A Girl Can Dream...

I'm telling you, if I am ever in a position to be able to have my dream kitchen constructed, this is what the pantry would look like! The idea that such a space exists simply makes me giddy! Unfortunately I don't think I will be waking up on my birthday to have one of my very own. How sad.

OK. Back to reality and doing the dishes.

Family Fun at the Park

My cousins Anthony and Matthew spent the weekend with my parents while their parents were out of town for a funeral. Seeing as spending the whole weekend at your aunt and uncle's house isn't exactly every teenager's dream come true in terms of staying entertained, mom and I took them to the park with us to run Melanie around for a while to hopefully wear her out. She wasn't worn out after an hour and a half, but she did have fun, and I think Anthony and Matthew didn't feel it was a complete waste of their time, so I guess that's good, right?

This was the first time I had Melanie wear this skirt, an 18 month skirt I bought over a year ago, assuming she'd grow into it eventually. Despite the fact that I had put a tuck in it she had trouble with it falling down anyway, mostly when she was running. I guess we'll continue to wait for her to grow into it! I also now know to do a test run (literally!) with her altered clothes before leaving the house!

Her droopy drawers didn't slow her down one bit! She just took it in stride!

See the slideshow in the next post for some cute pics of Melanie playing with her (2nd) cousins!

Our Trip To The Zoo

Friday mom and I took the girls to the zoo. It was a beautiful, windy Kansas day. The zoo was busy, but not nearly as busy as when poor Danielle took her kiddos on Thursday.

That morning Melanie just wanted to play with her car, so to get her on a different train of thought I told her we were going with Grandma to the zoo to see the ducks, cows and monkeys (thinking this array of animals would be the most likely to get her attention based on the books we have). She totally honed in on the "ducks" and wouldn't talk about anything else to the point that when I said it was time to get in the car to go her response was "No car. Ducks!" with a rather worried look on her face. I had to differentiate between her car and mommy's van. I never thought I'd see the day that she didn't want to play in her car...

Claire on her first trip to the zoo.

She sure looked cute!
(Even if she slept basically the whole time we were there)

The first stop was the American Farm petting zoo, where I thought it would be fun to let Melanie feed the animals.

Word of advice: Get the animal feed from one of the dispensers outside the petting area. Those goats are smart and know what it means when you go over to the feed dispenser and will butt you out of the way to get the food out on their own!

So we left the overly aggressive goats to munch on the feed on their own and went to the other part of the petting zoo to feed the sheep. Melanie was a bit intimidated by the animals, so we decided to keep a fence between us and them this time around.

The first momma duck and her babies we came across

Here's Melanie getting a better view of the ducks, which was the only thing she was really interested in at all. At almost every exhibit we went to I would tell her what it was and try to get her interested in it and her response would be "No, Duck!"

Finally getting to feed the ducks!
She was absolutely thrilled.

The family of ducks we fed.
(So I realize they're actually geese, but for the sake of simplicity, and to make it more pronounceable for Melanie,we called them ducks)
It's almost like feeding the ducks was her mission at the zoo, because she was more interested in the other things once we had finished feeding them. Mission accomplished!

I'm awake now and I'm hungry! Time to go home!

(or at least to the car, I'm not picky about where you feed me!)

Overall a good trip to the zoo. I hope to take the girls pretty regularly this summer to take advantage of our zoo membership. What a wonderful activity to have available to us! Now to remember to always be fully stocked with quarters for the duck food dispensers...

Garden Girl

I was able to get a bit of clean-up done in the front flower bed last week (laying weed paper, new mulch, putting in a few flowering ground cover plants), so Melanie got lots of outdoor play for a couple days. She even helped me out a bit - here's the pictures from her foray into horticulture!

She's a mighty mite, that Melanie!

I had to let some of the water out because there was no way she could pick the watering can up when it was full, but she was bound and determined to carry it by herself.

I'm telling you, that landscaping rock is going to grow up to be a humongous bolder with all the water Melanie gave it!

She did manage to water a few things that actually needed it...

The watering can tipped over and spilled a bit, and the tears started flowing.

Despite this I'd say Melanie had fun with the flower bed clean up all the same. It did involve being outdoors, after all!

It was too chilly to let Claire sit on the front porch that day, so she sat just inside the door with the door opened so I could hear her if she needed me.

I'm not sure if anyone else remembers Animaniacs besides Matt and me, but the face Claire is making reminds me of Brain from "Pinky and the Brain".

"What are we going to do tonight Brain?"

"The same thing we do every night Pinky... try to take over the WORLD!"

So maybe nobody besides me sees the sinister look on my infant's face, but I do!

Eau de Vapor Rub

If anyone has a stuffed up nose then come on over to our house and stand in Claire's room. You'll be breathing easy in no time!

Melanie's latest mess making adventure involved a jar of baby Vapor Rub, which is now smeared all over the changing table, crib, back of the door and wall in Claire's room. Can I not leave this child alone of more than 30 seconds? Oh well. At least this time she chose something that's clear to make a mess with...

Melanie's Birthday (Observed)

Melanie turned 2 years old on the 11th, but seeing as that was Holy Saturday and I spent all but about 5 hours of my day up at church, we opted to bump the festivities to this weekend. We kept it simple and did cake and ice cream with the family like we did last year. I think this is the best approach because Melanie seems to be overwhelmed by large numbers of people at our house all at the same time (she even hid from her Uncle John, and he's usually one of her favorite people). She does OK when it's just one of our families, but when both are here plus the great-grandparents it gets to be a bit much for her and she tends to latch on to one adult she sees as "safe". Last year it was Gramps, this year it was Grams. I find this kinda intriguing since she is around large groups at church as well as family gatherings at other people's houses, and the number of people doesn't seem to bother her then. It must just have to do with new people on her turf I guess...

Well, that's enough rambling about for the time being. Let's get down to the business of the pictures!

Working on decorating one of the cakes

You can kinda see it in this picture, but I used edible glitter on the cake.
Anything to make it a bit more girly!
(And let's be honest, an excuse to go to the cake store!)

After making the first cake I realized it was only supposed to feed 12 people and we had more family than that coming. To solve the problem I used this idea I saw in a recipe book that used a creatively cut and arranged 8-inch square pan and 8-inch round pan. I think it turned out pretty cute!

Melanie checking out a present with Grams -
a color/texture matching puzzle

Melanie insisted on holding that paper plate in one hand and the package of plastic spoons in the other while she was opening her gifts. My guess as to why would have been that she was trying to be sure she wasn't left out of the cake eating (she had been pointing at it and asking for it all day and even stole a chunk out of the ice cream cone cake before I had it assembled), but when it came time for that she didn't want any!

Claire comment bubble:
" *Sigh* When do I get to open brightly colored packages and be the center of attention?"

After Melanie's newfound enjoyment of umbrellas on Easter I just had to get her one of her very own!

The hit of the party - a car from Grams and Gramps!

This was the most animated she was all night. I'm pretty sure if she hadn't been given the car she would have sat in Stacey's lap all night and refused to move.

Driving Miss Melanie

She was not interested in blowing out her candles, and she really didn't care about cake any more at this point, either. I had to do all the work. She just wanted to play in her car. We had to bribe her with fruit snacks to even get her out of the car without screaming (you can kinda see her holding the package in this picture) and after eating her fruit snacks and ignoring the cake she was immediately back to playing with the car.

I'm pretty sure she would have stayed outside with the car all night if we would have allowed it. Grams, Auntie K and Uncle John all took turns at pushing her around (she hasn't figured out how to Fred Flintstone it yet).

One pooped out little baby with her Grandma

After everyone left Matt was getting Melanie ready for bed and she just hung in his arms like a limp rag. It's not very often that she plays so hard that she does that!

So here's to our big 2 year old - may this year be as fun as the last!

2-Month and 2-Year Check-ups

The girls had their scheduled well-baby/child checkups on the 7th (I know, I'm running behind - Holy Week was busy!) Claire got her first round of shots and Melanie had her hemoglobin (iron in her blood) checked. Good news is Melanie's hemoglobin was at 12, whereas before it was below 10, so we don't have to give her the multivitamin with the iron supplement any more - hooray! That stuff was my nemesis on the stained clothing front.

Here's their stats
Melanie: 20.5 lb. (fully dressed)
31 1/2 inches tall
18 3/4 inch head circumference

Claire: 12.1 lb. (diaper only)
22 3/4 inches tall
16 1/2 inch head circumference

And because we did it to Melanie, here's a picture of Claire after getting her 1st shots

She's At It AGAIN!

Would anybody like a mischievous 2-year-old? I'll give you a good deal on one!

I left the room to write something down on the grocery list. I was gone for maybe three minutes. When I came back guess what I found ... Melanie playing with my mascara... AGAIN!

And this is the third time she's done this. The first I posted about, the second time was the following Sunday, and Matt must have walked in on her shortly after she acquired the mascara because she had only decorated the linoleum at that point.

This time I know I left the mascara on the counter out of reach, so she had to have climbed the drawers to get to it.

The linoleum
The bathmat

The bathtub and non-skid mat

The floor of the closet, which is where I found her with the door almost shut. You can't tell me she doesn't know that what she's doing is wrong because as soon as you walk in she stops what she's doing, puts her hands up in an "I surrender" position and quickly says "Hi Mom!". Concupiscence I tell you!

She wasn't wearing nearly as much of it as the first time we had this adventure


I'm telling you, I may have to forgo this beauty product for quite some time seeing as my oldest daughter seems to have a radar as to where to find it!

Claire's Easter Sweater

What do you do when you find a cute dress for your daughter to wear for only $10 but can't find a sweater to go with it? You spend $30 on yarn and make one yourself of course!

I used a merino wool/cashmere/silk blend wool by Debbie Bliss, which is what the pattern called for. I tried to find a less expensive option, but couldn't find one in the right color, so I ponied up the cash for the yarn so that Claire's Easter outfit would *hopefully* be what I had envisioned.


This was my first venture into knitting a garment, and I think it went OK. I definitely won't be entering this into any contests, that's for certain. First off, I forgot to put in the button hole and didn't realize it until several rows later (it's amazing how missing just one yarn over can cause such a hassle!). To bypass this problem I just sewed a button on top and then sewed snaps on the back side so it can still be fastened shut. Next, if you maximize the size of the picture you can see next to the right side seam where I wasn't paying attention and did my moss stitch pattern where it should have been stockinette. I didn't notice it until I was a few rows past it, and it was getting late and I didn't want to bother with fixing it. I'm no good at "un-knitting" things and taking rows out without having to basically start over, and I was rather pressed for time since it needed to be done by Easter Vigil and I started it just 10 days before that (and finished piecing it together a mere 2 hours before I had to leave for the vigil!), so I decided to leave my "signature" where it was. It fits Claire just fine and was nice and warm for her first Easter, which was unseasonable chilly. For pictures of the whole outfit check out the Easter post!

Easter Festivities

Easter Sunday is always a welcome respite after the business of Holy Week and the Easter Vigil. We slept in until 9:00am (which when you go to bed after 1:00am isn't really sleeping in, but oh well), spent a leisurely morning at home and spent the afternoon and early evening with our families. Our time with Matt's family was spent at his parents' house and the time with my family was spent at Blessed Sacrament parish. Here are a few pictures of our day. The girls in their Easter outfits

Claire and her custom-made sweater

Another Claire picture
I feel kinda bad not having as many pictures of her. I can't wait for the barrage of "firsts" to start so I can capture them all on memory card (that just doesn't flow as well as "capture them on film", now does it?)
Melanie playing with Claire's car seat toys.
The snail chime on the right was one of Claire's Easter basket goodies along with a couple rattles.
Family photo at Grams' and Gramps' house
Watching a movie with Godfather Uncle John

Snoozing on Godmother Auntie K.

Playing in the gym at Blessed Sacrament
Melanie absolutely LOVED having the gym to run around in.

She'd run back and forth on the bleachers, sometimes by herself...

... sometimes being chased by others.

My cousins tried to do an Easter Egg hunt for Melanie, but she wasn't interested. Maybe next year she'll be more into it.

Someone let her play with their umbrella, and she thought this was the greatest thing around. I'm not entirely sure, but I think she was trying to say "Tut, tut, tut", which if you've watched the Adventures of Winnie the Pooh (as we've been doing lately) Christoper Robin walks around with an umbrella saying that in an attempt to help Pooh trick some bees. Either way, she was really cute and my cousins had a good time playing with her.

I had to go out to the van and get my umbrella so she would relinquish the other one to it's rightful owner. It sure is difficult understanding that just because you like something doesn't mean it's automatically yours!