Simple Things

I love the simple things that kids entertained.  

Kate played with and in this storage box for an hour yesterday.

A New Year's Twist

Breathe.  Whew, the holidays this year have been completely insane!  And that is my excuse for the two-week hiatus I took from the blog, so please excuse me.  I'll catch up on all of that soon, but first I just wanted to share our New Year's celebration.

You know those days where nothing goes as planned?  Well, that was yesterday for us (thank goodness it was the last day of 2010 and not the first day of 2011!).  I won't go into details, but to make a long story short, I ended up in tears, we didn't end up attending the party we'd been planning to go to, and we did some last minute improvising.

If there's one thing I've learned as a mom, it's that sometimes things don't go as planned - and you have to be on your toes and ready to come up with an alternative solution.  And be happy about it.  Our improvising included an old movie from the 1940s that I got for Christmas, some takeout Thai food, and a candlelight picnic on our living room floor.  It was just me and Dave ushering in the new year.

But, sometimes you've just got to be flexible.  We had a great time, and the perfect finishing touch was dessert from a dessert cafe called, "The Chocolate."  You can see why it was perfect, just from the title. 

I'm not sure if this is a sign that in 2011 I'm going to have to be flexible, but I guess we'll see!  Happy 2011!

When to Clean Your High Chair

I do it whenever Kate's backside looks like this.

Just a tip.

Christmas With a Crawler

Pretty much everything changes when you have a baby . . . the amount of sleep you get, when you eat (and if you're breastfeeding, what you eat), your social event calendar, vacations, and of course, holidays.  Last year at this time we were anxiously awaiting the arrival of Kate, who was due in January.  We envisioned how different our Christmas would be with a soon-to-be one-year-old.

Well, here comes Christmas, and here comes Kate . . . headed for the tree again.  We haven't even trimmed our tree yet, and already Kate has taken quite an interest in it.  So, what do you do when you have a child between the ages of 6 - 18 months (and maybe even older) who doesn't understand not to pull on the branches, break the ornaments, or eat the pine needles?  After doing a bit of research, here were a few ideas I found:

1 - Put the tree in a playpen.  You know, the pack-n-play your child sleeps in when you're out visiting or on vacation.  Problem is, we didn't really think about that ahead of time, and there's no way our tree would fit in the pack-n-play.  Guess that idea's out.

2 - Don't decorate the part of the tree within your child's reach.  Like this, except opposite:

But that just seems sort of sad.  I mean, won't the bottom half of the Christmas tree feel left out?  Or at least naked?  Yeah, it's a good idea, but no.

3 - And then, there's the small tree option.  Buy a tree that's 3 - 4 feet high, and then just put it up somewhere . . . out of reach.

Image from Country Living

Well, we've had a small tree the last two years, so we were ready to go big.  So we went big and went home with a big Christmas tree this year.

4 - Last option, barricade the tree with large, heavy presents.  Bingo!  This is the option we're going to try.

Emphasis on large and heavy (the suggestion was to fill them with something heavy - we're going to fill them with water bottles) and then wrap them, forming a ring of protection around the tree.

Any other ideas?  I'll keep you posted on how it goes!