Happy 4th of July!

Posted on by Amy
This is a day late, but we were having so much fun this weekend I didn’t get to post it yesterday.
We started off the 4th of July festivities by checking out the local festival called “Sawdust Days” which is held at a local park and runs through the holiday weekend with fireworks on Saturday and a veteran’s parade on Sunday. I was bummed that we missed it last year, and determined that we would check it out this year. So as soon as my hubby got home from work on Thursday I rushed him to change clothes and off we went, planning to indulge in some yummy fair food for dinner.
Unfortunately, the Sawdust Days seem to have been misnamed. The festival should have been called the “Freaks and Stinky People Fair.” I promise, I am not a snob. Go to any state fair or even smaller scale festival, and much of the fun is the confluence of people from all walks of life. I love people watching. But this small local event was truly the most concentrated gathering of scary, strange, and heavily body-odored people I have ever seen. And I worked in prisons and prison psychiatric hospitals for many years! Needless to say, we went, we saw, we hightailed it out of there and ate dinner at a downtown restaurant. We did however get a good laugh from the experience.
The rest of the weekend was truly a fun time. Friday morning Miss and I took the Expedition to have one of the headlights fixed and did a little shopping at Big Lots while waiting for the work to be done. I found a great “painting” for my bedroom for only $10. I just love a bargain. Then we went to a quilt shop down the road where I picked up some fabric to make curtains and the bedskirt for Baby Girl’s room. As we walked around the store Miss kept pointing at all the fabrics and quilts hanging up and saying her version of “pretty,” which sounds sort of like “pi-ee” with a very awed vocal inflection. It was so cute.
Saturday morning we went to the farmer’s market. We found some great local produce as well as some locally made salsa and salad dressing/marinade. I just love the farmer’s market. But the best part of the weekend was that Miss and I spent the majority of it (Friday, Saturday and Sunday afternoons) playing at the pool. We have met some new friends there, a mom and her little girl who is just about 2 months older than Miss. It is so fun to watch Miss and her little friend play together. They do a lot of staring at each other and working on sharing. Yesterday it was super cute to watch them take turns stomping and splashing in a puddle by the pool. I’m happy to have met a new mom-friend too, and we had a fantastic time at the pool, even though my hubby was working all weekend and couldn’t come with us.
Last night we went to a neighborhood barbecue and met some new people. Miss was, of course, the star of the party. How could she not be looking all festive and adorable?



I love the 4th of July. We didn’t get to attend any fireworks shows, because Miss goes to bed long before it is dark enough here for that, but we heard plenty and I’m looking forward to years in the future when we can take Miss to see some great fireworks shows on this patriotic holiday.

Though today was the observed holiday for a lot of people, my hubby still had to work and the weather took a turn for the worse here. It was overcast and looked like the sky might open up at any moment and pour down rain. It never actually did, but we skipped the pool anyway. We went for low-key today. Miss and I made basil ice cubes, to preserve some of the fresh basil we have for this winter. And she spent quite a bit of time having a blast playing with, eh, dog toys.

Yes, I am a little bit ashamed to admit to the sorry state of the dog toys in our home. What you see in the photo above was once a stuffed tomato with a squeaker inside. One of my dogs has no interest in toys, and the other just tears a toy apart so that the stuffing is all over the house and the squeaker is rendered mute within moments of giving it to him. That doesn’t mean I don’t give him toys from time to time anyway, it just means they don’t last in any form that would be recognizable as a toy for very long. Consequently, we have many scraps of stiff-from-dog-slobber plush in a rainbow of colors (previously a frog, a Santa, a white dog, etc.). Miss seemed a little grossed out by a few of the pieces too, picking them up gingerly with thumb and forefinger and holding them out to the dog in an attempt to play. But she was also fascinated by them for long enough that I got to sit and enjoy rocking in a chair and watching her dump out the whole dog toy basket and peruse the bits.

This green one seemed to be her favorite. It was once a tadpole-like toy with a tennis ball in one end, I think. Now it’s just the green tail part, and she plays with the ball separately.
She thought it would be fashionable as a scarf.
But I think maybe it grossed her out.
To top off the weekend I made a delicious stir fry for dinner with tons of fresh veggies from our CSA box and now my hard-working hubby is out enjoying an evening round of golf. Here’s hoping everyone else has had as much fun as we have this holiday weekend.

A Small Story about a Big Bag

Posted on by Amy
Okay, maybe it’s not really a small story, but here it is anyway:
When I was pregnant with Miss, the first baby-related item I bought was a custom diaper bag from 1154 Lill. I love 1154 Lill, because you can select from many different styles of bags and then pick the fabric you want for the bag, either in one of their stores or right on their website. I first bought a Lill bag in Kansas City in one of their stores (which has since closed I think, though they still have stores in Chicago and I believe Boston). The first bag I bought was a laptop bag, and I still use it when I work. It’s a gorgeous bag, and I love it. So, when the time came to get a diaper bag, naturally I wanted to design my own Lill bag. Here is the bag I made online when pregnant with Miss:

This has been a great bag and I have received tons of compliments on it. It is sturdy and has held up very well to daily use and often over-stuffing with the many things I need to tote around with Miss. However, it has some things about it that annoy me, like this:
And also the fact that the strap is just a bit too long and is not adjustable other than to make it really short. So when I’m carrying Miss and my bag, the bag hangs just a bit too low for me to get into it with one hand while holding her with the other. I always end up stopping, bending my leg and lifting my foot to push the bag up enough that I can reach my keys or whatever else I need to get out of the bag. Plus, if you’ve ever packed a diaper bag with cloth diapers, you know how much room they take up. When I bought this bag, I did not necessarily plan to cloth diaper Miss and didn’t know enough about using cloth for that to have that be something that would go into my selection of diaper bag. This bag has usually been sufficient for handling cloth diapers for one baby, but when I think about adding all the stuff that I need for two babies in cloth diapers, one a newborn and one a toddler. . . well, I knew this bag would just not cut it.
Fortunately, I had heard of a mom who makes fabulous bags and sells them in an Etsy shop, Brooke Van Gory Designs (Can you tell I’m seriously Etsy addicted? I just love buying things made by other moms). I told my hubby that I wanted a gift certificate for her Up-sized Expedient Weekender/Diaper bag for my birthday. This is a very large diaper bag with lots of pockets and a matching wetbag that can hook on to the outside of the bag instead of taking up room on the inside for dirty diapers (what a great idea!!). Being the fabulous husband he is, he got it for me. I was so excited I contacted Brooke right away and she helped me pick the fabric for my bag. A great thing about her bags is that you can pick from fabrics she has shown on her website, or you can pick almost anything else that you can find, provided it would work for the construction of the bag (when designing a Lill bag, you have to choose from the fabrics they have in their store). Brooke and I looked through lots of different fabrics (Michael Miller, Amy Butler, etc.) to select what I wanted for my bag.
Now here comes the part where the small story isn’t so small. Brooke got the bag made and shipped it off to me. Unfortunately, my hubby almost never uses Paypal (which is how he paid for the bag, as is typical for most Etsy shops) and didn’t even realize that the address on his account was our old address in North Carolina, where we haven’t lived in over two years! Well, it didn’t occur to either of us that Brooke would print the shipping label from Paypal (though this is a pretty standard practice among sellers who use Paypal), but that’s what happened and the bag got sent to the old homestead in NC. It took about a week before Brooke and I realized what had happened, at which point I proceeded to call the post office and start an investigation to find the bag. Unfortunately the PO dropped the ball and the “investigation” was not pursued, so another week went by before I contacted them again and they tried to speak with the mail carrier to find out what he could remember about the delivery. In the meantime, I sent a letter through snail mail (I didn’t have a phone number or email, but of course had the address. . .) to the people who bought the house from us asking them to please be on the lookout for the bag and mark it “return to sender” and put it back in the mail at their earliest convenience. The woman who bought the house from us called me and told me they had just sold the house themselves and would pass along the request to the new owners at their closing later that day. I told her that the bag had already been delivered two weeks before. Unfortunately she and her husband had not been living in the house for over a month, so the bag was delivered and sat at my old, vacant, house for up to two weeks. My phone number was passed along to the new owners. I never heard anything from them, though I didn’t expect to, figuring the bag was long gone at that point.
I was sad. I really wanted that bag.
Then, Brooke swooped in and saved the day. She just decided to remake the bag for me, and so she did. Talk about customer service. I have to give her major props for doing that, and for how completely awesome the bag turned out. After all that build up, here it is:
I knew it would be bigger than my old bag, but couldn’t believe how much bigger it turned out to be!!
Both bags have plenty of outer storage space, plus lots of pockets inside. My old bag had four interior pockets, which was great, except that I ended up without a good place to store my “mommy stuff” (lip balm, Tums, etc.), so I just threw it in the same pocket with the snacks/sippy cup, etc. Here’s a photo of the old bag, containing toys, a changing pad, a bonnet, one cloth diaper, some food, diaper cleanup stuff, and Miss’s Tiny Diner placemat (which I LOVE; I am a serious baby gear head):
Here’s the new bag containing the same stuff. There is so much more room in there!! And even better, there’s a whole extra pocket (5 total on the inside of this bag) where I can put my “mommy stuff” and zip it away.
The straps are just the right length to be able to reach into the bag while it’s on my shoulder. The bag is actually almost too big. Almost. But not really. I have been known to cram a lot of stuff into a bag when toting one child, and this bag will definitely be none too big when I have stuff for two. And the quality of the workmanship it top notch. Plus, the Brooke bag is significantly less expensive!
The only thing I regret a little about this bag is that it is sooo similar in its color scheme to my old bag. Obviously that’s because I love the colors in both of them. And I do absolutely love the new bag, I just have a very small part of me that wishes I had branched out to something a little different. But realistically, that would only be useful if I were planning to switch between bags to match what I was wearing or something, and I know I will probably never switch back to the old bag again, so it’s probably best that I got the new bag in the color scheme that I love the most rather than going for something different just because. So yeah, scratch that. I’m so glad I got what I got.
I have to say big “Thanks!!” to my hubby and to Brooke for this fantastic new bag!! I’m so excited to start carrying little newborn-sized cloth diapers in there in a few months. And I have to say, if you’re in the market for a bag, check out Brooke’s Etsy shop. She has smaller bags too if you’re not in the market for a super duper diaper bag/weekend travel bag, she does great work at great prices, and she’s fantastic to work with. Five stars for sure!

Check out these fabulous pants

Posted on by Amy

Yep, those are the pants I made with my own two little hands. Remember when I posted a few weeks ago about making Miss some pants like these? Well, I finally finished getting the ruffles on them last night and tried them on Miss today. I am seriously so proud of myself for finishing them so that they look like what I wanted them to, and for only about $5!! When I showed them to my hubby last night he said, “You made those? Wow, those are cool!” And not only did I make them myself, but the ruffles I did without a pattern! I had a basic pattern for the pants, which were easy, but then I had to figure out how big to cut the ruffles, how far apart to space them, etc. I already knew how to gather them evenly, because my mom showed me how to do that when we made Miss’s crib skirt last year. She also helped me decide on which size of the pattern to make when we discussed this project some time ago. Really my mom taught me everything I know about sewing, so thanks Mom! Check out how perfect the pants look on Miss.
She enjoyed trying them on today and flounced about a bit, kicking her legs to admire the ruffles.

As much as I am pleased with how the pants turned out, I do need to shorten the waist elastic a bit. I was so concerned about making the pants big enough to fit over Miss’s cloth-diaper-fluffy bum, that I ended up leaving the waist elastic just a little too long and the pants kind of fall off a tad. I also plan to make a few changes to the next pair I make, like double folding the hem on the ruffles and serging all the seams if I can get a serger, because I am having a slight problem with fraying on this pair. Otherwise, I’m thrilled with the result of this project and really want to make more. First though I need to get some things done for Baby Girl’s room, like her crib sheets, crib skirt, and a new cover for my boppy. So, no more baby couture until I have those projects done, hopefully soon. Then, more pants and maybe some bloomers too!

Whew!

Posted on by Amy
I can’t believe it’s been a week since my last post. This past week has been a whirlwind of getting ready for a house full of guests. And not just any guests, in-law guests. Don’t read that to mean that I wasn’t happy about my in-laws coming. I actually like my in-laws a great deal, but when I find out that they’re coming to visit, I go into a crazy frenzy of house cleaning and preparation. Of course I always do this to a degree whenever anyone is coming to stay in my home, but somehow when it’s my husband’s family, things get cranked up to a whole new level. I’m not sure what it is about having in-laws come to visit that makes me slightly insane for a few days before hand, but that’s how it typically works. I guess it’s better than feeling insane after the leave, right?
Anyway, that’s my excuse for not blogging for a week. I cleaned my whole house like mad and then had a great time visiting with three of my hubby’s siblings and their spouses and children (a total of 13 people) for a long weekend. Oddly, considering how camera crazy I’ve been since I got my new camera, I have hardly any photos from the weekend of festivities. The condensed version of events is that we had some guests arrive Thursday night, I went outlet mall shopping with one of my sisters-in-law on Friday morning, then we all went to the pool all afternoon and had a great time, ordered pizza for dinner, the rest of the guests arrived by late Friday night, Saturday morning I went to the farmer’s market with three of my sisters-in-law, then we went to the pool again for most of the day, my hubby and I had to take Miss for a brief appearance at the wedding reception of our beloved babysitter, then we came home and the kids played in the backyard until late at night, including some hide-and-go-seek in the dark. Everyone was gone before lunch today and we have been catching up on relaxation since. As I don’t really have photos from the weekend, here are some cute ones of Miss from today and last week, just because.

I love the curls out the bottom of the bonnet.

Smelling the flowers.

Big-Sister Strut

Stick phone.


Helping me clean for our company.

Just ornery.

Vacation Love

Posted on by Amy
We got back late Saturday night from a week-long vacation. I started the trip by going to my parents’ for a family reunion and service for my Papa. It was wonderful to see so many of my family members, many of whom I haven’t seen in years. I loved that Miss got to be surrounded by such a loving bunch of people. Then she and I went to meet my hubby at the “Farm,” which is his family’s vacation property on a lake in Missouri. Here are some of my favorite things from the trip:
1. My parents have this small antique rocking chair that Miss enjoyed sitting and rocking in, which was adorable. I learned that the chair was actually my Dad’s when he was little, which makes it just that much more special.


2. I got to spend some time with my Grandma B and go through some amazing photo albums she has put together with lots of old photos. My favorites were the ones of she and my Papa when they were “courting” and in the early days of their marriage. I love that I always learn new things about my family and my heritage whenever I see her.
3. Bloomers. I loved Miss in these from Three Yellow Starfish. In my opinion, bloomers beat shorts any day (on a baby/toddler anyway).



4. The slide. It was pure joy watching Miss on the slide with her Daddy.



5. Watermelon. Not my favorite fruit to eat, and I don’t think I even had any to eat during the trip, but I sure did love watching Miss try so hard to pick this one up.
6. Fishing. Here is Miss watching her cousins fish in the pond at the Farm. Her cousin caught a fish, and in the first photo she’s making her fish face, which consists of her opening and closing her slightly-puckered mouth. She wasn’t afraid to touch the fish or the worms they were using for bait. My hubby was pointing out all the important elements of hooking a fish to her while they watched the bigger kids. She ate it up. I can’t wait until she’s big enough to fish herself.





7. My hubby’s new no-hair do. Yowza! Love it.
8. Raspberries. They were delicious, but even better than eating them myself was watching Miss pick them right from the bush and put them in her mouth. The berry face afterwards was priceless.







We had a great trip, and there were many things to love about it. Another wonderful part of any trip is coming home. We got to spend yesterday (Father’s Day) together at home and it was a great day. A belated Happy Father’s Day to all the fabulous fathers in my life (you know who you are).

A Bonnet

Posted on by Amy
Miss is not a fan of wearing a hat. She hated having a hat on when she was a newborn. Then she seemed to get over her hat issue for a while and did fine wearing a sun hat last summer. But when I tried to put one on her during our trip to Hawaii in February, she was back to total refusal. I put the hat on, and she promptly pulled it off. I tried tying the hat under her chin. No go. Then I thought maybe the old sun hat was just too small so I got her one a little bigger. It didn’t matter, she still wouldn’t keep it on.
More recently I saw the most adorable bonnet from an Etsy shop called Bella Sol Bebe Boutique on this blog that I love to follow. So I checked out the shop, and I just had to have one for Miss. What is more precious than a baby girl in a bonnet?? There is just something so quaint and nostalgic about a bonnet. I can remember wearing one when I was little, and I was so excited when I got the bonnet I ordered for Miss. I always thought she looked cuter than should be allowed in her old floppy sun hat, and of course she did. . .

But when I put this bonnet on her, I just wanted to melt over how completely perfect it was. . .



And an added bonus to the complete adorableness of this bonnet is the fact that Miss will actually keep it on for the entire time she’s outside, so her perfect little head can be protected.


(I think this one is my favorite)

And I absolutely love the sweaty little head of wispy hair that emerges from under the hat when we come in to cool off for a bit. Heaven.

The Perfect Summer Day

Posted on by Amy

Today started with me making pancakes for breakfast, served with fresh berries. My hubby went outside after breakfast and cut some of the most gorgeous peony blossoms I have ever seen from the bushes in our yard. They are absolutely beautiful sitting on my kitchen table, and they smell like heaven. Then we went to the local farmer’s market and bought some delicious-smelling cilantro and dill, green onions, green garlic, lime basil to plant with my other herbs (I had never heard of this before!), and some locally made apple syrup and sorghum syrup. Yum!

After Miss took a nap and had lunch, we went to the pool for the afternoon while my hubby went golfing. No puking this time, fortunately! Miss and I had a wonderful time playing in the water. She is getting a little bit more confident and enjoyed splashing and bending her knees to dunk her booty in the water. By late afternoon it started to get cool and cloudy, so we got dry just as my hubby was finishing his round of golf and we had a snack of ice cream before it started to sprinkle and we went home. Miss took another short nap and then I made dinner of venison tenderloin, butternut squash, and asparagus. I gave Miss a bath, put her down to bed, and experimented with our new macro camera lens while waiting for some people to come purchase some furniture I posted on Craigslist yesterday. Check out a couple of the pics below.
The furniture sold and I started making a new pair of pants for Miss. I really fell in love with these pants, but couldn’t justify spending that kind of money on a pair of pants for a toddler, so I found a pattern and some cute fabric and just have to manage to add the ruffles at the bottom (the pattern doesn’t include these). Anyway, I got the pants cut and put together. Tomorrow I just have to try them on Miss to adjust the elastic and length before putting the elastic in the waistband and adding the ruffles to the bottom. I’m so excited to see these on her!
The way they’re laying in the photo makes the leg length look uneven, but it’s not!!


I found myself just enjoying so much about today. It really did just have the feeling of the perfect summer day.

Funny Miss

Posted on by Amy
My girl makes me laugh every day. She does so many funny little things that I just love to watch. Who new having a toddler was such great entertainment? Here are just a few of her new things that crack me up.
She loves to play in my closet with my clothes and shoes. She just sits in the middle of a big pile of stuff she has pulled off the shelves and has a blast. She has a natural affinity for jewelry and loves to put on my necklaces and carry my purses. She has made such a mess of my closet, and I love it.



Miss loves to get into my drawer of hair stuff while I’m getting ready in the bathroom. She pulls out brushes and bobby pins, clips, and scrunchies (I swear I only wear these when I’m working out or washing my face 🙂 And speaking of jewelry, she always puts on my hair rubber bands like a bunch of bangle bracelets. I never showed her to do this. And I don’t wear bracelets. My girl just knew what to do. She also loved the mass of clips and other things I put in my hair for this photo:


Miss found this pashmina in my closet and loves to play with it. She brings it to me so I’ll put it around her head like a little babushka and then gives me this huge smile. Then she throws it around and twirls it and poses in front of the mirror with it.



She loves the full-length mirror behind the door to our bedroom. She makes funny faces, strikes cute poses, and shakes her booty in front of it so adorably I could just watch all day.




This is just a tiny glimpse of into all the things that my gorgeous funny girl does. I am such a lucky Momma.

Miss is Sick :(

Posted on by Amy
Today Miss played in the pool for the first time. She had a wonderful time, but after playing hard for a few hours, we sat down to have a snack and wait for my hubby to get done playing a round of golf and join us for dinner. As I was encouraging Miss to eat her snack and drink some water, and feeling quite puzzled as to why she was refusing both, she got a funny look on her face and promptly vomited her lunch all over me. I was very surprised, as she has never been sick before, and hasn’t thrown up since she used to spit up as a tiny infant. I think I froze for a moment, not knowing quite what to do with myself or her. I recovered rather quickly though and took her into the locker room to shower the vomit off both of us (kind of lucky really that, if she had to throw up all over herself and me in public, she did it while we were wearing bathing suits and had showers readily available for our use). She seemed to perk up rather quickly, after she recovered from her own apparent surprise about throwing up. So we went back out to continue waiting for my hubby. Shortly after he arrived, once I filled him in on the vomit drama, we began discussing ordering dinner vs. getting food to go so I could get her home (at that point we weren’t sure if we were dealing with a virus or a one-time random vomit). I was just about to say that I really thought we should just go ahead and take her home just in case, when she proceeded to vomit again all over me. We did a repeat of the shower and I got her dressed in dry clothes to go ahead and go home while hubby ordered dinner for us to go. After we got home, I went upstairs to change out of my stinky, vomitty bathing suit and came back downstairs to see my hubby giving Miss her sippy cup full of milk!!! Well, I don’t need to tell you that the milk came back up within a few minutes, all over my hubby this time. At that point, after cleaning himself up, he volunteered to go get her some Pedialite while I finished cleaning her up for the third time and got her to sip a little bit of water. Needless to say, Miss had a little bit of a rough evening. Though in between bouts of puking, she seemed almost her normal cheerful self, just maybe a bit subdued. She did manage to keep some Pedialite down and got a bath before bed.
At first I was thinking the sickness had something to do with the pool, really just because we happened to be there when she first got sick. Now I am wondering if she caught a bug from being around so many people this past weekend. We went to a family reunion in Iowa for my husband’s family to celebrate his grandmother’s 90th birthday. There were about a zillion people there, spanning four generations. It really was a great time, so to make up for sharing all the gross details of Miss’s pukey evening, I’ll also share some great photos of Miss’s more fun times this weekend.
She got to run and play on my hubby’s cousin’s farm.




She did so much running and chasing other kids that she fell down a lot. She has some lightly skinned knees to prove it. But my tough girl never even made a peep about getting scraped up. She just got back up, sometimes with a bit of assistance but usually on her own, and kept right on running and playing.

I just love that she is tall enough now to hold my hand while she walks beside me. Every time she reaches her little hand up to hold mine I just melt.
At the big birthday party she danced to a song her uncle wrote and had some birthday cake.



She got kissed by her “Cousin Brother.” This adorable guy is Miss’s age-mate cousin in my husband’s family. He is just shy of 2 months older than her. In my hubby’s family, 10 of the 12 grandchildren have age-mate cousins, which we call “Cousin Brothers” and “Cousin Sisters.” The youngest baby (who is about 2 months old right now) will be our Baby Girl’s Cousin Sister, and there is just one little guy who doesn’t have a cousin his same age. Anyway, here is Miss getting a kiss from her Cousin Brother (maybe he got her sick?!?!)
Or it could have been any one of these other little ones 🙂 I just love this picture of my husband’s 90-year-old Grandma with all 21 of her great-grandchildren, ranging in age from almost 13 to about 4 weeks old. Miss is right up near the top of the photo, being held by her oldest cousin.
Hopefully my girl will be feeling much better tomorrow! I hope all of you have had a wonderful holiday weekend.