Things I Find

I have small children. That is the stage of life that I am in with all of the joys and all of the craziness that it entails. I do find myself laughing a lot. A lot. Lily is great at playing independently (note: I just misspelled this word and it auto-corrected to "indecently," so I am glad I caught that.), and I am great at letting her. This does mean that I often find surprises around our home to indicate what she has been up to.

For a while I was always finding my shoes rearranged. I put an end to this, as my closet and bathroom stayed perpetually disastrous.

Yes, it is a good idea to eat the doors to your mini-cozy coupe car.

And, here is the star herself, setting up some of the surprises that I often find.

She may have tendencies toward hoarding. She likes to drag around the laundry basket and fill it with goodies.

Currently, Bella is in training to learn the ways of putting random stuff in random places. And she likes her tea with cream and sugar, thanks.

One of my highlight moments. I am realizing that Lily might be a bit of an "arranger."

What should I do with the rest of my cheese? This is definitely a good option.

It will take Mom a while to find these, since I am hiding them behind a curtain. Thanks, Lily. Sadly, I didn't get a picture of a petrified Chick-fil-A nugget that I found under the curtain in the dining room. Gross.

All the little magnets. I was less than thrilled to knock some of these into the freezer. Still not sure I got them all out.

Things I find make me laugh. A lot.

Snow Melts. So do Two Year Olds.

We had a snow day a couple of weeks back. I decided that though I was not excited about getting everyone ready to go outside, I should give it a hearty go and see if Lily would enjoy it and if we could keep Bella warm enough. So I got my first little snow-bunny dressed.

And once the other friend saw a picture being taken, she wanted to join in.

Then, I got her dressed, and there was some melting.

Once I managed to get us outside, there was a little bit of fun to be had, though not with hat or mittens. I picked a happy child over a warm child, since I had a slight premonition that this would all be short-lived anyway. Bella did a great job holding the aforementioned unused hat and mittens.

A few of my favorite things. Snowflakes that stay on her nose and eyelashes. Especially when her eyelashes look like this.

Once I realized that she didn't want to get her feet "dirty," by walking in the snow - her words, not mine - I decided to relocate onto the back deck where there was plenty of snow and Bella could stay inside and I could just enjoy the view.

There was fun with the bucket and blocks for about 7-10 minutes.

At this point, I ran inside to get the video camera to capture sweet Lily's first moments in the snow. However, by the time I got back outside, which took about two minutes, sweet Lily was gone, sadly replaced by sour, melted Lily. Snow day fun was dead. In the house we went, and we enjoyed the snow through the window from then on. And it was a beautiful snow.

Lily turns Two

Our precious Lily turned two at the beginning of January. And after the holidays, it was nice/stressful to have something to be planning for. I chose a theme based on a cake that I saw on One Charming Party. That cake stuck in my head, and since I knew Lily LOVES colors/crayons, away I went planning the big day. First I downloaded a party plan from the website that I mentioned above for only $6! What a deal! It came with invitations that I customized.

Then I made the cake that I fell in love with. All eight layers of it. It really didn't take as long as you might imagine, because each layer cooked for about 7 minutes, and I have two pans. It is a white cake mix dyed with food coloring to get the colors I wanted. Here it is pre-frosting.

I made the Wilton recipe for a yummy buttercream frosting, and here is the result.

We decorated and prepared for our party guests to arrive.

I made Lily's birthday shirt using felt that I appliqued onto the shirt, and I made a color-wheel tutu to match the theme. It did make my day when she walked into the room, saw the tutu and said, "Pretty. Pretty colors." Then I had the idea to make a Crayola tiara. It ended up tipped over for most of the party, but it was still so cute. (in my, maybe not so unbiased, opinion)

Here she is waiting for people to come while watching "Tales."

After people arrived, we enjoyed breakfast and then headed downstairs for coloring activities. I knew we needed to keep them simple with lots o kiddos under the age of 4. I cut out the initial of each child attending from sandpaper, and then had them color them. We then baked them in the oven, which melts all the crayon together nicely. Funny thing is, we forgot to give them to the kids. Sorry kids. (I bet the parents aren't that sorry to not have another random thing around the house.)

The little friends left birthday "messages" for Lily.

Then it was time to eat the cake with the surprise - I must admit, I giggled with glee as I cut it open when people started to realize what was inside. Yes, I giggled a lot, and my husband really enjoyed watching all of this play out.

This year, birthday girl enjoyed the cake, though it seemed to put her into a cake daze.

While enjoying cake, I hosted a little Crayola trivia contest with fun facts off of their website. (The little label cards were part of the downloadable party pack, as was the idea to put it over a crayon.) My favorite fact: after 37 years of working as Crayola's most senior crayon maker and molding a record 1.4 billion crayons, he revealed a secret. He was color blind! Amazing.

I forgot to get a picture of the party favors, which were large crayons in the shape of cute animal faces that I found from this Etsy Shop. Fun shop. I sent out Thank You notes that came with the downloadable party pack that I printed and cut, like the invitations. Here I included a pic of the envelopes and color wheel stickers. I have fun going overboard on the details.

All in all, we had a great day, and Lily seemed to really enjoy all the coloring and "friends." She also now regularly asks to see "Pictures. Birthday Cake. Pictures. Birthday Cake." I usually capitulate, because, well, I like the pictures of the birthday cake too. Really, I did it all, because I like colors.

Welcome to Parenthood

Our daughter, Lily, is now 11 months old. She has been amazingly healthy, which we are so very thankful for. She can be occasionally fussy, but overall, she is an easy baby to have. About two weeks ago, I was delivering food to friends who had just had a new baby girl. Lily and I had eaten our own dinner at Chick-fil-A right before we took more Chick-fil-A food to these friends.

We were talking and Lily was cruising around the room, but she was not really herself. As I picked her up to check on her, she proceeded to throw up all over these dear friends' kitchen and my pants. Literally, she blew chunks everywhere. We were all shocked, and fortunately, these are good friends who immediately sprung into action and helped me clean up the puke off of their hard wood floors and countertop. We were laughing so hard that we were crying, while Lily was actually crying, which did make me feel bad.

I got Lily into the car and had to pick John up from work, and we were going to try to pick up his car at the shop. Then, we hear more throwing up in the back seat. So sad. We went directly home and gave her a bath. She was acting fine and happy, thrilled to be in the bath as usual. Since I am still green as a parent, I gave her a bottle. I assumed she had just eaten something that disagreed with her and was fine. We loaded back into the car, with Lily in her car seat without its cover sitting on a blanket. We had gone about a mile, when the bottle made its reappearance. We immediately turned around and headed home. Poor baby. She had a 24 hour bug and was fine by the next night. Two days later, it was my turn, and it was bad.

Thankfully, we are all well now and have been initiated into childhood sickness. Those were some great moments. I do feel officially welcomed into parenthood.