Blue-eyed beauties 3-2-1

I wish I could say I’ve been busy slaying dragons and conquering new skills, but no. Mostly just housework, hanging with the littles, and reorganizing my house. Actually, we shall restate that first bit. I have slain a dragon. Our playroom. I have completely reorganized it into an entirely unbeautiful and very functional toy storage system a la Rubbermaid, that makes it way easier for the kids to spend five minutes cleaning up. Instead of me spending two hours reorganizing every toy into it’s special spot, I have a bunch of buckets that are either by theme or by type, and they get one at a time, and if they want another they throw everything back in the Rubbermaid first. Pinworthy and beautiful? Not particularly. Functional? Absolutely.

I’ve also been working on skills, actually. Firstly, on my houseworking skills. Let’s be real here – it does not come to me naturally. If I strike you as the homemaker type, I apologize. In reality, I am the artsy fartsy type, and if I leave myself in my natural state I tend to sit up every so often and wonder what the heck happened. I’m forcing myself to create new habits and routines and so far I’m doing pretty well. I mean, two steps forward and one back – I have a toddler and a baby after all.

Secondly, I’m giving running another go. It’s actually just happenstance that I took it up in the New Year. That’s just when my husband and I came to the conclusion that going to the gym was not fitting in particularly well in this season of my life. Jackson has been clingy off and on, and my husband struggles with him when I’m gone, and that’s stressful for everyone involved. So in lieu of not having a whole gym available we opted for a second hand treadmill. I’m nearly done my second week of it and I’m getting stronger, faster, and yes, losing weight as well. But mostly I’m feeling more energetic, which is really helping with that housework skills thing… especially since I’ve got less sleep lately than I ever got when Jackson was a newborn. C’est la vie, and this baby season is long days and short years, and all the snuggles and laughter are totally worth the lack of sleep.

However, I have resolved to do or create something every day, even if it’s just a photograph. So, on a particularly crazy day, I pulled out my dslr and took pictures of my crazies. Then I edited them another day. Every day a little bit of something! Running and creating even just little bits, that’s what’s keeping me in a happy, healthy place (mentally and physically) this cold cold winter.

How about you? How do you keep in the happy healthy zone?

KCWC summary + Rufflicious Skirt Debut

Okay, so my kids have been tag teaming this whole getting sick/being miserable thing. I’m all about nurturing, nurture cuddle nuture, that’s me. But I wish they could just get it together and both be sick at the same time. Then I could lie about in bed with them both and listen to them moan and groan and make soothing noises back and them, and then slip off to Get Stuff Done when they both drift off to sleep. But no, one kid gets sick and gives it to the other kid and then that kid gets another thing while their immunity is down and gives THAT to the first kid… you know how it is. Anyways, I’ve moaned on about me being sick or them being sick for I dunno, a month now, off and on. It’s been grand. I’m sure you’re as sick of us being sick as we are. ITS SUMMER WEATHER OUTSIDE. I think it will all go away soon.

ON TO KCWC. My goal was to complete a sister set for my girls and at least one other thing. I completed the sister set (okay so the skirt was finished a day late and a dollar short) and called it good.

Olivia:

I want to do surgery on this yet. My calculations were a bit off and I did some past-midnight-sewing, as I mentioned, so there are some oopsies. Also my first applique attempt in a long time, it was kind of poor, to put it mildly, but oh well. I hope to put a waistband over the waist part and bring it in a bit, it’s a bit loose thankfully so I can afford to do that, and hopefully that will fix the ‘situation’ at least a bit.

Nicole’s outfit… well, I could just put it on her and then go skipping through a field of daisies with joy. Heck, I could skip through my yard full of dandelions with joy. LOVE. IT. I learned from my mistakes (look ma! Finally! It took 24 years but darnit, I’ve started learning from my mistakes!) and moved on to victory.

As long as you don’t examine Olivia’s too closely it still looks pretty cute. She’ll wear it. They’ll wear it together and Nicole will be pleased. Every day she says, “I want to match Olivia!” See, it’s not just me enforcing a rein of terror upon my children. THEY WANT TO MATCH. Well, the baby has no say, but whatever. She’s happy if she can chew a ruffle, so we’re golden.

left: Um, yeah, applique… suuuuuuper. Homemade? right: Nicely done! Still room for improvement, but definite learning curve. Handmade!

left: homemade, definitely homemade. It looks like the dog ate it, but really I just had a bit of a learning curve with the serger. right: yaaay! There’s still a few wonky spots on the skirt but I definitely have if not mastered then at least intermediate-ed the rolled hem stitch on my serger.

Dreamy sigh. I call this the Rufflicious Skirt. At first I called it Rufflemania but discarded that promptly because in my excitement I named it like it was wrestling related or something. No. Rufflicious it is. I’m going to grade it and make a pattern of sorts (it’s going to be diagrams and not printable pattern pieces, because it is a series of rectangles.) I’m trying to decide if I’ll do a tutorial or a .pdf for sale. If I do a pdf it will be size 6mos to 4/5, most likely. A tutorial I will do size 4/5 and size 6mos because I already did the 4/5 and I’m going to do the 6mos anyways. What say you? If you say paid pattern, how much would you be willing to pay? I’m thinking like $6.99CAD or something?

Look guys, look how yummy. LOOK. I didn’t pose this, she sat down to play Princess Dress Up on my ipod and the skirt did this on it’s own. I love it so bad. SO. BAD. It’s a little hefty but she loves it, seems comfortable, and the fact that the tiers are rufflier as they go along makes it so the middle tier holds in the bottom tier in such a fashion that I haven’t seen her panties ONCE today, despite no leggings. That is major, folks. She acts like a little lady sometimes but she rarely sits like one. (gets it from her mama, unfortunately. Sorry ma, I learned from my mistakes but I still sit like a boy.)

Helping Hands

You might be surprised sometimes where you might find some helping hands. What started out with me finding something for Nicole to do to keep her out of Chris’ hair while I was doing the dishes turned into me being impressed by her eagerness to help. In my urge to always get things done quickly so I could move on to the next thing lately, I had forgotten what I had previously considered So Important… letting her help. Letting her help at this age does not necessarily mean tasks are going to be done faster or properly. But it does set good habits that I will be grateful for when she is a bit older, and she is already starting to surprise me with how helpful she can actually be.Last night, she first helped me load the dishwasher. This does mean that I set aside certain dishes for her to load, like cutlery and plates and cups, that I could load myself in the same amount of time. Oh well! She enjoys helping me, and I enjoyed her eagerness to help. She’s been helping me unload for ages, and even gets annoyed at me when I do ‘her things’… the cutlery (after I pull out the knives) and the big pots, which go in the stove drawer.

Then I started doing the hand washing. “What’s next, mommy?” I would have handed her a few things to “dry”, even though I tend to let things drip dry, but the laundry monster had eaten all the drying towels. (hehe… I’m mostly caught up, honest! But since I let things drip dry, those hit last priority.) So instead I let her wash the table for me (after I gave it a quick wipedown first so it would really be done.) “What’s next, mommy?” I am going to endorse another Norwex product here… the mop. The handle easily goes from long to short and back again, so I made it Nicole-sized and let her go at. If you observe the lines on the floor, clearly my floor has not been mopped to pristine. But hey, if I let her do it every day, it should be clean by the end of the week, yes? LOL

Once she dubbed that complete, I assigned her to wash the windows in the livingroom, and she did a pretty good job of what she could reach. Then she moved on to wash the walls, or at least a portion of them, and once I ran out of other things, she washed the chairs. (This was probably more ‘water play’ than actual cleaning, but it entertained us both.) I finished the hand washing at some point in there, but her eagerness to work inspired me to scrub down my cupboards as well, plus a few other tasks I don’t need to do every single day.

I have resolved to make a point of letting her help me more often again. In the craziness of having a baby I forgot to do some of that kind of thing with her, but it really is so important. Done in good spirits, it allows us to bond, while setting good habits for her future. It also sets good habits for myself, I’ll admit I leave a lot of tasks for the next morning that I would feel much more refreshed in the morning if I just did them the night before! So, I can keep her busy after supper and before bedtime, without getting her hyped up or setting her in front of the tv. (Which she has watched less than three hours of in the last two weeks, yay for us!) I’m sure a lot of you are like, “Well, duh.” But for me it was a bit of an ‘oh, yeah…’ ;)

And of course, lets not forget my other little helper, who helped me fold laundry after the first one had gone to bed. Yup, she can already do short spurts in her Bumbo chair! Little turkey… I don’t think she realizes she is not even two months old yet. My babies really do not like to stay babies… Nicole was the same way. Actually, I think Olivia is a little “worse” for it than Nicole was! I’d like to take a moment, too, to be grateful to be very blessed with a good sleeper. This girl likes to have a late bedtime, but she goes down before midnight every night (generally around 11) and does not get up until 5:30, and she’s done it since she was four days old. I’m also already able to sleep train her, and now have her to the point where I can lay her down sleepy and she’ll put herself to sleep unassisted. Most of the time without even a soother! I’m so very, very blessed that my second is such an easy baby.

Cookies and milk

I give myself a blue ribbon for my multitasking last night. I was baking cookies/nursing/watching Gossip Girl something incredibly educational and non-trashy/blogging all at the same time. After 11pm. Actually maybe I give myself a blue ribbon for Batshit Crazy. Probably that. But you know what, I love my cookie scoop. Only with a cookie scoop can you nurse a baby and fill a cookie sheet with cookie dough balls at the same time. Mine is the size medium cookie scoop from Pampered Chef and I love it. Two scoops to fill a muffin/cupcake cup… one scoop for a generous meatball or cookie. I know some people prefer the smaller scoop but I like my cookies and meatballs to be HEARTY.

(click the scoop to be brought to the product page.)

I was totally going somewhere with this but then baby and three year old and hours passed and I watched a movie and I have no idea what I was up to. But somehow I still feel its important that the world know that everyone needs a cookie scoop. I used to get bored/annoyed halfways through making cookies because while I love the idea of making cookies, and the taste of cookie dough, and the smell of fresh cookies… when it comes down to actually placing a gazillion cookies on sheet after sheet with 8-12 minute pauses in between, snoooore. However, if you can’t find a cookie dough scoop or a Pampered Chef consultant to get you one, I highly recommend freezing cookie dough in a container when you get bored of devoting your life to scooping cookies, and pretend your endgoal all along was to have frozen cookie dough so you could enjoy fresh cookies whenever the mood hit. I recommend this MUCH more than I recommend polishing off the cookie dough you don’t feel like scooping. Trust me on this one. It seems like a good plan, but you will immediately regret that decision.

Actually I just decided you should give somebody a cookie scoop and a bucket of homemade frozen cookie dough for Christmas. Tadaa! I just went somewhere useful with this post. Merry Christmas. If I was a real blogger I’d have a picture of beautifully presented cookie dough in a bucket wrapped up with a cookie scoop and there would be ribbon and beautiful tags and it would be amazing. If you want a real blogger I can provide you with a good long list, actually… since I’m not a real blogger I’ll distract you instead with pictures of my adorable girls. Olivia was two weeks old yesterday!

  Olivia has some newborn rashyskin going on… Nicole still loves her super bad… I still am pretending Olivia might have my green eyes even though its definitely looking like she’s leaning towards blue like everyone else in our families… and yes, those are coordinating outfits. And I didn’t even leave the house with them today. I just do it because Nicole loves it. Okay, and maybe me too. 

 

So, back to the beginning… what’s the your best/craziest multitasking victory so far? Mine is pretty amazing for me because normally I can’t multitask AT ALL. Also, do you have a slightly unusual kitchen tool you’re madly in love with, like my beloved cookie scoop? I’m always up to try more, especially small ones that fit in drawers.

Also, I apologize to those of you who ‘got’ the title and are like ‘awwwwww that’s not even funny’.

Pierced Ears !!

Awww, my big little girl got her ears pierced today. She’s been excited for a month or so that she got to get big girl earrings for her 3rd birthday, and we decided to do it a bit early because ‘Sucky’ aka her soother is hitting the trash can For Good This Time on her birthday. We figured both at once might be traumatic. When Nicole is nervous/shy/unsure she makes this funny little face, she twists her mouth to the side and kind of just stares around. Its very funny. The picture below is right after the first earring was done. We put a freezing cream (Emla) on her ears, so it didn’t really hurt, but it was kind of shocking, and she took a moment to decide how she felt about it. You can see where she went with that decision. She bawled big fat tears but let the lady do the other ear like a little trooper. She decided she was completely traumatized, except 10 seconds later the receptionist offered her suckers. The complexity of choosing the pink sucker or the blue sucker totally made her forget she was supposed to be upset. (She was given both and then generously decided to give the pink one to me.) She was a little fit-ish for the next bit, with the lingering idea that she had been traumatized floating around in her head, she alternated between happily skipping around and throwing fits on the floor over random things (stuffed puppy, not wanting to walk anymore, etc.). She was overall very proud and happy, though. The earrings were a birthday gift from Grandma, my mom (and her middle-name namesake.) She also got another Fancy Nancy book from Grandma, ooh la laaa! Nicole didn’t want to let me take a picture of her earrings but was very willing to let me take a picture of her drinking a slurpee. (The smallest size and only 3/4 full, I’d rather pay for a fractional cup in cash then pay for a full cup worth of sugar in sanity later, ha. Clever me.) After seeing the slurpee picture on the back of the camera she was ready to have pictures taken of her earrings. She chose plain gold stars, which kindof surprised me. I thought she’d choose something colorful, or maybe some hearts. Initially she chose a star with a ‘diamond’ but they only had the pearl and the plain one available, and she chose the plain one. She’s proud as a peacock and I’m expecting to break down into tears at some point over this milestone yet today. It’s hard to get emotional with her sometimes though, she cracks me up. She rather firmly told me after getting her earrings done that she was turning six years old. I gently tried to correct her, but she sure told me, let me tell you. I have been told, ladies and gentlemen. Meanwhile, I have to start planning her ‘puppies and kitties’ themed birthday party. After peeking over my shoulder and seeing a unicorn pinata in my blogreader this morning (a la Craft) apparently we need one of those too, but I think I convinced her that if she wants puppies and kitties she needs to stick to that.

One thing I did get a bit misty about today was the idea of having another baby girl. I don’t know right now what we’re having, and I’ve been hoping for a boy since I am missing that from my little ‘set’, haha, but lately I’ve kindof been hoping for a pair of sisters to giggle together and pull each others’ hair, you know what I mean? I love my little girly-girl and her fancy-hair-lovin’ soccer-ball-kickin’ beach babe wannabe fart-noises cuddlemonster sassypants ways.