Picture Face

    Little L is 16 months old now.  Time is just speeding by (sorry about the hiatus on the posts). Anywho this post is all about her picture face that has us cracking up lately.  She is in love with the camera.  Every time I pull it out to take a picture she makes the same face and it's not a smile, it's not a frown either at least, it's well how bout I just show you.  

    Ok last one, I don't know about you but I love it and can't help but chuckle when she makes her picture face. 😂

Washing dishes

 

    This is an old picture; from when big L would still let me put her hair up, but it's still how I wash dishes 85% of the time.  If she is not right next to me "helping" me wash dishes then it's a safe bet to assume she is sleeping or watching a show.  

    She stands on her folding step stool; this is about the one we have.  Before her daddy bought her that she would use a kitchen chair.  It's also what she uses to help bake and cook.  

    When I first started letting her "help" me wash dishes I gave her a little sponge with soap.  It turns out "helping" me wash dishes really means pretending to cook.  Which I suppose is fine, there are worse things for her to be doing and it keeps her busy.  She usually "makes" spaghetti, Mac and cheese, pancakes, or birthday cake just in case you were wondering.  

    It's a little harder to wash dishes this way since I'm a little squished but the job gets done so I will continue to let her "help".  

Hiding my late night ice cream snack

    Last night I had a snack of chocolate ice cream.  Little L woke up before I could dish some out so I just brought the whole carton to the couch.  With her asleep on my lap I absent mindly ate the whole thing :O.  I'm ashamed to admit that there was only one bowl eaten out of the carton before.  

    The hubby walked past me to get a drink and asked if he could put my ice cream away.  I had to admit that it was gone to which he responded "would you like me to throw that away for you".

    This morning I looked in the trash and saw this. 

If you have a two year old that's not how you throw away chocolate ice cream!  She will see it and ask for chocolate ice cream.  She will get upset that I will not let her have ice cream for breakfast and chocolate cereal may or may not be a suitable substitute.  No amount of crying will get me to cave but the whole situation can all be avoided if you just do a bit of rearranging.  

Fixed!  Think before you throw next time my really trying to be helpful hubby.  

*sorry for the trash pictures.  

Here is a cute baby picture to make up for it.  ;)

Blue mouth

    I'll admit this happened when I was paying too much attention too my phone but it could have as easily happened any other time.  

    Big L has some stickers that you can color yourself. She colored them mostly with a blue marker.  I looked up from my phone; Facebook is way too addicting, I'm trying to kick it but it's soooo hard.  Anyway I looked up and little L's tongue and all around her mouth was blue. At first I could not figure out what had happened but then I fished out the sopping wet sticker and found the culprit.  Good thing we only have non toxic markers. :/   

    

Yay for sleeping on your own; at least for longer stretches!

    My good little baby slept until I was actually ready to go to bed tonight!  It was so nice; I got to sit and have a snack, wash dishes, AND cuddle up with the hubs while we watched a show!  Then when I was ready to lay down she woke up, nursed a little, then fell back to sleep.

    This works for me, I can do this. It's the only sleeping on her own for 15 min at a time that makes me what to scream.

Good girl little L.  Is it asking too much to repeat this tomorrow night? 

Fixing a lift and flap book

    Well I may have let my 2.5 year old watch four shows already this morning and have her whole chocolate bunny.

Hey she did poop in the potty and ate almost a whole carton of strawberries, so don't judge.   I may have waited too long to check a diaper and as a result the baby had a poop out.  The floor may really need a vaccume and I have already had a good cry but this was fun; I fixed a lift and flap book.  

Some cardboard, fabric swatch, hot glue and a marker and it's kinda as good as new :)

  By the way I kinda hate lift and flap books and pop up books because they always seem to get ripped and ruined.  

Two ingredient pancakes

     

 Here is Little L enjoying her breakfast of one big strawberry and a two ingredient pancake.  

Last night I thought the two ingredient pancakes where a Pinterest fail. Today she is eating them.  Although they were not easy to flip.  I used a banana from the freezer so maybe they would turn out better with a fresh banana.  

    If you don't know what two ingredients it's 2 eggs and one mashed banana.  Some of my pancakes turned into scrambled eggs.  Yup that looked about as appetizing as it sounds.  :/.   

   Big L is having strawberries and coco puffs.  "Chocolate cereal with chocolate milk" as she calls it.  

    Disclaimer: I am not giving my child chocolate milk in her chocolate cereal.  The cereal turns the milk brown so she has started asking for chocolate cereal with chocolate milk.  Not like chocolate cereal with white milk is so much better but there are worse things in the world.   

No more pajamas

    Big L has decided she does not like pajamas anymore.  If you tell her "its time to put your jammies on".  She will respond " no not jammies, regular clothes!".  

    I would rather her wear pjs to bed but I'm not going to fight her about it as long as she is wearing something to bed.   I do make her wear elastic wast bands at least, no zipper and button pants.  

    This has turned out to be a kind of good thing though.  She puts regular clothes on at night and wakes up dressed.  No more fights about getting dressed in the morning!  I'm not sure if she has thought this through or not but she made a comment the other day that made me think she has.  I said "I need to go get dressed, and then we can go".  She looked down at her body and said "I'm already dressed!".  

    As far as I'm concerned she can wear regular clothes to bed for as long as she wants.  

    

Baby and her food

Feeding herself a spoon of mashed Avocado 

Carrots

Avocado! She loves avocado.  

Apple.  With just two teeth she can really eat a lot of this.  

Carrots agian just because I love this picture.  

Sweet potato is defiantly a fav. 

Summer squash! She has also had zucchini.  

Egg, yum!  Also we got a high chair!  A kind mom of four just gave it to us.  

Not pictured she has also had strawberries, rice, banana, and oranges as you saw in a different post.  

When we started solids she did not see to like them so we would go days without eating solids.  I've switched to chunks of food and she seems to enjoy that much better.  Now she likes to eat with us so she eats 1-3 times a day.  She doesn't ingest much but she has fun and is kept busy.  

I'm so much more go with the flow as far as food, and really other things as well, the second time around.  

On the move

    Time to start regularly cleaning the floors; little L is on the move.  She is not really crawling yet but within a span of five minutes or less she can make it across the room.  She flips over as fast as I put her down on her back, turns in circles, and shimmies back until she can anymore.  

   She puts what ever she can toward her mouth but seems to prefer any type of paper.  She also seems to enjoy licking the floor.  Hope this is modivation to keep them clean.  I guess I can at least run the vaccume a few more times a week.    

Stuck on the couch with a cat and a baby

    This is me right now, stuck on the couch with a nursing baby and a cold snugly cat.

    Little L's bottom two front teeth are so close to popping through the gums and her little nose is all stuffed up.   She needs some comfort and I suppose I'm happy I can give her that.  

    Mr. Mac, the yellow cat, is always cold and likes to snuggle whenever he can.  So here I am stuck in the couch.  They are forcing me to rest and I guess that's a good thing.  Hopefully I don't have to pee soon.  

Great dad!

    Big L woke up from her nap crying.  She woke up coughing and wet so I guess I can't really blame her.  

   Daddy pealed her pants off while she cryed that she wanted to leave them on and coughing.  Feeling bad he promised ice cream.  

    So she is all set up on the couch watching a show pantless, covered up with a blanket, and eating an ice cream sandwich.  He looks at me and sarcasticly says "a show and ice cream, I'm a great dad".  Big L pipes up with a big "ya!". As in "yes, you are a great dad!".  Guess who is the favorite today lol

    

What's mine is yours

    I'm sitting here on the couch nursing little L and eating an orange.  You know I thought I'd give myself some nutrition while giving my baby some too.  My little stuffy teething baby had other thoughts on this though.  As I'm taking the segments apart she looks up at me, stops nursing, grabs my orange, and starts to eat it herself.  

After she sucked the segments dry she went back to happily nursing.  

    We'll I guess what's mine is yours little baby, mom doesn't need to eat anyway.  

Driving to the airport

    My husband had to go to California for a few days for work.  Pretty jealous seeing as how they had 65 degree weather and we had -18.  Yes you read that right negitive 18.  At least the sun was out.  

    I was not about to let him drive himself and waste money leaving his car at the airport so we all piled in the car at 6 am.  Thank God for coffee because man was I tired.  I had a hard time falling asleep that night, then little L had a hard time sleeping at around 2 am, and finally big L was up and going at 4.  

    We got going pretty much on time, which really is a miracle in it self.  Of course it had snowed the night before so the roads were slippery.  We were hoping we were going to miss most of the traffic but no such luck.  Then on top of that in a laps in judgment I made the hubby some snacks for the plane, which he ended up not eating, instead of feeding Little L.  I just gave him a cut up carrot and an apple, nothing fancy, but still eat my food man!  Since I did not feed her she started crying a few minutes out. When she did not stop I climbed in the back to try to comfort her.  Nothing but the boob would do though.  So here I am squashed between two car seats leaning over Little Ls body trying to keep my size Bs in her mouth and trying hard not to care what passing cars thought of me.  She fell asleep after about 15/20 min later and so did Big L.  

    Thankfully the rest of the trip was non eventful.  Dropped the hubs off and made it home safe and sound.  

Toothpicks in a colander

    We have let big L do this activity before but this time she set it up herself.  Proud mommy moment right here.     

   Although when she first took the colander out of the cabinet I was   annoyed.  I told her to put it back; I really did not feel like washing it agian.  Par for the course she ignored me and pulled the bucket of toothpicks off the counter.  

At that point I understood what she was doing.  I changed from annoyed to proud.  I'm always happy to have her do a fine motor activity such as putting toothpicks through the holes in a colander.  

    She did dump all the toothpicks into the floor, I was not overly happy about that.  I should have made her clean it up but at that point it did not seem worth the fight.  I wish I had though.  I hate when I look back and realize I've missed a learning opportunity.  Also who wants to pick up a ton of toothpicks off the floor when they did not make the mess? Oh well that's one of the many 'joys' of mootherhood, picking up after your children.   

Emotional first bite

    Well we did it, we started solids.  Little L has had some allergy issues so we were told to wait till 5 months.  She can't tolerate if I eat soy or dairy.  Talk about hard, I can't believe how much food has soy in it.  Makes me want to do this

Also I drive myself nuts second guessing if dairy and soy both are both the problem.  

    Anyway a few days past 5 months and the hubby would not let me put it off anymore.  I gave her a tiny amount of no sugar added applesauce but I was not exactly happy about it.    

    I actually had a much stronger reaction than I ever expected I would.  I had a pit in my stomach the whole time I was feeding her and I shed some tears after I cleaned her up.  

   I guess the worry about how her tummy would handle it was part of the reason for my emotion.  By the way she was not impressed with the taste but no tummy issues or allergic reactions.  Yay!  

Still I'm going to tread lightly with solids because I can't stop myself from worrying.  

   The other part of my reaction I think stemmed from the fact that she is my last.  We are planning to only have these two girls, so now that I've jumped the hurdle of solids I have to face the fact that I won't be doing that again. I won't be giving a baby their first bite of food again.  My baby's are growing up, I can't stop it, and this is all I have.  

    Now that I have jumped that hurdle I'm kinda excited about her next first taste though.  I'm thinking oatmeal or bananas.  

    

No naps = no TV after 5

   We have a new rule in our house after last night; no TV after 5pm if big L doesn't take a nap. 

    If she watches tv past 5 on no nap days this is what happens.  

 You might think oh nice, early bed time.  Well we are not so lucky in this house.  If you move her she wakes up, is cranky, and takes a while to fall back to sleep.  If you leave her she might sleep for 30 minutes, then will wake up cranky and fight sleep.  It's a lose lose situation.  

   We will continue to encourage mid day naps by requiring an hour of rest in her bed.  But one thing I have learned is you can't force a child to sleep.  So if she holds out on the naps I will hold out on tv after 5pm.  Really we watch too much anyway.  
  *update to her being 3.5 and we now feel any nap is a good nap but nap time is still a constant battle.  

Mid day silence

    Yesterday I thought 'oh nice.  Best birthday present ever' as my children both took 2-2.5 hour naps at the same time.

    I got so much cleaning done.  I was able to switch over laundry by myself.  Most of the floors got swept and the kitchen floor got wiped down.  I was able to wash a ton of dishes.  I even got to sit and finish a show I was watching the night before.  

    Today I'm wondering what I did right because they did it again!  Prolonged birthday present? Or maybe God just knew I needed a break?

    If it happens tomorow I might faint, I'm not holding my breath though.  

I want to make my peanut butter and jelly all by myself

    I can't make my daughter's peanut butter and jelly sandwiches anymore.  She has to do it herself, or kind of.

    We bring the peanut butter, the jelly, two slices of bread on a plate, and a little butter knife all to her table.  She attempts to get the jelly out of the jar and spread it on her bread.

Not much gets on and then I end up getting more jelly and in the end spreading it on the bread.  Repeat this with the peanut butter.

She then puts the two slices together and eats.  

     So for the most part I'm really making the sandwich it just takes longer but she loves it and seems pretty proud that she can do it all by herself.  

   Happy side note, this way I don't cut it in half so she ends up eating more crust.  I don't know why but about a month ago she started eating around the crust.  

   She can get her own cup of water from the water cooler now too.  My little self sufficient girl.  :)