Christmas Pictures

My kids' mood can change in an instant. Really, they quite possibly are 13 year olds disguised as small children. Knowing this, on the day that I wanted to take their Christmas pictures I knew I had to be quick. We set up our backdrop and got all of that ready before we even clued them in to the fact that we were going to take some pictures. I even had my camera completely ready before we got them dressed. Basically I knew we wouldn't get much time haha

I'm pretty happy with how they turned out though. Of course I wish I could have gotten more and I wish my lighting would have been better etc, but I feel like it captures them pretty well and so I'm happy. 
Here are a few of my favorites:

Did you have Christmas pictures taken? Did you take them yourself or have someone else do them?

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Snow!!

I'm not a cold weather person. I'm fine with fall and sweatshirt weather, but when that temp drops, I'm not thrilled. With that said, I DO like snow! (well you know, if I don't have to drive in it) So when it snowed the passed weekend my girl and I had to get out into it. 
Last year she wasn't such a fan but this year she is all about it. I asked her something like 20 times if her hands were cold and she just kept saying no. They HAD to have been cold... we had gloves on but mine were cold, so I think she was too excited to be cold. We had a blast making a snowman and she woke up yesterday morning wanting to make another one :)

I had the husband take pictures of us from inside while he held Wes, so Norah was slightly confused as to where she should be looking :)

Have you gotten any snow yet  this year? Love it? Hate it? Don't care? 
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Brrr!

Apparently we keep our home a little too warm for an Elf. I should have known that an Elf is probably use to cooler temps!

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Meet Christopher

You've all heard of the Elf on the Shelf right? Sure you have, if not you either don't have children or don't have any sort of social media presence. If you haven't here he is:

But this post isn't about him, though about something very similar. This is about the original. Meet Christopher Pop-in-kins:

I will be posting our adventures with our elf on my blog vs my Facebook as I know not everyone enjoys this sort of thing :) You can find Christopher here. The Christopher Pop-In-Kins book was released in 1985 and the story is about an elf that is sad because he wants to see the kids that get the presents they make. So Santa allows Christopher to "pop-in" to check on the kids. The rules are that no child must touch him or he will lose his magic and have to come back to the North Pole to get it, so he needs to be careful. Another rule is that he return by Christmas Eve so he can report back to Santa before he has to pack his bag with gifts. 

The book is colorful and while it is a tad long, Norah, who is almost 2 1/2 sat through the whole thing without a problem. Christopher himself is cute. I love his oversize shoes! I also love that he is bendable/positionable. He looks very friendly to me. 

There is also a "Christina" elf and we may add her next year so they can hide together. You can find her here. You can purchase the elves as well as the books separately as well.

From now until Christmas Eve I will post where we find Christopher each day. Christopher will sometimes be found simply hanging out and other days he will have suggestions for us (such as coloring a color sheet, doing something together such as baking or finding a way to do something nice for our community). 

Last night before bed we read the book for the first time and let Norah know we'd be looking for him in the morning. Wes is of course a tad young for it so he'll be more in to it next year :) This morning we went from room to room asking if she saw him yet and when she did she was pretty excited and all day she kept going to where he was saying, "There he is!!" I'm hoping tomorrow when she wakes up it'll take less prompting and when she sees him she'll realize he moved. 

So here is where we found Mr. Pop-In-Kins this morning. He wanted to remind us just how to spread Christmas cheer this holiday season :)

I'll update this post with each day's new adventure with Christopher:
Day 2

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Hold Me Mimi!

   

Does every parent spend entirely too much time sad/fearful/amazed at the fact that their kids get older? I know they do, and if you look back through my posts, I talk about it a lot so obviously I'm in that place in life. There are moments every single day that I stop for a second just to soak in that moment, knowing that it is fleeting and evolving. Last night it was when I was cuddling with Norah before bed and she demanded I hold her, "Hold me mimi!" (she calls me Mimi)
It's kind of a strange feeling for me. In those moments that I soak up I'm both sad and incredibly excited. I'm of course sad in the way of thinking how she won't always still be a baby toddler and she won't always ask me to hold her, I expected to feel that way.

What I didn't realize is that even in those moments I'd be incredibly excited for the things to come. I'm SO excited to see her grow up. Every day she does things that amaze me and I love seeing her grow into a fun, excited, creative, drum to her own beat little girl. Sometimes it is little things that others probably would give me a strange look about. You know, tilt their head to the side, scrunch their eye brows and shake their head in confusion (and maybe ask Siri for the number to some sort of helpline).  Those little things that unless you are Norah's Mimi you probably won't care about - such as her being able to tell me what she had for snack at preschool, amaze me. Watching her grow mentally is so fun for me. Other times it is the big things, such as when she formulates a complex sentence that I've never heard her say before. Well... at least that is big to me :)
So I think my excitement for the future outweighs the sadness about her baby days fading. So I choose to soak in those fleeting moments and embrace the fun that is happening and the fun to come :)
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Learning To Not Rush To Bedtime

Many days bedtime seems to be the prize. If I can get to bedtime I've accomplished something. If the kids and I are still in one piece and they are asleep, I've made it. Sound familiar at all?

Sometimes I get so busy, so self consumed that I forget my children are to be enjoyed. After I've reached that "prize" of the end of the day I often feel guilty. How much of me did the kids get today? Did I enjoy them? Did I simply rush them through the day hoping for the least amount of hiccups until The clock finally said 7:30? Did I love on them... did I enjoy them?
I'm challenging my husband and I (and you!) to make sure we are enjoying our kids. That we don't make parenting a burden. That we fully experience the joy that our children are. Sure, it isn't jump up and down fun all of the time, and that's okay. It's okay if some days bedtime can't come a moment too soon. Days like that are bound to happen. But I have felt convicted lately about not being fully engaged enough to appreciate the kids. 
Maybe I would be less tired if I played on the floor a little more with them. Maybe I would be less stressed if I laughed at them when they splashed in the tub. Maybe I would feel more happiness if I embraced being asked for yet another story at bedtime. Maybe, just maybe, I won't look back on this time, sad that they have grown up, if I take the time to appreciate them being this age, while they are this age. 
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Hot Coffee?!

It's not often that I get to finish a cup of hot coffee. Usually I find my abandoned mug half filled with cold coffee. My kids wake up before the Sun and so while I would love to always wake up before them, get myself together and sit down and consume a hot coffee, it just doesn't happen that way. I get busy with the kids and well hot coffee just doesn't happen after those first few sips. 

Source

Until this morning. This morning I was up very early and made myself a cup of joe, very excitedly knowing that I was going to sit in a quiet, near dark room and enjoy it. My last sip was not going to be cold this time! Ohhhh the simple things in life. I poured my coffee, added my milk and made my way to the couch. Yay! It was going to happen!
I plopped down on the couch. I should have never plopped on the couch. See this was my mistake. With a 2 year old and 8 month old, they coffee I do get to drink I a typically standing, taking swigs of it as I walk by it on the counter. 
Darn the glorious option to plop. When I plopped myself on the couch, my coffee plopped itself all over me. I had filled that mug up to the brim, what was I thinking?! I now had hot coffee all over my lap. 
Oh, then the kids woke up. 
It's okay, one day I will know what the last sip of coffee tastes like :)
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Bright Star Kids Clothing

I'm always on the look out for cute clothes, so when I got the opportunity to look through Bright Star Kids' clothing I was pretty excited! I'm not so great with the whole making decisions thing (just ask my husband) and I had such a hard time deciding the perfect shirt to have shipped, they are all so stinking cute! Finally though I decided on this adorable puff sleeve shirt. 

I will admit, I was expecting a rather cheap iron on item. I mean sure they looked cute on the site, but typically my experiences with personalized designs on shirts included me getting a low quality iron on.  I was completely surprised at the quality! Not only is the shirt super soft but the emblem is far from a cheap sticky iron on. The design is smoothly printed directly on the shirt and isn't going to fade away with washes as far as I can tell. 

So if I'm even more honest, I was expecting the product to take quite a while to get to me seeing as they are based in Australia, and well... I'm not :) Again I was pretty surprised when it arrived quickly. I was more than a little excited to see a package for me from Australia.... I get excited about things like that ;) Speaking of the company being in Australia, their clothing sizes are different than ours here in the US. Thankfully they have a handy dandy size chart. I got my small 2 year old and size 2 puff shirt and it fits with room to grow. So just be aware that you will likely need to break out a measuring tape before ordering. 

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Thankful Thursday

This week our girl started at preschool. Well kind of. A church in our community has a program that is basically pre-preschool and it is called, "Parent's Day Out". She attends twice a week in the mornings. We decided to enroll her because she doesn't really have a lot of socialization time or structured time with adults other than the hubs and I. We want her to learn to make friends and the ever important sharing aspect. Also it will give some one on one time at home with the little mister than he doesn't typically get. 
She loves it! On her first day she didn't even look back when they took her in from the carline and she came home sporting an oh so cute fireman hat that she had colored :) Oh and in case you were wondering she said they had "fishies" for snack. 
I'm so thankful that our community has a program like this for her and that we are able to enroll her. I really think she's going to love getting away from mom from time to time and go to "school". 
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Cute Candy Corn Craft

Norah had a ton of fun making this super simple fall craft! Although she won't call it candy corn... she keeps calling it a rocket ship haha!

This was really easy and fun for us to do. While she is VERY into cutting (snipping as she likes to call it) I did the cutting this time ;) Basically I simply drew a candy corn shape (lots of drawing and erasing and more drawing and erasing to get it to a shape I liked) onto the yellow. After that I used it as a guide to cut the orange and white and we simply used a glue stick to glue the 3 pieces together, glued some eyes on as well as a pipe cleaner for the mouth, then glued it to black paper. 

Easy and fairly mess free fall craft :)

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Spark of Amber Review and Giveaway!

Hey there! If you are a mom (or dad) of a teething child you probably have heard of amber teething necklaces. Spark of Amber kindly provided one for us to try out and I'm excited to share our experience with you! If you haven't heard of Amber necklaces let me allow Spark of Amber to tell you a little bit about them. 
Spark of Amber:

Baltic Amber is a fossilized resin. Europeans greatly prize this beautiful stone for its claimed 100% natural anti-inflammatory, pain relieving, and calming properties. The healing oils of the Baltic Amber are said to relieve teething pain, tame baby’s irritability and relieve inflammation in the throat, ear, and stomach. 

The necklace I received can be found here. It is a great length and fits both our 7 month old and our 2 year old. The pieces are nice and smooth and has not irritated their skin, which is something I was a bit worried about because both our children have very sensitive skin.  Safety! As parent's we're always thinking about our kid's safety right? When I received our necklace I was very glad to see that it is knotted between each and every bead, which means if for some reason it breaks they won't be all over the floor as a choking hazard. If it broke, only one bead would come loose - at the place where the string broke.

They are cute! My daughter has not really had an experience with jewelry yet so I wasn't sure if she would tug at it or be annoyed with it on. I was surprised when she didn't even seem to notice it was on. It's a cute fashion accessory for her even without regard to the beads doing their job. I was even more worried that my 7 month old would tug at it and was a tad worried he'd yank it off and break it. It's long enough on him that I can slip it under his shirt (which is actually ideal so the beads contact more of his skin) and he forgets all about it. 
I wasn't sure how a yellow necklace would look on a boy but I think it works! For the most part though he has been wearing it under his shirt to give more contact with the skin (except for the pictures) so if that is a concern for you wearing it under the shirt makes it virtually unseen. 

So does it work? Well Wes hasn't really been teething this week (or maybe he has and the necklace has helped??) so it's hard to say. I was quite skeptical but I had a headache the other day and decided to put the necklace in my fist to see if it helped and my headache went away pretty quickly. Placebo affect? Maybe, but it can't hurt so next time I get a headache I'll be trying it again! 

** These necklaces are not intended to be chewed on and they are not intended to be worn while sleeping for safety reasons**
Wes had just woken up from a nap and was still a little sleepy when I was taking pictures :)

Giveaway time! Spark of Amber is giving away a teething necklace to one of my readers. Use the widget below to enter. 
a Rafflecopter giveaway
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Yep, I'm Being THAT Mom

In my every day life I don't usually have chats about my children's bathroom experiences... but we're all friends here right? Okay good! Before having a toddler I used to scoff a bit when parents would publicly talk about potty training, hello! That's private! Okay yes I still think not everyone needs to know the details of your toddler's bathroom trips, we moms (and dads!) need advice sometimes! So yes, I'm being THAT mom. 
When our daughter was about 15 months old we bought her one of those potty chairs. We were feeling very ambitious... well and maybe I was reading one too many stories about child prodigies who potty trained themselves at 9 months old and never looked back. Okay so maybe not 9 months, but seriously I felt like left and right I was reading about kids jumping on the potty train when they were the same age as my daughter and like every other good mom, I don't want my kids getting behind!

Yep, I'm being "That Mom" posting this kind of picture...

Yeah. My kid apparently wasn't a potty training prodigy.  Sure, she sat on it a time or two but that was about it, it ended up being an eyesore a decoration in our bathroom. Honestly though I didn't give it a second thought. She had other ideas as to what this new "toy" was I was fine with that.

Sorry for the cropped Instagram quality photo :)

Fast forward to just after her 2nd birthday and we decided to give it an actual shot. Having two in diapers just isn't all it's cracked up to be for me. She actually did really well right out of the gate and she is now practically 100% in big girl pants at home (aside from when she's sleeping)! Yay!! But we have an issue.
She has a phobia of public toilets. 
Even if we take her seat attachment she knows it's a trick, that there is a public toilet under it. She's on to us. It has nothing to do with the flush, it really is the actual seat (and like I said, even with her seat attachment that she uses perfectly fine at home).
We've taken her out a few times in public without a diaper but I'm honestly a bit scared to. She's stayed dry sometimes and not so much other times. I don't want her to start having accidents in the middle of Kroger and then have a regression but at the same time I feel like every time I throw a diaper on her to go out I am hindering her moving onto the step of being 100% potty trained even in public. 
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