Jillian is a Big Girl!

Last night wasn't nearly as bad as I expected it to be. I put Jillian in her bed, and again we did the "Good nights" and "I love yous" and I left her room and stood outside her door listening. She sang (a song that I couldn't decipher) for a couple minutes, and when she got quiet I went to my own bed. After a few minutes she started saying "I want pizza, Mommy!" I just ignored her and hoped that she would go to sleep. A little while later, I was half asleep when I heard her walking down the hallway. I went and put her back in her own bed and told her that it was time to go to sleep. She started to cry a little bit, and I told her that Brelyn and Amaya (my friend Kim's daughters) sleep in their own beds like big girls, and I asked her if she wanted to be a big girl, too. "Yay-uh-ssss" she answered. (Because I've been correcting her "yay-uh" and telling her to say "yes" instead. At least she's on her way!) So I left her in her own bed again and went back to mine.

It was quiet for a very long time so I decided that she was asleep. I went to sleep, too. Just after I fell asleep, however, I heard her walking down the hallway AGAIN! When she saw me she realized that she was caught, and she started to cry again. (I don't know where she was going, or what she was planning to do!) I put her back in her bed and told her that it was time to go to sleep (AGAIN), and she asked me for her cat (toy) and said "My baby is behind you," which meant that her doll was behind HER and that she wanted me to get it. So, I left her again with "Good nights" and "I love yous" and her cat and baby tucked under her arm. That was the last I heard from her all night. At about 7:30 I woke up confused and trying to figure out where I was. (I'm used to being woken up by little toes poking me in my back or side all night long.) Then I realized that I was in my bed, Jillian was in her bed and we made it through the night!

I slept for another hour before I decided to get out of bed. When I went to check on Jillian my heart skipped a beat... She wasn't in her bed! I started to panic until I saw the top of her head poking out from under her blanket. She was on the floor wrapped in the blanket with her head resting on the foot of the mattress like it was a pillow! I went and grabbed my camera and took a couple of pictures before I called my mom to tell her how the night went.





Right about 9:30, Jillian came walking into the living room to find me. She said "Good morning, Mommy" and still looked a little out of it. I asked "Where did you sleep last night?" as she climbed onto my lap. She said "I don't know!" "You slept in Jillian's bed!" I said. "You're a big girl!" She smiled and said "Thank you, Mommy!" Then she got a "candy prize" (Brach's Dessert Mints, yuck! She loves them.) for being such a big girl!

I hope she continues to sleep in her own bed from now on. So far it looks like it won't be much of a problem!

A Long Post After A Long Absence

Jillian's room has served many functions since Brandon and I moved into this house in August 2005 (Wow! Has it really only been 3 years?) It started off as my studio. By the middle of 2006 it was converted into my studio/ Jillian's nursery. Shortly after Brandon left for deployment at the end of 2007, Jillian started sleeping with me in my room (I just felt safer having her close to me) and her room, by default, became the storage place for all things that didn't have a better place to go. Now Brandon will be coming home on leave soon (in about 7 days!), so I've spent the past few days converting the room (yet again) into Jillian's big girl room so that she can sleep in her own bed.

I started by completely emptying and sorting out Jillian's closet. In the closet were boxes that I hadn't opened since I moved into this house when I left my house in Savannah after college. I went through every box and threw a lot of random things out and found proper places for the other things (mainly old artwork, art supplies and shoes!). Then I went through each and every bag and box in the room and sorted all their contents. That sorting took a whole day! Today I finished packing away nursery items (which made me kind of sad) and completely emptied the room of everything but the crib. (I can't bring myself to take the crib down. My baby is growing up way too fast!)

Then, since everything else that had been entertaining Jillian in the room was gone, the crib caught her attention. "I'm a baby!" she said, and lifted her arms for me to put her into the crib. As soon as her feet hit the mattress, her legs turned to springs! "I jumping! I jumping!" she yelled and giggled as she flew up and down from one end of the crib to the other. "I fall down!" she said as she repeatedly lost her balance and landed on her butt and bounced right back up again. What a crazy, hyper, funny child I have!

After the jump-a-thon I vacuumed the room while Jillian, terrified of the vacuum, stood outside the bedroom door peeking her head in and saying "All done, Mommy! All DONE, Mommy!" Once the floor was all clean, I put the crib mattress on the floor. Then the jump-a-thon was shortly relived before we put Jillian's big girl sheets, blanket and pillow along with her bedtime cuddly toys on the mattress and called it her new "bed." She seemed pleased, and we went to have a pizza dinner in front of the TV.

We watched Ghost Hunters International and half of Project Runway Season 5 before I decided I'd better go and start what I expected to be a long process of getting her to sleep in her own bed. I changed her diaper, cleaned her up a bit, put her jammies on her and put her in her bed. Then I simply said "Goodnight, I love you" and walked out. She said "I love you too" and that was (surprisingly) all I heard from her. I went to check on her 20-30 minutes later and she was totally knocked out! I was so excited! I took some pictures and left her to sleep, wondering how long it would be before she would wake up crying for me.

Just about 20 minutes ago (about 10:30pm), as I sat here chatting online with a friend and saying how excited I was about Jillian sleeping in her own room, I heard an odd thumping sound and Jillian came strutting into the living room. She walked straight over to the box of pizza sitting on her little table, opened it and said "Oh, a pizza. Look at this!" She took a piece and started eating and said "Good morning!" I just looked at her and started laughing and she said "Are you okay, my Mommy?" At least she didn't cry when she woke up alone!

Now she's sitting on the couch next to me picking off and eating all the black olives from the pizza and saying "Watcha doing? Nothing?" She's had a power nap, and I'm tired... It looks like we've got a long night ahead of us afterall!

Here are some pictures of her sleeping in her new "bed" for the first time (even if it was only for a couple of hours!).

Time Well Wasted

So, today I accomplished absolutely nothing... Well, nothing that I had PLANNED to accomplish, anyway. My plan was to avoid working today and focus on cleaning the house instead. My husband is (supposed to be) coming home for leave in a couple of weeks, and I want the house to be spotless for him, so my plan is to do a deep clean on every room in the house. I went to bed last night feeling motivated and prepared to spend the day today cleaning. However, I woke up this morning with working on my brain...

I spent a couple hours this morning uploading the products in my new birthday section to Froogle, then I added Google Analytics to my site and did a little bit of reading up on marketing. I was satisfied with leaving work alone for the rest of the day after that, and I did. I did not, however, focus on cleaning the house...

While cooking Jillian's lunch and waiting for her to finish eating it, I cleaned out and organized ONE kitchen cabinet! I threw out expired things (some pasta, grits, box dinners that looked good enough to buy, but never quite good enough to try out once I got them home...) and organized the canned goods. After that I went and layed Jillian down for her nap and chatted with my husband on Yahoo Messenger for about an hour. He had access to a webcam today, and seeing his fresh haircut and cute smile made me even more excited to think of him being home soon! After our chat (which didn't seem long enough- they never do), I went and scrubbed the toilet. How fun! That was the extent of my cleaning for the day.

I spent the next few hours curled up in bed with my new comforter and Nicholas Sparks (well, one of his novels, anyway). I felt like taking a nap, but I was just too into the book to stop reading. Just after I had finally convinced myself to put the book down and close my eyes, I heard Jillian calling out "Mommyyyyy!" No nap for me!

We cuddled and read a book before I made dinner. Now dinner has been eaten and we are sitting on the couch watching Mickey Mouse Clubhouse and drinking Crystal Light Raspberry Lemonade.

Yeah... It's been a lazy day. I guess I needed a break though.

I Love Ties!

I've been working my butt off since Friday, and I've opened two new sections in my shop! The "I Love..." section features many, many designs featuring things that children love in "Girls Love," "Boys Love," "I Love Sports," "I Love My Family," "I Love My Pet," "I Love Activities" and "I Love Food" sub-sections! I'll probably add more designs to this section as new ideas come to me, but there are already lots to choose from!





The other new section is called "Ties for Tots" and I think it's really, really cute! It features feaux ties on tees and onesies. There are a large variety of ties to choose from, including Spotted Ties, Striped Ties and Solid Colored Ties! If I had a little boy, I would definitely put him in one of these. They are adorable, funny and formal! I think they would be really cute to wear for holidays, weddings, fancy dinners, etc.





I think I'm done working for the day, but now I need to go tackle nap time!

A Day In The Life...

I decided to pick a random day and write down everything that I did during that day. Here are the results:

8:00 am - Woke up
8:00 am - 8:20 am - Checked e-mails, blog, MySpace, Facebook and JustMommies Forum
8:20 am - 8:30 am - Picked up random things around the livingroom
8:30 am - 9:30 am - Watched TV
9:30 am - 9:45 am - Cleanued up in the kitchen
9:45 am - 10:00 am - Prepared and ate breakfast
10:00 am - started shopping list
10:05 am - Jillian woke up
10:05 am - 11:00 am - Changed Jillian's diaper, made her breakfast, helped her eat, cuddled and danced with her
11:00 am - 11:20 am - Cleaned up after breakfast, finished grocery list, started laundry, put the trash out, fed the cats
11:20 am - 11:30 am - Checked e-mails and Forums
11:30 am - 12:00 pm - Researched affiliate programs for my Tee Shop
12:00 pm - 12:15 pm - Started working on new tee designs
12:15 pm - Remembered to put clothes in the dryer (Oops!)
12:30 pm - Started a load of towels
12:30 pm - 1:30 pm - Continued to work on new designs
12:42 pm - Put new batteries in "LuLu"
1:15 pm - Opened the blinds so Jillian and I could watch the rain, made a video of Jillian watching the rain and cooking in her play kitchen
1:30 pm - 2:00 pm - Changed Jillian's diaper, prepared and ate lunch with Jillian
2:00 pm - 3:00 pm - Watched TV while folding and hanging laundry
3:00 pm - Put Jillian down for a nap and moved laptop from desk to couch
3:00 pm - 6:30 pm - Continued to work on new designs while listening to the TV
3:15 pm - Turned off the flashlight that Jillian fell asleep cuddling
3:50 pm - Signed for FedEx package and checked the mail
6:15 pm - Jillian woke up, changed her diaper, gave her a drink and a snack
6:40 pm - Put dinner in the oven
6:45 pm - 7:35 pm - Chatted with my husband on Yahoo! Messenger
7:15 pm - Served dinner
7:35 pm - 7:45 pm - Read to and played with Jillian
7:45 pm - 8:45 pm - Folded and hung more laundry
8:45 pm - 9:20 pm - Played with Jillian
9:20 pm - 9:30 pm - Got peed on! Had to clean both of us up!
9:30 pm - 9:45 pm - Had ice cream with Jillian
9:45 pm - 9:55 pm - Jillian helped pick up in the livingroom
9:55 pm - 10:00 pm - Changed Jillian's diaper, put her jammies on and layed her down to watch TV
10:00 pm - 11:00 pm - Continued to work on new designs
11:00 pm - Opened new section in my Tee Shop!
11:00 pm - 11:30 pm - Read in bed: "True Believer" for me and "Llama Llama Mad At Mama" for Jillian
11:30 pm - Turned off light and went to sleep
12:00 am - Woke up to find Jillian laying across my back and staring out the window, layed her on her pillow and told her to go to sleep
12:40 am - Woke up again to find Jillian still awake. (Weird!) Layed her back on her pillow and told her to go to sleep again

Buy Me Some Peanuts and Cracker Jacks

So, softball has pretty-much consumed the past 6 days of my life. My little cousin Kailyn's team made it to the Louisiana state playoffs, and the tournament just so happened to be hosted in my little town this year! The team made it to the championship game last night, but unfortunately, they were not able to bring in another win. Second in the state isn't so bad, though. Not so bad at all. Jillian and I had a blast watching them play, and we can't wait until next year!

Here are some of my favorite photos from the tournament:

Mission Completion!

I'm happy to say that final work for my International Playthings job was turned in yesterday! It took longer than I expected to get it done. I worked on tracing all my sketches Sunday night from 6:00pm to 1:00am. Then I woke up Monday morning and worked from 9:00am to 2:30pm scanning, piecing together and cleaning up all my final artwork. So, it took 12.5 hours of work when I thought it would only take about 4! Boy did I ever misjudge that! It got finished well and turned in on time, though, and that's all that counts! Here are a couple sneak peaks at some of my favorite pieces from the job:

Word Find: Tree, Sky, Sun


Which Is Different?


Maze


Finish The Drawing


Connect The Dots


Color The Picture


Feel free to print these pages for your own personal use (for your kids to do!), but please leave me a comment letting me know if you do!