Adventures in La La Land

1. After a very mild August, we had some hot, summer weather this week. We don't have AC, so I made most of our meals in the crock pot. I finally tried the slow cooker breakfast casserole I pinned forever ago. It was muy delicioso! (That's "very delicious" for all you non-Spanish speakers. ;-) ) Photo Credit 2. Of course it was unbearably hot and humid this week, because we had scheduled our garage sale for Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. My sister does a sale every summer. We're really poor so we don't buy stuff, which means we don't accumulate stuff, which means we don't have much to sell. But we managed to find a few things this year. My goal was $10. Haha. I made $25! So I sat out in the 90 degree heat for 3 days to make $25. Ha! It was worth it to spend time with my sister. And Lucy loved  playing with the day care kids every day. 3. Look what I made this week: Look how I made it: Hahaha. I get free baby food from WIC, so it's...

We only did one craft for the letter V. I pulled the ads out of Sunday's paper and told Lucy to circle all the vegetables. Then we cut them out and pasted them on the V. Pretty e xciting, eh? ;-) She also tried her hand and writing a few v's. 

The 23rd snuck up on me this month! How is my baby 7 months old already?? Here's what she's been up to lately. Routine She wakes up every morning between 6:45 and 7:00 like clockwork. She's still eating every 3 hours, and takes 3 naps a day - morning, afternoon, and evening. Then she's back to bed around 8. Eating I have been so lackadaisical about giving her solids. She definitely prefers feeding herself to being spoon fed, but I'm nervous about giving her chunks of food. I give her something in the mesh feeder when I think about it, but I think we're just going to take it slow. Sleep Oh sleep. I've come to the conclusion that I just don't have babies who sleep through the night at 6 weeks like all the rest of my friends and facebook acquaintances. Lucy didn't sleep through the night 'til 8 months - after 2 grueling weeks of CIO. Lena seems to be following suit. I tried CIO last weekend. She screamed  for two hours and was hoarse for...

1. We crossed another item off our summer bucket list this week: Go to the Beach. I've been waiting for a good hot day, but we've had such a mild summer, that we haven't had many options! We finally just decided to go yesterday. Our friends Paul, Missy, Bob, Kris and their kids were "camping" at the Christian Reformed Conference Grounds near Grand Haven, so we called them up and asked if they wanted to go with us. The Conference Grounds has its own beach access, so we ended up heading there. It was so  nice. I totally want to "camp" there someday. (Camp is in quotation marks because they stay in a super nice "cabin" - that is actually a nice, clean, modern house. My kind of camping. Haha.) We didn't actually stay at the beach that long because Lucy had to go potty, but we had a good time while we were there! 2. I made a new recipe this week: Tortellini Salad . I thought it was delicious, but I don't think Justin was a big fan. Hah...

Lucy has a strange obsession with potty training. Her favorite episode of Daniel Tiger is "The Potty One!" She loves her Elmo Potty movie and potty books and all things potty related. So I knew she'd love doing an underwear craft for the letter "u." Word to the wise: make sure your "safe search" is on when you look for images of underwear on google. Lol. I couldn't find anything, so ended up drawing my own: I did the red one. :-) And I realize some of my u's look like v's. It's hard to paint curved lines! Haha. We painted them, and decorated them with Dora stickers and letter "u" stickers. So much fun! :-)

1. Lena had her 6 month check-up on Monday. She weighed 14 lbs, 8 oz. and measured 26". That puts her in the 14th percentile for weight and the 39th for height. Still a little shrimp! She got 4 shots, screamed when they poked her, but stopped crying as soon as I picked her up. She was feverish and cranky for the next couple of days, but nothing terrible. 2. She has been getting up so much at night. It is ridiculous. We've been doing some cry it out, but it's not going very well. Especially because she's still sleeping in our room. And Lucy's room is right next to ours. She woke up one night this week saying, "Mommy! Lena is being too loud!" We all agree, Lucy. 3. I got pink eye again  this week. I really need to do some research on recurring conjunctivitis or something. Fortunately, I still have some of the antibiotic eye drops from last time. And I came across this little gem  online. That seemed to help too! 4. In this week's edition of ...

Lucy is the quintessential girly-girl, so when we got to the letter T in our quest through the alphabet, I knew we'd have to have a good old fashioned T ea Party! I found the perfect craft on Pinterest, and kind of made it my own. We used styrofoam bowls because they're easier to puncture than paper. I thought it was so brilliant to thread a headband through pipe cleaners so the kids didn't have to try to balance a bowl on their heads. I bought a couple flower vines at the dollar store and snipped off the buds (leaving an inch or so of stem to push through the bowl). Then I made a bunch of little tissue paper roses by twisting a square of tissue paper around my finger and tying it off with a pipe cleaner. I bought 5 teacups/saucers for 50 cents a pair from a thrift store, grabbed some stickers and a tablecloth from the dollar store, and found this awesome tea canister on a shelf in my parents' kitchen to complete the tablescape. I decided to set out some...

1. When google reader went offline last month, I switched to feedly. But I didn't transfer my blogs correctly, so I had to add them from memory. This week, I came across one that I'd missed: Making Home.   I caught up on a whole bunch of articles that are so fitting for the things I've been struggling with lately. Me Time : " In the last decade, there's been a clamoring for women to embrace and seek out "me time". Especially moms."  This was such a great article. I loved how she pointed out that Jesus sought out solitude, getting away from the crowds to pray. But she also calls moms to e xamine their hearts and motives when seeking out "me time." Multi-Tasking : "S ometimes there's a tendency to think that we have to have silence and solitude in order to meditate or enter into spiritual truth in a deep way.  That the schedule has to be cleared in order to intake spiritual "food".  That if we could  just get away  ...

I was surprised by how few "S" crafts I could come up with this week. The first was a combination of 2 pinterest finds. ( Here and here .) I did the cutting and Lucy did the gluing and painting - her two favorite things. :-)  I got the idea for the snake craft here . We stamped the stripes on with a sponge to add in that extra "s." Lucy loved it.

1. We've all been fighting colds this week - but Lena got it the worst. On Tuesday night, she was an absolute wreck. She would not sleep in her bed and just cried and cried and cried. We ended up on the couch downstairs where she slept on my chest all night. The poor baby was burning up (she actually made me so hot, I didn't even use any blankets - unheard of for me!) and miserable. :-( She fought the fever all day on Wednesday, but woke up fever-free by Thursday, and has been on the upswing since then. Thank the Lord. 2. I tried 2 new recipes this week. The first one was baked penne from Pinterest. It definitely falls under the category "Delicious but Time Consuming."  And it could've benefited from some extra garlic . . . or bacon!  The second was garlic parmesan crusted chicken from plainchicken. She gave it absolutely rave reviews on her blog, so I was excited to try it out. Again, it required more time/effort than I usually put into dinner, but ...

I've been thinking a lot about those two articles I posted last Saturday ( here: point 6 ), and the reactions I got to them. Since then, I've been gleaning little bits of wisdom from people far wiser than I. I thought I'd compile it here.  I was thinking again about the "happy medium" between those two articles - finding compromise between cherishing our children and being honest and encouraging about motherhood. I do think our culture focuses too much on the bad, and over-e xaggerates the hardship of being a mom. But do I think God commands us to spend every waking moment doting on our children? No. They should be a top priority, yes, but I think we have to be careful with making them our everything.  My friend, Rhonda, told me recently that she and her husband consider it their responsibility to teach their children that the world does not revolve around them. Children (and everyone) are naturally ego-centric. They have to be taught that "it's not ab...

My first plan was to do a color by number rainbow. This is how far Lucy got before giving up: She's not a fan of being told what to do. Ha! She enjoyed the second craft more. I found it on Pinterest , of course. First I wrote the letter R with dark marker on a light piece of paper, then cut out and numbered 12 pieces of colored paper. Lucy glued the papers in order over the R. After the glue dried, I turned the paper over and cut out the R.  Then we glued the R onto another sheet of paper. Isn't it cute?!