K. I. S. S.? I wish!

Keep it simple, stupid!

I know that toddlers and pre-schoolers thrive on routine, but N's bedtime rituals are getting a little ridiculous. This is what happens EVERY night:

Things that NEED to be in the bed:
2 Pony Security Blankets
2 stuffed Ikea ferrets
2 different stuffed giraffes (they both rattle/jingle which is annoying)
regular pillow
bear pillow
down throw blanket
large egyptian linen swaddle blanket
large crocheted blanket
pink patchwork quilt

If any one of these things is missing from her bed, she WILL notice and you MUST find it. Sometimes she's carried it out of her room, sometimes it's just lost in the crazy jumble of toys and blankets. Either way, if it's not there, she's not sleeping. The list is only about half of what's in her bed, the rest is a semi-rotating gathering of toys and blankets that are crammed into her bed tent. There are nights that she gets it in her head that she needs a 4" tall piglet change purse that hangs out in her bed. Try finding that in the dark!

After we make sure everyone is in bed and ready to go to sleep, it's time for the routine.

Read a book in Mommy & Daddy's room, because D's sleeping and we can't do it there.

Make sure her fan and nightlight are both on.

Once in bed, we say the sleep rules:
1. Stay in bed.
2. Close your eyes.
3. Be very quiet.
4. Go to sleep.
5. If it's red, stay in bed. (this refers to her nightlight / toddler alarm clock, which also must be on)

Then it's time for prayers:
Now I lay me down to sleep... and also God is Great (the one you say before eating). I'm not sure how this got added in, but whatever.

Then, I sing her two songs:
The Beatles, All My Loving (Close Your Eyes)
and Mr. Moon (Before you judge, my mom used to sing it to me and I didn't think of changing the lyrics until it was too late, haha!)

After that, I have to hold up the sign language I Love You sign, and say "Goodnight, sweetheart." The very last thing is to lay in bed with her for more than 30 seconds, but less than 2 minutes. She doesn't like it if you  stay too long and she says "OK, please go away now."

While all of this can get a little annoying, especially finding all of her toys in bed, it works like a charm. If I follow the routine, she's good to go. The downside is that when we aren't at home, she has a very difficult time going to sleep and never naps.

The simple days. 1 Pony, 1 Ferret, no fuss!

D, on the other hand, I could chuck her in bed from the doorway and just go downstairs. (Of course, at her age, N was the same way!) We read her a book or two before bedtime, just because. For naps, I take her upstairs, hand her the bear blanket and cover her up. She'll fall asleep on her own in 5 or 10 minutes. If she's not sleepy, she'll talk to herself for 30 minutes before she settles down. I don't remember the last time she cried when I put her down to sleep. We've been super lucky with her. Also, A and I have always firm believers in sleep training, and protecting the girls' need to sleep and nap. The book Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child was our bible from when the girls were 4 months old and up. Whenever someone is going through a nap transition, or having trouble, I still refer back to it. I highly recommend it to every new parent, or to parents of older kids with sleeping or napping issues.

Anyway, I'm not complaining about N's routine. I think it's cute and only mildly annoying that she's so inflexible. It comforts her and gets her to sleep, so it's all good in my book! I've found that a well rested child (and a well rested parent) is much easier to deal with, so whatever it takes is worth it.

The Fruits of Our Labors

Or rather the vegetables of our labors, to be more precise.

I noticed that there was one squash that was ready to be picked today, and N helped me pick it. The squash plants have taken over the garden, so I had to go in and pick the squash for her. She still got a little squash prickle in her finger, but she wore a bandaid for 10 minutes later in the evening and it was all good.

So proud of her squash!

Before she went to bed, she had to tuck her squash (complete with its own bandaid) into a makeshift bed.

I told her that she could take her squash over to Giga's (my mother in law's) house tomorrow since she and D are spending the night and that Giga would make it for dinner. Now I'm not so sure that will be cool with N. I hope that all these vegetables don't become her personal entourage.

Also, I still haven't figured out the commenting problems on blogger. I can't even comment as anonymous now. Grrr!

On Again, Off Again, On Again, Off Again...

My diet.

We're currently on again after a painful betrayal by my scale. My butt cheated on me with some oatmeal creme pies, so my diet and I got a mediator. We've been working through our issues, and have made good progress the last week and a half.

I haven't actually gained THAT much weight back after my Operation Wedding Weight journey from last fall. (Those of you that don't know, after D was born I joined Weight Watchers Online and lost over 40 pounds of chronic pudge that I've carried most of my adult life, not baby weight.) However, seeing those pounds creeping in on me is a scary thing. 8 pounds now can easily be 20 pounds in a few more months if I'm not careful. When I started getting pissed at the scale, I decided to DO something about it this time before it got out of hand, instead of just hoping that the weight would disappear. It seems like calorie counting is the easiest way for me to lose weight. I hate exercising more than I love food, so it's been the way to go. SparkPeople is a little more serious than Weight Watchers in that instead of blind "points" I have to keep track of calories, carbs, protein and fat. I've noticed that I'm always short on my protein for the day, so I need to make some changes to fix that next time I hit the grocery store. Also, it's free, so that appeals to my inner cheapskate.

My only problem with the whole process, if you can really call it a problem, is that I get a little overwhelmed and I over think everything that I eat. Instead of eating a normal breakfast and then tracking it, I obsess over what I'm going to eat and end up eating nothing for an hour while I decide what to have. While this tendancy is great to curb snacking, it makes eating my regular meals a pain. I try to have a plan of attack for the day and a set of go-to foods to eat so that I don't get stuck at mealtimes.

I've lost about 5 pounds so far. I think a good bit of it was just random water-weight and my starting weight was a bit pessimistic. Still, my numbers are dropping again so that makes me happy.

There weren't many "before" pics, but this was taken Spring, 2010.

This is my "after" pic!

I made my goal and wore my wedding dress on our 5 year anniversary: October 29, 2010.

On an annoying side-note, blogger isn't letting me comment on anyone's blog, including my own. I'm not ignoring anyone, just not computer literate enough to figure it out.

...How Does Your Garden Grow?

I've been remiss in my blogging as of late, mostly due to the fact that my husband has been home at night more the past few weeks. I use the blog to kill time after the girls go to bed when there's no one to talk to and I have housework to avoid! I also wait until I have a TON of stuff to talk about instead of making 3 or 4 shorter blog entries.

Anywho, tonight's topic is N's garden. It seems to be doing OK. My alternate working blog title was "Two Left Thumbs" but her plants have perked up a bit in recent days and I think they're doing better. To start at the beginning, A and the girls dug out my garden for Mother's Day. It took about a week to put on the finishing touches and get the dirt to fill it in.

 It's a good thing the garden got done, these guys were getting out of hand! Also, we seriously need to work on her "picture face"!

Hooray, it's done! N's ready to plant.

Digging the holes with her own little shovel.

Carefully planting some peppers.

Phew! Job well done!

N and I watered her plants every day and we made it through the heat wave with most of the plants intact. We lost one pepper plant right next to the door, but I think that was due to N stepping on it a few times. Oops! It was nice to have something specific to do while D was sleeping. Some days, when it was too hot to go out, I watered them while N was asleep. Luckily, she didn't remember! The plants have been growing well. The squash are doing the best, the cucumbers are still hanging in there, and the peppers are slowly growing. A few weeks after the initial planting, I got N to help me weed out her garden. There were only a few tiny weeds, but we had fun!

N's got her gardening gloves and her goofy grin ready to go!

Me pointing out the difference between her plants and the weeds.

N pulled them all herself.

Plants are getting bigger!

Baby squash!!

Since the rains have cooled things off a bit, the squash have gotten so much bigger. Hopefully we can keep things going and not kill off all of the plants. I'm super excited to have squash and cucumbers this summer! I'm not too hopeful about the peppers, but we'll see. We never got a chance to get tomato plants, but perhaps it's just as well. I think I'll have my hands full with the garden I started!

The Toy Fairy

Lots of households with kids have random fairys that reside within. One popular one is the Tooth Fairy. We have lots of little Nature Fairies that live in the birdhouses outside (they only come out when you're not looking). I've often heard moms wish that they had a Clean-Up Fairy to do all their work! Well, I think that I've met the Clean-Up Fairy's cousin, and it's the Toy Fairy.

The Toy Fairy doesn't leave your darling children toys while they sleep. The Toy Fairy doesn't magically fix a broken favorite toy. The Toy Fairy doesn't even give you mystical inspiration on what to get your kids for their birthdays. The Toy Fairy in our house will STEAL YOUR TOYS IF YOU DON'T PUT THEM AWAY! I'm not even kidding. Well, she's a little nicer than that, but she will take them to play with for an undetermined amount of time if you leave them out. It's so awesome. When N's done with a box of blocks and wants to move on to something else but is too distracted to get them all put away... "Honey, I thought I heard the Toy Fairy in the house last night. You better get those blocks put away or she might take them to play with!" It just lights a little fire under her butt, hehehe! As of yet, we haven't had to actually implement a toy taking. The threat of fairy invaders has been enough to spur a cleaning frenzy.

I've also heard that the Toy Fairy has lots of sisters and brothers, just in case you want to invite one to stay at your house. ;)

Rainy Day? Craft Away! (Updated)

I'm always looking for something easy, cheap, quick, fun and not too messy to do with N. A tall order! I ran across a neat website called HowDoesShe? that has lots of craft ideas as well as recipes and articles on mommy-type stuff. I've found a few nifty things on there so far. One of the crafts that I ran across was this sidewalk chalk recipe. It looked easy, and N had a birthday party to go to soon and I thought it would make a good gift. I did end up modifying the "recipe" a little to make it less messy and easier to clean up.

You will need:

2/3 cup water

1 to 1 1/4 cups plaster of paris

sandwich sized ziploc baggie

ice cube tray or silicone candy mold tray

scissors

food dye

toddler or pre-schooler

1) Pour water into zip loc baggie and add food dye.

2) Add about half of the plaster of paris and seal baggie with most of the air pressed out.

3) Give to wee one to squish around until the plaster is thorougly mixed in.

4) At this point, the mixture will be very watery. Add more plaster until it is about the consistency of pancake batter. The pink set used a little over 1 cup of plaster and the yellow used about 1 1/4 cups. You can see the difference in how thick the mixture is. Both set up fine.

UPDATE: After popping out the chalk, the thinner mixture turned out much better. The chalk had no bubbles in it and the tops were smoother. I really like the home made chalk better than the cheap store bought chalk becuase it's much denser, so it lasts longer. The store bought chalk looks like it's made from a frothy mixture, so there's lots of air bubbles in it. Nothing wrong with it, but goes quickly. I need to get some more interesting molds, though! Also, the chalk only really works on sidewalks. It doesn't work very well on an indoor blackboard.

5) When you have the mixture at the thickness you want, snip a corner off the baggie and fill your trays.

6) After a few hours (or a nap!) flip ice cube trays upside down and pop out your chalk!

Here's the set I made for Z's 3rd birthday party. I got the boxes and basket at Rite Aid, and N decorated them with princess stickers.

The best thing about my modifications to the original recipe is that there's MINIMAL CLEANUP!! Just toss the baggies, wash the mold and you're done. I also like the small sized batches, this lets N pick lots of colors and squish lots of baggies. Her squishing made me a little nervous, so I'm definitely going to invest in some name brand baggies. The ones I had were from the dollar store and I didn't have a whole lot of faith in them holding up to her enthusiastic participation.

We had lots of fun today, even though it was rainy and chilly out. Now I just need to find something good for next time...

Too Cool for School!

A few weeks ago, N and I visited her future pre-school. There's not a whole lot of options in the area, so I scoped out everybody's websites and called a few places. It seemed like one came out far on top in attitude and price. When I called, the woman was super nice and it's right in town. (Also a big plus!) She told me that N and I could drop by any day just after all the kids get there and hang out for an hour or so while they do their morning routine. So, I arranged to meet up with N's little friend W and her mom, and off we went!

The preschool is set up in a church basement. There's a large common area with classrooms all around the perimeter. I think there were 2 three year old classrooms and 2 four year old classrooms. Each class had 10-12 students and 2 teachers. The three year old classes focus on shapes, colors, letters, numbers, etc. It seemed like most of what they would be "learning" is stuff that N already knows. However the MOST important thing that N will learn is how to follow directions and how to act in a classroom setting. She's never been to a daycare, or had to behave without me or A around. I signed her up for a tiny tots tumbling class to see how she'd do, but it's kind of a bust. N's not very interested in it, she is terrible at following directions, and the teacher isn't very good at controlling the rest of the class. I spend the entire class herding N around and trying to keep her on task while the two boys run amok. W is a little angel, of course!

When we got there, N definitely looked overwhelmed with all the activity. After a few minutes, she decided it was OK to join in the free play and she fit right in! After 15 minutes or so of kids coming in the door and getting settled, it was time for all the classes to meet in the common area for morning prayers and songs. This was where things got a little scary for N, I think. The 3 year old and 4 year old classes all got together in a big circle (with N and W) while W's mom and I hung back to watch. I think what was most intimidating to N was that everyone knew what to do except for her. W, however, jumped right in and copied everyone's dance moves and tried to sing along to the songs that she didn't know! Even though I was trying hard not to giggle too loudly, it was a bit sad to see N so weirded out. Since it's the end of their school year soon, all the other kids had months to learn their songs, dances and Bible verses. They were a well oiled machine! N was just standing there like a deer in headlights while the other kids were clapping and dancing. At one point, W tried to hold N's hand to make her feel better. For the next few minutes, while W had gone back to dancing, N had frozen with her arm sticking out and a panicked look on her face. Poor kid!

After morning songs and prayers it was back to their classroom for craft time and free play. The teachers would pull out two students at a time to work on their Easter baskets while the other kids played until everyone had a chance to complete their craft project. W's mom and I just hung back again to watch how our girls interacted with the rest of the class. I didn't think that N and W seemed so much younger than the other kids. Everyone played and shared nicely and W even helped clean up when play time was done. N will be on the older end of the 3 year olds by the time she gets into class, which is fine by me. Hopefully it will give her a chance to mature a little more and listen a little better.

I'm sure that N will be fine when she starts in the fall. She's only signed up for two days a week from 9 to 11:30, and she should be in the same class as W. I, however, have never had to leave her with strangers before, so... I think I'll be the nervous wreck! We've definitely been lucky in that A's mom watched N while I worked part time, and that I was able to stay home after D was born. It was a blessing that we got to keep the kids home with family. It has been hectic lately and I find myself daydreaming of work sometimes, but when you get right down to it, I wouldn't trade my life for anything.