Kids

Happy Valentine’s Day!  In honor of this day we made a pink strawberry banana smoothie and cupcakes. So good! Becoming a mom is such a cool thing because it truly changes your perspective on love.  This used to be the holiday I looked forward to with romantic love for Ned, drawing his name in hearts on my notebook.  It is still that of course, but now there’s a whole new level and kind of love to celebrate.  I love crafting with the kids.  There are so many great seasonal crafts out there from super creative moms and I find myself …

Annie loves to do little art projects and it’s been so cold outside I decided it was time to pull out a fun round up of winter crafts for toddlers.  All of these crafts are Annie tested and Annie approved.  Seriously so much fun and none of them are hard or time consuming.  Just a great afternoon spent together crafting. 1. Smoosh paint mittens with free printable Any time I dream up a craft that will entertain both the baby and the toddler I get really excited.  Even better—it’s mess free!  Smoosh paint was the perfect go to for this …

When I hear “easy, no mess painting” my head turns.  I always want to know more.  Annie lights up when I say it’s painting time, but sometimes I just don’t want to deal with the mess. So no mess painting is my favorite kind of painting.  My kids love smoosh paint because it is a way they can be creative without mom nagging them to keep their shirt out of the paint.  That’s where smoosh paint comes in.   What is smoosh paint? Smoosh paint is a process art that involves applying paint inside a ziplock bag either on a template …

I’m not sure how, but I almost forgot I’m responsible for potty training our two year old.  There really should be a manual of when parents need to teach their kids certain things.  It seems to me that there is a sequence of events that should occur, but it never crossed my mind.  Annie was born and I blinked and all of the sudden she’s two and I’m looking for potty training tips. Oh Crap! Potty Training A few months ago I was reading through posts on a local mom’s facebook group and someone was asking about potty training.  It’s …

This was the second year I’ve hosted Thanksgiving in our house.  Last year it was just my in-laws.  This year my mom was able to join us from Colorado, so I really wanted everything to be perfect.  So I planned out the day so I could focus on the cooking, while setting up fun activities for Annie with my mom and husband.  Everybody wins.  We started the day watching the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.  Then we pulled out this fun sensory bin that I put together the day before. What is a Sensory Bin? A sensory bin is an interactive …

Prepping all the things the kids needed to pack for daycare was a lot more expensive and time consuming than I had expected.  Annie and Ace are at different enough ages that even at the same school they have different lists of needs.  Add to that a second daycare for Annie, which is a different style and again needed a different list of supplies.  So, here’s an outline of everything each kid took to the first day of daycare. Time to Pack for Daycare Ace – Infant Room 1. Full Sleeve of Size 2 Diapers // 2. 2 Packs Baby …

It’s official. Maternity leave is over and I’m back to work, which also means the kids are in daycare.  My company offers remote work 3 days a week and office work the other 2 days.  That schedule gives me the flexibility to be a little creative with our childcare. So it was time to start thinking about daycare and scheduling daycare tours. I decided to keep Ace home with me on the days I work from home, at least until he’s mobile. Especially since he’s breastfeeding.  The more time we have together the better.   It went okay throughout the …

If you’re anything like me, as a first-time mom trying to decide what baby gear I needed I leaned heavily on the women in my life who were already mothers.  I sent my sister-in-law text messages right from the aisles of Buy Buy Baby.  I sat with my coworker at the company picnic and picked her brain.  And I spent hours reading reviews and posts online.  Now that I am three months into being a mom of two, I have some insight on what we liked so much we reused for baby 2, and what we replaced.  So, I’m paying …

Almost a year ago I shared some insights into our process of getting Annie to sleep through the night in her own room.  I stand by our sleep training process; it worked well and continues to work well.  So, I wanted to share a brief update. Click here to read the original post. Time Change Debacle Last weekend Daylight Savings Time ended, and we changed our clocks to spring forward.  The first morning, Annie slept until 9 thanks to an extra tired kiddo and the bonus hour provided by the clocks.  Sounds awesome, right?  It was, but it was the …