Six in the Suburbs: Single Serve Dip Cups

Such a great idea from a fellow blogger and would be perfect for any party!!

Six in the Suburbs: Single Serve Dip Cups: These single serve dips are perfect for parties or portion control.  You can use either small plastic cups or foil cupcake liners.  No more...

The Home Depot Fail

Since Justin has been gone I have been having to play mom AND dad. What I mean by that is there are times where Justin will take Taylor and go do something fun with her. I usually get one or two weekdays off a month so I will take Olivia to daycare and Taylor and I will go do something for a bit. 

We have gone and done the girly things like getting pedicures and going for frozen yogurt or even going for a matinee at the movie theater. 

Well a few weeks ago I decided to do a "dad" thing with her and go to the Home Depot Kids Workshop. I should have realized that since I can't hang a picture on a wall that this workshop might not go as planned. First we get there and there are already a million kids so we have to squeeze in besides the lawn furniture which Olivia insisted to try to climb on. 

THEN I pulled the most "manly" move yet. I looked at the picture of what I was going to help Taylor build and think to myself "Oh this is going to be easy who needs directions." Apparently me and every other man out there that is who!!

I can't even tell you how many mistakes we made..instead the picture can speak for itself.

Fail #1
As you can see her truck doesn't have wheels...that would be because we put the base on upside down.

Fail #2
You can't see it but there are nails sitting out of the top because we used all the shorter nails for the base instead of the big ones so we attempted to use the long nails for the top...yea didn't work so well

So next weekend is the next Kid's Workshop at Home Depot and it will be a cork bulletin board. HOPEFULLY we won't screw that..fingers crossed

Where Has My Little Baby Gone?

On Thursday Miss Olivia turned 9 months old...9 months!!! As I was holding her this morning when she fell asleep in my arms I sat there wondering how much longer moments like this would be before she doesn't want me to hold her while she sleeps. I feels like just the other day we were packing for the hospital and picking up Granna to come watch Taylor so we could go have Olivia and now she is just a few months shy of turning 1! 

She is such a sweet baby with so much personality that I can already tell she is going to give me a run for my money! She loves to babble and say Da Da, Ga Ga and Ba Ba. She rolls around like crazy and does this funny little low crawl. She has 3 teeth and is already cutting 3 more! So needless to say that necklace is working perfectly because she isn't fussy! Her hair is growing so much and is finally not sticking up anymore. 

Thankfully one of the few good things about all this new technology is how easy it is to take a picture with my phone. I hardly ever get out of the camera because my phone takes just as good of pictures as my camera does. So needless to say I have easily taken over 2000 pictures since she was born. I know I know she probably thinks celebrities have no room to complain about the paparazzi with a camera toting mom like me!

 At 9 months my sweet baby weighs 19 lbs and is 27 1/2 inches...short and chubby! Love it!

My stepmom had told me about this nail polish that is safe for babies called Piggy Paint. I searched through some stores and finally ended up ordering it online through Walmart.

Love the little nail file!

Baby Livy's sweet little toes all cute and pink!

Where Have All The Kid's Show's Gone?

Today I was watching one of my 8 year old's favorite shows on Disney and part of the story line was about one of the girl's boyfriends was cheating on her...?!?!?!? Seriously Disney this is what you have lined up for my 8 year old now? Why should that even be apart of the plot? That sure doesn't help me in stopping my daughter into already acting like a preteen! 

Sure they have good shows for toddlers but this is what they give me for elementary age kids. Not cool Disney not cool. And you know what even Disney isn't the only one who does this. Nickelodeon is guilty of it too. Between iCarly, Victorious on Nickelodeon and Wizards of Waverly Place and Good Luck Charlie on Disney it is becoming glaringly obvious that PBS will be my channel of choice for the girls!

PBS offers learning in a nice innocent way that children need nowadays. Never when I was a kid did Rainbow Brite worry about a boy cheating on her or did My Little Pony. In fact I think I might do a little searching on the internet for classic Mickey Mouse episodes. I do like when they will show small clips of that in between shows and Taylor likes it too. 

So please pay attention to what your kids watch because while you may not be ready to explain something to them just yet if you aren't careful you may not have a choice!

A Salute to Single Moms

I want to start this post of first by saying- Ladies I don't know how you do it! You are my heroes!!

So yesterday may have been about the nation's freedom and saluting our troops who fight for our freedom but today I am saluting the single moms!

For the past 2 months I have once again been playing single mom while the hubby is off on deployment. This isn't the first time nor will it be the last but man it sure is tough! Olivia is now 8 months old and he has been gone off and on for 5 months of her life. While I love my girls both unconditionally it sure is taxing. There are days where Olivia is fussy because of her teeth or she just wants to be held and that usually coincides with the same days that Taylor has secretly snuck the "pagent crack" aka pixie sticks and is bouncing off the walls and talking non stop. I do work full time so I get a little kid free relief at work but needless to say when I come home I'm exhausted and still have to take care of kiddos. 

Last week I had one of those days where baby was spitting her baby food at me and rubbing it in her hair at the same time. Taylor's room was a mess and for the life of me she was hardly cleaning it like she is supposed to do. Oh and I had about 7 loads of laundry on my bed that still needed to be folded so needless to say I had been sleeping on the couch for the past week. I look at my girlfriend who is a single mom and she makes it look effortless! 

So if there was a medal or some sort of award you ladies would win it hands down. I can only look to my chalkboard picture frame that counts down when Justin will be home and say to myself. "Only 80ish days left April..."

Happy Belated 4th from my favorite messy baby!

It IS ok to be a little "Crunchy"

Crunchy?!?! Yep that's right crunchy...it's the new term for being hippie or au natural. Or as the urban dictionary puts it: "Used to describe persons who have adjusted or altered their lifestyle for environmental reasons." (Urban Dictionary)

With that being said let me go into a few reasons it is ok to be a little crunchy.

1. Hormone and Antibiotic Free Meat is SAFER!

About 80% of meat sold each year is injected with hormones to help the cows produce more milk and antibiotics so that cows don't become sick...sounds ok right...wrong!

Antibiotics aren't digested easily and not completely broken down in the cows system so it is passed onto us and also excreted by the cows as well and get into the water through wastewater and runoff. Also the hormones are passed onto us as well. Last time I checked I'm good and don't need any extra hormones as I'm crazy enough as it is!!

http://www.sustainabletable.org/issues/hormones/

2. Being crunchy can help baby!

My 8 month old is a teething slobbering machine and is cutting her third tooth. Oragel and teething rings are no match for this girl! My cousin's little boy wears an amber necklace and I asked her what that was about. Amber is a natural analgesic and releases pain relieving and healing qualities when worn by the baby. She swears by the necklace and he has worn it since he was 4 months old and doesn't bother it at all. I figured why not give it a shot since nothing else seems to help. Well I have to say so far so good!  There are a million to chose from but this is where I got mine from: "Crunchy Amber Necklace".

3. Pesticides on Fruits and Veggies

I have known for awhile that fruits have a waxy coat on them to help keep them fresh longer but really didn't think much about it until a few years ago. While studies have shown that the pesticide residue that is left on the food has little health impact why eat it if you don't have to! Here is the list of the "dirty dozen" foods that have the most pesticide residue on them.

The Dirty Dozen

4. Making food for Baby

I'll be honest this one is fairly new for me. During my last pregnancy I read up a lot more on preservatives and realized how bad they can be for you and got to thinking how can I change things for this baby. Make your own baby food. First off it is so much CHEAPER! I can buy a sweet potato for 1.50 and make 6-8 servings that would cost me 3-5 bucks in baby food. Secondly homemade baby food doesn't have preservatives in it. Secondly I absolutely love this article on preservatives because it basically explains what each one is all about and the harmful effects of it. 

All About Preservatives

I could go on for more but realistically I would lose some readers attention!

While I am all about being crunchy on some levels I will still stick to shaving my pits and wearing my makeup because let's be real...I would be scary looking with hairy pits and no makeup!