Daniel turns one

When Hannah turned one, Aaron and I went to Toys ‘r Us and spent way too much money on big fancy presents. When the first child has the first birthday, it’s a big thing. For us and her.

She wasn’t really fussed on opening the presents, and then she didn’t really like them. She never played with them and we ended up giving them to charity.

We weren’t so silly this time. For Daniel’s birthday, we bought a second hand Little People car ramp from a friend at church. Daniel loves cars, to the point where he pushes around any object he can find like it’s a car whilst making brrmmm brrrmmm car noises. Needless to say, we knew he’d like the car ramp. And that was all we bought him. No, I lie, we also bought him a helmet so he can go for bike rides with me on the WeeRide.

Playing with the car ramp right after opening it (still in their sleepy suits)

Grandma, on the other hand, got him approximately 1,000 presents. I may be exaggerating. Whatever. We went over to Grandma and YaYa’s house for Daniel’s family birthday party yesterday and Hannah ended up opening all of Daniel’s presents. He had no interest in ripping wrapping paper whatsoever. But he did like all the cars Hannah found inside them.

Hannah opening Daniel’s present

The Jess usually helps me decorate cakes (and by helps me, I mean, she does it), but she moved to Adelaide (sad face), so I had to do it all by myself. I was going to make a car or a train, since Daniel likes them so much, but I thought I’d go the safer route and make a Daniel cake instead.

I seem to be much better at making a cartoon Daniel on the computer than I do on a cake….

So it wasn’t the best looking cake in the world, but apart from stealing cake bowls out of the trash and licking them on Hannah’s birthday, he hasn’t actually eaten cake before, so I’m sure he didn’t really mind.

Mmmm…cake

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Hannah made a sticker

A while back, I was contacted by MyBinding.com  to see if I wanted to review a laminator. Hannah makes so many artworks that I thought it would be awesome to laminate them and turn them into placemats. Or playdoh mats. Or flash cards. Or something.

But then Tarragon from MyBinding brought up the great point about electricity. They are a family owned company in Oregon (U.S.A.), so the plug of the laminator wouldn’t exactly fit into my outlets. And if I used an adapter, there is still a wattage issue, and it could quite possibly blow up.

No seriously. I’m not even joking. I brought my guitar amp over here, plugged it into an adapter, hooked up my guitar, and BANG! No more guitar amp.

Sigh. No laminator.

But then she had another product for me. A Xyron Create a Sticker.

WHAT??!!!!!!!!!! I CAN MAKE MY OWN STICKERS????!!!!!!!!!

Let me just tell you a little something about kids. They love stickers. If it were up to Hannah, she’d cover the entire house, floor to ceiling, including floor and ceiling, in stickers.

Daniel loves stickers too. A little too much. Remember when he tried to eat one, choked on it, and I had to call the ambulance?

Now we play with stickers when he’s asleep. And I make sure they are not too small, and stuck on anything that he will be playing with.

To say I was excited about the sticker maker is a huge understatement. When the package arrived and I told Hannah about it, she nearly wet herself with excitement. She does this eyes bulging, neck stuck out, mouth in a 5 year old boy’s pretend smile position, half laugh/half nanny goat noise when she gets really excited about something. She was doing the the whole time I opened the box.

I let Hannah draw on some construction paper, and then tear it however she wanted.

Hannah drawing to make stickers

Then we stuck it in the sticker maker and turned the crank. And out popped Hannah’s art on the other side. On a backing, as a sticker. It was that easy.

If I let her, she’d make stickers all day.

I decided to use the sticker maker for a very different reason: Potty training. We have a sticker chart that Hannah gets to put stickers on if she poops in the potty or toilet. Not that she does, but the though is nice. I made her a very special sticker in the sticker maker.

My sticker coming out with one of Hannah’s

“Hannah, look at this!” I told her excitedly, “If you do a poop in the toilet, you can put this sticker we made on your potty chart!”

Stickers!

“YEAH!” She told me. But she still won’t poop in the toilet. Sigh.

PROS:

-Inexpensive

-Non-toxic

-No heat, electricity, or batteries needed

-Easy to use

-Would be perfect for scrap booking

-Kids love it!

-Ships internationally

-Can get backing that lets you stick and re-stick your stickers (repositionable)

-Can get backing that lets your stickers stay stuck

CONS:

-Your child will harass you to make stickers all the time

*I was sent a free sticker maker and backing for the purpose of this review. Opinions expressed are my own and were not swayed in any manner.

You can buy your own sticker maker, or a variety of other products (laminators, binders, binding supplies, shredders, etc.) here

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And the winner is….

Thanks to everyone who entered the Fill in the Blankie competition!  All of the entries made me giggle, and my impartial 3rd party has reached a decision. And the winner is (drumroll please)….

Erika, with this entry:

I think my most embarrassing moment with my 13 month old was at dinner a few weeks ago. We went out for my friends birthday with her and her 18 month old. My son finds it hilarious to throw his food on the floor or at me instead of eating it. Our cat fully benefits from this at home but in public it’s not so nice. Well, I am distracted and talking to my friend, catching up on life and I did not realize that my son was not eating quietly like I imagined. He was instead, putting spaghetti, ever so quietly, in the hair of the women behind us. He managed to put 4 long strands in her hair before my friend noticed! I was so embarrassed when I told this poor women that he was gently putting spaghetti in her hair. I’m still not entirely sure how she did not notice/feel this, but she was not exactly nice about the revelation!

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Hannah turns two!!!

Tuesday was Hannah’s 2nd birthday. Oh. My. Gosh. I can’t believe she is 2!!!!!  Where did the time go?!?!?!?!?!?!  Seems like yesterday, I was pushing her out and riding the steep learning curve of parenting.

We already had a joint Cowboy/Cowgirl birthday party with everyone from our antenatal class (yes, the antenatal class we attended when pregnant with Hannah), so on the actual day, we went to Featherdale Wildlife Park (where we tried our best not to freeze and blow away as it was crazy windy), ate some cake, opened some presents, and had a look at an apartment for rent.  Here is the day in photos.  HAPPY BIRTHDAY my sweet little girl!!!

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The new to do list

Hello everyone!  So I haven’t posted in a while, but I have a very very good reason, which I will tell you later.  In the mean time, I’ll try to post when I can, but my current blogging time slot is now being taken by something more important and urgent.  Sorry 😦  But, I promise I will do another post in the near future.  A really good one.

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Excitable Hannah

The other day, Hannah asked me if she could go to Lollipops.  I told her I’d ask Daddy if he’d take her (because I waddle and can’t play with her there as much as he can at the moment. Plus, if she wants to go on the big slide, you  have to go up a ramp and then through this padded roller thing that I can’t physically fit through right now due to my massive 34-week pregnant belly).  He messaged me back on my phone saying he’d take her the next day.  I told Hannah.

Hannah went nuts.  She toned it down a lot when I got the phone out to record her excitable-ness, but still, it’s hilarious.  What can I say?  I guess Hannah likes Lollipops (an indoor playground centre).

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Flashback Friday: 1.5 years of phone camera photos

Ok, so it’s not exactly Friday, but I did start this post on Friday. It just took me a very long time to rotate and caption all the photos!

I recently got a new phone, which is good because my old phone sometimes worked, but sometimes decided to be so quiet that I couldn’t actually hear the person on the other end, making me sound like a fool with all my “what, I can’t hear you, sorry, my phone doesn’t work properly.”

This may not be a very old flashback, but here are 1.5 years of photos from my old phone. There were some from the other .5 years, but I already had those off the phone and on my computer and well, I couldn’t be bothered adding those too.

Most of these photos were taken to then message to Aaron while he was at work. I like to make him smile a little while he is slaving away at his computer desk.

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“Oh, it’s Jesus!”

Last night, Hannah was eating dinner.  She wanted some lunch meat ham.  Whenever she wants lunch meat ham, I always give it to her.  It’s not like she eats any other sort of meat (yeah, yeah, lunch meat ham is hardly meat, but it’s a start).

She picks up the ham, tears a little piece off and then puts it in her mouth.  This happens a few times, and then she held up a piece of ham and got all excited:

She was really excited, like she actually was holding Jesus in her grubby little fingers.  But then took a big bite.

She got really upset.  Her little face went all red and tears filled her eyes.

“It’s ok sweetie, Jesus is still here, it’s only the Jesus shaped ham that’s gone.”  I told her.

She smiled.  And ate Jesus’ head.

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Backyard heirloom vegetable garden

I’ve wanted to grow my own vegetable garden for a while.  I used to have one when we lived across the road (yeah, we used to live across the road from where we live now because we are just awesome like that.  When we lived in the city, the apartment we were living in was being sold so we moved just one floor down.  In the same building.), but we moved just as all the vegetables were ripening.  I never actually got to eat any of them.  Humph.

My friend has a giant vegetable garden and is forever telling me about the Diggers Club and heirloom vegetables.  That same friend and her soon to be husband, helped Aaron make two raised vegetable beds. I ordered a load of garden soil, and then Aaron and Hannah put all the dirt in the garden.  Why didn’t I help, you ask?  Heavy lifting/shovelling, and such things are not exactly good for a woman in her third trimester of pregnancy to be doing.

Hannah and the dirt pile

Hannah LOVED digging in the giant dirt mound, helping Daddy move dirt from the mound to the wheelbarrow, and then putting dirt on top of all the seeds that I planted in styrofoam cups with holes in the bottom (we had some lying around, so why not use them?).

oh so helpful

Aaron and Hannah set up a worm farm to give us wonderful “worm tea” to help the plants grow.  Every time we go outside now, Hannah wants to see the worms.  I did take photos of the making of the worm farm, but I can’t find them.  Humph.

In one of the beds, I planted all the things that needed to be sown directly into the ground (colourful heirloom carrots, purple garlic, 5 colour silverbeet, perpetual spinach, long red onions, stuff like that).  The other, was awaiting transplant from the seedling cups (crispmint lettuce, red lettuce, endive, broccoli, purple broccoli).

the straight in the ground garden bed

the seedling garden bed

When the sprouts from the cups were big enough, I transplanted them.  Sounds easy enough, but at 31 weeks pregnant, was actually quite a difficult job.  Lots of bending and getting up and down frequently.  Sigh.

Flame lettuce

I was pretty buggered by the end.  But, it’s all done now and soon we will have a nice variety of healthy, back to the way they are supposed to be vegetables, rather than flavorless, not very nutritious supermarket varieties.

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Where do toddlers nap?

Yesterday, I put Hannah down for her nap in her new bed.  I read her a story, tucked her in, turned on her sleepy music, turned off the light and shut the door.  I didn’t actually expect her to sleep after her performance the day before.

I could hear her playing in her room for over an hour.  She was happy as larry.

“Oh! Minnie Mouse!”

“Hannah run around!”

Then I heard her say ‘gina (which means vagina in Hannah speak), and a little later she possibly said poop.

Images of a naked Hannah, poo and pee all over the floor, herself, and all of her stuff, Hannah poking the poop, bewildered at what it was, filled my mind.

I voiced my concerns on facebook.  I wrote it before the possible poop comment:

I debated going in there because usually when she says poop when she is supposed to be sleeping, she really did poop.  Then she can’t sleep, or if she does, it’s only for 20 minutes or so because she has this irritating sticky log stuck to her bottom, making it all red, and preventing any real rest.  But, I wasn’t sure if she really did say poop.  So, I left it for a little bit.

And all went quiet.  I waited some more.  Still quiet.  She’d gone to sleep.

I changed my facebook status:

She slept for quite a while (I wrote that update after she’d been asleep for a long time. I had to be sure before facebooking it…).  3:30 rolled around so I figured I’d get her up.  I probably would have let her sleep longer, but I was really curious as to where she was actually sleeping.  If I waited for her to wake up on her own, I’d never know!

I grabbed the video camera.  There was no telling what I’d find in that room.

.

UPDATE:

Sound asleep IN her bed

Today Hannah played in her room for a while during nap time and then started banging on the door and calling “Mommy!”  I put her back in her bed, read her a story, and she fell right asleep.  When I went in to get her at 3:30, I found a peacefully sleeping little cutie right where I left her.

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