nostalgia [no-stal-juh, -jee-uh, nuh-]

This week ended up being full of nostalgic moments. Like, grab your tissues, this is going to be good kind of nostalgia. But both moments are really special and I'm so happy they were captured on camera.

First, a local photographer is doing a marketing project with little girls wearing their mother's wedding dresses. On Sunday, A and I went to her studio and had a photo shoot with A wearing MY wedding dress and veil! It was so fast that I hardly had a moment to take it in but it did take my breath away seeing it.  I am excited to see the photographers final project which I will post here in May. Hoping Avery makes the cut--but in the meantime, here is a photo of me on my wedding day and the one of Avery I quickly snapped just with my iphone.  So cool!

Next, I had been dreaming since the day I met my son-with his massive amount of blonde hair and his chubby, total boy look- to have a photo taken of him like one that I have of my father. To be clear, in person, N is a exact replica of my husband, but when you see this photo of my father at 18 months you can't help but take pause.  There is a resemblance! 

So as N's 18 month birthday was rolling near I made an appointment for the shoot to try to match this photo from 1943.  As usual N was totally stubborn at the shoot (making the photographers crack-up but not a smirk from him) but by some miracle I got him to smile ONCE and she actually got THIS!

Its not perfect, and N's smile isn't as big as it normally is. That would show the resemblance even more but either way-- I LOVE IT.  So happy I kept this dream for the last year and half and that I stuck with it even with N trying really, really hard to make it impossible. My father passed away when I was 19, so he never got a chance to meet my husband or my children. I think he'd appreciate this photo -- And N's sense of humor too. :-)

And we're back!

Back online after a little hiatus for personal and work reasons.  

Many thanks to my sister for redesigning my beautiful new blog. 

We are still in the construction process but new posts will be here now. 

Please follow us here at our new address!

What's new on our iPad...

The latest App that I've installed on our iPad was brought to my attention by the new blog Matter of App.  It is Alphatots and it is fantastic! It has been mom, dad, and kid approved.  I LOVE that it teaches the letter (both upper & lowercase), the sound, and then its example is an action word and the app has you do that action before you move on to the next letter.  My 3.5 year old loves sounding out the letter with the narrator and then eagerly awaits her related activity.

Here is the full review.

Half-Birthday Colorful Butterfly Cake!

So I think half-birthdays are pretty fantastic. Especially around here when all 4 of our birthdays occur in one 30 day period. This make for an entire year of waiting for a birthday/cake obsessed 3 year old. So the end of last week we celebrated the much anticipated 3.5!! We did this by making a colorful butterfly cake together. 

I got the idea from my sister who had made rainbow cupcakes for A for her birthday.  Being that this was a spur of the moment decision to go from plain cake to awesome cake I didn't look up any "right" way to do it. So my method was just adding food color to the batter in batches--First blue, then added red for purple, and then GREEN!  All in the same bowl.

It was really, really fun for her. Really easy for me.  (If you want a real method for a Rainbow cake here's a cool one HERE.)

Or you can try our delicious, hodge-podge mystery cake! Cutting into was a surprise each time!

And for a 3 year old---its really just about the frosting and the candle. :-)

What the 3 year old is reading...

This week, little A is happily reading (and rereading) Tammy Turtle (thank you Auntie Chelsea!)   Quite a cute story, simply written, easy to understand. It's about a sea turtle, born on the beach, makes its tremendous journey into the ocean, grows up, mistakes a plastic bag for a jelly fish, and has to be rescued.  The story has a happy ending with Tammy recovering and setting off on her own beach journey into motherhood.

There are a lot of things that A is getting out of this book other than the "moral" of the story. The drawings are cute and allow her to ask a lot of questions about the ocean and sea life. There is an entire Nature series by Suzanne Tate.  I recommend sprinkling these books into your collection. They are in expensive and effective.

Sweet, Sweet, Perspective on Toddlers

I've read two posts in the last week about the Toddler years (basically anything between 1 and 5) and I am LOVING them. Because as parents of a 1.5 and 3.5 year old there are many times that we need to give each other a little pep talk of, "its going to get better". The older they get we know new challenges will be presented but, right now, patience is thin, brains are crashing with over load and some days you wonder what the heck we were we thinking! And let me tell you, kids bedtime and mommy's bottle of wine can't come quick enough.

On the flip side, now that my son is approaching 1.5 yrs things ARE easier than a year ago, and we know it. The first year is just a blur of well, blur, cause you never remember much later except for snippets. Now, I'll admit it feels like complete mayhem most of them time around here, but there is also a LOT of fun. They are funny, smart, fascinating little kids. Becoming active,  joke-telling, goofy members of our little family pod. We laugh a lot. Those are the days that we say, "There it is! The reason we had kids!"

At around 15 months old, with both of our kids, was when I felt like my head was starting to literally lift. For a long time you have that feeling, like when you go to a party or gathering with two (even just one) toddlers, you leave the party feeling like you never actually made eye contact with an adult the entire time you were there. Its a really strange feeling. With your first baby its hard because it one of those times that you are acutely aware that your life is CHANGED. And you sort of feel like that, in general life, for a long time. That you spend all you time looking down. When each of my kids were around 15 months is when I really began to feel like I was seeing the world around me for the first time. It is a good feeling.

And now the next stage we look forward to is self sufficiency! This is why my first JOY DAY post was about A getting out of bed on her own. And I remember the first time a while back, when she went to the bathroom totally by herself, washed her hands and rejoined our activity: heaven. Every step towards happy independence IS joyful.

So this week I saw this piece "Toddlers: The Hours Are Long, The Years Are Short". Love it. It also referenced Ask Moxie's "It Gets Better: Toddler Edition". I recommend both of these readings for any one who is living with their head down right now. Or for anyone who's head is slowly raising to find themselves holding pom-poms for independence.  My favorite sentence on Ask Moxie: "they are still little boys even though a lot of days it's like having two adult roommates who just like to snuggle a lot."

I can't wait!

But we still look around and say to ourselves, breeeeaaaaathe. Its going to be over soon. She won't always have this ridiculously cute lisp. And his 1 year old feet won't always be this chubby.

First Birthday Fun!

It's actually been almost 6 months since N's First Birthday party but I have yet to showcase the photos here. Since N is about to turn 1 and a 1/2 in a couple of weeks, I am feeling nostalgic.

This was a really, really fun party for me to plan and design. I went all out with the "Farmyard" theme and I was really proud of the way everything turned out. It was a beautiful end of summer day just like his sister's 1st birthday. Lots of friends and family were there to enjoy with us. I had so much fun with the cake and cupcakes and decorations and birthday "activities". The photos below are a perfect mixture of the work of my photographer sister Barbara Brush and Brian Samuels (of Brian Samuels Photography) who we hired for that day. Brian was amazing and blended right in to the action. He caught some great moments that I missed because, like most hostesses, I was in the kitchen for the first hour of the party.... Enjoy!

The decorations...

The food...

The cake (and cupcake garden!)...

The fun...

A few days before the party I thought of this idea--- Using pictures that I cut out of all of my extra invitation I made a "clothesline" type of thing and asked people to safety pin a message for N that he will read on his 10th birthday. It was a big hit! And really really sweet to read them all now from all ages that were at the party.

Face painting!