Welcome To My World

5-16-2012: I heard a thud from upstairs at 10:30pm so I went upstairs to check it out. I saw Lil had her light on and went inside to see why. She had moved her stools to the middle of the floor and then built a tower with her books on top. She looks at me with a huge grin and says “I knocked down my tall tower of books!” Yup, someone was feeling creative at 10:30 at night! LOL! I told her what a great idea and how fun it looked but that it was too late to play. So I rocked her for a bit and had the cutest little conversation with her before putting her back to bed.

5-13-2012: Charlie was sounding out some words today and trying to spell. A little while later we were at the table and she had said “Good” and so C started to help her sound it out. He then showed her the difference of removing one of the O’s to make “God”. Charlie then asks “Who’s God?” I reply “Jesus’s Daddy”. She says “No he’s not! Joseph is Jesus’s daddy!”. I stand corrected by my awesome 5 year old.

4-16-2012: As we were getting ready for bed Lillian tells me she wants to wear her underwear to bed instead of her diaper. At first I thought she was just playing around. But she looks at me all serious and says “I potty train, mama!” gives me a shy grin and then determined says again ” I potty training. I wear my ungwear!” So off to bed in “Ungwear” she went. When this kid makes up her mind she does it. So we knew she was ready to try. And she did it!

4-6-2012: Lillian is now potty trained during the day and naps so there is a lot of talk about underwear. Which she adorably calls “Ungwha”. I need to get it on video it sounds so cute!

4-1-2012: Lillian is going through a very picky eating stage and so we started telling her she needs to eat to have string muscles. So now she’ll eat a little and say ” I got stong mussels!”. She even randomly walks around saying it and showing us her scrawny arms. LOL!

2-29-2012: Lillian is potty learning right now and so that means there is a lot of “Big Girl” talk around here. Well tonight while we were rocking before bed Lil asked for her usual Mama Milk. (I’ll talk about this more later) I reminded her that she was a Big Girl and Big Girls don’t have Mama Milk any more. She pouted for awhile and then looks at me and says “I’m a Big Girl!” She then rubs my face with her hand and says “You happy, Mama?” I told her yes I was very happy. She replies “I am happy too!”  And loving giggling pursued.

2-23-2012: Lillian just told me I was a baby. You know, her current role playing pretend play of assigning people roles to be. So I started rubbing my eyes and crying/whining like a baby. She looks at me confused and says “Mama, you are not an apple. You are a baby.” She totally thought I was signing apple LOL!

2-22-2012: I came downstairs this morning to find Charlie fully dressed, including shoes. She saw me and yelled “Let’s get out of here!” Poor thing has been stuck inside sick for days and was ready to get out ha! So I ran my first training run with them in the stroller. Felt great!

2-21-2012: Lillian just put her hands on her hips said “Fine!” and walked away! Who switched my 2 year old with a 16 year old! Ha!

1-10-2012: We went to sit down for lunch today and Lillian starts to sing a song unprompted. What song does she sing? “Dreidel, Dreidel, Dreidel, I made it out of clay.” Of course it was more toddler speak and it took me a second to realize the familiar tune.

1-8-2012: “Wuv Ew!”. That’s right! Lillian now tells us she loves us without having to be prompted! It is the cutest and BEST thing ever when your child tells you she loves you out of the blue! A great way to start out the year!

Charlie has always had a great creative side. She has mostly been the I will create what I want how I want kind of kid. Not your typical I’ll follow the directions and make it look like the picture type like her Mama. So it’s been neat lately to see her drawings looking more like real life people and things.

She came to me and showed me her drawing of “Healthy Snacks”. A banana, an orange, a no sugar grape and vanilla ice cream with a lemon, and a glass of water. 4-20-2012

This weekend the cousins were here visiting and they got out the colored pencils and people bodies to color in. It is neat to see how she is being creative with the colors and clothes! Um yea, that is cleavage on some of them. I asked who showed her that and she said she just made it up. Ha!

      

This one is “Very Tired”. See the lines under her eyes. LOL!

She also drew her own people on the backs. Loving the triangle bodies and now her people have fingers.

   

And she HAS to draw a pregnant mama EVERY TIME! I swear I’ll be shocked if she doesn’t become a midwife some day.

And last but not least her mobile from her school performance she made. I LOVE this and will keep it hung up for a while.

I have so many articles that  I want to remember about and thought it would be great for me to have them all in 1 place! Yes these support our “natural is best” and crunchy granola beliefs but it seems like that is the direction a lot of people are moving to with all the Cancer, autoimmune diseases, and other diseases on a high rise. As most of you already know my Dr. has highly suggested our family change to an all organic/No Hormones nutrition plan and that has been what we are doing, well for the most part. Yes I will be putting my vaccine cons here too so read at your own risk and know I’m not starting a debate, although that may become a venting post one of these days! I’m putting these here hoping to help friends with a quick link to research.

CHEMICAL LISTS IN SKINCARE/BEAUTY PRODUCTS: A great website to look up what chemicals are in your shampoo, conditioner, body wash, lotions, and other skincare products. You can also find replacement products with less chemical risks.  http://www.ewg.org/skindeep/

SUNSCREEN: 2011 Sunscreen list http://breakingnews.ewg.org/2011sunscreen/

MEDICINE FREE SOLUTIONS AND HELP:

1. Special – Needs Kids Go Pharm Free: A lot of research has shown that special -needs kids can benefit with more natural remedies than with polluting their bodies with chemical medicines. These practices have also shown to help out non special-needs kids and just people in general. This just further proves that nutrition is really the key to health! Not chemicals! (And yes I know medicine is needed is some cases but we feel natural remedies should be tried first.) This site has great suggestions! http://pharm-freebabiesandkids.com/

 

 

 

VACCINES AND VACCINE CARE:

1. Intro to vaccines:Lots of links for info http://guggiedaly.blogspot.com/2010/05/way-to-ease-into-vaccine-topic.html

2.Pain/fever relievers During Vaccines: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/33331643/ns/health-kids_and_parenting/

http://guggiedaly.blogspot.com/2011/01/dont-fear-fever-fear-fever-reducer.html?spref=fb

3. A Great post debunking myths about non vaccine beliefs:http://guggiedaly.blogspot.com/2010/11/what-every-parents-needs-to-read-on.html

4. Great research links about Vaccines, ingredients, and side effects. A must read for decision making for your children and yourself! http://guggiedaly.blogspot.com/2010/11/what-every-parents-needs-to-read-on.html

5. Tetnus: We were brought up to be so scared of Tetnus but here are the real facts.  http://guggiedaly.blogspot.com/2010/05/one-thing-that-has-frequently-come-up.html

6. Renaming diseases to cover up vaccines not working. Backed up with lots of research: http://vactruth.com/2012/04/25/change-names-of-diseases/

CO-SLEEPING:

1. Night Weaning: http://drjaygordon.com/attachment/sleeppattern.html

PREGNANCY:

1. Folic Acid: 2011 New studies are showing too much folic acid is bad! Ugh! Once again try to get it as naturally as possible through food and maybe a supplement for preconception to the first 8 weeks? 1. http://www.ei-resource.org/news/autism-news/folic-acid-metabolism-linked-to-autism/ 2. http://guggiedaly.blogspot.com/2010/06/is-folic-acid-only-and-best-choice.html

EDUCATION AND PLAY:

1. Routine Charts, I can make my own but like this as an example. http://www.akidsday.com/

2. Play At Home Mom: Love the ideas of these women! What great ideas for art and learning play! http://www.facebook.com/pages/Play-at-Home-Mom/174614952594331

This week I have realized that I am a true runner. As Charlie’s school plans have changed for next year again, in a good way, all I can think about is how bummed I am I won’t be able to run on my way to pick her up from school. Ha! I often enjoy my runs to school and love that I am getting my workout done as well as saving gas money and accomplishing the task of picking up Charlie from school. And because of the timing I won’t be able to run Lil to or from school either. But I will find my time to run as I am a runner after all.

We are running the Wisconsin Cheese Half Marathon soon. I have realized that my knee only wants me to run shorter distances. So unless my knee miraculously gets better this will be my last half. It will be 10Ks and 5ks for me.

Happy Running!

HAPPY EASTER!

 

I made the girls their Easter Outfits this year. My knitting friends and I have started to also sew again and decided on a pattern we could do together so us more seasoned sewers could help the newbies. So I thought since I had to do one for each girl I might as well make them their Easter outfits too! Unfortunately the other girls were still getting their sewing machines and other supplies so we didn’t end up sewing them together. But I did get mine done and I think they turned out super cute! The girls LOVE them so that is what counts

Charlie has turned in to my mini model who likes to do her spontaneous picture posing. Lil is at the age where she is beyond the novelty of having her picture taken but too young to realize if she would just smile for one quick minute it would be all done and she could go play. So as you see there is more of Charlie than Lil Ha!

It is really a top and skirt…

    

    

Some candids of them playing around and sister giggles. Such great sisters!

    

We had a great day of an egg hunt for puzzle pieces, blowing bubbles. walking around with their RickShaw (Thanks L’s), and playing in our new tent.

  

  

I also found out today that Lil can roll her tongue like Daddy! Ha!

And the yearly Easter Bunny Pic. This year we went to a local egg hunt and they had The Bunny there. Charlie was very grumpy that morning and refused to go have her picture taken. Lillian on the other hand was Soooo excited to go meet and pose with “The Eser Bunny”. She actually has a grin on her face!

My friend L and I decided we needed a painting day with the kids and since the weather was so warm we did it outside and let the kids loose. As usual paint plus kids equals a blast! We used some canvases so that we could give them to Daddy for his Birthday.

Lillian decided she wanted to paint her feet and use them to paint the canvas. From there everyone got the idea.

  

      

Hands, arms, and legs included. I made Lil stop with the red stripe down her nose ha!

      

 

We went to a farm near where I grew up and brought the girls for the first time. I have tons of great memories on this farm as a kid and I was so excited to share some with the girls. Grammy and Grandpa came along and we had such a great time! It was a fun walk to the original farm that is still a working farm using “Old Time” technologies. A great lesson in History.

The first thing we saw were the huge cows grazing in the fields.

And then our long walk to the Big Barn. Inside were old tractors and saddles for the horses.

   

We then walked over to the Blacksmith’s workshop. Charlie loved talking to the gentleman and asked him lots of questions about what he was doing. She made us go back again on our way out to say goodbye.

   

We visited the Woodworking shed next. They had a hand made marble maze and some walking men. It was neat to see all the toys mad by hand and tools only. Nothing electric!

      

After some play we went to the farm house and gardens. We got to see the inside of the house and eat some fresh baked bread on the wood burning stove. One lady was rocking in her chair knitting. Lillian’s favorite part was all the chickens and roosters just walking around. She tried so hard to catch one! It was the cutest thing! One of the farmers gave us some corn to feed them.

  

  

I got a lot of great pictures of the rooster. He was huge!

The Windmill was so neat!

The girls of course had to stop and say hi to the cat on our way over to the horse drawn wagon ride. I didn’t get any pictures but the work horses were huge! Wow did they have some power in them!

Lillian made me take some pictures of her next to a big tree. And the Charlie had to have a picture too.

  

We ended our day with a visit to the penny store for some penny candy. Such a fun day and great memories made!

 

The girls have really been into drawing lately. Lillian does her usual 2 year old scribbles. But Charlie is really figuring out how to draw real things. At school I noticed they were showing her to draw things using the basic shapes, circle, square, and rectangle. So I’ve been encouraging her to look at the shapes of things to draw them. One morning our “Billy” train from the Thomas cartoon was out and she decided to draw it. I quickly said look at that. It looks like there are some rectangles and squares. I then became busy with another task and when I came back she had drawn the train! And a rainbow above. I am so impressed with it! What a little artist we have.

And the angle she was looking at while drawing it…

This year for Valentines’s the girls and I made heart crayons out of all of our scrap crayons. We sat at the table and peeled off all the papers and broke them down as small as we could. I couldn’t believe how long the girls sat there and helped! I then took them and put them in the mold in the oven. After they cooled we took them out and smoothed out the edges a little.  Then Mommy made the cards and taped them on. Pretty fun and we’ll be making crayons in other shapes again soon.

Here are the cards for Charlie’s school. I removed out last name for this picture so it looks off centered.

Just some cute pics of the girls from the other day. We were heading out somewhere and I realized that they had dressed themselves and actually coordinated. It is so nice that they are dressing themselves now but sometimes their choices are quite funny. They even requested their specific hair styles that day.