A bit more than I can chew...

For those of you who haven't figured it out yet, I'm one of those type A personalities. Over and over, I remember my dad saying to my brother and me "if it's not worth doing right, it's not worth doing at all." And, that's exactly the attitude I have taken toward everything Itsy Bitsy Spider.

I'm also one of those "never say die" types, so it's not easy for me to admit that I've bitten off more than I can chew. But right now, I think that's exactly what I've done... it all started with that awesome weekend of sales the first week of October.

First Mistake: My husband made the really good argument that I had nothing to lose by listing all of my inventory on Etsy instead of squirreling it away for my November show. So, I did it. I listed everything. And then I had that (awesome) weekend at the beginning of October where my bats were featured in an Etsy Storque article. By the end of the weekend, my inventory was cut in half and I'm still getting a steady stream of custom orders from the feature.

Don't get me wrong... I'm not complaining about the sales. That part has been incredible! the problem is that I found myself less than 1 month from my first show with just enough inventory to fill a shoebox. So, I really had to step up the production and that, of course, takes time.

Second Mistake: I really love blogging. Seriously. It has been so much fun to meet other kindred spirits and share ideas online. I love coming up with new features for my blog and I love reading other peoples' posts. But, again... reading blogs and posting takes time.

Third Mistake: OK... this one is admittedly not a mistake -- more of a mistake in timing. I've mentioned our daughter in several of my posts now and that she is internationally adopted from Korea. She and my husband are the two loves of my life and I can't imagine a day without them.

That being said, my daughter has some special needs. We suspect that in infancy, she was not given the attention that a normal baby receives. As a result, she's been consistently hitting her development milestones about 5 months later than kids her age.

For you non-parents. a developmental milestone is a little benchmark that parents are taught to look for in order to make sure that a child is growing "normally." I put normally in quotes here because no two children hit their milesstones alike and the whole thing is really more a guideline than a rule. So, for example, some perfectly normal kids walk as early as 8-10 months of age. And other perfectly normal kids wait until they're 20+ months to take their first steps. No biggie.

But, because Kaia is working with some delays, we need to devote extra attention to ensuring that she stays on track. Long story short, Kaia has people. She sees a physical therapist, a speech therapist, a developmental specialist, and she participates in a playgroup for kids with delays. We've really stepped things up this month and Kaia has something just about every day of the week. And that... takes time.

So, what does that mean? Well, since Kaia is my #1 priority and I'm already committed to the show in November, I've decided to take a little break from blogging. I plan to keep updating my Facebook page whenever I can -- so if you haven't already, click the Facebook badge on the right side of the blog and join my fans.

I also plan to be back to blogging full steam after my show. I'm thinking about doing a series then on lessons learned from my show and how I went about getting my table set up.

So, until then, I'll wish you happy blogging. I'll see you all again soon!