Love...

I watch him coo at the baby, "Don't cry. You're safe with me."

He steals every opportunity to lay with her warm, cozy weight on his chest.

He does the potty dance in the middle of the living room as little girls gallop around him, fingers pointing to the sky.

At the sound of her call, he's up and running in the middle of the night to the little one who needs a drink of water.

At a request for 'shoulders?', he scoops up a girl child and romps around the house to the sound of her delighted squeals.

He is the inventor of imaginary games that only a Daddy could dream up.

He bathes giggly, energetic girls, makes pony tails and plays princesses.

Once they're all tucked away for the night, he shakes his head and says, "I love them so much!"

And when I stumble back into bed after a 3am feeding, he's the one who pulls me close, murmuring an "I love you" into the quiet of the night.

He runs for copious amounts of water and nursing pads and diapers when my hands are full of baby.

He takes over Friday night plans, piling high homemade nachos with extra avacado just for me.

A Saturday morning is devoted to adding baseboard to our soon to be schoolroom, knowing that this causes me over the top kind of joy and excitement.

He sits in the ER til 4am, by my side, juggling a newborn and making me smile despite the reality that he must head to work the next day.

He walks in the door with that adorable grin on his face, flowers in hand along with 3 bags of my favorite chips. "They were on sale!", he explains.

Love.

Valentines {In Pictures Because Mama's Blogging Time Is At a Minimum}

 

Happy Heart Day!

Tot School (Sort of...)

It seems to me that for many the last week has been filled with similar circumstances. So I'm sure the following picture of what we did in Tot School this week will be somewhat familiar!

That's right - laying on the couch snuggling Mama. Poor, sick dolly! She was hit the hardest!

But the funny thing about kids is that despite feeling awful, they still need to be kept busy! Taitum is not at an age yet where sitting and watching movies will suffice on a sick day. No, no. This girl has to keep moving! She wasn't in any mood to be on her own though so I included her in many of the things her sister was doing:

Like making contact paper heart suncatchers ... (mind you this was before I realized she was sick and was blaming teething...)

And pouring Valentine confetti...

And dancing to the song I sang for Piper's rhyming activity...

And stamping with paper tube heart stamps.

I also pulled out the crayons for her so she could color some vegetable pictures too but she got a glimpse of stickers that were in the crayon box. Coloring time turned into sticker time! This girl LOVES stickers lately!!

You can pretty much guess what the challenging and successful parts of our week were: dealing with a sick darling and seeing her health return (and sleep-filled nights! Can you hear my sigh of relief?!)

I am very much looking forward to the week ahead and more than ready to put this last one behind us! I must say though I am so grateful for children that are rarely sick and who recover quickly when they are!

Be sure and check out what other parents are doing with their tots by clicking on the button below!

Valentines and Vegetables!

On weeks like this one, these weekly wrap-up posts become SO valuable! Coming to the end of a week that seemed to last forever and that felt so very unproductive, its nice to look back and see that things did get accomplished! Don't get me wrong - comforting, cuddling and nursing my sick littles back to health is a huge accomplishment in my books! But its a lot harder to see or even look back on since it all just seems like one big blur! Its nice to be encouraged by my own posts!

Here are some of this week's encouragements: 

On Valentine's Day, we made contact paper heart suncatchers like the ones I saw at Teach Mama.

Then, being oh-so-inspired by Counting Coconuts, we practiced pouring Valentine confetti into a jar.

As I mentioned in my post on Tuesday, Monday was a bit hectic so I had a few Valentine activities that we weren't able to get around to. Rather than starting a new theme, I decided to finish up what I had planned. This included practice cutting strips of hearts (also from Counting Coconuts).

Then we did this little rhyme:

6 little Valentines I once knew

All lined up for us to view

But the Valentine that I like best

It is the one that rhymes with...

bed - red, bean - green, shoe - blue, mellow - yellow, stink - pink, bright - white

Rhyming is something new for Piper and I'm not totally sure she got it but both girls enjoyed the song and the chance to join in by picking the right colored heart!

Paper Heart Tube Stamps were fun to do but short lived. Within 5 minutes both girls were done with this craft! I guess they didn't find the heart shaped stamps as amusing as I did!

I had some fun though by combining the paper tube stamps, my camera and an idea I saw at Pink Paper Peppermints! I ended up with this cute picture of my lovelies!

Mama's heart :)

As well, Piper worked away at transferring heart shaped bracelets from one bowl to another using a clothes pin.

We pulled out the good ol' Do-a-Dot markers and did the Letter V sheet from Confessions of a Homeschooler. Piper got a little crazy with her dots this time! Once she was done, most of the sheet was filled with dots but she was able to fill in the 'Vv' first! I love how excited she gets about getting to use these markers!

We began a vegetable theme so we could continue on with learning about the letter V for the rest of the month. We didn't get too terribly far with this because sickness hit and our school time was dramatically reduced for a few days. So look out! Next week is likely to be FULL of vegetables (and maybe a few violins and vacuums, too?)

We did manage to color in some vegetable pictures which will hopefully be turned into a mobile next week!

Piper matched vegetables using these printables from Homeschool Creations. This was more to build up her vocabulary since she didn't really know what a squash or zucchini looks like in their unmashed and ungrated form! ;) We will be using these cards for different activities next week too!

With it being a sick week, I finally got around to introducing Piper to Starfall. I've meant to for a while since I'd heard lots of good stuff about it and had investigated it for myself and liked what I saw. But I'm not big on my kids sitting in front of a screen for any length of time so it just wasn't a priority. Until this week... If they're going to sit in front of a screen they might as well be learning something! And I have to say I was pretty impressed with the stuff Piper picked up while playing around with the program! So check it out!

That's our week! The good, the bad and the...lovely?

See you next week!

Maple Syrup, Spilled Milk and My Knight in Shining Armour

Yesterday I promised to tell you about how my guy made my Valentine's Day so special. First, I must prefice this with an explanation of how my day went before he arrived on the scene...

This pretty much sums up my day:

Thats right - a maple syrup container with a hole in the lid.

Stabbed in the lid to be exact.

At 8:15am.

With 2 kids whining for syrup on their pancakes.

I will admit it was a pretty desparate move. The lid would not budge.

 But this was only the beginning...

Add to the equation teething baby girl who is a slobbery, drooly, emotional mess (and by emotional, I mean screaming at the top of her lungs all morning! If you know her, you know this is not normal!), a 3 year old who is recovering from a weekend sleepover and 'one of those days' - what do you get? Disasters left and right!!

Like Mama opening the fridge and the bag of milk falling out and emptying all over the floor. Preceded by Pipey-loo spilling her cup of milk all over the floor.

So lets relax and do craft.

Of course, the new package of paper will not be opened so again Mama grabs her multipurpose scissors and hacks away until the stinkin' packaging succumbs to her rage!

Craft time is lovely - especially the part where Tait sucks all the ink out of a marker.

For real.

The blue marker tip is now white.

Lets switch to something new.

Like pouring V-day confetti into a jar.

(How does Mama come up with these brilliant ideas?!)

Guess where all the confetti went?

No big deal because finally it is naptime!!

Whoo hoo!!

Should be a long one for Taitum with all this teething stuff happening, right?

Wrong.

That's OK snuggles on the couch are nice.

Until babes decides she's done with that and flops off the couch, banging her head on the floor.

Just when I thought the crying had come to an end...

Its nearing supper time and cupcakes and pizzas still need to be made.

Cleaning has been discarded for the day but with people coming over that night the bathroom needs a spit shine at the very least....

And you thought I had it all together!

HAHAHA!

Then arrrives my knight in shining armour. He truly saves the day. He charms me with the words, "What can I do to help?" All of a sudden my dishwasher is unloaded and reloaded, vegetables are being chopped and pizzas topped, kids are giggling and joining in with the process, dishes in the sink are being washed - I am in love!

I received no flowers, didn't get to dive into a whole box of chocolates or don a new piece of jewelry. No, what I got was far better. For Valentine's Day my hubby gave me help, support and encouragement. He eliminated the day's stress and put a smile on my face. He made me laugh at the craziness of my day as I tell him about all my (mis)adventures. For Valentine's Day I am reminded once again why I love this man so much.

"How are you feeling now?", he asks as we work away in the kitchen together. "So good, " I reply. "You are my sanity."

PS. I should also add that on the weekend he whisked me away to Country Lane Inn, our favorite B&B. Think private outdoor hot tub and amazing food. And no responsibilities. :)

A Love-filled Day!

Our Valentine's Day was, well, eventful! Here's the run down of our 'lovely' day!

These are the Valentine's the girls handed out to the family! I was so happy they worked out! I smile everytime I look at them! They were actually plan B - our first ones were flower lollipop Valentine's that ended up looking nothing like flowers! Even Piper said so! With no time to spare I remembered this idea I saw at The Idea Room and got to work! It took awhile to get the photo of Taitum but finally accomplished it by asking for high fives!

I made pink heart pancakes for the girls for breakfast. I had originally planned on using the pink pancake recipe from my Deceptively Delicious Cookbook but didn't want to have to buy pancake mix or ricotta cheese. Instead, I used this Whole Wheat Oatmeal Pancakes recipe and added some beet puree. They turned out well. Although Piper was not a fan, Taitum ate her own plus Piper's leftovers! You win some you lose some!

After brekky they opened their Valentines. The excitement of getting to do this was nearly equal to that of Christmas morning!

They got all dressed up in their Valentine shirts they made! I just love, love, love these two!

Lunch involved this pink hummus (an idea I got from Twigs and Toadstools but I used my own hummus recipe) with heart shaped pita bread...

And roasted red pepper and tomato soup with a sour cream heart! They finished their lunch off with some strawberries!

At snack time we had hot chocolate with (sort of) heart shaped marshmallows and a heart shaped cranberry muffin! Poor Tait was apalled by the taste of cranberries but Piper gobbled it up!

For supper we made a Valentine classic - heart shaped pizza!

For bible study that evening I made these mouth watering chocolate cupcakes with peanut butter butter cream icing! The fact that I found those adorable little V-day animal decorations at the grocery store made these even more exciting for me! You can find links to the recipes for these at this post!

Last of all I just have to tell you about this book I read to the girls this morning: Love, Splat. Its about this boy cat that is in love with this girl cat in his class named Kitten. He doesn't know if she likes him and is super nervous about giving her a Valentine that tells her he does. That day at school he faces some competition but don't worry - there is a happily ever after ending!

My fav line: "Kitten. She had snowy white paws and pea green eyes and Splat liked her more than fish sticks and ice cream."

Tomorrow I'll tell you all about how Matt made this one of the best Valentine's for me!

Valentine Sweetheart!

Taitum joined in the Valentine fun with us this week, of course! She is such a willing participant it makes it easy to include her! It can be challenging too to keep up with some of the mess and busyness of a toddler but I think the enthusiasm she shows makes it more than worth it! 

Inspired by our Fisher Price Piggy Bank, Taitum spent lots of time this week with the Valentine pig! I found him in the sale bin at Michael's and the Valentine coins at the Dollarama. It was a bit more challenging for her since it is smaller than her FP piggy but she kept at it and is now very competant!

Tait made a doily heart shirt just like her sister.

She also dove into the Valentine's sensory box and we worked on a lot of sorting exercises.

Fingerpainting again and I'm happy to report that very little went in her mouth! ...A lot more went on my table, chairs and wall!!

Here she is putting stickers on the letter V. There is something lovely about watching the concentration a toddler puts into putting stickers onto a piece of paper! I love how her feet are crossed, too! I could just eat this kid up!

While Piper graphed with candy hearts, Taitum sorted them on this printable from Prekinders. She loved how they tasted but also loves to be a big girl and do school work too! So in the end she didn't really eat too many of them! (Mama was thankful!)

She got very excited every time she put a candy heart on the paper (whether it was on the matching color or not! :D)

She made a Valentine mailbox and was mesmerized by the glue! She just kept rubbing it together in her hands! It took a while to convince her to put the foam hearts on the glue!

Taitum also did this activity where she had to try and put the heart sticks into the holes of the jar. Very tricky! She got frustrated with this rather quickly...

Also, in this picture is our 'success' of the week. I say this somewhat sarcastically but let me explain...see the potty in the bottom right hand side of the pic and notice that my baby is not wearing any pants? Then remember how I while back I talked about early potty training? Well, we're still chugging along with that endevour by having diaper-less days! You see the problem is, despite having made sitting on the potty a positive thing for my little girl, she still doesn't get the pee in it part! She'll sit on the potty and have a jolly ol' time as I read her books and sing her songs. Then she stands up and pees beside the potty! AH! I know its a time thing. Part of training is being patient and giving them time to figure out the logistics of it all. I know she can hold it - she went all morning without a diaper and no accidents. Its just a matter of figuring out where to go and how in the world you sit and pee at the same time! Anyhow, time will tell if our diaper-less days pay off! If anything, I'm getting to spend lots of quality time with my little gal as I read and sing to her next to the potty!

And this week's challenge...ending activities. When it is time to be done painting or crafting or whatever we may be doing, this sweet one does not want to be done! Clean up has included a few mournful tears this week. Its a hard lesson to learn that all good things must come to an end! ;)

That's all for this week! Hope you have a lovely Valentine's Day! Be sure and check out what other parents are doing with their tots by clicking on the button below!