Happy Birthday Pumpkin!!

I cannot believe my baby is 2 years old!!

Time has literally flown. 

It seems like just yesterday she was crawling and now she has figured

out how to get on top of everything. 

Her comprehension of the English language is amazing and even though she doesn't

say alot of words she can have complete conversations with me in "baby jibber jabber". 

Answering each question with just the right amount of almost distinguishable syllables.

It is crazy.

 She's grown like a weed. 

I don't know exact measurements yet (her two year check up is next week) but

she is one healthy little girl.

I want to capture this moment time when she is this innocent (okay not always)

moldable little being where everything is glass 1/2 full and her biggest worry is how to turn sesame street on in the morning.

Can I just stop time right now?

I thought I would document her personality right now at this moment to

look back upon years down the road.

Favorite TV show

Lil Miss is a lover of anything Sesame Street. 

She can pick Elmo, Cookie Monster, and Big Bird out from a mile away. 

Favorite Animal

Horses seem to be her favorite animal -- she can make the neigh sound they make and

screams of joy anytime she seems them.

Puppies would be a close second.

Favorite Color

Lil Miss's favorite color is the rainbow.  She loves every color equally and has no prejudices to any one color.

Favorite Toy

Lately it seems to be her doll babies, but she hasn't gotten any new birthday toys yet, so that could change.

 Favorite Song

This one is easy. If you're happy and you know it! She knows all the movements and even sings along. So completely adorable!!!

Favorite Drink

She gravitates to orange juice if she gets to choose. She likes also anything with ice in it.

Favorite Breakfast

Eggs -- egg omelet, scrambled eggs, egg burrito... not hard boiled though.

Favorite Lunch

Pizza ... the girl takes after her mommy.

Favorite Game

She has started to play tag with the kids and runs around the house just giggling.

Favorite thing to Play outside

Riding the gator. She can't reach the pedals yet, but she loves to go for a ride with her brother and sisters.

What does she sleep with at night

Her blankie, a stuffed elephant (Ellie), Minnie Mouse and Twinkle Twinkle playing in the background

 Her Biggest Vice

Sucking her thumb -- it's a work in progress

Favorite Word

Mom, Mom, Mom, Mom, Mom.....every other word out of her mouth.

She has literally forgotten how to say daddy. I am not complaining.

Thing she wants to wear everyday

Her Jelly Sandals.  They are literally falling apart.

We have been so blessed with Lil Miss in our lives. 

She brings sunshine into our days and when she crawls up on your lap wanting you to read her a story you can't help but do it when she gives you that smile. 

Happy Birthday Love Bug!!!!



Just like Mommy

I am constantly getting the "she looks just like you!" comment from people.

And I do see a resemblance. 

But unknowingly little girl got a haircut last week and now she looks more

 like my baby picture than ever!!!

{Mommy at 2 years old}                                                                        {Lil Miss at 2 years old}

 

That's my mini me. 

I definitely see Nate in her face as well, but it's hard to deny that I am her mom.

When Nate and I were scrounging through some old boxes to find his old cub scout badges to show Bubba we came across alot of good archives.  Like this baby picture, Nate's class First Communion picture which he could name every person in his class EVEN the people that had moved away, a very old and worn Browns cap, and of course all his boy scout stuff.

There were some pretty cool "treasures" in the box. 

I started to put this frame in the box and Nate said I had to scan it in and share it on the blog.

Okay first of all Nate suggesting me to blog anything is shocking, and second of all..... okay let's just say I was shocked. 

So here I am blogging about this baby picture. 

It sat on our desk table for about a month before I got around to scanning it in yesterday. 

Last week, Lil Miss had found it under a heap of papers (who knows how she saw it under the mess) and started talking to the picture.

Literally she had a 5 minute conversation with my photograph. 

It was the cutest thing ever. 

And then when I said we had to go and pick up the kids from school she picked up the frame and did this....

awww... she gave me a hug. 



and a kiss!!

 

What a sweetheart. 

I don't think she knows it is her mommy as a baby girl, but it warms my heart. 

One more day til this little gir'ls second birthday!!  I cannot believe it.

The Sweetest Things....

It seems like the last week, we have been maneuvering between days of sunshine and days with galoshes.  It sure keeps us on our toes, but makes it hard to plan ahead. 

{Who minds a little rain when you look this cute in rain boots?}

Some days (mostly the rainy, cloudy days) mommy starts out with a little pick me up. 

I have to keep an eye out on my coffee though because little girl seems to sneak sips when I am not looking.  She especially likes the chocolaty goodness at the bottom of the cup. 

She ends each sip with "mmmmmmm".

Not good.
My goal is only going to Starbucks once a week.... but I can strongly say I am still working on that. 
 

Most days, not everyday, I have been getting a good run in. (to work off that Starbucks) 

Last week I completed 15 miles.  Not too shabby for me. 

It gets a little more challenging when you are dodging rain puddles and piles of wet slippery leaves. 

I have not fallen this month... knock on wood. 



On Saturday morning I started with a nice good feeling run and then started my day. 

Did you hear it was Sweetest Day?

I didn't realize it until I saw someone post it on facebook.  Nate and I don't celebrate sweetest day because everyday is sweetest day... awwwww.  Okay not really but because it is just another made up holiday by hallmark to get you to buy flowers and gifts for your wife.  Did I get that right Nate?

Well, bucking tradition, while I was at Target for the forth time that week I picked up a six pack and sour patch kids and Swedish fish to treat Nate. 

Some of his favorite things.  

I also stopped by a local greenhouse and picked up myself 2 beautiful purple mums to go on the front porch.  I figured if I treated Nate, I could treat myself. 

But to my surprise Nate went with the kids and picked up 2 bottles of wine and a potted mum for my dining room table. 

See how I got that ball rolling ladies.  ;-)  I felt so loved.

He has made me promise that we there are NO more sweetest days anymore. 

Okay, Nate.



I picked up sweets for my other sweeties too. 

Each child got a different kind of candy. 

They were in heaven and I even got the cutest Thank You card ever from Rosie. 

Oh, how I love them!!!! 

Gigi and I went to her first birthday party for a classmate on Saturday afternoon and on the way home we stopped at a park mommy had never been to.

My cute little fashionista was too cute not to snap a few pictures of her. 
This girl literally wants to wear a dress everyday.   

 Momma gave in and let her wear her "Dorthy" shoes to the birthday party because "Mom they match my outfit".  Who could argue?

On Sunday the weather was absolutely beautiful. 

After a morning of church and Sunday school, Nate had me slaving away in the kitchen cutting all the veggies for "his" chili for a party later that evening. 

The rest of the day consisted of me toting the kids to their last weekend of cheerleading and flag football while daddy stayed home to make sure the chili didn't burn. (which apparently he can do while watching NFL football and playing Xbox the whole time -- what a multi tasker!  LOL

I loved every minute of the weekend I got to spend with my sweeties. 

I hope there are more weekends like this before it gets too cold. 

I think not, but a girl can wish!!

{Tried it Tuesday} --Sock Puppets

The craft this week was a joint effort between my daughter and I.

She brings every craft, drawing, and how to book from the school library home.  She just loves those kinds of books.  Now I love that my daughter loves making things and creating crafty things just like her momma, but when she gets it in her mind she is going to make a particular

fishy aquarium out of the current book, it's mommy's job to have all the supplies. 

And unfortunately we didn't have corrugated cardboard.

My daughter was devastated and corrugated cardboard is now on my supply list from Hobby Lobby.

I looked through the book and looked for one project that she could create from things I all ready had.  I came across some sock puppets. 

They had a different little take on a traditional sock puppet.  The puppets are made from one white sock (stolen from daddy's sock drawer) and a black glove.  Luckily this momma has tons of garden gloves and could spare one.  Rosie filled the top of the sock with a piece of tissue paper to create the Panda head and then put a rubber band around the ball of paper. 

 Then she cut two slits in the sock to squeeze the pinky and thumb fingers from the glove thru. 

The other three gloved fingers control the head. 

The rest of the work is put into the creativity of making the sock into a Panda. 

She cut two circles from black (or gray which we had handy) felt and 2 squares for the eyes. 

A few scrapes from here and there became the nose and mouth and POOF**  we had ourselves a sock puppet.

 Within 15 minutes, after collecting all the supplies, we had ourselves a puppet show. 

Lil Miss was ecstatic with the cuddly little Panda.

Mr. Panda sang songs, told jokes and made a wierd panda like noise. 

Okay it was some what more of a niegh like a horse, but mommy didn't know what sound a Panda made and lil Miss liked it.   

Even Rosie got some love from Mr. Panda. 

It's funny how a little glue and creativity can create hours of fun. 

Rosie has plans to make a whole family of sock puppets now. 

Come spring I won't have any garden gloves left.  :-)

 

What kind of sock puppet can you create?

Z is for Zoo

On Tuesday the kids had an early out. 

At least once a month the kids get out around 1:00 in the afternoon and mommy is left to entertain them the rest of the day. 

Most early outs consist of a trip to the local frozen yogurt place (it is sooo good!), playing at a park, and then maybe a little naptime. 

Early this week I had seen that the Naibi Zoo was now free admission during the week.

We have a family membership to the local Family Museum but not the zoo.  

I made a mental note to take Lil Miss soon and then I remembered we had an early out. 

Surprising the kids after school during snack (which of course they asked to go to Jujube but I turned them down) I told them to keep their shoes on because we were headed to the soon. 

There were hoots and hollers, you could see they were so happy not to have mandatory naptime.  :-) 

To their amazement not too much later Daddy walked in through the door to go with us. 

There were very few people there for a weekday and so it was like we had the place to ourselves.

 Every kid had their favorite animal to see.  

For Gigi it was the monkeys!!

Her and Lil Miss were mesmerized by the monkey swinging on the ropes back and forth. 

I was shocked at how much all of them have grown up. 

It was like it just hit me all of sudden.  Lil Miss turns 2 next week. 

In the last week, I see her changing so much and growing up. 

Sadly, she isn't a little baby anymore.

 Around the zoo there are numerous animal statues.

My children needed to climb on top of everyone.   

 {giving us their best dinosaur ROAR}

Mommy's favorite animals to see are the elephants and giraffes and they were both out and enjoying the fall weather with us. 

 {just like daddy}

 Rosie had reminded me to bring quarters to feed the animals. 

So mommy was prepared. 

We fed the fish, ducks, goats, sheep... any animal we could. 

 {a year ago she would have never let them eat out of her hand}

 {Rosie was getting bossy at the goat who kept stealing her food}

 {This girl isn't afraid of animals.  She was having a great conversation with this baby goat}

And of course the boy is off harassing a goose.  All boy that kid.

It was a good family day. 

This mommy enjoyed every minute of it. 

I know we won't have many more beautiful days like it was so I pleased to take advantage of it. 

If you live around the Quad Cities you should take advantage of the free weekdays at the zoo.

www.niabizoo.com

 

Missing mommy and daddy

With being gone this weekend, we always prepare our kids in advance of us leaving. 

We have learned from experience that our kids don't deal with the unexpected very well. 

If your life turned upside in one foul swoop and you didn't know what was going on and one day you were with a different family, in a different home, and nothing looked familiar.  Maybe you would be a little leery of unexpected and unplanned things too.

We talked all last week that Annie would be babysitting and we would be gone only ONE night and we would be home about lunch time the next day. 

They asked lots of questions like where are you going, is she going to read me a bed time story, and who is going to change Lil Miss's poppy diapers.  Being masters of routine, they need to know what is going on when anything is changed.   

So the key things for us is to keep things as routine as they can be. 

I left our babysitter a book (literally it was 3 pages long on a legal size notebook) on everything that we do and what our lunchtime rituals are, bedtime routine, and what to do in case any of them act up and need time out.

This way she could know how we handle it and do the same.

This seems to work out really well for us, so the kids aren't confused and have some sense of security in familiarity even if it isn't mommy and daddy doing it.

One thing I did this time though was to by one of those recordable books. 

I have seen them everywhere from Hallmark to the grocery store. 

It's hard to call alot to talk to the kids when we are trying to enjoy a night away so this was a way the kids could hear our voice anytime they wanted to. 

Gigi especially was enthralled with the book and was pointing to the words as daddy spoke them in the recording.  So it's a learning tool too!  Double Bonus!! 

The other thing we always do is to reiterate that we will be back. 

We are leaving you but tomorrow we will go to flag football.

Or tomorrow we will eat popcorn for supper.

Or Sunday night I will help you take your bath. 

This way they know you are leaving but you will return. 

I think that is the scariest thing for a child is to see their parents walk out the door and think are they coming back?  For our kids that fear is very real.   

So these few things helped to make our little get away possible and came back to kids who missed us but who also had a great time. 

That is priceless!!!



{Tried it Tuesday} -- Guest Blogger Project

Okay I am still working on Halloween costumes and a very special birthday gift for someone

and not ready to reveal those just yet.  So any other projects have been put to the wayside.

But to my surprise my new sharing of all things great on pinterest has

led my little sister to do some projects of her own. 

So today I would like to share one of the cute projects she just completed.

By the way, this is completely out of character for her because she isn't usually a glue stick and crafty type of person but I am so encouraged that she is enjoying creating things. 

 

She made her own dry erase board. 

{My nephew's learning board}

 If you recall from a post way back when I was sprucing up the kitchen I did this as well.

It is as simple as using any old picture frame and placing a patterned piece of paper or fabric in place of a picture.  And as easy as that you have your self a dry erase board. 

Can you believe it?

Beth used a gray piece of chevron fabric to enhance a picture frame from Ikea. 

This is going to be super cute in my nephew's bedroom.

So proud of my baby sis.  Way to Go!!

What an easy way to do room decor and make it functional!!!