Two Years Gone By

Two Years Ago:

One Year Ago:

Today:

Happy 2nd Birthday, M!

I can't believe it's been two years since M was born. She is a big girl now, into everything her sister is into. M knows lots of words now and her favourite sentence is "Read dis book!" Most of her C words start with the letter T, which makes them extra cute, especially when she's "told" and wants "tuddles".

We had a little party on Sunday with some grown-up friends and a cake. Our camera did us the honour of completely crapping out so all I have are some bad cell-phone pictures to commemorate the occasion. 

I made a Rainbow Butterfly Star Cake:

After making this cake, our electric beaters completely broke as well. So, it was a day for things to break, which is kind of appropriate in a way, considering how M loves to break stuff.

Welcome to 2, baby girl.  Here's to another year of your smiles, laughter and hugs. I can't get enough of them.

A Day in the Life (mostly in pictures)

I thought I would do a little tour of my life as a stay-at-home parent. I took these pictures in October, but haven't gotten around to putting them on my blog until now.

In the morning, Paul got up with the girls and fed them breakfast and we did our usual routine of attempting to stay in bed while getting up every five minutes to get the girls something. For some reason, we think this is better then just facing the day at 7. We were up by about 7:30. I changed M and got her dressed.

When I got to the kitchen, G and M were busy climbing the shelves looking for craft supplies.


I put the kettle on for coffee. My lifeblood.


Paul left for work to a chorus of "Bye-bye Daddy!" from all of us.


Breakfast consisted of an English Muffin with Marmite and coffee.


While I ate, I balanced a book about dinosaurs on my knee for M to look at and me to half-assed-ly read to her.


She really wanted the camera. WHY CAN'T I HAVE THE CAMERA!!?


After breakfast, it was time to get dressed. G wanted me to pick out her clothes (she usually does this herself). So, for today, they matched.


You're holding a camera! Let me pose for the camera!



By 9:30, I had the girls in the car.


We arrived at our playgroup and stayed for a few hours. Mostly, I drank coffee and talked to the other parents. Adult conversation is always at a premium when you're a stay-at-home parent.



I read a book to M. "Fish!" she says. "Fissssssssh" .


Home we went. I buckled the girls into their car seats again. I long for the days when my kids can do up their own seatbelts.




After lunch, the girls watched Blue's Clues.


While I put the beans on for supper.


And started doing some dishes.


I put the M down for her nap and G into our room for a quiet time, then went downstairs to put the laundry in.

Lots of Loonies and Quarters to make these machines go!


While the girls were quiet, I worked on a blog post.


Then I put the kettle on for some tea.


I barely got a chance to finish my blog post before G was out from her quiet time (I'm lucky if it lasts for half an hour these days). So I let her play some games online while I did more dishes.
While I was doing the dishes I broke a wine glass. Glassware hates me, I swear. It leaps from my hands. Paul does it to, but I'm a bit worse. I would say I have broken no less then 10 glasses (wine or drinking) in the past year.


I did a bunch more dishes, then remembered my kettle, which I then re-boiled and made my tea. While it was steeping, I went downstairs and moved the wash into the dryer.
I took advantage of this moment to sit and drink my tea and read a bit of my book.


I read about 5 pages before Maggie was awake. She was very unhappy to be awake.


So I gave her some rainbow goldfish crackers.


If you give an M some goldfish crackers, G has to have some too.


While they snacked, I wrote my meal plan for the next few weeks, so I'll know what to buy when I go shopping tomorrow.


M was much happier.


I started supper (bean burritos).

Then I remembered we had no cheese and that was unacceptable. So, I called Paul to see when he was coming home. He was feeling sick and crappy today, so he was happy to come home half an hour early.


The girls were so excited to watch him come home. This was when it was light outside when he got home. It's sad and dark at 4:30 now.


I ran out to Sobey's to get cheese (and avocados).


And when I came home, we ate supper.

Finally, a picture of me!


Not long after supper was bathtime, then pajamas for the girls. They wrestled with their Daddy, post-bath.


Then put toys away, had a snack and went to bed.


I waited for a pregnant friend of mine to pick up a bag of baby clothes I'm getting rid of.


Then I watched Walking Dead and (eventually) went to bed.

Birds of the not-angry variety

Speaking of birds, G has decided to "study" birds recently. The fact that Paul is studying has started to influence her play, and she keeps coming up with new things to study. Recently, it has been firefighters, space and birds.

We like to get books out of the library on whatever subject she's interested in, and watch videos (mostly on ARKive.org, a fantastic site for animal videos), play games and look at pictures online.

The other morning, she decided she wanted to draw pictures of birds and, as she said, quiz me on them.
She drew the following five pictures, while continually saying "Don't look, Mommy! Don't look!"

Emu, Macaroni Penguin, Owl, Bald Eagle, Parrot

Then she proceeded to hide them behind her back one at a time and ask questions like this:

"This bird has a very long neck. Is it a crow, an emu or a seagull?"
 "This bird has very, very colourful feathers. Is it a heron, a ostrich or a parrot?"

I am proud of my score of 4/5. It was a tough quiz.

Ethics of Angry Birds

G: Why are the birds so angry at the pigs?
Me: Because it's the name of the game.
G: But why are they so angry at the pigs?
Me: Because... the pigs stole their eggs and they're mad about that.
G: But why don't the Birds just say "Please give us our eggs back" And the Pigs say "I'm sorry, here you go" and the Birds say "I forgive you."

Me:...I don't know. That would be a much nicer thing to do. But then there wouldn't be a game.

Cheap Toys vs Expensive Toys

We have lots of toys. I feel like it's too much. Most of the time they end up either staying in either the toy trunk (in the living room) or the toy bins (in the bedroom). Or they end up scattered, not played with, all over the apartment.
We have nice toys. Nice wooden blocks, play food and dishes, all of the My Little Ponies (except Applejack for some reason), a million stuffed animals...

Then we have what G actually plays with.

These are G's favourite toys:

Bullseye, Pikachu, Beaver

This is Bullseye (named for the horse on Toy Story), Pikachu and Beaver (his "real" name is DeWott, but G thinks he looks like a beaver). The two Pokemon toys come from McDonalds and Bullseye was a gift, but I'm pretty sure he's a McDonalds toy as well.
For at least the past six months, these have been her favourites.

You know, I don't really have a problem with it. She can choose whatever she wants as her favourite. But there is a little part of me that's frustrated that she loves these stupid McDonalds toys so much.

Oh, and the other much, much bigger problem. You see those toys up there? They are SMALL. They are stupidly small. Because they are so small they get lost ALL the TIME.
And since they are G's favourite, she is not satisfied when they can't be found. No other toy will substitute.

 We lost Beaver for 2 days and it was a tragedy. She was not even soothed by my wonderful stories of how he was off on an exciting adventure, and what great stories he would have to tell her when he got home!
We found him stuffed behind a chair in the living room, under the radiator. How it got there, who knows?

At the end of the night, the girls put their toys away, but these three don't always make it. Paul and I frequently come to bed to to find one of these three in our sheets.

Oh? And her favourite book?

This flyer. For Chuggington toys and DVDs.
Heaven forbid I should throw this priceless literature out. 

How I made my Halloween Costumes part 4

Last one of the bunch!

Paul as Batman:

Supplies:
-Grey long underwear (shirt) - $8 (Walmart)
-Grey long underwear (pants) - $8 (Walmart)
-Black felt (Dollar Store) - $1
-Dracula cape (Dollar Store) - $2
-Black Balaclava (Dollar Store) - $1
-Black rubber gloves (Dollar Store) - $1
-Black foam (Dollar Store) $1
-Yellow felt (same as Batgirl)
-Yellow foam (same as Batgirl)
-Black legwarmers (Dollar Store) $1
-Black shorts (on hand)




I luckily had an action-figure model for this one, so I based my costume on him!

Grey long underwear made this costume so much easier, it's the perfect thing for a superhero costume.
For the "underpants", Paul just took a pair of black shorts he had and rolled them up on the inside so they were much shorter.

For the bat-symbol, I cut and sewed felt onto the shirt.

The belt was just a circle of yellow felt (done up with a safety pin...classy, I know), with a bunch of folded-over yellow foam hotglued onto it. I drew buttons on with a gold marker. In the middle is a yellow bat-symbol, also out of foam.

The gloves were tricky. At first I made separate gauntlets out of black foam, but they just would not stay done up or on properly, so I just ended up adding the foam fins directly onto the rubber gloves with hot-glue.

Original Gloves: Did not work.

Second try: Much easier

The cowl didn't have the eye-holes, so I sewed the area, then cut them out (to prevent the knit from coming out). I had to do some creative alterations to get them to match where Paul's eyes are, which was the most frustrating part of this whole project. I added an extra nose-piece by cutting a triangle out of felt and sewing it between the eye-holes. I did the ears in the same way as Batgirl, just sewing felt to the sides of the balaclava.

The cape was quite easy, I cut the red collar off of a black vinyl dracula cape and then cut the bottom to look like Batman's cape. I just used safety pins to attach it to the cowl.

The boots are just black legwarmers, worn with black dress shoes. My dollar store is in love with leg warmers, so they were easy to find!
 

That's it! Those are my four Superhero costumes. I really enjoyed making them. I hope that I can continue to have the time make Halloween costumes while my kids are little.