From Bad to Worse... to Worser??

Okay, I'm not sure if worser is a word, but I've decided to make it one.  If you read my last post you'll know that there isn't a whole lot of sleep happening in my house.  Most days I can get up from a loooong night and somehow function as if I'd had enough sleep, but other days I drag.  On Monday morning after being up with a coughing baby for 3 hours, I was having a hard time functioning.  I was foggy, baby M was cranky, and the impulsive neurons in 2 year old B's brain were firing at full speed (I don't know if that's a real thing, but it makes me feel better to give a scientific explanation to the reason why 2 year old B is only wearing tennis shoes and a soft cap while wildly running around the house yelling, "bare bum Baya, you better watch out!" while I am trying to catch her so I can get her dressed and in the car so I can make it to work on time - ah).

On this morning, I somehow managed to get all 3 of us dressed, fed, had my 4 + bags packed and ready to load in the car for the day, and I just needed to run downstairs to throw some dirty towels in the wash.  I grabbed the towels and headed downstairs and if you were a fly on the wall in my house, you would have heard the following series of sounds as I stepped off the bottom step: "squish squish squish, splash SPLASH, "oh @#$%!"

Worser.

It turns out that way far down in the pipes a root worked its way in and has been collecting all kinds of fun things that try to flow past it and then one day it collected one too many things and blocked up the whole outflow pipe which caused a water explosion out of the toilet!  At the time though all I knew was there was a lot of water... I mean A LOT of water just pooling on and under the laminate floors, under the washer and dryer, around the water heater, and in the bathroom.  The water managed to seep its way into every crevice and under every piece of furniture it could.  Oh and the water even made its way into my newly organized office area.  I used all the towels in the house to try and soak it up and eventually had to give up because I needed to go to work.  This is where the best dad in the world comes into play and came over while I was at work to Shopvac up as much water as he could.  He said he quit after vacuuming up about 3 gallons of water! Although anyone who looked at that room would think it didn't look organized, it actually was.  There were just piles of things to go to goodwill scattered about and a bunch of Christmas lights that needed to be put away lining one of the walls.  But now, it looks like this...

Those towels piled up in the sink are from my frantic attempt to mop up all the water.

Oh and my newly organized office area looked like this for a few weeks...

But now it looks like this...

And the playroom we love to spend so much time in now looks like this...

Ugh!!

P.S.  To make matters even worser my nanny quit... by voicemail... with no notice so I was left scrambling to find childcare!

Geesh, rough week!!!

Baby M's calendar

I'm tired these days, oh so tired!  Since going back to work baby M has decided she needs extra cuddles at night, then she got sick, then I got sick, then 2 year old B got sick, then Nick got sick, and now that we're all sort of healthy, baby M has decided to practice her new rolling over and moving around skills in her crib in the middle of the night instead of sleeping.  And don't get me started on getting up with 2 year old B... that is its own set of issues!  Sleep isn't the only thing that I either haven't done or done very little of in the last 7 months, though. Since I'm tired, I get a free pass at being whiney and will provide you with a list of the things I have been missing out on lately:

1. Sleep!
2. What is a haircut?
3. And remind me again what a hair dryer does??
4. My teeth could definitely use a good clean and polish.
5. The closest thing I've had to a girls night in a while is drinking wine while watching Downton Abbey and The Mindy Project with Nick.
6. Exercise.

Okay, enough complaining, and really, who needs those things when you've got these girls to play with and snuggle everyday...
 

Well actually, a cute smile won't clean my teeth so maybe I do need to make it to the dentist.  

This blog post is actually about number 7 on my list of things that haven't really happened in the last 7 months - the baby book.  To be perfectly honest, I don't have a book for baby M... I never even ended up buying one for her.  What I did end up doing was a calendar.  I give all the credit for this idea to my friend Katie B. who told me her mom did this for her and her brother and sister.  When baby M was getting closer to arriving and I was thinking about a baby book for her, I came to the conclusion that I needed something easy and accessible to help me remember all of her milestones and development.  That's when I decided to keep a calendar by my bed.  I printed a monthly calendar from printfree.com for baby M's first year.  Here is what the February one looks like:

February 2013
Sunday	Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday	Saturday
					1	2
3	4	5	6	7	8	9
10	11	12	13	14	15	16
17	18	19	20	21	22	23
24	25	26	27	28
January 2013	Printfree.com      Printable Calendars					March 2013

I keep the calendar in my nightstand drawer and the plan was that when I would go to bed at night I would jot down baby M's milestones.  It turns out I don't remember to do it every night, but I manage once or twice a week to pull out the calendar and write down some notes.  I'll write things on specific days, like when she first smiled and laughed and rolled over, etc.  I also write notes for the week.  For example, last week I wrote across the whole week, "Rolling over in her sleep at night and doesn't like it!"  I keep track weekly of how many naps she's taking, when she has been going to bed, what she's been eating, and what her new developments are for the week.  I keep waiting to write, "started drinking from a bottle," but that hasn't happened yet!  This week I need to write that she loves it when I hold her and we chase 2 year old B around the house.  I've never heard her laugh so much as when we play chase!  

The calendar I use isn't super cute and looks really messy with all my notes written all over it.  I could have gone with a pretty notebook or planner, but it works for me and with this system I can write things down as I remember them and then someday I'd like to make a cute baby book that I can put all this info in.  I think if I didn't have the calendar by my bed I'd never remember to write anything down and since I can't remember things that happened an hour ago, I know I'd forget all those important milestones that happened during baby M's first year.  Thank you Connie and Katie for the great idea!!

Office Update

Waaay back in November, I wrote a post about how I wanted to organized an area in our downstairs.  It functions as a kind of everything space and it was a disaster!  If you want to read that post, click here.

Well, it's finished - almost!  There are a few little details to be taken care of - like labeling and filing, but the majority of the work has been done.  All I have to say is thank goodness for the playroom because just about every evening for the past few weeks Nick and I have taken the girls downstairs and they have been keeping busy playing (for the most part!) while we have been organizing away.

We got the IKEA EXPEDIT shelving unit and I love it!  It has just enough room to fit everything, but is small enough to force me to purge, and purge we did!  We donated, recycled, and threw away at least half of what was on the large and small bookshelves and the contents of our files.  I also moved some things around and got rid of a few pieces of furniture.

Are you ready to see what it looks like?  Here you go...

before:

after:

You'll notice there is no desk and that is because we decided that we really don't need one.  We both have desks at work, and TRY to keep our work at work.  My laptop and Nick's ipad go with us everywhere around the house so we didn't feel like we needed a place to keep them. If we need table space, we either use the dining room table or the kitchen counter.

Want another look?  Check it out...

before:

after:

I turned the back corner into a sort of bar area and since that is kind of Nick's domain, I added his replica high school helmet to give the corner a Nick feel.

Here's one more before and after...

before:

after:

Did you notice how the Keurig was on the wine fridge before?  I moved the utility cart to where the wine fridge is and made a coffee area. We keep the Keurig downstairs because we don't use it that often and it takes up too much space on the kitchen counter, but at least now there is room to make a cup of coffee when it does get used and to top it all off, there is room on the utility cart for when I need a little desk space.

Well, what do you think?  I'm loving it!  In a future post I'll explain how I organized all of the stuff we didn't purge so that I can find and file things easier, but here's a sneak peek at how I have decided to organize all the pens, notepads, paperclips, etc.

P.S. I just have to add this disgusting picture because look what I found making a home in the corner behind one of the shelves...

Yuck!!

Monthly Menu: No Bake Meals

Here is the timeline of events:

4 weeks ago - the oven (actually both ovens) stopped heating up

3 weeks ago - the repair man said the oven needed just a little part to fix it, then he called in to make sure the part was in and discovered the part isn't made for our oven anymore

2 weeks ago - after the Christmas craze it was time to start shopping for a new oven

this week - the oven was SUPPOSED to arrive, but apparently now it is on back order and won't be in until the 23rd!

So yep, that's right... we've been without an oven for about a month now and we still have a few more weeks to go.  If only it were summer and we could BBQ everyday!  We've had to really think hard about what we are cooking for dinner because we didn't realize how much we used our oven.  It seems like every meal we think of requires the use of an oven... ugh!

Here are just a few of the no-bake meals we have made over the past 4 weeks:

1. penne with homemade pesto*
2. breakfast (we did this a few times and switched it up between pancakes & breakfast sandwiches with fruit and turkey sausage as sides)
3. spaghetti and meatballs & broccoli
4. paninis & ceasar salad (pretty much our go to quick meal... we seem to make it once a week)
5. vegan white bean chili & tortilla chips (I usually make my own chips by baking tortillas, but since that requires the use of an oven, I was forced to indulge in some very oily and salty tortilla chips - yum!)
6. salmon (cooked on the stove), kale, & toasted bread
7. lemon chicken pasta
8. turkey tacos & peppers
9. green chili cheese soup (with another bag of chips... might as well milk this no oven thing for all its worth in the tortilla chip department)

Christmas breakfast - crockpot breakfast casserole (Thank you Amy for being a life saver and sending me this recipe!)

New Year's Eve dessert - chocolate chip cookie dough truffles (I also made these for some friends when we watched the Seahawks playoff game and decorated them with blue and green sprinkles.)

*I have to make homemade pesto because Nick is allergic to tree nuts.  I've come up with a pretty yummy one.  Here is the recipe:

1. heat 1/2 cup oil and 2 cloves of garlic on medium heat for 5 minutes
2. meanwhile, combine the following ingredients in the food processor and pulse until well mixed:

1/2 cup sunflower seeds

about 3 large handfuls of basil

1/2 cup parmesan

juice of 1 lemon

about 2 tsp of kosher salt

20 grinds of pepper

3. add the oil and garlic to the basil mixture and pulse until smooth (you may need to add a little more oil as you are pulsing to get the right consistency)

4. I usually add the pesto to penne pasta with feta and halved cherry tomatoes that I warm up in a little oil on the stove to make them softer for about 5 minutes...

The pesto is so easy to make that sometimes I will make an extra batch and freeze it for a really easy cooking night!

Hope this gives you some ideas for no bake meals.  I would love to hear if any of you have meals that you love that don't require the use of an oven... since apparently I have a few more weeks of no bake meals to go!!

My Purse

When I first had 2 year old B,  I don't think I ever left the house without her... and therefore never left the house without the big diaper bag.  There came a point in time, though, that I started venturing out without the little baby in tow and found myself throwing this light and pretty thing that I hadn't seen in months over my shoulder.  It's called a purse!!  Then at some point I discovered I didn't need the diaper bag and could just throw a few diapers and a wipes case into my purse when out and about with the little one.  But that was short lived because not too long after I put the diaper bag away, baby M arrived.

Here I am again, at the in between point of switching between diaper bag and purse on a regular basis.  I have 4 things that I always take with me when out of the house: my wallet, my cell phone, the car keys, and Chapstick (because I'm addicted).  When 2 year old B was a baby, I was always throwing these things in the diaper bag, losing them, digging around to find them, and then throwing them into my purse... and then repeat when I needed to use the diaper bag.  Then I discovered a brand of mainly baby accessories called petunia pickle bottom and fell in love!!  They have the prettiest prints for any baby and travel organizational needs.  They are way out of my price range, but, on one of those daily deals websites, I was able to purchase a Powder Room Case similar to this one:

It solved my purse/diaper bag switching issue perfectly.  I put my "always take with me" items in the case...

... and then I just move the case from diaper bag to purse as needed.  See:

This little system doesn't have to be used solely for diaper bag to purse switches, it can even be used for purse to purse change ups too... as long as you have a large enough purse!  The next purchase I would love to get from petunia pickle bottom is the Wanderlust Wallet.

I can't justify spending $62 on a wallet though, but I'm keeping my eyes out for a deal!!

In case you are wondering, I do own just one other petunia pickle bottom item.  I needed an Ergo carrier when baby M arrived so I went with a petunia pickle bottom one.  It was actually only a little bit more than the regular Ergo carrier, but so much prettier!  Here is the one I have:

How do you make the switch from diaper bag to purse?  Or purse to purse?  Is it a free for all where everything just gets thrown in, or do you have a way to keep it all organized?  I'd love to hear!!

Sugar Cookies

There are so many traditions and fun activities to do during the holidays, but my favorite one of all is making cookies, specifically cookie cutter cookies.  Every holiday season my mom and I would transform the kitchen into cooking baking central where we would mix, frost, decorate, and best of all, sneak bites of cookie dough in between batches.  As an adult, holiday cookie baking has looked different for me every year. Some years I have made them at my mom's house or sadly made them on my own when we were living in San Diego (although that's not as fun, but can be made more joyful by blasting the Christmas music while baking) and one year I even got Nick to make cookies with me. Last year my friend Chelsea and her baby came over to bake with B and I:

Aren't they the cutest in their matching bib & apron!

Baya did a lot of tasting, but very little baking!

This year seemed a little more special than others.  The reason... 2 year old B is able to actually bake with me.  She has been helping me "make cookies" for a few months now and it warms my heart every time.  She gets her measuring cup and teaspoon and bowl and big spoon and she "mixes" her ingredients while I'm mixing mine.  She even sneaks bites of her cookie dough (which I woudn't recommend since I only give her the dry ingredients).

Before we started the cookie cutter process, we needed to make the dough and let it chill overnight in the fridge.

Making cookies is serious business!

2 year old B had to be sure she was wearing the proper attire.

This apron and hat were made by a teacher I used to work with.  She makes the most beautiful and adorable kitchen clothing and makes sure that all of us teachers with kids have matching bibs and aprons (see the photo of Chelsea above).

Baby M helped pick out which cookie cutters we were going to use.

Then it was time to start baking!  The girls and I spent the afternoon with my mom, friend Patsy, and even my dad took part in the decorating and frosting cookies.

The first step was to roll out the dough and cut out the cookies.

2 year old B quickly got tired of cutting out the cookies and enjoyed decorating the cookies much more.

Did I say decorating cookies?  I meant pouring decorations on the cookies.

Here is her very green and very sprinkled tree.

Even baby M tried to get in on the cookie decorating.

We decorated half the cookies and baked them and the other half we baked without decorations so we could frost them.  2 year old B chose 2 cookies that she frosted to death.  One for daddy and one for mommy... so sweet!

That's not chocolate frosting... Apparently B is into mixing colors!

Somebody learned how to sneak licks of frosting very quickly.

Everyone has their own favorite sugar cookie recipe.  Here is mine.

1 cup of butter
1 cup of sugar
1 egg
1/2 cup sour cream
1 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. baking powder
2 cups flower

1. beat together butter & sugar
2. add the egg
3. first mix the sour cream and baking soda, then add to the butter, sugar, and egg mixture
4. add the baking powder and flour
5. the dough gets dry by the end so you will need to hand knead it to make sure it is all mixed together
6. wrap in plastic wrap and chill overnight
7. bake for 10 minutes at 350 degrees, but don't over bake them or you will have hard cookies and those never taste quite right

P.S. I don't save cookie cutter cookies just for the holidays.  One year I made special cookies for a few of my friends for a girls night.  Check out the martini glasses, red heel, and wedding dress for that bride-to-be:

Merry Christmas everyone!

Hand and Footprint Ornaments

At this time last year I was pregnant, sick 24/7, and exhausted.  My husband recently commented about how we didn't do many Christmas activities last year and I had to remind him that I was basically nonfunctional during the month of December.  There were a few good days, though, and on one of those days I spent a cozy morning with my moms group.  We attempted snow globes that fell apart almost immediately and then we all sat our kids around the table to make handprint ornaments.  With a bunch of 15 month olds running around, its amazing we got anything done, but with snacks and toys, we were able to keep them busy so we could chat and be crafty.

This year it was just the kids and I making the handprint ornaments, but my inspiration came from one of the moms from that group.  She made the cutest handprint ornament on a bulb with her son last year and so I decided to try the bulb handprint as well.  I started with 2 year old B and had this brilliant idea to use glitter over the paint, but it turned out looking like this:

Kind of funky looking, right?  So I started over.  2 year old B loved the feeling of the paint on her hand and she kept asking me to paint her again... and again... and again!

I had her hold her painted hand out and then I rolled the ornament over her hand.  I learned from a couple of tries that you need to do the handprint higher up on the ornament (like closer to the part that hangs) and that you need to start with the palm of the hand and roll up to the fingers.  I started with the fingers on one try and the palm didn't make a print.  I also discovered that baby wipes take the paint right off if you make a mistake so it was really easy to keep trying until I got a handprint that I liked.

Making baby M's handprint turned out to be impossible.  I painted baby M's hand and then she closed up that hand into the tightest ball that there was no way of even peeling the fingers apart to attempt a print.  So I ended up doing her foot.  I did the same process with the foot and started with the heel and pressed her foot around the upper part of the ornament.  It took a couple of tries, but I think it turned out pretty well.  Once I had a nice footprint, I wrote her name on the paint, but the black writing took something away from the cuteness of the ornament. 

Luckily I only wrote on one ornament so I was able to pull out those baby wipes again and make another footprint.  I made 2 ornaments for each kid.  One for us and one for grandma and grandpa.  Once they were dry I made name tags to attach to ribbon on the ornaments and voila, our 2012 hand and footprint ornaments are ready to be hung on the tree.  I thought about putting tinsel in the bulb to fancy them up a bit, but when I hung them on the tree they looked pretty enough with the lights shining through.