Baby Cuddles

I just love this picture. It isn't very often that Rachel will lie down and cuddle with me anymore. She likes to nap but only in her crib. To her, if she isn't in her crib then it must not be nap time and therefore it's "toddle time". As a toddler, she has a full agenda each day of emptying the contents of any cabinets she walks past, opening the top drawer of the desk and getting my file folder labels and sticking them all over herself, and, of course, spinning the toilet paper holder until all of the toilet paper is in a pile on the floor. Yes, her days are full and she doesn't have time to lie down with Mama anymore.

As usual, on this day I was exhausted (probably from cleaning up after said activities) and I wanted to take a nap. I tried to get her to lie down on our bed with me so we could nap together but it was just too exciting to be up on the bed with Mama. She crawled around laughing, moving the pillows around, and trying to touch the pictures on the wall. I let her get the wiggles out and, with much coaxing, finally got her to get still and lie down with me. It wasn't long before we were both fast asleep.

Thank you Daddy for capturing this picture. I don't get many moments of baby cuddling like this anymore and this picture really just melts my heart.

Add A Little Fun To Your Meals

Nicholas loves it when we eat dinner in the living room. Gasp! Yes, we sometimes eat dinner in the living room while watching TV. Bad parent of the year award, I know. But is there really a better way to eat pizza on a family movie night?

When we eat at the coffee table, Nicholas likes to be in charge of getting out coasters for our drinks. We have two different sets of coasters. He will pick out specific ones for each of us, different ones each time. Sometimes he just picks out ones he likes. Other times he says that certain ones are magic and give us special powers.

I recently printed some pictures from Snapfish and they offered me a free set of custom printed coasters. I couldn't resist! Since we often use the coasters while eating, I picked out 6 pictures of Nicholas eating.

The coasters arrived quickly and I told Nicholas that I had a surprise for him. He couldn't wait to open his package. He had several guesses about what I had gotten for him but oddly enough a set of coasters never crossed his mind. Needless to say, Nicholas was thrilled to see his own picture on our new set of coasters!

Petsmart Tour

Rachel and I recently went to Petsmart on a children's outing with our early childhood PTA. Rachel had so much fun looking at all of the neat animals up close.





Of course, she loved the dog run room! We spent most of our time here as she walked back and forth in front of the windows watching the dogs.



Sorry, baby girl. I don't see any pets in our future.

Happy Groundhog Day

I expected to find some fun recipes online for making treats for kids on Groundhog Day. I made the mistake of searching for "groundhog recipes". Let me just say that the word "day" is really important in this search. Otherwise, you will find recipes that describe how to skin your groundhog before cooking. Ewww!

I didn't find anything inspiring so I decided to just wing it. I was feeling lazy and didn't want to make cupcakes again this year. But pre-made cupcakes sounded good to me. We went to the grocery and I asked Nicholas to find some Ding Dongs. He has only had Ding Dong cupcakes one time that I know of so I knew he wouldn't pick it out by just recognizing the packaging. He actually had to read the words on the box in order to find them. And he did!



Then I let Nicholas help me pick out a few other things that we might use to make our Ding Dongs look like a groundhog. We didn't have a specific plan so we bought a little more than we ended up using. We got home and set out all of our supplies to try to brainstorm what would work best. At least we had plenty of fun snacking while we were creating.



Here's what we came up with...



We used Ding Dongs, Keebler mini fudge grasshopper cookies and pink icing for ears, mini M&Ms and chocolate icing for eyes, a chocolate chip for a nose, and marshmallow pieces for teeth. Once we made our first groundhog, we had to make a few more friends for him so he didn't get lonely. Nicholas did a great job with his creations.





We also played with a groundhog puppet that he made at school today. He colored a picture of a groundhog and a styrofoam cup, attached the groundhog to a pencil, and put the end of the pencil through a hole in the bottom of the cup. His cute little groundhog could pop his head out of his hole and see his shadow on the ground. We talked about how the shadows changed as he changed the angle to the sun.



Happy Groundhog Day!

Dancing the Day Away

We like to play all kinds of music in our house. And we can dance to all of it...even the littlest one.