Craftiness

I've slowly been setting up shop in our home office/craft room. I was hoping that having my own space for all of my crafting and sewing supplies, with a door I could close to keep little people out and my messes contained, would encourage me to spend more time working on my projects. And although it isn't anywhere near as organized as I'd like for it to be, I'm downstairs working almost daily! 

Last weekend I decided to make a new dress for Madeline. The colors in these pictures are a little off, but I had the brown floral fat quarter and wanted to play around with a pillowcase style dress. Adding the ruffle and making the bias tape took me a bit, but I'm happy with how it turned out. 

I have a few other sewing projects for her and Joseph in the works. And I stare at the bag holding my still unfinished Advent Calendar every time I'm down there, so I know I need to spend the couple of hours putting it together soon!

After birthday season for us ended (3 birthdays in about 6 weeks!), I realized that I was missing having a fall wreath for the front door. I had fun looking at Pinterest for ideas, and came across a burlap wreath with hydrageas and a monogram that I really liked. Of course, it was just a picture from an Etsy seller, with a $70 price tag. After multiple trips to Jo-Ann and Hobby Lobby, I found the supplies I needed, read a few tutorials, and came up with this for about half the cost of the Etsy wreath:

I'm pleased with how it turned out, and so far it's holding up nicely. I'm glad we have a bit of protection over the front door, so unless it rains like crazy sideways, I don't have to think about bringing it inside at all. 

Joseph Updates

I feel bad not updating the blog with what Joseph's been up to, so he'll get his own post as well. Joseph is loving life at the new house, and had an awesome summer!

We took a trip down to the Lake of the Ozarks, where he got to spend a lot of time driving Papa's boat and spinning us in circles. He's getting pretty good, too, and loved spending every possible minute behind the wheel! 

He's having a lot of fun getting to know the neighborhood kids. One night in July some new friends invited us over for dinner. They have two girls, both almost exactly the same age as our kids. Joseph had a blast with Ellie, and after dinner she took him out to her play house where they enjoyed eating ice cream cones together. While she doesn't go to the same preschool as Joseph, we do see them out a lot, and he's started asking if Ellie will be where we headed. I'm so excited for him to get to start making friends that he'll have all through school at such a young age!

Joseph's imagination has completely taken off this summer as well. We spend a lot of time playing pirates, typically with Joseph as Captain Hook. After I brought home some popsicle molds, he realized that the stick part looked enough like a sword that we started using them for sword fights. One day, Joseph thought Joe should take one to work with him to "fight off the bad guys." How sweet!

When I was packing up the old house, I couldn't believe how many large boxes of toys we had. I dreaded Maddie's birthday and the excess that would come, so I requested that our friends not bring gifts. It's not like she would notice (or mind), and luckily we didn't end up with a lot of new things. I still think we need to purge, so last week Joseph and I made a very long paper chain, counting down the days until Christmas. He was really excited to help make the chain, and I explained that each day he could tear one link off. 

The catch is that he and I need to pick one thing a day to donate to other kids - books, toys, clothes, whatever. We will see how well this continues, but so far he's gotten over the initial desire to just pick Maddie's toys, and is making really good progress about picking those toys that he never plays with. 

When it came to choosing something from his bedroom this weekend, he surprised me when he sorted through his stuffed animals, pulled out his Mickey Mouse and handed it to me. I asked him if he really wanted to give Mickey away, knowing that just a few nights prior he pulled Mickey into bed with him when he was nervous about some bad weather we were having. His response? "Mom, Mickey is a good friend to sleep with, but I have all of those other stuffed animals over there (gestures to the full basket). So I think a boy or girl who doesn't have a toy would like Mickey to sleep with them and be their friend." I kid you not, those words, almost verbatim, came out of his mouth. I was really proud, and knew that he really did understand why we were going through this activity. I'm hoping I can sort through the things that just need to go to Goodwill versus finding a place to take Joseph to make a donation, so he can see the end result a little better.

While we were making the chain, Joseph started singing to himself. He's becoming more interested in the words in various songs, and will frequently just break into song. I captured him singing while making the chain, after just a bit of reminding that he had been singing before I started recording:

Finally, Joseph is LOVING gymnastics class. He looks forward to it all week, and I'm thinking we may need to sign him up for another day of classes next spring. He seems to have a strong aptitude for it, although running is still his strongest skill - check out the last video. The teacher breaks their skills sets in half, and to transition they all start on a red line on one side of the gym and run the perimeter. Joseph is consistently the fastest, and this week it was almost funny how much further ahead he was of the rest of the class!

Maddie Updates

Someday I will figure out how to best manage my days so that I can accomplish everything I want. Right now, it's still crazy thinking how little we have scheduled each day (besides gymnastics on Monday, preschool Tuesday and Thursday, Friday morning neighborhood playgroups, of course!) and yet I still haven't figured out a good system for keeping the house cleaned, grocery shopping done, food made, going to the gym, playing with the kids, sewing/crafting, blogging and trying to keep up with the home improvement projects we need/want to do. Sigh.

Anyway, a lot has been going on with the kids since I've stopped daily, or weekly, blogging. Now that I'm starting back on compiling our family yearbook/blog book for 2011, 2012 and starting 2013, I'm realizing how much I need to stay on top of this portion so that we don't forget the little details that make this crazy life fun!

Maddie's growing by leaps and bounds at this point. She's still not walking, although is happy, upon request, to pop from a tripod stance up to standing by herself. She'll do it over and over, but has yet to even really try to take a step. She's gotten really good about going up and more importantly, down the stairs by herself. We started teaching her how to go down them a few weeks before her 1st birthday, and ended up taking down the baby gates right after her birthday party. So far, no tumbles down these stairs!

When we moved into the house, the stairway echoed quite a bit, and the rug from Joseph's old bedroom was a perfect fit for the landing, so it ended up there. Now that Maddie has access to it, she loves hanging out on the landing, quickly crawling from spot to spot, spinning around in the closest thing we can equate to puppy spasms. Or she'll plop down, head on the rug, bottom up in the air, and just lay there for a few minutes before getting up and finding a new spot to lay down on.

Maddie's also quite the cuddly little girl. She loves giving face hugs, where she'll smush her face into yours, and will give this little "ohhh" sigh whenever she does. It's the sweetest thing, especially when she'll crawl over to Molly, lay in her neck and give her happy love sigh.

Most mornings she's awake by 6am, but not happy about it. She's still demanding a bottle first thing, and typically will spend the next 30-45 minutes cuddling back and forth between Joe and me, trying to smush in as closely as possible. Some days she'll fall right back asleep, other days she prefers just to soak up the attention and cuddle time. Until she gets antsy, and starts asking for Joseph. He knows that "morning isn't until 7am," and usually is pretty good about staying in his room until then.

Maddie's starting to talk, and really listens to how we say words, trying her hardest to imitate. Dada was definitely her first word, but about a month ago she started saying Jo-Jo ("do-do"). Next? We had mama for a few days before the trip to California, and when I got back, mama had been replaced with, what else? Papa! She'll say mama every once in a while, typically when she's angry or upset about something. Right around her birthday she started saying "ball," but with typical Madeline flair - she'll see a ball, point, and exclaim (and I do mean exclaim!) "Baaa!!" Every time. It's so cute.

She's getting a lot of use out of the "b" words. Her hairbow display hangs near her crib, and she's obsessed with them. Multiple times every day she points at them, emphatically shouting "bow." She loves having us put them in her hair, upon which she'll promptly try to feel it on her head, pull it off, hand it to us and say "bow!" insisting we put it back in her hair. Over and over and over. Every once in a while after we put one in her hair, she'll get distracted enough to leave it alone for a few minutes.

We're also back into the world of baby sign language. So far, Maddie signs "more," "milk," "eat," "all done," "please," "thank you" fairly frequently. It seems that any time she watches one of the baby signing movies and we ask her to sign something, she pauses briefly, and then will do it, and it's in her repertoire. It's been wonderful having a way to communicate with her, especially since she's so quick to fuss. :)

On Tuesday she cut another tooth - bottom left, next to the middle ones. She's working on the opposite bottom tooth, and I imagine it'll be here by this weekend, if it isn't already. That's made for some fussy days, particularly this past Saturday morning, when we had her 1st birthday pictures.  I'm sure Sarah, our photographer, was able to get some good shots, but for now, here's our sneak peak picture.

Maddie's 1st birthday!

Somehow a whole year has passed already, and Madeline is officially 1! We had a little party to celebrate on Saturday, and invited a few of the neighbor families we've met, a few old friends and family. Thank goodness we're now living in a house that has multiple spaces to entertain in, as it was one hot day, almost too hot to play outside.

It's really fun that we've met so many people with 3 year olds and babies right around Maddie's age. She and Joseph had lots of fun playing with their own friends. Ben and Kristin made the long trek from Lee's Summit with their daughter, Emerson, who will be 1 in just a few days as well!

When I realized we should have a party, and parties are more fun with themes, the first thing that popped into my head as one of Madeline's favorite things was ice cream. So I went all out on her ice cream themed birthday... thanks to Pinterest!

I made these ruffled ice cream cones to hang on the chandelier, and baked cupcakes inside ice cream cones. The kids thought those were great! We also had a bunch of different flavors of ice cream and toppings, along with a traditional cake.  I apparently forgot to take a picture, but made ice cream cone cake pops as party favors that were so adorable! I was really excited how they turned out.

While I wasn't going to complain about a lunchtime party with nothing but sugar, I figured we should also have some real lunch food as well - so there were party sandwiches, chips, and fresh fruit in waffle bowls, of course.

I also found a picture of these adorable ice cream cone party hats online, so I finished making them late Friday night.

Maddie's second smash cake... the first attempt turned out awful and not picture worthy. It ended up in the trash (there was so much cake floating around the kitchen this week, I didn't feel compelled to save it and eat it!)

Papa came by after dropping Nana off at the airport. She was on her way out to New York to meet the newest cousin, who will hopefully be born tomorrow!

Scotty B rocking the party hat as no one else could.

Maddie was much more dainty with the smash cake than I thought she would. After we sung happy birthday, I put out the big cake and ice cream for everyone to eat, and while she enjoyed having the attention on her, she really wanted her own ice cream cone instead of the cake. I shouldn't have been surprised at all.

 She never really smashed the cake, just ate bits and pieces and started rubbing lots into her hair.
Mason sat quietly the whole time, eating his lunch and then going to town on his ice cream cone cupcake.

Maddie's true personality came out after I took the bulk of the cake away. She was hamming it up for people and laughing a ton. Turns out, she enjoys birthday parties! :)

After cake and ice cream, Joseph insisted on opening Maddie's gifts. For her. It took some convincing to get him to back off and let her take a turn.

 Although she seemed to miss having help, she figured it out pretty quickly.

Mimi and Papa

Uh, oh. Why is it so quiet?

Oh. Because they have decided that it is story time.