sewing for 'lil

So 'Lil has decided that dresses are the only thing she's willing to wear.

Which is weird to me.  First of all, because I HATED dresses as a kid.  Second of all, because Girly-Lou couldn't care less about what she wears, so it's very different to have a girl that's picky. 

And of course, I don't have 8+ dresses I'm willing to let her wear every day either.

Because of all this, I'm in the process of buying/thrifting/sewing a whole wardrobe for her.  Pintrest, of course helps with the ideas.

A couple of days ago I found a pin to THIS page, and she was asking for pattern testers for a cute dress. I've always thought it would be fun to be a pattern tester, so I filled out the form.  The next morning I woke up to FOUR emails from the blogger with all the info and asking to have the dress ready 48 hours later.  (cue panic attack!)

It was a VERY crazy day, but in 24 hours, I did this:

she was mad I was taking pictures, but she really loves the dress

Isn't it adorable! 

Now, the pattern wasn't perfect (yet!), but it's a great basic dress that I could do a dozen different variations with.  I'm super excited to play around with it some more!

find the joy

Yesterday I was talking with my sister, and (along with a million other subjects), one thing we talked about was the importance of doing what is best.  I've heard it said before that you can tell what is most important to our Heavenly Father by looking at what the world and the devil attack the most.  


Today I read THIS post on another blog.
I love things like this. I love it when parents learn something about themselves, something they didn't realize they were doing, or needed to do, or wanted to to. 


I needed to comment on this, and thought I'd copy it here (with a little expanding too)


Wonderfully written.
Along with this idea . . . I grew up KNOWING that my parents enjoyed me more and more each year. I constantly heard them saying things like “I hate it when people call it ‘terrible twos’. It’s TERRIFIC TWOS”, or “having 4 teenage girls is a joy, not a burden. I love having such great conversations with my daughters now.”

Think of the difference of that and what you usually hear. I knew my parents wanted to be around me. I knew they expected me to act appropriately so everyone ELSE would also want to be around me. We didn’t have moody teenagers because we were expected to be pleasant. (and had consequences too!)

I don’t expect my kids to be perfect, but I do expect them to grow and change. And yes, my three year old screams with the best of them (constantly too!). But I look and that sparkle in her eyes, and celebrate the little things – like the fact that she is finally understanding us (she has a severe communication delay)

Or the inventiveness of my 8 year old. Yes, today she started acting like a moody teenager. But look at just how much she’s grown.

Or listening to my 7 year old giggle as he plays with his 1 year old brother.

Every day, all 4 of my kids are a joy. Sometimes you have to dig under the unpleasantness to see it, but it IS there!  And what an exciting thing it is to be able to discover that joy in each of them as they grow too.

365 days ago

I met this guy:

365 days ago I was sleep deprived from painful contractions all night long. I've never gone into labor on my own, and didn't really feel like I should go to the hospital.  After all, the c-section was scheduled for 11 am the next day.  But man, oh MAN were those painful.  Every bit as painful as the two times I was induced with pitocin.

And I seriously regret not asking someone to check how much I was dilated. It wouldn't have changed a thing about the surgery, just sheer curiosity on my part.

366 days ago freaked my hubby out so much I was left comforting him for several hours before we collapsed into bed. No mother should ever be scared by a heartbeat like that.

366 days ago I had never felt so loved and welcomed by my ward and neighbors. What a joy it was to feel so nurtured by my friends.

365 days ago a  very purple boy was placed into my arms right as I type this.  He was perfect in every way . . . except that color.  He quickly turned pink (and then orange), but I remember stroking those purple fingers as they wheeled us into recovery.

365 days ago I finished my last pregnancy.

365 days go Jellybean came into this world and we finally truely picked his name. (I still look at him and think he looks more like a Will, but that boat has LONG since sailed.)

365 days ago we started babyhood for the last time.

 365 days ago changed our family forever in the bestest of ways.

I can't wait to see what the next 365 days bring.

Happy birthday, Jellybean.  You are loved.

3 months

I just went 3 months without blogging.

Not a word. Not a picture. (but LOTS of projects!)

This is happening too often to me. And the process goes the same way every time.  Here's what it looks like.

I blog regularly.  I enjoy it. I start thinking of more posts.  Then I start looking at other people's writing. Other people's projects. Other people's lives. 

Then I do one of two things.  I start thinking my life and blog aren't enough.  That I'm not enough. That my words are silly and pointless and meaningless.  So I gradually stop writing at all.

Or I decide that my stuff is good, but needs to be AMAZING so maybe I can get really cool and maybe even get to the point I make money off of this, thus justifying the time I spend here.  This road leads to even worse results than the first. I start doing JUST TOO MUCH. I  try to turn this little corner of the webbernets into something like Ucreate or The Nester.

And I fail.  As I try to do projects and talk about them, I delete post after post after post. All I can see is how unpolished my work is. I don't take enough pictures. My lighting is bad. My writing lacks personality.  My projects are the same thing everyone else has done before.

And then I find reasons to stay away from the blog.  I don't want to even start to think about that failure.    Very quickly I'm doing nothing but blog stalking everyone else.

I'm TIRED of this cycle!  I think this is the third or fourth version of this since I started this thing almost 5 years ago.

So this is me (hi me!) attempting to stop it once again.  I want to write for me. I need to remember that I'm enough without anyone reading this blog, and that yet again I realize why I don't really want to make money off this thing.  Yes, it would be nice. But I'm not willing to put a full time job's worth of work into this thing. 

There will be projects still, of course. And pictures.  But I want more of my personality more than anything. 

Here's to a new start.  I just hope it lasts this time.

Keeping it real: redoing my master bedroom

Trying to do a major redo of your bedroom is seriuosly not an easy thing with a 9 month old and a 3 year old around the house all day.  I wanted this room to be done a couple of years ago. Umm yeah, that didn't even get past the drawing board stage.

So ere's a run down of the schedule of this room:

3 years previous: read a million blogs about how to do board and batten.

2 years previous: buy a new bed and bedding. Get paint swatches that you tape on the wall for the next two years.

1 month previous: buy grey samples and paint the top part, just to see how it would work.

Actual start

Day one: Paint store is having a killer sale. Figure you better just do this think already. Go buy the paint. Then buy the wood and rip it into strips at Happy Mom's house.

Day two: Sunday, so just play.

Day three: the "real" work can start!  Um, nope. Hubby gets sick.  Manage to do one coat of primer on the wood and that's it.

Day four (today): Let's try this again . . . Um nope. manage to get the baseboards pried off (that was GROSS under there!). and that's about it.

At this rate I'll be doing the before/after in about 2 months.

Sigh.

But my kids are happy when I play with them.  Maybe, just MAYBE I can do a little painting after they go to bed. But I'm not holding my breath.

sleep

Such a simple thing.

But any one who has EVER had a newborn, will also tell you it's a very elusive thing too.

It's also something that's been rather hard to come by at my house for the last 8 1/2 months. 

Now, I've sleep trained all of my kids with out much problem at all (we've done the Ferber method.)

But for some reason, I just couldn't do it this time around.  For years I've told people this (what I think) truth: I think every single kid can be sleep trained with this method. But I DON'T think every single parent can do it - you have to do what works for you.

And listening to Jellybean cry was just too much for me.

Maybe it's knowing that he's my last.

Maybe it's that unbelievably pathetic cry he has (sounding like he's cried himself hoarse after about 20 seconds).

Or maybe I'm just to tired to really do that hard now, better in the long run method.

Whatever the case, it just hasn't worked.

So here's where we were 3 weeks ago: Jellybean would wake up between 3 and 7 (no joke!) times a night.  And when you combine that with the 3 or so times 'Lil was getting up, I was NOT a happy person.

Ah, 'Lil.  Here's the story on her nights.

3 months ago she turned three.  This meant she had to transition to a preschool to continue to receive speech therapy.  Now, that was hard enough.  But then I realized that my grand plan of toilet training on her third birthday wasn't going to work so well (too many changes too fast).  So on a whim we did it the day after her IEP meeting.

And it worked . . . sort of.  She still won't go #2 in the right place, and was in diapers at night.

I felt that the diapers were being confusing for her, and that things would improve if I made her stay in underwear at night too.

Which started the waking. I think she had to go, but she would only SCREAM BLOODY MURDER if I put her on the toilet. So instead she would wander the house crying.  Or wet the bed two or three times.  We did this for a about 6 weeks.

Which made me even less willing to let Jake cry.


So I knew something had to change.   First thing I did was put 'Lil back in diapers at night.  I hate spending the money on more diapers, but I realized that $0.17 a night is probably cheaper than the entire load of laundry I did every day from her wetting the bed so much.

It took a week or two, but finally she was sleeping through the night again. And I slowly started working on Jellybean.

I finally started a real bedtime routine with him. I know, it sounds lazy, but I just had never bothered to do anything more but have him fall asleep while eating.  Then I started letting him cry at 10:00.  That didn't work so well for me. So I changed it to rocking him to sleep instead of eating.  After a few days he stopped waking up at 10:00 and I started trying it for his 12:00 waking.  I was still feeding him if he woke up after that, but I was down to only 3 times a night!

Then, over night, he stopped waking up.  For the last 4 nights, he's woken up at 4:30 for a small bottle (about 3 oz), and then back to sleep until 6:30.

I'm like a whole new person now.

(sorry this was such a long post, and most of you probably don't really care. But I wanted to remember what happened with this, and it really is just such a wonderful thing in my life!)

Speed Dating, Relief Society Style

I don’t know if I’ve mentioned it before, but I’m responsible for all the activities for the women in my ward (that’s Mormon talk for a church congregation).  I’ve been doing this for almost two years now, and we have some awesome activities, if I do say so myself.

But don’t think I’m really patting myself on the back here. See, I think I’ve come up with  exactly . . . ZERO of the ideas.  The internet ROCKS for great activity ideas (ok, my committee is a huge help too!).  But even with the ideas I’ve found, we usually find a way to improve on them.

And since I get so many things from the great web, I thought maybe it was time I give a little back.  So I’ll be posting our fabulous activities here once and a while.  First up: Friendship Speed Dating.

I first got the idea on Pintrest, of course, when I saw this pin:

(ok, this is my picture from that night, not hers!)

 

What an awesome idea!  Everyone knows that what women really want is to just chat, and the idea of getting to know the sisters better was an awesome one.  Biggest problem with her post is that she doesn’t really explain the format too great, and there aren’t any questions at all!  So here’s how we did it.

First, we had a potato bar dinner (we’ve got several gluten free in our ward, so this is an awesome option to include them.)  My amazing crafty person decorated the tables . . . um forgot a picture of that!  But we did a polka dot theme – super easy. She did each table a different color of scrapbook papers in different sizes of circles, and then had little nut cups full of color coordinated jelly beans (yes, she admits she’s slightly OCD).  We also had the list of questions at each seat so people could look them over as they ate.

I didn’t want the questions to be the usual. I wanted to actually get to know something about people, not just where they were born or how many kids they had.  We had a great brainstorming session, and came up with this list.

I’ve got it in color:

Or in black and white for you to use!

So here was our format.  One side of the table didn’t move – yes that means you don’t get to talk to everyone. But it also means the activity doesn’t last 4 hours.  This was also great for some of the older women that don’t move very well.  We had a time for 5 minutes each spot.  When it was time to switch, my timer friend flipped the lights.  And then usually yelled out.  And then sometimes did jumping jacks to get people to stop talking and move to the next spot.  It took about an hour to get through the line. 

It was one of the biggest hits we’ve ever had. Now, I also have to admit, we fielded more questions on this activity than any other before (Do I bring my husband because we’re dating? Is this actually ok to do because I’m married? What on earth is speed dating anyway?) But stick with it – it’s great!

(if you’d like to follow my rs idea’s board, you can find it here:  Yes, I know it’s called Craft Day, but just go with it!)