Valentines Day!

I hope everyone had a wonderful Valentine's Day! I tried to make Melody a Valentine's Day dress, it didn't turn out like I wanted but it also didn't turn out too terrible.     

Ignore the lip, she tripped yesterday and of course hit the spot where her scar is. It bled A LOT and freaked me out, I did not want to take my baby back to the ER to get stitches but it ended up not being too bad.

We also got us some Tinkerbell wings! Tinkerbell has been our new favorite thing and I'm pretty sure we've watched the movie everyday since we've got it. The employees at the Disney store also know us by name and I'm not sure if thats a good thing or not but Melody is a favorite there!

Try, try, and try again

So I want to be crafty. I want to be able to sew, knit, and just make adorable things. But as y'all know I am not the least bit crafty. Sure I try, you can look back and see my attempts. But to put it really simply, I just suck at sewing. I watch tutorial after tutorial and nothing turns out well (I also have this problem with make up and hair).

So who is going to waste money on fabric to attempt to make Melody a valentines day dress? I am! Though I did but a dress just in case... But you know what they say; try, try, try again and eventually you will succeed! At least that's what I'm hoping for... I told my mom I'll be on project runway when I'm 55 cause that's how long it'll take me to get the hang of it. Lets just hope it really doesn't take that long.

Dry season

I have been going through a rather rough dry season with my faith, for it seems to be the past year or so. It's not like my faith has gone away. it's just there. Not growing, wavering, or anything really. Just there. And it shouldn't just be there. I want it to be growing, I almost feel spiritually dead and it's terrible. I still pray everyday, try to read the bible (willingly and excitedly) every day, and nothings happening.

I recently told a good friend about it whose in ministry school and he said it's like what happened with Job, and I don't know about you but I don't want anything that's related to Job, just not as extreme. He had his dry season where he didn't hear from God and all he could do was persevere and wait for it to end. So apparently that's where I'm at and it's not even like things are bad, life has actually been pretty great recently and I've been really blessed.

Even though life has still been good I can't wait for this dry season to be over. It's like when your sick and trying to eat something but it just doesn't taste like how you know it should. But I guess all I can do is keep on persevering!

"Faith is the confidence that what we hope for will actually happen; it gives us assurance about things we cannot see." Hebrews 11:1

Snack trays

I first saw this idea on Life Rearranged and thought it was absolutely wonderful! Melody is a snacker, which she gets from me, and she always wants to pick what she snacks on. We end up having tons of fits due to this. I try to only keep good for you things around so she has good things to choose from but we also have "special" snack food; fruit gummies, the rice puff popcorn, animal crackers, and goldfish. And those are always what she picks!

 I figured it was time to change that. So I found our cupcake tray and located 12 different snacks and just filled up each little container. Now I did include some "special" items such as cheetos (her absolute favorite), whole grain cookies, goldfish, and some apple jacks. But I was able to also include veggie sticks, cheese cubes, yogurt bites, and snap pea crisps.

All I had to do then was set it put and tell her those were the snacks for the day and she couldn't have more of one until each section was gone. It worked like a charm! She got to use her independence to pick her own snack, was able to snack when she needed to, and was still able to get some good things in her without much of an argument. Of course she went for the "special" snacks first but when they were gone that was that, no fit what so ever! I hope we can keep this up!

I have also concluded that Mel has the most adorable coloring face. She just concentrates so hard!

What are your favorite snack time snacks?

Sickies

Melody and I caught the stomach bug this past week and I must say it was absolutely terrible! I caught it first; had a fever, was throwing up roughly every 30 minutes, couldn't walk without almost passing out, and all around ickiness. I'm pretty sure I looked like death. Luckily for me my mom was there to watch Mel so I could quarantine myself with the hopes she would avoid catching it. Luckily for me I started feeling a whole lot better on day 3 but sadly that is when Melody caught it. Poor baby girl couldn't grasp the concept of throwing up in a bucket so we went through A LOT of pj's and blankets. Good thing was it didn't hit her as hard so she recovered pretty quickly.

Next up is potty training! Now I have been trying to potty train her for awhile. Every now and then she'll go in the potty and get really excited but we have gotten to the point to where she'll hold it until I put a pull up on her. The only times she would get pull ups were going out, naptime, and bedtime. We tend to go to a lot of places so she didn't have much time being out of pull ups. I decided to start doing a terrifying thing -  keeping her in big girl undies when we go out and about. Today was day 1 and we went out to eat with no accidents! But also no actually going in the potty.

How do you deal with sick kids?

Have any potty training tips?

New Years

2012 is over. That seems so hard to believe, this past year as come and gone leaving so many memories behind. I'd have to say this was one of the most eventful years of my life, it contained a lot of good and a lot of not so good. I'm excited for 2013, though also a little scared. The wonderful thing about life is that it goes on. This past year may not have been the best but I can't wait to start this new year with y'all! What are some of y'alls new year resolutions? Mine are;

• Get in shape
• I'm skinny, I can say that but I am no where in shape. Having a toddler and working with children everyday is exhausting! And it would help so much to be in shape, also who doesn't want a toned body? And also yoga is a blast!
• Get (and stay) organized
• I love organization, just getting it started is the hard part!
• Keep up with at home preschool
• I had started preschool with Melody and it was a blast! Sadly we got busy and just took a never ending break but I'm excited to get it started again!
• Keep up with my blog, become a better blogger
• Pretty self explanatory here... It's a nice "mommy time" thing and I would like to get "better" with keeping up with it and with the quality.
• Become a better photographer
• I absolutely love photography but school kind of ruined it for me so I'm hoping to get back into it and get my ideas into an image.
• Have good time management
• THIS! Without time management I won't be able to get anything done! I will gladly take tips, also if you use a management binder please share how you set it up!
• Be more crafty
• Learn how to knit
• Be the person I want to be

Christmas!!

Christmas day is here at last! Melody woke up excited and not too early! I went to get her from her crib, said Merry Christmas and told her that Santa came. Her first question was "Did Santa eat my cookie??" Baby girl was excited to see if he ate her cookie or not, she didn't even care about the presents. She just ran into the kitchen and reached up to grab the plate off the table to see. Since Santa has to eat a lot of cookies he gets a little full, so he just ate the feet off of the gingerbread man and she thought it was the most hilarious thing! She had to go wake up Grandma and Grandpa and show them her feetless gingerbread man, she was so excited though. She then had to eat her own Gingerbread man.

Present opening was a challange, Lovebug got quite a bit of gifts and sitting there unwrapping them all was pure torture! She got through three presents before deciding she was done and just wanted to play with what she had already opened, one of which was a Cinderella night dress. She had to put that on right away and wore it the whole day! Pretty sure she had a wonderful day, even though it took her a fe hours to finally get everything opened, and this mama is worn out!

Mommy also got lots of fun things; such as awesome mustache earrings!