Tuesday, December 14, 2010

Because I Said So

Updating my blog has (obviously) not been a high priority lately.  Between helping Nick on a few projects and trying to keep one toddler, two dogs and one kitten from destroying our Christmas tree, we have been busy!  Hopefully I can begin updating more often again soon, but I'm not making any promises.  I did read a blog post today that I thought was pretty awesome.  Nothing we don't already know, but it's so nice to be reminded:
http://inspiredtoaction.com/2010/12/7-true-things-about-you/

Thursday, November 25, 2010

Our first family Christmas card!

Green Ribbon Holiday
Get custom holiday cards online at Shutterfly.com.
View the entire collection of cards.

Thursday, November 11, 2010

Christmas Cards

Well, it's one of my favorite times of the year again.  Christmas card time!  In the past, we've tried to organize a family photo session, but that usually takes a long time and is frustrating enough with just the dogs.  Add a toddler to the mix and it's pretty much impossible.  So this year, I'm just going to use pics I already have for our cards.  I've used Shutterfly in the past for holiday cards as well as other photo services, so I thought I'd check out their holiday cards.

You can check out Shutterfly's Christmas card collection here.  I love this one, called Perfect Paisley.  Wouldn't that look adorable with a picture of Emma's cute face?  I'd definitely love getting that in the mail (but I am a little biased).
I also like Peppermint Snowflake:

Shutterfly also offers some great Christmas photo cards.  I had a hard time settling on just one or two designs that I liked the best.  There's one called Top Ten Moments that would be fitting for our year, since we've had so many firsts (Emma turning one, walking, talking, running, feeding herself, first trip to the beach...I could go on and on).
I also really like this card, called What a Year.  It would let me tell everyone about our special year too.

If you're looking for a good gift idea (this is great for grandparents if you have kids), you can also make your own photo calendar
I'm making a few of these for our parents and grandparents, and might just make one for myself too.  You can add in your own special dates, which is great for our parents (and also my husband, who has a hard time remembering dates sometimes :-) ). 

Head on over to Shutterfly to choose your favorite card!  Hopefully you'll have an easier time choosing that I am!

Tuesday, November 2, 2010

Halloween 2010

This blogging thing is harder than it seems.  Actually I just haven't taken the time to update in a long while.  Even with Emma's 2-3 hour naps (thank you Babywise)!  I've been trying to get our house cleaned up, which is hard for someone who has never been a neat freak...until now.  For whatever reason, I have suddenly felt a huge urge to get this place clean.  I've implemented a weekly cleaning schedule, which is great.  It helps me to get most of the house clean, but I don't spend hours cleaning.  I keep finding more things to add though, so I'm still tweaking it.  I still hate cleaning but I feel so much better once it's done.  Although it's never really done...I would really like to know where all the dust comes from.

Halloween this year was quite different from last year.  Last year, Emma was a monkey and went to church.  This year, she was Elmo and she got to go trick or treating around my parents' house.  The weather was great and Emma seemed to have a lot of fun.  We pulled her in her wagon, but she walked to everyone's door for the most part.  She said hi and thank you; we'll hopefully have "trick or treat" down for next year.  She got to meet a lot of dogs, which she loved.  She stayed up a little late, but didn't get fussy at all.  Unfortunately mean Mommy and Daddy are eating all her candy...however, I did save the suckers for potty training treats. 






As far as the potty training goes, she has regressed a bit with peeing in the potty.  She has pooped twice though.  Fortunately, we started early enough that I'm not freaking it if she takes a few steps back...we have lots of time to get it done.  And she loves sitting on the potty...she always asks us to read her a book...and then another and another.  She is very grown up all of a sudden.  We've been working on self-feeding, which she's very happy about.  She can feed herself any finger food, but has a harder time with a fork or spoon.  She can put it in a bowl or plate, and then into her mouth, but there's usually no food on it.  But we're getting there, and she seems pretty determined to figure it out.  She's still just as picky as ever, but I am going to start offering more vegetables.  She usually plays with them instead of eating them, but I'm going to keep trying. 

Thursday, October 21, 2010

More pictures
















I have more to post, but my camera and/or computer is being stupid tonight.

We're still alive!

My effort to blog more often has not gone so well.  But we've been very busy around here lately.  Emma is 17 months old and she is everywhere!  We're still having problems with her allergies.  Fall is especially bad for her.  We took her to the allergy doctor, and got a prescription that will hopefully help ease her congestion.  It seems that dust is really hard for her, so she gets a flare up when I dust the house.  I can dust most of the house while she's sleeping and hopefully that will help, because she loves to tag along and "help" me clean.

We've also started potty training!  She's pretty young, so I just thought I'd buy a potty seat and see what happened.  She has taken to it so quickly!  She is realizing now when she has to pee and she bends over and grabs at her diaper.  She loves to run into the bathroom, sit on the potty and have me read her a book.  We've been pleasantly surprised with how well she's done so far.  My goal was to have her potty trained by the time she's 2, so that gives me 7 months.

Our trip to the beach was fun, but Emma hated the beach.  She didn't want anything to do with the sand or the water.  Our house did have a wagon that she loved to ride in.  We pushed her in that wagon and let her push it around the neighborhood about 200 times.  As soon as we got home, we got my old wagon from my parents' house and cleaned it up.  She loves it.  We were also able to swim, which was her second favorite thing.  We tried to plan out our traveling times, but we failed miserably.  We drove to Atlanta for a baseball game and then drove straight to Destin, and got there about 12:15am.  Emma slept for about an hour and was awake for the rest of the way.  It took us half the week to get her back on her schedule, so she was not a lot of fun for a few days.  We did better on the way home though.

Here are some pictures of what the little lady has been up to lately.











Wednesday, September 29, 2010

Another Giveaway

I'm entering another giveaway, this time from the Chronicles of a Babywise Mom website.  The giveaway is for the So Easy Toddler Food Cookbook, which is supposed to be helpful for parents of picky eaters.  And do I ever have one of those.  Meals are soo frustrating, unless I only give her the same foods over and over.  And that would be fine if it didn't involve hot dogs and frozen chicken nuggets.  Occasionally I can get her to eat some pears or peaches, but she won't eat any veggies.  At all.  It's driving me insane.  She either clamps her mouth shut and refuses to take the food, or she takes it and spits it out.  Needless to say, our dogs love helping me clean up the kitchen.  I know she's healthy because she's growing and happy, but I miss my little girl who used to eat all her fruits and veggies!