Bright Beginnings

School is now in session in our home. Children are constantly learning, so singing the ABC's, reading letter and number books, and pointing out letters or counting while playing is of course educating, but I wanted to start a more structured form of learning that could build on top of each lesson. So while perusing my favorite recourse site (do I even need to say Pinterest at this point?)I found this great site No Time For Flashcards by Allison McDonald. For someone who wants to start teaching little ones but doesn't know where exactly to start this is the perfect site for them. I've worked in day cares, religious ed classes, and elementary schools so the concept of teaching and lesson planning wasn't foreign to me. However, I've never taught a one-two year old in a "school" setting. As advertised, No Time For Flashcards is all about early education and creative play. Allison provides so many brilliant ideas and resources.

So with this new guidance I've started planning and doing mini lessons for each week. I've decided to start with the alphabet. So each week we focus on one letter. We've done three letters so far and Babycake and I have been having a lot of fun with it. 

For "Aa Week" I got as many books about the alphabet from the library as I could find. Like I mentioned, the youngest child I'd taught in an educational setting was five. So it makes sense that only about half of the books were a success with my toddler. (this is a learning experience for both of us)

Here is the list of the four books that Babycake enjoyed reading:

Eating the Alphabet: Fruits and Vegetables from A to Z. This is a great picture book of fruit and veggies listed in alphabetical order. It is very colorful and eye catching.

ABC Safari. This book is great for kids who love animals. One animal is listed for each letter. I really like this book b/c it lists animals but also gives a short poem for each animal.

Curious George Learns the Alphabet. Babycake loves Curious George. This book does have a lot of wording and is a bit long so it might not be as interesting to most toddlers. However b/c it is Curious George, her favorite, Babycake happily sits and listens.

Apples A to Z. The perfect alphabet book for Aa week! This book is great for toddlers and older children because it provides one simple sentence that matches the picture and letter for each page, but also gives a short paragraph description. 

So for each day we add the books when we sit down to read (there's no set reading time, Babycake loves books so we'll read at different times throughout the day) and do one craft or activity that coincides with the week's lesson.

For activities we glued apples to an apple tree (glue is super exciting for a one year old), colored a lowercase A to make it an apple, hunted for acorns in the yard, made an Angle, and made an Alligator. Here are the finished products:

What Can Be Done While The Toddler's Away

Yesterday we dropped Babycake off with her grandma and grandpa for a four day weekend. As we drove away I felt like I was missing something and was a bit sad. We got home, stayed up until midnight watching movies (b/c we could actually sleep in!), and left her a video message to wake to in the morning.
When I awoke today, I was filled with excitement and vigor. Today we had a major project. We re-landscaped. I have hated the landscape of our house from the day we first saw the house let alone bought it. Today we didn't have a child to watch to make sure she didn't touch anything that could hurt her, that she didn't run into the road, that she didn't eat anything she shouldn't. Today, we could get all the work done with no worry of what our child might be doing. What an amazing feeling! Here is our work in photos. It looks so good!!!!! :-)

The back of the house. Flower bulbs are already planted and just waiting to bloom.
I forgot to take a pic of what it looked like before we put in mulch and the stone boarder. Oops! Oh well.

The side of the house  was bare with a few flowers planted.
We added the stones before I started taking "before pictures."

After with mulch. Flower bulbs planted and waiting to bloom!

Front of the house before.

Hubby, "Are you really taking a picture of this?"
Me, "Yes! This is exciting and you are rocking your new chainsaw!"

There goes the first limbs!!!!!

Bye bye ugly bushes!

All clear!

Arranging the plants before planting.

Just a reminder this is what it did look like. :-P

The finished product! Isn't it beautiful?!!

We still have a lot of clean up to do, but while hubby is at work, I'll be home taking care of it b/c you know what, Babycake will still be gone, and I won't have to worry about her. :-)

Bathtub Learning Fun

This last week we started "school" in this household. Now when I say school, what I really mean is that I've started planning learning themes for each week. For the next few months we'll be doing 'The Letter of the Week.' Last week we did 'Aa.' Really all we do is one craft or activity a day that features the letter, and then through out the day add a book here or there that discusses the alphabet.

So far it's been really great. We've done a craft/activity everyday. Babycake loves to learn and loves activities and crafts. For her, this isn't school, or work, or a hassle. This is a fun play time with Mommy.

Her artwork featuring the letter Aa

It wasn't until bath time tonight that I realized I'd already made an activity that I wasn't using. A while ago I was perusing Pinterest (I know. I have a problem) and I found a really fun post. A woman got foam dots at the dollar store and let her kids play with them in the bath. The foam sticks to the walls. She used the activity for the kids to focus on finding colors. I however, had been thinking about purchasing a bathtub alphabet set for Babycake to play with and decided to make my own instead!

The foam dots come in a pack of like 20. I bought two packs ($2 wohoo!), brought them home, did my best bubble letters, and cut them out. For months Babycake has been playing with the letters in the tub. I only realized this could be part of our 'Letter of the Week' lessons when she started singing the alphabet while sticking her letters to the tub wall tonight. Of course she can't pronounce half of the letters while singing, and she names them all incorrectly when looking at them, but she's having fun and soaking it all in.

It melts my heart to hear her sing the alphabet. It's strange to say that, I never thought that song would mean anything, but when she sings it I can't do a thing but smile. I am so happy she loves learning and I can feed her hungry little mind. I am one proud momma.

Toddler Leggings

So, we're still in the potty training process. That means Babycake is still wearing the little leggings I made for her a while ago. In order to ensure no accidents when we're home, Babycake goes pant-less. Since it's still below freezing out I don't want her to get cold, so she wears socks/slippers and leggings for easy access to the potty while staying warm.

Since Babycake is not yet 2, she really loves these leggings because she can "dress" herself. She likes to pick out which pair she will wear that day and proceeds to tell me "no" when I attempt to help her put them on.

Babycake looks awesome in the leggings. My husband says she looks like she's ready for Flash Dance. At the moment they are slightly too wide for her skinny legs and stay on best with slippers. They are also a bit long for her right now; they start above her knees and end below the ankle. One way to fix the width and length "problems" would be to roll the leggings. I've tried, but being a toddler means constantly running, rolling, and moving in general. The rolls/folds usually come undone. I don't see the extra length and width as a problem though because she will be able to wear the leggings for a couple years.

The pattern for the leggings is super easy. That's what made them appealing to me. I think that even though there isn't any fancy pattern or add-ons, they look good and can be matched with multiple tops. I got the pattern from Corina Gray's website Stitch.

What else could go wrong?

Last Wednesday Babycake got sick. We put her to bed and an hour later rushed up to her screaming cry. Poor little girl was up every hour for the remainder of the night puking until she had nothing left in her. It was a rough night for all. In the morning at 7 am however, she was chipper and raring to go as if she had gotten a full night's sleep with no sickness. It amazes me how kids can bounce back from things.

Two night's later my husband, who averages getting sick to once every two years, went to bed early complaining of an upset stomach. I stayed up watching the Olympics. Once I was done watching I made rounds of locking up the house. To my surprise, I found our garage and basement flooded. We had had a really nasty one hour storm pass through that night, but with it being so short I though nothing of the possibility of flooding. (due to the layout of our house we flood easily). Since hubby was up sleeping off his stomach ache I got to set up our portable sump pump and mop up.

Needless to say, I was exhausted by the time I tumbled into bed. About a half hour after I got in bed, hubby jumps out of bed and pukes on his way to the bathroom. I believe I failed to mention in the beginning of this post how I do not do puke. Dirty diapers, sure, baby spit up, ok, gushing blood, gross but fixable. Puke.... gag.

Anyway, we have hardwood or tile everywhere in our home... except the hallway/stairway... where hubby let it rip. I walked to the bathroom once I no longer heard heaving, and asked if he was ok. He said he felt much better, and that he would clean up the hallway. So I grabbed my pillow and headed downstairs to sleep on the couch where the smell of sick would not reach my nostrils.

The next morning I went upstairs to tend to our alarm clock, aka our daughter. In order to get to her room I had to walk past the disaster zone. Well, there wasn't anything chunky left, but it was far from cleaned up. Hubby was not better. He stayed in bed with exceptions of trips to the loo the following day. Of course this would happen on a day I volunteered to watch my friend's three kids.

So the job of cleaning vomit, and continuing to tend to the flooding lay on my shoulders. My nightmare clean up job come true. I don't know how many times I sprayed and scrubbed that hallway carpet, or squeegeed the basement floor. All that cleaning while making sure the four children under my roof were fed, clothed, relatively happy/entertained and overall surviving. On days such as that one I strive to follow my grandmother's example and honestly wonder how she and her 12 children survived.

In any case, while working on the carpet I used up the remainder of our carpet cleaner and so turned to Pinterest for homemade carpet cleaner recipes. I'm attempting to go green in our house, plus I really didn't feel like hauling the kids to the store. This homemade recipe by TJ is the one I liked the best because it seemed to do as well as the store bought:

http://www.measuringflower.com/2013/06/naturally-clean-vomit-carpet-allpurpose-carpet-cleaner-recipe/

Sad note, this didn't totally clean up the carpet. I think that by the time I got to working on the carpet, it was beyond repair, stained and disgustingly smelly. Most likely if I would have started the cleaning process immediately than it could have been saved.

Yep, I said "could have been saved." We had to rip out the carpet. Now, for most people this would probably be a stressful decision. Me? No way. I have hated that old disgusting carpet since the day we moved in and have just been waiting for an excuse to get rid of it. This was it! I totally didn't plan on this, I tried to clean it. I had my face mask, gloves, and scrub brush. I honestly didn't try to pull one over my husband while he was sick. I just got lucky :-)

Our house was built in the mid 1950s. So in almost every room of the house there is really nice hardwood! For some reason the previous owners thought that it was better to have carpet in every room and covered it up. Um.... No. Not having carpet in the house when there are children is the best thing ever. When they spill you just wipe it up, when they, or your husband, is sick, you wipe it up. There is no scrubbing and deep cleaning involved. Simply, wipe, disinfect, and dry!

I could not be happier with the outcome of hubby's illness. He is fully recovered and currently taking his turn to do the dishes. Our basement is dry, I still have to work more on the garage as it's got dirt everywhere now. Oh, did I mention our basement toilet clogged, and couldn't be easily unclogged that same day and added to the basement flooding? Well, hubby is also working on that tonight since we simply turned off it's water supply to make a quick fix of that problem. It's apparently going to take the stuff he got a couple days to fully unclog the toilet.

I don't think I've ever been happier to have a weekend over and see a Monday.

Being a Stay At Home Parent in Today's USA

How do I even begin this post? I have so many thoughts...

I am a Stay-At-Home-Mom. My mom was a SAHM. My grandmother and her's before her were SAHMs.

Everyone knows how much our world has changed since the time our grandparents were our age. We know it is different now from when our parents were raising us. Schools are different, music is different, TV, computers, internet, socializing. Almost every aspect of our lives have been affected and tweaked in some way with the change in time. Change is a part of life. The little changes come without us even noticing, we switch brands of bread, take a different route to school/work. Big changes however, can rock our world; moving, a job promotion, job loss, graduating school.

I did not want to be a SAHM. I wasn't even sure if I wanted kids. I love kids, I worked with kids. I enjoyed being able to teach them, play with them, help them, love them, and at the end of the day leave them with their parents. I enjoyed having the freedom to be myself and live my life as I wanted at the end of the day and on the weekend. I knew from witnessing the parents in my life that being a mother is a full time job. Not a 40hr/week full time. No.  It's a 24/7, 365 days a year job... for 18+ years. You don't get 4 weeks vacation or weekends, there will be long hours, and you'll have night shifts after a full day's work. Appealing right?

I am a SAHM for two reasons. First, I truly believe that for the first three years of a child's life his/her parents need to be there- full time. I think it is crucial for the parent/child relationship that a parent raise the child instead of a day care. (I understand there can be exceptions such as single parents who need to work to support the family) The child needs to know the parent is always there for them, "Mom and Dad are my number one support." Children go to school for 7-8 hrs starting at the age of five. Parents get their breaks then. We should give all we can to our children in their first years. The first years set the building blocks for the rest of their lives. The second reason I'm a SAHM is that even if I were to work, my pay, and part of my husbands, would go straight to child care- it's expensive!

(Let me add here that I absolutely adore my daughter who was the biggest surprise/accident of my life)

The hardships of parenthood listed above were the ones I knew about before becoming a parent. No one had ever mentioned how isolating it can be to be a stay at home parent. When I was still pregnant and had decided that I would be staying home once Babycake was born, people would always say how nice that is, or how lucky I was, or that it was the right thing to do. Despite my fear of parenting, these kind words encouraged me.

Once I had Babycake though, my life no longer existed. Days and nights were ruled by her schedule. I no longer saw my friends. None of them had kids, they all had jobs, they could hang out at 7 pm (or even later!). My family all lives out of town. My  husband works long hours. I was alone with my infant. Days turned to weeks, weeks to months, and I was regularly left alone with my child.


I remember when I was a child, listening to my mom swapping stories with her six sisters about growing up in a neighborhood where all the moms were home and the streets were covered with kids playing. If I was going to be home all day, I wanted that scene to be my reality. I wanted to be able to walk over to my neighbor's house in the middle of the morning and talk; about anything. I missed adult interaction. Isolation- the perfect place for depression to fester.

How was this staying home thing "so nice" as those women exclaimed when I was pregnant? Before having my daughter I was "a social butterfly." I am an extrovert- I get energy from being with people. I love people. I hate constantly being by myself. I enjoy breaks by myself but not being home, all day every day.

How was I to meet other moms? I couldn't just walk out my front door like the old days. I searched for groups to join, or places to hang out. Almost everything cost money. Even the mom groups I found had a membership fee. The only free place I found that was age appropriate for Babycake and social for me was the library where it had a baby reading time. I liked it, Babycake liked it, but in the first year, her nap schedule changed enough times that we weren't able to go for six months due to time conflict.

Finally I decided to cough up the dough and budget so Babycake and I could become members of the YMCA. Thank goodness they base membership fees on family income! We're also very lucky that Indy has multiple locations. I tried a couple places and picked our future home away from home. I first fell in love with the Y because it's child care is free, and good (of course different locations may have better or worse child care). I also LOVE the exercise classes. They have a lot and a great variety.

Because my life still revolves around Babycake's schedule, we go to the Y at the same time every day. You know what? That's the same reason all the other moms in the classes I go to are there too! We're all dependent on our kid's schedules. We're also there to get a break from our kids and to take care of ourselves. Many of us were home alone with our kids before joining the Y.

I've made great friends since becoming a member of the Y. We're all in the same boat. We can talk for hours about diapering experiences, potty training, bedtime routines, etc and no one gets bored. We understand each other because we're all going through it. We ask each other for tips and tricks in parenting. "She won't eat x anymore, did your kids do that?" "Did she change her bedtime this early?" "How was it potty training him?"

Babycake and I now go on play dates. Babycake has many friends (all children of my new friends). We get to go to birthday parties. The other moms/dads and I swap babysitting date nights. Because we see our friends often Babycake has learned how to share and how to be aware of those around her. She will also be old enough to do gymnastics and soccer at the Y this year. I could not be more excited for her.

I do envy my friends who don't have kids. I wish I could stay up past 10 on any given night and not be exhausted the next morning. What would my house look like without toys everywhere, in every room? What would it be like to have a spur of the moment date night with my husband? It would be so fun to be able to call up a friend to get together that afternoon without having to find a babysitter or plan a dinner for the family while I'll be gone.

But that's not my life. Mine is the early mornings and early nights. Mine is the toddler temper tantrums, the smudged windows, and the finger print covered walls. It may be drastically different from my dreams, it isn't even the children filled neighborhood, but it is no longer a lonely life.

Babycake's Baby Blankets

As I stated in my last post about my love for crochet, I'm relatively new at it. I only learned after having my daughter just under two years ago. The first crochet project I attempted and completed, was a baby hat with a little brim. Too cute! Soon after I finished that venture I decided to take on a very personal project. Babycake's great grandma had a tradition of crocheting blankets for every baby in the family. Grandma had the pattern picked and the yarn ready for the blanket, she even started the blanket. However, by the time Babycake was born Grandma had been battling Parkinson's disease for 20 years and was unable to crochet.

"Made Especially For You" tag
and picture on blanket.

Because Grandma could not crochet, she made Babycake a fleece tie blanket. It is beautiful, soft, and warm. The blanket is perfect, it is large and will be able to transfer to a "big kid" bed, but has Pooh Bear and friends on it so is still young. This blanket was by far my favorite baby shower gift.

 After sharing my new found love of crochet, I was given the baby blanket pattern and yarn. The yarn was girly, but it wasn't really what I considered "baby blanket" material. So I went and got new babyish yarn and began. 

Even though the concept of making a blanket seems easier than a hat, the baby blanket was much more difficult. This would be because the pattern in the hat was simply double crochet stitches. For the blanket I had to learn how to do a shell stitch and figure out how to make the blanket's edges straight while doing that stitch. I think it took me a month and a half to finish the blanket. Like the baby hat, I did a lot of starting, undoing, and starting over. Here is the finished product:

This pattern is called Innocence. It is in Baby Wraps: 8 Crochet Blankets. The design was created by Ginger Thomas.

A little closer view of the pattern.

Babycake loves both her blankets. She sleeps with them every night (unless they are in the wash). It warms my heart when she notices one is missing (due to needing a cleaning) and searches for it. I'm sure once summer rolls around we'll have to put the fleece blanket in the closet, but it'll come right back out in the fall!

I would love to share this pattern with you, however, I don't want to break any copy right laws. This is why I shared the title of the book in which it can be found, and the designer of the pattern.