Friday, November 7, 2008

Goings-on

Okay, so I'm excited. Over the course of the next few days, I'm doing stuff. Not just, laundry, dishes, baby-stuff. Stuff OUTSIDE the house. With PEOPLE. On Saturday I begin working a part-time job at Tookie's Toys. This might seem kinda lame to some people, but first off, I love Tookie's. The owners are super, nice people who support the local community. I love toys! Who doesn't? It's like being able to be a kid again. I love kids - it's so funny to see all the things they do while in a toy store. I'm kind of (read: very) excited to have a few hours of 'me' time. I know, I know, it'll be consumed by insane customers and wild kids, but I'm still counting it as me time. Also - I'm excited for Andy to spend time with Elliott, without me. He's only spent 2 maybe 3 hours (once) alone with him. It should be interesting to see how it goes. Also, it'll be good for Andy to not be thinking about work for a few hours.

Saturday is The Handmade Market in downtown Raleigh. I won't be able to stay for very long, but I just want to go check it out. This is the first year that I've been able to make plans to go to things like this, and actually get to go without having to ask off from work. I can't wait.

Next Wednesday Ele and I made plans to go out together. I think we both have a tendency to get a little down when we're on a stint of being home-bodies (correct me if I'm wrong!). It'll be nice for both of us to get out, have a glass of wine and just socialize. Lately I feel like days are just flying by. I seem to be getting bored with the daily in-and-out of my life. My Etsy is a nice distraction from boredom, but I have a bad habit of letting my chores be the last thing I do in the day, instead of the first. Then I spend most of the day thinking, "Oh, I really should be hanging laundry...". It kind of keeps me in a state muted anxiety. It's something I have to work on. So, I better stop blogging and go hang that laundry!

Thursday, November 6, 2008

Milestones

Elliott did two (almost three) things today that surprised me and made me so excited!

First off, he fell asleep on his own at about midnight and slept until 2:45. This is a 45 minute improvement over the last time, when I found him upside down in his crib. Also - it didn't require much intervention from me.

Second, he rolled over from tummy to back on his own! We've been having a lot more tummy time lately and he's been rolling back and forth with a little help. Usually being on his tummy makes him so cranky and he ends up crying and drooling all over the place until I flip him on his back. This time he just sort of got it in his head that he was tired of tummy time, and rolled over on his own. I was so excited I was clapping and laughing and he was grinning ear to ear!

Third, today while on his play mat, I looked over and Elliott was laying on his side and throwing his hand on top forward and was pushing with the foot that was on top - trying to roll over on his tummy! Over the course of about half an hour he managed to spin his whole body around almost completely 360 degrees. Any day now he'll be rolling over on his own! How exciting!

Wednesday, November 5, 2008

New prez

Okay, so we elected Obama into office yesterday. I'll spare you a lot of what I'm thinking, and just say that I'm really happy with the outcome of the election.

Today Andy went to Sam's Club and bought a ton of food. Mostly meat and bread products. We're really going to have to eat a lot of buns, rolls and bread over the course of the next couple of weeks. I'm not really sure what he thinks when he goes there. I think he just walks through and thinks, "Mmm, that sounds good, I'll get that!", but he does it to everything in the store. Sometimes he comes back with really strange things too. One time it was a wipe board and assorted dry erase markers. Today it was hamburger meat in a long tube.

I made two new necklaces today and a new pair of earrings. I really love them. I feel like my shop looks great, and is really coming together nicely. Now all I need is a spot in a treasury that makes it to the front page and I'll be golden!

As promised, a pic of my bead store loot. Click on the picture and enlarge it to see what everything is.

Tuesday, November 4, 2008

Frenzy!

Okay, I have a TON to say. Let's see if I can keep it somewhat short and sweet.

First - we're trying to teach Elliott to sleep in his crib at night. The results so far range from okay to a complete fiasco. The first night was him screaming from 11pm-4am. The next night he slept from 10-12, but when he started to stir and I went in to get him he was completely upside-down from how I put him in his crib, crammed in the corner and on his side. This had me in a complete tizzy. I called mom and dad both and basically proceeded to deliver a sleep-deprived frantic rant. This also included each of my parents mentioning 1) a ghost 2) 'someone else' in the house, which lead to me breaking down into tears, then maniacal laughter. (Sorry dad!)

Last nights results weren't as traumatizing for me, but did involve me going into his room about 6 or 7 times between 10:30 and 12:30. Finally Elliott fell asleep and slept until 2:30, but again, when I went in to calm him he had scooted all the way to the top of his crib. He ended up coming back to bed with me both nights, but slept until 6am, which was great!

Yesterday was so much fun. Pretty much the most fun day I've had in a long time! First we went to Tookie's Toys (www.tookiestoys.com) and I looked over the POS system to make sure I remembered how to use it, which was pretty easy. We spent about 45 minutes visiting and looking around the store. After that we went to Ornamentea (www.ornamentea.com) and I filled my bead card and bought a little over $70 worth of beads and paid a little over $20 for them all. It was fantastic. Nevermind the fact that I had to spend $500 to get $50 free, it was still exciting! I'm going to take a picture of all the stuff I got and post it later!

I'm hoping to start making some things for Etsy, but it depends on how calm Elliott can be for how long. Also - I really need to do some chores and figure out dinner. The exciting life of being a grown-up!

Monday, November 3, 2008

Halloween!

Susannah invited me to come along with her to a Halloween party at a co-worker's house. The boys were invited too, but they were both party poopers and stayed behind. I guess it worked out okay, though because Elliott probably would have had a meltdown. There were quite a few people there. Also, a baby bjorn doesn't really go with a witch's costume. I realize I don't look very witchy in this picture, but I promise the bottom half of my costume really pulled everything together. Complete with a spider web skirt, purple and black striped tights and pointy black boots. When we got home the boys had been barbequing and were watching "The Ring". We only caught the end of it, but I'm still expecting that little girl around every corner of the house!

Sunday, November 2, 2008

Wow.

I'm officially sleep deprived. Last night was the first night of trying to get Elliott to sleep in his crib. He went down a few minutes after 11, and he was already asleep - which is not really the way I wanted it to happen, but alas. At 4 am I finally decided that we had all had enough and brought him to bed with me. This is of course after trying the "Ferber method" and checking on him in increasing intervals of time. So. Going into this I've had three bad nights sleep because he was sleeping with me, and now a fourth because he wasn't. We slept in til 11:30 today (before I remembered to set the clocks back) but the sleep was terrible after a traumatic 5 hours of listening to the wee one so upset.

On a more fun note, Susannah and I went to a Halloween party last night and we both dressed as witches. I had a costume that I wore a few years ago that I made from this awesome sparkly fabric with iridescent spider webs on it, so we split it, and I wore the skirt and she wore the vest. The vest actually didn't come anywhere near closing on me, and fit Susannah perfectly - we looked quite awesome. Once Susannah sends pictures I'll post one.