sleep soundly in her very expensive crib. My engineer husband, who does NOT have to get up with Clara, has made it clear that I am to stick to the schedule he so graciously designed, color coded, and printed for me from Microsoft Excel. The problem is, Mazer didn't get his memo, or if she did, she's choosing to ignore it.

So, this post is for those of you who have been sticking pins in your little Danny themed dolls. The gods have heard your cries and I am being initiated into mommyhood the correct way. You win.

Not What I Expected

I am a new mommy.

I think I read every book and website at my disposal in preparation for my little one, and what I've learned from all my research is reading those books was a waste of time. I don't think there is anything out there that could have properly prepared me for my dive into parenthood. I am barely two weeks in and my little lady has yet to show any chartable behavior patterns that Husband and I were so looking forward to. This is going to be quite an extravagant adventure and I can't wait to see where it takes me!