We very much enjoyed the long weekend last week. Did you? We didn’t do anything special, just relaxed, tried to catch up on housework and errands, all that stuff. Then on Tuesday, Troy turned 42. His birthday was rather meh, since he had to work late (as usual) and we didn’t get to have a birthday dinner. I made coffee cake in mugs, at his request, and we ate those while he opened a few presents after he got home from work. Then we did baths and put the girls to bed. Not exciting, but not a bad day.

Thursday afternoon, we had the house cleaned which was utterly wonderful. We decided it’s worth it to us to pay for a professional housecleaning about once a month. It makes such a difference and is worth every penny, and every movie we don’t see in a theater and every coffee we don’t buy at Starbucks.

Thursday evening, we picked up our friend Rebekah and her kids at the airport. They were flying back from visiting family, and since one of the kids had an appointment with her eye doctor just up the road from us (they live in the same small Southern Maryland town we used to live in, which often means going to D.C. for specialists) they stayed the night at our house! Bek said she couldn’t believe it took them two years before they finally got to stay the night with us. We’ve tried several times before but illness or weather or something always messed with our plans. Annalie was over the moon to have her friends stay the night.

Friday morning we enjoyed our friends’ company. The kids took advantage of the mild weather and played outside. After lunch Bekah and her kids headed home. Since it was raining, and I was in a good mood and Annalie was a little sad to say good-bye to her friends, we stopped at the bakery for cookies. That evening, it took Troy almost two hours to get home from work thanks to horrible traffic. I spent those two hours feeding the kids and getting them ready for bed, silently reciting to myself the list of reasons I am thankful that we aren’t leaving D.C. till August. If I remind myself often enough, think I’ll start to believe it?

I think I mentioned before that Elliora’s sleep habits had become atrocious since we were in Omaha. She was teething something fierce when we first got there, and being in a different place and a different bed was not okay with her. She spent about an hour or two in the middle of the night EVERY SINGLE NIGHT we were in Omaha and Texas, all 25 nights, letting us know how upset she was about it all. It was stressful and exhausting and it got so I dreaded nighttime. In Texas things were a little better because Troy was there to help out, but she was still awake and mad in the middle of the night. It suuuuuucked.

We thought things would improve sleep-wise when we got home, but they didn’t, not really. And nothing we tried helped—not back-patting, not singing, not cuddling, not nursing, not sitting in the room with her. After a few nights, we realized we were going to have to leave the room and let her cry. When she woke up in the middle of the night, we checked on her and reassured her and then gritted our teeth and left her alone. We’d go in and check on her every few minutes, but only stay a minute or two and then leave again. The first night, she cried for about an hour before going back to sleep. The second night it took about a half-hour. Every night since then, if she’s awakened, she’s gone back to sleep within a few minutes.

I’ll be honest: it’s a relief that she’s not up crying for hours anymore. I still hate listening to her cry knowing she’s in the room by herself, even for a few minutes, even though her crying is clearly pissed-off, not scared. For heaven’s sake, when we ask Elliora to pick up her applesauce pouch and take it to the trash can in the kitchen and throw it away, she does it. If she can follow three-step directions, I know that she understands us when we tell her that it’s nighttime, time to lie down, time to close her eyes and go to sleep. She’s 15 months old, not 15 weeks. Knowing all of that still doesn’t make the crying any easier to listen to, but I’ll live. It’s easier to live with guilt when you’re well-rested, apparently.

Free pattern for crocheted golden snitches. Thanks, Deborah!

You know that whole do what you love philosophy that I talk about from time to time? Apparently right now I love crocheting and cooking meals and taking photos and watching Downton Abbey with Troy more than I love blogging. I do miss blogging, though. I write posts in my head all the time. I look forward to having the time to actually type those posts out again someday, and then actually edit and Flickr photos on the same day I take them so they’re not three weeks old by the time I post them. Sigh.

How did it get to be almost March already? How is 2012 treating you all so far?

We gotta go to the crappy town where I’m a hero! (4:29)

If you are a Browncoat and you have not seen this video of Adam Baldwin singing Hero of Canton, do yourself a favor and watch it now. I’ll wait for you to come back.

In case you have not figured it out by now, this mug is part of my Geek Dottery series.

So is this mug I painted for Jen from Following the Road a while back, at her request. The pineapple is a Chuck reference. Big surprise, right? You can watch this video and this video to get in on the joke.

Guys, I know kung fu. Even though there have been a lot of great moments in Seasons 3 and 4, sometimes I think back to the sheer awesomeness of Season 2 ending with that line, and wish that it had all stopped there and any further adventures of Chuck and Team Bartowski had been left up to my imagination.

I tried an experiment, painting that tiny pineapple, and wasn’t sure how it would turn out. I was so happy when it worked just like I wanted it to.

Madge requested that I paint another geeky mug for Fish’s birthday, this one an X-Files/Big Bang Theory mash-up. I tried to make the colors of the mug match the greens and dark blues and purples that I associate with X-Files.

This last mug isn’t geek dottery, except in that I painted it as a gift for my friend Elaine, whose blog’s brilliant tagline is “where geek meets granola.” She wrote this heartfelt post for her daughters about how she wants them to know that they owe kindness to everyone, first and foremost, but that it’s not okay for anyone to take advantage of that kindness to abuse or hurt them or treat them with disrespect. Hence, the inside of the mug:

Ahem. I’d like to point out that this is a direct quote from Elaine’s blog, which I used on a mug with her permission. (Man, I’m such a square. I can’t even cuss in a photo covered with asterisks on my own blog without feeling totally embarrassed about it.)

I didn’t make it to the monthly Ladies’ Night at my usual pottery studio this month, and I really missed it. I’ve been feeling fairly stressed out lately thanks to Troy working long hours leading up to a deadline and a pulled muscle in my neck and blah blah family blah homeschooling blah blah life in general. Nothing is wrong, exactly; it’s just one of those times when life is a little extra challenging, you know? On Saturday Troy told me to get out of the house for a couple of hours, so I went to paint at a local studio. I sat all by myself with paint and a Coke Zero and dotted to my heart’s content for 90 minutes. When I went home I felt much calmer.

Thank you to all of you who keep supporting my painting habit by asking me to paint you mugs and bowls and things! It helps keep me sane.

p.s. The Firefly mug at the top of this post is up for grabs! If anyone out there wants to buy it, let me know and I can stick it in my Etsy shop as a reserved order.