Apple Tree Art

It has been about two months since Olivia and I have done any crafting or purposeful educational activities.  Now that the dust is settling, I am trying to get us back into the swing of things.

We had nowhere to go yesterday.  We had a lazy morning and then got busy with an art project.  I thought we would do a simple apple tree art project since we just went apple picking.

A good majority of my art supplies are still packed, so I had to go scavenging for necessary items.

First, I gave her a paper plate and a paint brush with green paint.

 She was so happy to be crafting again.

She painted most of the plate green.

I found a scrap piece of brown paper, so that's what we went with for the trunk.

I put the glue on and then had her put it on the paper.

 Pushing it down

The green wasn't exactly dry, but it was time for us to move on.  She used her finger prints to make the apples.

I put the glue on for the paper plate

Then she pushed the plate on (with some assistance--she didn't quite have it on the glue at first).

The finished product.... a very simple two year old art project that she enjoyed doing and is so proud of!

Success!

Three Bags Full (Hilliard)

I went to my first Ohio consignment sale last week.  I went into it pretty much knowing that it wasn't going to be what I am use to.  I say this with all the kindness I can, because I do love Ohio---but Texas has money and Ohio does not.  Of course that reflects on the resale of the clothing (and many other things!).

It was about a fourth of the size compared to what I am use to.  It also wasn't organized as well as I would have liked, but it wasn't awful.  The worst part is that it was at a fair grounds building and there was no air conditioning.  It happened to be rather hot that day.  At one point I seriously felt like I needed to sit down.  And I did... on a recliner that someone was trying to sell.  At all of the sales I have been to in the past, there is always an area to "go through" your stuff.  Most people throw anything that looks remotely good in their bag and then goes through later and looks for stains, tears, spots or decides if it is worth the price. There was no "go through" spot at this sale, so I made my own--while sitting. :)

Despite the fact that it wasn't "as good" as the ones I have been to, I was still able to find a few deals.

Olivia is still wearing some of her 24 months stuff.  She also can easily fit into 2T stuff.  That being said, some of her fall and winter stuff from last year still fits.  I have been buying 3T stuff, because she seems right on the edge of fitting into the 2T stuff.  Oddly, if you go by the height and weight requirements on the tags, I think she should technically be in a 4T. There is NO WAY that would fit though.  (It's the head!)

She got one Gymboree outfit, two sweaters, two dresses and one pair of pants.  I also bought her 3 books.

Logan got the most!  I wanted to stick with newborn and size 0 to 3 months just because I'm not sure how fast he will grow.  The Children's Place sweater is a 6 month though.

He got 4 long sleeve onesies, 4 sleepers, 3 outfits and one sweater.

I also bought a maternity outfit.  It's actually from New York and Co.  I didn't even know they had maternity stuff! Anyway, I spent the most on that.  It was $10.

Total I walked away spending $64.50.  Not bad.

19 weeks, Baby # 2

How far along: 19 weeks

Size of baby: baby is the size of a mango

Total weight gain/loss: +6.4 pounds

Maternity clothes: Still a mix. About 80% of my maternity clothes are spring and summer, so I'm trying to wear what I can of those.  On the colder days I have a few options.  I will eventually need to pick up a few winter type items, but I'm waiting until it gets a little cooler out and my bump is fuller.  Right now I'm in that stage where my bump is too big for most of my regular clothing items, but it's too small for a lot of my maternity shirts.

Gender: A boy!

Movement: I'm feeling him much more now.  It's still a tickle and not a kick, but it is getting stronger by the day.

Sleep: I have good and bad nights, but overall it's not too bad.

What I miss: not much

Cravings: nothing really

 

 

Symptoms: my hips hurt if I walk too much (and it doesn't even take much), some heart burn, and peeing way too much!  Unfortunately it's more in the night than in the day.  The other day I went at 8 PM, 9, 10, 11, 12, 1 AM, 1:20 and 5:30!!  That is a lot of middle of the night trips to the bathroom!  Luckily most nights it's only 3 times.

Surprises: We weren't for sure if we were going to get our anatomy scan yesterday or have to wait for an opening on Thursday.  So it was nice when it all worked out for us to do it while we were already there!

Favorite purchase: I  have a post coming, but I went to a local consignment sale and was able to buy a few boy things.  Now that I know for sure that it's a boy, I will start paying more attention to sales and such.

Best moment this week: Meeting my new doctor and getting to see baby Logan on the screen and hear his heartbeat!

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 I had my first doctor's appointment yesterday! They told me there was a chance that we could get my anatomy scan right after, but even if we didn't Michael should come to meet the new doctor too.  So it was a family affair!

*I really liked my new doctor AND the nurse.  So far there have been a lot of things that I like better in Texas, so it was really nice to be able to leave and feel good about my choice and my future visits.

*She was very pleased with my weight gain.  Also, I gained 30 with Olivia and was down all but 2 to 4 pounds (even though my body looked a lot different), so she was happy about that.

*However, even though the weight gain is going well, she thinks I might have developed gestational diabetes late in my last pregnancy.  I didn't have any symptoms of GD, I passed my test with flying colors, and they tested Olivia at birth and she did not have GD.  Even so, there really is no explanation why she suddenly started measuring so far ahead.  Also, she was a really big baby for 37w4d.  So she wants me to test early this time and also avoid things like soda, white rice/breads/potatoes, etc.  You can't induce without a medical reason until 39 weeks.  So if I don't have high blood pressure this time and things turn out the same as far as babies size, I will end up with a huge baby.  She wants to try to avoid that and the complications (can it fit?) that could arise.

*3 out of 4 of my grandparents have died due to cancer and my mom had ovarian cancer.  That concerned her and she said that I will eventually (after pregnancy?) NEED genetic screening.  This is not something new.  I know my family history.  It's not very comforting, though.

*We did the anatomy scan and everything is looking good.  I was 18w6d and baby was measuring at 19w3d, so that is still pretty normal.  It is for sure a BOY. He is 11 ounces.

*I was told that I need to try to avoid lifting Olivia as much as possible.  They say the limit is between 25 and 30 pounds and she is more than that.  That  could be tricky, but I will try my best.

It was a good visit, and I'm feeling good about the rest of this pregnancy now.

Traveling with a Toddler!

There is no need to go into the details of our move.  It sucked, and we hope to be getting some money back.  The movers were awful, too young to be left in charge, and were rude and careless.  We have had movers move us two other times with no issue.  I guess this time we just got stuck with duds.  Add that to the stress of being in the hospital for a few days the week before and trying to rush the last minute packing and we were actually looking forward to the 18 hour drive!

Thankfully I had planned far ahead and had packed two little totes of fun for Olivia.

Like usual, I wanted to be prepared.  She does well in the car, but it was going to be a long drive.  I wanted to try to avoid any issues.  I way over packed.  Part of that though, was that our stuff could have taken two weeks to get here.  So my thought was, then she'll at least have two small totes of toys.  But our stuff was the only thing on the truck, so the movers actually arrived the same day we did.

We planned ahead of time to take our time on the drive and to stop as needed.  Thank goodness that was already our mindset, because we were having to change diapers immediately and give two baths a day due to Olivia's surgery.  It all worked out.

We left Sunday night around 6.

 Because of the movers, we ended up having a late lunch.  I knew we'd be stopping for dinner after a little bit so I tried to just let her sit and entertain herself for a bit.  She did just that!

Our friends gave her a "BOZ" book as a going away gift.  She loved it!  I also picked up about 2 or 3 other new (cheap!) books over the few weeks to give her for the drive.  She is a book lover and looked at them multiple different times throughout the few days.

I tried not to spend too much money.  The one thing I did splurge on ($20) was a full size magnadoodle.  I had so many people say their kids love it in the car.  I knew we'd also get use out of it in the future when learning to write letters or even just drawing, so it wasn't just for the trip.  Of course, it's the one thing that Olivia showed the least interest in.  She likes to write with pens and pencils and draw, so I thought it was going to be a home run. She was less than impressed.

It started getting dark shortly after we ate dinner, so we put a DVD in and watched that for a while.  I bought just a handful of new $5 DVD's since she had seen everything we have multiple times.

We made sure to bathe her (for the second time) before we left the apartment, so that we could drive a little further on the first night.  After watching one movie I turned it off and tried to get her to go to sleep.  She eventually fell asleep and slept until we stopped around midnight.  We were fearing she would be up for a bit since the transfer woke her up (and that's just her style). Plus, she doesn't do well sleeping with us but she's too big for a pack and play at this point.  Surprisingly, she did great.  She was so tired from the thrown off schedule from the move that she went right to sleep!

I have a few dollar store cookie sheets from my teaching days.  I brought one along.  The magnetic animals are from our fridge.  I also brought along magnetic Melissa and Doug letters that we already had, but she didn't play with them much.

I got her this "praise mic" at Mardel on clearance for $1.50.  She thought it made her Sid the Science Kid! :)  She played with this multiple time throughout the trip as well.

I glued felt onto the back of the cookie sheet to make a felt board.  I got this little farm set at Mardel too.  It was by far her favorite activity out of my bag of tricks!

We purposely went the way of Missouri so that we could drive through where I went to college.  We stopped for lunch at Lambert's--home of the throwed roll.

We drove the 20 minutes to Springfield.  We stopped to get gas right across the street from the college and don't you know, Olivia fell asleep.

We didn't have a stroller and I didn't really want to wake her, so we just took a driving tour of the campus.

The cookie sheet also served as a lap tray.  She loved these little animals.

This slinky came from the dollar section at Target.

We only had about 5 hours to go on the last day.  She had caught on by then, and as soon as we got in the car she was asking for her toys.  I think she enjoyed that there was a steady flow of things to keep her busy.  She repeated a lot of the things that I already mentioned.  She also napped and watched some DVD's.  The new thing she did was coloring some pictures with markers.

Truth be told, I think she would have been more than happy to watch DVD's the entire 18 hours of drive time.  I, however, did not want her watching that much TV.  I am all about doing what you need to do to get through tough situations. I also am not opposed to her watching more than normal in one day.  But I knew that I could entertain her for part of the time where it didn't involve just staring at a screen.

I packed other things that didn't get used.... A box of her touch and feel flashcards, a box of her mini puzzles that she loves, stickers, small little play doh tubs from my teaching days, buttons and that bottle with the slit in it, and more.  We mostly played with the new stuff.  Like I said, she played with most of it two and three times so it was worth it.

She slept great the entire trip, she ate well, and she never once cried or complained about being in her car seat. I call that a success! :)

Family Traditions--Apple Picking!

Guess what we did this weekend?!  That's right.  We went apple picking. Woo hoo!  I am so glad to be back in the land where apples grow. :)  We had perfect weather for it too!

Olivia LOVED it!  I didn't even have my bag situated or my camera ready yet and she had already ran to a tree and pulled an apple off!

There were so many left that were low on the trees, which was perfect for Olivia.

They took a little effort on her part to pull off the trees.  Michael told her she had to pull hard.  So each time she picked one she'd say, "Pull, pull, pull!"

Inspecting her apple.  We really didn't find too many bad ones.

Even though there were plenty of apples to pick at her level, Michael thought it might be fun for her to pick a few from up high.

Love!

We picked Johnathon, which are good baking apples.  You could literally go back every weekend to get a different variety if you wanted to!

You pay by the bag where we went.  You could get a small or large bag.  We probably only needed enough apples to fill a small bag, but went for the large for the "experience".

After we were done picking our bag of apples, we headed over to the large market area.

Olivia had almost as much fun in there as she did apple picking!  They sell all sorts of fruit and vegetables, fall decorations, jams, Amish baked goods and so much more!

She loved this little "pumpkins".  In this picture she said one was mommy and one was boppa and she gave each one a hug.  She was also calling some Olivia and "baby Logan".  We left with one baby pumpkin, one sucker, and one box of Amish baked pumpkin bars. Mmmm!

They usually have a hay/wagon ride you can go on, but the tractor was broken.  So we headed over to the corn maze area.  They had all sorts of activities. 

 (She is in the "I'm a toddler and will refuse to look at the camera just because" phase. It's awesome.)

 We didn't go in the corn maze or on any of the bounce houses.  We did buy a ride on the barrel train since the hay ride wasn't happening.

She didn't look to sure about the ride while it was happening, but after she got off she kept talking about how much fun it was.

Then we played in the "fun zone".  There were all sorts of options for her.  She dug in the sand for treasure, climbed a spider's web, rode a bouncy horse, had a blast in a tire swing shaped like a horse, went down a slide, and all sorts of other things.  Then it was time to go home.

Once at home, Olivia and Boppa took a nap and I left for a girl's afternoon/evening.  My best friend, Allyssa, from high school (in Wisconsin) now lives about an hour away from me in Ohio.  Small world, huh?  So we met up and did a little shopping and had dinner.  It was nice seeing her again and catching up. 

It was a busy day, but it was a fun day.  My cup is full.

Library Love

I'm going to try to avoid beating a dead horse, but we headed to our first library story time this week... I LOVE our libraries!!!

I didn't get any pictures of the story time itself.  Olivia spent a majority of the time sitting in my lap taking it all in.  Not only were there lots of people, but the room itself is a lot to look at.

We spent lots of time afterwards playing.

I didn't get any pictures of her playing with the puppets, but she loved the tree house.

She loved all of the little story features.

She found this guy...

Then she made sure he had tea with the mad hatter.

I can't even begin to tell you how much this girl loves books.  She literally sits for hours a day and flips through books one page at a time. Then she stacks them up in nice, neat piles.

We didn't even get to everything.  We had to leave after an hour and a half so that we could go eat lunch and take a nap.  Next time I'm going to try to get there early, so some of our play time is ahead of time.  Although it was nice to stay after because so many people left for early lunches.