Wednesday, February 29, 2012

What We Wore Wednesday


Today I thought I'd give Charlie a little love and post a What We Wore Wednesday-Charlie Style.  Today Charlie has on a green and white striped sweater from the Gap, Gap jeans, and the cutest booties given to him by my friend Ashley (from Sasa's Handcrafts on Etsy).

Heather

Tuesday, February 28, 2012

Breakfast for Bea

As I mentioned in a post last week I'm actively working on getting out of our chicken nugget, pb&j, fish stick rut for Bea.  My sister turned me on to making smoothies for her and I have to say, it's a brilliant idea.  I can "sneak" in (although since she helps me make everything it's hardly sneaking) veggies.  Here's what we had the other morning for breakfast.


This smoothie consisted of low fat vanilla yogurt, milk, frozen berries, spinach leaves, vanilla, and ground flax. I served it with toast with butter and jelly.  Bea was so excited to help me make it and ate a lot more than I had anticipated.  I'll probably try at least one version of this a week.

Heather

Monday, February 27, 2012

Registering for Baby-Part 1, Diapering

One of my good friends, Jenny (from ILOVEAGOOD), is pregnant with her first child and she asked if I would help her create her registry.  Since I've prepped for a baby twice now I feel like I have pretty strong opinions on things.  I'm also the type of person who likes to read reviews but ultimately try things out for myself so I can form my own opinion.  And the more I can try the better.  I blame this on my years as an editor, we would look at hundreds of items before choosing the things for our pages.  As we were combing through the onesies, strollers, and swings Jenny suggested that I do a series on registering.  I'm starting off with Diapering and each week I'll add a new part, so stay tuned!  And please feel free to let me know if there's anything I've overlooked or that you find you can't live without!!

Diapering:

Probably the thing you will use the most of during the first few years of your little ones life.  After much debate I decided on the disposable route for both of my kiddos.  With Bea I never even considered cloth diapering (no particular reason, I honestly just didn't even think about it) and with Charlie I really took into consideration the pros of cloth diapering (money being the driving factor).  In the end we chose to stick with disposables.  My go to diaper for newborns is Pampers Swaddlers

I've tried most of the major brands and this is hands down my favorite.  I find that it not only contains the most (which you'll appreciate for the blow outs!) but there's also a line indicator that turns from yellow to blue when your little one is wet.  I'm also a big fan of Amazon Mom, it's a subscribe and save service from Amazon that allows you to set up monthly (or any schedule of your choosing) deliveries for diapers, wipes, etc and offers you a discount for doing so.

If you decide that cloth is the way you want to go I would suggest bum Genius.  I found this post from Young House Love to answer any and every question I had regarding cloth diapering too.

In addition to diapers you'll need to choose wipes.  In the first few weeks you'll want to stay away from traditional wipes (babies skin is too sensitive).  I had no idea about this until my friend Nicola told me right before Bea was born.  She suggested using Viva paper towels and that's what we went with for both of our kids.  They are super soft and super thick.  


After about a month you can switch to regular wipes.  Again, I've tried all of them at one point or another and I keep coming back to two brands, Seventh Generation and Target's Up & Up brand.



I use them pretty equally, it's just a matter of which I have on hand (the Seventh Generation ones I order off of Amazon Mom as well).  As a bonus I use the Seventh Generation to clean faces with as well, since there are no harsh chemicals or chlorine.  

On to diaper cream.  This is another category that I feel like I've tried a fair number of choices out there.  For day diaper cream (granted, most people probably don't divide up diaper cream, but I'll explain my reasons shortly) we use California Baby Diaper Cream.  It has a wonderful subtle smell to it and isn't so thick that it's stuck to their bum all day (reason number 1 for a "daytime" diaper cream).  

  
For nighttime diapering I prefer something that's thicker and so we go with Aquaphor.  I've also used Burt's Bees which is great as well.  


Stay tuned for additional posts in the series!

Heather 

Thursday, February 23, 2012

Dinner for Bea

I've really been trying to shake things up a little bit when it comes to Bea's mealtimes.  I've found myself falling into the same routine of pb&j, chicken nuggets, pancakes, fish sticks.  You know, all of those things that most kids love and will eat.  The thing is, when we first started table food with Bea she did such a good job.  Salmon, gobbled it up, broccoli, couldn't get enough of it.  I'm not really sure where we went wrong but now she pretty much refuses to eat veggies and has become so picky about everything.  I'm sure part of it is being a toddler but part of it is also my fault that I keep feeding her the same things over and over.

So, when I read that Lauren from with two cats was starting a series called Mini Meals I decided to start putting more of an effort into Bea's meals.  Here's what was for dinner tonight.


Whole wheat "pizzas" using English muffins, pasta sauce, pepperoni (a favorite of Bea's), and cheese along with roasted butternut squash, and grapes/dried cranberries.

Heather

St. Patty's Day Sensory Box

Inspired by our Valentine's Day sensory box from Pink and Green Mama today I decided to create a St. Patty's Day sensory box for Bea.


I used our bin from Home Depot (I really need a larger one but haven't gotten around to buying one), colored rice from this tutorial, green pom poms from a pack I found at Target's dollar spot (there are also pink, blue, and purple in the pack), a coffee scoop, and the gems, shamrocks, and Easter eggs all came from the Dollar Tree.  When I picked ours up a few weeks ago the St. Patty's Day items were almost gone, but I have a feeling that's more about our Dollar Tree location than anything else.  I'm sure you would still be able to find some.

Bea has such a great time with these sensory boxes that I'm definitely planning on more.  I've saved a few ideas of others on my Pinterest page, if you're interested.  


Tuesday, February 21, 2012

Sticky Paint

We haven't painted in a few weeks (which Bea loves) so today I thought we would try sticky painting.

 
I saw this post on sticky painting over at Play At Home Mom and it's just corn syrup and food coloring.  I also added in some glitter glue and glitter for Bea to add to her creation.


She loved not only the paint but also the glitter and glitter glue, I think we went through at least two little containers of glitter (but she was very specific about when and where all of that glitter went).  The only downside was cleaning up all of the glitter!  And, as a bonus the paint dries shiny.

Heather

Thursday, February 16, 2012

Cooking with Kids

I love to cook and before we had kids I used to spend hours on meals.  I'm not sure that they were also good, but I enjoy being in the kitchen and creating.  As Bea has gotten older it's been harder and harder to keep her occupied while I'm making dinner (or any meal for that matter).  So yesterday I decided that instead of trying to keep her busy with something else, I would see how it went cooking together.  I had picked up some zucchini over the weekend and found a recipe for Chocolate Zucchini Bread from Paula Deen (spoiler alert, not one bit of butter!).

 Carefully pouring sugar

 Mixing

Ready to bake

I'm sure the pictures speak for themselves (especially the one with the huge grin) but Bea LOVED IT!  In fact this morning she was still talking about how she put sugar in the bowl and got to stir.  And I was pleasantly surprised at how well she listened and did exactly what I asked of her, from pouring the sugar to standing back away from the oven as I put the bread in to bake.  And the best part of all was that she actually ate some of the bread with her dinner.  And I know it was sweetened with sugar and chocolate but the fact that I was able to have her eat any vegetables is a success!

Finished product


Heather 

Tuesday, February 14, 2012

Happy Valentine's Day

Our Superbowl Trip

Well, we all didn't really go to the Superbowl, just T for work.  Since Indy is about 3 hours from my sister's family we decided that it would be a fun trip.  Plus, I wouldn't be alone caring for Bea and Charlie for over a week.

Both kids did really well on the flight despite having a delay before we even left Newark.

Charlie's first flight

Charlie slept for most of our 2 flights and Bea slept a little and kept busy watching Sesame Street on the iPad and playing with her packet of stickers I brought along.  I made several busy bags for her, but we didn't end up using them.  Better safe than sorry though, right?

And once we made it to my sister's she had a blast!  Here's a few pics

 Playing dress up

 Tea party

 Duck pin bowling

Milkshake!

It was so nice to see everyone and Bea loved playing with her cousins.  The girls are finally old enough to actually play together (with minimal fighting!).  All she's talked about since we've been back are Olivia and Ella, hopefully we'll see them again soon!

Heather 

Monday, February 13, 2012

Valentine's Day Sensory Box

For awhile now I've wanted to make a sensory box for Bea.  I've seen tons of great ideas online and decided to finally do it this weekend.


I went with a Valentine's Day theme after seeing this cute image on Pinterest.  The idea came from a blog called Pink and Green Mama.  We did a lot of the same things, dyed the rice pink using gel food coloring and alcohol (although next time I will absolutely add essential oils, the alcohol smell was overwhelming) and I also ran across the heart and lip containers in the dollar spot at Target.  In addition to those things I added some foam heart stickers (which Bea didn't want anywhere near her containers), a coffee scoop for scooping rice, a set of measuring spoons that I found at the Dollar Tree, some clear "gems" I found at the Dollar Tree, and a purple Easter egg container (this one Bea found and added, guess she didn't get the memo about it being a Valentine's Day box!).

I can't even tell you how excited she was to play with this.  I had it on her table when she woke up from her nap and just let her find it.  I think within 10 seconds of coming down the stairs she had it spotted and went straight to it and started scooping.  It did take a lot of "the rice goes in the bin, not on the floor" but part of that is also my fault, I think we need a bigger bin for her.  After playing with it about 30 minutes or so she wanted to do something else so we put it away, but she asked several times over the weekend to bring it back out, which we did.

    

Heather

Wednesday, February 1, 2012

Book Mobile


The Invisible String was a Christmas gift for Bea from a close friend of ours.  In it a set of twins are awoken by a storm outside and go to find their mother who tells them the story of the invisible string that connects them to her no matter where they are and so they have nothing to fear.

We've just started reading books that are a little bit longer than she's used to and this was an instant hit.  I think we must have read it a hundred times the first week we had it.  And with such a sweet message I didn't mind one bit!

Heather