Random Ramblings

•  Charlotte learned how to catapult herself over the crib rail this afternoon when she did not want to take her nap.  She goes to the back of the crib, runs into the rail and then flips over it.  Very safe. We spent the rest of the afternoon taking down the crib and taking the twin bed on her room off the bed frame so she could spend her first night in her big girl bed.  

• The first night Trey spent in his big boy bed we laid him down and he stayed in bed and never got out and went right to sleep.  Charlotte screamed and ran to open the door anytime I left the room so I finally laid in bed with her.  Not wanting her to think that would happen every night, Jay came in and laid on the floor next to her bed until she was asleep.  

• Today after church we had to drive across the street to Wal-Mart to pick up something.  While in the Walmart parking lot you can see the church down in the valley below.  Trey explained while looking at the church and homes around it, "Look there is my big town.  God made me a big town and the tractor helped Him." 

• I have been doing the Insanity workouts after school each day.  With a holiday weekend last weekend and 2 snow days in the past 2 weeks we haven't been doing much Insanity.  I didn't fall behind in my workout schedule so I have been completing the Insanity workouts at home using a video someone posted of herself doing Insanity each day on youtube. The videos I have done before are not too hard to follow because you can hear ShaunT's voice in the back ground.  I spent cardio abs basically laying on my mat trying to figure out what to do because the girl in the video kept taking breaks and trying to figure out how to do the moves.  

• I have been using Myfitnesspal app on my phone to record all my calories for the day and doing the Insanity workouts everyday since Jan. 7th and I have only lost 2 lbs.  Kinda discouraging but when you do Insanity it burns a crazy amount of calories, so the app adds more calories I can eat each day I workout.  Basically I workout so I can eat more and not go to sleep starving. 

• Charlotte has become very clingy lately.  She wants to sit in my lap for meals, for me to hold her hand in the car and basically she comes up to me all the time and says, "Hold you Mommy?"  How can you resist? The only way we could get her to eat dinner in her seat the other night was to put her baby in a high chair beside her and she could show baby how to stay in her seat. 

• Today during their afternoon snack Trey kept putting a colander on his face as a shield.  This was how he explained it to Charlotte.  "Charlotte, this is good for my face because it protects it, but I can still see you." 

• We have a chance for some freezing rain tonight so I was hoping for a 2 hour delay at school to make the morning I little bit easier.  I decided if I waited until the morning to make lunches we would be on time.  I went ahead and made lunches and when I sat at my computer after I finished they called a two hour delay for us.  To my coworkers: you are welcome :) 

Minnie Party Part 2

Since there were so many pictures of Charlotte's party I had to break it into two posts.  Here is the best part of the party- the presents and cupcakes :)

Charlotte is opening up her new vacuum from Grandma and Grandpa.  The best thing is it actually collects dirt!  She loves to push it around and help me clean!

Charlotte and Trey love Uncle Mark and were so happy when he participated in the party festivities. 

Nana made bean bags for the kids that spelled out their names.  When I told Charlotte they spelled her name she said, "T-r-e-y" which made me laugh so hard! I tried to explain that was Trey's name and her name was "C-h-a-r-l-o-t-t-e" but I guess she has heard him spell his name so often she associated those letters with the word name.  The fabric is different for each of their bean bags and they like to match the e and r from both their names. 

 This is the bean bag board that Papa made them.  They love throwing the bean bags into each hole. 

 I wanted to get Charlotte a personalized stool from etsy for her birthday, but they were all way more than I wanted to pay for a stool, so my cousins found one at Target and my cousin Jayla painted it for Charlotte.  It turned out way cuter than the ones I saw on etsy!

My parents brought up my doll cradle from when I was a little girl.  I got it when I turned 2 and Charlotte got it on her 2nd birthday.  Charlotte also got a cabbage patch doll that came with a blankie and paci, Charlotte's favorite things in the world.  She loves to lay the baby down for a nap and give her the paci and blankie and sing Jesus Loves Me to the baby.  

After a whole house search for a lighter, we finally found one to light her birthday cupcake! We had this same problem at Trey's party last year.  Next time I know to look for a lighter before the party starts!  We keep hiding them up high so the kids can't get to them and then I forget where I hid them.  

Charlotte dove right into her cupcake!  She really liked the icing.  

 I am not sure how many cupcakes Trey ate during the party.  I put them as a table centerpiece and didn't realize Trey could get to them until he ate his first cupcake when the party started.  Whenever he was quiet I would look over and he had stolen another one!  I think he only ended up eating 2 1/2 altogether, but it was way more sugar than he needed without a nap! 

Charlotte had so much fun at her party and loved that her family could be there to celebrate with her!  Happy Birthday Charlotte! 

Minnie Mouse

We celebrated Charlotte's birthday with a Minnie Mouse party.  It was a really easy theme to decorate for and Charlotte loves Minnie Mouse! Thank you to my cousin Jillian for taking most of these pictures so Jay and I could enjoy the party!

 The kids were Mickey and Minnie for Halloween this past year so I had them wear their costumes again to match the party theme. Here is the birthday girl ready for her party!

I love using the chalkboard for special occasions!  On the basement door we set up the game "Pin the ring on Minnie." 

All the food set up.  I had a disaster with attempting to make marshmallows on Friday night and Saturday morning and I couldn't get all the sticky off the kitchen island, so I used Minnie wrapping paper as a table runner.  One of our friends from church had a Mickey party last summer and they shared the Mickey topiaries and bowls with us.  

We took out the Christmas cards from the kitchen frames and put in Charlotte's birth announcement, her invitations to last year's party and this year's parties.  These frames are so easy to change decorations in and out. 

The only problem is some of the 3-D parts to the decorations get squished.  The pink in the middle is Charlotte's Minnie Mouse invitation Jay made.  I pinned a bunch of ideas and then Jay cut all the paper and created the wording using Disney font on his computer.  The bow is really 3-D in real life.  

 I had planned to have a hot chocolate bar for they party and despite being 70 degrees outside we still enjoyed the hot chocolate! I made the hot chocolate in the crock pot and it was very chocolatey! We had crushed heath bar, white and semi-sweet chocolate chips, crushed peppermint candies and "marshmallow fluff" (the homemade marshmallow disaster) to top on the hot chocolate.

 We did cupcakes instead of a Minnie cake to make life a little easier.  Thank you A.C. for these cute Minnie cupcake toppers so we didn't have to create our own!

 

In the dining room we decorated the top of the buffet.  I painted white foam balls from Walmart pink and white and used polka dot ribbon with a Minnie cut out to finish off the hurricane vases.  We used the table runner my mom made for Charlotte's cupcake party last year.  Jay had given me flowers for my anniversary earlier in the week so I broke up the arrangement and placed them around the house.  Jay made a Minnie Mouse printable on his computer that we framed too.  

After we ate the kids played "Pin the ring on Minnie."  I got the game at the party store and I knew they would love it.  Trey wanted to wear the blindfold to play, even though he kept peeking! 

Charlotte did not want to wear the blindfold, but she had fun putting the ring stickers on Minnie too. 

More party pictures to come soon!

Sledding

Thursday and Friday we had our first "real" snow this year. Trey and Charlotte were so excited to go sledding on Friday morning.  At our house the snow was minimal and very wet so by Friday morning the top layer was just a sheet of ice, perfect for getting lots of speed on the sled!  Here are some videos of the kids sledding.

Year 2

I love looking through all the photos to see how Charlotte has grown!  From her birthday party last year to Christmas a few weeks ago, I can't believe how fast the year went by!

Happy Birthday Charlotte!

Today Charlotte turns two! This was our conversations tonight before bedtime.

Mommy: "Charlotte, how old are you now?"
Charlotte: "Two!"
Mommy: "That's right, you're Mommy's big girl now."
Charlotte: "NO! I Mommy's baby, 'member?"

That pretty much sums up Charlotte.  She is quite the little personality!  Charlotte is a social butterfly and loves to be around people.  She waves to every car on the way out of church and wants to wave to every older lady in the grocery store.  Charlotte went from a sweet baby at 1 year old to a full blown toddler who runs, talks, and knows what she wants.

She still absolutely adores her brother and wants to make sure he is included in everything.  Any time I tell her she can get something or do something she always says, "Trey too!"  and wants him to get whatever she is getting.  If Trey is upset she will say, "Trey's sad." and want you to go help him.  She will also bring him toys when he is in timeout or try to take his temperature if he doesn't feel well.  Charlotte is old enough for them to play together now and they love to play parade, hide and seek and do crafts together.

Charlotte has just started to really enjoy playing with her baby dolls.  She will sing to them, feed them, and lay them down for a nap.  She loves to brush the baby's hair and put hair bows in the baby's hair.  It is so sweet to watch her play with the dolls because Trey isn't interested, so she does it all by herself. 

Charlotte is still a really good eater.  She will eat almost any fruit and try whatever you are eating.  Some of her favorite foods are: oatmeal, beans, applesauce, yogurt, any fruit, spaghetti, mac and cheese, tacos and black bean salsa!  She doesn't really care for vegetables, but will gobble up any bean we put in front of her. It is so nice that she will eat or at least try whatever we have for dinner.   Due to her peanut allergy, Charlotte eats sunbutter sandwiches.  She doesn't seem to miss the peanut butter at all.  Her favorite thing to do with food is dip it in a sauce, especially syrup or pizza sauce!

Charlotte still naps once a day in the afternoon for about an hour to two hours.  She sleeps from 7-7 at night and hardly ever wakes up in the middle of the night.  We are getting ready to move her to a big girl bed hopefully this month.  She still loves her blanket and paci and has to have them to sleep.  At night before bathtime she pees in the little Elmo potty.  I am not sure I am really to do potty training again, but Charlotte will definitely be ready soon. 

Charlotte talks nonstop.  She will talk on the phone, to her toys, or just tell you constantly what she or Trey is doing.  Every day she says new words and phrases.  Her favorite phrase is, "Oh, Man!" whenever she drops something or something doesn't do what she wants.  It is so funny to hear what she says and comes up with.  Her other new favorite phrase is "I do 'self"  meaning, "I do it myself."

 Charlotte's personality is so fun to be around and we love the joy she adds to our family.  Happy Birthday sweet girl!

Making Cookies

The week before Christmas I kept asking the kids to make cookies with me.  I showed them the picture in the cookbook for Christmas cookies and tried to hype it up that we could decorate them with icing and sprinkles, but Trey kept insisting that we only make cookies with brown things in them (translation: chocolate chips).  Finally 2 days before Christmas I decided we were going to make Christmas cookies, even if I was the only one who did it.  Charlotte was interested once I started pulling out all the ingredients. 

Trey was content playing with the measuring tape instead of baking with us girls. He did not want any part in making cookies without chocolate chips.   Can you see the toy explosion behind him that happened every day over Christmas break? 

Finally Trey decided to scoop out the last few ingredients. 

After a couple of hours in the fridge, the dough was firm enough to roll out. 

 

Charlotte and Trey both liked making lots of different shapes.  

 Waiting for the cookies to cook and cool was taking a little too long so the kids enjoyed candy canes for the first time!

On Christmas Eve we decorated the cookies to have some to leave out for Santa. 

 Of course we had to taste test a few too.