Sleepy Sunday

After a beautiful day and playing outside all afternoon, here are my tired babies!

Got Milk?

My good friend Mary walked the MS walk with me.
Here we are with Three at the finish line.

It was such a beautiful day.
Most of our walk was along the Columbia River.

And when you're walking for Team Darigold,
of course there's chocolate milk at the end!

What could be better?!

Ending Multiple Sclerosis of course!
Click here to donate or find a walk in your area.

Toddler Birthday Present

Life has been crazy lately!
Everyone's been sick.
Things have been weird.

Guess who finally finished a craft project?!

ME!

These amazingly simple bean bags took me only took two weeks to complete! Of course I saw it somewhere else so I cannot take credit for the idea but it turned out cute! As of a month ago, sweet Elinor's favorite color was green, so hopefully it hasn't changed!

I cut my felt into squares (these are about 4"). Then I cut the letters out of squares of felt and sewed some cute fabric on the back, almost like a reverse applique. Next I sewed three sides of the back felt piece on, filled the bags with lentils and sewed the last side together.

Happy 3rd Birthday Elinor!!!

Grief

Grief.
I guess it's supposed to be a good thing but there are times when it flares up like a bad disease and makes life difficult.

Today is one of those days for me.

You see, when I was a little girl, my baby sister died of SIDS.
Most SIDS deaths occur between 2-4 months, but my sister was
6 months, 2 weeks, and 6 days.

The exact age Three is today.

I can't imagine what it would be like if this was all the time I ever got with Three. To never see him again? Did I love on him enough? Would I start to forget him?

It's a hard day.

So today I let everything else slide and I loved on my baby. I held him a little bit tighter, played a little bit longer, cried for my sister, and just willed the day to pass a little bit faster.

Room with a View

Three did not want to lay down in his bathtub anymore today.
I guess that means he's ready for the big tub...

However the big tub does not have nearly the view that the kitchen sink does! The kitchen was at least updated this decade. This century even.
Hopefully, when I look back at the kids' pictures of their first baths in the big tub,
I won't mind the 70's brownish greenish yellow. Yuck!

Anyone want to redo my tub in the next week?

Fake Sunday

Ha ha! Not really fake, just more than just the kids. :o) Family pictures are so rare, I thought I'd post a family picture from Friday at the Tulip Festival.

The avocado

If you want to make your own baby food,
this is the best book ever.

I started making baby food when One was a baby. Turns out he was allergic to some of the acid used as a preservative in the jarred baby food. It also meant he couldn't drink orange juice or eat other acidic things until after he was potty trained.

I know that's a weird leap, but trust me on that one, you don't want the details.

Making your baby food is so easy! And cheap! This book lays it out month by month, tells you how to cook everything, when it's in season, and how to know which ones are ripe.... It's a wonderful book and I even found my copy at a local used-book shop.

Now, everyone has a Martha story. And somehow, mine involves making baby food. Before I ever had children, I saw a show on making baby food. They were going over the basics, with one of the last steps being to strain the food to get out any and every lump. Martha joked that you could drop that step for your third child. For some reason I found that so funny at the time and it stuck with me but sure enough, when I started making food for Three, I thought about that show and went,

Oh, he's fine.

Tonight Three tried avocado for the first time. One and Two hated it when they were infants. I wasn't expecting much success but Three seemed to enjoy them. He is certainly his own little guy!

Avocado: B+

Little Hands

Little hands pick flowers with little stems.

Flowers that a mom has to be creative in keeping.

(can you find the stems in this jar?)

Creative in graciously thanking
while ensuring her entire garden
doesn't fall to this fate.

Imagine my horror when we get to the tulip farm today
and Two runs and picks the first flower she sees!
"Look, Mom!"

Thank goodness they had plywood flowers too!

And horse shoes:

And duck races:

And big wooden shoes:

And cow trains:

Which, as you might guess,

are all good ways to keep little hands busy!

5 o'clock news

These are my news people.

April, over at JaneSays talked about her news people the other day and how much she missed them when she was out of town. It is so true. When we moved to the northwest, it turns out our old news guy had an identical twin brother that was the news guy in our new town! How fantastic was that?! And of course that was the station we ended up watching. And now I can tell you who's battled cancer (Helen), who's battling cancer (Shellie), who's a diabetic with a daughter the same age as mine (Rhonda), who's a ballroom dancer (Rod), who just had a baby (Laurel).... wow, you really get to know these guys over time!

Who do you get your news from?

My hands are killing me.

Here's a math problem for you: If Two, Three, and myself all have pink eye, and we all get eye drops four times a day, and I'm washing my hands before and after administering them to each person every single time, how many times am I washing my hands?

Perhaps that is why my hands hurt.
When this is all over, I think I will soak them in some granny cream.
For a few days.

Muffin Tin Monday

Has it really been so long? I download the pics from the camera and find two Muffin Tin Mondays? Thankfully I am aware that my food is Not So Gourmet and will only post tonight's dinner.

(Clockwise from top left: pudding (dessert only, of course!), applesauce, celery, stuffing, peas, chicken)

Have I mentioned that my kids help make dinner every night? When it is their turn to cook, they also get to "pick" what we eat (from two of my choices) and they say the prayer when it's time to eat.

Well, tonight was One's turn to choose and cook what we had for dinner. His choices were chicken and stuffing or tortellini. Why, oh why did he pick chicken and stuffing? He never likes it. He loves tortellini. But chicken and stuffing it was.

Things we had to endure before he finally got to open his pudding:

I'm allergic to stuffing.
My throat won't let me eat it.

Poor guy. Maybe next time he'll remember to pick the tortellini!

Sick Day

We have caught the crud that has been going around. Most of my days this past week have been spent snuggling a sick kid. I don't have any crafts to share so I thought I would at least drop in for a few fun stories:

Two has started having nightmares. I don't know if it's a developmental stage or if she's just not sleeping as well that's what's causing it, but when she's having a nightmare, she always calls out for DaddyMan. He gets the big sobs and story. One night, right after he came back to bed, she called for me! When I went in, I got the sweetest "I love you". Oh. Melt my heart. Throw in the fact that Two has been working on her LLLLL's in speech and she really really said "I love you" and not "I wuv you"..... wow. It was such a sweet sweet moment.

Three lifted his hands up to me today! I took a baby sign class with One and that teacher said you can tell when a baby is old enough to sign when they raise their arms up to you to be held. Now, I don't know if they have to do it without me reaching for them but today I went to pick up Three and for the first time he actually raised his arms up to me! Hurray! I'm such a huge fan of baby sign, I'm excited to get back into it again. So far we've been working on "diaper change" and "more".

Spring Break officially started for One today. When I went to pick him up, his teacher asked if I could stay after to look at some of his work! Oh no! Nothing good went through my head. Cheating? And we've all seen the email going around with the kid drawing of the mom working at the Home Depot but it really looks like a stripper pole? Yeah. Well, she ended up showing me a progression of his writing from the first of the year to today and it was incredible! He went from copying a short three word sentence to writing a detailed story with spaces in between all the words, capitals at the beginning of each sentence and periods at the end! All that is big time in the kindergarten crowd. Anyway, at this point he's actually "passed" kindergarten writing! Wahoo! Mrs P said this was what made teaching kindergarten so exciting! I'm so honored and proud. She's really a fantastic teacher and WAY TO GO ONE!!!