little lovelies handmade

Handmade Parade Ornament Swap

HP is having an ornament swap, are you gonna join us?? All the details are here. Don't miss it! You have till Oct 4th to sign up!

This is gonna hurt.

And unfortunately it won't be tear-off-the-band-aid-quick kind of hurt. It's gonna be long and achy hurt. My Cannon was dropped on the floor today. I was getting ready to upload pictures and Peanut knocked it off the table. It landed lens first and is completely bent. Of course who knows what the impact did to the camera itself. It was an accident on peanut's part and she has been apologizing to me repeatedly, which is sweet.  I trid not to make a huge deal out of it because it was an accident and I was the idiot who left it unattended on a table.

I called Aaron to tell him and he reminded me that expensive or not it is just a camera (I shed some tears, so he was keepin' it real for me). My pain was more because I know it will be at least a few hundred dollars for a replacement lens; I'm not even letting myself think about i f the base is jacked up. Plus, we are on a hardcore debt reduction/savings plan so repairs shouldn't be happening anytime soon. Naturally this would have to happen when we have a newborn in the house, family visiting from town, holidays around the corner...Oh crap I am going to cry again,but I am going to watch this instead, because intended or not that is straight up hilarious.

Awesome costumes!

Awesome costumes!
Originally uploaded by littlelovelies

Stumped on what to be this Halloween? Any of these clever costumes will make you the life of the party. I think the husband and I might sport the paper doll and car freshener this year!

Think I can make my four year old be Napoleon? Although if he sees that transformer its over for me!

!(*&^@*(!%@&!^@%

I just accidentally deleted my whole post. It was clever. It was funny. There were cute pictures involved. It's 10:48 pm and today has just been one of those days. Not terrible, but one where sprta crappy and generally lame things keep happening (like the utility sink in the garage overflowing causing everything on the floor to be damp or your three year old deciding to have an accident while playing in the yard or the same three year old flinging her dinner all over the table in an effort to make her brother laugh or tired frazzled mom saying damn under her breath in front of her kids once or twice. Or three times. Ok, ok no more than FOUR times).

We'll just chalk it up to one of those days, shall we?

Looks like baby girl might have been having one of those days, too.

Babies = Productivity?

Turns out that having a three week old and limited sleep is actually pretty good for crafty progress. I have been able to spend time with my sewing machine several times this week. Actually, it might have as much to do with the fact that Aaron has been home for two weeks as anything else.

Also, most of my crafting has been baby related. I've crocheted pacifier clips, made little dollies, sewed up burp cloths (shown above)... Life imitates art (and craft), right? But tonight my mission is to complete the Artists Challenge for Glitter and Grunge. I'll be updating the site with the challenge pieces on the 15th, so definitely check back and see what everyone made! 

After that I need to bust bootie and make more stuff for a craft show I am doing on the 27th - the first show I have done in nearly a year!

If you insist...

So I have been getting comments and emails asking for more pics of the offspring. Trust me, not posting a million and one pics of said offspring ('specially the new one!) is a challenge. But I hold back because I know that not all my readers want to look at my kids every day no matter how cute I think they are. But dang. If you insist I'll turn this into a gratuitous baby blog! No? That would be overkill? Ok, ok, I'll just post baby pics every coupla days. I give you the right as readers to say "uncle" when you need to.

Ohh, crap she found her hand. Mission #1 with Baby Girl was to keep her from finding (and thus sucking on) her digits. Monkey and Peanut are digit suckers and at 4 3/4 and practically 3 I am at a loss as to how to get them to stop. Therefore I am willingly shoving pacifiers into her mouth in an effort to stop her from finger sucking, which might be all kinds of bad parenting, but who gives? Not me (obviously). All I know is that it is going to be a hell of a lot easier (in my mind) to take away a paci than a thumb.

So tomorrow is preschool (can you hear me cheering from your house?) and I can't wait for the free time. Except I have to go grocery shoppig (boo!),but that does include the farmers market (Yay!)...

I like change

I think it is fairly safe to say that the three kid transition has gone well. Our two olders smother their "Baby Girl" (Monkey says Baby Girl in the sweetest big brother voice!) with kisses and hugs and love that borders on abuse. Don't worry they are supervised at all times. Thankfully Baby Girl just takes it all in without a peep. She is one observant two week old. She follows voices and very intently studies our faces when we hold her or are near her in the room. I had some time to sew today and Aaron said she immediately perked up and began intently listening when she heard my sewing machine start (have we a future seamstress??). We are doing great with are three, just moving along, dealing with what comes when we need to deal with it (we have feedings all figured out, now, woohoo!). It's a great change. I like it.

We are about to start our third week of school and now both kids love it, but probably not nearly as much as mommy and daddy do. Since Baby Girl has been here we have been full of chores and errands such as doctors appointments, grocery shopping and running around town looking for pieces of equipment that obnoxious lactation receptionists won't sell you without "permission". (I'm almost over it. really.) Tomorrow is yet another doctor's appointment to check baby's weight. Both my other kiddos (and now this one) lost too much weight after they were born even though they fed like champs (as does this one, despite our glitch). Doctors are always worried about them, but they always slept well, ate well, pooped well. I just make skinny kids.

After the doctor, though, I'm free! I'm either sewing on some WIPs I have going or converting out entryway closet into a hideout for the kids. Toay they found a flashlight and started playing in the closet for ridiculous amounts of time. We would hear giggles and muffled talking every once in awhile, but no bickering, so we figure of ya wanna play in a dark closet, go for it! While the kids are at school we are going to clean it out, line it with some pillows and sleeping bags (per their request)and hunt down another flashlight so they both have their own (because if they do fight, it will be over that).

One night when they are sleeping or during the next grandma overnight we are going to paint it to their specifications (a red wall for him, pink one for her) install a doggie door sized for big dogs so they have a special entry just for them, and make sure there are donuts and bagel in there for snacking (monkey said this was the most important thing in the hideout. Ahhh, he is so my son!).

I'm seeing red

 
red
Originally uploaded by littlelovelies

What's with the double posting you say? Well I uploaded the flickr and started to add text, but decided maybe the readers of this here blog aren't that interested in reading my issues at the moment, which do not include fabric or glue or thread, but rather babies and breastfeeding and horrifying pain. So horrifying that all day yesterday I would cry in the moments leading up to feeding my sweet girl. We ran around town looking for something I knew would help, didn't find what we needed at the first two stores we looked, but we remembered there was a breastfeeding store/help center at the hospital so we jetted there. I asked the woman behind the counter for what I was looking for and she says "Sorry, I can't sell you one of those unless a lactation consultant says you can have one." So I asked if I could briefly show a consultant my issue and and get one. "No, you have to have an appointment and we don't have any today." (I am purposefully being vague. No one wants the gory details)

Since I was about to burst into tears I just left and went out into the lobby where Aaron was waiting for me and told him what transpired and saw that a lactation consultant was in the lobby shooting the breeze with the a co-worker for about 10 minutes which made me feel kind of like they cared more about making sure you paid your $80 for an appointment than making sure mothers can successfully feed their children without pain. All I needed was about 3 minutes of their time and, trust me, I would have paid for it. I sucked it up and made it through another feeding and went to a store that the woman recommended (if she knew I was going to buy the item anyway, I don't know why she wouldn't just sell me one they had there, but whatever). I got what I needed and we are back to happy feeding bliss.

I'm happy, baby's happy and no one is bawling every two hours. Aaron is especially thankful for that. Sorry for the annoyingly vague post, but if you have experienced what I have been while nursing you probably have a good idea of where I am at and if you haven't, well you really don't want the details anyway. Plus I figured being vague would prevent people from finding this blog through really weird google searches. Oh look, i ended up telling you all about my issues anyway.

This is for Beth.

Long Weekends

This weekend was a busy one. A lot busier than I would have thought we would have 8-10 days after having a baby. My cousin got married Saturday night, so we all went to the wedding. On the way there Aaron and I talked about how we would only let my mom and Grandma hold the baby and no kids could hold her. As soon as we walked into the door I was bombarded with aunts and cousins and grandmas all pawing for sweet little baby hugs. I managed to fend people off and find a seat and sit down for a bit, but the next thing I knew she was being passed along from aunt to grandma to bride to groom to bride's aunt to cousin to... you get the idea. She slept soundly through it all only squawking when she needed to eat or have a diaper change.

Sunday we went to another cousin's college graduation brunch which doubled as a celebration for her mom's graduation from chemo as well. It was less chaotic as the wedding, though the family members who didn't get to hold the baby at the wedding were trailing us to hold her at the brunch.

Today we took the kids to an annual event in town called Chalk It Up. There is a one block park where the park district sells sidewalk squares to artists and businesses to be decorated with chalk. We walked around the park admiring the artwork and then the kids found some chalk of their own to decorate a bit of sidewalk in the kids area. They decided the color stuck much better on their bodies than the sidewalk and began to paint themselves. Or rather, Peanut colored all over herself and Monkey decided that he'd help her out. They talked about how fun it was all evening and they can't wait to go again next year!

Look at the joy on that girls face!