Back from the dead [tired]

This past week was rough. Anya decided out of the blue that sleeping was no longer fun so she tried her best to keep us up all night, and all day, and then all night again, and... well, you get the idea. For the night time Mark and I have our specific duties when it comes to Anya being awake. I nurse, Mark bounces with her on the ball if she's restless. Well, during those few nights last week the only times when Anya slept were either when Mark was bouncing with her or when I was nursing. If Mark tried to set her down when she seemed to be asleep, she would instantly pop her eyes open, start squirming and acting very mad. Same story during the day... By the end of the week Mark was so tired that he had to take a day of, and I... well, moms don't get a day off. I mean it's not like I can go and spend a day at friend's house sleeping all the time... Well, maybe I would if there was a friend I could go to...

After all this madness, Anya finally went back to her normal sleeping, right after we sent an S.O.S. call to Mark's mom and she promised to come and help us out. And wouldn't you know it, the first night Anya started sleeping better, Mark and I spent 3 hours working on our projects. And the funniest thing is that instead of working on one of 238 unfinished projects, I picked a new one, something that I've never even done before. How smart is that? I mean, the baby is sleeping, mama is still about 78 hours behind on her sleep, but who cares? I have the whole night ahead to create something, even if my eyes are red and my vision is getting blurry from being tired. So what did I make? ;)

It's a necklace :) A while ago I saw a photo on Flickr (I'll post link later if I can find it) of someone wearing a perfectly happy necklace and I knew this was it, I had to find one with the colors I liked. I waited and waited, and last week I really felt like I needed something to lift my spirits, so off to the bead store I went. As per usual, I spent twice as much time as I thought I would ( although Mark would argue that it was 3x) but I ended up finding my perfectly happy beads. Being the total dummy that I am, I asked the sales lady how to make a necklace that I had in mind, and of course she had to start her explanation by saying "well, it's one of the trickier ones". Boy, she wasn't kidding! It only took me 3 hours and one very sore thumb to make it. But I am happy :) Happy to have my happy necklace and to feel like I finally made some kind of accomplishment last week besides surviving.

The only photos I have of it were taken while I was nursing Anya ( I took some other ones too, but the files turned out to be corrupt, grrrr...). Don't be fooled and go 'awwwww' looking at me 'lovingly' holding her head. It was done in an attempt to restrain her from doing what she always does. The truth is, she is a terrible nurser, for the lack of a better fitting word. She never sits still, always kicks her legs and squirms with her whole body. Watching her head reminds me of watching a clock arrow - moving up, then to the right (or towards my stomach), then down, then to the left... over and over again. Nursing her always requires both hands (could always use 3rd one for holding her down, and a 4th one would be nice for reading a magazine for once), and a permanently fixed head in a "I am watching you, aaaaalways watching you" position...

Then here she is mad for me interrupting her 'workout':


And finally cute for a moment (now you can say "awwwww")