Usborne Books

I had to post about the most amazing new book find. We ordered a bunch of books from Usborne Books and everyone in the family is in love. We first came across Usborne Books when T was a baby and they quickly became her favorite books. When T2 came along he was just as enamored with them. He really loved all touchy feely books and the early words books and mom loved that they were not filled with licensed characters and inappropriate content. But since then I just haven't seen a lot of Usborne titles around. Come to find out Usborne is an international publisher and that's why I just didn't seem to come across them in our local bookstore. Anyway long story short once we found a source we ordered an entire library of these books. I will be posting on my favorites as we discover them. A real stand out are the Lift & Discover series. We have the Question and Answers book. The illustrations are just so precious and the quality is amazing, the best part is how much my kiddos love this book. You can order them from www.usbornekid.com

New Mexico Balloon Fiesta

We booked a last minute family vacation to see the Balloon Fiesta in Albuquerque, NM. It was an amazing trip. We stayed at The Tamaya resort outside of town, the hotel is located on the majestic lands of the Santa Ana Indians surrounded by mountains and several buttes. This festival is the only one that allows viewers to be right up next to the balloons as they prepare for ascent. Roughly 750 balloons cover the open field gearing up to go before the sun even rises. You get there while it is still dark, bundled up in warm gear, drinking hot chocolate and eating the most incredible green chili breakfast burritos while watching the preparations. At dawn they send up the initial patrol and the balloons are alight from within as they rise up and test the air. Once the sun come up the rest of the balloons all go as up they are inflated. The kids loved it. Beside the balloons Albuquerque offers so much to do as a family, we hiked and found a meteorite, went to local crafts shows and ate great New Mex food. We are already longing to get back to this very very special place. 

City Mouse Big Cheese

We has a little tug of war this year with costumes. T was set out from the get go to be a ghost but Mommy had other plans. I had 1/2 started this mouse costume a while back and had planned to give it as a birthday present but never got it completed. The week before and the week of Halloween I was not feeling well (just found out I have bronchitis) and so I decided to revisit this little mouse and use stuff I had around the house to put together something simple for Theo. I whipped this up in two hazy congested miserable nights, but it was so worth it.

The mouse costume consisted of a tail and ears made from stretch velour and a grey tulle tutu. Theo's cheese head was a piece of latex foam that I cut with scissors and sprayed with yellow spray paint. We used an on hand onsie that I dyed and printed out an iron on decal that said aged one year (yes he just turned one the week before). We got to use the costume several times once for a party and then again at Halloween and my guess is that she will want to wear this a dozen or so times before we re purpose the parts for something else. Halloween was so magical this year. T had such a great time, we created a bunch of creepy crafts and she became completely obsessed with all things slightly spooky. Theo, well he wasn't so sure about it all and even though he looks miserable in the photo he warmed up to his costume and was our perfect stinky lil cheese. Oh and I went as a black cat...with a few grey whiskers.

Birthday Boy

Hard to believe that my little guy just turned one. Brings tears to my eyes just thinking about how quickly this past year has flown by. I'm reminiscing now about all the precious moments and sweet infant glances that I wish I could have bottled up to relive again and again. I'm always in such quandary about whether I should be capturing (i.e with a camera) or be mindfully living the moment. I go back and forth and most of the times I think I choose to just let the experience be what is it and then just lament later that I didn't get the shots. I guess I am sorting venting here because I really didn't get the best pictures of the big guys birthday. Lighting was bad, he had a big poop in his diaper that I didn't know about and it was the end of a very very busy day so I guess I should be glad I got what I did. It really was a special day. Dad played hookie, Theo's buddies at little gym all sang to him, we had lunch out after an outing at the toy store (where he scored big time) and finished it day off with a cake I made in the nick of time the night before. I have a funny story about this cake that I won't go into but Dad and I were in tears laughing at 1:30am and will never forget this ONE.

Super Natural Millet Muffins

Okay this is officially the first of my attempts at more frequent posts. I'm hoping to get at least a few posts a week up and capturing more of the everyday. Just quick little snippets of the simple things that keep me busy, thinking and constantly on the move. I've been working on clearing out most of the processed foods from our families pantry and getting rid of boxed anything. I recently purchased the cookbook Super Natural Everyday and love the recipes, they are high on flavor yet easy, healthy and uncomplicated. We have an almost impossibly small kitchen so keeping anything but the essentials for cooking on hand just isn't practical and Heidi Swanson's recipes make the most out of ingredients that I usually have on hand. Here is my go at her Millet Muffins the recipe can be found on her amazing site. Here is the link to the muffins and five others from her beautiful cookbook.

I switched it up a bit and used 1/2 unbleached flour and 1/2 whole wheat pastry flour because that's what I had on hand. I ended up having to put the batter in the refrigerator and run and pick T up from school so they set up some before I spooned them into the muffin tins. They came out having a very scone like texture which look very different from the photos of Heidis in the book but the flavor was amazing. And I loved the denseness of the muffins. She compares the muffins to cornbread muffins but they are so much better.

First Day

Here's my little girl going off to her first day at school. I had fretted over this moment for the past two weeks, afraid I would breakdown and cry. I imagined myself pulling over afterwards sobbing into my steering wheel while seasoned moms honked for me to move on. The truth was she didn't shed a tear and barely looked back as she walked away from me to meet her new awaiting classmates. As for Mom, there was no crying I was too filled with pride at my brave little girl to do anything but smile and watch her bounce off. This week we are only going partial days to get used to all the newness, develop positive routines and get acquainted with the whole school thing.

It seemed I barely had time to get home, drink a cup of coffee down and it was time to go get her. When I got to school I queued up with the other cars and waited my turn to pick up my pumpkin. Her new teacher walked her out to the car and helped her buckle up. As she was seeing to Tess's car seat straps the teacher said to me, "You have one sweet sweet little girl here". I smiled ear to ear so glad she made a positive impression but even more glad that she was back with me safe & sound.

I had worked it out with Dad that he would work from home and watch baby brother so that after pick up I could take Tess for a special Mommy & big girl cupcake. I was barely able to contain myself I wanted to know EVERYTHING about her day. Over the cupcake I tried to pull out as much info about what she did in her new environment. I guess I had thought I was going to get this great download but she was much more interested in having a conversation with her cupcake icing than me. Oh well. I guess that's how it's going to be from now on - Moms on a need to know basis.

Noodle Necklace

Today as I was cooking up T a big freezable batch of homemade spagettio's I starting wondering if she would be to young for some good old noodle jewelry making. I took a handful of the noodles I was using and got out some watered down paints and set her up for some pasta painting. She had such a great time. She put all the noodles on a metal skewer which was a great exercise for her fine motor skills and used a small paintbrush to color the noodles. After drying she applied glitter glue to some and she finished off the project by stringing them on some pink nylon cord. She was so proud of her necklace and I was so impressed that she tackled this project all by herself and the result was just adorable.

Noodle Necklace Materials:
Pasta Noodles
Water based paints
Glitter Glue
Nylon Thread

Homemade Spagetti O's
1 can tomato sauce
1 cup pasta rings
1/2 cup vegetable broth
1/2 cut fine diced or pureed carrots
1/2 can drained and finely chopped garbanzo beans
1/4 tsp garlic powder
dash salt
1/4 cup milk
1/4 grated cheese

In a sauce pan combine tomato sauce, veggie broth, carrot puree, salt, garlic powder stir until combined and hot. Add cooked pasta, beans, milk and cheese cook until heated through. Can increase recipe to make big freezer batches holds up and is good in freezer for 2 months.

Daily Lessons

T starts montessori school in the fall and in preparation we have been working on making sure she is confident in some basic early education skills. I let her go at her own pace, never push her and try to wrap the lessons around fun activities so that she continues to develop a lifelong love of learning. Lately we have been working on drawing her letters. This exercise is a fun way to for her to practice her writing and work on her fine motor skills. I draw the original letters and she has to erase them with the brush and water.

She knows how to spell and write her own name and she wants me to write all of her friends names so she can trace those as well. It is so amazing to be able to watch as her language skills progress to the next level. Honestly, I am a bit conflicted over the fact that once she starts school someone else will be directing her and teaching my little monkey things. I cherish watching her learn and how she looks at me while we are doing her lessons as if I am the smartest Mom on earth. I love how when Dad gets home she recounts our lessons to him almost verbatim using the same words with the same inflections she learned from me. I already know when the first day of school rolls around there will be plenty of tears, not hers but mine. I already know that I will hold them back and wait until my car pulls around the bend before I lose it so I don't tarnish her moment. We only have four more weeks to spend in this pre-school - pre-school bubble I am going to cherish every one.

Cave Girl

The costume theme this week was time travel. If you know my husband you would assume that we would be making a techie costume for Tess since Dad is a big sci-fi nerd. Momma was super tired this week and baby Theo teething again so I opted for a quick & easy pre-historic getup. We watched a few clips from the Flintstones to get her excited and she quickly picked up the all important cave girl mantra, Yabba Dabba do. The only fabric we purchased was a 1/4 yard of the animal print the rest was left over from other projects so the total cost on the costume was less than six dollars. Cheap, quick and priceless. If you follow our costume adventures you might be wondering what happened to "princess" week. Well we ended up skipping that week because we were headed to Galveston for some family fun time at the beach. Whew escaped the princess theme...for now.

Materials
1 yard Utrasuede
1/4 furry animal print fabric
various wood beads for necklace

Rogue Pirate

Here's the next installment of the summer of costumes. Just now posting this project from two weeks back.Tomorrow is castles, prince & princess day and I've yet to start sewing or have any clue of what I will throw together. I think I am procrastinating on this one because I have always sworn to try and steer T away from the whole "princess" thing and encourage her to indulge in more "girl" esteem rewarding role play. But I am finding that this issue is alot like me trying to steer her away from junk food, sugar and bad nutritional influences I can't help to to feel like... the girl needs an occasional brownie and just maybe an occasional princess.

All princess talk aside, here is T as my rogue...not so rogue pirate. She really loved this one and has worn it several times since I made it. We have a hand me down ship play set in the backyard which is perfect for her to act our her pirate daydreams. I even managed to drag Dad into this one - I had him stencil the skull and cross bones on to the vest. So pleased that this was my first attempt at a pair of pants, simple yes they were but I felt a huge sense of accomplishment at tackling something that I had a bit of new sewist fear of. No patterns just used a old pair of pants and an old vest as a go by. Again, not a lot of finishing on this costume. The pant bottoms and felt on the jacket left rough making for a quick 2.5 hour total project. I had all the material except the red striped fabric for the hat on hand so it was almost entirely made up of scraps.

Still missing some pirate accompaniments, I still need to make up a treasure map,some kind of soft sword for swashbuckling(very important according to T)and decorate a paper towel tube for locating other pirate ships in the distance.

Materials:
1.5 yards cotton for pants
1 yard of felt for vest
black bias tape
black felt & elastic for eye patch

First Cake

Been racking my brain thinking about options for Tess upcoming birthday. We usually spend & celebrate the summer date away. We will be out of town again this year but daddy is requesting that we do a small playdate party at home for her close buddies. I'm a little concerned about having two parties... are we setting ourselves up for trouble next year when her birthday rolls around again. I can already hear it... Tess gets TWO parties. What ever we do I will have to try and top the cupcakes from last year and the octopus cake from her first birthday... I take it as a personal challenge. I wanted to post the cake from her big 1 because that's were the "topping" the cake challenge began. Matt and I had NEVER made cake from scratch before but we have watched plenty of food network cake shows and were thinking, "we could try that". We had a few obstacles to overcome, we had to cook the cake in the vacation kitchen and had to track down quality fondant on a small limited provisions island all the while dealing with an active 1 year old- thank god for grandparents.

The first cake went into the garbage, burnt. My mother-in-law slipped my hubby a tranquilizer in his diet coke to calm him down and we had food coloring everywhere. Alas, the cake turned out great so proud of our first attempt and best of all Tess was just enchanted with her Octocake.We called her Toothy.

Cake specifics - we used an egg shaped mold, fonderific fondant and gel food coloring. For the cake we used Martha Stewarts recipe for yellow cake with buttercream icing. There was lemon curd between the layers and we topped it with crushed graham crackers to get that sandy look.

Standing Tall

Theo just rounded the corner on his 8th month. His little personality is really starting to shine through and boy do I love this little monkey. He is so fulled with wonder and amazement at his new world that he just couldn't wait to start pulling up, standing and creeping about the house. He has been crawling now for about two months and I think he just might walk early. I think the idea of keeping up with big sis is a big motivator. Along with being very physical he is also sweet & loving (minus the occasional bite), his favorite past time is playing the piano and squealing in delight.

I give a lot of thought as to what kind of boy Theo will be and what kind of things will he be interested in. Wondering if he's going to be sporty or brainy, into science or comics looking to Matt wondering if he will be just like dad. I'm not overly concerned about the specifics as long as he is happy - it's more of a fascination with how different he is from Tess and how wonderfully boylike he is.

Memorial Day Weekend

We headed off to Bastrop for Memorial Day Weekend. It was our first overnighters with the whole family and I wasn't so sure how baby Theo was going to manage the long drive and unfamiliar sleeping arrangements. We decided to head out on Thursday about the same time as his morning nap and we got 3/4 of way there before he woke up and demanded some out of the car time which was expected - we were all hungry for lunch. When we arrived Lost Pines we were all excited to go exploring and get in some lazy river time. Tess is at that age where she can appreciate all the outdoor activities and Theo is small enough to not really care so we were in vacation bliss the whole weekend. Tess loved interacting with the animals and our room overlooked pastures with longhorn cows, horses, alpacas and miniature donkeys. I was really surprised that some of the best times we had were right in our room we had small moments filled with kisses and cuddles. It amazes me to see how much Tess and Theo love each other, he adores her and she can always get him to smile. Tess takes such pride in being his big sister and always wants to be included in helping us out with the baby. Everything was just perfect we ended up extending our trip by another day and I am already pining to get back to those Pines.

Making the Cut

Anyone who has known Tess since she was a baby knows that the girl was born without a lick of hair on her head and didn't start getting peach fuzz on her noggin until practically her second birthday. At almost three she still doesn't have much. What she does have grows incredibly slow in the front and on the sides leaving the majority of her goldie locks growing in back - aka the toddler mullet. After debating for the last week if I should trim up her hair or let what precious little she has grow brazenly wild, I decided finally to get out the scissors and give her a respectable do. She was delighted to get her first haircut and sat without fuss while I chopped off the straggly strands to give her a pixie cut that perfectly suits her.

Baby Theo

Baby Theo arrived on Wednesday morning and Mom Dad & Tess are all still busy gushing over him. After only 6 hours of labor he made his debut weighing in at a hefty 8.7 oz. We were told by the nurses that our "little" boy was the biggest baby on the floor and I think (I might be partial) the most squishiest smoochest baby ever. We've only just gotten home and it's apparent that this little guy is as hungry as he is cute, lucky for us he is sleeping well and when he's awake he spends his time cooing and looking around at his big new world. For the last 9 months Matt and I have been anticipating his arrival wondering what Theo would be like and words cannot express how much MORE he is - even in our expectant imaginations we could not have have predicted the overflow of love and happiness we both feel. Our journey as a family just got bigger and better. Welcome to the world baby Theo.

Halloween Fun

Baby is due this week and trying everything I can to keep my mind off the fact that... BABY IS DUE THIS WEEK. Despite all efforts to will him to come faster he and mother nature are taking their own sweet time and going the distance. I have been taking everyone's advice and enjoying these last precious days of being a threesome. Getting out and about is challenging but staying at home with a toddler can be enough to drive anyone crazy. Tess has tons of energy these days and we have been trying to squeeze in some seasonal fun while the weather has been so lovely and while Mommy still can. Last weekend we headed off to the pumpkin patch and picked out a few choice gourds and when we got home we were all still in the pumpkin mood so we... painted mommy's belly to look like a big ol' jack-o-lantern and took some fun family pictures.