I'm still here!

Yes, don't worry guys, I AM still here!  And so is this guy...

I haven't decided how much I'm going to share of him (who am I kidding, I'll probably post his face eventually, because it's so darn cute), but for now, here, some baby feet!

I did, in fact, have my son.  But things did not go as planned, as he arrived in August.  "But wait, Whitney," you say, "weren't you due in October?"  Well, yes, I was.  Baby had other plans, apparently! (won't be my WHOLE birth story after the jump, there will be art news, too, I promise...)

So in addition to now having a baby, and all the cliches about never sleeping and, uh...never sleeping, we also had a preemie, which is a whole other set of challenges.  Basically for the first eight weeks of Stephen's (that's his name) life, he was in the NICU.  They really do try to be as welcoming and gentle as possible there, and NICU nurses really are angels, but it's its own special kind of hell.  And nobody talks about this before you're actually in it, either!  You don't even consider it as a possibility when you're pregnant, that the baby could have to be taken from you right after birth and LIVE in the hospital for months, and not come home with you!  But that's a post for another day...

And then I couldn't breastfeed, which is a whole other post for a whole other day.  

And then I had my gallbladder removed!  This is one of those weird things that could maybe, possibly, probably not, happen to you during/after pregnancy, but it's only less than one percent of pregnant women who develop gallbladder complications as a result of the extra estrogen, so they don't even bother to mention this to you in any of the "what to expect" books.  Which is good.  If anyone had told me, "oh by the way, four days after you give birth, your gallbladder will attack you and it will actually be the worst pain of your life, 50 times worse than labor, and you'll think you're literally dying, and then they'll have to surgically remove it," I would probably say, "uh...never mind, then."

Well, no I wouldn't.  I would have done it anyway, and it's all worth it.  Because of this.

The real reason I'm coming back to the blog now, though, is because you may have seen these pop up in my Etsy shop and on Maxfield and Madison's Facebook page a couple days ago...

Yes, as I had said a while back I was going to do...finally I'm getting more into nursery art!  I'm going to start offering original baby name watercolors, customizable to whatever your nursery decor and color scheme is.  The one on the left is one I made for my son, and the one on the right is a sample of another possibility (and if you actually have a baby Sophia Theresa, this one is up for sale as well!). 

Similar to my word art, I would make some digital thumbnails of different font and color possibilities, so that people can pick their preferences.  And the theme possibilities are pretty much endless: jungle, underwater, horses, Celtic knots (for those little Connors and Aidans out there), butterflies, any animals really, trains, dinosaurs, outer space, whatever you can think of!  I could potentially have so much fun with these...and I'm thinking of offering similar stuff for weddings, as well, so stay tuned.

Of course, there will be more baby-related art coming your way soon...and non-baby art, too, don't get me wrong!  And you can expect to see, in addition to my usual art-related musings, posts musing about motherhood and how I balance that with this art business. (spoiler alert: sometimes I don't.)