Just a quick note to say, sixhours.net has a new look (finally!), and there are new goodies in the Calobee Doodles Etsy shop! You can also visit the Calobee Doodles Web site and subscribe to the RSS feed for more updates. Yes, I’m attempting to maintain multiple blogs at once. We all know how this will end, but humor me, won’t you?
I’m not sure where the last month has gone… lost in the abyss! Life is great, just extremely busy.
Ellie started daycare this week, which was relatively uneventful with the exception of her catching her first cold. Welcome to the petri dish, baby girl. She’s been a bit feverish and snuffly, poor thing, but seems to be on the upswing. We’re only a teensy bit sleep-deprived, so I consider myself lucky!
Speaking of the little bean, I’m told tomorrow is Mother’s Day, and oh hey, I’m a mom now, right? I guess I am, although most days I feel like this is just a warm-up for the years to come and the “real” parenting has yet to begin. This is the honeymoon phase, which serves the purpose of ensuring we bond appropriately so that when she’s 13 and a terror I won’t leave her on the side of the road somewhere. I may be tempted, but thanks to the memory of her baby gummy grins, I won’t actually do it. 
All in all, after four and a half months of Ellie in our lives, I think I can speak for both Tim and myself when I say we are just so in love with her. She’s perfect, from her adorably wrinkly little toes to the slightly bald spot on the back of her head where she rubs against her crib mattress at night. Yes, you read that right–even her bald spot is adorable. I want to capture every little nuance of her behavior and tuck it away in memory, because every day she’s a little more attentive, a little more coordinated, a little more her own being and less the squirmy, wailing creature we met in December (who was cute in the way newborn babies are cute, but is no match for this strikingly blue-eyed baby girl).
In other news, I’ve been working on some new ideas soon to be released at Calobee Doodles… in fact, I need to take photos for some new products tomorrow. Very exciting! And today I spent some time at a local greenhouse, buying new starter plants to decorate our porch over the summer (a “congratulations, you’ve survived four months of mommyhood” present to myself). It seems the new floors have inspired me to prettify the rest of the house, which includes our often-neglected back porch and yard area… I can’t wait to see all the colorful flowers peeking in at us through the kitchen windows.
Now I’m going to go relax, maybe read a book, and enjoy the first thunderstorm of the season. Good night!
The new carpet was installed the week before last, and it’s like walking on a cloud. We wasted no time in putting Ellie’s room together, and I posted some photos at Flickr. The room is not entirely finished… I still have to paint her dresser, put up curtains/blinds, find a better slipcover for the chair and some long curtains to act as the closet “door.” But this is definitely a huge improvement over the stark, bare room we had before.
I’m especially enjoying the quilt/pillow set we purchased from littlelegwarmers.etsy.com (always happy to support a talented Maine artist) and the colors we chose make the room bright and cheery. Even better, miss Ellie has taken to it well… we had a couple rough nights but now she’s back on her regular schedule and happy with her pretty purple room.
We’re expecting lovely weather this weekend… I think it’s time for a trip to the coast and some thrift shopping!
It’s long overdue, but I’m happy to announce the brand new Calobee Doodles Web site!
It’s a showcase of my doodles, as well as an archive of past custom orders. I needed a separate place to show off my illustrations, because let’s face it–my photographs and doodles are two very different beasts and at times it feels as if I’m catering to different audiences.
Besides, I’ve been looking for an excuse to geek around, and what better way than to build a new Web site? This one was particularly fun because I got to be a bit more playful with the layout. At some point in the near future I hope to redesign sixhours.net as well… it’s been over a year (where does the time go?). As if I don’t do enough of this stuff at my day job… I’m practically dreaming in PHP and CSS these days.
Speaking of which, I’ll tell you a story. You know how I posted earlier about Elspeth and how she’s typically a great sleeper, right? Well, I totally jinxed myself with that post, because suddenly the little bean is waking up in the middle of the night to eat–after almost eight weeks of sleeping through without so much as a peep. Apparently someone’s going through a growth spurt.
Anyway, at 3 a.m. last Saturday, my sleep-deprived brain had the craziest thought:
I bet I could write a PHP function to illustrate Ellie’s sleep habits.*
Yes, I actually thought, “I could probably program my daughter in PHP.” That’s how bad it is, people. I’m now applying computer coding principles to completely organic situations… I think it’s time to step away from the computer and get some sun.
What is this “sun” you speak of? Never mind, I’ll just Google it.
Wow, this week has flown by… there’s been so much excitement, and I think I lost Tuesday and Wednesday in the chaos.
But thanks to said chaos, we have new floors! Aren’t they pretty? This photo gives you an idea of what the old carpet looked like, and here’s a “before” photo of the kitchen… as you can see, the wood is a huge improvement. Huge. The first floor looks and feels so much bigger, and the warm tones make everything feel homey. As you can see, Ellie is quite excited about the change, too!
Now we move on to phase two… the new carpet for the second floor will probably be installed next week. I’m especially looking forward to that because it means we can move Ellie into her own room. She currently sleeps in our bedroom in her crib, because it was handy to have her close by when she was waking in the wee hours to nurse. She started sleeping through the night about six weeks ago, though, so the change is overdue. Thankfully she’s a pretty easy-going kid, so I don’t think the transition will be difficult.
After this it’s a matter of repainting, refinishing the kitchen cabinets and counters, replacing the (hideous salmon pink) bathroom fixtures, and adding our own touches. I haven’t felt motivated to work on the house much because of the awful flooring, but now I can’t wait to settle in… and it only took a year and a half!