Six weeks

My baby boy is six weeks old!

Here's his birth stats for those who asked:

Date: January 15, 2008 at 1:29 pm
Weight: 8 lbs 3 oz
Height: 20.5 inches

He had blond hair & blue eyes at birth, but now his hair is more of a light brown / dirty blond color.

Blogger's Challenge #36

This week's blogger's challenge was to use the layout on page 44 of the Spring Summer Catalog - "with deepest sympathy".

The baby's baptism is scheduled for April 20, so I've started thinking about making invitations. Mind you, his baby announcements are not done yet, but why should that stop me? Perhaps because he has some sort of sensor that wakes him up from his nap the instant I walk into my stamp room?

At any rate, I thought this layout was simple enough that I should be able to whip up 20 invites in the next week or so. If I get the cutting and stamping done, I can assemble them anywhere.

For this card, I wanted to use the christening dress from the retired stamp set Buggies & Booties. In fact, I bought this stamp set when it was retiring so that I could make my future children's baptism invites. ;)

I was inspired by Heather Nichols to stamp on kraft cardstock instead of white. It's a very different look and I think it makes the card look a little more vintagey.

I tried just stamping the dress and sentiment with white ink, but it didn't show up enough so I had to emboss it. (For the record, I tried Stampin' Up Craft white, Brilliance White and Palette Noir new canvas and none of them were bright enough.)

I did sponge some Brilliance white ink onto the embossed panel to make it pop a little more.

That's pretty much it. I'm hoping to become a regular blogger's challenge member again, but to be honest it might take me a couple more weeks to get up to snuff. I literally threw this card together in 20 minutes before my little guy noticed I was gone.

Stamps: Buggies & Booties, Hugs & Wishes
Ink: VersaMark, Brilliance white ink
Paper: Confetti Tan, Blue Bayou, Bravo Burgundy
Accessories: Mellow Moss Taffeta ribbon, Brass Hodge Podge Hardware, white detail embossing powder
Tools: Cuttlebug, Textile Texture embossing folder, sponge

4 weeks and 1 day

That's how old my little boy is!

He went from this:











To this in just 4 short weeks!










I can't believe how much he's grown and changed. First of all, he eats now! When he was first born, the last thing he wanted to do was nurse. It was so bad that I had to pump and feed him with an eye dropper. (The lactation consultant didn't want us to use a bottle so he wouldn't get confused.) That went on for 8 days! Every 2 hours, we would wake him up, try to nurse for 30 minutes, finger feed him with the eye dropper (which took about 15 minutes) and then pump for 20 minutes. On the ninth day, we gave up and started using a bottle instead of the eye dropper. Luckily he started to nurse for real a day or two later. By the third week we were good to go and I was able to put the pump away.

If you would have asked me which I was more nervous about while I was still pregnant: cloth diapering or breastfeeding, I would definitely have said cloth diapering. That has really been easy though. The laundry is not that big of a deal. I throw it in at night and move it along in the process when he wakes up to eat. It practically does itself.

Anyway, I'm sorry that I have been MIA for over a month. I haven't had much time to stamp at all. Now that he is actually nursing, I feel like we're doing it non-stop. ;)

He does take a good 1.5 hour nap in the afternoon though so I have started to work on his announcements. I'll be sure to post pictures of that when I get a little farther along.

Anyway, check out more pictures of my little guy here.