This last weekend grandma and grandpa Hansen came up for a visit and they brought the girls some fun little kites. It was a little chilly, but we all went to the park to test them out and the girls had a great time.
Charlotte mostly spent her time flying her Dora kite with grandpa.
I'm not sure that Lily understood that she could stand still and her kite would stay up because she ran all over the park.
Grandma Hansen helped her get her kite back up one of the many times that she crashed it.
Painting on the sidewalk was one of my girls' favorite activities last year and so when we had a nice day we mixed up a batch of sidewalk paint and spent some time outside.
So focused on her "fish."
Charlotte got bored with the sidewalk and decided to paint her hair instead.
Winter seems to be especially long when you have young children at home that are just itching to get outside again. I've been trying to find projects to keep the girls busy and entertained as we wait out the last clod days before Spring. I found this great idea on Pinterest for melted bead sun-catchers and decided to give them a try. They turned out to be very simple and the girls had fun sorting the beads and placing them in the muffin tins.
Lily loves them and talks about them almost every time we walk in and out of the back door.
We made a couple with the girls' initials in them as well.
The blog that I got this idea from also made a large sun-catcher using a cake pan. I think that I need to give that a try sometime soon.
I've been sewing like crazy these last few months and most of it has been things for this baby boy. It has been a lot of fun to try out some new things and this baby boy is a good excuse to do so.
I started out with some blankets. First I made this soft and silky baby blanket because I love them. I have made similar ones for my girls and they are so soft and cuddly, I just had to make one that wasn't pink for this baby boy
Next it was time for some swaddling blankets. I am a big fan of swaddling and my friends have been raving about these thin cotton gauze swaddling blankets. I checked them out, they were $36 for 4 pieces of hemmed cotton. I don't pay for stuff like that. I ordered the fabric online and made mine for $18. They weren't hard, you just cut a square and hem the sides, easy as can be.
I've been seeing lots of tutorials for these self-binding baby blankets and well, I wanted to test them out so I had to make one for this little guy, just because I wanted to learn the technique. Again, also very simple and rather cute. I'm loving the whales!
I also used the same flannel to make some of my very favorite burp clothes. I really shouldn't have made them all super girly last time...oh well. It only took an hour or two and cost about $3 to make 9 so still an awesome deal.
I even did a little bit of applique this time around, just for fun.
Finally, it was time to get to the nursery set. I haven't made a nursery set since I was pregnant with Lily so it was a lot of fun to come up with my design and draw it all out. No patterns this time around though, I created all of my plans on my own and just went for it.
First challenge, colors. Tyson painted our nursery a surfer blue shortly after we bought the house and before we were expecting Lily and it was the only color that he got to choose. So, rather than repainting, I have worked around the color. After looking online for some ideas I decided on something somewhat nautical (surfer blue, right? It had to work) and then came the fabric search. I found some online, some in local stores, and when I was all done shopping I ended up with this stack, which I loved!
I planned to make a quilt, crib skirt, and window valances. Last night I finished it!
I was ambitious this time around, I hand quilted and hand bound the quilt. It took a lot longer, but I love how neat and clean it looks!
I also painted that cute little set of canvases that are up on the wall. A friend found the image online and I just had to reproduce it because it was so adorable!
I think that it is a lot of fun to have our little nursery all put together. There are still a few more projects in the works for this little guy, like getting his name up on the wall, but that will have to wait until I get the girls' Easter dresses sewn and Lily's birthday present finished.
Our baby girl has turned two. My goodness, time flies when you are having fun! Charlotte is active, mischievous and has the happiest smile of any child that have ever known. She loves to play with her friends, especially her big sister. They spend hours every day having tea parties and playing dress-up. Charlotte is very bright and talks and talks all day long and is very intent on communicating what it is that she wants verbally.
When it came time to plan out a little birthday party for Charlotte I started flipping through cake ideas and Lily of course asked Charlotte what she would like and as soon as she mentioned Dora it was all over. Charlotte loves Dora the Explorer and so that was that. She wanted a Dora cake and Lily was kind enough to remind her of that fact nearly every day for a month. I must say though, I had a bit of fun putting together the cake. Yes, it is a little much for a two-year-old, but it was fun and the girls liked watching me put it all together.
She wasn't quite sure what to do with the candle, but she liked being up next to her cake after I'd spent the entire day telling her to get off of the table.
We had a fun little party with some family and friends last Saturday night and Charlotte got some fun new toys.
Tyson built this great little crib and drawer for Charlotte's baby dolls. She loves her dolls and spends a great deal of time taking care of them. I made a quilt and pillow for the crib and then some doll clothes and diapers for her to play with.
Our sweet baby girl is two. They just grow up so quickly and while this age certainly has its rough patches, I'd love for it to slow down a little bit and take its time passing.
This week has been a rough one. You've seen the bean bag pellet mess. The following day they finger painted each other, the walls, and the furniture during nap time. Needless to say, they are not napping together anymore. Maybe in another month or two they can, but for mommy's sanity, we needed to separate them for a while. Given all that, you can imagine how I responded when the other day I was in the bathroom, just for 2 minutes, and I hear Lily in the kitchen saying "Mommy, I want to cut my hair." Now, I've been doing a lot of sewing lately so my sewing things are out and two pairs of scissors are sitting on my sewing table. I imagined that Lily had already started cutting her own hair, and probably Charlotte's too for good measure so I was up and out of that bathroom as quickly as humanly possible. To my great relief, she hadn't even touched the scissors, she just decided at that moment that she was ready to let me trim her hair. I'd been telling her that it needed a trim for at least a month, but she has wanted to keep her hair long so I hadn't pushed it. But when she said that she was ready for a trim, I got right on it. I had her set up in the bathroom and ready for a haircut in 2 minutes. She did fairly well at sitting still and was very excited when we were all done.
Of course, Charlotte could not be left out and demanded that I cut her hair as well. I think that I trimmed off 1/2 of an inch. Some day it will start to grow on top, but until then we have to keep her little mullet under control.
Some days are just harder than others. There are days when your children are happy and well behaved and others when they are naughty and mischievous. Today was a harder day than usual. Thankfully, my kids are healthy, and generally happy, but a little too mischievous for their own good. After lunch I sent the girls down to their room for nap time. Now, they usually play for a while together before falling asleep and I am totally fine with that. I still have a baby monitor in the room so I can hear if they get into a fight or anything like that, but this afternoon it was quiet. Maybe not totally quiet, but certainly not loud. I got to my mommy chores and did the dishes, swept and mopped the floors and then sat down to Skype with my sister for a bit. Because it was quiet I figured that the girls were sleeping.
I was wrong.
Around 4:15 Charlotte came upstairs to get help taking a swimming suit off because she had the strap too tight around her arm and it was hurting. They dress up sometimes before naps so I thought that maybe she had put the swimming suit on before falling asleep. Lily followed her up wearing her mermaid skirt and I noticed some little Styrofoam pellets were stuck to her clothing. I knew right away what they were from. I made the girls some little poofs to sit on when we watched movies and such and they were stuffed with these little Styrofoam bean bag pellets. I thought that maybe one had sprung a leak so I went downstairs to investigate. Lily followed me and said, right as I turned the corner to see into her room "We were swimming in them."
Oh, the horror!
I'm amazed at myself, I didn't yell. In fact, I didn't do anything. I just stood there in the doorway, staring at this mess in front of me wondering if I could get away with just shutting the door to the room and having the girls sleep elsewhere until Friday when Tyson would be able to help me clean this up. I finally concluded that I couldn't wait for help, it had to be done. So I went into the room and surveyed the damage a little more closely. All the while Lily is saying in her sweet little voice "Oh mommy, I so sorry." Like I can be mad at that!
So many pellets!
They were everywhere! All of the way back under the beds, in shoes, throughout dolls' hair, just everywhere! And they are staticy little things, so they were stuck to the walls and the sides of the beds as well.
All of the little toys mixed in was fun, lots of practice sorting
I got right to work. I walked in, picked a spot, sat down and started raking the pellets into piles and refilling the little bean bags with them. The girls were sweet and got right to work with me, though honestly, their help was a little trying on my patience.
It was a great opportunity however to talk about how when we do something wrong we need to do more than just say sorry, we need to do what we can to fix the situation and make it right again.
Charlotte would pick up a few and drop some in Lily's bag and a few more in her green one that I was working on, all the while scattering more pellets over the floors space that I had already cleared.
Lily on the other hand would pick them up and put them in her bag in tiny little handfuls but she moved around the room so much, going from one spot to another that she also did a lot of scattering. She was sweet though, she kept trying to get Charlotte to work with her by telling her that "sisters help each other because they love each other." I really do have good kids, all things considered.
Finally, after about an hour I started to really be able to see some progress.
Eventually Lily started counting out the pellets as she was picking them up and putting them in her bag and well, my frazzled little mind found that very annoying. Hopefully tomorrow or a week from now I'll see it as cute.
This is also about the time that I sent the girls out of the room. I appreciated their help and desire to correct their mistake and make things right, but my nerves were at the breaking point and I just couldn't accept their help any longer.
As I go to bed tonight it is about 90% cleaned up. There are still some pellets against the wall behind the beds, but I can't scurry under them on my tummy because I'm six months pregnant so I need to wait for Tyson to be around to help me move Lily's bed and get them picked up. That can wait until Friday though because after cleaning everything else up I was just not up to moving furniture as well.
This evening Tyson called from work as he usually does to check-in and see how my day is going. When he first asked how things were I paused, and then told him about his little girls emptying out their bean bags onto the floor and then dressing up in swimming suits and mermaid skirts to go swimming on their floor covered in bean bag pellets instead of napping. It has been a long time since I heard Tyson laugh for that long or that hard.. Thankfully, his laughter made me laugh. Sure, it was picked up by then, so the worst was past and this frazzled mom started to feel a bit better about it all. Because honestly, it is hilarious, just not so much for the person who is cleaning up after it at the time.
