my first garment

i've always been terrified of sewing clothing. i can handle napkins. i can handle curtains. even quilts don't really scare me. do you notice a trend: SQUARE. they are all squares. i ventured outside the square realm once to make christmas stockings with heavy, hands-on assistance/guidance from my mom, but other than that, all square. well i decided to get over my silly anxieties and figured what easier place to start than children's clothing since they don't reeaaaallly have to fit 'just so', as long as they are "close enough", right? well betsy's birthday is coming up so i found a cute little romper pattern and decided to give it a go. can't wait to try it on her for her birthday party tomorrow!  thank you mom and grandma for giving me this gift! i will do my best to pass it along. :)

new hair style

my hair hadn't been cut since thanksgiving....so just cut it a little shorter for something fun and a little different.

hot and sunny

we've welcomed some more summer-like weather this week lending itself to lying in the sun with his bff and "painting" the fence for momma (with water).

black out curtains

yes - these were important to make for my little man who has oh-so-much-trouble winding down for sleep lately. he IS tired and he DOES need a nap, momma knows....but when he gets tired he gets hyper busy crazy and is a little tazmanian devil who takes forever to wind down (queue naughtiness/room destruction....reid calls it "rock-starring his room"). the bright sun pouring through at nap and bedtime (and so so so early in the morning) was not helping. so momma made these black out curtains (lined with black out fabric) to set the mood a bit more.  (the valences were already there but they were out of that dot/bubble fabric so i stayed with the ocean theme of the room and got some fabric that looked a little like sea weed to me in a coordinating color - i think it looks better in person than the photos show).  we've had a quilt over the window for the past week and it has significantly aided the wind-down process. in addition we've tweaked our timing on naps and bedtime, resulting in (generally) an easier going to bed process and also sleeping a bit later too! but i will not be too proud, every day is different. one day he goes right to sleep at naptime. other days it takes him an hour or longer to finally get there with lots of management and stress from momma in the meantime. learning lots of patience, creative thinking, self-control and child development information. i actually stayed up late "studying" last night, enjoying the insight this new book, "positive discipline: the first three years" has to offer. i even took notes. seriously.  i needed some new tools in my parenting pocket to feel empowered to face the day today (yesterday's naptime stress involved me crumpled in a heap on the hallway floor feeling completely lost and like a parenting failure). and absolutely, without a doubt, i learned a great amount of wisdom from just the first chapter and felt calm and centered and focused and empowered about how i was going to interact with and react to my little man today. much improved on both accounts.

simply ten good things

...inspired by Amanda Soule's blog post...taking time to think about 'simply ten good things" in my right now.

a new perspective on discipline (ever so timely, two's are indeed terrible as of late, but learning that perhaps....ahem, i have a lot more power and influence on this than i realized)
dinner on the back patio with my husband
cocoa brownies for dessert
"i love you too, momma. 'nigh 'nigh"
putt-putt date night on the calendar
big blue, sunshiney eyes after a 3 hour nap...every day
only-needs-one-finger-to-hold walking baby one year old
a birthday party just around the corner
scouring our new toddler art book, finding inspiration on every page (and considering hosting a weekly toddler art play group)
a baby quilt almost complete and a weekend of silent, therapeutic creation with love to fill those nights when hubby is away.

cinnamon rolls

traditions in my family, both sides, seem to revolve heavily around food and family gatherings. i am seeking out some new traditions to celebrate the seasons and take note of the holidays from cultures around the world, but always seem to come back to food for our family. and how fabulous since i love, so very much, to make good food with extra love from mom to feed my family and friends.  one easter tradition i've decided (with much support from my darling husband) to keep going is cinnamon rolls for breakfast on easter morning. from scratch, obviously.  this recipe from pink of perfection is ridiculously easy and so-very-delectable, particularly fresh and gooey from the oven (am thinking of dabbling with some whole wheat four the next time i make them, but very carefully, i do not want to upset the balance of delicate and delicious in these babies). another one of those seemingly time-consuming treats i never thought to attempt - and once attempted, i've found its actually so simple. 30 minutes or less and you make them the night before. so the special morning you're serving up these sweet treats, all the labor and attention required is a quick 20 minutes in the oven and viola. homemade, fresh from the oven cinnamon rolls for the people you love and you don't have to get up at 3 am to make the magic happen!

easter weekend

we've had lots of easter fun together this weekend. spent saturday morning at the farmers market and then walked to our community park for a h-u-g-e easter egg hunt eggstravaganza. :) it was put on by a local church and included a baseball field full of easter eggs with an age-group egg hunt every 30 minutes. we missed the 2 year old hunt so we had to opt for the baby easter egg hunt instead (sugar!). cookie decorating station (sugar!). after all the sugar the bounce house seemed like the only appropriate option. the park was packed full of people enjoying the gorgeous morning with their families.  even baxter joined our outing and we spent a good bit of time running at the dog park too!

audubon birds, kids binoculars and bird books from the easter bunny

more interested in the flowers than the plastic eggs

ethan, tyson, ryan, pete, betsy, lucy and thomas

everyone else bailed out on the photo op but pete stayed put to finish his fruit snacks

today on easter sunday our dear military family friends hosted us along with some other families at their home for a brunch and easter egg hunt. i felt so blessed and full of joy to have such lovely people to share our morning with. and what fun to watch these ever growing "babies" of ours play together.  they are just getting so big so quickly!

naturally food dyed easter eggs

i'm on the hunt for making simple changes in every nook and cranny in the name of "green" and "natural" and safe and also cheap (although i'm finding green/natural/safe alternatives are anything but cheap most times).  this easter egg solution was so fun and easy! the recipes for these colors and several more were listed on lakewinds' website.

tumeric = yellow, red cabbage = blue, red cabbage + tumeric = green, red beets = pink

and about those cracked eggs....that's called too much happening at once; woops! how do YOU cook your hard cooked eggs?  i do the betty crocker method: bring water to a boil, add eggs (that's where my woops happened), off heat and cover for 18 minutes.  when i took my cooking class with my favorite chef jesus, he laughed and said i boil the eggs for 5ish minutes and then spin them to see if they are done (he literally took one out and spun it on the stovetop like a dreidle and if it stood up, that was your sign that all was well. i tried it; didn't do the same neat little spin for me. huh. must consider chef school. lol).  pete wasn't too interested in the process and i was ok with it grateful because one flailing arm and we could have had a bright red beet stained petey. he did like to check in on them occasionally throughout the morning, declaring the "o-ster eggs pretty". thanks, bud.

is this how they dyed easter eggs in the "good old days" before they had the little dye kits? or were they so busy milking cows back them they didn't dye easter eggs? i'm curious!

waiting for daddy

this is the ONLY time my son sat still today. waiting for his daddy to come home. i love that it is the main event of his day (my day too, really). yesterday i knew we were arriving home from our walk just minutes before his arrival so we waited outside on the front step for him. today's walk was earlier but of course pete asked to wait there again. i had to explain to him it wasn't quite time. about half an hour later he told me he was going to wait for daddy and pulled the chair up on his own and sat there waiting.  sometimes he'd get bored and twist the chair facing away from the door or scoot it back far from the door and then shriek "help help help!"...i encouraged him to reposition the chair himself. after about 30 minutes of waiting and some funny yoga/dangling from the chair, it was time for dinner. daddy came home minutes later and pete ran to the door screaming "DADDY!!!!!!"
these are the moments that make up our magical days. it really is the happiest moment when he comes through the door!

wanesta garden project: "winter" 2011 crop

end of february i got antsy about my empty raised garden bed and decided to try some "winter" plants.  tossed in some (too many?) carrot seeds, lettuce seeds and green beans. i had no idea what our weather would do or if any of them would take to the environment, but after thinning the lettuce and some warmer weather lately, it seems like they are doing just fine. i may have waaaay too many carrots planted in there, but its all a big fun learning experiment, says me.  now my only problem is: how do you know when to harvest those yummy little carrots? can't wait to see pete pull them up one by one and declare each time, "that's a carrot!"  he love to help water too, and only once (so far) has he spun around to talk to me while spraying the hose....directly at me.....

the neighbors palm tree must block the sun on that back row-ish that's empty...should be lettuce growing there but it was quite wilty and yellowish and not thriving so i pulled it up.

you can tell my first son helped plan the carrot seeds, there are some carrots growing helter-skelter in the ground around the garden bed. wondering how they'll do?

no beans yet. i remember them taking awhile last summer.

bouncing the ball off sister's head while mommy waters the garden.

beach day

what better way to spend a gorgeous spring morning as a family than at the gorgeous san diego beach!  the kids both had an amazing time running through the water. it was a cool, breezy morning so we all went fully clothed (not to mention pete was terrified of the water last trip). we decided to stop at dog beach (poor baxter wasn't along, i felt guilty alllll morning!) because there was street parking available and its a little more protected than torrey pines who was under pretty high tide at the time. betsy was determined and spent all morning, while holding onto my fingers, steering our path toward the water and she didn't stop at the edge. no, she took each little determined step, slowly and diligently, heading straight out to jump the waves. she knew what she wanted. no fear. she loved the squish of the saturated sand under her toes. she loved the chill of the water as it lapped up to her knees. she loved how i pulled her up out of the water at the last second when the little white caps rushed in, threatening to soak her little body. peter was apprehensive at first but once he saw betsy enjoying it so, he decided it might be alright. he quickly figured out the system, holding safely to daddy's hand, he had a ball....and that ball culminated in him diving into a little tidal pool and soaking himself head to toe. as daddy was working on removing the soaking wet outer layers, our little man finished the job by removing his underwear which he tossed nonchalantly on the sand and went speeding across the entire beach to our little "camp" to lie down on the towel. completely naked! streaker!!!