Izzie turns 2

Aaaand then it happened. She stopped being a baby one day. Sigh. Why does this always happen to children? Don't get me wrong, I'm definitely enjoying less diaper changes, better sleep at night, and forgoing onesies but there's something about the blink and you end up with a teenager thing that killls me about parenthood. 

I've at least gotten a bit wiser with birthday celebrations the second time around. It's occurred to me that other than a little sugar and a couple of balloons floating around, the whole birthday concept is lost on the under three crowd. So that's what I did; I kept things reeeeallly simple. Cake, some extra treats, a few reused birthday decorations and, of course, balloons (have you ever seen a 2 year old who isn't crazy about balloons?)... The cakes might look a little tricky but I swear to you that they are as easy as pie....err, cake. I just made a basic chocolate cake, whipped up some butter cream frosting, cut and frosted with a spatula and added some piping that I improvised from a ziploc bag that I had snipped the end off of.  Here's the pin that shows how to make the butterfly shape. 

I love her expression in this candle blowing picture. She could not figure out why the heck we were all looking at her face. In case you didn't know, Izzie gets an old man grumpy face anytime she's perplexed, which was definitely happening here. 

10 things you should know about Isaline: 

1. She has two loves at the moment: cars and babies. About as opposite as you can get on the stereotype spectrum. Maybe she will turn out to be part time nanny, part time race car driver. 

2. Isaline was byyy far the more challenging of our 2 children as a baby. She is sensitive to just about everything. Food, new environments, dairy products, sleeping conditions, temperature, etc. Gotta love a high maintenance child. (don't worry, we do!) 

3. She cannot say Mama, Mom, Mommy, Maman, or any other version of the name for the life of her. I'm not kidding, I'm that cereal commercial in reverse where the dad is trying to get his baby to say 'Dada' and the kid keeps repeating 'Mama'. This drives me crazy most of the time with the exception of early morning wake ups and dirty diapers. 

4. Like any self respecting younger sibling, she secretly thinks the world of her big sister. Big sis likes her quite a lot as well :) 

5. She has a knack for breaking into the kitchen cabinets and spreading dried pasta and chicken bouillon all over the floor as well as shoving as much as she can into her mouth. 

6. She once managed to sneak an entire cup's worth of salt into a muffin batter just as we had finished up making it. 

7.  The kid cannot say Mama but she can sing the tune of 'Let it Go' and 'Peppa Pig' with surprising accuracy and pizzazz... 

8. She is naturally reserved and very good at giving her stalker stare at children at the park. I have yet to birth an outgoing child :) 

9. Her preferred method of dancing is head banging. (she gets that from her father)

10. Through Izzie I have discovered the joy of mothering. The second time around is full of unrealistic expectations let go of, the confidence knowing you did it once, and extra cuddles mixed with the hindsight in knowing just how fast it all goes. 

Chaos and mayhem and pasta

Anyone had one of these days recently? Being a pastor’s wife, Sunday often has me outnumbered in the fight for a civilized world. 

I do my best to counteract it—lunch is hummus and picnic goods and dinner is always pasta and spaghetti sauce to keep my sanity afloat. 

Back in the dark ages (okay like 6 months ago) I used to slave away Sunday morning trying to scrounge up some form of after church meal Martha Stewart worthy until my husband finally knocked some sense into me and convinced me that while our children might not suffer too badly forgoing a weekly pot roast (and let’s be honest—three fourths of the time I’d forgotten to either grab the meat out of the freezer to thaw or to actually prepare the crockpot more than five minutes before we walked out the door) , they just might suffer from dangerously crabby mom syndrome. Can I please get an amen?

 So simple and repeated meals became the law of the land and I haven’t look back since. Except, maybe, when I see Isaline covered in red sauce despite all my best full body bib efforts. Alas. Sigh. Momma said there’ll be days like this. 

On Lent

Before you think that I’m going to pull any holier than thou stuff on you, you should probably know that just last week while walking home from Livia’s school I discovered a spoon floating around in my blouse. Said spoon had somehow been dropped in by my one year old while I was holding her and getting ready to leave the house about an hour an a half prior. So yes, I had walked to her school, chatted in detail with her teacher and had managed to get about halfway home all before I realized that a spoon had accompanied me. And before you think that it’s an isolated incident, just know that I collect spoon incidents (not to be confused with the false rumor the I collect small spoons but I digress) about every other day. Clearly, I have issues. Clearly, I do not have my stuff altogether.

Now that confessional is over, lets move on to lent (I’m in a Catholic mood today, I guess). Recently my husband, Matt, and I decided to experiment with Lent this year. I know that Easter feels long behind us, but it’s taken me a little while to get my thoughts together on this (I blame mommy brain and sleep deprivation). As an evangelical protestant, I had never actually done Lent before now. For those of you not really familiar with it, Lent is the 40 day period leading up to Easter Sunday every year. The idea is to choose to take out something (or somethings) during that time that you feel is taking an unhealthy presence in your life and to replace it with more of what is supposed to be there, i.e. God. Not that the ‘something’ in and of itself is bad but the priority that it’s taking in your life is unhealthy.

For Matt and I, it was screens. Because let’s be honest here: with littles in the house, when bedtime has finally rolled around and passed, you have about all the leftover energy of a slug. I felt so often that I needed some screen time to ‘unwind’ because I didn’t have any oomph in me for anything else. I also knew that, when repeated night after night, I was starting to have the sneaky suspicion that there was more to life than blogs and netflix subscriptions. There was this after a junkfood binge type of feeling and it depressed me to look too closely at how often evenings slipped through my fingertips.

So I, alongside my husband, decided to do a lent experiment: eliminate all tv/netflix except for 2 nights a week. One was for me on a night when Matt had evening meetings (a frequent occurrence for a pastor) and one episode we would watch together. We also allowed for about a half hour of morning news before work everyday. Maybe this sounds like still a lot of tv to you but for us it was like moving to some remote part of the himalayas.  

Here’s what I learned:

    1)      It actually wasn’t as hard doing it as it was thinking about doing it. Like I thought it would be the techie equivalent of cutting out sugar from my diet but I didn’t go into extreme withdrawals like I thought I would. Sure at times it was hard, but mostly it was just a question of “well what do I do instead?”

    2)      Which leads me to point number two: I actually got bored. Which could seem confusing with what I just said about it not being as hard as I thought but bear with me. It actually wasn’t that bad to be bored. Because more often than not, I decided to just turn in and go to bed instead. It’s like all this time I’d been subconsciously needing to prove that I could hack sleep deprivation when really I could have actually—gasp—been getting a full night’s rest (or at least a darn good start...Isaline is currently teething after all). Low and behold, extra zzz’s gave me energy for other things, like tackling that closet project or reading a book that had been on my list since the beginning of time.

    3)      I rediscovered anticipation. Remember those tv nights back in the day? In college I and my roommates would all pile onto our hand me down couches to watch an episode of Gilmore Girls together. It was so much more than just tv; it was the chance to hang out, eat junk food and discuss in detail the inner workings of Rory’s latest love interest. Now I sit in front of my computer to watch Netflix on demand. And that 14 seconds before the next episode starts automatically? Killer…

   4)      Life got really slooow. Like super slow. Instead of my precious “the kids are finally in bed” time flying by, the evening suddenly felt twice as long. I realized that I (like a lot of folks out there) have gotten trained to equate fast with better. To think I needed constant entertainment or else I’d just fall to pieces. But slow felt really good. And really restful. It gave me margin on the edges of my sanity when previously mentioned one year old got ahold of her sister’s flower pot and turned it upside down. It made me feel like a better mom and a less cranky wife. It fed my soul.

   5)      This is the part where I’d love to tell you that God just popped into my living room one night and gave me this awesome lent epiphany. But if there’s one thing I learned throughout my screen binge, it’s that slow can be good. And though I didn’t hear the angels singing, I know that with his grace, I’m inching my way closer towards him. Clearing out the screen clutter has been like clearing out some of the clutter in my soul to make room for more of his voice, his love, his lavish grace in my life.

I may or may not have binged on Netflix episodes the week after Easter. I plead the fifth. Now that lent is over I don’t want to just go back to my old ways. But neither do I feel like I need to be beaten down by a rigid system. Christianity is not about systems or rules or spiritual whips. So it’s going to be a bit of dance. Me, my tv, and the Holy Spirit. I can’t promise perfection but I’ll let you know what we figure out! 

Toddler Turmoil

New posting coming soon but in the meantime here is my life these days...aka the trade off for 5 minutes uninterrupted peace...

Have a great weekend!  

Happy Holidays Part 1

I'm thinking that if I say 'Happy Holidays' maybe some of you won't notice that I'm posting about Christmas on the 26th. Maybe someday that magic Christmas will swing around when I do everything on time, even a blog post. At this point, I just consider getting presents under the tree without losing my sanity to be relative success. Speaking of trees, we finally have one! Would you consider it pathetic or economical that this is our first Christmas tree in 5 1/2 years of marriage? I'm not counting the foot tall one that we bought a few years back for our old, even tinier, apartment. 

To be truthful, you can basically chalk it up to just plain moping, really. I found myself stuck in that phase where you're secretly hoping that you'll wake up on Christmas morning 10 years old again surrounded by that Christmas magic that only mom knows how to make. I think I would self-pitied my grown up responsible self to the end of time if something hadn't come along to kick my butt out of that grinch-like hole. And that something was Livie. Suddenly I am now the mom who is supposed to make the Christmas magic and while I was able to still retain a slight grinch-like inclination for her first Christmas, I figured this one as a toddler might be slightly less acceptable to skimp on. Considering my stress levels just before Christmas break, I probably went just a tad overboard (proof of that in my unfinished advent calendar below): 

But overall I am glad that I got out of my grinch mode and started/continued a Christmas tradition or two... 

One of the things I got super excited about was finally getting a nativity scene! I have awesome memories of following Mary and Joseph along in our house as they "made their way" to the stable and awaiting manger (aka a spot on the living room shelf). I wanted that kind of experience for Livia as well--something that I enjoyed looking at but was easy for her to interact with; a nativity that she could play with to her little aggressive toddler heart's content. Enter peg dolls from Etsy! Seriously, I'm in love. They're super cute and I don't have to worry about her breaking anything. The "stable" is a wall shelf in the shape of a house that I found at a craft fair. 

Then I indoctrinated Liva in the ways of the motherland (aka Albany) by making our family's Christmas sugar cookies with her. Of course, in real life she doubles not only as a professional baker but also food inspector so here she is "testing" the merchandise. We tried decorating them together but that resulted in lots more eating while I decorated. :) 

 

A frenchie Christmas tradition that we started up a few years back is to make the annual hike to our local marché de noël. It takes place in a business district called La Defense (hence the skyscrapers) every December and is a fun warm up to Christmas.

I mean, where else do you get to see a giant pink pig on top of a wine barrel, right? 

Yes, French kids write letters to Santa too, just in case you where wondering.... 

This, though, is the reason we go to the Christmas market. Vin Chaud and French hot dogs. Vin Chaud, which literally means 'hot wine', is like the Christmas grown up version of spiced cider here. I am literally salivating just thinking about it. Red wine + mulled Christmas spices = fabulousness. 

So there you have it: some of the Christmasy things we've been up to lately. Currently we're in Nantes soaking up the rest of the holiday break with Matt's family (more on that next time!) before it's back to the daily grind. Hope you're having a fabulous holiday season! 

I'm sick of sick

         Motherhood can hurt. Literally. No, I mean literally--just today Livia has already tried whacking me in the face twice. But let me back up to the Tuesday before last, Nov. 25th. I was dreaming that I felt sick to my stomach when I woke up. You know that huge feeling of relief that it was all just a dream and now you can get on with your life? I love that feeling. Unfortunately, that feeling lasted about the length of time it took me to get my hiney out of bed and stumble into some workout clothes. Once again I felt sick to my stomach. My daughter missed the memo and instead of waking up at her usual time, decided that a half hour early would be a better decision. Nature waiteth not, even for toddlers, and she ended up getting quite the show, first thing in the morning. It turns out that puking up sweet potatoes, just two days before Thanksgiving, is a bad thing. The rest of the morning was a bit of a blur as I did everything I could just to stay up until Matt came back from a meeting to work from home. Thankfully, just as I was contemplating the merits of super gluing my eyelids open, Matt walked in the door. 

        As it turns out, the low point of my day was just the beginning. The fun was just getting started :) Feeding Livia later that evening I got up from my chair to take off her bib, a giant fuzzy blanket wrapped around me (yes, this is the stay at home mom version of a sick day). Forgetting that I'd scooted back the chair, I went to sit back down and of course, missed completely. So there I was on the floor: a tangle of fuzzy blanket, one very dirty bib in me and a smarting elbow (the result of whacking it sharply on where my chair actually was on the way down). Livia, startled from the commotion (I had made quite a bit of noise on the way down), got so scared that she tossed whatever she could find at hand off of the table. 

        The problem was, this was her unfinished dinner plate and her flinging target happened to be my face. Once I'd gotten over the initial shock of it I managed to get her down, reassure her and laid myself out on the carpet to recuperate. She grabbed her sippy cup and headed over, convinced that she now needed to keep a close eye on Mom. Unfortunately, just as she was taking a swig of milk she happened to spot her pacifier. Dropping the sippy cup, she reached for it. What I didn't mention before was that she happened to be just above my head when this happened and that very full sippy cup hit me smack on the jawline. Whenever the going gets tough I try to remember that Momma said 'there'd be days like this' but I have to admit that Momma didn't warn me that there would be a single day where I'd puke my guts up, feel as if I'd been run over by a tractor, topple to the floor, have luke warm peas thrown at my face, and then get punched in the jaw by a sippy cup. So I did what any mature, grown, hormonal woman would do: I rolled over and cried like a baby. 

        Surely, I thought, this was the worst of it. Light started glimmering at the end of the week. It had been a hard week, I was still weak from my stomach flu but life was going to get better and on Saturday we got to celebrate Thanksgiving with good friends. Take that: Life 0 Tal 1. That night Livia had trouble sleeping. Lots of it. When she was no longer comforted by me holding her I started to panic. Matt was gone and at first I couldn't reach my mother in law (a doctor). And then she puked a couple of times. Wait a minute, this is all too familiar, right? We just did this dance earlier this week. The next morning Livia was up at 6 crying. It was too loud to go for a 'selective hearing' approach and since it was my morning to get up with her I slowly complied (I say slowly because we'd been up most of the night with her and my body was feeling it). When I shuffled out to the living room I just stared dumbfounded. In an act of solidarity, the cat had thrown up all over the living room. You have got to been kidding me. Seriously? 

        And so it continued. Livia, sick and grumpy all day every day--no more throwing up at least, turns out that that had been caused from excessive coughing--sick and grumpy all night as well. One night she was up just about every hour, sometimes multiple times. One day in the haze, her and I were going through the box that contained her new play kitchen for Christmas (more on that later) and had just arrived by special delivery. Trying to be helpful, she turned around to give me a longish wooden rod, only to whack me smack in the forehead with it. Later that day she had a tantrum (one of many when the girl is sick apparently) and tried to scratch anything in a toddler arm radius. This just so happened to be on my neck and sternum area, leaving behind scratches that are horror film worthy. Thankfully it looks like hope might be on the horizon and I'm going to attempt going to work tomorrow. All this to say, however, that one lesson has been imprinted on my mind over the past two weeks: parenting is definitely not for wimps. But it might make one out of ya! ;) :) 

Life With Livia Lately

As I type this post my daughter is currently decked out in the the sweat pants and shirt she slept in, Hello Kitty pink rain boots, her polka dot rain coat and a fur lined Christmas cardigan (which is on top of the rain jacket of course). We won't even talk about what her hair is doing at the moment. What can I say, she got my fabulous fashion sense ;) Yep, parenting is an adventure! (Dommage that my camera is currently at school!)

I'm loving this new stage that Livia is in though. She's all about becoming more and more aware of the world around her and imitating it. If you ever need a good laugh just have a toddler. (Of course it comes with a few good cries--both you and her--so be careful what you wish for) She's also currently discovering the function of the garbage can so I just took a break from writing to rescue some pinched fingers and explain why we can't chuck Papa's bible in the bin.

The best part about this stage is that she loves to be Mama's lil' helper. This form of free slave labor helpfulness comes in many forms: scrubbing the kitchen sink, "folding" clothes with me on laundry days, even cleaning up toys (when she's in the mood of course!). The Montessori teacher in me  just hasn't been able to resist (Montessori is all about encouraging children towards independence and personal responsibility) and I've already gotten Livia her own Livia-sized sponge (I happened to find some small ones but you could just use a normal sized one or cut one in half) and later this year I plan on getting her a pint-sized cleaning set (broom/dustpan) to go with the play kitchen that Matt and I will give her for Christmas.

Washing dishes :)

I figure now is the best time to teach her basic life skills while she's willing and just dying to be included. So what if she's a bit more of a hindrance than a real help at times (okay, let's be honest, just about all the time!). We've all got to start somewhere right? I figure, better now than at 25 :)

For anyone who is interested in Montessori for tots and can read in french, here is a great book that gives you lots of ideas and  pictures about all the things you can do. 

My Lil' One Year Old

Ahh, how time flies. The little curled up wrinkly thing from box 0 that we nicknamed "la crevette" at the maternity ward is no longer a shrimp anymore. (Although she pinches like one, does that count?) What's funny is how fast you forget those previous stages. It's as if she was always crawling around, mischief making and the like. I forget that there was once a time when she actually stayed when you put her down. Well all this to say that the Livster is now officially one year old. Practically a college student. Sniff, sniff. 

Still young enough to have a bit of help on the ol' blowing out the candles job so at least she wont be packing her bags for campus just yet. 

Although she figured out pretty fast how to get into her presents... That just might be genetic though... 

And of course this new age brings all kinds of new challenges to be overcome...

Although some not so thrilling for mom and dad... 

She's lucky she's cute! Here's to many more years of troublemaking adventures!