Digital scrapbooking and other woes

Okay, first of all, I thought that real scrapbooking took forever. NAY. Digital scrapbooking takes forEVER. I think I just spent 40 minutes on one lame little layout that is not very cute nor pretty. I find it very annoying that when I add embellishments to my pages, the program automatically makes them GIGANTIC and I have to majorly resize them to get them to fit right. Plus, the pictures don't always fit right and it only came with 5 fun fonts! Poor me. Here is my latest offering:

Look at that dumb black thing in the corner! And the stupid title (thank you, Lionel Richie).

Moving on. Okay, we were at my parents' house for 2 weeks and of course Maggie's schedule got all screwy and she got all weird about food. She has kind of been refusing to eat much of anything lately except for breakfast. She will eat the heck out of some waffles and bananas but after that, she's not interested. She signs "eat" and acts like she wants food but when I give her something to eat, she starts to pitch a fit and wail and say, "Nooooooooooooooo" and shove the plate or bowl away. It makes my blood pressure go up. I've been trying to limit how much she eats between meals. Tonight she ate the noodles out of a bowl of chicken noodle soup and drank the broth out of the bowl with a straw. Gross, I know, but I wanted her to have some nutrition. It's very frustrating. She also wants one of us to hold her while she eats and she cannot do that while we are trying to eat. Because guess what, I don't want to try to eat while Maggie is trying to grab the food on my plate and hold my silverware. And guess what her newest word is? MINE.

Next problem, while I'm venting. Maggie has turned into a SUCKY sleeper. She's fine for naptimes because she sleeps on our bed. I know, that was probably a bad move on my part but when I was on maternity leave and I would put her in her crib for a nap, she would SCREAM for 45 minutes before I would take her out. During the night last week, she woke up SCREAMING and we just stuck her in bed with us. Mistake #1. After that, we would put her in the crib and she would scream and scream and scream. A couple of nights I stayed in the room with her and rubbed her back until she fell asleep and then I would try to sneak out. She would wake up and scream. It was HORRIBLE. Finally, we let her sit up on a chair while we were watching TV or something and she would fall asleep. As soon as we picked her up to put her in the crib, she would wake up. So she eventually spent the last week sleeping with us. So last night, when we got home, I was not messing around anymore and put her in the crib (after our usual bedtime routine). She screamed for, I am not kidding, 2 1/2 hours. She would fall asleep, wake up and realize that she was supposed to be screaming and start in again. Tonight, it was more like an hour but it SUCKED. I don't know what to do. She stayed up way too late last night because she was crying and then woke up at 6:30. Then she fell asleep at 9:30 this morning in the car. Tonight we went on a walk all the way around the block and Maggie walked the whole way. My plan was to wear her out. When we got home, I told her it was time for a bath and she started crying because she knew that was the start of the nighttime routine. She cried all the way through her bath, cried through the application of lotion, cried through brushing her teeth and cried while I was rocking her. After she brushed her teeth, I told her it was time for bed ans she walked into our room and when I told her "no," she cried some more. I finally got her calmed down and she laid in my lap for a little bit but screamed her head off when I put her in the crib. I sat on the floor next to her crib and she finally settled down a little bit but if she thought I was going to leave the room, she would get all worked up again. I DO NOT KNOW WHAT TO DO. This sounds like I am the most horrible mom ever but I'm going to be blunt. I don't want Maggie sleeping with us. In the past week or so, I've seen some glimmers of real toddler-hood. She started to have a full-on temper tantrum in the car one day and her eyes were absolutely crazed she was so mad. She's gotten very into saying, "NO" and "MINE." She swats at me when she doesn't want me to do something and like I mentioned above, she shoves her plates, bowls and cups away when she doesn't want what's in them or on them. She's had 4 teeth break through in the past week so hopefully I can chalk some of this up to teething.

We are going to New York on Thursday and I am very nervous about the setbacks we are sure to have because Maggie will be sleeping in the bed with us while we're there. I'm sure we're going to start over at square 1 with the screaming when we get home.

Maggie's going to daycare on Monday so hopefully she can get back on some semblance of a schedule. I think that's part of her problem. We're going to check out the new house tomorrow. They've framed the bottom floor and have started on the second! Woo hoo! I'll see if I can get some pictures for the blog.