From the Archives: Easter in our house

**After publishing the post on the Pumpkin Patch I found this post that I had written months ago about Easter, but never published, so here you go!**

Before we knew it, it was Easter. This year is flying by!

Last year a friend of mine invited us to join her and her family for her town's Easter Egg Hunt. We went and even though the girls didn't really get the hunt, they had fun. This year everyone was a year older, and they definitely knew what was going on. My sister and her family went to the hunt this year as well as more friends of ours. It was a lot of fun for all the kids, young and not so young. 

Emilie's cheese face.

Emilie and Josh, partners in crime.

Someone got a little camera shy while Papa snapped some pictures of us together.

Showing Papa her haul.

She needed to sit in the middle of the field and taste test.

Thankfully this year I was feeling much better than last year so I was able to actually snap some pictures. Andre and I really try our best with each holiday to really get across the true meaning of the holiday. We have quite a few books about Christmas, which Emilie loves, but I was at a loss about how to handle Easter. I just felt that explaining the Crucifixion of Christ was just a little too much for a three year old to handle. So we decided to let Sunday School handle that issue this year and just focus on the fun aspect this year. Next year I plan on doing a little more research and try to find some age appropriate stories/activities at home as well. Anyone have any suggestions?

The Easter Bunny left Emilie's little basket in the livingroom and also some chocolate eggs hidden around the house for Emilie to find. It was so funny to see her run out in the hall and see the trail of eggs on the stairs. She thought the Easter Bunny was very silly!

A few weeks before Easter Emilie had gone shopping at Target with Carrie and my mom. We love checking out the dollar and $5 sections and this trip was no different. Emilie came home talking about this Doc McStuffins camera and how she wanted the Easter Bunny to bring it for her. I had totally forgotten about it until shopping the Thursday before Easter and I saw it. I figured why not, and bought it for her basket.

On Easter morning Emilie came running into our room, sat on the bed and let out a long sigh. "Welp (her way of say welllll). I don't think the bunny will bring my camera. ::sigh:: He bring it next time"

We went downstairs and she was so happy to find the camera in her Easter basket. Mom Easter Bunny for the win! She had to line up all of her new jammies on the floor and snap pictures of everything with her "camera".

We finished off the day with a big Easter dinner at our place. The weather was so beautiful and sunny that afternoon. Emilie's favourite part of the dinner was the ham. Our girl get not get enough of it.

It was a long day full of activity (and chocolate) and the night ended with me having to rock her to sleep.

Fall Adventures at the Pumpkin Patch

When Emilie was born we I became a little bit obsessed with trying to create traditions around the holidays. I don't really know why. My family was never big on traditions. Routines yes, but not so much with traditions. Andre loves holidays and any excuse to do fun things as a family to mark the holidays, so thankfully he has been on board with my obsession.

We started Emilie's first with just a trip to an apple farm not far from home to pose for some cute pictures and pick up a pumpkin. The next year was when the fun really started with a trip to a local pumpkin patch. Emilie loved the wagon ride and choosing a pumpkin. We went to the same farm two years in a row, but now that she is older and enjoys more activities we decided to visit a bigger farm with more activities.

It was a little bit more expensive, but she had a great time. They had a pumpkin patch, a wagon ride of the property, a hay barn, animals, corn maze...you get the picture!

As you can tell from the pictures her favourite thing to do that day was play in the hay barn. We could not tear her away. We got home that night and she was standing there wiggling her little bum and I asked her what was wrong. She started laughing and said "I have hay in my pants!". It was literally everywhere!

I tend to be behind the camera most of the time on days like this, but I did manage one "usie" of Emilie and I on the wagon ride.

 

 

After all of the excitement of the afternoon we stopped off at the little coffee shop and grabbed some hot apple cider and a little snack. Emilie loved her first taste of "warm apple juice".

It had been so difficult finding a day to go that wasn't raining and we really had a perfect day. We all dressed in layers and by the end of the trip Emilie had shed her hat, mitts and jacket and just played in her fleece. It was the perfect fall day. 

She is already talking about getting her pumpkin next year!

Emilie's Birthday!

As with Emilie's previous birthdays I decided to take the day off work to spend the day with her on her birthday. There is only one more birthday I can do this before school will consume her birthday, so I am going to take advantage of this for as long as I possibly can. I can't help but feel that her special day is a special day for both of us. Not only do I celebrate the day that she entered this world, but I celebrate that day since it was the day she made me a mother.

We decided that we would make the day low key. We've started a tradition last year that we would have her gifts ready to give her in the morning as soon as Andre got home from work. She loves Doc McStuffins so we got her a stuffed Lambie and a doctor bag. She loved it and continues to give everyone "check ups" long after getting the gift.

Andre had to work late that night, so he wouldn't be home for dinner, so we had my mom and grandmother over for dinner and then Carrie, Darren, and Josh came over afterwards for birthday cake. We've found that we really like a low key celebration on the actual day and then we do her birthday party for her and her friends afterwards.

Andre and I really hadn't decided what we wanted to do for her birthday party, but back in January Emilie started to talk about her party from last year and how she wanted to go back to the same Indoor Playground and how she loved the homemade Elmo birthday cake. The one thing I knew for sure was that I was buying a cake this year. I was NOT making another one. The bonus for having her birthday party at the same place is that we knew the routine by now,  and we knew the kids would have a blast, so we booked it.

As predicted Emilie and her friends had a blast at the Indoor Playground. We went with Little Goobers, just like last year. They are one of the only ones in our area that does a true private birthday party. Since the majority of the party goers were between the ages of 1 and 4, we didn't want the stress of having to hover the entire morning making sure some rambunctious 10 year old was going to mow them over. They can run around the entire place and we can sit back and drink our coffee knowing that they are safe. It's really a win, win.

 We opted to wait until we got home to open gifts because having to round up all the kids to watch Emilie open gifts just seemed like more work than it was worth, and we only had the place for 2 hours, so we wanted them to have as much play time as possible. Emilie loved all of her gifts, she is a blessed little girl.

Loss

It has been a rough two years.

Just over two years ago my Memere passed. I think my mom best described her when she said that God broke the mold when he created her. She was one of the most loving, giving, warm people you would ever meet. Her greatest loves were her husband and her family. She didn't speak a lot of English, and unfortunately we never spoke a lot of French, but we found a way to communicate regardless. Even with the language barrier, we never doubted that she loved us, and we still loved her.

Andre and I with Memere and Pepere.

Just one year ago we had another loss. This time on my mothers side of the family. Our cousin Leslie passed suddenly while on vacation. We were all in shock when we got the news. Leslie was always the life of the party. You were always greeted with her infectious laughter and a warm hug. It's still hard to believe that she is no longer with us, even a year later.

Ron, Leslie with Kevin and Rose

Today we unfortunately had to say good bye to someone else. Another sudden death. Another loss that we're still struggling to understand. It's one of those situations when you just can't understand it because we just saw her. Two weeks ago she was just having tea and chatting with one of her friends. A week later, gone. Today we said good bye to my Step-Grandmother, Joan.

Let me start by saying I hate the term Step-Grandmother. I feel that when people asked who passed and I said the word "Step" that they almost stopped listening, or didn't care as much. People hear that word and for some there is a negative connotation. Instead of someone saying "I'm so sorry" They said "Oh", or worse yet, nothing.

Joan has been a part of my and my sisters lives as long as we can remember. We can't remember a time when she wasn't with my grandfather. There was a never a time when we can't remember her not being there. She was the type of person that when you went to visit her and my Poppy she was always up and about. She never sat down until everyone else had their food, and was taken care of. She was always taking care of everyone else, and her cat. She loved her cat.

Today her daughter Dorothy gave her Eulogy. I don't know how she managed to hold it together long enough but she did, and she did an amazing job. It was great listening to stories about when her children were younger, stories we had never heard before. She shared one story about when her and her brothers were just children. Joan had found an abandoned lab. She nursed him back to health and then posted that she had found a dog so the owner could claim him. No one did. They lived in a small apartment that didn't allow pets. So what did Joan do? She bought a house. It makes me smile whenever I think of that story because that was so her. She was always giving and thinking of others.

Today we said good bye to my Grandmother Joan. She was loved and she will be missed.

Joan when she met Emilie for the first time.

"Mama, I still your baby"

This has been something Emilie has been saying a lot lately. It's almost like the more she asserts her independence and becomes more like a big girl she needs to reassure both of us that she is still my baby.

My little big girl will be three years old in just two weeks. THREE years old!! Where did the time go? Where is my pause button?

About a month after her second birthday she decided enough was enough with the cloth diapers and wanted to wear her big girl underwear. That went great and she basically potty trained herself in one day. To be honest I miss the diapers. I never minded the two extra loads of laundry a week and always thought her fluffy little bum was so adorable. Not to mention it helped to keep Emilie's pants from falling down! I loved seeing all the bright colours and designs drying on the clothesline in the summer, and I loved that I could reuse them and not have to throw them out. It kills me every time I have to buy yet another box of Dora Easy Ups for Emilie to wear overnight. She will only wear disposables now since her cloth diapers are too thick for her now that she's used to underwear.

Over the last few months nap time has become less and less. "Mama, I no need a nap" and "Mama, I just sit on my bed. I not tired." are things I hear on an almost daily basis. Those rare days when she does nap are a special treat for Andre and I.

On New Years Day we converted Emilie's crib to a toddler bed. The potty training had lead to what we referred to as "Poop Emergencies". All I will say was there was poopy pull ups being hurled out of the crib. I will leave the rest to your imaginations. After the first incident we started talking to her about changing her crib to a big girl bed. After the third emergency I took the front off. Surprisingly Emilie was all for it. She offered to get the screwdriver and hammer and help! From the first night she was excellent in what she now refers to as her "big girl crib". She will occasionally get out of her bed to play when she should be sleeping, but overall the transition has been great. Much better than we expected.

With all of these new firsts have come regressions. Some days she will speak in baby talk instead of using her big girl words. Others she wants to be with me everywhere I go. She will have weeks where instead of getting out of her big girl crib to use her little potty during nap time she will go in her pull up instead. Most of all this has meant cuddles. Lots and lots of cuddles. I guess every stage has a silver lining right?

Some days these regressions are hard, and add another struggle to our routine. Others I'm more than happy to put down whatever I'm doing and cuddle with my little girl.

Winter at home activities and December Kiwi Crate review

Quite recently we had a cold snap. Not as cold as some places in Canada (as us Ontarians were reminded over and over) but cold for us. For us this meant that if we didn't have to leave our nice warm house we just didn't. This also meant that on my day off I had to think of what I was going to do to keep little Miss Emilie and myself occupied for the entire day. Not so bad when she was consistently napping for at least an hour and half to two hours every afternoon, but harder on those more frequent days when she decides she doesn't need a nap (hahahaha).

It was so cold here (-40 with the windchill) that the condensation on the inside of our windows FROZE. Craziness.

 

This particularly arctic day just happened to be a day that Andre wasn't home during this split shift at work so it was just Emilie and I for the day. I decided that we would bake some cookies in the morning. I had done some cleaning and purging of our cupboards the week before and discovered a dry cookie mix that needed to be used up before it expired, so I thought Emilie and I could bake some cookies. She loves to help me bake, so she loved this activity.

Later that afternoon after her hour of calling for me repeatedly while telling me she's not tired nap, I decided to bust out December's Kiwi Crate. After talking to a friend about how she liked Kiwi Crate with her kids, I decided to bite the bullet and get a 6 month subscription for Emilie back in October. We have loved it so far, but this month proved to be a little "old" for Emilie. I knew that this was bound to happen since all of the activities are for ages 3+, but we had lucked out with the previous two boxes. 

The theme of this month was "Polar Expedition". For anyone that has never heard of Kiwi Crate before it is a subscription box that is delivered to your home every month filled with 2 crafts with a theme every month. All of the crafts come with everything that you need. You do not need to purchase anything. I love this since I get to do something fun with Emilie but do not need to think of anything!

The first activity in the box was a ball toss game. Emilie wanted nothing to do with sewing up the mittens even though she had been getting some practice with her animal boards lately. So I ended up doing this. She did love putting all the velcro dots on the ball and making up the little "paws" on the mittens. This activity was definitely more Emilie friendly and she still plays with this almost two weeks later.

The second activity in the box was homemade window clings. I had received an e-mail from Kiwi Crate before getting the box in the mail so I knew that some other users had some issues with the materials for this craft. Even after being prepared with paper clips to unclog the paint and kneading the paint and glue before using them, the paint was still clogging repeatedly, and at one point the top popped off and paint went everywhere. I was not impressed. We did end up getting two clings complete though, one together, and one that I made on my own.

OURS

MINE

After drying the window clings out of reach of little hands for 24 hours, they were complete, and Emilie decided that they should go in her playroom.

Two out of the last three boxes have come with a little "bonus" activity along with some ideas in their monthly magazine. This month was a little snowflake cookie cutter that she loves to use with her play dough.

Overall Decembers box was not my favourite, but Emilie still had a lot of fun working with all of the different materials and it was nice to have some new activities to do while we were home bound. I can't wait to see what surprises will be in our January box!

If you are thinking of making an order, you are welcome to use my referral code for $10 off your order:
http://www.kiwicrate.com/Refer?i=JennaM7

New Year, New(ish) Projects!

With the beginning of a new year comes the motivation to get things done, a sense of I CAN DO IT. If you're anything like me, that quickly passes, you don't get anything done, and then six months later you kick yourself for not crossing anything off that ever growing to-do list.

Every year I promise myself that this new year will be different, and then a friend shared a link for another blog, Apartment Therapy . They are doing what they call "The January Cure". Basically every day during the month of January she assigns a project to complete to get the ball rolling on all those things that you were meaning to tackle during the month, and a few other more practical little things. It all started on January 2nd, so you still have time to sign up for yourself and have each daily assignment sent directly to your inbox! For the first assignment, and more information, you can go here.


The first assignment was an inventory of sorts of all the little things that you need to get done around the house. I'm ashamed to admit that my list was a page and a half long. It includes everything from touching up some trim paint, and hanging some pictures, to finally painting the basement stairway. All things that are totally doable. So after January is finished I have a whole list of things to work on this year. I can't wait to start crossing things off that list!

Our week in pictures

Baking Cookies

I think every parent has that list in their mind of things that they want to do with their children one day. Some are lofty dreams, others are more everyday types of activities. Sometimes you just remember things that you did with your parents or grandparents, and you think to yourself I can't wait till I can do that too!

I remember baking as a child with my mother and my grandmother. I remember my sister Carrie and I waiting patiently as my mother scraped even amounts of leftover cake batter on to spoons so we could lick the batter. I also remember making Christmas cookies with my grandmother, and her using the cookie press. It's such a simple little thing really, baking with family, but can leave a lasting impression.

Emilie has become more and more interested in the goings on in the kitchen (especially if it has to do with bubbles in the sink), and I really wanted to make some oatmeal chocolate chip cookies. We had some time to kill before bath and bedtime, so I thought why not!

 I used to bake all the time before Emilie was born, but for the longest time if it didn't come in mix form it just wasn't getting made!

The kitchen was already a disaster, so what was a little more mess right? We washed our hands (she loves that part) and away we went!

Emilie loved it. She kept chanting "cookie, cookie, cookie!" while helping me dump the ingredients in the bowl. She loved watching the bowl turn around and around in the mixer, and listened really well when I told her not to touch the mixer. Her favourite part had to be spooning the batter into the cookie sheet. She never once tried to eat any of the batter, and for a child who sometimes hates getting her hands dirty she had a blast.

She was so focused on what she was doing that she wouldn't even make her "cheese" face for the camera!

I am sad to inform you though that she would not taste the fruits of her labour once they were cooled out of the oven. She cannot possibly get that from me!

A photo update to catch you up

November 2011

Trying to distract me for Daylight Savings.

Out to a breakfast date with my Mama on my 8 month birthday.

Pigtails!

My first haircut!

But Mama can still do pigtails!

What-is-this-white-stuff?

Whoa!

Big and Little!

DJ "E" hard at work.

Co-ed bathtime!

December 2011

Yummo!

"Josh, I have some things I need to tell you..."

Pears are so yummy!

Papa showing me what snow feels like for the first time.

Le Sigh

Santa you have great taste in presents!

Papa helping me open one of my first Christmas presents on Christmas Eve

"Mama, the phone is for me!"

My Uncle Andrew helping me open my present.

Thanks for the car Baba!