Naptime Worktime

The baby suddenly started taking normal naps again yesterday.  And, by normal, I mean more than fifteen to thirty minutes long.

A thirty minute nap is one of two things.   One, it's annoying in the sense that it takes almost as long to get the baby to go to sleep as she actually stays asleep.  Two, the baby stays asleep just long enough to get me really into whatever I'm doing before she starts stirring.

I'm one of those slow-build kind of people, so when the little bean falls asleep, I make a cup of coffee, have a snack, start doing dishes...then I get into the cleaning and I start doing laundry, and then I've got the vacuum out and the mop... then WHAM! She's awake and the floor is half mopped or the laundry is in a pile.  If I was working on my shop, maybe a listing is half-edited, or I was in the middle of a batch of photographs that needed to be tweaked.  Then, I hear that gurgling sound that means she's up and I think two things. One is too profane to post here and one is just too gushy.

Needless to say, I am very glad she is sleeping for one to two hours at a time.  But it now presents a new problem:  I have so much to do, that I haven't done in so long, I don't know what to do with myself or how to do it.  This morning, I finally photographed some new items for my shop which were designed and made mid-way through my pregnancy.  But I hadn't used my camera in so long, I couldn't remember the best settings and most of the photos turned out meh, so that's going to take a few tries to get right.

Mostly, though, I just sort of wander aimlessly from one chore or spot of work to the next (the same way I'm kind of rambling through this post).  The way my brain works now is this:  I see the bouncer needs to be moved back into the kitchen, so I do it and as I'm doing it, I see the dog bowl, so I feed the dog.  While I'm getting food, I see dirty dishes, so I go to do those, but I realize my brayer for rolling ink is drying in the rack, so I take it to my desk.  I see on my desk a half-finished design, so I sketch a few lines, look up and see a dirty glass...you get the point.  I get a little of everything done, but nothing really gets completed.

Maybe it's going to take a few naps to figure out the settings on my camera again and a few more to get that print design finished, but there is one bright spot:  that smile I get every time she wakes up.

WAHM, SAHM, Thank you Ma'am

There are acronyms for everything on the internet these days, even for moms.  If you've spent any time whatsoever on any kind of baby or child forum, you're probably already familiar with the two or three most common: WAHM (work-at-home mom), SAHM (stay-at-home mom) and FTM (first-time mom).

Well, today, I'm making a new one.  I am redefining myself as a CAHM.  Create-at-home mom.  I really don't think WAHM fits, because creativity is an elusive enough beast when you aren't distracted by a very small person.  It doesn't schedule itself.  I can't get my husband to watch the baby and hope my muse shows up then.  I just have to cross my fingers and hope I can remember that idea long enough to write it down when Amelia is playing or sketch out that new design while she naps.

This has nothing to do with the post, but I think baby hands are cute.

I mean, I don't know if you've noticed, but I have not added an entirely new design to my Etsy shop in nearly a year.  Not a print, painting or card.  I did do some creative things while pregnant (I'll have to do a post on the nursery soon!), but nearly all of them were for the baby.  The simple truth is, pregnancy fries your brain (at least temporarily, though I admit to still feeling like a dunce most days).  So it was hard enough to come up with ideas then, let alone carry through with them.  Thankfully, I feel like I'm back on track these days.  I don't know when my muse is going to pop in, but I'm scattering a bunch of drawing pens around the house just in case.  I also think I might have a new one, hidden in a tiny, chubby face.

So, yes, I feel being an artist and a mom deserves it's own acronym.  When you're trying to sketch out an idea with one hand while jiggling a cranky baby with the other, you totally get to make up your own title.

And am I writing this while the baby sleeps, three days in advance of posting? Hell yes.