Adventures in La La Land

1. Well I survived my week off of facebook and Pinterest. I didn't particularly enjoy it. I missed it a lot. Apparently I'm just not one of those people who enjoys "unplugging from the world." And I don't know how much it helped my depression/comparison issues. I just find other ways to compare myself. In church on Sunday, there was a girl on the praise team who is my age, has had 2 kids, and is a size zero, always wears such cute clothes, and can style her hair so amazingly! I had to close my eyes during all the worship songs because otherwise I just stare at her the whole time feeling ugly and inadequate. The issue isn't facebook. It's me. Still trying to figure out how to fix that. I didn't have a huge surge of productivity, either. I did spend more time reading my Bible, and Lucy and I did some pretty stellar M crafts , but I didn't even crack open a single book or do any more cleaning than usual. Part of that was because of number 2 . . . ...

I got this idea from notimeforflashcards.com . Her owl was dotted with a Bingo dotter to make little O's. I don't have one of those, so I gave Lucy a pop bottle cap . She had more fun smearing the paint than dotting O's on the page. :-)

I was feeling super inspired this week, so we had lots of fun with M.  First up, was fingerprint m ermaids. Lucy loves  The Little Mermaid, so I thought she'd be thrilled with this craft. I got the idea from Pinterest , but the link is no longer active, so I just figured it out based on the picture.   First we painted Lucy's hand and stamped it on the paper to be the mermaid's hair. Then I drew on a body/tail. (I'm no artist. It looked pretty awful.) Finally, she fingerprinted some scales on. I'm not actually a big fan of handprint/fingerprint crafts so we almost never do them. Lucy was thrilled that I let her dip her fingers in paint, and got a little carried away. Mostly, it just ended up being a big m ess! We checked out the book If You Give a Moose a Muffin  from the library, then made our own m uffins. We used this recipe since I'm obsessed with all things peanut butter/chocolate.  And finally, we did some m arble paint...

I didn't make any rules against blogging. Since I can't vent on facebook, I'm going to write a whole blog about my horrible day! 1. My first problem was that Lena took such a short nap this morning I didn't get to take a much needed shower. 2. My second problem was thinking that I just had a few groceries to get so I could bring both girls with me. Ugh. Lucy started crying before we even got out of the van. She said her flip-flops hurt her feet, but she didn't have any other options, so I had to physically force them on her feet and drag her into the store kicking and screaming. I put her in the cart and took her flip-flops off, but she continued to cry the entire  time I shopped. She cried because she wanted to get down, she cried because I wouldn't hold her, she cried because she wanted Daddy, she cried because the sky is blue. I told her if she didn't stop crying, she couldn't have any snacks all day. She didn't stop. I told her if she didn...

I feel like Lena has changed so much in the past month. She's much more smiley and happy. I can almost always get a smile out of her these days. (The above picture was my first shot!) She still doesn't laugh much, but she just recently started doing this shrieky inhale. Haha. Does that make any sense? It's a version of a laugh. We're getting there. We're still working on getting her in a good routine. Her schedule generally looks like this. She generally wakes up around 6:45 am. Oy. We snuggle in bed for a while, then she nurses around 7:30. I've really been sticking with feeding her every 3 hours, unless she happens to sleep longer. I'm not that rigid with my scheduling. She's been staying up later between naps - more like an hour and a half to 2 hours. But she's been a catnapper lately. I really want to transition her to sleeping in her crib (instead of the swing), but I don't even know where to begin. She usually has her last feeding at 7:...

L is for Lucy and Lena: I let Lucy pick the animals. She wanted a llama for Lena. Haha. She had a lizard, but she put it on the back of her picture. Loosely inspired by this : Photo Credit L is for Lion We learned the story of Daniel in the Lions' Den, then made a puppet lion ( idea credit ). We glued his mouth shut to signify God closing the lions' mouths. And I added the popsicle stick Daniel. On one side he's scared, but praying. Then on the other side, he's happy. :-) I also intended to do this craft since "This Little Light of Mine" is one of Lucy's favorite songs, but we never got around to it. Photo Credit

1. We went all out for Justin on Father's Day this year. Lucy is finally old enough to understand a little bit, so we had fun getting everything ready for him. I got this idea from Pinterest, and put it together for Justin: Photo Credit Photo Credit We filled it with a bunch of his favorite snacks, and a gift card to a local fishing store. Then Lucy filled out this questionnaire: It was kind of ironic that her favorite number is 28, so she actually got his age right. She said he was 28 inches tall and weighed 38 pounds. One of my favorite parts was when she said, "I know my Daddy is mad when he pouts ." Lol. Justin is not a big pouter. I don't know where she got that from. And she said "My Daddy is really good at exercising ." Haha. It was so cute. [She also made one for my dad. The best part was that she said he weighs 530 pounds. Lol.] Then we made breakfast in bed. And by we, I mean I . Lucy helped him eat it. :-) 2. I made these...

I'm going to tell you a secret. Justin was never that interested in my pregnancies. Sure, he came to the ultrasounds and put his hand on my belly when I said, "She's kicking!" But he wasn't the type to talk to my belly or insist I cut out caffeine (thank goodness!). I've heard it said that a mother becomes a mother the second she sees that positive pregnancy test, but a father becomes a father when he has the baby in his arms. There was almost a visible change when Justin first laid eyes on Lucy. This picture sums it up for me: It is amazing to see how much he loves his girls. He's said before that the best part of his day is getting home and Lucy running to him, crying, "Daddy!" I love to see him do all the girly activities with Lucy - things he swore he'd never do, like tea parties, dance parties, and pretend weddings. I love his gentle way with Lena, and the sweet things he whispers to her when he thinks I'm not listening. ...

1. Lena had her 4 month appointment on Monday. I wrote about it on facebook, but want to record it here too. Feel free to skim. She weighed 12 lbs, 12 oz (13%), and measured 24.5" tall (34%). She's still a tiny peanut (especially compared to Lucy at 4 months), but she's growing! We got to see our actual doctor this time (she's been on maternity leave). She dismissed the PA's concerns and said not to worry about formula. She told me that my body knows just what Lena needs and that breast is best. Woohoo! Lena had to get 4 shots. She screamed hard, stopped as soon as they got the band-aids in place, then started up again when we got in the car. It took me a long time to get her settled down. I tried nursing her, but she just got mad and kept tossing her head back and forth. I've come to the conclusion lately that she is not a comfort nurser. The only thing that finally calmed her down was a receiving blanket. She found the tag on it, and settled right down by pla...

1. I've been taking a slew of vitamins and supplements for a couple months in an effort to curb my anxiety, depression, and exhaustion. My anxiety has actually gotten worse (although I don't blame that on the vitamins), but I really do think it's helping my depression and exhaustion. I ran out of fish oil a couple weeks ago and couldn't bring myself to spend the $15 to buy more. But this week I have been so  exhausted. I took a nap almost every day, and today Justin let me sleep until 11:30! (With a few breastfeeding interruptions, of course.) Lucy actually woke me up at 11:30 because I could've kept sleeping! I guess I'll fork over the $15. 2. Lucy and I did a couple fun activities this week. We made Jell-o J's (that were actually major failures - ha!), and did this chalk shape game. I think I pinned it on pinterest a while ago, but Lucy played it recently at Kelly and Presley's house, and wanted to do it again at home: I just drew a bunch of diff...