Adventures in La La Land

Lucy has had her capital letters down for over a year, but still struggles with some of their lowercase counterparts. So I came up with this quick little game. This is actually the second time we did it, but I didn't take pictures the first. Lucy was thrilled to do it again. The first time, I just wrote all the capital letters on a piece of poster board. But today I couldn't find any poster board, so I pulled out the Melissa and Doug "Responsibility Chart" (that has never been used for its intended purpose) and taped some uppercase letters to the back: Then I taped lowercase letters all around the house. You can make this as easy or as difficult as you'd like, and even have fun with it by putting the letters on corresponding objects. For instance: d on the dishwasher, f on the fridge, b on a book, etc. I didn't get that involved. I just scattered them around: Then Lucy ran around finding the letters and matching them with the upper case version on...

Not sure I'm going to make it to 7 this week. I feel like all I did was console sick, miserable Lena. 1. The sickness saga - more for my records than anything: Sunday just before church my mom was holding Lena and said, "she feels kind of warm." I took her temperature just to be safe before sending her to nursery. Sure enough: 101*. That night, she was up every hour on the hour crying and burning up. I finally went downstairs and slept on the couch with her on my chest for the rest of the night. Her fever stayed around 102* for the next 3 days despite many doses of tylenol and ibuprofen. She was absolutely miserable. I got nothing accomplished all week and Lucy spent about 20 hours a day watching TV or playing on the iPad. Part of it drives me crazy, but the other part enjoyed all the snuggles. Thursday was her birthday and she woke up fever free! I was surprised that she was still being so grumpy despite her fever being gone. Part-way through the day I noticed she was ...

It's time for the big one year update. No picture until she's less sick. Haha. This is going to be ridiculously long. Hold your hats . . . Routine She's gotten in a lovely habit of waking up at 6:00 am. We snuggle on the couch while I give her a bottle of [cow's] milk, and she usually goes down for her morning nap around 8. She eats lunch around 11:30 and takes her afternoon nap between 12:30 and 1:00. I honestly think she'd take another nap around 4, but I think it's ridiculous for a one year old to take 3 naps a day, so I keep her awake. I'm starting to consider giving her that 3rd nap though and putting her to bed later if it'd help her sleep longer in the morning! Bedtime is at 7. Eating We are totally done breastfeeding. I dropped the afternoon feeding when she turned 11 months, and the morning feeding a couple weeks ago, so she was only nursing before bed. I nursed her for the last time on Saturday. She woke up sick on Sunday, but I actually...

My sweet Lena is 1 year old today. She celebrated by waking up at 5:45 am hacking her guts out (but fever free for the first time in 4 days!). The one year update will be up later today, but for now, here's a repost of her birth story. One of the best days of my life. :-) Wednesday was my due date. I stayed up late Tuesday night re-reading my blog entries about Lucy's first 6 months of life and getting so excited to meet the little one who'd been using me as a punching bag for months! That night I dreamed about giving birth all night. I woke up Wednesday morning at 8:05 to Lucy an inch away from my face saying, "I want to watch a movie on your computer." I got her settled in bed next to me with my laptop and fell back to sleep. At 8:21, I was woken up by the worst contraction I'd had to date. I thought to myself, "Wow! That one really hurt," checked the time on my phone and went back to sleep. When the same thing happened again, I checked my phone...

1.  I got   this book   for Christmas and have been loving it. I've been faithfully recording our days and know it will come in handy when I want to go back and see when Lena got her first tooth or Lucy fell down the stairs for the first time. Haha. (Both events of this week.) The fact that it's "for moms" is irrelevant. It's no different than any 5 year journal   e xcept that it's pink and has a rocking horse on the cover. 2. Lucy and I did a couple fun crafts this week. We did  salt painting  on Monday. I think I actually enjoyed it more than she did. Haha.  A Little Red Riding Hood costume not required for this craft. :-) On Tuesday, we read  Mama, Do You Love Me?   and did a corresponding Eskimo craft via  this blog . 3. Our Bible lesson for the week was on Joshua and the Wall of Jericho. I didn't get too creative. Just built a city with a wall, marched around it 7 times, blew our imaginary trumpets, then kicked the walls ...

My original stomach post is one of my all-time most viewed. I posted it just before Lucy's 1st birthday. Since Lena's birthday is a week from today, let's revisit my poor belly. *Warning: these pictures are disgusting!* Before  -- This is the picture I took a year after Lucy was born. It looked pretty much the same when I got pregnant with Lena. May 9, 2011 During  - This was actually 2 weeks before I delivered. I got bigger! January 9, 2013 After  - Taken today - January 16, 2014 Better than the above picture, but worse than the first. Blech. Like my sparkly sweatpants, though?! :-) And just for fun - some side by sides: Isn't pregnancy beautiful? ;-) At least I didn't have PUPPS with Lena! The damage. 

I intended to do this craft at Christmas time to illustrate why it's important that Jesus came to earth. I just now got around to it, but it's an important lesson any time of the year! We started by cutting a heart out of white cardstock. (Lucy was amazed that when I folded the paper in half and cut it, it unfolded into a heart! Haha.) I taped the heart onto a glass cutting board and covered it with saran wrap. Then I told her the story of a naughty little girl named Julie. One day, Julie lied to her mommy. The Bible says not to lie, so lying is a sin. I told Lucy to put some paint on the heart. One time Julie got mad at her sister and hit her. The Bible says to be kind, so when we're not kind that's sin. Lucy put some more paint on the heart. Another day Julie stole a cookie out of the cookie jar. The Bible says stealing is a sin. More paint on the heart. Pretty soon the heart was starting to look pretty icky: I told Lucy how sin makes our  hearts look ic...

1. We got back on the bandwagon with CIO this week and Lena has been doing really well. She usually sleeps 'til 4, then cries for a little while before going back to sleep 'til 7ish. And a few nights this week, she actually slept all night without a peep! Woohoo! Maybe she'll be sleeping through the night by the time she's 1. Ha. 2. [TMI breastfeeding point.] On Sunday night, Lena screamed from 4:30-5:30 and I couldn't take it anymore, so I got up to nurse her. She sucked and sucked and nothing happened. I switched her back and forth and kept trying, but my milk never let down. It was so weird! I finally just got up with Lena and fed her some pancakes because she refused to drink cow's milk. I attempted to nurse her again at 8, and my milk did let down, but Lena was not interested. I took it as a sign to drop the morning feeding and we haven't done it since then. So now we're down to just the bed time feeding. And here's another weird tidbit: my le...

First entry of 2014! 1. I had a terribly lazy, unmotivated week. I don't know what my problem was. I hardly cooked, barely cleaned, and did about one load of laundry all week (that's still sitting unfolded in the laundry basket). And I'm pretty sure Lucy spent about 20 hours a day watching TV or playing on some kind of electronic device. I have got to get back on track. I already made my menu for next week. I need to get back on board with lessons for Lucy and cleaning this poor disgusting house. 2. We actually did our grocery shopping for ne xt week today because Snowmaggedon is purportedly on its way - complete with subzero temperatures and frigid wind chills. Lovely. We have groceries and a woodstove, though, so I'm rejoicing that I'm a stay-at-home-mom and planning to hunker down inside. Stupid winter. 3.  Lucy and Lena both had really bad coughs this week. I actually took Lena to the doctor because she was wheezing so much, but it was just a virus. I coul...