Hot Date!

We're at my in-laws house, about to escape for the night!  We'll all sleep here, but after we put her to bed, we're heading to the drive-in!  Can you tell I'm excited?  And guess what we're seeing?  Despicable Me and Inception :)  Hooray!  Let's hope I can stay awake through five hours of movie and hope I don't regret staying out until 1:00 am in the morning... Oh well, we're making memories here right?  Plus we're seeing two movies for twenty bucks.   So that's awesome.  And we have a pathfinder, so we just push down the backseat, lay out some pillows and blankets and voila! we're watching movies in bed outside.  It's sort of like camping, right? Let the canoodling commence!  Because the best kinds of dates are the ones you can canoodle on.  Does anyone else think the word canoodle is hysterical?  No? Just me?  That's alright. Let's hope we don't run the battery out (ok so that wasn't technically correct at all...)

Any awesome drive in memories to share? I know they're out there :)

Toddler Talk Thursday

The ladies over at Family and life in las vegas and Crazy about my baybah  have come up with a new blog party, and today is the first installment.

A little about the new party first:  "Toddler Talk Thursday is a place for moms and dads of toddlers to come together over a weekly topic and share ideas, go-to toys or products. Not to mention it is a great way meet other bloggers of toddlers. Topics will range from Dinner Dos and Disasters, Books, and Bedtime."
This week’s topic is Books. We all know that reading is an essential part of your toddler’s learning and development. But what do you do if your Toddler doesn’t show any interest in books?


We don't have a problem with Peanut not being interested in books, she is very interested in them.  The problem is that she is very interested in pulling them all down from her bookshelf or throwing them across the room at mommy!  It is pretty rare that she will sit down and listen to a whole book from us!  When she was very little (and couldn't yet run away from me) I used to read aloud to her from any book I happened to be reading at the time. But sadly, that doesn't work very well for us anymore. 

What I have found works well for us is to pick books with lots and lots of different pictures.  And if they have different textures that's even better!  But Peanut especially seems drawn to simple books with a lot of pictures of things that she can pronounce.  She has been pretty big into animals, and food lately.  Two words I hear all the time are "apple juice and and goat".  So random I know!  A lot of times instead of actually reading the words written on the pages, I just ask her to point at different objects, or ask her which animals make which noises etc., and this keeps her entertained for a few minutes longer than if I simply read the story to her.  It's amazing how many words she has picked up from books.  The last couple weeks she has really been whipping out new words!  I swear she learns at least one new word a day.  It's been awesome to watch!

We also make frequent trips to the library and I allow her to pick out one board book to take home with her for the week.  She gets pretty excited about this, and it allows us to try out new books without paying for them.  And so far she's been pretty good about having to give them back! (which I was nervous about)

But here are a few of her current and all around favorites:

     B is for Bear

Where is Baby's Belly Button?

The Eye Book

Tails

My First ABC Lift the Flap Board Book

and Hide and Seek Puppy

Happy Reading!

Smile Pretty :)

We're still working on it...  :)

 At least she "goes big" right?

Happy Wednesday!

Emma's New Fun Game

Can you guess what Emma's new favorite game is?

Coincidentally, can you guess what mommy's least favorite game of the moment is?

Actually, it's a tie between this and fishing things out of the garbage can.

My life is so glamorous...

The Play Kitchen #1

A few months ago, Adam and I stumbled across this Tutorial on making a playkitchen out of a nightstand, and we fell in love.  We then spent the next few weeks scouring Craigslist for cheap/free nightstands that we could turn into little works of art like Jane did ( Jane is the name of the talented woman who writes at "Out of the Crayon Box")

After a lot of dissapointments and false offers, we scored big and grabbed this nightstand for $6.00!  Sweet, right?  It was, except that the top turned out to be a veneer nightmare!  It looked like this:

(Bella decided this was her new favorite sun spot and refused to move, so please ignore the sleeping kitty)

But now, about a month later, I'm excited to say it looks like this:

Hooray!!! Obviously we still have a ton of work to do, but the bones are there and they're pretty :)  Kudos to my awesome handy husband and all the friends whose tools he has borrowed over the last couple of weeks.    We're hoping to have it done by the end of the summer.  It was originally going to be a birthday gift for Peanut, but we couldn't wait until November!  So now her gift will probably be a super cute set of pots and pans from Ikea to go with her new stove. 

Also, I got excited and made her an apron to wear that matches the curtains (that I have also made already but will show you all when we do the big reveal!)

                                                                          (I love ruffles!)

So this is the project that has been keeping me busy and away from the blog at night.  Again, apologies.  But I think the end result will be worth it!

ps.  Welcome TTA friends!  Be sure to leave your blog name so I can find you and follow you back!

Late Night Ramblings

I apologize for the lack of posts last week.  Seriously, I couldn't find the time to write one?  Good gracious  I'm lazy super busy lately.  I thought of a lot of funny ones and serious ones, but it's 11:30 and I never ever ever ever stay up this late on weekdays. (and barely ever on weekends) So I'm pretty brain dead right now.   I just spent like three hours trying to fix up the blog format, because my free background pooped out on me?? And I didn't even notice because I didn't even check the blog at all last week.  Shameless negelct.  Worst blogger of the year, right here. 
  Also I'm the worlds biggest retard when it comes to anything involving computer language.  So I'm pretty proud of myself for getting any kind of background up here.  But honestly, what do you guys think?   Is my blog ok to look at?  Is there anything I really need to work on (besides posting regularly...) format wise?  And if there is, please let me in on any secrets regarding how to go about fixing said problems.
   I think tomorrow I will probably attempt a real post, and if I get some time to myself, maybe try and add one of those awesome post divider/signatures to the end of my posts.  But that may be waaaaay too ambitious.  We'll see.

Good night!
::insert cute post divider here::

Mom Fear

  Last night I cried myself to sleep over a blog I have been reading the past few days.   I don't know if any of you have been following little Presley's story yourselves, but if you want to you can read it  here I will warn you though, that it is sad.  My heart is  breaking in two for this couple that I have never met, but has so much in common with Adam and I.  Their little girl is so much like my peanut in that bathroom photo that it makes my throat close up instantly.  We even have those same toys.  And their beautiful little daughter was almost the same age as Emma. 

  The part that really touches me is that the blog entry before the tradgedy struck is one of happy summer activities.  Life changes so very quickly.  And that is really really scary as a parent.  I don't think that I really knew what fear was before I had a baby of my very own.  Fear for my own life pales in comparison to the fear that grips me when I hear of something like this happening to a child.  I have trouble watching the news with all the stories of children being abducted out of their backyards or just never coming home.  It makes me want to take Emma into bed and just snuggle her forever and never let her out of my arms.

   The weekend of the fourth we were haveing an evening BBQ at a house of some dear friends of ours, when I had the scariest moment of my life yet.  Emma fell down an entire flight of stairs (not a small six set, but stairs leading to the basement) I felt like I was going to hyperventilate.  She was miraculously fine (few small bruises on her legs- Thank you God!) but that night I kept seeing her small body laying at the bottom of the staircase over and over in a variety of nightmares.   I understand that you can't keep an eye on your child every second of the day (try as we might moms) and even when you are watching them sometimes toddlers are just too fast and accidents can happen right under our noses.  And that is really really scary. 

     God was merciful to us that day, and I'm sure that over the course of her life we will have many more "scares".  I am not very physically coordinated and her father was a daredevil of a child (not the best combination).  But I don't think that intense parental fear will ever diminish.  I think it will continue to grip my heart each time she is in any kind of danger and even when she is perfectly safe in my arms. I guess it is just part of being a mother, but it is one that I was not fully prepared to experience before I met my little peanut.

My heart goes out to this grieving family who I have never met, we will keep you in our hearts and in our prayers in your time of greatest need.

Family Love ?

We're always creating lovely family memories around here!

Like this one:

(Give me my money!  I need my money... Ten points for that reference!)

Or this one...

Like I said, lovely family memories, I'm sure we'll always cherish!  (Actually these are two of our favorite pictures from our family reunion trip this weekend- more on that later)

                         Sorry to subject you to our abusive pictures like that but it was too funny not to share!

Boobie Dookies (aka blueberry cookies)

Emma and I just finished baking the yummiest thing! I had to share it with all of you because it is easy, delicious and super cheap this week!  Stop and Shop has an awesome sale on blueberries (4 pints for just $5.00)  so of course I was all over that.  "Boobies" are Emma's favorite fruit of the moment.  She eats them by the fistful! So one pint went in the freezer, one in the fridge for morning snacking and two in this awesome blueberry recipe that I found at Smitten Kitchen

And for once, mine actually came out looking just like the ones in the recipe!  Hoorah!  Gotta love it when that happens...

And they taste just as good as they look.  It's a good thing I'm bringing them to a party tonight or I'd probably have the whole pan eaten by tomorrow. No joke.  They're that good.

Emma agrees:

 

Also this was my first time using lemon zest in a recipe, and I thought it sounded pretty gross at first.  But it turned out to be pretty easy and added a lot of yummy tartness to the cookies.  It was also Emma's first time helping mommy to bake something and that also went pretty well.   She stood on a chair and helped me pat the dough into the pan, measure out the sugar and flour, spread the blueberries ( aka she stuffed as many blueberries into her mouth as she could before we covered them with the second layer of crumby goodness) and helped scoop on the toppings.   She also "helped" me clean up the huge mess we made of the kitchen floor.  Then we finished the whole escapade up with a shower.  But it was worth the mess, she was so excited to help, and we encourage helping around here!

Articles

I recently discovered how to add pages to the blog, so please feel free to check out the About Me section and the Articles page, I just added another article.  It is about the things that we do to hopefully instill a sense of responsibility in our daughter (ie chores that the peanut "helps" me to do)

I hope all of you East Coasters are managing to stay cool today because it is seriously hot out there!

4th of july weekend

We had a very busy long weekend! Unfortunately I never remember to take our camera anywhere exciting, so the only  pictures I have of this weekend were taken in our backyard on sunday!  But I can offer you a written description of our activity.  The weekend went like this:

Friday-  Adam got out of work early, we worked on Emma's play stove (i'll post about this when it's done, so excited!) then he went to Beerworks for a guy's night while mommy stayed home and kept cool!

Saturday- Grocery shopping, then BBQ with good friends from our former church group, our friend Eric stopped by on his way home to Connnecticut so we fed him, then headed over to Marc and Katie's house for more BBQ action.  (experienced one of the scariest moments of my short life!!! Emma was almost really hurt- but she's fine)  Watched some fireworks, bed.

Sunday- took Emma to the playground, cleaned, took Emma to an awesome parade, saw Bruce, got Captain Dusty's !! Played in the backyard for a while (hence the pictures above) did some more cleaning, watched a movie relaxed, made dinner.  Bed.

Monday- Headed down to Upton, dropped Emma off with her "Nanny and Bappa" (she may have stolen the "bappa" from the Kreyling kids, it came out of nowhere yesterday!) went to see The Last Airbender, (it was alright), back to the in-laws, played in the pool for awhile, ate some awesome steak fajitas!, played in the pool again, then drove home.  Light dinner. Bed.

Pheeeew!  No wonder I'm tired today... and that is why we are spending today hanging out in the AC, and catching up on housework!  I hope everyone else had as good a weekend as we did! :)

Buzz on By Thursday

  I decided to try out his new blog hop today.  My little peanut loves bees!  Every bug or speck of anything on the ground is a bee lately!  The big fuzzy ones are her favorite though, and she chases them all over the yard (much to mommy's chagrin).  I'm so afraid one of these days she's going to catch one!

So if you're checking out the blog and it looks interesting, feel free to hit the follow button.  And make sure to leave a link to your blog so I can return the favor!

Torture and Free Chocolate!

So we were up at 5:30 again this morning, and we did the other half of the torture session  video.  I'm really proud of us, (it took a lot of convincing to get Adam to do it with me this morning)

But seriously, the last time I was this sore,  I had just pushed an 8 1/2 pound baby out of my whoo-haw.  I'm walking around the house like a 90 year old woman.  Somebody get me a walker pronto!

The thought that's getting me through the day:  a dark chocolate raspberry chocolixir and free truffle at Godiva tonight with one of my best friends!

If you're not a member of the Godiva Rewards Program yet, than you need to join RIGHT NOW! 
I'm completely serious, go to this website now: Godiva Rewards Club because every month you get to walk into the Godiva store and pick out one of those delicious little ($30 lb) truffles.  I did the math, and it'll cost you about $2.50 for one if you're not a member.  

And if you're poor like my husband and I are then you should both join and once a month you get to indulge in a decadent little treat that we would never purchase for ourselves otherwise. (aka a free date)  Or you can choose to cash it in with a good friend, like I am this month! Free girls night.  Delicious.