Life in details: Playing in the hose

Let him sleep.

I’m not going to lie, or feel any guilt or shame in admitting this:

Mason still sleeps in my bed. Not only does he still sleep in my bed, he’s almost 18 months old and he still doesn’t even pretend to sleep through the night.

I don’t mind. I feel deep down that as long as he wakes to nurse at night, and as long as he feels he needs me, that we are doing the right thing and that he is exactly where he belongs. The few times that he has slept through the night (in his pack-n-play right next to my bed) I never sleep well. I’m up all night checking on him or waiting for him to wake up.

I know bed sharing and co-sleeping isn’t for everyone, but it’s always been the way our kiddos have slept as babies before they would start sleeping through the night. And up until Mason it wasn’t any big deal. With the big boys it was just me and them, and then with Bella, and Mason at first, it was us and them. I’m pretty sure John enjoys snuggly baby loves more than me – this is probably because they aren’t trying to latch on to him when they snuggle him.

New Releases–August 30th

Sweet Shoppe has a whole ton of awesome new releases this week! But here are some looks at the three products that I worked with this week by Sugarplum Paperie, Mari Koegelenberg, Lauren Grier, Studio Basic, and Darcy Baldwin.

To my sons.

This week there has been a lot of hoopla over the whole Miley Cyrus and Robin Thicke performance on the MTV VMAs. Most of it was directed to Miley since she’s been a public figure since she was a child and in most of our eyes, she is still that child. A few days later people woke up a little and remembered, oh yeah, there was a grown-*** man on that stage with her whose only outrage after the fact was that her performance completely eclipsed his in the press. There was a blog post almost immediately after the performance from a mom to her daughter about not following in Miley’s footsteps. My first thought after reading it was “Well, what about me? What am I supposed to tell my three sons about living in a world where there will be girls like that?!” Then there was this blog post from a man to his son about Robin Thicke, and I felt better.

Edit like this…

Edit like this… is a set of simple picture only photo editing tutorials. If you need something more clearly explained, or you have a question feel free to comment with it. I used Photoshop CS3 to complete this edit.

Seven ten to seven fifteen.

Who would have ever thought that a five minute window would become so precious to me? Since giving up smoking I have realized that there isn’t really much you can do in five minutes to justify being alone for those few minutes. I used to have several kid-free five minute breaks during the day… and that didn’t even count the lovely 60 – 90 minute quiet time I got while children napped. I used to spend nap time outside, with a book, and would just sit and read and smoke. Ah… those were the good days.

Life in details: Toddle Finger Painting