a new discovery

You know you are a mom of a newborn when you take 42 pictures of your kid playing with his tongue.

You would think that Charlie had just recited the entire New Testament by heart or discovered the cure for Cancer with the way I "oohed" and "ahhed" over his new found talent!

All that cuteness in one little body...it's just unreal!!!





Seriously - I have like a zillion pictures of him doing this.
You can thank me later for restraining myself from putting ALL of them on the blog. Flipping through the photos while they were on the camera was like watching a movie in still frames.

{Sigh} He makes me so happy.

You can see the sheer talent emerging right before your eyes.
I'm pretty sure he's a Boy Genius.

A very SHORT Boy Genius.

At Charlie's 2 month check-up he was 5th percentile for height!
With a Mommy who is 5' 2" on her best day and a daddy who is possibly (David says that short guys don't keep up with how tall they are) 5' 8", but PROBABLY 5' 7", I'm not surprised at all!

Looks like someone will be playing soccer instead of basketball!

priorities.

The Laundry Mountain is slowly creeping into every crevice of our itty bitty house.
My car looks like a McDonald's-filled Pinata exploded in the back seat.
The Dust Bunnies in Avery's room have been around so long that we've named them.
There's a potentially award winning sixth grade Science Fair project growing in my microwave.

It's bad. Really bad.

Life with a toddler and a newborn leaves very little room for doing anything but meeting their immediate (and frequently requested) needs.
Chores are just NOT a priority right now.
Evidently, SLEEPING isn't a priority either.

What IS a priority is survival. I've learned to function pretty well with little to no sleep and have finally perfected the "whip out a pan without being pummeled by the avalanche of pot lids" move. Maybe I'll make it after all.

Meanwhile, I've got tons of craft project ideas floating around in my head and NO time to do them. I'm having serious crafting withdraws. Just looking at my lonely little Mod Podge bottle gives me the shakes. It's very, very, very sad.

Another very, very, very sad thing is the fact that THIS GUY is ruining my life:

David and I are taking the Financial Peace Seminar at our church for the next few weeks. We've been to 3 classes now and I'm starting to think that Dave Ramsey might be evil.

Darn his "Budget Plans", "Envelope System", and "Live like no one else" mantra. All that fancy schmancy talk is just code for "NO FUN."

He's seriously cramping my style.

Before you feel the urge to tell me how wonderful he is and how I'll "appreciate all this later", keep in mind that I need a moment to mourn the loss of my credit card before I can see things your way.

I'm sure I'll be fine.
Eventually.

almost wordless wednesday

This picture was taken after Avery announced, "Mommy. My baby needs milk."

Oh goodness. I hope her baby doesn't decide to "need milk" at church.
or at the doctor's office.
or the grocery store.
or anywhere that is NOT our house...
Maybe I need to make a "hooter hider junior" in addition to the one I make for myself!

Niiiiice.

a little room to breathe, please

This is the view that David has every day when he comes in the door from work.

We can't just sit NEXT to mommy or NEAR mommy.
We have to be ON mommy.
Twirling her hair.
Tightly.
VERY tightly.
While she nurses Charlie.

Good times.

Sometimes, we like to mix things up a bit and climb on mommy's back while she nurses.
That's a fun one.

Last night, I decided to take a shower -- fully expecting the beautiful solace that only exists in the privacy of that tiny space in our house.

Guess who (loudly and with the persistence that only a 2-year-old could possess) decided that she needed a shower too?

So much for privacy.

It makes me wonder why we went to all the hassle to add on to our house when, clearly, we only plan to use 24 inches of space at a time.

valentine banner

I did it.
I finally cracked the cricut code.
I took a deep breath and jumped on in.
Minimal paper casualites occured. I was pretty proud.
Here are some pictures of the fruits of my labor:

nursery tour

Charlie's room is mostly finished. He doesn't spend a whole lot of time in there yet, but hopefully in a month or so, he will!


Current landing place for the banner I made a few months ago.

I found this little car and papered it to match his room.

I made these blocks with paper and a little mod podge. They have his initials on them


I have to brag on my friend Maribeth a little bit. She designed these beautiful canvases with paint and paper. Isn't she too good? I was so excited to get them! How lucky am I to have such talented friends?

a week of firsts

This week, Charlie smiled for the first time.
Oh how I love him!
That precious smile is going to be my downfall...I just know it.


Charlie's other first:
Taking a nap in his crib.
Never mind the fact that it was only 10 minutes long.
He still did it.
All by himself.
Mommy is so proud.

It's the little things, you know?

After his 10 minute siesta, he started WAILING, so I put him back in his car seat... where he slept like a....baby.

What? His car seat?
Yep. His car seat.

I know. I'm a total redneck. My kid sleeps in his car seat. But he does it FOR up to 5 HOURS AT A TIME.

Laugh all you want, I don't care. I'm taking the sleep WHERE ever I can get it. HOWever I can get it!

hide and seek

Living with a toddler means finding things in the most random places.

A few months ago, I lost my cell phone for a week. I looked everywhere for that crazy thing.
Everywhere but here:

That's right. Inside a bag of chips.
mmm.... yummy.

At some point, every single sippy cup in the house has ended up under our sofa.
A few were discovered only after the smell gave away their hiding place...
Not pretty.

Yesterday, this is what I saw when I opened the refrigerator.

It's a lint brush.
Just chillin' (That's right, pun intended. I'm a nerd).

Then there was today's discovery:

Saving it for later, I guess.

I don't even want to know what's under her crib. I'm a little frightened...
Good thing she's so cute.

mission organization

Today I'm linking up with Sarah @ Thrifty Decor Chick.
She's having an organizing party and I thought I'd post a couple of my organizing ideas.


We live in an itty bitty house, so closet space is at a premium. Since the weather here doesn't require a million different kinds of coats, we decided to put our coat closet to better use.

It's a craft closet now. Shocker.

David and I bought some wire shelving at Home Depot and installed a shelf for my Cricut and our printer.
I left some room on the side of the closet for my hanging gift bag holder and my standing gift wrap holder and bought two organizational towers to house all my crafting goodies.


My pretty crafting towers used to roll, but the wheels broke off.
SO SAD.
I think that I must have maxed out the weight requirement and the poor little wheels just couldn't take it.

Imagine that.

Now, instead of rolling my pretty towers out when my crafting buddies come over, I have to shove and shimmy them out. Not very graceful, but they still work like a champ.
___________________________

A few years ago, I saw this idea in Real Simple magazine. It's the perfect place to store all of those random things that need a home - you know, things that usually end up lost in a junk drawer? It's just a simple, cheap-o little shoe organizer, but I love that I can find my flashlight or USB cord now. It makes life a lot easier.

___________________________

This is Charlie's diaper bag. It's a Kalencom bag. My friend Maribeth introduced me to it. I love it and will never buy a different type of diaper bag ever again. That's how much I love it.

Anyway - It kind of doubles as my purse for now, so I thought I'd show you some of my ideas for organizing my diaper bag.

I don't know if you can tell or not, but I have a really great key chain that hooks on the outside of your purse. It has to be one of the best inventions ever (I know I say that a lot, but I mean it this time!). It's so nice to not have to fish around for my keys anymore.

This is my bag of goodies for when we are in waiting rooms or restaurants. Very necessary.


playdough
books
suckers
all you need for a quiet meal!

I got tired of never having bendy straws at restaurants for Avery. So - when I saw this idea in a parenting magazine, I was so thrilled. Now I keep bendy straws in a toothbrush holder so they don't get dirty or lost. It's been a lifesaver!

This is our mail sorter (I got it at Ballard Designs. Well worth the money). I prettied up some clothespins and labeled them to help organize our random papers better. It's worked really well for us. Because my camera STINKS, you can't read what the clothespins say, so I'll just tell you:
to file
receipts
bills
coupons
grocery coupons


That's it! Check out Sarah's blog to view more organizational ideas.

seeing things differently

Today, as I was washing dishes and listening to a Bethany Dillon CD, I had one of those moments that make you look at life just a little differently.

It was this song: a song about the faithfulness of God.

I Believe In You (Imagination Album Version) - Bethany Dillon


I've heard this song a million times, but for some reason - today it hit me that the lyrics are what I want my children to know (I mean really KNOW) that their mom feels about them.

I've thought a lot about what it means to love unconditionally since being married to David. He's really good at loving me unconditionally. I'm really not so good at it. Marriage has been a big part of my training in the School of Life.

What I've learned is that loving someone unconditionally can be really hard at times. Real love means loving regardless of how you "feel". Real love can be messy and frustrating - and it definitely means dying to yourself - which if we're being honest here, is H.A.R.D. and totally sucks.

Really loving someone is a choice...one with wonderful, beautiful rewards.

Now that I'm a mom, real love takes on a whole new meaning for me. Two little lives are counting on ME to show them what real love means. They are counting on me to communicate the love of Christ with them.

How do you even come close to loving like our Heavenly Father does? The task can seem mind-blowing and totally daunting if you really stop to think about it.

I don't know much, but I do know that a step in the right direction is to just tell them. Tell them over and over and over and over. Tell them that you love them no matter what they do or how they act. Tell them that you believe in them. Tell them that they can never do anything to make you love them more than you already do - and never do anything that will make you love them less. Ever.

I hope that I can do that. I pray that I will do that.

As you trudge through your day today, I hope that this song inspires you a little too.

almost wordless wednesday

"totail plolish!"

Avery had her toenails painted for the first time last weekend. She is obsessed with them. She's constantly taking her shoes off to admire the beauty. Everywhere we go. Seriously.

I purposely kept from painting her toes until she was past 2 because I knew she would do this. She is, in fact, my daughter and a VERY girly little girl.

I guess I was worried that she would insist that her toenails always be freshly painted and thought that it may be a little strange for a young toddler to have painted toenails all the time. Maybe I was overthinking it, but that's what was going on in my head.

She adores her pretty toes!

By the way - check out the super cool p.j.'s. that Avery's rockin'.
I've officially given in to commercialism.
Pitiful.

uhhh

I received two super-fabulous gifts this Christmas.

This:

It's the Cricut Expression.

and This:

A fancy schmancy sewing machine from my Mother-In-Law.

I've wanted both of these lovelies for awhile now - so Imagine my sheer JOY when I got BOTH of them for Christmas!

In my mind, I've carefully planned out all the fabulousness that I'll create with these items. My imaginary list is insanely long... filled with lovely etsy inspired goodness.

The funny thing is, now that I have them, I've find myself doing a lot of this:

Why???

Maybe it's because I spend most of my day walking around in a caffeine-induced stupor. These days, I'm just plain STOOPID.

I've read the manuals and looked at countess websites explaining how to use both machines, but the details keep getting lost in my fuzzy baby brain. Reading them is a little like trying to read Chinese.

Honestly, just remembering my name seems like a huge feat...worthy of rewarding myself with - oh I don't know - maybe something like a large container of ice cream.

Anyway - making a little board definitely seemed less daunting than attempting to conquer the 2 machines, so that's what I did.
Here's a picture of my winter-themed board:

I tried some different techniques with this one. I used sandpaper to distress the paper but also used Ranger Distress Ink in Walnut Stain to "dirty" it up too.
I love it. I want to put it on everything. It gives paper such a cool look.
I also added a little charm - Cause it's pretty and I had it leftover from another project.

I'm planning on putting on my big girl swimming pants and braving the unchartered Cricut/Sewing Machine waters soon.

Wish me luck!

on the outside looking in

This is my back door.

Take a look.
Take a good long look.
Take a look for about 20 minutes.
Then add a very confused two-year-old and a large boxer on the other side of the door.

Did you do it?

That's was my view on Saturday evening.

Yep. I did it. The thing that all mothers fear that they will accidentally do: I locked myself out of the house...and my two small children IN the house.

As soon as it happened, I had that moment that some of you may have had before. The one where you are in total denial about what just happened. In my denial I jiggled the door handle for a insanely unrealistic amount of time - thinking, "maybe it's not really locked" or "maybe I can unlock it if I jiggle it enough".

Yeah. Dream on, Sister.

I tried to keep myself calm by reassuring myself that Charlie was safe in his seat and as long as I could SEE Avery, she was fine. Then I told myself that David would be home -- eventually -- he had just stepped out to grab dinner for us.
Everything would be fine.
Everything would be fine.

Then I had the crazy, unrealistic, worst-case-scenerio thoughts racing through my head:
What if Avery hurts Charlie?
What if there's an emergency situation like a fire?
What would I do?

I didn't want to do anything drastic (like throw the planter through the window) unless I HAD to, and I didn't want to leave the back door to call David from the neighbor's house because that would mean that I would be leaving Avery.

So -
I knocked on the door and desperately tried to enlist the help of the only chance for getting in the house I had: a two-year-old with limited fine motor skills.

I spent the next 20 minutes trying to explain to a toddler how to turn a teeny little lock on a great big door. I almost lost my mind. There was lots of praying going on in those 20 minutes of torture.

At first, Avery thought Mommy was playing a game with her. Between her half-hearted attempts to unlock the door, she squished her face against the glass and blew kisses on it.

When the game got old, she started to get frustrated because she couldn't open the door to go outside with Mommy.

She kept saying, "I want to go outside and play in the sandbox!"
I kept saying, "mommy WANTS you to come outside, but I can't open the door. You need to unlock the door for me."
To which she responded, "NO!" and proceeded to collapse to the floor (in true dramatic girl fashion) and throw an absolute fit.

I felt like doing the same thing.

Thankfully, David came home shortly after the screaming started and rescued me.

Everyone was fine and I survived to tell the story on our blog.
Isn't that what life is all about? Good stories for the blog?

Needless to say, I'm planning on being a little more careful in the future!