Easter 2014

And following my late post for S’s 15 month birthday, here’s a super late post from Easter! Just like last year, we colored eggs! Last year we also did our first egg “hunt” at a local high school. This year I wanted something that required a little more actual hunting for eggs. I saw a blog post from some local moms that had a very nice summary of ideas and chose one that was close to home and sounded really fun. It was at a park and kids were led along a wooded trail and found eggs, some with candy and some pretend bird eggs. At the end the kids had to figure out which bird eggs went in which nest. M loved it and they had a great playground to explore when we were done. Even S loved it! She would have picked eggs up all day. On Easter morning, we did a little egg hunt in our living room and the girls opened their Easter baskets. Then we went to our Unitarian Church for their Easter music celebration (R played the cello!). We had great friends and their kids over for Easter dinner. It was a really nice family centric Easter this year.

4-17-14 dying eggs 1

4-18-14 M easter dress

4-19-14 M and S easter bunny

4-19-14 M and S egg hunt

4-19-14 M easter bunny

4-19-14 S egg hunt 1

4-19-14 S egg hunt 2

4-19-14 S swing daddy

4-20-14 Easter S 2

Posted in Easter | 2 Comments

15 Months Old

Like I said, I am SO BEHIND on blogging! S turned 15 months old over two weeks ago and I’m just now getting around to posting about it! She’s walking everywhere and really starting to get into things. She’s very interested in going outside to play and gets really upset if someone goes outside to grill something or take the trash out and doesn’t take her with them. She’s home full time with my mom right now. She sometimes takes two naps a day, but for the most part just takes one. She’s in that in between stage where she still wants to go down for a nap in the morning, but probably would be ok with just one after lunch nap like M. I was really starting to notice how little S talks (especially compared to M) but they did not seem concerned at her check up. She hardly even says Mama or Dada to me and R. She is able to say the sounds, but just doesn’t. She understands EVERYTHING we say, I am sure of it. But all of a sudden she’s starting to say some things.

Her list of words includes:
un-oh (her first)
Row, row, row (as in “your boat”)
cracker
mama
dada
woof (to Izzie)
up
night night
bye bye
good girl (to Izzie)

She continues to sleep all night like a champ – usually from about 7pm – 6am. She has been on the same evening routine for quite some time. She gets a bath with M, then teeth and jammies, then nurses, sits up, gives me a kiss and points to her crib. She has little interest in cuddling and just grabs her blanket, pops her thumb in her mouth and is off to dream land. She’s even been known to go grab her blanket from between the slats in her crib to tell you she’s ready for a nap. She imitates M a lot. They are starting to really play together and their favorite thing to do is chase each other around the house screaming and giggling. She had been biting a lot (M) but that seems to have calmed down. She hits M a lot when she wants something M has or when M takes something she wants. She makes this certain shriek that we know means we must get them apart ASAP. M is doing better and better at not hitting her back and giving her a “nice touch” instead. We stress how important it is to teach S these things by showing her what the right decision is.

She’s a pretty great eater, but is slowing down a bit lately. She loves pancakes, waffles, sausage (a lot!), eggs, cheese, meatballs, green peas, mac and cheese, yogurt and potato chips ;) I have a feeling she’ll try things (like TV and potato chips) sooner than we let M because she has an older sibling. (Side not – M doesn’t even like potato chips!)

All in all, I am lucky to have another amazing kiddo!

4-24-14 S gpa R

4-27-14 S sunglasses

4-28-14 S at Fathom

4-30-14 S with bass

 

15 Month Stats:

Weight: 20 lbs (10th percentile)
Height: 30″ (40th percentile)

For these milestone posts, I usually link back to M’s post at the same age. For 15 months, all I could find was this photo. I think that big October snow storm happened the day after M turned 15 months old and our power was out for several days and I just never got my act together to post her stats. Or maybe we missed the appointment altogether. That was a crazy week or two!

Posted in Miss S. | 1 Comment

This Week In My Kitchen: Blog Hop

I must confess that I haven’t been the one cooking around here lately.  Things have been tough and there’s a lot going on around here between kidney stones and some job stuff. My mom has been a champ, more than picking up the slack I’ve dropped. So, I take no credit for the cooking happening in these photos but I did do S’s hair in the first photo, I did hard boil those eggs in the second photo and I did peel and chop all those fruits and veggies in the third photo. These photos are posted as part of a weekly Thursday Blog Hop.

5-5-14 S and Z

S and Z look out the back door together. They’d both rather be out back than inside any day of the week. If you happen to open the back door and not let S out – watch out!

photo 2

We’ve been eating the heck out of Mandarin Oranges and other small citrus lately – even the baby loves them. I also always have hard boiled eggs in the fridge.

photo 3

I finally dug the counter top compost canister out and cleaned it out. We’re back to composting. Look at all these goodies that will nourish my garden instead of rot in a landfill.

photo 4

Someone knows how to write her name!!!

Posted in Blogging, Cooking, Miss S. | 3 Comments

Nashville

I wrote a little bit about R and M’s trip to Nashville over Spring Break here, but here are more photos!

4:14 Nashville01

4:14 Nashville07

4:14 Nashville17

4:14 Nashville23

4:14 Nashville25

Posted in Family, Travel | Leave a comment

“Spring” Trip to New Hampshire

 

 

 

We kept waiting for the weather to warm up and Spring to arrive so that we could head north to New Hampshire. Eventually, we just gave up and went anyway during the last weekend in March. There was still snow on the ground, but we loved seeing family and cuddling up in my Aunt and Uncle’s house.

3-28-14 Girls in NH

 

3-28-14 S in NH

 

3-29-14 Evelyn and Ford Girls

3-29-14 Evelyn and M

 

3-29-14 M and Ginni

3-29-14 M pudding

What’s more fun than eating chocolate pudding right out of the bowl?

 

3-29-14 S and Amy

3-30-14 Evelyn, M and S

Posted in Family | Leave a comment

6 :: May – An Update

I am embarrassed by how far behind I’ve gotten on my family’s personal blog. I love being able to look back at this blog and have a record of M’s life, and I want to make sure I do as good of a job for S. I’m going to do my best to catch up and to keep on top of it!

I posted about our Valentine’s Hearts, but I don’t think I mentioned that we went to super fun craft party hosted by my friend Michelle. She held it at our local carousel museum and it was super fun!

2-9-14 Painting Beads

Here’s M concentrating on painting beads.

2-9-14 Carousel 1

Then I took this super cute photo to use in a guest post on my bank’s blog.

2-21-14 S with Piggy Bank

 

S has got some serious personality. She’s either doing things like this:

3-14 S food on head

3-14 S ponytail

Or she’s biting her sister. We all know that if you hear a certain shriek from either M or S, you need to get over there ASAP because S is about to start biting! More on that at S’s 15 month post – coming soon!

Posted in Blogging, Miss M., Miss S. | 1 Comment

The Director of Operations Takes a Staycation

Today I’m over at CTWorkingMoms.com talking about my four night staycation – I only had to care for one kid AND I had help (and a kidney stone!).

And if you haven’t seen this, watch it now:

 

Posted in Blogging | 1 Comment

School Updates

It was an adjustment going from daycare to Montessori school for me as well. I no longer get daily updates on what they did or if M slept at nap time or not. I think this would have been the case as she transitioned to the preschool room at daycare anyway. We do get these amazing newsletters from her new school. Each one contains tons of information on stuff they are doing in her classroom and at least one photo of each child working with some piece of “work.” This is the latest photo of M.

M is working with the spindle boxes. This is a math material that helps the children see in a concrete way the value of zero as a place holder.

M is working with the spindle boxes. This is a math material that helps the children see in a concrete way the value of zero as a place holder.

Posted in Miss M., Montessori, Preschool | Leave a comment

One Thing – An Update

So, this never really happened.

My friends gave great suggestions and maybe my asking them prompted them to add one thing to their lives that they had been wanting to do daily.

I changed this to a once a week thing instead of my original plan to try to take on one new thing a day. I got about four weeks in and here are the results:

  • Wash Face – I managed to do this most days, especially in the beginning. I think this has really helped my skin. Also, it made me brush my teeth more because it created more of an evening routine. I dare to say it even helped me sleep a little more because it really helped me close out the day and start the night.
  • Give the dog more love – I took this to be two things: pet and engage the dog more and also to brush the dog’s teeth more. Both lasted a week or two.
  • Give the cat more love – Well, I’m on the fence about this one. The cat died this year, so overall it didn’t work out very well. But I hope that by keeping this goal in mind I gave her a lot of extra love during those last six weeks of her life and also that I brought her to the vet sooner than I might have in the past.
  • Pick out clothes the night before – I was already doing this for the girls mostly, but I wanted to start doing this for myself as well. I wasn’t really successful at all with this.

Yesterday I cleaned out my junk drawer in my dresser and tossed the rest of these goals. Oh well. I feel like right now I’m more focused on making my personal space (my home) more organized and inviting and I’m not feeling like I can handle such rigid goals.

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Valentine’s Hearts

photo

Please ignore the vomit on the door. This photo was taking during a rough week for us.

It’s past the middle of March, so it’s time to finally take down our Valentine’s hearts on the girls’ doors. M has started moving them around – giving them to us by putting them on our door to let us know she loves us. S’s came down a few weeks ago when we all had the stomach bug. Her door and its hearts were a casualty. I wanted to document what each of the girl’s hearts say in hopes that we’ll do this each year and have fun looking back at the old messages.

M:

  • Mom Loves Doing Yoga With You
  • We Love Your Knock Knock Jokes
  • We Love to Hear You Sing
  • You Give Jasper Lots of Nice Touches
  • We Love Your Hugs and Kisses
  • You Take Great Care of Izzie
  • You Teach Your Sister So Much

S:

  • We Love Hearing You Sing Row, Row, Row Your Boat
  • We Think You’re So Fun
  • We’re So Proud You Can Stand On Your Own
  • You Love Learning New Things
  • We Love Your Hugs and Kisses
  • We Love Your Laugh
  • You Have a Beautiful Smile
Posted in Valentine's Day | 2 Comments