• first time Fi stayed the night elsewhere
• first time I attended a WordCamp conference
• first time I wore a MailChimp monkey cap

Well, the last one isn’t as much of a milestone. Moving on…  

If you’re wondering why baby girl spent the night elsewhere, it was due to the WordCamp Atlanta conference. It was today and yesterday. (So, so, soooo excited I was able to attend!) And if you volunteered to help out with the event in any way, you got to wear and keep one of these lovely monkey hats, courtesy of MailChimp:

You know the cap is sex-zy.

Anywho, WordCamp Atlanta presented a new problem for me. Since the hubby works through Saturdays, I needed someone to watch over her for the two days. It truly turned into a team effort by my local friends. 2 Days + 3 Friends and an overnight stay made for a very tired, but happy, baby girl.

Tuckered from a day of play with friends, I’m told she slept without a peep overnight and then again for her nap today. Suffice to say, I’m extremely glad she did so well with all the change these past two days. It also makes me confident she will be able to weather staying with someone else if we decide to do a missions trip to Taiwan this coming summer.

Good results indeed.

Anyone else have milestones they’re excited about this week?

Feeling like one of the horde orc peons from World of Warcraft. All I do is “work, work”… that is the only thing that seems to come out of my mouth these days.

I have one project in particular hanging over my head like a black shroud. It affects everything I do these days. It taints my thoughts, plans, goals.

I had hoped I would be finished with this project by the 1st of February, but the contractors I brought into the project are not meeting their deadlines. Last time I outsource any contract work.

Regardless, my life is feeling one-sided these days. And I still feel like I’m living in the shadow of last year. And really, it’s time to break free.

How about you… are you swamped with work… or are you living in the shadow of anything?

I have a history of wearing my heart on my sleeve. Not so much these days as I find myself guarding my feelings and responses a lot more in my old age, but I do slip back into old habits.

Speaking of old habits, I did so well last year to not buy those little candy corn pumpkins at Halloween. So you can imagine my guilt after eating half the bag of cinnamon jelly hearts… and the tummy ache that follows.

cinnamon jelly hearts = the evil

Any old habits of yours dying hard?

When I ran across Jesika Jack’s shop, I was so impressed with the focus behind the idea. Her pieces are beautiful. I couldn’t help but write a quick post on her jewelry line.

Leo Constellation Necklace by Jesika Jack on Etsy

Virgo Constellation Necklace by Jesika Jack on Etsy

The necklaces are quite a statement piece. If they’re too much for you, take a look at some of her more compact necklaces or even her earrings:

Southern Cross Constellation Necklace Spiral Motif by Jesika Jack on Etsy

Southern Cross Constellation Disc Earrings by Jesika Jack on Etsy

Makes you want to wear your stars, huh?

Playing with duckies, whales and octupusses that blow bubbles… I never get tired of this.

These are the things that make me smile, laugh and giggle. Someone remind me of this when she hits her tweens and wants nothing to do with me.

If you haven’t seen it, here’s a look:

My grandmother should be on this show. She’d fit right in naturally. lol

Anyone else have a “saucy” grandparent?

"Don't Go Through Life Without Goals" Wall Art by Walls That Talk on Etsy

To that end, I thought it might be good to create some goals for 2012. Originally, with 40 looming next year, I was thinking of resurrecting my 101 list from back in 2008, modifying it to a more reachable 40 items, but really, the whole process just left me feeling like it was all so rushed. I just haven’t had time to contemplate what I really want to complete to feel a sense of accomplishment before the big 4-0.

Instead, I pared down my list to this varied 12 goals. One goal a month seems achievable. I suspect most of you would agree.

So here’s the plan for the next year:

1. Catalog stray recipes
2. Grow an herb garden
3. Clean out garage (mainly so I create a kickboxing setup and use the fantastic 100lb hanging bag hubby bought me for Christmas – oh yea)
4. Clean out spare bedroom (my mom is retiring this year, so it can no longer be my craft room)
5. Learn to play suduko
6. Run a paperless office (otherwise known as scan and shred all stray papers)
7. Read 4 self-improvement/work-related/biography books
8. Take a photography class
9. Whittle down my photo backlog from 2010
10. Try a craft I’ve never attempted before
11. Create memory board
12. Sew an outfit for Baby Girl

Sure… doesn’t seem like a lot, but with baby girl running in tow, even the littlest of tasks can seem like a mountain to scale. Who doesn’t know that feeling?

What about you? It’s the second week of the year, have you finalized your goals – made plans for the things you want to accomplish?

Not that I need anything else on my plate, but more that I need to find that new normal I talked about at the beginning of the year, I decided to pick up the project again. Narcissism is far from who I am, but let’s see how it wears on me for the next 52 weeks. ;)

Clearly, Baby Girl has taken over my life. I’m in dire need of a pedicure. Let’s see if I can’t work a little on me this year…

Anything you need to put in balance in your life?

Of course, I don’t have a problem with that. However, maybe you who have come to know my blog for the beautiful (if I do say so myself) jewelry I created (considering I only created two pieces this year, we’ll keep that in the past tense) and other jewelry related items I talk about, might. So, let me apologize now and say “Sorry.”

Unfortunately, I can’t say I’m going back to jewelry posts. This year has been an eye opener. I’ve realized life can’t continue as it is. Not that it is bad, just that it’s different.

What has worked for me before isn’t working now. It’s time for a change… again. It’s time to turn a new leaf.

In the meantime, the blog will just be a jumble of different things. Family, life, books, baby girl and maybe some jewelry every now and then. I should probably change the intro to the blog, too, since it hasn’t been centered around jewelry for a while now.

Hopefully, while I try to find my voice again it will lead me to where I need to be… and that is my goal this year – to find what my new normal should be. I hope you get to start a new adventure, too.

Happy New Year to you all!

While you ponder how you could eat so much so fast, I hope you take a moment to mediate on the following:

“For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace.”
—Isaiah 9:6, King James Version

Merry Christmas!

It’s interesting how things I hardly thought of when it was just Jason and me are now drawing my attention. For example, growing up, Christmas Eve was when my family celebrated Christmas. With tons of guests – family and friends and a HUGE buffet dinner, we’d have anywhere upwards of 80+ people in and out of the house.

I left for the Army, spent many a Christmas away and I’ve never really celebrated Christmas on Christmas Eve since the last Christmas I lived at home. Not so much because I didn’t respect the tradition - more that I was alone and with no one around to celebrate with on Christmas Eve, my celebration days slowly became Christmas Day.

Would we ever do a Christmas Eve celebration? While my parents loved to cook and entertain, that’s not really us. I don’t think we would ever undertake such a huge endeavor. (And boy was it huge!)

However, I do like the fun of opening presents Christmas Eve. Even so, I will probably continue to have Fiona open presents on Christmas Day and let her open just a present on Christmas Eve as a nod to my traditions. This Noche Buena, though, Fi was literally falling asleep as I changed her out of her dress. Maybe next year…

I hope everyone has a wonderful Christmas Eve! Make sure you leave some milk and cookies out for Papa Noel!

As far as naps, we’re still working on them. Nothing solid yet, still tracking the times and her crying and such. Some days she easily takes a nap in her crib, other days she won’t nap without being on me. Having a nap routine works sometimes, other times it doesn’t. I’m considering it a work in progress. I’m sure it’s just going to take a little longer than what I expected.

Hope all my sleep training mamis out there are hanging tough! You can do it. :)

We have successfully achieved sleeping through the night. It’s what I had initially desired when I started out trying to sleep train the girl. As you may now well know, I wasn’t counting on the sleep training wrecking havoc with her daytime nap time.

While it’s been a heck of a two weeks and hard, hard work, I can say I would recommend cry it out to anyone who has tried everything else. It’s not the most fun listening to your kid cry, but there’s a certain satisfaction in seeing the transformation in them to understand the routine of what is happening and what comes next in their day. I still, however, cannot say I see the calmness that comes with the routine. Our time will come.

Tonight though, she did really well. Lots less crying.

It’s also funny to see her understand once I read the books, it’s time for singing, then time for bed. So she’s starting to close the books midway into the reading… having me start over from the beginning or having me switch books. Makes me laugh.

As far as naps today, I decided she wasn’t ready to move to one nap like I had hoped. I’m consistently seeing the tired signals around 10:30-11am. I never used to see them this clearly, so I think I can thankfully say the regular nighttime sleeping is helping regulate her  wake times.

So, after she fell asleep on my lap for the first nap, I took her upstairs and tried to lay her on our bed. She started crying, so I moved her to her crib and let her cry it out for the rest of the hour.

Around 2:15pm she decided it was nap time again and fell asleep in my lap. Took her upstairs to her crib after 10 minutes of napping where she proceeded to cry for 15 minutes and then… voilà! Silence! She napped for 50 minutes straight! (Or so I think ’cause I didn’t hear a peep or rustle from her room.) But then she woke up – and I thought she was ready to wake up – so I brought her downstairs with me just to have her fall asleep on me for another hour and 15. Should celebrate little victories, I guess.

And you already heard a little about tonight’s bedtime. She stopped crying after 2 minutes, just to start crying again when Snickers decided to open her door and pay her a visit. (That’ll teach me not to secure the door better at night…) Fortunately, she settled down quickly again.

So, what’s next with the sleep training, you ask? Nap time. We have to work on getting her to nap by herself in the crib.

Thank you to all who have followed along, read silently or commented. I appreciate your patience as I got my frustrations out on “paper”, so to say… I’ll make sure to post a weekly update on the nap situation until we get it sorted out!

Well, the laptop switch over I briefly alluded to kinda took priority over blogging about baby girl. I forget how many things I customize on my laptop just to make it a portable work machine.

So as it turns out, I can happily say the two nights I didn’t blog, she cried through the whole bedtime routine, but stopped crying within 5 minutes of my leaving her bedroom. We heard a few short peeps from her at night, but she has successfully slept til 7:30am both nights.  I am so super happy and excited about that. Tonight she’s not doing so hot (cried a little longer at bedtime – just cried a little as I write this paragraph), but I think that has to do with something else I did differently for naps these past two days…

Some backstory… On Tuesdays and Thursdays, I take a work morning and have our neighbor take care of her for me. It gives me 4 hours of uninterrupted work time, or a chance to get out and run a ton of errands without dragging her along.

After all the nap issues I was having, I decided to transition her to one nap a day. I’ve been told over and over again, consistency and routine are the keys. Since her morning nap always falls right around church time on Sundays and therefore she never naps twice on Sundays, I thought this would be my best bet.

I have no desire to take away her second nap, but pushing nap time back to 1pm allows me to let her sleep 2-3 hours uninterrupted. With two naps and the church issue on Sundays, she would always be getting 2 naps, with the exception being Sundays, hence ruining the whole “routine” of the routine.

My neighbor is wonderful, but when I explained this to her and ask her to make sure to keep the girl up while she was with her, she wasn’t onboard with the idea. She was of the 2 nap camp so when baby girl fell asleep at her house, she let her sleep. Imagine my dismay.

I knew that would throw a wrench in the day’s nap, so I waited an extra half hour before trying to get baby girl to sleep. Sadly, she fought her nap and cried – even more than usual.

A conversation with a friend the day prior made me realize maybe I needed to concentrate on making sure baby girl was sleeping well through the night before I tried to tackle the nap issue. She recommended I go back to holding and rocking the girl to sleep before laying her down. Lately though, I can have the girl knocked out and when I go to lay her in bed, she wakes up with eyes opened round as quarters! So frustrating!

After listening to the girl cry hysterically for 30 minutes at this particular naptime, I decided it was time to calm her down and get her sleeping any which way I could. I tried rocking her to calm  her down for 15 minutes to no avail. I then decided it would be best to lay down with her in our bed to see if I could get her to fall asleep. She was not having any of that either. I literally had to lay in bed with her laying on top of me for 15 minutes before she finally calmed down and allowed me to lay her directly on the bed. Broke my heart she was so overtired.

But that day… oh that day the girl slept 3+ hours! I believe she would have slept more had I let her, but it was 5pm and with bedtime being in the 8 o’clock hour, I needed her up to expend some energy.

The next day, when I went to put her in her crib for nap time, she cried at me again. I just didn’t have the energy and honestly, I so enjoyed the 30 minutes it took me to get her to fall asleep (since I fell asleep, too, in the process), that I decided to take her to our bed again. She slept a little over 1.5 hours, which again was fantastic.

Today, I had my friend over helping me clean the house. While baby girl was a little wound up from seeing her, she was able to calm down and sleep 1.5 hours again. However, she did wake up after the hour mark at which point I had to head back upstairs to get her to sleep more.

I’m not sure if I’m doing more harm than good with having her sleep in our bed, but the fact that I can get her to actually sleep for that time period has to count for something. It is so much better than listening to her cry up there for an hour and a half. That’s just like torture and the checks I make to her room to make sure she is okay and let her know I still exists even though she can’t see me sometimes make the whole situation worse, I fear.

So the update? I think night time sleeping is well on its way to being fully under control (and I was even able to sleep from 11pm to 4am last night without waking once – I’m usually up at 2:15 like clockwork.) Now to tackle naptime sleep.

Any suggestions?

Then today, I decided to take her out shopping around her old sleep time and she fell asleep in the 5 minute drive to the warehouse store. Then after the shopping trip, we still had some time left before her new nap time, so I went to meet Jason for lunch. And, of course, she fell asleep again in the 5 minutes it took me to get across the street to the other shopping center.

What happened on the ride home from lunch? You guessed it… she fell asleep. I gingerly removed her from the car seat, took off her jacket and got all the way upstairs. As soon as I started to put her in the crib, she woke up. :/ Seems to be the new trend.

So no real naps for today. Just power naps, including a 15-minute one I let her take around 6:30pm tonight ’cause she was having a major meltdown.

Despite it all, she went to bed quickly. Cried on and off through the bath, the book reading and the singing, but 5 minutes after she was tucked in she knocked out! Love that.

Someday we’ll get to do everything without any crying…

And then there was today. She fell asleep on the way home from church. So when we got home, I took off her jacket and shoes, made it all the way to the crib, when she realized what I was doing and she started crying again. I waited the regular time and decided to go back upstairs to rock her to sleep with no luck. Tried laying her down twice and twice she woke up. Today was more crying than napping.

Hoping tonight will be easier. Hoping she won’t be overtired from not sleeping today. Hoping the routine kicks in for her. Hoping it goes easier.

SHE SLEPT 2.5 HOURS WITHOUT A PEEP! YAY!

Then tonight, we went to a Christmas light show and made sure we got back in time for her bedtime. While she cried through here bath and wind down, she only cried for 5 minutes after I left the room. Woot!

This was a happy day. Still tired, but stayed up to have. Movie night with my hubby. Now off to bed… G’night!

Tonight also marks the half way point. Just one more week of this and then it will be time for me to make a decision on whether I want to keep trying this or if I want to just quit. I’m praying we’ll get over this hump this weekend. I’m praying she will begin to sleep well for both naps and nighttime. I’m praying she will stop crying the moment I pick her up to go upstairs – that moment she realizes what’s in store for her in the next half hour. I’m praying.

And again, I’m tired. So off to bed I go.

P.S. I know I’ve lost a few readers with this thread series, but I’ve needed an outlet to get my frustrations. Thank you to all who are still subscribed for hanging in there with me.

Firstly, you should think about what that person’s personal jewelry preferences might be. Take a look at the style of items which they might usually wear on a regular basis. Do they prefer long, detailed earrings or plain, simple studs? Do they tend to wear gold or silver? Although you might be looking to get them something special, it can be a good idea to sneak a peek at their everyday items, in order to get a good idea of what their preferences might be. It is worth bearing in mind that A Pretty Rock can offer custom orders, which can save a significant amount of time searching for the perfect piece.

You will also want to think about the style of jewelry which you want to purchase. Costume jewelry designs can often be unusual and will stand out from the crowd, despite the fact that this can often be the less expensive option. More classic pieces, such as diamond rings or heavily jewelled bracelets will usually have higher costs, although they are often more versatile. Again, it can be a good idea to consider which style of jewelry tends to be favored by the person whom you are buying for.

You may also think about adding a personal touch to the jewelry which you choose to give as a gift. Perhaps you know what the birthstone is of the person you are buying for? Some designs are also thought to have a certain spiritual significance, which you may feel would be relevant to the person for whom you are buying.

I’m sure you have good ideas on how to choose a perfect gift. What is your best tip?

Today, I decided to change her nap time cold turkey to one nap. (With how much she is sleeping at night and her resistance to the other naps, I thought we might be making the 2 to 1 transition at the same time all this was going on.) So, I picked her up from the neighbors 1 hour early, fed her lunch, played a little, then off to bed. She cried for a whole hour and a half.

I wasn’t going to have another repeat of last night with an overtired baby not sleeping well, so I went upstairs and rocked her to help her go to sleep. Took me 30 minutes, but she was down for a nap at 3pm and would have slept longer than 5pm had I not gone in to wake her up.

I’m grateful she had that nap. I know tonight we will all sleep well…