Adventures in La La Land

1. We welcomed Lena Kay on January 23, almost exactly a year after my last miscarriage . 2. I finally achieved my dream of  becoming a full time stay at home mom. It has not been without its challenges, but it sure is nice to not have to go to work every day! :-) 3. We packed up our entire house in one week and moved in with my parents ! 4. Lucy and I worked our way through the alphabet , doing crafts and activities along the way. 5. Lucy had her second trip to the ER . Diagnosis: nursemaid's elbow. 6. I went on my first official diet and lost 9 pounds, then gave up. I also started a running plan and gave up after 2 weeks. 7. We took Lucy's binkies away when she turned 3.  It was rough. 8. We made and completed a summer bucket list. 9. Justin and I celebrated our 8th anniversary! 10. Discovered Lucy is allergic to soybean oil (through trial and error - not legitimate allergy testing). 11. I signed up for daily emails from Proverbs 31 ministries a...

1. I had a rough weekend last weekend. On Saturday after Lena's afternoon feeding, I started to feel some intense pain. I was practically writhing on the couch because I was hurting so much. After some online research, I decided it had to be thrush. Lucky for me, the prescription most often prescribed for thrush is Nyastatin. I happened to have some on hand from a while ago when Lucy had a diaper rash. So I've been using that and it's feeling tons better. By Sunday, however, my Paxil withdrawals started. I wanted to die. Chills, nausea, the shakes, e xhaustion, dizziness. We had our family Christmas with Justin's side of the family that day, and I spent most of it on the couch. Stupid drug dependence. I finally got it refilled on Monday and was feeling good withing hours of taking that beautiful little pill. Haha. I sound like such an addict.  2. Our final advent activities included introducing Lucy to the movie Elf (she liked it for the first hour, then got bored - ...

Quick picture snapped after the Christmas Eve service at church. Lena is 11 months old. I can't believe she's going to be one next month! By the time Lucy was 11 months old, I had spent weeks researching and planning her first birthday party. Sorry, second child. I think you might just get a cake and some balloons. Lol.  Anyway! Here's what's up this month: Routine We've really started to nail down a good routine. (Which will change as soon as I hit "submit" on this entry.) It usually looks something like this: 7:30 Wake up, nurse. 8:30 Eat breakfast: waffle and half a banana. (She rarely eats much of the waffle.) 9:30 Nap 11:30 Up, play for a while 12:00 Lunch, play 1:30 Nurse, nap 3:30 Up, snack 5:30 Dinner 7:00 Nurse, bedtime Eating For a while, I was stressing about how to drop a feeding during the day. Finally, I just decided to worry less about how many hours it had been since she'd nursed, and just feed her 3 meals a day, s...

1. Here's my "mother of the year" moment of the week: Lucy sleeps with a lamp on all night long. The lamp is on the floor and one morning this week, Lena crawled over to it and grabbed the light bulb. She cried for a few seconds, so I figured it must have been hot. I didn't notice til hours later that she had blisters  on 2 of her fingers. The blisters have since gotten red and scabby. Yikes. Worst mom ever. 2. Our advent activity for Monday was decorating cookies with friends: I'm pretty sure more candy/cookies/chocolate chips were eaten than cookies were decorated, but that's half the fun! ;-) Our friends stayed and played for a few hours afterward. Lucy adores  having friends to play with. I can't wait for Lena to be old enough for them to really play together. 3. We also made Christmas tree pizzas this week (which Lucy loved making, but refused to eat), watched Elf as a family, and saw the Christmas trees at Frederik Meijer Gardens. I'm...

1. It was really cold this week. Like highs in the teens cold. I realized that I'm going to save on gas this winter, because I abhor  the cold - especially when I have to get 2 kids in and out of the van. And especially when said van's heat doesn't work. Grrr. I see cabin fever in my future . . . 2. I don't know why I bother putting my planned Christmas activities in a specific order on the advent calendar, because they always change. I'm glad Lucy can't read yet, because I pretend the calendar says something different than it actually says every day. Haha. Here's what we did this week: we forgot to do anything on Sunday, so on Monday we made 2 different ornaments. Scrabble ornaments: We couldn't find 2 m's, so "mom" is actually "wow." Haha. And a cupcake ornament in honor of Jesus' birthday: I cut a squiggly line out of blue painter's tape and wrapped it around a clear glass ornament, let Lucy paint Elmer's ...

1. In the past week, I've noticed that Lena is crawling full time now instead of scooching on her belly. I'm pretty sure Lucy started full-time crawling at almost e xactly the same age. They've been so similar all along that I could probably start predicting when Lena will walk, get teeth, etc. 2. We're getting e xcited for Christmas around here! We got our tree up and I decorated the whole house. I've been listening to Christmas music non-stop, and even got all my gifts wrapped! (I still have more to buy. I'm not totally done.) Lucy and I are have been doing our Advent Activities and changing the number on our chalkboard countdown every day.  We made a card for our Compassion child, Christmas tree cinnamon rolls,  and painted Lucy's nails red and green. The last picture is to show how each envelope has baby Jesus getting a little closer to the stable. Every day I tell Lucy, "Jesus is getting close! It's almost Christmas!" 3. Justin had ...

1. Sorry this is so late. It's been a crazy day. Today is the one day of the year that I work outside the home. Every Saturday after Thanksgiving, Niki and I work at the family-owned dollar store. Our second cousins own it, and this is their family day to get their Christmas tree and have a day of fun together. So we run the store. It's always an adventure! Haha. 2. My van is dying. The transmission is going out so it has trouble making it into first gear. It has 241,000 miles on it, so we're not going to put any more money into it. I was really hoping it'd hit 250,000 but it's not looking too hopeful. Every time I put gas in it, I hope it doesn't die the next day, taking that expensive gas with it to the grave! 3. We had a very nice Thanksgiving with Justin's side of the family this year. I feel bad that we pretty much ate and ran, but it was naptime and Lena was melting down. Plus, I had shopping to do . . . 4. I am one of those horrible people who s...

Here are our Advent Activities for 2013. We repeated a couple of favorites from 2012 , but added a lot of new ones. If you're a procrastinator like I am, feel free to steal my ideas! :-)  This year, I found a package of 12 blank cards at the dollar store in red and green. I bought 3 packages and went to town decorating them. (Pictures to come.) Last year, I numbered them from 1-24, but this year we're going to do it as a countdown, so we'll start with number 24 tomorrow morning. 24. Make a cinnamon roll Christmas tree for breakfast.  23. Make ornaments and decorate the Christmas tree. Some ideas from pinterest: bead candy canes , scrabble (gonna use the girls' birth dates), marshmallow snowman 22. Go to Chicago to visit Aunt Kaley! 21. Paint nails red and green. 20. Make a Christmas card for Judie (our Compassion International child) 19. Visit Frederick Meijer Gardens with Great Grandma 18. Make hot chocolate snowmen to deliver to friends.  1...

I think every month, I'm a little later with the update. Haha. Here's what's up at 10 months. The first and only picture I got of her looking at the camera. This is what most of the pictures look like. Haha. Eating She's nursing every 4 hours around the clock. Sometimes during the day, she doesn't nurse very well. I wonder if she's getting ready to drop a feeding. (I dropped Lucy's afternoon feeding at 10 months) But then some days, she acts like she's starving. She loves solid food. She can eat pretty much anything now. Some of her recent favorites have been lasagna, cheese roll-ups (with green bean puree - sneaky, sneaky), beef-a-roni (with carrot puree), cheese, and cinnamon rolls. Hehe. That's my girl. I'm really trying to feed her 3 real meals a day. She has a jar of baby food here and there. She'll still only eat fruit from a jar, but it's better than nothing, right? And I work hard to incorporate veggies in other areas of...

1. I've been getting some great deals online shopping for Christmas. Mostly for Lucy. I have absolutely no ideas for Lena. She has all Lucy's old toys to play with! And I just realized (duh) that her birthday is a month after Christmas, so I need to be buying stuff for that too! Second child syndrome. 2. I posted the baked French toast recipe from last week  here . Mmmmm. So yummy. 3. Lucy and I had kind of a rough week. She is entering the whiny phase with a vengeance. I need to nip it in the bud, but I'm kind of at a loss. It's not just a whiny voice. It's this teeth-clenching, mind-numbing, fingernails-on-the-chalkboard fake cry that goes on and on and on. One day this week, we went to the dollar store 5 minutes from our house. 1 mile down the road she said, "I forgot to bring my balloon!" (She wanted to bring her balloon in the car with her.) When I refused to go back and get it, she cried the rest of the way to the store, the whole time we shopp...

Here is the promised French Toast recipe from Jesus' Birthday Party . I got it from my friend Kelly who got it from her mother-in-law. You know it's gonna be good when it gets passed around that often. :-) Ingredients: 2 sticks of butter*  2-3 loaves of French Bread (I used 2 really long loaves.) 2 cups brown sugar 2 heaping tsp cinnamon 6 eggs 3 cups of milk* Directions: 1. Use 2 cookie sheet with sides. On each cookie sheet spread one stick of softened butter. It will be lumpy 2. Mix brown sugar and cinnamon together. Sprinkle mixture on top of buttered cookie sheets 3. Mix eggs and milk. Cut French bread in 1" slices. Dunk bread slices in egg mixture, making sure both sides of the bread are covered. Arrange bread slices on cookie sheets 4. Refrigerate overnight 5. Bake at 350 for 10 minutes. Flip bread slices and bake 10 additional minutes 6. Serve and Enjoy! *I used Earth Balance butter (almost a whole container - enough to cover the bottom of e...

It's that time of year again! Time for our annual Birthday Party for Jesus! I started this tradition with Lucy and her friends when they were 18 months old. This was our 3rd year. We've added more kids and more chaos, but it just adds to the fun! This year was special because we combined the party with the Merry Larry party I won from houseparty.com ! We got sent an awesome kit full of goodies to share. It had the Merry Larry and the True Light of Christmas DVD, a Veggie Tales Christmas CD , plates, cups, napkins, silly bands, stickers, tattoos, and some fun face masks. I had a blast incorporating Bob and Larry into our party. Lucy helped me fill the goodie bags a few days ago: Then we decorated: Lucy picked out the pink tablecloth. Haha. I got pretty good at drawing Bob and Larry faces! Yes, I drew all those faces. Please admire my incredible artistic ability! ;-) We made some delicious dairy free cupcakes. (Recipe here . I substituted earth balance butt...