Valentines Day

I love Valentines Day. I know it's all over-rated, over-priced and over-everything, but I still love it. This year, Ryan and I ate in and watched a movie we found on netflix. Ryan surprised me with a bouquet of flowers. What I found more sweet is that he brought home a single rose for Camia.

Kisses for Daddy:

'Smells delicious!'

For Daddy we made cookies.

I've been trying different shortbread cookie recipes every time I want to make shortbread but have always found the recipes too dry and crumbly. Around Christmas time someone from Ryan's work brought shape cookies in and he asked her for the recipe. It's not shortbread, but a very yummy sugar cookie that made moist cookies and was easy to roll and shape. If you want to try it, click here for the recipe. I also go the icing recipe from this website too. Camia got to help me pour and mix the ingredients

And she got to give Daddy his special cookie

D is for Daddy.

C is for Camia

Go Bananas!

Last week, Camia and I went to the Go Bananas indoor amusement park with M and S. We thought it would be a good way for the girls to have some fun together and stay warm and dry at the same time. This is the story in which I must confess I don't know who had more fun....her,

or me!

or them,

or us!

This slide is pretty crazy. If you lift yourself up just a bit, you can get some pretty good speed and even some air too.

There was some sort of ball pit there where it was all controlled by compressed air. They had shooting guns, a vacuum sort of thing that sucked the balls up and tossed them in the air and then there was this thing. The balls get placed in, they get sucked up and tossed in the basket. Then, once ever few minutes, the basket tipped and the balls got dropped back into the play place. Some of the kids caught on, and stood or layed under the basket and got rained on with balls.

It was a fun way to spend a good chunk of the day, and Camia keeps asking me if she can go in the tunnel again. Such fun!

Stuff and Fluff

So, it turns out that having two Uh-Oh's to occupy my daughter's bed, car seat and life in general is not the great idea I had intended. Though I intended for it to be specific for when one of them leaves our lives by means of garbage disposal, irresponsibility or just plain misplacement, I made the mistake of not only telling her we would go get another one but also giving him to her when he was placed in my grateful hands. I could not convince her that she only needed one of these critters to suffice her need for a security toy of sorts. No, she needed both of them. Where ever we went. I cannot even happily entertain the thought of having to look for TWO of them before bed, or when we leave someone's company, or after work in the dark. So, I took her in my lap and explained that she is to have only one of the critters for reasons I felt I did not have to amplify. Other than she only needed one. After producing a few tears, she accepted this as fact and went to bed. Only to ask for critter number two approximately 2.5 seconds later. 'But Mom! I NEED him!'

We ran a couple of errands today after visiting a place called 'Go Bananas' - a story all by its self in which I must confess I have no idea who had more fun there. Me, or her! But, I digress. When we got to the store, she was allowed to pick one of the critters to take with her into the store. The look on her face made me want to crawl under the car and laugh for a brief while. Such a terrible mother, I know. Making my child decide between two loves. She looked up at me, hugged both of them close, and said 'two.' It was a process of about 5 minutes for her to decide which one she was going to be taking with her. And both times she reverted back to the grubby, well loved Uh-Oh she's been carrying around for almost 2 years. I have since hidden the new one in my closet, deep under some clothing she might be able to reach eventually. Tomorrow I expect to be asked for this new Uh-oh.

The bright side of this little tale is that I now know that if I were to switch critters for reasons already mentioned, it will be a smooth transition. Unless you count the constant asking for two Uh-Oh's. But eventually that will become a thing of the past as well.

ACKK!!!!

Sometimes, when the moment of peace creeps up on me, I take time to peruse facebook swaps looking for clothing and means of entertainment for my toddler. This is how I dress her, how I find toys for her, and this is the reason she owns about 12 pairs of jeans. $2 for a pair of Gap or Childrens Place jeans that fit her slim body are hard to come by! And new they can be expensive. So, this is how I shop for her. I had (or, took) a few moments this morning to look on the swap for I am not sure. I have been watching for Polly Pockets to add to her collection.....and look at what I found! I've only been searching for another since she was 11 months.

She's been attached to this - thing - since then. Since then, we've lost it 3 times, retrieved it from puddles, from dirt, from rain, snow, from peers and have not gone anywhere without it. This photo was taken in 2009, in his better days. Wal-Mart and Toys R Us have discontinued it. I've been watching thrift stores. I have an aunt searching for me. When I saw it on the swap page, I got pretty excited. It is listed for $2, but I honestly would pay more for it since it is still something Camia drags with her everywhere. She saw the picture on the computer and compared uh-oh to it:

See? It's the same. Just nicer looking. And it still sings. She tried to get it out of the monitor:

And compared it again:

She asked me to buy it. We get to pick it up tomorrow. Maybe we'll get to retire Uh-Oh number 1 and introduce Uh-Oh number 2.

A Letter To a Friend I Miss

Today I have a friend on my mind who has not visited me for well over a year. I decided to write a letter to her, telling her how much I miss her. I decided to keep it short, simple and sweet. It goes like this:

Dear Nap time.

It's been a year since our regular daily visits. Today in particular I miss you and wish that you would come visit me. Your semi-monthly visits just don't cut it for me sometimes. I am exhausted, I feel unwell and your presence would make my day that much better. Quiet time, breathing time would also be nice. When you are free, and have a moment, I would love to see you again, especially since my batteries seem to drain much more quickly these days while watching my energizer bunny of a toddler bounce around my house, giggle her way through life and move from one activity to another in about the span of 5.5 seconds. Her energy tires me, her constant flapping lips makes my ears ache, even though sometimes it is the most lovely sound in the world.

Nap time? What's nap time? I miss you, to see you would be the icing on my cake.

Yours truly,

Sleep deprived Mom

P.S. It would especially be nice to have a visit since my bouncy toddler has decided that a good wake-up time is anywhere between 5 and 6:50. It sometimes makes for a long day.

Project Church Bag: Complete!

Since Camia has been gracing us with her presence in church since last summer, and received a little Bible of her own, I decided that carrying it in my purse was no longer necessary. First, it made my purse heavy, and I thought that maybe some sort of responsibility was in order. As it turns out, I still wound up carrying it around - not that I minded, because I do find it a little bit cute :). For the most part, though, she was proud to carry it into church with her. She loves this bag and constantly asks to carry it around the house. I say no since I want to reserve it as her church bag, to carry her Bible and sketch pad along with a few crayons. I found 3 pictures online that I liked and came up with this. It's got 2 inside pockets for her crayons and eventually candies - when she learns to space out eating them rather than one right after the other.

I wanted to make the bottom corners square, but because of the pocket placement, I was not able to do this as I would lose half - 3/4 of the pocket, making it basically useless. I got to make my first fabric flower, sewn mostly by hand and found it a fun little thing to make. I made my flower smaller than the tutorial said, about 3 inches in diameter to accommodate the space where I wanted to put it. I found it the perfect size. I think I might want to make some for clips for Camia's hair...

Time To Catch Up

I have been faithful to the 21 day challenge, I am just doing things on the list that take more than 1 day. They take more like 2 days. or 14. I have put things on my list of 'to do' because there is NO WAY I can get it done in one day. And we've maxed our home improvement section of the budget. I got all of Camia's clothes organized into their respective totes and found that I have not saved as many clothes as I thought I did. I have 2 totes. One for 0-6 months and the other for 6-24 months. I have 1 tote started for size 2+ for the things she grows out of, though I am finding that her growth rate has plateaued and she is wearing clothes for longer periods of time. As in, for 1 year + as opposed to 6-9 months. I also put away all receiving blankets, baby bath towels and her crib sheets, things that have been sitting in drawers and closets unused for a while now. The next major project we worked on was Camia's room. We sent her dresser back to my mom and stored the change table at my mom's until we need it again in a effort to make room for her big girl bed. Which Camia loves dearly. She is so proud of her new room and is eager to show all who come to visit. In place of her dresser, we installed a closet organizer to hold her clothes. Here it semi-organized. I took the photo the day after installation and since it was Camia's bedtime just when we finished, I kind of 'put everything away for tomorrow...' tomorrow still hasn't come.

Her dresses used to be stored in the spare room closet as her dresser used to be in her closet since there was no room for it in her room. Basically my idea was to de-clutter our little house since it is quite full of stuff. I didn't realize how big Camia's room actually was:).

The only thing we've noticed about her and her new bed is that she refuses to get out of it at night for anything. We put her to bed at 7 almost every night and if she is not sleepy, we give her books to read.

We don't see her for the rest of the night. She won't even get out of bed to get her uh-oh which is just out of reach from her bed. She will ask us to get it for her. On the first night she was out of her crib, we found her like this

so bed rails are definitely a must-have when we get her bed together.

Another time she fell asleep in the middle of the afternoon like this:

As far as organizing other spaces in our teeny little (which seems to get bigger every time I clean) home, I think I am done de-junking. I just need to organize things. The coat closet is a big one, we want to add more shelves to hold our games which are stacked high on top of one another and raise the coat rack to better organize our mess of shoes. I want to organize my craft room, but that is a job and a half all by itself. One day we plan to move it downstairs into the wasted kitchen space, we plan to put up cupboards and a counter and make it into an office/crafting area. One day :). The shed is another thing that needs de-cluttering. There are wedding gifts we received that we've never used, so I intend on re-gifting those. We just went to an engagement party where I re-gifted and we have a wedding coming up where I plan to do the same. I reason that I've held onto it for 3.5 years, and the items have never left their boxes. I don't think I will ever use them, so I might as well pass them on. This organizing has been a great challenge and is very tiring, so I am looking forward to our mini vacation at the end of February with Ryan's family for a couple days.