Adventures in La La Land

Did I get your attention? ;-) I've been meaning to note that I don't really hate formula as much as I may have let on in my posts about Lena's weight gain/"failure to thrive." I don't want any of my formula-feeding-friends to feel like I'm looking down on you. I couldn't care less how you choose to feed your baby. I, personally, love breastfeeding, and I just hated that I felt like formula-feeding was being pushed on me by my doctor. Formula is a Godsend for women who can't or don't want to breastfeed, and I like having it as an option to fall back on. At least I did . . . I'm terrible at building a frozen milk stash. I'm home all the time, so it's not too necessary. And I have yet to figure out when I'm supposed to pump when I breastfeed for every feeding. Anyway, we have a wedding coming up and the girls are going to Justin's parents'. I don't want to worry about having enough frozen milk and I don't want t...

1. Lucy got this book for her birthday from Great Grandpa and Grandma. It came with a CD of a little girl reading the stories. Lucy listens to it during every nap and every night before bed, and she seriously has every story memorized. It is amazing. I really need to get her a CD of Bible verses or something! 2. I made another fabulous pinterest recipe this week. Smoky Chicken Pasta . It was very similar to some other recipes I've made from plainchicken, but I still loved it. It was very bad for us, though. Lots of heavy cream, butter, and cheese. Which leads me to my next point . . . 3. The diet is not going very well. Haha. We had Olive Garden on Sunday as a belated Mother's Day celebration. Monday night was Bible Study potluck where I ate way too much good food. We had that fattening smoky chicken pasta on Thursday, and KFC on Friday. Oh, and Wednesday night I had a small bowl of ice cream, followed by 2 of those Grandma's chocolate chip cookies you get from the...

My baby is 1/3 of the way to a year! 4 months old and getting cuter every day. ;-) Routine/Breastfeeding/Sleep The past few days she's been waking up at 6:59 on the dot. Haha. She happily talks and plays for a while before she starts fussing. I feed her in bed and we snuggle for a while, then we usually go back to bed for an hour or so until Lucy wakes up. She's finally started to go 3 hours between eating! Not every time, but more often than not. I think it helps that she's started to eat off both sides more regularly. She definitely prefers my right side, so the left doesn't produce as much. Isn't it crazy how my body knows that? She's still only staying awake about an hour at a time before going down for another nap, and she usually takes a few short naps and one long nap during the day. Night time is very hit or miss. Sometimes she has her last feeding at 7:30, sometimes it's not until 10 or 11. I was just reading in Lucy's 4 month update ...

It's a cold, rainy day today, but we're dreaming of sunshine and ice cream, so we made this little craft today. First we drew a lowercase i. I drew x-es on the bottom to make it look like an ice cream cone, cut some ice cream scoops out of construction paper, and let Lucy glue them on. You're not taking my picture, are you? We glued on cotton balls to look like whipped cream. Lucy thought they looked like marshmallows, so we had to have a little marshmallow snack: We glued a cherry pom pom on top and some sprinkles on the bottom. Voila! It's supposed to be nicer tomorrow. We might have to take a field trip to the ice cream shop!

I just realized I forgot to post this. I found the questions on pinterest, and Lucy was so adorable when she answered them. She really thought about each one and surprised me a couple times with her answers. I didn't help her at all. This is what she came up with all on her own. What do you and Mommy do together? Play What do you and Daddy do together? Play What makes you happy? Toys What is something scary? Thunder What are you really good at? Ballet Who is your best friend? Presley What do you want to be when you grow up? Mommy What do you think about before you fall asleep? Getting my "be's" [this was before we took them away - haha] Favorites Color  Yellow and pink Book The Belly Button Book [Sandra Boynton] Movie Little Mermaid Food Pizza Treat Goldfish TV Show Caillou Toy My baby Animal Turtle [that one surprised me, but she answered without hesitation! haha] Song "Lola and you Dance." [She made that ...

1. We had a big weekend last week. Lucy's birthday was Saturday. We spent hours at Chuck E. Cheese thanks to the hundred tokens my mom got Lucy. We didn't even use them all. 2. Also on Saturday, Justin ran the 25K River Bank run in Grand Rapids. Lucy and I went to watch last year, but I didn't have a babysitter for Lena this year, and there was no way I would be able to push the double stroller through the crowd down there! Justin had a cold, so he didn't do as well as last year, but he finished! That alone is an incredible feat. 3. Sunday was Lucy's birthday party. She got spoiled like crazy and loved all the attention. Imagine that. Haha. Then, Monday was my brother Luke's birthday. Lucy and I decorated for him: Poster on his door - Lucy decorated it with princess stickers. :-) Lucy's portrait of Luke. Balloons! (Don't mind his messy room! Haha.)  4. Lena has been trying so hard to roll over this week! She just can't get past thi...

Lucy got a bunch of princess nail polish for her birthday, and she desperately wants to paint her own nails, but I just can't bring myself to allow such a mess. I compromised this week when we worked on the letter H. First we traced her h ands, then I drew nails on them, and finally she got to paint them! Then she wanted to trace my hand. Lol. I promise it doesn't really look like this:

My sister is in search of a way to make cake pops royal blue. We've ruled out food coloring (it makes the frosting gloppy and gross), and it's surprisingly difficult to find royal blue sprinkles or sugar. So when I came across this pin on Pinterest, I got all excited and sent it to her: The caption on the pin, says to combine 1/4 c. sugar with 1/2 tsp. food coloring, and bake it at 350*. However, when you click on the pic to go to the site, it says "This page has been removed." Niki did a little searching and found this: Apparently, it's not real. Or if it is, it's pretty difficult to accomplish. I also saw an article floating around facebook recently about how Pinterest is creating anxiety in mothers and causing them to feel so much pressure to be the "Pinterest mom." I honestly do feel that way sometimes, but I also think Pinterest has been an amazing tool. I have found so many amazing recipes, tips, and craft projects that I decided to doc...

I thought of a few things I forgot to mention in Lucy's 3 Year Update. 1. She is just now starting to sprout her 2 year molars! We're late bloomers around here. Her fingers are always  in her mouth lately, so I took a peek - sure enough, one of her lower molars is starting to poke through. Only one so far! The good news is they don't seem to be hurting her. She's always been a pretty easy teether. Hopefully Lena will follow suit! 2. She has a nasty cold right now - complete with chest rattling cough and disgusting runny nose. The kid can not  figure out how to blow her nose. She either blows with her mouth or sucks the snot back in. Haha. Her preferred method of snot removal is using her right arm to swipe under her nose and across her cheek. She has a perpetual snot trail on her right cheek (and forearm). Totally the Wal-Mart child I swore I wouldn't have. 3. Another of her quirks I wanted to record is her propensity for making lists. I think she partially ha...

My Lucy is 3 years old. Somehow that seems so old. Not such a toddler anymore. Only 2 years 'til she's in Kindergarten! Here are some of the things I want to note about her: She can be so sweet. Yesterday, I was playing with her dollhouse with her. She looked up at me with the biggest smile, leaned over to hug me and said, "Mommy, you're my best friend." I about melted in a puddle right there. She's the best big sister. She loves to kiss and hug Lena, and is always saying, "I love you, Lena!" She talks in a high, squeaky voice (can't imagine where she gets that from), loves to put the binky back in Lena's mouth, and will often say, "Why you crying Lena? Do you need a kiss from your big sister?" Haha. Yesterday, at her birthday party, she unwrapped a fishing pole from Justin. Someone told her to tell him thank you, and she ran over to him, gave him a big hug, then leaned back to look him in the eye and say so sincerely,...

I'm going to try to make this a quick one. I have too much to do today to spend an hour writing this like I usually do. 1. Today is Lucy's 3rd birthday! We have big plans to go to Chuck E. Cheese later today, but her party isn't until tomorrow. I did let her open one present this morning (plus some tokens wrapped up from my mom). And she woke up to her room filled with balloons and this at the bottom of the stairs: I took this picture last night because I expected Lola to have them all torn down by this morning. Miraculously they were still in place! I'm working on a 3rd Birthday Update for Lucy. It's daunting. 2. We worked on the letter G this week. We made a Glitter G , and Lucy worked in the g arden with G randpa. 3. Diet Update: it's going remarkably well. I actually lost 9 pounds in one week. Seriously. Apparently my body just needed a jumpstart! Or I really used to consume so many calories that limiting myself to 1800 is a drastic difference...

This is my tutorial on how to make a glitter G - because I'm sure none of you are smart enough to figure it out on your own. 1. Find a g template on the internet. Or use this one (page 5). 2. Go outside to the picnic table. This is an outdoor project. Trust me. You do not want to be cleaning glitter off of every imaginable surface inside your house. 3. Get some dollar store salt shakers. Coffee also required if doing this project before noon. (Especially if the temperature is below 70*) 4. Pour glitter into salt shakers. 5. Put glue on your g and apply glitter generously. Duck head paper weight optional. 6. Pour excess glitter back into the shaker. 7. Add more colors. 8. Admire your finished product sparkling in the sun!

1. Well the news of the week is that I went on my first official diet. It's not super fun. I'm not doing anything crazy or super-restrictive. I signed up with myfitnesspal and they asked me questions about my lifestyle and goals. I said that I'm sedentary, but want to lose 25 lbs, so they only gave me 1250 calories a day. Yikes. I add 500 to that because I'm breastfeeding, and don't beat myself up if I go over another 50 calories or so. Basically, I'm trying to stay around 1800 calories. I entered my calories all week, basically to get a feel for what 1800 calories looks like. I'm a complete nutrition novice. I was amazed how many calories are in peanut butter and cheese - a couple of my diet staples. Haha. And one day I was ravenous and scarfed down 2 pieces of Papa Murphy's pizza for lunch. That didn't leave me many calories for dinner! It's a learning process, and I honestly hate it, but for the first time in my life I hate my current weight m...

To celebrate the letter F this week, we tried an activity I've seen floating (hehe, pun) around Pinterest for a while: alphabet f ishing. (My inspiration came here .) My dad has all kinds of random, interesting things used as decoration in this house. So we picked up the "Legal Fishing Gauge" because it was stick-like and had a hole in the end to tie our yarn through. I found a magnet on the fridge that was shaped like an "o", and tied the yarn through that on the other end. Then we threw our magnetic letters in the tub (the Leap Frog ones worked way better than the little dollar store ones) and went fishing! Here are a couple of the "fish" we caught: Lucy loved  this activity. She thought it was the greatest thing ever. Later on in the week, we made flower f's. My idea was to have a green stem and flowers just at the top, but Lucy wanted to cover the whole thing with flowers. We had these flowers in the craft closet (leftovers fro...