First Day of School! First Day of School!

(Not really)

But it is the meet and great with my littles this morning! I’m so excited to see them and their parents and introduce a wonderful year of art. Lilly helped me make them a little surprise…

Recycled star crayons! Super fun:

Find some old crayons that your kids won’t miss…

Peel off the papers so all you have is the wax crayons.

Break up the crayons into a silicon *baking mold*….

If you are anal, like me, break up the crayons according to color and group like colors into each little well. Bake crayons at 275 for 15 minutes. Remove from oven carefully (like you are transporting molten lava) and let cool completely.

DO NOT USE AN ICE CUBE TRAY (they are meant for the freezer and will melt in your oven- woops).

Pop out your new crayons and hand them over to your kiddos to color some beautiful pictures. So fun to see the lines they are drawing change color as the crayon tip color changes!

I attached this poem (that I wrote so please link back here if you use it for your kiddos!) to a little baggie with two crayons each just so each child could have a little something from me to take home. Hopefully they’ll talk about me and the art room with their parents and be just as excited as I am about real school starting next week!

…Lilly’s not excited. She just asked, “Mommy, don’t go to work cuz you’re my special girl.” Oh, how I love that child.

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If you didn’t read my last post, start there or this won’t make sense.

I actually slept last night- without Grace in my bed. I swaddled the hell out of her in a super duper many-velcro-tabbed swaddling blanket and put her to bed in the pack and play downstairs. She couldn’t flail around or twist and arch. She also had no rice cereal at all yesterday (coincidence?) and I let her cry it out twice. Keeping her downstairs seemed like the best solution to the room share problem. I figure if I can get her sleeping soundly in the pack and play, through the night, then I can easily just switch her up to her crib without disrupting Lilly at all.

So she cried- once around 1:30 a.m. and once around 3:00 a.m. Neither cry was more than fifteen minutes. I slipped on headphones and blasted my favorite Mumford and Sons Pandora station (try it- it’s awesome) and just took deep breaths. It’s never easy to listen to your baby cry, especially when it’s your little, tiny, occasionally medically worrying, love of your life. Eight million things go through your mind like what if something’s really wrong, her little feelings might be hurt, is this damaging her psyche in the long run? am I a bad mother? shouldn’t I just go and pick her up? did she stop crying because she’s suffocating?

But then I coach myself with a little reality check. Grace is strong enough to roll all over the place, pick up her head to turn it both ways (even with the helmet on) and she’s never had breathing problems. We keep the house very cool and have a fan running (both lessening the risk of SIDS). I tell myself that I’m not a good mother when I’m exhausted and short tempered. I can’t give 100% of myself to my girls when 90% of me is thinking about sleep. Teaching Grace to sleep will be good for everyone. Lilly cried it out for a few days much worse than Grace last night and she {seems to be} growing up as a very well adjusted, happy, healthy toddler. Lilly can go to sleep by herself, fall back asleep by herself, sleep all night, and take great naps. But she’s still trusting and loving and cuddly and sweet. She’s confident and bold. It doesn’t seem like we damaged her. That’s all I want for Grace.

So I’m prepared to let chaos rain this weekend while we are on vacation. The girls will do whatever they’re going to do in an unstructured, fun environment. But when we get back- I’ll be sticking to this plan for Grace, hopefully banishing these no-sleep nights forever! Yes!