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?

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!

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.

* What would that function look like, anyway? I’m so glad you asked…

function sleep_baby_sleep($baby, $the_fussy)
{

if ($baby == $the_fussy)
{

if (apply_binky($baby))

$baby = “This isn’t food. Where’s my damn food? Scream!”;

else if (apply_bottle($baby))

$baby = “This is food. Yum. But now I’m gassy. Scream!”;

else if (apply_gas_drops($baby))

$baby = ” I feel better. But now I’m WIDE AWAKE. What’re you gonna do about it, punk?”;

else if (apply_snuggles($baby))
{

$baby = “So… sleepy… must… fight… urge… to… zzzzzzz”;

if (put_in_crib($baby))

$baby = “Hey, wait! I’m still awake! You can’t put me in my crib! Scream!”;

else (three_hours_later($baby))

$baby = “Ok, fine, I’ll sleep. But I’m totally waking you up in two hours.”;

}

else if (is_asleep($baby))

$mommy = “*twitch twitch*”;

}

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!

Every time I watch it, I giggle.

This is why Kidmondo.com is my savior. I spend the majority of my day on a computer as it is, so managing Elspeth’s online baby book is as easy as posting new photos and videos to Flickr, or writing a quick blog entry–two things I do on a semi-regular basis anyway.

That’s right. My kid is barely out of the womb and she already has her own blog. But given her parentage, is that really so surprising?

I can also chart her height and weight (kidmondo calculates the percentiles automatically and plots them on a nifty line graph, which I love–I’m such a nerd), keep notes about dental and medical records, tag my posts with specific “firsts,” and invite friends and family to follow along as she grows. I can jot down quick drafts about milestones and other amusing anecdotes to be written about in more detail when I have time–there will be no unsightly scribbles or cross-outs or sleep-deprived misspellings in my baby’s book! There are even options for journaling about pregnancy, if you wanted to start from the very beginning. And all updates and posts are summarized in a tidy timeline format, which satisfies the OCD nitpick in me.

And the best part: at the end of the year, I can purchase a hardcover, professionally-bound book of Ellie’s adventures, complete with several pages of color photos. As someone who’s scrapbooking-stupid, I love that I can still have a tangible product and keepsake to show for my digital efforts.

Something I’d love to see as part of the Kidmondo package is the ability to add a “family tree” page… most traditional baby books include a way to list the members of baby’s extended family in a tree format. The Flickr integration is also a little clunky, but the site’s creator assured me that they’re aware of the problem and working to resolve it. And that’s another point–the Kidmondo staff were helpful and quick to respond when I had questions.

And no, they’re not paying me to write this. I’ve just had such a good experience so far, I thought I’d help spread the word to other parents and parents-to-be.

Last year around this time, Tim and I planned to put hardwood floors down in the condo we bought not two years ago. Fast-forward to today and we still don’t have hardwood floors… the unexpected arrival of a certain someone delayed our planning and temporarily cramped our budget. But last Friday we finally paid for all the flooring materials and hopefully everything will be installed in the next week or two. Yay!

We decided to put hardwood throughout the kitchen and living room, and new carpet to replace the icky 20-year-old beige stuff on the second floor. I am so excited to see what our humble abode looks like with flooring that doesn’t look like the tail-end of a wet dog.

To celebrate, Danielle and I spent the weekend painting Ellie’s nursery a soothing shade of lavender, with the idea that we could be as messy as we liked… the carpet would be pulled up soon, anyhow, drop cloths be damned! This is the first room we’ve painted since we moved in, and this weekend I remembered why: I hate painting. I don’t have enough patience for projects that take more than an hour or two, and a fresh coat of paint (or two coats of primer and two coats of color, plus trim details and taping and cleaning brushes and… you see where I’m going with this) is the kind of thing that requires attention to detail. It never looks good until its finished, and waiting for paint to dry in between coats is so boring. I am a product of the instant gratification generation… I kept thinking, “it would take me all of two minutes to do this in Photoshop. Where’s the damn Paint Bucket Tool?”

But I have to admit, the results are worth it.  I love the new, softer colors, and the room is brighter and more open already… I think it will look amazing with the new carpet. I’ll post pictures from start to finish once the new floors are down and everything is in place.

Unfortunately, most of the comments toward my photos are negative, and some of them are downright mean (who knew scrapbookers were such a grumpy bunch?), but hey, exposure is exposure. Calobee Doodles is getting some positive attention as a result of all the extra traffic, so I can’t complain!

It will be interesting to see how the Artfire shop does given its unique start. I’m always surprised by what appeals to people (and what doesn’t). My photography gets much more attention at Etsy–in the form of treasuries and front page features–than my doodles… but I’ve sold equal amounts of each type. I suppose there’s something to be said for making art that appeals to two drastically different audiences.

Speaking of which, I’m in the process of redesigning sixhours.net to add my illustration. I’m not doing much photography right now (unless adorable baby portraiture counts) and it seems silly to keep sixhours exclusively for photography when the portfolio hasn’t been updated in over a year. At least it will look somewhat current with the illustration included. Now I’ll be lucky if I can find the time to sit down and code it.