Works for Me Wednesday - Doing Dishes!

Anna is at that age where she wants to help with everything. The dishes being her favorite thing to do - well that and watering the flowers. When we do the dishes we have gone from using the dishwasher to doing it the old fashion way. When doing them in the dishwasher not only were we using a ton of extra energy and not always getting them very clean but Anna would always want to climb into the dishwasher causing me extra stress. So now we do them in the sink and I keep a large bowl in the sink we are rinsing in and she can help dip the cups and stuff or sometimes she will "bathe" her baby while I do the dishes. It is a lot less stressful, doesn't take that much extra time and it gives us some time together doing something useful!!! So that works for us go HERE for more great tips!!!

Wordless Wednesday!

My baby is growing up!!!

You know honestly it seems like just yesterday we brought home our 4 lb baby girl and now she is transitioning into a full size bed. I did ok with her first birthday because she was still my baby in so many ways. Now I am struggling to find ways to remember she is the baby I brought home! Not really but you know what I mean. She is so grown up in so many ways. Moving her to her big girl bed just kind of sent it home I guess. Just for the fun of it lets look at her through the months so that I can go back down memory lane! I am really having an emotional breakdown here :( I will survive but if you know of a way to slow down time please leave me a comment to let me know!

Oh yeah go to Anna's webpage for a video of her discovering her big girl bed and testing it out!

Mommy needs a tutu for Anna

5 minutes for mom is having another contest and I want to win this one for Anna. She will look adorable in what they are giving away!

Head over to the above link if you would like to enter and you can also see the prize if you go to Tutu Fantasy! Have a great day!!!

Works for Me Wednesday

What works for me this week is fairly simple and you may all already know about it but for those that may not. When you are weaning your child from nursing and your child is all done but your milk isn't put cabbage leaves in your bra over the nipple and it will help dry you up. You should keep the cabbage in (exchanging periodically) for a while to actually help dry up your milk otherwise it will only help with engorgement. If you are still nursing but simply have engorgement issues you can put it in for short periods to simply reduce the engorgement. You can also use hot showers and hand express a little out. I also found that not wearing a bra for a few days helped keep me from getting engorged for some unknown reason (at least unknown to me)So this is what works for me this week. We have just officially weaned our almost 2 year old and it has been an emotional month or so but these tips kept it from being physically uncomfortable!

For more helpful tips go to Rocks in My Dryer!

Time Travel Tuesday

I was reading around and found this new cool meme so I thought I would join in and have some fun going back in time. This week we are traveling back to our first blog and what made us get started. So I started blogging because I think I have the cutest daughter ever and wanted to share her pics with everyone. I started a blog for Anna to share with family and friends. Then I created a Mommy blog because sometimes I want to write about things that don't really need to be posted over there. Rants and cool memes etc...

So here is my first blog for Anna! You can go to this link if you want to see the pictures!

Thursday, November 9, 2006

Here I Am!!!
Read all about the life and times with Anna Sophia. I am a 15 month old active little girl. I love chatting on the phone, walking around in the great outdoors and spending time with family and friends. I have recently started climbing and opening drawers. Here are some cute pics of when I climbed into the wagon that holds my legos. Don't mind the clutter around it I love making piles of toys. I also like to carry my Daddy's shoes around so they ended up in the piles of toys too. To bad Mommy didn't get a picture of me when I fell in the toy box. I am sure that would have been a funny picture!


So stick around and check out how my life progresses and see what adventures I can get into.


Here is the Mommy blog! Click here to go to the original post!

Wednesday, October 18, 2006

First time blogger
Well this is my first blog ever!!! So bare with me while I adjust to the life of a blogger. My name is Candace & I have a daughter that is 14 months old. She is the light of my life. I waited a very long time to have her. My DH and I have been married for 10 years now. Patience has never been my strong suite so I don't know how I managed to wait that long for the best part of my life lol.

Here she is: Anna Sophia

If you want to see more time travel posts go here!

Tackle it Tuesday

OK so this is embarrassing to put on here but I know that you guys will understand :) Anna's room has been collecting things since she has been born (almost 2 years ago) and well it wasn't on the top of my priority list but now she is sleeping in there pretty much all night and will soon have her big girl bed set up so I have to clean it up and get it ready! We started on it yesterday and got a little headway with it but we have lots more to do today! Here are the befores and the little that we got done yesterday. Come back later for the grand finale!





Ugh I have tons of work to do so I will see you all later. Wish me luck lol!

Anna loves her clean room I can't keep her out of it! I have tons of stuff to take off to our children's consignment shop now woo hoo! I am excited all we have to do is get Daddy to set up her big girl bed. Her crib turns into a full size bed so that should be easy enough and our window seat will have to come out because we want the bed against the wall. We will probably move it to the living room and get baskets for it to keep toys or books or something in it. Yay I am glad I am done now I am going to see what everyone else is up to today!!! If you want to see what everyone else is up to go here!

Party Like its 1999

or like Kevin & Natalie's wedding!!!

We went to a reception for Chris's best friend. They got Mauied in Hawaii last week. They came back and had a reception and boy was it exciting. There was a little electric slide and cha cha sliding going on and not to mention the dancing on the tables and jumping around. Good times I tell ya!!! I have pictures - woo hoo. and drum roll please a couple of very short videos woo hoo!!!

Kevin - I hope you are feeling ok today because I am thinkin you are feeling pretty rough!!! But you had a GREAT time and that is what counts.

Natalie - You looked beautiful! and the reception was Fabulous - Thank you for inviting us!!!






Sorry for the conditions of the videos. It was dark in there and I wasn't using my camera. But they are funny so check them out!!!

To Do List:

1) Laundry
2) Clean house
3) Cook Dinner
4) Pack clothes
5) Watch Grey's Anatomy
6) Play with Anna
7) Take more pics
8) Find keys
9) Paint Anna's Toes-Done
10) redo my nails

Sounds exciting right!!! & now you are wondering why I am blogging instead of working, right? Well the truth is that Anna is napping and this is my break time. We will work on the other stuff later. We have today and some of tomorrow. Well not much of tomorrow because tomorrow is the last day that Anna will be with Hunter, Jeff and Lisa. I get so sad thinking about it. This will be her first broken heart. We are going to do video chats with them but that won't be the same. Honestly, Lisa & I have just really bonded. Before when she was keeping Anna I loved her for being so good to my daughter. Now after spending so much time with her I regret not making the time to spend with her before. Our schedules were just so crazy with kids and stuff we couldn't work it out and now I think I missed out on a great friendship. Well, not really missed out cause I really hope that we can continue our friendship (I have lots of cyber friendships). If you have anyone out there that you are trying to be friends with but can't find the time - make the time. We have so little of it and everything changes so fast just go for it!!!

Works for Me Wednesday

Sometimes we all have things that are easier done without little ones under our feet. So how I have found to handle that is to work with my neighbor that has a 6 month old a time when we can trade off watching the other one. So if she wants to do Yoga or take a nap or whatever I keep her son and if I need to clean house or whatever she keeps Anna. It is great and it really works GREAT for us!!!

Wordless Wednesday

Let's Tackle the Pantry!!!

Well I did an easy Tackle it Tuesday today! I am still rather burnt from our trip to the beach on Saturday and haven't wanted to do anything major. So Anna & I cleaned out our pantry and reorganized everything in it. I don't know if you can tell the difference but I sure can!!!

Hope everyone has a good day and if you want to see more go HERE!!!

Motherhood:

Motherhood definitely has its ups and downs. Right now I am listening to an ultra whiney little girl. Why you ask well simply put because she was expecting to go to church to play with her little friends and her foggy brained Mother can't seem to find her keys. We went to the beach yesterday and had such a great day. Played in the waves and the sand for several hours. Now I have no idea what I did with my keys when we came in. I usually put them in the same spot but apparently I didn't yesterday cause they sure aren't there. So now my punishment is to listen to a whiney toddler on Mother's Day! Ha I feel better now that I have whined about the whiney toddler lol.

So since I can't go to church and I am trying to tune out the whineyness I will tell you about our day at the beach. We got there and had a picnic lunch at the pavilion. It was yummy a little KFC chicken and chips and water with cookies for desert. We went down to the water after that and got settled. Anna wanted to go straight for the water and so I took her down and she liked it but I think it was a little cool for her so we stayed down for a few minutes and then went back to the sheet to play in the sand. I alternated between staying with her and playing in the sand and playing with Lisa and Hunter in the ocean. Jeff didn't like the water at all so he stayed with Anna at sheet playing in the sand. Lisa and I did leave the kids with Chris for a while so that we could go out into the bigger waves. However, High tide was coming in so we had to keep moving our stuff up and finallty ran out of room to move so we started packing up well at this point Anna decided that she wanted to play in the water and we had a hard time getting her to leave. She would run into the waves and giggle and run back up to dry land. It was so cute to watch and very exciting for me. I have always loved water and LOVE swimming so it is great for me thinking she will like it too. Of course I haven't really ever LOVED swimming in the ocean. My first time to the beach I unfortunately watched Jaws so now whenever I get in the ocean I think about all the things in there with me.

Well, we are into full fledged crying for Jeff Jeff so let me go see if I can console a broken heart. Happy Mother's Day!!!

OK Anna is napping so I can continue my blogging WooHoo!!! I want to say thanks to Chris for making the day at the beach possible. He had a rotten week at work and probably didn't want to go but he went anyway because that was what I wanted to do for Mother's Day. So THANK YOU so much for being there for me and taking me to the beach when you had rather be home chilling out. I had a blast and will always remember my second Mother's Day as wonderful!!!

Oh yeah pictures of our day out are in the slide show below here. So much fun!!!

Happy Mother's Day

To all the Mothers out there know that you are special. For those that have loved and lost or never were able to fullfill those needs of motherhood - you are most special. Mother's Day is a difficult day for most people lol. For one reason or another it can be a painful day. For me before Anna it was a reminder that I wasn't a Mommy when I so desperately wanted to be to top it off I don't get along so great with my Mother. So Mother's Day hasn't been my favorite holiday. Know I have Anna and it is a great way to make special family time together. We are off to the beach for the day on Saturday with our friends. I am looking forward to a great day spent with my family and my friends. I hope all of you Mothers and soon to be Mothers will have a wonderful relaxing weekend!!! For all of you Mothers that lost your children or Mothers that don't yet have your children I hope that you can have a weekend that is not so painful. May God BLESS us ALL!!!

We are up and running again!!!

Hopefully we can stay up and running lol. I feel like I have been away for a lifetime. So I will tell you what we are up too. Anna is 21 months old now and is growing up so very much. We have started weaning. As of today we are down to one nursing session a day. First thing in the morning & we may go ahead and cut it out tomorrow. Depending on a few things. It is very difficult for me to do this because I feel like I have lost my baby and I don't know if I will have anymore. Oh well, I will suck it up and face the facts that my baby is a little girl now. Last night in fact she realized there was no milk and she laid down in her little soft chair and fell asleep. Nap time has become an easy process we eat lunch and then rock until she falls asleep and then I put her in my bed. She is such a big girl :( In so many ways I miss the itty bitty baby but then I think about the perks of this new big girl. She sleeps so much better, she is very entertaining, she listens (most of the time), she can do tons of new stuff almost daily and the best thing is she is loving and happy and fully of energy. We played with potty training but decided to wean and then tackle that. I will probably start working on that again towards the end of the month. It will be easier to monitor her liquid intake when she is no longer nursing at all and we can then focus our whole day on going pee pee on the potty woo hoo. I hope it isn't to difficult. If you have any words of wisdom please feel free to share!

Baby Shower Cake

Just wanted to share this for a friend. This is relatively simple to make and not to time consuming. The best part is everything can be used by the Mom-to-be.

So Sleepy!!!

I haven't been sleeping good due to this horrible headcold that I have had. I think I am on the verge of breaking free from it but it can't be over soon enough. Before you get all excited no my computer still isn't fixed I am next door again. You gotta love neighbors that share :) Well, I really don't have much to say just wanted to pop in while I had a second and say hi. Anna is doing great. Growing up way to fast. She is drinking from a big girl cup most of the time now. Talking in sentences and doing so many new things I wouldn't even know where to start. She hates walking on the grass barefooted which shocks me since I love it. She is loving the tubby time even more than before. She is the joy of my life and keeps me entertained throughout the day. Speaking of I have to run off and tend to her so I hope you are all doing well. Talk to you later.