My Family

The Nose Has Been Found

I've been waiting for this to happen and it finally did last Sunday:

I believe Lucy was saying "I've got to get the booger out." I laughed. I know I shouldn't have because it will feed the behavior, but it was so funny! And I also know I shouldn't have started taking pictures and filming it, either, but it was just too funny! I'm really surprised she hasn't picked her nose before, or at least I haven't seen her pick her nose before! What a fun little girl we have!

Happy Father's Day

Happy Father's Day to my Dad! He's a good, good Dad and is always so helpful and offers good advice.

Reading With Lucy

Reading books to Lucy has been a part of her naptime and bedtime routine for as long as I can remember. (And you know that's a long time, all 2 years!) Some of her favorite books to read are the "Spot" books by Eric Hill. "Spot Says Goodnight," "Spot Goes To The Farm," "Where's Spot?" and "Spot's Birthday Balloon" are the books we have. We have read these books over and over and over and over! They are "lift the flap" books and Lucy loves them.

When I was getting Molly's room ready before she was born, I put some of Lucy's books in Molly's room to read to her someday. I put the Spot books and some of the more "baby" books in her room to make way for more of the "toddler" books for Lucy. The past few weeks we've been playing in Molly's room before bedtime and Lucy found Molly's book basket with the Spot books in them. She wanted to read Spot, so we started reading them again. She really enjoyed them and has been asking for them each night.

This past Sunday Ross gave Lucy the "Spot Says Goodnight" book to look at while he was drying her hair. All of a sudden, Lucy started reading the book to us and it was so sweet! She was spot on (ha, funny pun there!) with the words on each page and she even used different voices with the different characters like I do. And on the page where Dad says "you smell nice, Spot," she even smelled her arm like I smell her when I'm reading it. It was so much fun listening to this! She really is a little sponge, soaking up everything we say and do. Love her so much!

I was so happy to get this on video! It's too long to post on this site, but please click the link below to watch it on our YouTube site. It's just soo sweet to pass up!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5CiA5owQhQE

 

A Good Mommy

Lucy has proven to be a pretty good Mommy lately. She has done this by carefully taking care of her dolls and Toy Story figures and putting them in her baby doll swing, Molly's bouncy seat, Molly's car seat, and anything else that a baby might sit in. She likes to buckle the straps, too. It's so cute and Lucy is just the sweetest little girl ever!

My...Uh, Lucy's Toy Story Birthday Party

Lucy has really been into Toy Story since she first watched it in January at Aunt Stephanie's house. Because of her absolute LOVE for Woody, Buzz, and Jessie, we decided to have a Toy Story-themed second birthday party for her. I had a really fun time putting everything together for it, and did it pretty inexpensively, too.

Of course, my first thought was to search Pinterest for Toy Story birthday party ideas and I actually found a lot of good ideas. Some seemed a little over the top for me, but good ideas nonetheless. Here's a breakdown of everything I did for my...Lucy's party. :)

The Invitation
I found this on Etsy and am absolutely in love with it! In fact, I still have it on my refrigerator door because I love looking at it! It was only $6 to have designed and then I printed it out on my home computer, very minimal cost. I love the expression on Lucy's face in this picture!

Etchasketch Board
I am so proud of this Etchasketch board! I made it out of the box our double stroller came in and used gray and red duct tape to make it, along with Toy Story clipart/fonts I bought for $3, and a free downloadable picture of the Toy Story gang I found online. This was a fun project to work on and again, I'm so proud of it! I added Lucy's picture to the Toy Story gang and think she fits so perfectly with them! The board was setting inside the front door so everyone could see it when they arrived.

The Cake
I love this cake!! My very talented friend, Bekah, from my MOPS group made the cake for me and she made it for free!!As you can see, she played off of the Etchasketch look from the party invitation and I love how it turned out. It was a very tasty cake, too!

The Cookies
Lucy's Gramma Wiseman made the cookies for us and I loved them! She made some very pretty cookies for her birthday party last year and I asked her to do the same this year. I sent her a few pictures of Toy Story cookies that I found online and she did a stellar job making her own. They were so festive and tasty. We had quite a few leftover and I enjoyed pulling one or two or three out of the freezer for a few weeks after her party to eat!

Door Decorations
I found a blank Etchasketch picture online and used that for the base of all of my decorations. I used it to make a "Welcome to Lucy's Birthday Party" sign for the front door. I also put pictures of Lucy from her second year on the Etchasketches. Loved this!

Happy Birthday Banner
I used the Etchasketch picture to spell out "Happy Birthday Lucy" and strung them together for a banner. The party was held outside, so I put the banner on our house under the table Lucy sat at to eat her cake. 

Woody, Jessie, and Buzz Poster
Lucy's Gramma and Grampa Wiseman bought all of our Toy Story paper goods - plates, cups, napkins, party favors, and a game. This was so much appreciated! It was nice to not have to buy any of it. They found it at the Hallmark Discount Store for former employees. (Lucy's Grampa Wiseman retired from Hallmark a few years back after working their for 30 years and still has lots of good perks for his years of service to the company!) The poster below is actually part of a game, but we didn't play the game, just left it up for Lucy to enjoy. I love this picture of her!

Learning To Roll With It

If there's one lesson I've learned my first 2 years of parenthood it's this:  Whatever happens, you just need to roll with it. Life throws things at us and there's absolutely nothing we can do about it but deal with it and move on. Here are some examples of this:

My First Mother's Day
Just two weeks into parenthood I was very excited to celebrate Mother's Day 2013, but it just didn't happen as I'd planned! I was extremely tired and didn't even go to church because Lucy woke up the night before around 3am and I fed her (she was only 2 weeks old at the time) and she did not go back to sleep until about 9am the next morning. NO. JOKE! She spent that whole time crying and screaming at us. We had no idea what to do so called the overnight nurse line from her doctor's office. We ended up taking Lucy to the doctor that morning, my first Mother's Day, only to have her fall asleep right after we made the doctor's appointment! The doctor suggested Lucy had reflux and this was causing all the screaming. (Side note, she did have reflux and we started her on Zantac that week after her two-week checkup.) Lucy was fine the rest of the day and we went out to my parent's house for Mother's Day to take a nap while they took care of Lucy!

Lucy's First Easter in 2014
Easter 2014 did not happen for us as I'd planned on it happening. We spent the evening before Easter Sunday at urgent care with Lucy. She was not feeling well and had had an ear infection the previous week. She had also been around my Mom the day before and my Mom woke up sick that Saturday morning. We were afraid her ear was still bothering her or she had picked up what my Mom had, so decided to have it checked out.

We spent about four hours at urgent care just to be told nothing was wrong. We were glad nothing was wrong, but kind of frustrated at our wasted time. Well, very early the next morning, Easter Sunday morning, I woke up not feeling well and made my first of several trips to the bathroom to throw up. I was so sick!

Needless to say, we did not make it to church for Easter Sunday. I was so bummed about this! Easter is my favorite holiday and I was so looking forward to celebrating it. I also had a very pretty dress for Lucy to wear for her first Easter and was upset that she wouldn't get to go to church. I'm so thankful for Ross. He took care of me and Lucy that day. I only saw Lucy a few times as I was too sick to get out of bed and I wanted to stay away from her so she didn't get what I had.

Life With Molly
I'll be the first to admit that life with two kids, one kid who is just two years old and one kid who is three months old at the time of this writing, has been hard! The hardest part is probably learning how to balance my time between Lucy and Molly, and getting used to having a baby around. I got so spoiled with Lucy....she goes to bed easily and stays asleep all night, she can play on her own and doesn't require constant attention, and she can feed herself to name a few things. This is much different than Molly who is 100% dependent upon us for everything. That was hard to get used to again and then trying to figure out who to tend to first when both are crying.

There are several activities I've planned or ideas I've had in my head of how I wanted things to go since Molly was born but they just have not panned out at all. I have had to really roll with things and that has been hard, especially for a planner like me. I know I will have several more opportunities to practice this "rolling skill" I've acquired. I just hope that each time will get easier and easier!

Back To Reality

We celebrated our fifth wedding anniversary on April 17 and had a kids-free date night that night, thanks to my parents. They came over around 6:15pm and we took off at 6:30pm. Molly was fed and I had a bottle in the refrigerator for her. Lucy was eating dinner when they arrived. I wasn't worried at all about leaving them. Lucy has been with my parents so many times that they know her routine and I figured Molly would be fine, too.

Ross and I went to Ocean Zen and had a nice time eating alone. Alone as in no kids! It was such a nice time. We talked about so many things and it was nice that it was uninterrupted! After dinner we went to Coldstone Creamery to get me some ice cream and then went to the park where we got engaged at to walk around. We walked a little and found a bench to sit at and just enjoyed being alone. We talked about getting engaged and our wedding day...the most perfect day ever!

Mr. and Mrs. Ross Wiseman, April 17, 2010

Mr. and Mrs. Ross Wiseman, April 17, 2015

After the park we went to Andy's Frozen Custard and got Ross a treat. (I don't care much for Andy's so that's why we got me ice cream earlier!) We were there maybe 10 minutes while Ross ate his custard and then decided to head home.

It was about 9pm when we walked in our house and reality hit us like a ton of bricks. I don't know if it was the leftover dinner on the kitchen table and counters, a very hyper Lucy running around the house at 9pm, or my Mom practically throwing Molly at me (okay, maybe a little exaggeration there) because she wouldn't stop crying that made reality hit. But it did! Seriously, it was like a commercial I've seen before where one scene is a calm, peaceful meadow with birds chirping and the next scene is mass chaos in the form of kids screaming and running all around. That was exactly how I felt getting home that night! It was just such a big dose of reality that our life is so different now than five years ago! It's a good different and I would not change a thing at all, but we have a two-year-old and a three-month-old, what else should I expect?!