Happy Canada Day!

Our afterschooling adventures this past week revolved around Canada/ Canada Day:

Kenzie brought over a Canada puzzle and some Canada-themed books to share this week

Red and white snacks included fresh strawberries and homemade whipped cream

maple leaf cut out watermelon 

(how cute is this kid?!)

Canada Flag marshmallow pops

Rache got in on the marshmallow action

Loved it :)

We made flag popsicles
with the leftover strawberries and cream

Flag face! :) I guess they were good
because they ate the whole tray! We had to make more!

Canada Flag manicure for Kenz

Canada Flag pedicure for Laura
( I know, my painting tiny, intricate flag detail skills are overwhelming) ;)

We made handprint/ finger paint flags. Laura is efficiently painting both sides at once. ;)

 

We sang 'O Canada' a lot this week at the request of Laura. Her version goes: "O Canada, We stand on Canada." <3

We also attempted this fireworks straw art, but Laura was not in the mood for arts & crafts at the time, so it didn't go very well.

Canada Day 'fireworks cookies'

Canada Day chips & dip appetizer :)

 We had a busy weekend with the in-laws visiting. They were super helpful with building our new little deck and finishing up the girls' playset, and allowed us to get some one-on-one time with each of the girls (and with each other!). Saturday Rachel got to go to her little friend's first birthday party while Laura went

Rache tries corn on the cob for the first time :)

to a concert with Daddy and Grandma, and Sunday Josh and I got to take Laura to see Monsters University (so super cute, by the way!) while Rachel was napping. Laura and I made Canada Day 'firework cookies' (gluten-free!) on Sunday for dessert after our burger and corn BBQ dinner.

She loved it!

     The weather could have been a little warmer this weekend, but we still got out to pick strawberries this morning, as per our Canada Day tradition. :)
I think we will make jam this year. I also have a few other 'berry' activities planned for our afterschooling this week. (Natural tye dye, anyone?) :)
Laura was a rock star strawberry picker this year, I think only about a handful from our whole 2-quart basket were unusable. We had lots of fun with her. Rachel loved strawberry picking too - she was shovelling them in her mouth like she hadn't eaten in months. She got a little extra fibre, too, as she was not discriminating against the stems. ;)

We will be hitting up the fireworks this evening with a very tired couple of littles. Laura has been looking forward to them since May 2-4 fireworks.

Happy Canada Day, everyone!

Angels

     June 29, 2009 & June 29, 2013.

     Today is the due date of not one but two of my angels. (I mean, give or take, since neither of the due dates were all that reliably calculated.) I guess it seems a bit sappy to call them that, but I don't really know what else to use. And when I lost my first, a dear friend comforted me by saying that my future children would now have a guardian angel. And it sounds nicer than 'dead fetus'.

     Anyway, it's still fairly raw and painful to talk about, but I feel like I at least owe them a blog post today, though I'm not totally sure what I want to say. Basically just some rambling thoughts, I guess. I have been thinking of my most recently lost baby more frequently in the past few weeks as our due date approached. I'm not gonna lie, it kinda sucks. I think now that I have healed physically and (somewhat) emotionally over the ordeal as a whole, I can now take some time to grieve the loss of my child, which is something I haven't really done fully yet.
     I do wonder on an almost daily basis how on earth we would have handled having another child at this time. The two we have keep us busier than busy as it is, and I'm sure things would have been mighty stressful around here. But, when I see families with kids really close in age like ours would have been, I still get a painful twinge.
     I had planned on making this --> for our baby, but instead decided to make it for a friend's baby who is due around the same time. I didn't realize that would also be painful. Maybe I just should have chosen to make them something else, or maybe I will make one for us anyway, just as a keepsake.
     I've been thinking a lot lately about my 'incomplete' family, and the prospect of surrogacy. And I think that would be a really hard thing to do for both parties. I am a headstrong, Type A who would probably have a really hard time coping with the inability to control/ monitor the growth of my fetus, not to mention missing out on the emotional, bonding aspect of growing my own child. And I'm sure it would be even harder to give up a child you grew in your body for nine months even if you knew it was coming and wasn't biologically yours... so... I'm not sure if I would ever be strong enough to handle that. And also, Josh has stipulated that we must win the lottery first since IVF is not cheap. And it would have to happen while our family is still young enough to justify making new siblings. And what if we got twins?! Also I'm not super enthused about the idea of all the messing with hormones it involves... Any way you look at it, it's not in the foreseeable future for us right now, though the desire for a third child is certainly there. For now we'll just enjoy the two we have.

    For sure the loss of a baby is a deeply painful experience, but the joy the children I already have brings me makes it much more bearable. The first pregnancy I lost was horribly depressing without the welcome distraction of mothering. At the same time, it feels like the loss of our second baby has gone largely under-mourned because I have been so distracted. It makes it especially hard because we had confirmed a heart beat and everything for the second baby, so it really did 'die' (as opposed to the first baby, to whom we do not know exactly what happened.) Sigh. This is so saddening to think about. Perhaps I will stop here, and simply light a candle for each of my two angels tonight.

    May you rest in peace my two beautiful, sweet babies. You are missed and very loved.

School's Out For Summer!

School's Out For Summer!

   Laura's end of year concert/ graduation was today. She isn't actually graduating from preschool, but some members of her class are, so they just called it 'Graduation'. Laura will be back for another year in September. :)

Little Concert

Laura receiving her 'preschool certificate'

Laura sneaking a bite of cookie during the photo op with her best school buddy

 

Dress made by Grandma

Laura and her teachers <3

Teacher gifts :)

Laura picked out the yarn for me to crochet some footless sandals
(might seem kinda random, but her teacher mentioned to me a couple weeks ago that she thought they looked cool)

Laura helped me pick out and bead some necklaces for her other teacher :)

And, with that, there will be no more Laura-free 'Baby & Me' time at the library for Rachel and me, either. She will be graduating to the 'Toddler Tales' story time with Laura.

Last 'Baby & Me' for Rache. So sad. Love these ladies!

Afterschooling, Take Two

     I don`t know if this technically counts as 'afterschooling', since Laura won`t be in preschool over the summer, but the concept is still the same, so we`ll go with it.

     After a couple months I kind of fell off the afterschooling bandwagon last fall. I was in my element doing all the planning, but Laura wasn't really into a lot of the activities I chose, and it was a lot of work for little reward, basically. She would often refuse to engage, or would only participate for a few minutes, so the hours I spent planning and prepping didn't seem worth it, especially since it was sometimes a fight to get her involved at all. That's not fun for anyone. In hindsight, the teacher in me realized that I guess I should have tried harder to 'teach to the student' - pick/ come up with activities she would be more into... but, too late now. I also lost motivation because they didn't continue to post weekly themes in the school newsletter, but only on the bulletin board outside the classroom. And since Laura only attended Tuesday and Thursday afternoons, by the time I saw it on Tuesday afternoon, the week was almost half over, making it difficult to start planning the week's activities at that point.

     However, I will be watching our neighbours' little girl once a week over the summer, and she is a busy one, so I have renewed motivation to think up fun activities. I decided to go with weekly themes for the summer so I can continue doing things with Laura throughout the week to provide her some mental stimulation. And because themes are fun. :) I also gained some motivation from this random ice melting activity I pulled out the other day when Laura was acting out and on the verge of meltdown. It changed the whole course of our day, and instead of allowing the meltdown, getting angry, and doling out consequences, we were able to avoid the whole thing.

     I'm not going to plan a lot, but I would like to have a few activities on deck for when we get bored, and it would be fun if they complimented each other in some way. So, first up, I chose a tooth theme because Laura had her first dentist appointment this week.

We read Theo LeSieg's (aka Dr. Seuss) 'The Tooth Book'
and followed it up with an activity about which foods make your
teeth 'happy' and 'sad'. I was surprised at how into it the girls were,
they asked to do it several more times throughout the day.

I made these 'smile' snacks for the girls

We also tried this tooth flossing activity. Laura wasn't too into it.

Kenzie liked it though, and she and I worked together to actually use the 'floss' to get the 'tooth goo' out.

Kenzie also brought over the Crocodile Dentist game we gave her for her birthday for us to play

We also tried this experiment to see what happens when you leave eggs in Coke. 

We talked about how eggs and teeth have similar properties to make it relevant.
This was what it looked like after about 36 hours.

Coke is gross.

Using some toothpaste to brush the eggs

Test and control eggs. ;)
With this great visual we were able to talk about how important brushing is,
and how even though we were able to brush a lot of it off, the egg isn't as white as it was to begin with.
Pop makes your teeth sad.

We also took a photo of Laura's smile, laminated it, and then practiced brushing
(with dry erase markers and an old toothbrush)

Exam time: did all our tooth activities prep her for her first dentist visit?
Brushing our teeth before we went...

She was a rockstar!!

<3 Happy, cavity-free camper! <3

 

I'd say we had a pretty successful week, and I'm excited to continue and share more!



Disclaimer: I didn't actually come up with most of these activities, they were Pinterest finds.
Here is a link to the Happy/ Sad Tooth food sorting game (and free printable!) .

I Need A Drink

You might think this one would be about the kids, but tonight it's not.

Today was a rough day, mostly thanks to our lovely furbabies. I recently decided to enroll Chester in obedience school, mostly as a fun night out once a week with my friend (and her dog), but also because Chester - although he does know and perform most basic commands - gets very excitable and anxious when anything out of the ordinary happens and his training flies out the window. He needs some work.
So, in light of this, I figured we should also probably get around to getting the dogs up to date on their vaccines. They are a few months overdue. And, as demonstrated today, that is because this is no easy feat when both of your ill-behaved dogs are nearly 100 pounds, and you also have two small children attached to you at any given time the vet is open. Not possible for one person to do.

And so I recruited the help of my mother today. We went to a new vet, one who has a place on a river. He is friends with my mom, and wanted to show her around, which also entailed a visit to said water's edge. This  turned out to be a bad idea, as my mom was trying to dog wrangle, and I was trying to child wrangle, and nearly resulted in the three year old being knocked off the dock into the river with "a really fast current" the doctor made sure to point out several times. *shudder*
Also, Rachel's diapers decided to just not work while we were there, and so while trying to dog and child wrangle and carry an infant on my hip, I became saturated in urine. Good times. Not chaotic or embarrassing at all.
After that we went to visit my dad so he could take a look at our brakes which seem to have been acting up lately. Our van is not even three years old, and now needs brake work for the third time. Cha-ching. Dodge, you suck.

I also then went to Michael's (without the children and the dogs, at least) to sort out a gift card I had been given that didn't work. For the fourth time. And waited there for probably 40 minutes while we resolved nothing. Again.

And while all of those things were shitty/ stressful, the real highlight of my day was when I was rushing to get the kids back home from my mom's so we would be on time for obedience classes, and ironically (?) enough, Chester escapes from the yard while I was trying to get them into the car. He beelines for the street, just as a car is coming around the corner. Because she was going around the corner, she was going a bit slower, and she did see him, but not in time to stop. I watched in slow motion horror as he thumped into her front bumper.... my stomach dropped. He didn't fall, but turned around and ran off the road back toward the house. I was screaming at him to come here. He ran up the front steps to the house, so I put Willow in the car, and went to tend to him. He was favouring his leg, and I was freaking out. I let him in the house and frantically told my mom that he had been hit. She freaked out and I burst into tears. Laura is confused by all the freaking out and says, "Mommy, what's wrong? Did somebody hurt you?" <3 So sweet. I didn't even know what to say to her. Chester was still running around somewhat spastically while we were trying to observe whether he had broken anything. He did jump up on me in his, "I'm so sorry, please don't be mad, I'm really confused right now" kind of way. My mom gave him a quick check over and thought he seemed okay. So we re-attempted to get everyone in the car, successfully this time.

I was still obviously shaken up about it as we are leaving, and Rachel, who is teething and apparently sleep deprived (no afternoon nap) decides she can be of most help by screaming bloody murder while I am trying to drive. I seriously thought she was going to vomit.

All in all a great day. I need a drink.

(For the record, we did make it home on time for the obedience classes. And Chester appears to be fine.)

Upcycling!

This project came about as a stem from another recycling 'project' we had. Backstory:

      When we bought our house, almost half of our already very tiny yard was sloped, ie. we had very little flat, usable yard space. One of my conditions of buying this house was that putting in a retaining wall at the back of the yard to maximize the flat space would go on the immediate reno projects list. However, when we priced it out, it probably would have ended up being a good two grand to do that. And since we generally do not have that kind of extra money sitting around, it didn't get done. But then, last summer, of one my cousins was over at our place, we were out chatting in the back yard, and in passing, I told him about my retaining wall plans. Being the awesome cousin he is, I got a phone call a month or two later to tell me that the construction site he was currently working on had a retaining wall that was being ripped out, and was going to end up the garbage. He was going to persuade his boss to let us come and take the stones for ourselves if we wanted them. $1500 of free stone? Yes please! Only catch was that we had to get them back here ourselves. Tricky, but we ended up just renting the biggest U-Haul we could, and it did the trick. Anyway, so we recycled this old, destined-for-landfill retaining wall, and in the process, acquired five pallets.
     Normally, I probably wouldn't have thought twice about upcycling these pallets, but Pinterest is abound with uses for pallets I never would have dreamed of. So, we kept the pallets, and I set about finding an awesome use for them. Last summer we didn't have any lawn furniture aside from a few bedraggled lawn chairs, so that is what I landed on: upcycled pallet lawn furniture.

BEFORE

     I recruited the help of my dad since Josh absolutely loathes these sorts of projects. My dad is a good guy, doesn't complain much, and is happy to let me take the design reins. Perfect, right? :) We banged out three of these benches in one afternoon (with the help of one of his buddies). Josh, happy to have not been involved, had nothing but good things to say about them once they were roughed together.

And I was pretty happy with how they turned out, too. So I spent today sanding and staining them, and once we get our little deck built, they will have a permanent home.

Only got one of three stained today, but you get the idea. :)

Now we just need a few cushions (although I must say they are pretty comfy as is) and we'll call it a wrap!

Total cost for our new lawn furniture? About $40 for two 4x4x8's (for the legs), a bucket of nails, and some stain. I'd call that a win.