Conversations with my 2 year old this week:

Mady was washing her hands, but being a little on the small side, has to lift herself up onto the counter in order to reach the taps. I thought I would be helpful and give her a boost, to which she replied, “No, Mom! Go do the dishes!”


I was holding Kaitlyn when I suddenly said “Uh oh!”
Mady from the other room says, “Oh, Poopy?”
“No”
“Oh. Spit up.”
Apparently Kaitlyn only does 2 things all day. Sadly, she's right.


Whispering to me while I was asleep in bed: “Mom! Mom! Look!” I wearily open my eyes to see her finger stuck in my face.
“Mady, you don't need to wake me up to show me your booger. Go get a kleenex and go back to bed.”


While at a dollar store getting party supplies, Mady found a bouncy ball and was carrying it around throughout our shopping trip. At the end of our shopping I said, “Okay, Mady, time to put the ball away. Where does it go?”
“In the potty!”
Apparently we've been potty training and drilling some things into her head a little too much!

Phone, Yo yo and Shape Matching

Phone
This page may defeat the purpose of the quiet book, but how fun is a pink animal print phone? Mady loves to talk on the phone, so she will love this. The phone “hangs up” by snapping to the base.




Yo-Yo
This was probably the easiest page in the book, but I think it's super cute. Pull the rings to move the yo-yo up and down.







Matching the shapes
I had to hand stitch the whole thing because it uses earth magnets and they stick to my machine.
I have to plan exactly where my magnet pages are going to be in the book so that they don't start sticking to things they shouldn't! But I've tested the strength through the felt and by other highly metal pages and I think they will be okay.

Count the Buttons

These pages probably took me the longest of all my pages so far. Each item had to be hand stitched. The numbers onto the squares, the squares onto their backings. And then I decided that the way I would attach these to the page would be to use earth magnets, since velcro doesn't exactly work well with felt. But I have a metal sewing machine, so to do anything with these magnets doesn't exactly work well with a sewing machine. There is a magnet in each number square and then one on the actual page. I forgot to take a picture with the number squares off the page, but behind each one is a slightly smaller square in which the magnet is sewn.

Each button is hand-sewn on as well. It seemed like it would be a quick project, but it really wasn't. I'm in love with the colours though and I think she will have a lot of fun with this page.

I finished off a bunch of pages this past weekend, but rather than make a really long post, I'll space them out over the next couple of weeks. Really that's my excuse for not taking pictures yet. *wink*

Better Late Than Never, Right??

So this is a post I've been meaning to put up for forever. Well, a month anyway. I don't even have a good excuse, just sheer procrastination.

September 19th marked a special day for Baby Kaitlyn as we dedicated her at church.



Since our church is large, we do private dedications with family and friends. Pastor Pam, who is our children's ministry pastor (and my boss when I'm not on mat-leave) did the dedication.



Kaitlyn, it is our prayer that you grow to love and serve Jesus with your whole heart. We want you to know that God made you, He loves and wants to be your friend forever!


(I would just like to point out that I have the EXACT same expression as my mom in this picture.)



Mady decided she didn't want to sit with her family and instead sat with her friend, Makenna, whom she adores.



On the morning of the dedication we planned that we would arrive early to do pictures with Mark's family while the girls were happy. Well in true two year old fashion, Mady decided she didn't want to smile. Her facial expressions still make me giggle, though.


With Daddy, Madelyn and Mommy, a few attempts.





We had to pull out a few tricks to get Mady to smile. Unfortunately, they didn't exactly work.



What can I say? She loves her Daddy!




With Grandma and Grandpa



With Auntie



Unfortunately I completely forgot that I was going to do pictures with my family after. So, sorry to my family that I forgot and sorry to Kaitlyn that your baby book won't be as complete as Madelyn's. I guess that's life as a second-born and if she complains I'll share my woes as a third-born, its even worse.


And of course, we always take advantage of an excuse to party! Here is the mini-dessert table I did (this was before lunch so I didn't want to go too overboard).



Ignore the stuff in the background. Our church was having a weekend that highlighted the different ministries so they all had boothes set up in the atrium below.

Tissue Paper Pom Flowers


Cupcakes


Sugar Cookies


Marshmallow Pops


Thanks to all our family and friends who came to celebrate with us. You are all so special to our family!



Thanks to Auntie Mel for the pictures (you need a website so I can link to you)

Some things you didn't see (or maybe did, but I'll explain):
-Mady fell face first on the sidewalk just a couple of days prior and gashed up her forehead. Isn't that always the way it goes?
-I purposely put Kate in the pink dress for church and planned to change her just in case she soiled the first outfit (if you know what I mean). Instead she filled her pants during the closing prayer.
-As much as they say you always hear your own child above everyone else's, I know for a fact that Mady was the one talking the most throughout the dedication. I kept hearing "oh, Monkey!" from behind me. I guess that quiet book can't come soon enough. Good thing it was a children's pastor doing the dedication and she doesn't mind children's chatter!

Kaitlyn 3 months

This past week my sweet little Katie celebrated 3 months! I can't believe how fast it seems to be going by. I think this month I mourned it a bit more because she's no longer considered a newborn. And she totally doesn't act like it either.



She hit three months and started sleeping through the night. All the way. I put her to bed around 8 and then between 10 and 10:30 I'll wake her (barely) enough to eat and put her back to bed and she'll sleep until morning. It's glorious. I'm getting sleep for once! Well, sort of. I'm potty training the older one, so sometimes I'm up in the night regardless. Hopefully that will end soon. Kaitlyn has the cutest baby stretch that she does when I pick her up for her night feed. She'll make fists with her crossed arms, arch her back and turn her head to the side with this cute little grimace. It makes me smile every time.



Kate is starting to become more fun. She's starting to smile back at us and every night just before bed she starts to “talk” to me. She'll babble for a good 10-20 minutes. I feel like she's telling me all about her day. She's pretty quiet when things are going on around her. She's content to just sit and watch. I have to admit, after having Mady be so loud from day one, I sometimes forget about Kate. I'll walk into the living room where she's been laying to find her just staring at one of her toys or something and realize she's been there for 20 minutes and I totally forgot. She can't feel too neglected though because her favourite place is still in Mommy's arms. I'm trying to encourage that out of her, or at least the sheer volume! But I do love me some baby cuddles.



She has herself on a pretty good schedule. There is nothing about it I hate, so I hope she sticks with it for a while. It's working well for my life!



I'm so blessed to have this sweet girl in my life. Each day I fall more in love with her. How can a person not? Look at those cheeks. And that crazy double chin!

Dear America

Dear United States of America,

Though I appreciate that you heard my cry for my White Tea and Ginger scented products from Bath and Body Works and sent a location near my home, there are a few other establishments that could really make their way up to the great white north with their sweet prices and merchandise. We're friendly up here. I promise! We'll send more Tim Horton's if that would help sweeten the deal. I could even throw in the ketchup potato chips, nanaimo bars and coffee crisp.

Here is my request list:

Chic-Fil-a
Joann's
Hobby Lobby
Kohls
Dollar Tree
Target
Sonic
In n Out
And all those cute kids clothing stores

Thank you in advance!
Melanna

Do you have favourite American stores you like to shop at (or drool at their ads, even if you've never been) that should be added to this list? I'm sure I didn't get them all.

Beads and Shoe

It's been busy on the quiet book front. Sorry I've been slow in getting posts up. I've been trying to finish off some pages and as much as these ones are officially “done.” I don't know that I'm completely happy with them. I think I'm going to do some extras on the pages in terms of stitching some embroidery or something to make them a little more interesting. But I fear not finishing the book because I took so much time for the extras on the early pages. So my current plan is to finish the basic pages and then make them pretty when/if I have more time at the end. Christmas is less than 3 months away after all!


Bead Counting Pages
This was a very simple page to make. In fact, I think I made it more work than it needs to be. It's like an abacus to count from 1-100 (or really millions if you use it like a true abacus, though I don't know that Mady will be doing that quite yet!). I think I may add in the numbers beside each row of beads 1-10, 11-20 etc.




Shoe
Once I sewed this onto the page I kind of wondered if I should have made it bigger. But this way she has lots of lace to practice with and there is nothing worse than short laces when you're learning. This is a page I want to “pretty up.” I just need to decide exactly how.






I just picked up my rare earth magnets this week which were holding up a few pages. I decided I didn't want to use velcro as it tends to injure felt over time and I want this book to last. I was trying to think of something that would work similar and magnet was what I came up with, but then I had to get some that was strong enough to go through layers of magnet. After some trial and error I've decided rare earth it is! Now I'm busy hand stitching those pages (super strong magnets and metal sewing machines don't play nice).

Etsy proved to be a good source for flesh-toned felt (it is NOWHERE in my city). So now once I find some shank google eyes, I'm all set for the rest of my supplies. Then I have great plans to fly through the rest of my pages. Expect the posts to pick up a bit. I say that more so that I will actually post more. Haha!