Holy Mary's

When I was little, my grandma taught me to say a prayer (Hail Mary) whenever I heard a siren, for the person who was having an emergency. It's a habit I've carried through life, and I've been teaching Gemma to do the same thing. On the way to the grocery store today we heard and saw a rescue squad go by us, so we said our Hail Mary. Well, when we pulled in the grocery store parking lot there happened to be a fire truck sitting there, and Gemma looked at it, pointed to the siren on top and said, "oh, it haves a Holy Mary on it". Pretty cute correlation I thought.

Bears

I have decided to begin some at-home learning and faith formation activities with Gemma, and eventually Kolbe and any other future children with whom we are blessed. We intend to send our kids to Catholic schools, but I feel that the home should be the first place for education, especially when it comes to raising our children in the Faith. I want our home to be an environment where our children can explore, create and learn about life and our Catholic Faith through play and other activities as we go about our days, whether they are attending a school or not.

I recently purchased some counting bears for Gemma. I had these in my classroom when I taught preschool and just thought they were a wonderful manipulative for preschoolers. Gemma is working on mastering color identification, so I thought they would be great for that, plus some pre-math and counting activities when she is ready. She really seems to like them, and asks to use them often. She mainly just dumps and scoops them from cup to cup, but if I'm sitting with her and helping her to sort them and identify the colors she seems to have fun with that, too. She has shown a great affinity for the color purple, and brought me a container of "pepple" ones that she sorted out all by herself this morning!! I was very proud, as was she (you can tell by her smile).
I have been looking at some montessori items online, and have all kinds of fun ideas for this coming Christmas and January birthdays as we continue living and learning together!

Gemma-isms

Days in the life of Gemma are never dull, especially now that she is getting more conversational...

Gemma - while standing on her stepstool at the counter last evening, wearing no pants and eating refried beans straight from the can by the spoonful - proclaims, "MMMmmmmmmm, this is YUMMY pumpkin pie!!" --Ooooooookay!!

She has quite the independent spirit and strong will, and will often be heard to say, "I do it, IIIIIIIIII do it!" She can't say it just once, for whatever reason, and always puts quite strong inflection on "I" the second time around.

She often uses the word "actually," which I just find funny coming from the mouth of a two year old. I guess I must say it a lot.

She is obsessed with our heater. When we started playing in the basement this winter the sound of it running really scared her, so we took her to look at it and show her that "it's not scary." Which she will say often about random things. And very often during the day she will say, "I want to see heeeeaaater." So we take her to see it and she says, "it's NOT scaaaaary".

A lot of times Kolbe will be sleeping in the honey (her name for the front carrier) or on my lap or the couch or wherever, and after making an obscene amount of noise, touching his face and giving hugs, and being generally disruptive, she will look at me and say with sheer and utter amazement, "MOMMY!! He wake up!!" --Nooooooooooo, ya think?!!

When she is finished with something or doesn't want it, she will say she doesn't like it. For instance, the other morning she put her beloved blankie down and said, "I do not LIKE my blankie". Yeah right. I think perhaps she doesn't quite get the definition of the word "like" yet.

One of her favorite books as always been "Are You My Mother" by P.D. Eastman (or, in her words "Are You Monner" by P.D. EasMAAAANNNN". Anyways, in the board-book version, the baby bird goes down down down, PLOP! Thus, whenever Gemma wants down (from her chair, from being held, etc.) she doesn't ask to get down, she asks to get "down down plop". Always get some funny looks for that one.

While at Mass a few weekends ago, I accidentally bumped Gemma, so I whispered, "excuse me," to her. She responded, in quite a plain and out loud voice, "Mommy, did you make a toot?"

After a recent cold, she became aware of her boogers, and often tells me all about them. Recently she told me, while examining her "find" very closely, "that's a fine booger right there." --Hmmmmm, glad it met your approval.

Okay, that's enough for now. Hope you got at least a few chuckles from that. As I said, I am always quite entertained by her cute little personality.

Cuties

Here are some recent pics of the kids. Sometimes I just start snapping with the camera and I can't stop. ;-D How on earth did people survive before digital photography?!!

The evolution of help

I like to find little chores for Gemma to help me with around the house, I just think it's good for her. She likes to load the washer and unload the dryer and is beginning to get a grasp on putting some of her laundry away (one piece at a time, of course ;-D). I have her put her jammies back in her drawer or in the dirty clothes each morning, and she can, for the most part, undress herself at the end of the day and put her dirty clothes in the basket and her diaper in the pail. She also loves helping me unload the dishwasher, and boy has she come a long way.

From this (last October), when she just randomly threw the silverware in the drawer by the handful...
To this (she's standing on her stepstool)...
...putting all of the silverware away, by herself, in the correct spots. She didn't quite get the sizing right on all the spoons and forks, but all the forks were in fork slots, spoons in spoon slots, etc. I was so tickled. I am very proud of my Gemma-goo and the big helper she is getting to be.

Baby room updates

Kolbe still sleeps in our room, but he will sleep in the baby room eventually. When we had Gemma I bought a gender-neutral bed-set at a consignment sale and I just LOVE it. I hope we can use it for all our kids, and as that type of thing just doesn't get much wear, I don't see why we won't be able too. Well, when I bought it, it came with the quilt, bumper, bed-skirt, sheets and window valances. I picked up a matching rug and night-light, as Babies-R-Us was closing out this set around the time Gemma was born, too, so I felt I really lucked out. Well, I was at the consignment store that I frequent today as I had some items to consign, and I stumbled across the matching wall-hangings and quilt clips for our set. I could hardly believe it!! I had debated about the wall hangings at BRU two years ago and decided not to get them, but since Kolbe came and we've taken some of the little girl stuff down, the walls have been very bare, so this is just PERFECT!!! With the stuff I was leaving, I was able to basically take these items for "free" and still have some store-credit left over. I'm pretty excited. I've already got them all hung (thanks to the help of my hubby, who definitely has more an eye for this type of thing than I do). So here you go!
Quilt clips
And I had to throw in a pic of my cutie kiddos, just for kicks. It's so nice to be dressing them in spring clothes.

Prayer space

I decided it would be nice to have a prayer space in our house. Somewhere to keep our Bibles, rosaries, and other prayer/religious items all together, that can remind our family to live always as Christ asks us. I debated about several different spots, and even thought I may need to buy some sort of small table, but in the end decided to just use one of our end tables in the living room, as that is a place that we are often together, and I wanted it somewhere that it would be seen and used (IE not the basement or a bedroom or something). I left the lamp (and actually put a bulb in it...it hadn't had one up to this point) as I thought the soft light would be nice to have on during prayer time. I used some birthday money from my parents to purchase the Holy Family picture, I thought it was a nice "staple" piece upon which to reflect. The white candle is in representation of the current liturgical season (Easter). We will have green for ordinary time and violet for Lent and Advent. The tiny crucifix is nice, as Gemma can hold it and "give Jesus a kiss". We'll see if we need to find a different home for it once Kolbe is crawling, I don't want it to be a choking hazard. The angel statue was something I had, and in that spot I intend to change out various items, for instance a Mary statue during the month of May, or different saint pictures for various feasts, etc. I also placed our Children's Bible on the table-top for Gemma to look at and for us to read together. On the space below is the kids' wooden Noah's Ark set. I thought it would be nice to have some sort of religious toy down there, since it's a low space convenient for keeping something for the kids anyways. I also got this book for my birthday upon the recommendation of a good friend. I hope to begin incorporating some activities, crafts, stories etc. into our days to help Gemma (and Kolbe) continue learning with our family the richness that is our Faith.

Crown molding

We recently had crown molding installed in our master bedroom. It was a neat process, and we were very pleased with how it turned out.
A close-up
We also hung our Christ and Theotokos icons above the bed . They were an anniversary present last summer. Any tips on how they should be placed? We currently have Christ on the left (His own right) but an Orthodox friend mentioned he thought they should be the other way. I did some digging and can't really find information one way or the other. Anyone know??

Professional Pics - April 2010

We recently took Gemma (2 yrs/3 mos.) and Kolbe (3 mos.) in to Portrait Innovations for some professional pictures. It was fun to get some of the two of them together, and of course some individual shots too. Prying Gemma's baby-doll out of her hands long enough to get good pictures of her was another story. :-) Live and learn. Anyways, I recently sent out pics to some of our friends and family, but thought I would post some of our favorite poses on here so you could see what all we did!! I'm pleased with the results, and tickled to have some updated photos around the house.

Kolbe Saturdays I

Kolbe is three months old today. WOW!!! He was born on a Saturday, and I thought it would be neat to take a picture of him every Saturday for the first year of his life. Rather than post all 52 at once on here, I thought I'd do it in quarters. So, here's the first edition, weeks zero through twelve!

A bit of sewing

I did some sewing this afternoon!! My sewing time has been few and far between since Kolbe was born, and that's fine, but I was tickled to get a project that I'd been mulling over for awhile completed. I am constantly poking holes in the pad on our changing table with my wedding ring. We've already replaced it (the pad, not the ring) once, and careful as I try to be, we already have several tears in our current one. It seemed wasteful to keep tossing them and buying new ones, and the tape I put over the tears only works for so long before it starts peeling and looking bad. So Aaron mentioned that maybe I could put my sewing skilz to work and craft some sort of cover. After mulling it over for much longer than I needed to (months, I tell you), I finally decided to get my hiney in gear and figure something out. I love it when I can do a sewing project that costs me little to no money in supplies, and this ended up being one of those. We have a whole bunch of those one-layer flannel receiving blankets sitting around, and quite frankly I just don't use them very often. And if I do, one is enough, not 14 (see here for another blanket-recycling project I did). So I grabbed two that were big enough and went to work. I basically crafted a pillow-case type thing, but it was easier than just using regular flannel would have been as the edges were serged on the blankets, so I didn't need to finish the open part. I attached some Aplix that I use for my cloth diapers to the open end and was able to just tuck it under. It looks great (I think) and the really exciting part about this is that one of the receiving blankets that I used matches the basket liners on the table perfectly, so it looks like a set!!! YAY!!!!!
Here's a close-up of the print.
I was able to complete this while the kids were napping. Kolbe, for the first 3 months of his life, has slept mainly in the mei tai during the day. Just recently, however, it's beginning to seem that he sleeps better in the bassinet than he does being worn. He likes it if I "wear him" to sleep and then lay him down. Makes me a bit sad, but I thank God for the hours of special snuggly moments we've had (and I'm sure we'll still have plenty more). Doesn't he look sweet all crashed out?!

Playtime - blocks and stackables

Gemma has had her Build-n-Fun farm blocks set for about a year now, and they have been one of her favorite toys. Here is an example of her little analytical brain at work, using some of her Little People, her duckies, and the lid from the blocks.
This morning I heard her singing "The Wheels on the Bus" while playing blocks and thought her voice sounded a little odd. I looked in the living room and found this was why!! I ran across my stacking blocks from when I was a little girl while going through some things in the basement, and thought Gemma would like them. Sure enough!! She has always been fond of anything stackable, and as fun as the stacking is, the knocking down is even more fun for her!!!
And so as not to leave Kolbe out, here is a picture of him playing under the floor gym at my sister's house with his cousin Anna.

Gardening 2010

I am so blessed, my husband really takes such good care of our yard. He takes pride in the mowing and the landscaping and such, and it really has been a process the past three years we've lived in the house, but now that things are more the way we want them and starting to grow it is really looking great. So you'd think I'd have snapped pictures of all that, but oh no. Mental note...

Today, however, he took the kids and I to the store to pick out pretty annual flowers for our deck. They are completely unnecessary, and die every year with the first freeze in Fall (or before), but he knows how much I enjoy them throughout the summer so each year we add a few more. This year we got the two hanging baskets on the rails. I can see them right out our sliding glass door and I LOVE it!!!! We got everything home and even planted. Last year it was Gemma's and my project. This year it was so nice to have his help dumping the old pots out, adding new soil, sweeping up the mess...what a guy!! It really was a great end to a wonderful weekend.

I always like to take "before" pictures, so when everything is growing and thriving come mid-summer, I can look back and see where we started. So here you are!

Ageratum, marigolds, and some viney filler.
Petunias and another variety of viney filler.
Spike, geraniums and lobelia.
Begonias and purple queen spike, and my two little gardeners.