Like It’s 1999

Posted on by Amy
Yes, we do love to party around here.  The girls have been really rocking the dress up and dancing lately.

So today, we got dressed up (even Daddy!) and had our special New Year’s Eve party.

The girls got a few minutes to practice with our noise makers.

Then we did our countdown, yelled “Happy New Year!!” and went to town with the noise makers.

Who cares that it was only 7 pm?

They sure didn’t.

We even finished off the party having a “toast” with our special “party drink” in fancy glasses.

The drink was sparkling cranberry juice.  The girls weren’t really sure if they liked it.  Miss kept taking little sips and smiling, but then saying, “It’s too spicy!”  I think they mostly liked the fancy glasses and having something different.

They thought it was all a pretty big deal.  Happy New Year!  I’m looking forward to all that 2012 has in store for us.

On Being Pregnant

Posted on by Amy
Being pregnant is really an awesome experience.  There’s no real way to explain how cool it is when you feel a little baby kicking in your belly and then get to see pictures of her like this:

Awesome is really the best word to describe it.

Little Sis seems to be growing well so far.  She’s breech for now, just like her big sister Lass was, but I’m hoping she’ll get herself facing the right way more quickly and easily than Lass did.  We’ve entered the third trimester and all is going well.  I’m fairly enormous, but that’s okay.

I’m used to being enormous.  That’s just how I carry a pregnancy I guess.  All way out in front.  It’s not uncommon for me to look more pregnant at 6 months than many other people do when they deliver.  It’s no biggie.  It’s just the way I work.  It is funny though, as wonderful as pregnancy is, it also is an odd experience in terms of how it changes the way people treat you.  Of course there are always the ubiquitous “How have you been feeling?” “How far along are you?” and “Everything is going well, I hope?” questions and comments from friends and strangers alike.  People tend to be concerned with and interested in pregnant women, and this interest is very well-meaning, kind, and harmless.

However, there are times when I swear I must be wearing a sign on my forehead that says, “Hi, I’m Amy.  I’m pregnant.  Feel free to ask me very personal questions about my personal choices and bodily functions, tell me your worst labor and delivery horror stories, comment on how huge or small you think my belly is according to your idea of what size I should be, and/or give me unsolicited advice.  And sure, go ahead and rub my belly while you’re at it.”  Seriously.  Anyone with me here?  Here is just a small sample of some of the things that have been said to me or to others I know:

“Geez!  Did you mean to have them that close together???” – Said to me in a somewhat snide tone by a nurse practitioner after she asked me about my children’s ages during an office visit.

“Oh my gosh!  You gained 10 pounds in a month?!?!  Wow, that’s a lot.” – Said to me by a medical assistant after taking my weight during a routine doctor’s appointment when I was pregnant with Miss (I then heard her whispering to my doctor outside the door about how terrible my weight gain was.  To her credit, my doc never said a word to me about it).

“Wow, my daughter-in-law is at the hospital today delivering twins, and you’re as big as she is!!!” – Said to a friend of mine when she was about 6-7 months pregnant.

“You still have three months to go??  Wow, you look like you’re ready to pop now!” – Said to me this past weekend.

“Are you sure you don’t have gestational diabetes?  I had that, and you look like you do.” – Said to a friend of mine.

“You’d better be planning to breastfeed that baby.” – Said to me by a total stranger in the grocery store when I was pregnant with Miss.

And my personal favorite:
“One on board and another in the oven???  Um, you do know how that happens, right?” – Said to me by a total stranger when I was pregnant with Lass and carrying Miss in a sling above my belly.  I have to say though, this wasn’t as bad as my friend who heard, “You do know how that happens, right?” from an OB/GYN resident doctor while she was in labor with her third child.

And then there’s the belly rubbing.  I hardly ever get belly rubs from people I am close to, but those belly rubs don’t bother me anyway.  It’s the people who are strangers or acquaintances who don’t just rub or pat the belly but kind of, well stroke it, for lack of a better description.  I mean, that’s weird, right?  Fortunately this has only happened to me twice.  Once by a friend of a friend, who started rubbing my belly right after she was introduced to me.  And then another time by an acquaintance who noticed I was pregnant very early on with Sis and started rubbing my relatively small belly as she commented about how exciting it was that I’m pregnant again.  This is not only weird, but risky too, don’t you think?  We hadn’t really announced that we were expecting, and I wasn’t that big yet.  What if I was just gaining weight?  Very risky.  And weird.

Now, I know that for the most part the people who make odd and sometimes inappropriate comments to pregnant women are probably not trying to be offensive.  And usually I’m not even really offended by the comments (except the weight one, that one had me in tears).  I just think they’re kind of funny and like a little puzzling social phenomenon – The “say anything” and “touch freely” policies that often seem to surround a pregnant woman.  I’m not the only person who has experienced this, and I’ve had many laughs with friends about the crazy things people will say to a pregnant woman.  I think people mostly are just interested in pregnancy and want to or feel like they should say something to a pregnant lady to show their interest.  Maybe.  It truly doesn’t matter much anyway, as it’s such a tiny part of the nine-month wonder of pregnancy.  But it does make me chuckle a little.  I love being pregnant.

My Own Cute Daddy

Posted on by Amy
A few months ago we got family photos taken.  I love how they turned out.

The girls’ personalities just shine through in these.

Props to our photographer Tara.  You can check her out here.

Don’t they look like little porcelain dolls?

Several of these photos were used on our holiday card this year.  The one below was on it.  When we were at my parent’s house I gave my Mom her copy of the card, and Miss was really interested in checking it out.  She was so cute about it.  She pointed to my face and said, “Who’s this pretty girl?” (pronounced “pwetty guhl”).  Then she pointed at my husband’s picture and said, “And who’s this cute guy?”  I of course played along and said, “That’s Daddy!” and she said, “Yep, it’s my own cute Daddy.” I could have melted it was so sweet.

These girls just make me smile.

Santa Came to Town

Posted on by Amy
We were at the Farm over the weekend for Christmas with my husband’s family.  The girls got to have tons of fun playing with their cousins.

The grown ups got to have lots of fun visiting.  This is a photo of me with my also-pregnant sister-in-law.  She is due about two weeks after me.  The woman brought O’Doul’s.  Gotta love a fake beer on Christmas Eve.

And then of course, the Christmas festivities began.  We opened gifts with the family, which is kind of crazy since my husband has five siblings.  There were 14 adults and 13 kids opening and slinging wrapping paper all over.

It was fabulous.

One of the biggest gift “hits” was this “Rody” for Miss from my husband’s parents.

Daddy blew it up and away she went.

It caused a bit of friction once Little Sister noticed it.

She was pretty upset at not being able to ride it right away.

But Big Sister is such a sweet girl, she let her sis have a turn,

hovering nearby the entire time, of course.

And, time’s up!

It’s a really cool toy.

Finally, Miss got distracted and Lass got to have a bit of time on it.  Oh, the holiday drama!

After family gifts, the kids all went downstairs to wait for Santa.  In my husband’s family, Santa arrives on Christmas Eve before the kids go to bed.  They have to wait patiently downstairs for him (while the moms put out stockings and all the Santa gifts upstairs).

When he arrives, he makes lots of noise stomping around and “Ho-Ho-Ho-ing.”  The kids scream and run up the stairs, hoping to catch a glimpse of him before he gets into his sleigh and rides off.

We all got to see him as he ran out of the house and back to his sleigh waiting in the grass.  Unfortunately one of the older cousins may have seen him a little too much.  He said to his mom something like, “I wish we got to have the real Santa, not the one with dark hair and eyebrows.”  I guess the wig wasn’t quite straight on my brother-in-law!

When we went back inside, of course the girls had a blast with all their presents.

Miss got the two Care Bears she asked Santa for, and they haven’t left her side since.  Here she is reading one of her new books to Grumpy Bear.

In my last post I wrote about how Miss has been insistent about wearing her “ballerina costume” of leotard, tights, and ballet shoes.  The trip to the Farm was no different.  I told her she had to wear some nice clothes for Christmas dinner and family gifts, and we compromised by putting her nice clothes on over the ballerina costume (if you look at some of the pictures above you can see her little ballet shoes). After getting her Santa gifts, the “real” clothes were off and she was back in ballerina mode.

I finally got her out of the ballerina costume when we went on a treasure hunt on Christmas day.  I told her she needed to wear warm clothes and that her ballerina costume really needed to be washed while we were out.

The weather was chilly but beautiful, and as always the treasure hunt was memorable.

Lass was a bit like the little brother in “A Christmas Story.”  she was so bundled up she could barely move.

Miss found some shells and some acorns for her “treasures.”

She got to check out lots of interesting things, like this deer rub.

She got to examine some mushrooms growing on these trees

And look at these little berries.

Lass fell asleep during our walk in the woods.

Overall, the trip to the farm was a great time for all.  And when we came home, the girls found that Santa had been to our house too while we were gone.  He left some gymnastics mats, a balance beam, and a baby doll high chair (which so far has only been used to feed pizza to Care Bears).

Oh yeah, Santa left bubble wrap too.

I am still trying to get things back in order here after so much holiday traveling. Yesterday I folded six loads of laundry and I still have more to do!  The toys aren’t all put away, but they’ve at least all made it into the house now.  The spare room in the basement still has wrapping paper strewn all over the floor.  But the traveling was absolutely worth it, and we had a magical Christmas.  I hope you did too.

Christmas-ing

Posted on by Amy
Oh, we are a-Christmas-ing at our house this week.  Lots of carols and shopping and wrapping.  We even did a bit of crafting, making ornaments out of bread.  We started by using cookie cutters to cut shapes out of the bread.

Lass mostly just wanted to eat it.

After we got them cut out I used a straw to make holes in them for hanging and we left them to dry out/get stale over night.

Then we painted and glittered them (I mixed some glue into the paint).  Yes, I hate glitter.  But it is a necessary part of holiday crafting with little girls, in my opinion.  So, we braved the glitter.  Lass hasn’t done painting with a brush yet (unless you count her painting/eating endeavor with the pumpkins at Halloween), so I was just going to let her go to town with crayons and a piece of poster board.

But she saw Big Sister with the paint and was not about to settle for boring old crayons.

She did a great job.  She did immediately try to put the brush in her mouth, but refrained when I told her no.  Perhaps that’s why it wasn’t long before she got tired of painting and wanted to get down.

This girl, on the other hand, was all about focus.  She painted and glittered ornaments for her babysitters, her two teachers, and her Daddy, carefully choosing the shape, paint color, glitter color, and  hanging ribbon color for each recipient.

There are only a few left that haven’t yet been given out or put on our tree.  I think they turned out pretty cute, though I’m not sure how well they’ll hold up.  The one Miss gave to her Daddy is already in the trash after Lass tried to eat it and broke off the top of the ornament where the string hole was cut.  They are made from bread, after all…

Today was Miss’s holiday party at her school.  She got to play a game where she tossed a big jingle bell into a bucket to win a present.  This is her shy smile after achieving her objective.

She decorated cookies to set out for Santa.

And she filled a bag with reindeer food (which looked like a mixture of oatmeal, glitter, and maybe some flour, with a few jingle bells and cinnamon sticks thrown in).  We will be taking this to the Farm tomorrow night.

The girls had lots of fun playing with the Christmas tree tonight.  You might have noticed that Lass has a new hairdo by the way.

The barrette just wasn’t always working that well, even when she did keep it in her hair.

So we’re all about the spouting pony look these days.  It works much better and is so stinking cute.  You wouldn’t believe the number of comments this thing gets when we go out in public.

I did a little experimenting with my fun new-ish camera lens to try to achieve a new photography effect I have recently learned about.  It’s called “bokeh” and is basically “the aesthetic quality of the blur,” or something like that.  Look at how the Christmas lights are twinkly and out of focus behind the girls.  That’s what I was going for.

I love Holiday bokeh!

Miss has been in one or the other of her two tights/leotard combinations since we got back from Kentucky for almost every moment of the day.  It is like pulling teeth to get her to put clothes on to go to the store or to school.  She had on that adorable Matilda Jane top at her school party today, and asked to change back into this as soon as we arrived home.  She got back on the ballerina kick when my Auntie got her a magnetic wooden “paper doll” ballerina for Christmas.  The first night we got home from Kentucky she asked to put on her ballerina costume.  I let her put on the shoes and tutu, since it was almost time for bed (thinking these would be easier to get into and out of when it was time for jammies).  She ended up sleeping in those anyway, and has slept in some sort of ballerina get up every night since.  And she dances the part too.  It’s awesome.
Tomorrow will bring lots more Christmas-ing, with tons of shopping, wrapping, caroling and then packing and traveling to the Farm, where the Christmas-ing will continue through the weekend.  So I’d better get some sleep!

A Great Big Kentucky Post. Y’all.

Posted on by Amy
Last week we went to Kentucky to spend the week with my parents.  I have virtually no internet access there, so I couldn’t post while we were gone.  Somehow we have been home for three days, and I am just now getting around to posting about our fabulous trip.  I would say with all the holiday craziness I haven’t had the time to post.  However, I am a firm believer that you have time for what you make time for.  So.  Sorry, I haven’t made time for this.  But if it makes up for it, I’m posting right now during naptime instead of taking a shower…
Anyway.  Our trip was really wonderful, though it was unfortunately delayed for a day.  Remember how I posted that we had all managed to escape the stomach bug except for Lass’s very brief encounter with it?  I typed too soon.  Friday night, the night before we were supposed to leave, I was up all night sick and ended up going to the emergency department for fluids around 4am, right about the time Miss woke up crying and asking for “new jammies,” meaning of course that she had thrown up all over the ones she was wearing.  So, needless to say, she and I were under the weather for the day that was supposed to be our travel day, and we didn’t make it to Kentucky until Sunday.  But the visit was so worth the trip. My parents rock.  They are so awesome with my girls and give them so much love and attention it just makes my heart melt to watch them together.  I love that my girls are the center of attention with my parents for a whole week.  And they eat it up.  Miss just glows with happiness when playing with my Mom, and Lass got there too, though it took her a bit longer to warm up.  Little girls can just never have too much love and attention from their grandparents.  I only wish my parents lived close, so my girls could have the experience of spending time with them more often.
Here’s a big, huge photo tour of our week in the south:
We went to story time at the library where my Mom is the children’s librarian.  I was so proud of my girls.  Both of them sat nicely and listened to the story, even though there was a good bit of chaos going on around them.

Then Santa showed up…

Miss got all shy and scrambled for my lap

where she clung to me for dear life

until Santa called her name to come up for her present.

She was so shy!

But my shy girl braved giving the big guy a hug.

Lass was surprisingly calm about the process of seeing Santa too.

Probably because I didn’t even attempt to get her any closer than this.

The story time was great.  We colored and had a snack and crafted a paper chain.

All the kids got in a circle with my mom at the end to sing a song, which was very cute.

Then it was time to go.

We did stop upstairs to check out some books, which Miss had fun reading to her baby doll when we got back to my parents’ house.

The day of the story time was also my husband’s birthday.  This year I let Miss pick out a few presents for him in addition to what I got for him.  A couple of weeks ago I took her to the dollar store (the real one where everything costs $1), gave her a $5 bill and told her she could pick five things that she thought her Daddy would like for his birthday.  She walked around the store clutching the $5 bill in her hand, selecting things at her eye level.  It was so fun to watch her make her choices and then to pack them up when we got them home.  In addition to the five presents, she was also allowed to pick a card and a gift bag for him.

And all on her own, she also picked this hat as a must-have for her Daddy.

So what were the gifts?  A Winnie the Pooh chalkboard set,

a pink jumprope, blue safety scissors, and a pen with a bobbling dog on top, set into a suction cup base (not pictured here, but shown above).

My personal favorite?  Floral foam.

Miss had no idea what it was when she saw it at the store, but she thought it was awesome and knew her Daddy would just love it.  It was great to watch her getting so excited about her Daddy’s presents.

We also got to visit with my brother and his family for an afternoon.  We went to their house to do our Christmas with them.

A good time was had by all, I think.

And a great holiday tradition was passed to the next generation during this visit.  Every year my mom and I watch the movie “Heidi” with Shirley Temple.  Some people watch, “Miracle on 34th Street,” maybe even “A Christmas Story” or some other traditional holiday movie.  Our movie is “Heidi.”  We know the dialog by heart.  This year, my girls watched it for the first time.

Okay, so the above photos are a little misleading.  They really only paid attention to the movie for about the first 10 minutes.  But I didn’t expect much more for the first viewing.  This movie takes time to appreciate.  My husband and brother, even my Dad, still don’t quite appreciate it yet.  The girls will get there.  Of that I am sure.

One other movie experience we had while in Kentucky, that Miss did greatly appreciate (to the point that we watched the movie 3 times in 24 hours), was her first viewing of “Snow White.”  I hadn’t seen the movie in many, many years, so I probably enjoyed watching it with her almost as much as she did.

The still photos don’t quite do justice to our enjoyment of the movie.

I’m glad to be home, though I miss my family.  I can’t believe Christmas is already almost here.  Tomorrow is Miss’s school party.  I have way too much gift-wrapping left to do.  This weekend we’ll go to the Farm to “do Christmas” with my husband’s family.   It’s the most wonderful time of the year.

Did I Say I Thought Pink Eye Was Yucky?

Posted on by Amy
Yes, I did.  When Miss first started school I typed this post, which I stupidly titled, “Bring on the Ickies” (why would I ever type such a statement?).  At the time I was grossed out because I thought she had pink eye, which she actually didn’t have, by the way.  I was writing about how I knew she would bring home lots of germs now that she had started school and blah, blah, blah.  Yesterday I got a much better sense of the truly icky.  Picture it.  I wake up at 4 AM to Lass’s crying.  It was a “something’s wrong” kind of cry, so I went in to get her thinking maybe she’d had a bad dream or something, and I’d just rock her for a bit.  Instead I found that Lass had puked all over herself, her bed, her floor, and then me as soon as I picked her up.  Okay.  I got it all cleaned up, put both of us in clean jammies, and began rocking her to try to get her back to sleep.  Naturally, she puked all over both of us again before I managed to run her to the bathroom and get her over the sink.  Again, I get it cleaned up and go back to rocking her.  And that’s not even the really icky part…
Rewind about 8 hours to Wednesday night.  I had received a text message from a babysitter telling me that her roommate had just found out she has scabies.  Oh yes.  I thought pink eye was gross?  No.  No, scabies is gross.  Gross as in make-my-skin-crawl-give-me-the-crazy-heebie-jeebies kind of gross.  Unfortunately this babysitter had been to my house three times in three days, including Wednesday afternoon for a little while while I took Miss to gymnastics.  At first I wasn’t too worried about it, since this babysitter didn’t even know if she actually had it, and I hadn’t seen any signs that my girls did, but still.  I did vacuum every room where this babysitter would have been, rugs and furniture.  And then as I was sitting there at 4-something AM, rocking Lass again after changing both of our clothes for the second time, I couldn’t help but imagine a little bit what yesterday might have had in store for me.  I pictured two puking girls, perhaps being sick myself, and needing to scour and sanitize my house and medicate my girls to get rid of little tiny mites that had burrowed under their skin and gotten into all of our clothing, bedding, furniture, carpets…  Perhaps this was a bit melodramatic, but I was sleepy and my mind was wandering on it’s own.  And really it wasn’t really too far fetched to imagine that could have been my day.
Amazingly, Lass went back to sleep (though I never did – see thoughts running through my head, above) for a little while and when she woke up she had no additional symptoms of a stomach bug.  She kept down everything I gave her to drink and eat and was her cheerful happy self all day long.  Miss never got sick, nor did I.  Score 1 for Mama!
Unfortunately, I did get a text later in the morning that my babysitter does in fact have scabies.  Even more unfortunately, I couldn’t get a doctor’s appointment until 4:30 in the afternoon to find out if my girls or I had it.  So, though I tried not to worry about it, I was kind of freaking out that we were infested.  There were no real signs that any of us had it, but I started imagining that every little red spot on my girls or any itch I felt myself was a little mite trying to find a home.  I started stripping sheets and doing laundry.  And then I did the most appropriate and merciful thing yesterday afternoon.  I let my girls watch a rare bit of afternoon TV and I called my mom to whine.
 TV Glaze

It was quite therapeutic.  My mom did what all good moms do.  She listened.  She sympathized.  She made me laugh.  What more could a girl ask for (other than having said mom living nearby so she could have come over to help with the laundry, which my mom would have happily done, of course…).

And to make a very long story short, the girls napped, we went to the doctor, and we found out that we do not have scabies.  And I learned a lot about scabies that made me feel better all around, like that scabies can’t live long at all in clothing, furniture, etc.  That washing every article of clothing and bedding in our house wasn’t really necessary, though I did it anyway.  That scabies show up fast and move fast and itch like crazy.  In other words, if you have scabies, you know it.  Since we didn’t have it and our poor babysitter had not been around for a while, the likelihood that we would get it was nil.  Score 2 for Mama!

And, since we did not have scabies, our other babysitter, whom we had scheduled to come over so my hubby and I could get out for dinner, was still happy to come.  So we had a nice dinner out and relaxed away the craziness of the day.  Score 3!!  I am still a little bit shocked when I think about how crummy yesterday could have been and then about how relatively not-so-bad it really was.  I feel like I dodged a major bullet!

And to top it all off, since we don’t have scabies and my testimony for this morning got postponed (thankfully, because I wouldn’t have had a babysitter!), we got to go to a much-looked-forward-to play date with some great friends.  My friend had a Christmas cookie decorating play date at her house this morning, and it was a blast.  Lass mostly just ate a cookie and played in the frosting.

Miss had lots of fun decorating the cookies and eating them.  She had a little bit of a hard time though with the idea that she could only eat one of the cookies she decorated and the rest we had to just decorate and save to take home.

Miss made a special cookie for her Daddy.

A good time was had by all.  Hooray for no scabies!

Tomorrow we go to my parent’s house for a week.  I am so thrilled to spend the week with my Mom and Dad.  But, that likely means there will be very little blogging from this girl until we get back, as my parents live in an internet black hole.  I’ll be back in about a week!

Wednesdays

Posted on by Amy
I love Wednesdays.  I get to spend a little bit of special time with each of my girls on Wednesdays.  Miss goes to school and Lass and I run errands or just hang out and play in the morning.  Then I take Miss to gymnastics in the afternoon.  She loves gymnastics.
Note: All of these gymnastics pictures were taken at least six months ago, probably more like nine months.  Unfortunately, I don’t have any recent photos of her at gymnastics.

Miss has gotten so much braver and stronger since these photos were taken.  She used to be somewhat fearful about doing certain things by herself, like going down the slide, or jumping from a height she perceived to be too high.

In spite of encouragements to try it herself, she used to insist on holding my hand.

Now she jumps from much greater heights by herself.  Occasionally she still comes up to a jump that makes her nervous, but with encouragement she’ll usually even go for those by herself.

She used to need lots of help doing this “strong arms” move down the beams.  Now she not only does it totally by herself, she’s fast!

Today she even insisted on trying to do a headstand by herself.

One thing that still makes her a bit nervous is walking the balance bean if it is raised up off the floor at all.  But she’s even getting better at that.  Today I was so proud of her, because although she was clearly nervous, she did walk the whole length of the beam herself.  She did it shuffling her feet in tiny, tiny steps, but she did it.  And at the end she jumped off and yelled, “I did it!”  It was awesome.

Gymnastics class with Miss is a blast and I am always so entertained and awed by watching her learn new things so quickly.

In addition to enjoying spending time with her in class, I like to savor the car rides to and fro.  Now that it’s dark out when we go, she often comments on the Christmas lights she sees.  Tonight we sang to Christmas music.  Her favorite is “Rudolf the Red-Nosed Deer” followed closely by the Chipmunks Christmas song.  She half-sings, half hums along with that one until the line “Me, I want a hooooola hoooop,” which she nails every time.

And since gymnastics class runs right up to dinner time, often we treat ourselves to some take out dinner.  Lately we’ve been getting an extra special treat of Culver’s on Wednesday nights, complete with frozen custard sundaes for dessert (mine is still waiting for me in the freezer…)  Of course, Culver’s has very little post-dinner clean up, which leaves plenty of time for my favorite part of the day, between dinner and bedtime when we listen to music and play.  Christmas music and wrestling/chasing/tickling with Daddy were on the agenda tonight.

I love Wednesdays.  Frozen custard is calling me.

A Letter to Santa and a Little Elf

Posted on by Amy
A few years ago, my mom and dad gave us an ornament for our Christmas tree.  It’s a hollow tube with one end that comes off.  It says, “Letters to Santa” on the side.  This was the first year Miss was old enough to have an understanding of the idea of writing a letter to Santa to tell him what she’d like for Christmas.  So yesterday we wrote a letter.  Really, I wrote a letter and prodded her for the things she’d like to ask Santa for.  She initially said, “A teddy bear.”  When I asked what kind of teddy bear, she said, “A pink one.”  This was news to me.  Every other time I’ve asked her what she would like from Santa, she has said, “Care Bears,” even going so far as to specify a few specific Care Bears.  I have since purchased said Care Bears.  These will be gifts from Santa.  So, I must admit I kind of prompted her to include Care Bears and a few other things that “Santa” has already gotten her in her list to him. We also added a section to ask for things for Lass.

Then we rolled up the letter, put it in the tube, and hung it back on the tree.  I told Miss Santa would come to get it while she slept.

This morning we got up and went to see if Santa had taken the letter.

He did, of course. Miss thought this was quite fun.  I also used this exercise in sending a letter to Santa to introduce the “Elf on the Shelf” concept to our house.  I had gone back and forth with myself about whether we were going to have an Elf this year.  Once I learned about it, it seemed like a cute concept.  Folks seem to have lots of fun with their elves.  Miss’s school has an elf they have named “Jingle.”  By the time I finally decided to go ahead and get an elf, I missed the “late November” time period when these elves are supposed to arrive.  Oh well. Miss doesn’t yet understand what “late November” means anyway.  So, I decided to coordinate the arrival of the Elf with the disappearance of the letter to Santa.  As in “Santa came last night and took your letter and, wow look!, he left an elf for us.”  Cool, eh?  The book and box for the elf (we got “Christopher Pop-In-Kins” instead of the other Elf on the Shelf that lots of other folks get) were left under the Christmas tree where the ornament was hanging.  We read the book together this morning.  Then I pointed out to Miss that the box was empty, so the elf must be hiding!  She found him pretty quickly (see the little elf below on the mantle in front of the white-framed photo of the girls).  She was a little excited to find the elf and tell him “Hello,” though I’m not entirely sure she understands the whole thing.  It’s okay. If nothing else it will be fun to hide the Elf each night and let her find him each morning.

And speaking of Elves…  This little elf’s sweet personality has just been blossoming!  She is such a funny and feisty and loving little girl!  Her big thing lately is giving kisses.  A LOT of kisses.  She’ll just walk up and kiss me wherever she can reach me.  On my knee if I’m standing.  On my big belly if I’m sitting.  On my arm if I’m changing her diaper.

She gives kisses just as much to her daddy and sister.  She gives kisses to the dog.  It makes me melt to see the girls giving each other hugs and kisses.  Big sister seems to enjoy the lovins and there is a lot of hugging and kissing between those two these days.

Talk about holiday spirit!

Toy Storage Makeover

Posted on by Amy
Last week I went to a play date at a friend’s house.  I hadn’t been to her house before.  She had the most amazing basement playroom/toy storage system.  Huge closets and a wall of shelves with bins and baskets all holding toys sorted by type.  It was awe-inspiring.  It at least inspired me to finally finish the toy storage redo I’ve been gradually working on at our house.  A few months ago, our toy storage consisted of this:

When Miss was tiny, I started out using a cube-shaped ottoman-type thing that had a lid on it to store her toys (you can see it in the above photo in front of the window).  Once her she had her first Christmas under her belt, that was no longer sufficient.  So after a while I got the baskets you see under the table below our TV.  Then I moved a bunch of toys into a Rubbermade container in the basement.  They just kept expanding and expanding.  And they were totally disorganized.  My family room had been taken over.  So, a few months ago I made the decision to buy a few new toy storage items and move everything either down to the basement or into the sunroom.  My husband and Miss took care of the assembly.

And the result is so much better.

Family room before:

After:

Far wall of the sunroom before:

After:

Two of the pieces we added were the book cart and the low table (which has been shown in a few other posts as the girls love coloring on it) with the rolling toy bins underneath.  We also redistributed our plants to several other spots in the house, and they look much nicer now.

This is the wall along the front of the house before:

After:

And the wall along the back of the house after:

The bookshelf with toy bin at the bottom is our other new piece.  I also purchased the fabric baskets to store the girls’ play food and dishes.  They just happened to fit perfectly in the boxes of one of my old wooden-crates-turned-shelves (just to the left of the doors).  We never use these doors to go in and out to the backyard, so having the table and some toys in front of it works just fine.

I am quite happy with the end result.  It’s nothing compared to my friend’s super amazing basement space.  But it works.  I think the girls like it too.  It is more organized so they seem to enjoy their toys more.  And they still play in the family room, which is a bigger space and better for running around with baby dolls in strollers and/or shopping carts.

Note the boots in this picture.  Remember I posted about getting a great deal on winter boots?  Miss loves them!

Without the toys strewn all over the floor in the family room, there’s more room to run, and for them to chase each other.

I’m happy to have this great space for my girls to play and color and have friends over.  We also moved lots of their bigger toys to the basement, like Miss’s tricycle and Lass’s cozy coupe car.  So they have another space for running and playing and I get to keep those toys out of sight and out of the way.  I couldn’t bring myself to make the basement into our main playroom because it isn’t nicely finished (picture drop ceilings, ugly chair-rail-height paneling, and carpet without padding underneath) and it has no windows.  We get little enough daylight here in the winter.  I can’t bring myself to spend more than a little bit of time in our windowless basement per day.  So, this is the perfect solution for me.