Instagram Monday! And hopefully a return...

My laptop had a run in with some orange juice about a month ago and I've been trying to get it fixed so blogging had to be set aside for awhile..but hopefully I will get our month of tot school up today!

My little princess is growing so fast! She loves to get up every morning and go straight to the window to show me the "ees" (trees) and the "bi bi" (birds) and all the "vroom vrooms" (cars) passing by. She reminds me every day to take a second to look at all of the beautiful things around me.
We've also been spending most of the summer with my mom since she's on summer break. Paisley has had a blast at her Nyanya's house swimming and playing with the dogs and basically getting spoiled left and right ;)

Instagram Monday!

We had a baby playdate this week with the Princess' bestie. These two are about 4 1/2 months apart but they love to play together! They have the same sippy cup-that they have to drink out of at the same time :) And I got to rock both of them in my lap the other day. They were super sweet falling asleep together until my little princess got a bit jealous. ;) I can't wait to see what the years bring for these two sweet girls!

Instagram Monday!

I love that my princess always has a book in her hands. She is just like her mommy that way :) Her favorite is reading in the tub. None of her other bath toys are anywhere near as cool as her bath books!

Paisley got to feel the baby's first outside kicks today. It was so exciting for me and she thought it was funny. She wasn't really sure what was going on but it made her giggle. :) With all of this baby excitement going on we've been playing with baby dolls alot. She loves feeding her baby...and sometimes herself ;)

Tot school-Nature

Paisley is 13 months

I don't know about you,but my little girl LOVES being outside! She loves trees, which she calls "ees!" She loves flowers,she loves everything about plants. So we learned about plants this week!

We started off our week by going out in the yard and picking a little bit of everything we could find. She thought this was a blast! We had a few different kinds of leaves, some grass,flowers...anything that was plant like.

Then we put potting soil in Paisleys wagon and "planted" our treasures. She had shovels to dig with and she had tons of fun playing with this.

I also bought a few pots from the dollar store and some Alyssum seeds. We planted these and tossed a few seeds outside. Then we taked about how we need to water the flowers every day.And after a few days we had these little sprouts!

We also spent alot of time reading this book. It's "Caterpillar Spring, Butterfly Summer!" It has wonderful, bright pictures and great little pop-ups. It was read quite often. :)

We also used our water colors again to paint this wooden flower. She carried around with her all day long. She was so proud when she finally got to show her daddy what she made.

 The next day she found the paint again so I printed out a coloring page for her and we painted that too. She's my little artist <3

Instagram Monday! The little things I hope to never forget :)

The last few weeks my little princess has literally carried her sock monkey everywhere! It goes with her in the car,in stores, to bed,to play..everywhere! It's adorable. She even convinced her Nyanya to buy her another sock monkey hat from Cracker Barrel.

Tot School- Animals week

         

Paisley is 13 months old

This week Paisley was really into animals. So I decided to follow her lead and make our lessons this week on animals and the different sounds they make.

We started off with these little grow your own farm animals from the Dollar Tree. She had a blast watching them grow but they were actually a pretty bad idea. As soon as we picked them up they fell apart! That was pretty disappointing but the princess didn't mind. We still got to talk about all of the different animal sounds while we watched them grow.

                                 

I also brought out watercolors and we painted our very own bird. She had so much fun with this! I showed her how to do it with just water on the paintbrush and we practiced a few times and then she painted it. Afterwards we talked how birds live in birdhouses and we put ours in its very own cage. We also talked about the noises birds make and pretended to fly like birds for awhile.

 One of her favorite things to do this week was to play Animal Hide and Seek on my phone. It's a super cute (and free) app. We also watched a few Youtube videos of different animals and sang alot of Old McDonald. :)

 I made a doghouse for her puppy and we played with that all week long! She loved putting the dog in its house and telling it "nigh nigh".

                                         Our snacks this week had to be goldfish of course!

And we finished the week off by taking a trip to the zoo with daddy!

(She wanted to pet the tiger so bad!!)

Tool of the Week:

These were awesome! They were pulled out at least twice a day and Paisley learned the sounds for a bee,chicken,dog,cat, and monkey. She also learned to hop like a frog :)

Our very first week of Tot School!

                                                   Paisley is 13 months




We had our very first week of Tot School and it was a blast! I learned so much about Paisley! She really enjoyed the structured one on one learning time and was so excited to show her daddy what she did each day when he got home.

We focused on colors for our first week.

This was our sensory bin for the week. I wanted to keep it simple since it is our first one so we used rice, lids from her Buddy Fruit pouches, and a spoon. We still need work on using a spoon so digging in the rice was great practice!

 We also tried out sorting buttons. Mommy mostly sorted while Paisley took them out and put them in her jar. This wasn't the best activity because she wanted to put them in her mouth.

                                So...we put them in the jar and shook them to make music!!

                          I also used an old snack canister and cut a hole with an exacto knife so that she could drop some of her lids in there. We said the colors every time she dropped them in and she loved the clink the lids made when the hit the bottom. :) This game was a favorite all week.

 Then we sorted our lids. She didn't really understand but she did think it was fun once she saw them sorted.

We also read tons of different books about colors this week which was probably her favorite thing we did. This little girl loves to read!!

It's 5 o clock in the morning...

Welcome back pregnancy insomnia. After a week of dealing with a sick one year old who woke up 5 times a night, all I wanted was sleep. Apparently my body decided otherwise though. :(
So instead I'll update on our little gummy bear! We went to the doctor on Thursday and we got to hear the heartbeat. It was a solid 160 and the dr said it sounded like baby was already doing somersaults! I can't wait to start feeling those wonderful little kicks and somersaults. <3
I also recently started a new "diet". It's more that we were sick of the way we felt and decided to try to weed out the bad stuff. So for breakfast I have a bagel with low fat cream cheese and a cheese stick, lunch is 2 sandwiches, and dinner is a small mason jar salad. We are also BIG coke drinkers so we are trying to cut down on that and opt for sweet tea some days and more water throughout the day. And it's working! Even though I'm 13 weeks pregnant I lost 4 pounds this month! I feel a little better than I have in awhile and I feel a little better about my body. I'm so excited to keep going from here :)
I also started looking around yesterday for some new learning activities for the princess and I ran into a ton of great blogs about Tot School. So this weekend we will be setting up a little classroom for the princess and starting on some fun, daily learning activities. I'm super excited and hopefully this will keep me more on track with making sure she is actually learning something instead of just cuddling up to watch tv all day ;)
Well I think I'm going to try to get back to sleep. See you guys soon!

What does a stay at home mom do all day??

As a newbie mom I'm always looking for things to do with my 1 year old that are fun, age appropriate, and educational. Sometimes we fall into a rut where I'll just let her play with her usual toys but on our creative days we have a lot of fun together! So if you're stuck in a rut like I often get, here's our top 10 of activities we enjoy. :)

Top 10 Activities for children ages 9 months - 1 year

Dance Party

Shaving cream ( we put shaving cream on the wood floors and have a blast drawing in it)

Playing in her water table - (We are also getting ready to try different things other than water, such as corn starch, flour, and jello!)

Lego's- I build and she takes them apart :)

Drop In- I used an old coffee can and cut a slit in the lid so that she could drop in lids from her fruit pouches. She really enjoys this simple game!

Bubbles are always a hit
Coloring- I bought a simple scrapbook with the paper already in it and she colors with colored pencils or fat crayons
Cooking!- My little girl loves the kitchen! She loves to stir things so whenever I get the chance we are baking together. Yes its messy, but it's absolutely worth it! We also have a cabinet just for her in our kitchen and she gets to play with her own bowls and spoons and such while mommy does dishes.
Fabric Scrap Bin- I'm sure we all know how hard it is to fold laundry with a toddler in the house! You're folding while they unfold..well I made a little bin of my fabric scraps and let her play with them while I fold laundry. She's practicing folding while I'm actually getting something done!

Baby Obstacle Course- I sometimes set up a little obstacle course for the princess, it was really great when she was learning to crawl and stand up. I used diaper boxes, pillows,she would even try to crawl under our coffee table. It was fun for her and I had fun crawling around being silly with her :)

So..what are some of your favorite things to do with your toddlers?

Shh...I have a secret..

Wanna know???

Did you guess it?? Yes,we're expecting baby #2 in November!!

The Big 22!

Yesterday was my birthday. 22 years old! I had a wonderful birthday. My sweet fiancé took me to a local bakery to get red velvet brownies, then we grilled some burgers and hot dogs and spent the day eating and playing video games with my sister,her boyfriend, Ben, and my sweet baby girl. them I went to work at our church nursery and and went to get FroYo with my whole family. It was a great low key birthday. But what really made it perfect was that Ben took the day off for my birthday. I was talking to one of the women at our church and she said to Ben, "I think every man should take off for his wife's birthday" and I definitely agree. As a new mom I feel like I kinda gave up birthdays. At least the old birthday where I would get tons of presents and the entire day was about me. My daughters birthday is 13 days before mine so we didn't have much left to spend on presents for me and I just wanted a nice relaxing day with my family. But I felt so very special because Ben chose to stop and spend the day with me. It may not always be practical or even possible for him to but I enjoyed the day.

The Princess is 1!!

We had a sock monkey party with a few close friends and family and it was a blast!! But since a picture is worth a thousand words... here it is!

The food table :)

We made a picture board to showcase her first year

The guest book and favor table

Banana pudding was a huge hit!

Smash Cupcake :)

She loved the ballons on the ceiling!

                                                  I think the party was a success ;)

Pinterest Yummies!

So I am completely obsessed with Pinterest for everything. But what I love most is the amazing recipes! So I thought I'd share a few of my absolute favorites so far.

Pumpkin filled Crescent Rolls..mmm! White Chicken Enchiladas!

These were so good I didn't get to take a picture before they were completely gone!

This Buffalo Chicken Ring is SO good!

Crockpot Salsa Chicken...a great dinner for busy people!

Just life...

I had a really hard time adjusting to being a stay at home mom. It wasn't what I imagined it would be and it's not easy to stay home all the time without any adult interaction. The last few months have been more of a challenge than I thought they would be and I had gotten slightly depressed. Now this isn't to say that I don't love being home with my daughter. I do. It's the best decision I've ever made and I wouldn't give it up for anything!
So saying that,I have this friend who I've been friends with for over 10 years. She was my best friend for years and I love her dearly. She is amazing. However, she sees life a lot differently than I do now. In high school we were both bitter, believing love was a lie,people can't change, questioning the existence of God...but I changed. I met Ben and I saw how much a person can change when they do it for love, and I realized that love is out there. The first time I heard my sweet baby girls heart beat, well how can you doubt the existence of God after that? I can't. My friend has changed too..she found a wonderful man who treats her like a queen. But she has still remained bitter about life. In my depressed state, reading her Facebook posts were making me even more depressed so I simply deleted her. I wanted to be surrounded by positivity. How else could I be happy? Now I heard from her mom that she's getting married in a few months. I reached out to her after getting an invite from her mom to tell her how happy I am for her. I just wanted her to know that I want the best for her no matter what. Now my invite has been rescinded and I feel lost. How do you lose a best friend over Facebook?

Baby leggings!

I LOVE baby leggings! They are so stinking cute but they can get pretty pricey. My favorite way to make them is super easy and super quick. I usually just go to the store and buy adult knee high socks-my daughter has always had chunky little legs so I've never had a problem with using these,even at 4 months old... :)

What I like about using the adult knee highs is that there are so many different patterns for pretty cheap, they usually have some for each holiday, and most of the work us dine for you! So, I take the socks and cut off the foot part at the ankle(you can make it shorter if your baby has short legs) and then I fold that under just barely and sew in a circle. That's it. Done. And for less than $5!