New Hobby: Cake Decorating

I started thinking about Maddie's birthday months before she turned one.  Either because my little baby girl was turning one and it's a big deal OR this modern marvel known as Pinterest.  I began browsing for ideas and came up with pink ladybugs and then started looking at cakes.  I never want to pay what the bakery charges for a cake but I wanted her to have a cute cake.  So why don't I just do it?  And that's how the idea for cake decorating as a new hobby began. 

For Mother's Day Michael bought be a starter case of tips and some other decorating supplies.  My friend Sara has always wanted to get into cake decorating so we thought it would be fun to take a class at Hobby Lobby.  So every Tuesday evening in August we had a class.  It was fun to get away and do something "adult" and learn the proper decorating techniques.  Although I'll probably just be doing this for birthdays for family, I am really having fun with it!  It is a good creative outlet for me and I am excited to be dabbing my hands in something new. 

This is my cake from our last class. :)

MOPS

We are officially part of MOPS (Mothers of Preschoolers-although it's for mothers of any under school age kid). For more info on it click on this link: MOPS I feel very fortunate to be a part of this group.  There is a waiting list and I didn't think we'd even be able to get in.  This year there are a lot of babies and the nursery was full, but since Maddie can walk so well we were able to move her up to the next room (18-24 mo.)!

I decided I wanted to get the kids involved in something that will allow them time to interact with other kiddos, especially since we aren't doing CMO this year. The bonus is that it is Christian based! Our MOPS is especially nice because we have the MOPPETS program which has people caring for our children while we have the meetings.  Not all MOPS have this so we are very blessed! And the way it works is we will have meetings every other Wednesday but the kids still go every week.  So the weeks we don't have meetings will be FREE TIME! Which for me will mean grocery shopping without kids! Yahoo!

Our first day was this week.  It was a lot of introductory stuff and paperwork, but I can tell it's going to be a wonderful experience for us.  The group of ladies will be a good source of support and fellowship.  When I picked up the kids from their rooms Nate was playing with play-doh and there were bubbles being blown in Maddie's room.  Both of them did very well with me leaving them in a new place so that was a little extra bonus that I didn't have to deal with a crying kid at drop off. 

We are very excited about this new adventure and look forward to the experiences MOPS will bring us this year!

Laundry Room

I found this idea on Pinterest and just had to do it! I thought it would be perfect for a laundry room. Not that I have one now, but maybe I'll hang it up in the laundry closet-it will make doing laundry a little sweeter.

Maddie at 3, 6, 9, and 12 months

Now, my laundry "closet" would not be complete without my other baby! So Nate and I had a little photo session as well. Since he's older he got to have a little fun. ;)



Big Helper & 1st Time Out

I always say 'I need to blog that!' whenever the kids do or say something I want to remember, the problem is that I can never remember when it comes time to blog. I think I need to write them down right away or there's no chance of it getting on here. So, just a couple things to mention this week.

Nate: He is becoming such a big boy! He helps out a lot more-example, today when I was changing Maddie's diaper and didn't realize she pooped and was not set up at all for a poopy diaper, I asked Nate to get me the wipes and he ran over and got them.  He also loves to help unload the grocery cart onto the counter at the store. He's talking a lot more too.  You probably have to be around him as much as I am to understand most of it, but he's really trying to communicate a lot more.  I love whenever he sees a shark in a puzzle or book, he says 'shark' and then 'ah ooh wah eh ah o o' (like in Finding Nemo. Cracks me up. I thought for sure when asked what sound a shark makes he would respond with this chant, but the other day when I asked he just bared his teeth. I guess he knows sharks don't really make sounds!

Maddie is doing great, of course!  She loves to eat and is still generally a happy kid.  Although the second she turned one we noticed her attitude changing.  She now gets pretty upset if she doesn't get her way.  She is starting to throw these little fits, kinda funny.  She is still pretty easy to manage though because she is easily redirected. She understands so much! I don't know if I just didn't give Nate enough credit at this age, thinking there's no way he understands what I'm saying, or if he was just more stubborn and didn't want to comply.  At the end of the night I tell Maddie to grab her blanket and her Cat in the Hat (or now it's her new stuffed dog, Violet) and she will go over and grab them and go to the stairs.  The other day I smelled poop.  I asked them both who pooped because someone stinks!  Maddie went over to the diaper bin and pulled out a diaper and gave it to me.  I checked, and sure enough, she was the guilty party! I couldn't believe she knew exactly what I was saying! So now that I know she's understanding us, there is also the downside of it as well, at least for her.  She was hitting Nate on the head a few days ago.  I told her to stop.  She looked at me and then started hitting him again as a smile spread across her face.  So she got her first time out.  She was not happy about it for about 3 seconds and then thought it was fun and stood behind the gate laughing.  Great. Not the response I usually look for when I'm discipling but it was pretty funny.

Trip to St. Louis

Everyone taking their summer vacations did not help with our desire to take a trip of our own.  Michael has been wanting to go on vacation for awhile now, but I said there is no way I am going anywhere with a baby that is not sleeping through the night.  Well, now that miss Maddie is sleeping at night, we decided to give this vacation thing a try.  We have taken a couple of road trips up to Wisconsin with Nate, but we have always left at night.  This being our first trip with the both of them, on the road and in a hotel room, we decided to go somewhere moderately close to home so that if disaster strikes, we can get home within a few hours.  What better place than St. Louis? It's a five hour drive and has a ton of activities for kids.  Perfect.

So we set out last Wednesday on our first family vacation (first with Mads).  The drive there went really well.  I loaded the car with toys and books.  Jaime lent us the boys' computers.  We had the DVD player (which I thought would be on the whole time and didn't end up using until close to the end of the drive).  We were set.  I also wrapped up some cheap toys I had gotten so every now and then I could pull out a gift for Nate to open up.  He enjoyed that, although once he realized there were gifts in the car he wanted to open them all at once.

The first day was designated just for travel.  No other plans or schedules so we could take our time.  Not knowing how the car ride was going to go or how many stops we were going to have to make, this flexibility was essential.  Although we only ended up making one stop for lunch and then went to the Walmart there so the kids could run around the toy section and play and stretch their legs. We got into St. Louis (we actually stayed on the IL side) that afternoon, checked into the hotel, got a pizza, and chilled the rest of the night.

For our first day we went to the St. Louis Zoo.  Awesome place and it's free!  We had taken the kids to the zoo last fall and what a difference 9 months can make.  Nate was much more interested in the animals this time.  He really enjoyed himself.  I don't know that he really liked one animal more than another, but didn't want to get too close to them, even if they were on the other side of the glass. Maddie didn't care where we were, just enjoyed running in the opposite direction of where we were going.  She thought that was hilarious.  Us, not so much.  It was really hot and the kids were tuckered out by lunch time so we headed out without seeing the whole zoo.  Of course they both instantly pass out the minute we get in the car (this is how naps happen during the trip) so we just grab some lunch and head back to the room.  After lunch and since the naps were done, we had some time to kill.  We decided to take them to the park.  We went to Tilles Park in one of the suburbs that was really neat.  The playground equipment was awesome and there was a fountain/sprinkler system to play in.  Nate really enjoyed running through that.  One of the fountains caught Maddie by surprise.  She did not like that at all!

Day two started out at Grant's Farm (free-only had to pay for parking!).  It's a really neat place.  We got a trolley ride through the whole park to see all the animals and then they dropped us off at the zoo area to view the animals.  Nate enjoyed feeding the geese but the highlight was feeding a goat a baby bottle of milk! He thought it was just the best thing ever! We tried to feed the llamas but they wouldn't leave the shade to get their treats. We finished the day at the St. Louis Science Center (again, free!).  This place is awesome!  There were so many stations and exhibits and everything was made in such a fun and engaging way, it didn't feel like learning at all!  Nate had fun exploring and liked all the hands-on activities.  His favorite was the dinosaur room-he kept roaring at the big dinosaur while digging for his fossils.  He also liked the bird room, probably because of all the magnifying glasses. 

The drive home was just as smooth.  The kids, so wore out, slept almost the entire first half of the drive; Maddie was out almost as soon as the trip started and was out until almost lunch time.  So we only stopped for lunch and then headed straight home.  I think the trip was a success! I don't think they would have lasted much longer than just a couple of days though and so it was probably timed out right.  It's good to know the option is there to get away for a couple of days and that they can handle the car ride and hotel room just fine.

Maddie is One!

My baby is now officially a toddler! I am excited about each new stage and development as the children grow, but it is hard to say good-bye to the baby days, knowing they are forever gone. She is now my big girl, and what a big girl she has all of a sudden become.  She's been walking for what feels like forever, but now her attitude feels much older, just overnight.  She is no longer content to sit in the cart at the store, she wants down so she can explore! She just knows what she wants now and is no longer willing to just "go along with things", although is still pretty happy and content. 

She came down with a fever last week and after a couple of days I took her in to the doctor.  No other symptoms and the doctor sent us home.  The fever finally broke on Sunday and she got a rash so I'm diagnosing her with Roseola.  It made her lethargic and fussy, but she was a trooper for her birthday party on Saturday.

We had our friends and family over for a birthday celebration cook out.  We had the kiddie pool and sprinkler toy out for the kids and Michael's coworker brought a bouncy house.  So the kids had a lot of fun and expelled a lot of energy.  Maddie, of course, had no idea that any of this was for her, but seemed to enjoy the attention.  She wasn't really interested in opening her presents.  She did try a few but I think I spent more time chasing after her-she just wanted to keep running away with tissue in her hand.  She played a little bit in her smoosh cake but didn't take one bite.

11 Months

Well, Miss Maddie is WALKING! She's been walking a few weeks now and gets better and better each day.  She is still a little wobbly, but walks most everywhere she can, only crawling out of speed necessity.  It really makes her seem like such a big girl. 
She loves to hand us toys now.  Whenever she gets a chance to hand us a toy she will; thinks it's the best thing ever.  She is also cleaning up her toys (something Nate still struggles with--so now we have our dumper and our cleaner).  She can put the ball in the hole now too. 

I figured out why she was waking up at 1am last month-she really WAS hungry.  One night I decided just to go get her during one of her crying spells.  I thought, even if she goes to sleep with me, I don't care, I can't take this anymore!  She didn't want to sleep with me and didn't want me to hold her, so I tried to feed her and she ate like she was hungry.  So the next day I decided to pump and found out my milk supply had gone down.  So all these nights she really was hungry! Of course I feel horrible!  So we are now pumping all milk and bottle feeding and supplementing with some formula.  It has helped at night but she is still waking for a feeding.  It's probably the guilt, but I am continuing to get up and feed her.  If I'm wrong, so be it.  Maybe everyone is wrong and she really is hungry.  I just don't understand why she can soothe herself back to sleep when she is content (she wakes periodically in the night and will cry just a bit and then go back to sleep) unless it is time to eat and then she won't stop crying until she's fed. 

She's also completely off baby food.  She eats mostly table food and likes most everything we eat.  She's not very picky at all.  She is even eating fruits now!  If it is a dinner she doesn't like then we have toddler meals for her which she seems to enjoy.

This past week has been pretty rough with teething.  We have been lucky so far as all her 8 teeth that have come in have not caused her too much of a problem.  But she has her first molar coming in and it's pretty rough.  She's been getting up at night and is a little crankier during the day.  Hopefully it will come in soon, poor baby.

**New developments at the end of this week: Maddie is sleeping through the night! That's right, I said it! She started the night before she turned 11 months and has continued to do so each night.  She sometimes gets up at 6am for a bottle (we are now completely done breastfeeding and just using formula/milk mixtures) and sometimes sleeps until 8 or 9am without getting up at all during the night.  There are some nights she wakes and stirs and sometimes cries a little, but she goes back to sleep like a champ! Maddie's sleep has always been on her schedule, even when I try to manipulate it.  I knew eventually she would get it and she did, it just clicked!