My sweet baby girl. You are getting so big and growing up so very fast. When I look at you I see so much of other people. I see your daddy's beautiful blue eyes and his cute ears. I see your auntie's nose and some of her facial expressions. You have so many wonderful qualities and are so absolutely beautiful. I have often thought and said that if I had not given birth to you I would swear you are not mine. Then I step back and I see your firey spirit. You have so much spunk and independence it is wonderful to watch. You are strong, tough, sweet and tender all rolled up into one little package with a big bow on top. When I really look at your spirit it is like looking at a reflection in a mirror. I am so very happy you chose me to be your mommy. I will love you always.
I am a huge fan of baby sign language. I taught this to Victoria and it was a huge success. It made communicating with her so much easier before she could actually talk. I started with Victoria when she was about 7 months old and she picked it up at about 9-10 months. It is time for Izzy to learn too. I start with the basics and once she picks it up I will move on from there. Basicially what I am doing is constantly showing her the signs for eat, milk, drink, and more when we are doing each of those activities. I am eager to see at what age she will pick it up. I remember the first time Victoria did it. When she woke up in the morning I always took her into the bed to play with me and daddy for a bit. One morning I set her on the bed and she started tapping her fingers against her mouth just like the sign for eat. I was so excited. I scooped her up and took her for breakfast. From that point on it was so easy. She did stop using them once she started talking. I told her the other day we needed to start teaching Izzy. The cool thing is she was right there with me at the highchair the other day showing her sister how it is done. If you have a little one and are not sure if it is worth it let me tell you it definitely is. There is a lot of frustrations that comes with not being able to fully communicate what your child needs. This is such a great tool to alleviate a lot of that frustration. I will post my updates along the way and even any tips I can find."Baked Beans
(Grab a tissue; I thinkyou’ll be laughing so hard you’ll cry!)
One day I met a sweet gentleman and fell in love. When it became apparent that we wouldmarry, I made the supreme sacrifice and gave up beans.
Some months later, on my birthday, my car broke down on the way from work. Since I lived in the countryside I called my husband and told him that I would be late because I had to walk home. On my way, I passed by a small diner and the odor of baked beans was more than Icould stand.
With miles to walk, I figured that I would walk off any ill effects by the time I reached home, soI stopped at the diner and before I knew it, I had consumed three large orders of baked beans. All the way home, I made sure that I released all the gas. Upon my arrival, my husband seemed excited to see! me and exclaimed delightedly: “Darling I have a surprise for dinner tonight.” He then blindfolded me and led me to my chair at the dinner table. I took a seat and just as hewas about to remove my blindfold, the telephone rang. He made me promise not to touch the blindfold until he returned and went to answer the call. The baked beans I had consumed were still affecting me and the pressure was becoming most unbearable, so while my husband was out of the room I seized the opportunity, shifted my weight to one leg and let one go. It was not onlyloud, but it smelled like a fertilizer truck running over a skunk in front of a pulpwood mill. I took my napkin from my lap and fanned the air around me vigorously. Then, shifting to the othercheek, I ripped off three more. The stink was worse than cooked cabbage. Keeping my ears carefully tuned to the conversation in the other room, I went on like this for another few minutes.The pleasure was indescribable. When eventually the telephone farewells signaled the end of my freedom, I quickly fanned the air a few more times with my napkin, placed it on my lap and folded hands back on it feeling very relieved and pleased with myself.
My face must have been the picture of innocence when my husband returned, apologizing for taking so long. He asked me if I had peeked through the blindfold, and I assured him I had not.At this point, he removed the blindfold, and twelve dinner guests seated around the table chorused: “Happy Birthday!”
I fainted!!!!!!!!!!!
It is 3am and I woke up to Victoria in her room crying. I quickly grabbed her and put her into bed with me so that she would not wake her sister. This then led to at least another hour of battling with her to go back to sleep. The battle was finally won and morning was coming. Izzy woke before Victoria so I got her up and downstairs for breakfast. I went back upstairs to wake up Victoria and the meltdown began.
Okay maybe the title should be Pixie Power. What girl does not like Tinkerbell? The title actually reminded me of a funny story. I used to have a couple of cute lanyards that I would wear to work. One said, "It's all about me" and the other "Boys are smelly". If you can believe it I was actually told not to wear the "Boys are smelly" one anymore. I still think it was completely absurd. It does make me giggle a little though at the thought of the guys I worked with tattling on me saying, "She said we were smelly. Make her stop". Apparently that week no one had anything better to focus on. 
This last weekend we went out on a family adventure to pick out the perfect pumpkins for carving. Victoria was so excited and had been looking forward to this all week long. It was really all she talked about each day.
Once we had the perfect ones picked out we took them home for carving. Daddy bought a kit to carve them that had some pretty cool designs. The first one he did had a spider on it which turned out really great. Then he decided that since she loved Dora so much he would free hand one with Boots the monkey on it. It turned out perfect! He is so darn good at all of this. I roasted the pumpkin seeds and I think they are good. He has not tried them yet so we will see what he thinks.
This morning I went through my normal routine. I am feeding the kids breakfast and listening to the Early show on CBS. This morning they were talking about a new diet that is all the rage in Japan. It is called the morning Banana diet. I have heard of some good ones but this one takes the cake for me. They were saying it is so popular it has resulted in a shortage of banana! So, I am certainly not an expert on dieting because I have a real sweet tooth that just gets in my way. It just does not seem logical to me that simply eating a banana in the morning will cause you to lose weight. So, the details of the diet are as follows:
I am always looking for work at home opportunities these days to bring in some extra spending money. I had a bit of free time tonight so I sat down and took the recommendation from The Work From Home Mother and signed up at Weegy. I checked it out and was curious to see what it was all about. It is the first one that I have really signed up for. I was excited and eager to see how it all worked. I created my account, logged in and waited . . . and waited. Basically you wait until a conversation comes in and then you get to decide if you want to accept it or not. After several minutes of nothing I noticed I had email. Apparently they are currently only running their CPC advertising program between 10:00am and 4:00pm eastern time. That said, I logged out but I do plan to return at a later time to check it out. Hopefully I will have more to report soon!
With Halloween just around the corner it has been a lot of fun around here trying to figure out what Victoria wants to dress us as. This is really the first year where she actually understands what it is all about and has had a voice. I am a huge Tinkerbell fan and I was thrilled when I asked her what she wanted to be and she said "Tinkerbell!" A few weeks later though she threw me a curve ball and said she wanted to be a Purple Barbie Fiary. I thought to myself, "how the heck and I am going to pull this off?" I searched so many places and I finally found this cute little purple fiary costume.
I am a work at home mother of two. I love being able to be at home with my kids every day. I have my own online store but I am always looking for additional opportunities to keep me at home. This is especially the case with the economy the way it is right now and business for me is a bit slower. There are so many different web sites out there that claim to have work at home opportunities for stay at home mothers. Some are legitimate and some are not. I visit a lot of the mommy sites and read lots of mommy blogs. So many other mothers are asking for help finding legitimate opportunities. One day I was surfing and came across an interesting post. The blog site that was posted was The Work From Home Mother. There is so much great information there I just had to mention it. I found this to be a great resource and one that I check out all the time to see what is available. I check back all the time to see what new opportunities are posted. I will keep things here updated as I find interesting ones.
Victoria is such a little sweetheart. She is really at the stage now where she picks up on the things you say and applies them throughout her day. I always thought it was very sweet when her daddy would come home from work and she would greet him by saying "Hello handsome". I always say that to him and it puts a huge smile on his face every time she says it.
I have a friend of mine that is difficult to buy gifts for. One year I just could not figure out what to buy him for his birthday. He is very into the environment and doing his part to make this world a better place. I admire him for it because he certainly does more than I do on any given day. So, I started searching online for a unique gift. I came across the perfect idea. The Arbor Day Foundation has a great gift program. You can order trees in celebration of any number of events. Each dollar donated plants a tree in one of America's national forests. They will send out a certificate to the recipient of your gift. My friend loved the gift and I did too. I try to do my best to help make our world a better place to live and this gift made me feel good about that.
All the time we hear about going "Green". There are so many things we can do now to help protect our environment. I am not a super environmentalist but I really try to do my part as best I can.
So, like most other mothers out there I have heard a lot of stuff on the news lately about Bisphenol-A (BPA). It is actually in so many common items including several baby items. The first item that got my attention really was baby bottles. At the time I was using Dr. Brown's because of the anti-colic venting system. I was a fan until I discovered the ones I was using did in fact contain BPA. All of this came about when my oldest was about 6 months old. I started looking into alternative items and found that the Nuby brand had several items that were BPA free.
I am so very lucky to have the love of two beautiful little girls. Victoria was my first and I think she is a very special little girl. She loves to make others laugh and she keeps me going all day with the funny and sweet things she says and does. I always make sure she knows how much I love her and how happy she makes me. Last night I put her to bed and tucked her in. I read her a book and we have our special little songs and routine that I know she looks forward to and so do I. Last night after I had already tucked her in I heard her crying. I went to check on her and she wanted to sleep with me. I told her she could not but I laid down next to her to snuggle for a bit. She told me to close my eyes and so I did. She rolled over towards me and put her arm on me. I opened my eyes and she had this wonderful grin on her face. Then she says to me, "Mommy you make me so happy". What more could a mommy ask for. I am so very lucky that she chose me.
So, Olivia went late last week for her 6 month checkup. Both girls got the flu shot which was a fun time for mom for sure. Olivia actually got 5 shots which really was not cool. She was so upset. Apparently though my little chubby girl is as big as most 12 month olds. haha I asked the doctor if that was okay and he was fine with it. He said she is proportioned just fine and growing nicely. She has her two bottom teeth and working on some top ones now. She can roll over both ways now. Just today she started pushing herself up so I think she will be crawling soon. We go back to the doctor in a month to get her ears pierced. I am nervous about it because they are doing it with a needle instead of the gun. We shall see how it goes!
