Friday, October 26, 2012

Pumpkin Party

Every once in awhile, I just don't 'feel' like taking photos. And then I look at them afterwards and think, "damn you for not doing a better job!"

Today was one of those days.

No photos turned out. No great shot was taken. No fantastic memory was captured. I took really crappy photos today.

We were supposed to go to a friends house for a big pumpkin party. Aryn's friend Anna's mommy is super creative and fun; much more than I am. But, alas, the flu struck and everyone was stuck coming to my stinky house with super dirty toilets and dusty floors. And I'm not creative like Anna's mommy. I'm not Pinterest-mom. I'm the opposite of Pinterest-Mom. I'm more Pinuninterest-Mom. I don't find super awesome recipes for Halloween snacks like one friend, Kelly, brought (and, albeit, I forgot to take a photo of!!! Dammit!). I am not a "let's carve pumpkins!" mom. Instead, I'm a "let's let mommy sit on the couch while you all entertain yourselves with the billions of toys downstairs!"

In my defence, I am not feeling well. But that's not an excuse for unmotivation with toddlers.

So lucky that Parveen came to the rescue with foam pumpkins for the kids to colour. And, in my awesome mindful way, I didn't even think to make all the kids bring home a few foam pumpkins to decorate. Nope. They're on a pile on our table, waiting to be ignored by my toddler when she wakes up.

*sigh*

And the photos are nothing to write home about. My trial version of Photoshop Elements has ended, and I am waiting for my 2 jobs this weekend to purchase it. So, the photos I DID take today are out of focus and unedited in Paint.Net. I'm ashamed. And laughing.

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The best part of the morning? Jumping on Aryn's old crib that's in our spare room. Yup. That was apparently the highlight of the day.

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And don't forget baby kisses. This one is quite the little Mommy. She wraps up the real babies, gives them kisses, and gets the diapers all ready for them. No wonder she hates getting her diaper changed. Ahem, little one. Start using the potty!


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But... it was fun. A great morning, a great visit, and a great group of women in our group. Thanks moms!

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Tuesday, October 23, 2012

Baking with a Toddler...

Aryn's new favourite words are, "No, MINE." Everything is hers. My socks are hers. Ryan's slippers are hers. Bauer is hers. Everything in our home is hers. So, when I got the bright idea on this extremely snowy Tuesday morning to entertain my toddler by baking banana bread with her, I don't know why it didn't occur to me just how difficult it would be when every single ingredient was hers.

It's hard to stir in mashed bananas when the whisk is hers and I'm not allowed to help.

But I powered through. Only a few freak outs (on her part or mine remains unspoken), and some great team work.

Step 1:

Find the recipe in your crazy, over-filled recipe container that is bursting at the seams. FYI: we literally make the same 8 things every week. Why do I have an over-filled recipe container?

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Step 2:

Add melted butter, sugar and 2 eggs. There are no photos of the added butter or eggs, because the "adding sugar" step entailed hands-full-of-sugar, eating sugar, and spilling sugar. I figured it was best to keep camera clear of eggs and melted butter.

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Step 2b:

Tell toddler not to eat the sugar.

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Step 3:

Whisk.

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Step 4:

While adding the bananas, baking powder, baking soda, and chocolate chips, keep toddler entertained with a bowl full of chocolate chips. Notice her hand is blurry? It's because it was moving 800 miles an hour. Sugar SLAM.

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Step 5:

Seriously consider cleaning your disgustingly dirty stove. But only consider.

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Step 6:

The delicious finished product, ready to be eaten post-nap.

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Step 7:

Very happy and proud little nugget, whom I love more than anything in the world.

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Friday, October 19, 2012

Crafts with a toddler...

I always read blogs of moms with toddlers and think, "these moms can do it ALL." I am envious of those moms. I feel like a failure sometimes at the end of the day when Ryan asks what we did that day and I think for minutes, trying to remember what we did. We didn't really do anything.

Today, I decided we're going to do a craft. I googled, "Crafts with Toddlers" and I came to this one craft. I figured it was easy, there were only 3 simple steps: find leaves, grate wax crayons, iron it together.

Well.

That's a fine and easy craft with "normal" toddlers. But when you have a tornado of a child, crafting is not easy. 3 easy steps is 2 steps too many.

Oh, and "grate wax crayons"??? That step should be 18 steps long. Grating wax crayons is hard. It takes forever. It SUCKS. I ended up using a pencil sharpener to speed up the process, and in the end not only do I have to throw out my pencil sharpener, I also need to throw out my 2 graters that I tried using first. I am not a pinterest-mom.

I cannot stress that enough.

But here is my little monkey face doing the craft. We went outside, bundled up warm only to discover it was +14C outside and the hat, boots, and coat were way too warm for outside. But I digress.

Step 1: find leaves

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Step 2:

Grate the wax crayons. This process takes 200 hours. While grating or sharpening your wax crayons, try to keep your toddler busy. Alternatively, a much better way to do this is doing this the day before. Unfortunately, the site I was using did NOT state that. I highly recommend it.

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Step 3:

Have your child show off her drawing, which she is way more proud of than the craft we just worked on.

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Step 4:

Iron the wax paper together on a low hot setting. Finished product. Does NOT look as great as it does on the original website I got these instructions from.

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Step 5:

Go for a walk to calm down from nearly losing your nerves during the entire crafting process.

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Step 6:

Wait until your child is at least 3 or has an attention span longer than .5 seconds to start doing crafts.

Wednesday, October 17, 2012

Farm life

I'm as much a "city girl" as one can get. I always imagined it would be wonderful to have an acreage or farm, where my children could run around outside and learn what that kind of life provides. But, as time has gone on, I've learned that I'm the least farm-y girl there is. I wear Lululemon's when we go visit Ryan's family, and I hate when they get dirty. Yet... I don't buy "farm-clothes" so that my nice Lululemon's don't get dirty. Maybe I have less common sense than I thought.

We went to the farm the other weekend for Thanksgiving. We had a lot to be thankful for, and it was a great weekend, albeit, short.

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Aryn is definitely a farm kid. She loves being outside, no matter what the weather. She doesn't care about getting dirty, and she is so interested in the cows, cats and dogs that she doesn't care if she has to wade through weeds and dirt to get to them.

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And my, oh, my does this kid ever love her cousin. Poor Veronica, I'm sure, gets annoyed with a 2-year old babbling and following her everywhere. But when you see Aryn's face light up when she sees Veronica... kid loves her cousin.

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We had a wonderful Thanksgiving, but we had to leave Daddy behind for the rest of the week so he could help out. It turned out ok, since I was super sick that entire week he was gone so we couldn't have gone out to do any fun things that I had planned in my head during his week off.

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I'm very thankful for Aryn's growing vocabulary. We're slowly being able to understand what she's saying. Unfortunately, she has learned, "No, MINE!" so we hear that about 8 billion times a day. Everything is HERS. She is quite the little turkey when it comes to anyone touching anything she wants at that particular second. It's funny, but I worry it's something I'll have to deal with in the future. But hey, she's talking, right? You have to look at the positives!! 

Happy thanksgiving, all!

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Wednesday, October 10, 2012

Whoops

I know, I know. I haven't been blogging much lately. I don't even have a good excuse. My camera hasn't been out and we've been holed up with this cold weather.

Our bathroom upstairs is beyond disgustingly filthy. I'm contemplating going up to clean it. Instead, I'm sitting here blogging with no photos to add to this blog post.

Much has happened since I last blogged. We've celebrated Thanksgiving, Grandpa's birthday, and cleared out all of our summer clothes and replaced them with long-sleeved winter clothes. My closet is full again with big winter jackets, gloves, mitts and boots.

Unfortunately, the brand new boots I bought for Aryn don't fit over her big fat feet ... even though I got them 2 sizes bigger. I even tried to "fix" them to fit and now I can't return them. My dearest little one: your feet are huge and perfect. But huge.

I have no exciting stories. I have nothing to share. I had better go clean... but I don't want to.

I'll take photos of the princess soon. Until then... peace out.