Weekend Randoms

Mohawk Baby
Despite her best efforts, Sophie is just a smidge too short to see out the window yet :)

Will asleep in bed on Friday night.

Will's Barrel of Monkeys game has a number on the front of each monkey. We were playing with them this weekend and he is really getting good at recognizing numbers!

The grass is always greener... Soph checks out big brother's toys.

Freakin' cute - enough said.

She's thinking "I know that farm toy is in there, mom. I can see it and I want it!" (Notice all the smudgy fingerprints all over the glass.)

I Spy books - he's addicted.

Oh! And I cut Will's hair all by myself for the first time ever this weekend! Craig usually does it, but he was busy clearing off the driveway and told me I could easily do it with a #5 attachment all over (no fade). It wasn't too bad and, though it's clearly an amateur cut, I suppose I could have done worse, no? The sideburns are a little high, but I'm pointing the finger at my wiggly customer for that!

There's good and bad points to this photo. The good: my heart just swells when I see my kids playing together. I love that they're interacting so much more and becoming playmates. The bad: as is expected from any older sibling who is used to having everything to himself, Will is pretty possessive of his toys whenever Sophie wants to check them out. Notice he's placed the farm magnets up just high enough for them to be out of her reach. ;)

But then Will gets distracted by something else, and now it's Sophie's turn to match a "cow-pig??" and hear a subsequent silly song. Parents: raise your hand if you own the Leap Frog fridge farm toy. It's like the obligatory toy for the kitchen. Almost EVERY parent I know has one in their kitchen - LOL.

I just posted this pic 'cause I love the "baby kneeling pose" :)

On Saturday evening, we got together with my mom's sister's family for a game night. We've always done an annual Christmas party with them and this year we just decided it's getting too difficult to organize yet another get-together around the holidays. So we're going to make game night a ritual after the holiday hustle and bustle subsides each year. I didn't take many pictures of the actual games and hanging out, though I'm hoping to get some pictures of our Wii dance competition from my sister's camera. (THAT was a blast!) I did, however, get some pictures of the kiddos.

Here's my ever-so-grown-up nieces and I. Mya and Stella are eight months old now!!!

My Goddaughter Stella Grace

Will playing Legos with my cousin Brooke's son Brendan (age 3 1/2).

Girl Talk (or Baby Talk?)

Sophia with Aunt Casey - they coordinate in purple.

Stay tuned for more game night pics from Casey!

Crazy About Owls

It all started with a hat... Actually, that's not true - I'll come back to the hat in a minute...

The night before I went into labor with Will, we were invited to dinner at Craig's sister's house. Steve had grilled and we were eating outside. Suddenly, Kelly spotted an owl sitting high up in one of the pine trees at the front of her property. Kind of an unusual thing to see around here, especially before dark. After getting the binoculars, I'm pretty sure Kelly called it a Great Horned Owl. It was eerily fascinating to see. And about 7 or 8 hours later, my labor began...

Then when Will was a baby, my mom showed me this adorable book and I loved it! I read it frequently to Will. The baby owl's name is Bill and he's always saying "I want my mommy!"

Okay, so then nothing else really owl-related until I was pregnant with Sophie and Christmas shopping with friends at Somerset Mall in Michigan. They have an Anthropologie store there (so awesome!) and I found the cutest little knit hat (above). At the time, I didn't know she was a girl and hoped that the hat wasn't too gender-specific because I had to have it. It's just now starting to fit her and I love it!

More time passes... and then this year for Christmas (2009) I found this cutest, little book that you can poke your finger in the back to use the owl puppet with every page. This author has several other books - I got a couple for Mya & Stella for Christmas and she has a new one with a butterfly that I'd like to get for Sophie's birthday.

And then suddenly, I'm scouring the internet for all things nature/owl-related. I think owls used to be sort of popular in the 60's/70's because it appears things are starting to come around again and have an earthy, nature-y sort of feel. And I'm addicted...

I found the cutest, little, knit owl doll by Blabla for Sophie's first Christmas stocking and she sleeps with it every night now. The owl's name is Prudence (I didn't name her, but isn't that cute?)

Gap and Old Navy even have some cute owl clothing items.

Jammies for the future.

Okay, so now I'm taking my fascination with owls to the next level and planning Sophie's first birthday party with an owl theme. (I know I'm thinking ahead, but when have you ever known me NOT to plan something well in advance?) I've found some super cute owl invitations (Look whoooo's turning 1!), some personalized cupcake toppers, a couple blogs that have posted some owl-themed-party ideas, some plans for simple food and nature-y table decorations, etc. All this, and it's not even going to be a big blowout party! We've learned the lesson after Will's first birthday that over-the-top is not always best for baby... or parents. We invited too many people and tried to plan too much food... and we were exhausted. My ideas this time around are simple and inexpensive (though thoughtful!) and my guest list is small. The day is about Sophie - not me - and I know she will be much happier with a low key soiree. I am excited that there will be some little girls at the party now that our family is growing with new cousins... because then I can plan some little party favor bags. (Something I didn't get to do with Will because he was kind of the only kid around at the time.) I'm thinking of a little bird-feeder-treat that can be hung in a tree, maybe some stickers, and here's a sneak peak at the mini owl favors I found (handmade) on Etsy.com:

Aren't they adorable? They're only about 2"x2" so they're perfect for a tiny favor. And that Etsy website is awesome! So many talented and crafty people out there!

Anyway, my owl obsession doesn't stop there... I'm also looking ahead to Sophie's big girl bedroom. I SOOOOOO do not want to rush her there (please stay a baby forever, Sophie!) but Will was in his big bed a few months before his second birthday and he did well with the transition at that time. So it's just on the brain and I'm so excited about what I've found! Pottery Barn - my favorite place for kids bedding - has THE CUTEST nature/owl bedroom set for little girls... and I've already ordered it (gasp!). Greens and blues with pink accents, the sweetest little owl dolls (Penny & Joy), monogrammed pillowcase, etc.

http://www.potterybarnkids.com/room/rom/romgir/romgirwod/ Haven't ordered the butterfly mirrors or lamp that they show - can't justify the price - but I'm going to hunt around for something similar. My mom is going to buy Penny & Joy for Sophie's birthday gift and Casey got the little, decorative pillow with the pink owl and an "S" monogram for a gift too. Yay! Some of the items have already arrived, though I'm still waiting for the quilt and quilted pillowcases, which are on backorder... and then everything will sit in boxes for the next year - LOL. But hey, it probably would have been gone if I waited till next year and it's too perfect to lose!

You probably think I'm crazy huh? Well then I probably shouldn't tell you I ordered my nursery bedding from PB a WHOLE YEAR before we even started trying to get pregnant! :) I'm like that bride who buys her dress before she meets the guy. LOL But at least this time, I HAVE the child... I'm just having fun with her being a daughter and getting to decorate a girly room! And in the case of the nursery bedding... it was gender neutral, ADORABLE shamois lambie theme, I used it for both kids, and I still love it! And it was on sale at the time (which is why I bought it), so it wasn't a bad decision in the end.

So anyway, if you see any super cute owl things around, send me an e-mail. I'd love more ideas!

Ooh! And wait till you see the owl Valentines I made for Sophie to give to the kids at the sitters! (I finished making Valentines last weekend 'cause I know this weekend is going to be busy.)

Licensed to Drive

For Will's first Easter (at 9 months old) I filled his basket with some children's music CD's and a coordinating book by a musician named Jim Gill. I ordered them online after seeing Jim speak at a seminar for "children's music, movement and play". There are several CD's each with a collection of silly songs that you can dance and sing along with. Check them out at: http://www.jimgill.com/new/home.html

When he was a baby, Will loved the "Toy Boat" song (those are the only two words in the song and it's really quite boring, but it's a tongue twister when sung faster) and he had a toy boat that he used to bounce around with. Now his current favorites include: "Toe, Leg, Knee", "Yes, No, Maybe", "May There Always Be Sunshine", and "Driving Here, Driving There". It's hard to tell, but he's dancing here (holding his barrel of monkeys):

The book is just a written version of the "May There Always Be Sunshine" song and it is definitely my favorite. I know I've mentioned it on here before but it's a song about favorite things and people that you want there to "always be". So Jim created the song's simple concept and then lets the children fill in the blanks when he sings at his concerts. In the back of the book, he has a cute list of lots of things children have come up with. So if the words to the song seem strange, it's just the beauty of a child's thoughtful mind. Who wouldn't want there to always be skyscrapers? :) http://www.jimgill.com/new/see_maythere.html

I sing that song a lot with the kids. Sophie obviously doesn't get it yet, but she snuggles right down on my shoulder when I sing it to her at bedtime. And Will is pretty fun about filling in the blanks. He often likes to sing "may there always be us", which is really cute. Last night I put him to bed first and then he heard me singing to Sophie across the hall. As I was rocking her, I could hear him through the door sing "may there always be us". After laying her down, I went back into his room and whispered "may there always be us" into his ear and gave him another kiss on the forehead. He's such a good boy.

Okay, onto clarifying the title of this post... The "Driving Here, Driving There" song brought back memories for me of playing "car" with my cousin Molly when we were kids. We had chairs set up with one in front of the other and we took turns being the driver and turning a frisbee for a steering wheal. I'm pretty sure I have pictures of that day in an old photo album - we're decked out with hats and handbags with very important places to go.

So I decided to set the scene for Will too. First we pretended to go to the grocery and pick up some milk, grapes, and eggs. But Will drove too fast and broke the eggs. :)

Then he gave Brutus a lift to the pet store to pick up some more dog food.

I even made him a drivers license...

What seems to be the problem officer? I'm totally legal...

And finally, daddy hitched a ride to the video store to rent Finding Nemo...

Good times, good times...

Punxsutawney WILL!!

Hear Ye, Hear Ye!

Our very own Punxsutawney WILL announced today that there will be 6 more weeks of winter. Boo hoo. Well if it's going to hang around for awhile, could we at least have some snow to play in please??

Happy Groundhogs Day everybody!

What's For Dinner? Feb Week 1

I watched the movie Julie & Julia last night and I'm feeling inspired. Yes, partly for cooking simply because I love food! But mostly for writing. I always wanted to be a writer when I was a kid and I just love the feeling of getting my thoughts down on paper. I think that's why blogging is so fun for me. I've kept a journal since junior high, so this is really just an extention of that. And now I feel like less of a dork for blogging about food - LOL.

So here's my most recent challenge: I'm on the hunt for a really good tomato soup recipe. I love tomatoes. They are what I craved in both my pregnancies and their flavors are so vast with potential for many things. But I never thought I cared for tomato soup, likely because the "standard" tomato soup comes in a can with a Campbell's label on it. Nothing wrong with that if it suits you - I just didn't care for it. But then I tried a couple different versions of restaurant tomato soups and fell in love. I actually prefer them a little bit chunky (ala Panera Bread) with garlic and herbs and perhaps some croutons. Remember the one I tried with white beans back in November? Blech! That one was definitely NOT a keeper. I'm not necessarily opposed to white beans in tomato soup, just not as a dominant flavor. So I've found another recipe to try: a roasted tomato soup from (surprisingly) Family Fun magazine again: http://familyfun.go.com/recipes/roasted-tomato-soup-699298/. It is a smooth texture, but it calls for fresh tomatoes drizzled with olive oil and s&p and then roasted in the oven to bring out their flavor. I love using my emersion blender for easy blending and my Le Creuset stock pot makes any soup look pretty.

So we'll call this Tomato Soup Challenge - week 1. :) I've already got it prepared and I'm serving it on Tuesday night with some croutons and shaved Parmesan. I'll report back on what my testing committee (Craig & Will) rate it.

Also this week:
1) Chicken fettucine Alfredo with salads, garlic bread and cookies 'n cream pie - we had this on Sunday night and it's one of Craig's favorites. Pretty rich though - gotta' hit the treadmill after this one. :)

2) Taco salad - nothing too exciting but it's easy and another one of Craig's favorites. And I guess I'm just feeling like being a nice wife this week.

New for Sophie this week: I boiled some whole wheat macaroni noodles (I like the Hodgson Mills brand) for a finger food on Sunday. Those may still be a little big for her - I think I'll cut them in half in the future. And since we never got around to broccoli last week, that'll be this week. I'd also like to incorporate some spices into her meals a little more regularly now so I'll play around with that. P.S. she didn't really care for the baby omelet last week. I think egg yolks are a strong flavor for babies, but I'm going to keep trying different variations here and there to see if she changes her mind. Her current favorite meals are probably: cottage cheese with sweet potato, avocado with banana, cereal with yogurt and fruit, and Cheerios!

Here she is eating her avocado dices with Cheerios. Will saw them and said "I want that!" I knew he hasn't cared for avocado in the past, but I gave him a piece and he put it in his mouth. Then he made a "yuck" face, spit it out and said "I don't like 'adacado'." Ah well, Sophie loves them!

Not really sure what this face was all about... I think Craig was trying to get him to hold a grape between his teeth for a silly picture and he wasn't interested.

William at 2 1/2

This post should more appropriately have been written on December 8th when he actually turned 2 1/2. (What was I doing back in early December to have overlooked all these posts? I said the same thing about my "having a daughter" post.) Anyway, better late than never...

At 2 1/2, Will is many things. He is sweet & loving, smart & fun, ornery & defiant, adorable & irresistable.

Here's Will in mid-December at age 2 1/2:
And a more recent one. He looks like my sister in this picture:

I remember one year ago when he turned 18 months that it seemed a switch had suddenly flipped in his brain and he just exploded with new vocabulary. Now at 2 1/2, he's made another sudden leap in communication. He nearly always speaks in complete (and even grammatically correct!) sentences. Even when a one or two word response would suffice, Will puts it into a full sentence. And an added cute touch: he always says your name at the beginning or end of the sentence when he's speaking to you. He's getting better at saying please, thank you, you're welcome and I'm sorry. (We like "Excuse Me! A little book of manners" by Karen Katz.) Now we just need to work on "no thank you" instead of a scrunched face and "No! I don't like noodles, mommy!" :)

Will is such a little lover boy for the past few months. He constantly tells us he loves us or gives us hugs. I mean constantly! I could just eat him up - it is the best! And he's also very affectionate towards Sophia. Anytime she's in distress, he tells her "It's okay, Sophia - don't cry" and often sings her a song. The other morning when Sophie woke before I was finished getting ready for work, we could hear Will go in her room and tell her "it's okay" and "don't cry" again and again. He also initiated the high-pitch squeals that they do back and forth with each other. And by the time I came down, she was all smiles. Such a good big brother.

Also in the general vicinity of his 2 1/2 year birthday, Will is able to:

1) Pedal a tricycle

2) Jump... and actually leave the ground (LOL)

3) Count to 10 in Spanish as easily as he does in English. (I thought about writing a post titled "Everything my kid knows, he learned from Dora & Diego". LOL But that's a bit of an exaggeration. He once told me a word in English - I forget the word - and then said "In Spanish, we say..._____" - just how Dora explains it. ) And yesterday he pointed out a "chinchilla" and a "maned wolf" in his Dora/Diego coloring book. Whaaaaaa??? My kid knows what a chinchilla is?! That's just funny.

We've unfortunately had a major setback with potty training. He just completely regressed and now he whines/complains every time we suggest it. :( So many people tell me that it's not worth pushing before age three because most kids just aren't ready before then. But I was just so excited about his sudden interest and I don't want to make him afraid of it now. We'll see...

At 2 1/2, here are a few of Will's favorite things:

1) Magazines! For some reason, he is obsessed with magazines and catalogs lately - specifically toy catalogs and anything to do with animals. Real quick, to explain this next pic: whenever Will gets up on week days while we're getting ready for work, he almost always comes upstairs and hangs out in Sophie's bouncer seat (which she never uses anymore). So here he is in his own version of a Lazy Boy, with his catalog. And on this particular morning, Craig jokingly buckled him in. :)

I'm very excited for his first issue of "Your Big Backyard" to arrive - he's going to love it! My mom ordered him a subscription for Christmas. It's a toddler-targeted magazine all about nature and animals. Perfect! On that note...

2) Animals! Any and all kinds... and anything to do with them. Feeding Aunt Kelly's horse:

3) Trains - namely James (from Thomas the Train)... and he tells us that his name is "James Will". James is the red train. Thomas is daddy's favorite because he's blue and Rosie is my favorite because she's purple.

4) Bedtime kisses from mom and dad - specifically with one parent kissing each cheek simultaneously. Will thinks that's hilarious and we love tucking him in for bed.

5) Hide-and-seek and I Spy - it's so fun that he's finally starting to get the concept of these games. I loved playing hide and seek with my parents as a kid! With I Spy, Will is good at being the guesser, but when he spies something, he'll either tell you what it is before you can guess or he'll say "yes!" to whatever your first guess is regardless if that was truly his object.

6) Being mommy's little helper. He likes to follow me around with a dust cloth and dust everything right after I do it. Sometimes he'll help me set the table for meals - mostly silverware and napkins, but I've let him carry plates and glasses (empty) one by one on occasion. Will's favorite thing to help with though is laundry, and pushing the buttons is the best part!

7) Coloring books, puzzles (particularly jigsaw puzzles now), and of course reading books. I love that he appreciates a variety. He only occasionally gets hooked on the same book for days anymore. Mostly he selects a good variety and has many of his books nearly memorized. Sometimes I'll catch him "reading" (reciting) to himself and I love that!

8) Shoe horns - why are these so fascinating? Yes, Craig uses them often and has taught Will how to use them as well. The other day, Will found both of daddy's shoehorns (a plastic one and a metal one) and proudly carried them around - one in each pocket. :)

9) Foods: bell peppers, tomatoes, carrots, ALL fruit (except mango), waffles/pancakes, yogurt, cereal, cheese
10) Colors - whenever I ask, Will always says his favorite colors are red and orange. :)

A few extra pics:

Things I'm looking forward to in the next 6 months (well... only 4 months really until his birthday):

1) Getting outside again in the warmer weather - playing and using the bike trailer with BOTH kids in tow!

2) Some fun ideas and activities for the late winter and spring time. Especially looking forward to another Easter egg hunt with Will.

3) Potty training (hopefully) and being able to dress himself (at least partly). I'm not actually looking forward to potty training... but I am looking forward to the extra money we'll save!

4) More Will-isms

5) Watching the bond between Will and Sophie continue to grow.

It's been another great half of a year with Will and he always manages to brighten my day.