The World's BEST Baby Shower!

Do you know what a crappy friend I am? A really bad one...really, really, really bad. I'm that friend who had some of her best buds in the whole wide world throw her a shower (oh, about 9 months ago!) and I have never blogged about it. Yes, there were extenuating health concerns at the time...but that's no excuse! These two lovely ladies threw me one heck of a baby shower and I dropped the ball sharing it all with you...

So in the spirit of "it's better late than never" feast your eyes on the world's best baby shower!

Two of my besties...T and B...spent so much time and effort making this a great weekend for me. Check out the decorations:







The food...




The gift table...with the CUTE homemade clothing-closet tags from B!

The little girls present were busy checking them out...

The guests started to arrive, and I took my seat to welcome most of them...I was pooped by this time!




Before long, the party was hopping, and we started playing some games that B came up with. I LOVE this face that my Mom is making while playing the "Guess which baby food this is game!"

Obviously the baby diaper/candy bar game was a hoot!
I think that I was laughing at Jenna, who actually tasted the baby diapers for her guesses...
Before long, it was time to get to the gifts!

We were blessed with SO much by our friends and family that day! Truly blessed...

Good thing that I had my little helper there!













And then it was MY favorite part of any party...CAKE time!! There's a story behind the cake (isn't there always?!?!) but look at it's gloriousness first, please! The lady who made it copied off of the shower invitations and did a FABULOUS job!

Doesn't it look all yummy! It was white with raspberry filling...I'm hungry now just typing that. Now for the story...If you look closely at the picture above, you'll notice that the bottom right corner is a little...off. To say the least. Well, what happened for sure is still a mystery, but we have two theories. T lives a good bit away from me, in Boerne, TX, and had the cake made by a friend of hers who makes really wonderful, yummy cakes. Because she lives so far away, there was a question about transporting a cake that far. For any of you readers who bake out there, you know that things can happen when transporting baked goods that have icing!

We're not sure if the cake got too hot, which made the icing unstable, or if just the jarring ride brought about the disaster. Either way, by the time that T got the cake to our house, she was nearly in tears (and half frozen for trying to keep the interior of the truck cold!) because the right side of the icing had crumpled and fallen off. B and I assured her that we could repair it somehow (although we weren't really sure how to go about it) and T got on the phone with the cake maker for better suggestions. We eventually went with the toothpick route and before long, it was all shored up and looking better. You can see in this photo how the icing crumpled a bit...

And here you catch one of our hands in the act of the repair...

In the end, I think that we did a good job...check out this close-up of the worst corner...

It all turned out well, and since T and B were going to do the serving, I just told them to cut that side first, removing toothpicks as they go, and no one but us would know the difference! I think that the photos speak for themselves...no one was the wiser, as the taste was PHENOMENAL!!

I just see lots of people eating cake...not complaining about it!

Overall the shower was one of the best parties that I've ever been thrown! All of the thoughtful details and personal touches really made it special...and Brent and I got enough gift cards to go shopping the next day and come home with these important items...





A great party all around...thanks ladies!! There is much love in my heart for you two...despite the lack of posting evidence! :) LOL!

Sleeping Habits of Babies

It's always a wonder to  me.  How this baby sleeps through the night from almost birth.  How that baby takes regular naps throughout the day until age 4 with no qualms or problems.  How some babies can sleep through anything and some startle at the slightest sounds.

Having had two babies of my own now, I know no more than I did with the first one.  I thought that I made some mistakes with the first one - I held her ALL the time those first few weeks when she slept so much.  She was just too cute to put down!  And I thought that made her a bad sleeper, because let me tell you, from then on out she didn't sleep unless you held her.  She also didn't sleep through the night until 7 or 8 months...

So this time around, I did my best to not hold my baby boy.  And I made sure that the grandmothers who came around and offered me SO much help also didn't hold him all the time...there is plenty of time to spoil him later, not right after birth!  I followed all the right steps, rocked him to drowsiness and then put him down to fall asleep on his own, didn't feed him until he was asleep, and for a while I thought that it was helping.

Yet sometime around the 4th month or so, I realized that he wasn't a good sleeper either.  Just like his sister.  Maybe it's something in my genes.  My mom will probably tell you that it's just payback...to say that I was not a good sleeper would be the understatement of the year, if not the century! 

So here's my latest question...how can such a horrible little sleeper like Jax sleep right next to my husband on his nights to take him?  I ask this because my husband snores like a freight train.  A freight train comin' round the bend and all.  I can barely sleep next time to him some nights...and have to use ear plugs most of the time. 

So how does my little horrible sleeper sleep so soundly next to him? 

It's a question that I'll be sure to ask one of these days...I'm sure there's an angel up there somewhere who can answer me! 

Sleep Deprivation Can Increase Natural Clumsiness…

Apparently exhaustion is not only the #2 cause of drunken dressing mishaps…it is also a leading factor in enhancing your natural state of grace. Or in my case, your lack of grace.

Let me enter into evidence my ring finger…


Which was wounded in battle while attempting to drive my car, make a phone call, execute a turn in said vehicle and change the radio station all at the same time. And yes, for a woman that knows that she has problems walking and chewing gum at the same time, I knew going into the situation that it was dicey that all would survive and come out okay. But still I hope for the best.

I’m a woman. We multi-task. It’s what we do.

Some just manage it better than others.

That doesn’t make me less of a woman. It also doesn’t mean that I won’t try it again…probably sometime in the near future.

I’ll just be more careful the next time that I want to hear a different song in the middle of a turn. Apparently those hands free buttons are danger magnets for people like me. Yes a button took a chunk out of my finger. And it bled. A lot. Have I mentioned my intense dislike of the sight of my own blood? It makes me pass out. Good thing that I was safely behind the wheel of my car, huh? (That was sarcasm…)

In order not to be grossed out by the missing chunk of flesh and possibly pass out while eating/showering/driving/sitting at my desk/any-other-number-of-possible-scenarios-of-things-that-I-could-be-doing-when-I-pass-out I grabbed some camouflage. Hence the ugly/cutesy Strawberry Shortcake Band-Aid.

What can I say? I roll in style!

I’m in L-O-V-E…

…with cloth diapers! Truly, they are much, much, MUCH different than I had pictured in my head, and everything that I “knew” about them was 100% wrong. I’m so glad that I gave them a try! Now I just wish that I could use them all of the time…

I showed off his cute butt the other day but in case you need another dose, here’s how cute he is in his cloth-covered bum:



You know that I was looking for options to avoid nighttime leaking with a heavy wetter. I tried the overnight diapers with mixed results. They leak about 50% of the time when I use them. But the cloth diapers? They haven’t leaked one single time in 6 nights.

Six nights.

No leaks.

That’s pure heaven for this momma.

Not that it means that he’s sleeping through the night – FAR from it! – but at least he’s not waking up ticked off because he’s all wet and I have to strip the screaming baby and the bedding at 2am. He’s apparently waking up to have a “party” in his bed…but that’s a whole other story.

Back to my new-found love for cloth. I really do like using the cloth diapers at night. Now, I will be honest here and tell you that I have yet to have to truly clean up a mess in them because it comes off as soon as he wakes up (it’s full!) so what I do clean is just pee, not poop. And if my day care was cloth-friendly (not something that I was interested in at the time when I searched for our day care) I would seriously consider switching all the way. But they’re not. And I love my day care…so we’ll be a mixed diapering family, I suppose. We’ll cloth diaper at night (and possibly on the weekends if I get some more diapers) for sure and use disposables during the day.

So being new to the cloth scene, I immediately started researching some accessories that I would need. Mainly a wet bag for when we’re out and about and a larger one (or a liner) as a place to put them at the house. I saw some cute stuff. And then decided that I could make my own. I went shopping on my lunch hour, went home and put the kid to bed then got to work on my idea and came up with this loveliness:





Isn’t it just perfect for a little guy? I love the old cars! The tutorial was fairly easy to follow, but there were a few moments when I scratched my head…and I’m still working out the kinks of making the hanging one for the laundry room door…but this one is perfect for now. Perfect for my diaper bag. Perfect for the laundry room floor. Just perfect.

I even went all fancy and lined it with PUL so that it's truly waterproof…



I think that it’s just as nice as one that I could have bought online at a diapering retailer or etsy. Too cute. I’ll post some pictures of the bigger one in action once I get it finished. Maybe tonight. Maybe tomorrow night. Heck, it might even be one night next week…having a husband playing softball one night a week means having one night a week when I don’t have to “pretend” not to be crafting something! Score for both of us!

What do you think? Too cute? (Yes, I understand that I’m fishing for compliments...LOL!)

Sleepless Nights Lead to Drunken Dressing…

This is just a public service warning to all readers. This is NOT a test. This can actually happen to you…be warned.

So I mentioned the other day that Jax has thrush. And that I wasn’t sleeping. Yeah, not a fun end of the week and weekend for me. Monday morning wasn’t any better…and Tuesday pretty much sucked. But the angels smiled down on me Tuesday and cleared up the majority of the Thrush and my baby boy slept that night.

For the first time in almost a week.

Yes, you read that right. Tuesday night was the first night since last Thursday night that I’ve slept for more than an hour at a time. I’ll kiss the feet of whatever Saint helped me out…seriously. Surely there’s a Saint for Mothers of Young Children? Anyone heard of that?? If there’s not one, then let’s find someone and appoint them…or however that works, let’s make it happen.

Anyway, back to my public service warning.

If you are operating on less than 3 hours of sleep (for the fourth night in a row) then you should maybe, just maybe, take a few extra minutes in the morning as you’re getting ready. Especially during the dressing portion of your morning. That extra minute or two just might save you a world of embarrassment later on during the day. Sure, my embarrassment was for me and my eyes only, but that’s just a fluke. It could have been worse.

Here’s what happened. I rolled out of bed on Tuesday morning, just barely coherent. I was beyond exhausted…tired of life, tired of one sick/fussy baby in particular, and really tired of being the favored parent. It’s not all that it’s cracked up to be, trust me. (I speak from experience. Twice.) I immediately jumped in the shower before the little jerk sweetheart could wake up and demand my attention and managed to get through the showering/brushing teeth process in peace. Amazed at my good luck, I snuck out of the bathroom to find my clothes and rushed back into the bathroom to get dressed.

It would be nice if I was less honest here and I told you that I got dressed in the dark bedroom. That would give me more of an excuse. But I can’t lie. I got dressed in the brightly lit bathroom. But I was still very sleep deprived.

I had black pants, a cutesy top and of course, my bra and underwear. Everything went onto my body in a hurry because I still needed to dry my hair, and if I could also manage to do that without waking the little man…it would really be my lucky day!  Color me shocked when all goes according to plan. He sleeps until I actually have two free hands to get him out of bed with and a few minutes to devote to his every whim and fancy.

Let’s fast forward to the afternoon: fix breakfast, take baby to day care, drop big kid off a elementary school, fight traffic, get to work, work on several things and nothing at all at the same time, go to lunch with hubby and come back from lunch.

Whew! Exciting day, huh? Well, sometime around the middle of the afternoon I had to go to the little girl’s room. Yes, I had already been several times throughout the day. No, I didn’t notice anything amiss during the other visits. And I really can’t tell you why this visit was different. Either way, this time when I was in the restroom, I happened to look down (because where else do you look while you’re in the restroom?) and noticed something odd about my underwear.

Yes, it was mine.

No, it wasn’t from the dirty pile.

But…oh wait…yep, it’s on inside out.

Hmmm…what to do now? Change it and flip it right side out after wearing it the wrong way all day long? Or just leave it alone because the work day is almost over anyway and then you’ll be at home…and who really cares if your panties are on inside out at home?

What to take a guess at my course of action? Well, knowing what you know about my energy level on Tuesday I think that you’d be safe to assume that I left those puppies just like they were. They weren’t hurting anything. And you couldn’t tell from the outside of my clothes that my panties were on inside out. Only I knew. And now all of you.

Because we can all use a good laugh every now and then. Go ahead, you can laugh at me. I did, that’s for sure!

I mean, who puts their panties on inside out except for drunk, college girls? Apparently moms who aren’t getting any sleep do! Or better yet – who doesn’t notice until almost 3 o’clock in the afternoon? It’s not like I hadn’t gone to the bathroom 3 or 4 other times that day…I had…and I didn’t notice.

Yeah. That’s when you know you’re tired. That’s when it might be a good idea to try to go to bed a few minutes earlier. Or to wear some ear plugs. Or to suggest to the husband that it’s HIS night on baby duty…any of those options will help you get your panties on correctly the next day.

Then again, I didn’t do any of those things Tuesday night. But you can bet money that I took an extra 30 seconds Wednesday morning to make sure that I had them on right side out this time!! LOL!

What crazy thing have you done when you were going through a sleepy phase? Surely I’m not the only one to have a “wardrobe malfunction” or make cereal with coffee instead of milk or something equally as funny…share with us and we’ll all have a laugh!

New Layouts...

I haven't shared any new scrapbook layouts recently, but I HAVE been working on them despite my lack of sharing!  Here are some of the layouts that I did for our family albums last month...

I've got to "get cracking" on this month's layouts...I have already made one (maybe two, if I decide that I like it) for Jax, but I have NO pictures of the other kiddos!  Does that make me a bad mom?  Maybe that just makes me a Mom with her hands full...LOL!

A "New" Discovery - PW Actions!

I know that I'm probably the last person on the face of the Earth to catch onto this...but The Pioneer Woman seriously knows what she's doing when it comes to her Photoshop Actions! I don't know whyti took me so long to clue in on this stuff...seeing as I use Photoshop a few times a week, but I don't know that I'll release another picture that hasn't had an action done to it from here on out...seriously. They're that good.

I can't imagine that anyone's asking this question, but since I only recently asked it myself, maybe there are a few more out there that don't know. That question that you might be asking is: "What's an action?" To put it as simply as I can (because I don't have a lot of technical knowledge backing this up), an action is a pre-determined group of settings that you can "wash" your photos with. Basically you install these actions in your version of Photoshop (or PS Elements), open up your photos in PS, and apply the action to your photo. Depending on the action that you select, you could get a variety of different outcomes. Check out my two new favorite pictures...

Aren't they precious? I mean, I know that Jax is cute (duh!) but aren't the settings cool too? The top one looks like it could have been taken with a vintage Poloroid camera and the bottom one is just the perfect blend of Sepia tones...and I'm completely in love with the PW Boost action...here - click over and see for yourself what I'm talking about. But be warned, you might get hooked too!

The Progression of a Tired Mother...

This is how I felt yesterday after one restless night of sleep (Friday) and one night of little to no sleep (Saturday)...

And maybe I looked a bit like this...

And that wasn't too terribly bad. But then last night hit. Another night of little to no sleep. Followed by a morning where I had to go to work. Which means that this is what I looked like getting up out of bed...

And here's what I looked like at work today...

Too bad that I don't actually drink coffee. I think that it might have helped me today. The good news I left work at lunch today, which is why there is a post during the middle of the afternoon. Hopefully I'm about to fall into a nice, deep sleep where I get lots and lots of rest...here's to hoping!

Oh, what's that? You want to know why I'm not sleeping. Hmmm...let me sum it up for you...I think that I can do it in 5 words or less. Jax has Thrush. Yep, I managed it in only 3 words - go me! I'll write more about it later...finding images was hard enough...wish me luck sleeping!!

source for images (1, 2, 3, and 4)

Look at that Bum!!

Oh my, get ready for cute bum overload...

I wrote this post last week asking for some advice from moms out there about how to help Jax stay dry all night long, thinking that part of his sleeping troubles could be related to how quickly he goes through diapers at night. 

Thanks to those moms who emailed me with some suggestions, and I want you to know that I acted on them.  On all of them.

Yep, you read that right...I hedged my bets, so to speak.

Some suggested trying the overnite style diapers from either Huggies and/or Pampers, while others suggested trying to cloth diaper overnite.  Although the overnite diapers were hard to find in an actual store in Jax's size anywhere close to me (I visited 4 stores!), and the cloth diaper world was slightly overwhelming...I managed to get some of each.

I got these overnite diapers...



And these are the cloth diapers that I decided to try...

source for both images

I mean, I figured that since BumGenius has a 30-day trial period where they accept returns (even once worn/used) what did I have to lose?

Since I was able to find the overnite diapers here in town, I used those for a few nights while I waited for the cloth diapers to arrive via mail, plus one additional night spent pre-washing and drying for maximum absorbency.  I mean, that's what we were going for, right?

I have to admit that I was skeptical about the overnite Huggies at first.  They felt no thicker than normal Huggies, so I was doubtful of the job that they would do.  Imagine my surprise when they made it to the feeding/changing time without a leak the first night.  Then double that surprise when I got really brave the next night and didn't change it at all...all night long...and his clothes were still dry in the morning.  At this point, I was pretty sure that I would be returning the cloth diapers right away.

And then the overnite diapers leaked the night before last.  Insert sad face here.  I know, I know...there isn't going to be a perfect solution, just something that's better than what I was using is an improvement.  Nothing is guaranteed to work all the time, after all.  So that's when I decided to give the cloth diapers a turn, and we tried our first cloth diaper last night.

Since I'm tryping this after he's gone to bed, and before he wakes up, I won't actually have an end to this tale for you...but I DO have some cute butt pictures to show you!  Man, those cloth diapering moms out there aren't kidding about how cute a butt in a cloth diaper is!! 

I just kept patting and patting it...couldn't stop myself!  I really hope that they work, because I could totally get used to seeing this right before bedtime each night...