Category Archives: Alethea Margaret

A First and Some Fun

Posted on by
Reply

Today was a crazy busy day.

It started out with Alethea and I going to Cost Cutters for her first haircut.

We only got the back cut, because I’d still like the front to keep growing and I don’t want Alethea to have bangs.  Still, I’m glad I went to a salon, because Alethea was pretty cooperative, but I think that was mostly the result of getting to wear a cool surfing penguins cape.

After her haircut, we went to Wendy’s for a mother/daughter lunch.  Getting to have a meal together (just the two of us) isn’t something that happens all that often.  We bonded over chicken nuggets and an apple chicken salad.

With tummy’s running on full, we hopped into the car and did some more errands, including the dry cleaners, which isn’t something I’d normally bother to share, but I’m super impressed with this one I found near us because they have a drive up window.  LOVE IT!

Our last errand of the morning was Kohl’s where we used our 20 percent off coupon to procure a black hat for Alethea’s Halloween costume and new sunglasses for me, who foolishly let Lydia play with my last pair while she was sitting on our concrete sidewalk.  SCRAAAAATCH!

I found a really cute new pair and so did Alethea:

After we put her selection back on the rack, we bought the hat and my sunglasses and then headed home for nap time.  Or at least Alethea took a nap.  I, however, took off again and picked up a pumpkin at the grocery store, take n’ bake pizzas for dinner and a paint sample for our main floor bathroom.

Then home again, home again, jiggidy jig, I tossed the pizzas in the fridge and grabbed a paint brush, determined to test a small square of the color before our dinner guests arrived.  I’m wasn’t sure exactly when I’d get around to actually painting the bathroom, but I just love to see what paint colors look like up on a wall.  So yeah, dinner guests coming and no plans to paint the bathroom soon.  Should I have waited to try the color out?  Oh probably, but I had a brilliant plan.  Just paint a small square behind the picture frame on the wall and hang the picture back up when finished.  Fool proof…

Unless one fails to realize that the screw in the wall only marks the top of the picture frame when the hanger for the picture frame is actually at the top.  Not closer to a third of the way down the back, like mine is…

Oh well.  Looks like I’ve got new motivation to move ‘paint main floor bathroom’ up on my to do list.

Our dinner guests arrived on schedule, but since it was my parents and Peter’s parents who came over, they were very understanding about the painting mishap and the tool box sitting on the kitchen counter.  Besides, we were about to create an even bigger mess since they had all come over for our annual pumpkin carving.  It’s quickly becoming a family tradition for the men to watch football and drink beer while the women-folk do the carving, but that’s okay.  We all probably enjoy it more that way anyhow.

Naturally, step one of carving is to pop the top off the gourds and clean out the guts.  The girls both helped with this.  Lydia very willingly stuck her hand right into the pumpkin, but then had a hard time grabbing seeds, since they were so slippery.

And when she did finally get a seed out of her large orange friend, it went straight into her mouth.  I was about to dive in after it when she swallowed it in one easy gulp.

And with that, her pumpkin gutting time quickly ended.

Alethea was definitely more squeamish than her sister, but eventually got into the seed finding fun.

With the guts cleaned out, we began the carving process.  I worked on a puppy pumpkin as per Alethea’s request (yes, she had a puppy pumpkin last year too) and Peter’s mom Denny worked on Lydia’s pumpkin eating pumpkin, which was based on a photo I found online (I wish it had been my design idea, but it wasn’t).  I’m super happy with how they turned out!

Small pumpkins and gourds of the world, beware!

We also took some time during the evening to have the girls model their Halloween costumes for their grandparents, who won’t be around on Monday to see them all dressed up.  I just can’t get over how cute they both look!

The bumble bee costume was actually mine when I was about Alethea’s age, so I’ll have to dig up a picture so we can do a side by side comparison.

Alethea was disappointed it wasn’t actually time to go trick-or-treating, and honestly, I was too.  It’s going to be a really delightful Halloween!

My little flower and bumble bee are snug in their beds now, and I think I’m going to join them and put an end to this very busy day.

Two and a Half!

Posted on by
Reply

Today is Alethea’s half birthday!  Can you believe she’s 2.5 years old?!?!  That means she’s half way to 5!  Yikes!!!!  Not ready to think about that, so I’ll just say…

Happy Birthday, Alethea!

You make us smile every single day and we can’t think of anyone else we’d rather have for our firstborn girl!

A Big Big Bed

Posted on by
3

It’s official!  Alethea in no longer in a crib and she’s no longer in a big girl bed.  Nope, she’s been upgraded to a big BIG bed!

While it was nice to have a crib that converted to a toddler bed, we realized that Alethea’s time in it was limited by the fact that our second crib, the one that Lydia is using, is a drop-side model, also know as an “they no longer make them death trap”.  So now that Lydia is on the verge of pulling herself up to standing, we figured it was time to pull the ol’ switcheroo and get Lydia into the safer crib and upgrade Alethea to a twin mattress.

Alethea’s transition from nursery to big girl room wasn’t completely smooth and her move from crib to toddler bed wasn’t exactly without bumps, so a few months ago Peter and I started strategizing how to make Alethea totally enthusiastic about her big, big bed’s arrival.  So enthusiastic that she’d want to help take apart her toddler bed.

Plan Stage 1: Talk it up!  We started telling her about the big, big bed, how it was going to be so big that it would go all the way from the wall to the bookcase and how she’d have room to sleep with all of her stuffed animals.

Plan Stage 2: Bribe away!  Alethea adores Clifford, the big red dog, so I found a large plush Clifford dog at Kohl’s.  Then we kept telling her that when she got a big big bed, her bed would be so big that Clifford would come sleep with her.

I’m happy to report that our two stage plan worked brilliantly.  Alethea was begging to go bed shopping!  And after we bought the bed, Alethea was so excited to sleep in it that when we offered her dinner, she said, “No thanks.  Go to sleep!”

She did eventually come down for dinner, but right after she got her jammies on, she asked where Clifford was.  I have no idea what she was expecting, but when Peter brought in the stuffed animal, she got a huge grin on her face, held out her arms, and said, “I want it!”

Of course, we couldn’t leave Lydia out, so she got a new plush too, Clifford’s best friend T-Bone!

Of all the sleeping transitions we’ve gone through, this was definitely the easiest.  She was thrilled with the bed and her new Clifford (and only mildly bothered that she didn’t get a T-Bone too!)

And I am so glad that we finally got to make the bed with the gorgeous quilt that Alethea’s Gramma Denny made for her.  It really brings her whole big girl room together so nicely!

A big girl, a big red dog and a big, BIG bed!

Trying New Things

Posted on by
3

Today Alethea and I decided to try a few new things.

THING 1

Since I grew up living in a townhouse, there are many yard related tasks that I didn’t do as a child.  For example, I’ve never mowed a lawn and I don’t recall ever having jumped into an enormous pile of leaves.  Today wasn’t a lawn mowing day, but the leaf thing seemed like a possibility.  However, instead of trying it myself, I was content to let Alethea have this first for her own.

Here are a few pics from Alethea’s inaugural leaf pile jumping:

THING 2

Alethea has been really into reading the Frances books lately, especially Bread and Jam for Frances.  I started noticing how in several of the books the characters mention cream cheese sandwiches: cream cheese and chive, cream cheese and jam, cream cheese, cucumber and tomato on rye, etc.  Cream cheese isn’t something that I’ve ever eaten as a main sandwich ingredient, but it didn’t sound too bad, so today we gave it a whirl.  For lunch, Alethea and I had cream cheese and tomatoes on whole wheat bread with a sprinkling of dill for zip.  Turns out cream cheese and tomatoes make for a pretty tasty sandwich.  I enjoyed mine and Alethea liked hers so well, she requested and was given a second serving!  I can see cream cheese becoming a staple around here.

THING 3

Has anyone else noticed how crazy expensive chicken is getting?  I’ve gotten to the point that I’m doing my weekly meal planning after I go to the grocery store, just because I can’t bring myself to buy chicken if it’s not on sale.  Boneless skinless breasts haven’t been marked down lately, but whole chickens were, which is how I ended up with a bird that needed roasting.  Never roasted a whole chicken before, but I’m always up for a culinary adventure.  So armed with some advice and a recipe that I sort of followed, I whipped up this beauty for dinner tonight:

I think I did reasonably well for my first attempt.  The meat was incredibly tender, practically falling off the bone.  The flavor was good too, but not anything to write home about.  Alethea gave it two thumbs up though and it’s hard to get her to eat chicken that’s not in a nugget form, so I will definitely need to try this again.

So that was our day of new things.  What about you?  Have you done/tried anything new lately?  A new food, a new hobby, a new route to work?  Is there something that people would be surprised to learn that you’ve never done?  Or have you ever based your menu choices off of a piece of children’s literature?  Please, do tell!

Family Fall Fun

Posted on by
4

Today Peter, Alethea, Lydia and I went to a farm for a little autumnal family fun.  My friend Katie and her daughter Madelyn joined us and together we had an exhausting, but delightful morning.

First stop: The mobile chicken coop.  Alethea and Madelyn both had fun making chicken noises, although at one point Madelyn was heard to say, “Rrrroooooar!”  It was super cute!

Next up: The pedal cars.  Daddy took Alethea for a spin!  Then Mommy took a picture.  (Can you tell someone has recently reached the ‘likes to make goofy faces for the camera’ phase?)

And then: Into the corn maze!  Here’s Katie and Madelyn navigating the path.  Amazing that we went through it with three kids under three years of age and didn’t lose anyone, huh?

A brief pit stop: Alethea was interested to discover that we were in fact walking through ‘corn on the cob’ and was happy to share her knowledge with Madelyn.

However: The novelty of walking through corn on the cob wore off quite a ways before we reached the exit.  The scenery didn’t change much and the sun was beating down on us, which is a weird thing to write about an outdoor adventure in Minnesota in OCTOBER, but it was hot.  And uncomfortable.  So we cheated, looked at the map and got out in the most direct way we could.  But, right outside the maze, the good times continued at the giant spider’s web.

Take two: After Peter got tired of bouncing Alethea in the web (which was definitely before Alethea was tired of being bounced!) Lydia took a seat and I snapped a picture of my girls sitting together (a rare occurrence, let me tell you!)

Sit down for a second: All of us together on a bright sunny day seemed to be the perfect opportunity to try and capture a family portrait.  We have two little girls who don’t necessarily smile on cue, especially when they are hot and hungry.  Fortunately, they do both like being tickled.

And then: We discovered the girls’ favorite fall activity, the corn box!  ‘What’s a corn box?’ you ask.  It’s like a sand box, but filled with feed corn.  Alethea couldn’t get enough of the scooping, filling and digging.  I told Peter I want one for our back yard.  It was so much less messy than a sand box.

A jealous moment: We didn’t put Lydia in at first because we thought we’d spend the whole time fishing kernels out of her mouth, but she was clearly feeling left out of the corn box fun.

Still in the box: And who could blame Lydia for feeling grumpy about being excluded.  Alethea was having a blast and Madelyn thought the corn box was pretty cool too.

One more in the box: So we let Lydia join us, and what do you know, she was pretty good about not putting the corn in her mouth (although all bets were off when it came to the buckets and scoops).

A wake up call: After Lydia almost fell asleep in the corn box, we decided we’d better finish up our farm tour before we reached the point of complete exhaustion.

Moving on: As we walked across to the barn yard to visit the animals, I tried to tactfully remove corn from places the good Lord never intended it to go (I bet we’ll be finding random kernels around the house for weeks after this). It turned out to be a good thing we had corn on us though because we visited the chickens, sheep, horses, ducks and geese, all of whom were looking for handouts.  The funniest part of the visit was Alethea constantly talking to the animals as though they could understand her.  “Hello, Mr. Donkey!  How are you?”

And finally: No fall farm visit would be complete without a few pumpkins, so we purchased some little ones from the garden center and then took pictures on the big pile outside.

More pumpkins: Madelyn willingly took her turn on the pile of gourds.

Last, but not least: Alethea got her picture taken, but only after I told her she could have ice cream if she would sit on the pumpkins and smile for the camera.  Perhaps I should have specified what kind of a smile was required to earn her reward.

Home again, home again: After devouring our well-deserved lunch at Dairy Queen, we headed home for naps all around!  It was a glorious day!

Speaking of Impressive

Posted on by
2

Wow, what a surprise to drop by my own blog and see new post up that I knew nothing about!  Hmmm….  Time to change the administrator password perhaps.

I don’t usually post more than once a day, but since the last post wasn’t actually mine, I hope you’ll forgive the extra blogging.  So, without further ado, on to my subject for the day…

A friend told us about this awesome video called The Letter Factory by Leap Frog.  (Thanks for the recommendation, Amie!)  While I subscribe firmly to the thought that most ‘educational’ kids programing is more entertaining than informative, and that limiting your child’s TV exposure is best, I have been thoroughly impressed by this video.  Alethea enjoys watching it and I find it to be age appropriate and not annoying, which is all that I generally expect from our shows.  However, (bonus!) she really is learning her alphabet sounds!

Check out this video I took of her a couple weeks ago, keeping in mind that she had only watched the Letter Factory DVD about half a dozen times over the course of a month at this point:

(For die-hard cute kid singing fans, you can watch letters Q-Z by clicking here.)

At the time I took the above video of her, I obviously realized she was learning the letter sounds in the song.  But that wasn’t totally a shock to me, since Alethea picks up on anything set to music really quickly.  What did surprise me was when today at the Library she, completely unprompted, walked up to a big sign that said ‘READ’, pointed to the R and said, “Rrrrrr!”

So, there’s my sales pitch.  My two and a half year old can recognize the letter R and tell you what sound it makes.  Not because I’m a great parent or implemented some crazy rigorous reading program, but because she watched the Letter Factory a handful of times.  If you have a pre-reader in your life, I’d highly recommend this video!

Post Party Fun

Posted on by
2

On Saturday we had my 30th birthday party at our house.  It was a super fun evening and I personally thought it was absolutely perfect.  Just what I wanted it to be!

Saturday night after the party, we just managed to get the left-over food put away before we crashed.  So, Sunday was spent cleaning up the house, since not only did we host a party, we also hauled all of our living room furniture to the garage and set up cocktail tables and a bar in our house.  Needless to say, it was a delightful, but extremely exhausting weekend.

So this morning, after Lydia, Alethea and I drove the rentals back to the party store, we came home and decided to kick back and have an alfresco lunch under the pop-up tent that is still set up on the back deck, and enjoy the centerpiece left from the party:

After checking out the food situation in the fridge, I ended up filling my plate with an oddly satisfying combination of one mini egg roll, one peanut-satay chicken skewer, a nice helping of apple pecan lettuce cups and a slice of carrot cake.

I didn’t have enough chocolate to dip all of the strawberries I bought for the party, so Lydia got to eat some of the undipped extras along with her puffs and pureed carrots:

Alethea had reheated chicken nuggets left from the kids party in the basement along with veggies from the crudites platter and two cream-cheese and cucumber finger sandwiches.  The later of which she completely devoured:

While I can’t say I’m dying to throw another cocktail party in the very near future, I will say that it’s not such a bad thing to have a beautifully decorated house, yummy (I just almost typed yuppy, but that might apply too) food in the fridge and a plate of chocolate truffles to keep you company while blogging.

So if the smell of carrot cake with cream cheese frosting comes wafting through the computer, don’t mind me, I’m just reveling in the the post-party spoils!

Sharing is Good

Posted on by
1

Unless…

This morning I got Lydia out of her crib and was getting her dressed.

Alethea walked into the room, held out her index finger to Lydia, and said…

“Hey We-ya, I have a booger. You want it?”

We’re always telling Alethea to share with her sister, so it must be mystifying to have me tell her, “That’s very thoughtful, but we don’t share our boogers, Honey.”

Stop confusing me, Mom!

Clean is in the Eye of the Beholder

Posted on by
1

This morning Alethea pointed to a spot on the living room floor and said, “Crumbs!”

Looking up from the lunch I was preparing for her, I replied, “Yes, honey, I know, I need to clean the house.”

She looked at me and said quite matter-of-factly, “It’s very dirty.”

Sigh… just what I need.  A two year old criticizing my domestic skills.

But she’s right.  The house is a mess, piano lessons are starting tomorrow, we haven’t finished potty training (will we ever?!?!) and of course, I’m in over my head with projects in my house, projects at church and projects that are still in my brain, but boy would I ever like to find time to get them out of there.  Oh, and Lydia hasn’t pooped in days (can we say craaaankeeeey)!

Gaaaah!

On the bright side, Alethea seems to be finally getting over this mystery illness that has been plaguing her during the past week, the weather is amazingly gorgeous and well, it’s hard to be too frustrated when your kids are just so doggone cute.

Because purple boots go with anything…

And because there is nothing quite so funny as a baby with a mustache…

And with that I’m off to sweep my floors.

Happy Wednesday!

Blogging Irony

Posted on by
5

One of the supreme ironies of keeping a blog is that when life is crazy, you have tons of material and no time to write, but then when life slows down, you realize that you’ve forgotten everything you meant to post about.

This week was one of the crazy ones.  Potty training, getting ready for piano teaching this fall and trying to get plans for my 30th birthday party in motion took up a lot of time and energy.  I really really really do mean to blog about these things and others, but am searching for some quiet moments to do them justice.

Fortunately when words fail, a good picture can make a poor blogging week just a bit better.  So here’s one for you.  Alethea, fast asleep in a pile of shoe boxes, wearing one pink boot, one purple boot and a diaper.  Gotta love it.

If it weren’t 11:20 at night, I’d think of a funny caption, but I’m all out of blogging energy now, so feel free to leave your own in the comments section of this post!