Trick or Treat

Happy Halloween!! Have a safe and happy one. I just got back from helping out Emily's class with their Halloween party and I am EXHAUSTED. I told her teacher that I have no idea how she does it - and with a smile on her face everyday. I was only in charge of four kids and seven activities and I need a NAP. They weren't even sugared up yet. Anyway, Emily had a great time, and it was fun getting to know the other mommies and all the kids in her class.

Life around here

After the not so fun last post, I decided to share some pictures from the past few days. This one is Miss Paige acquainting herself with the "musical" apple. I was trying to get some pictures of her new rolling over stunt - but of course she would not cooperate.
Emily hamming it up for the camera. At first, she didn't want me to take her picture - she ran from the camera, so I told her, "Fine, I'll just take more pictures of Paige." She decided to pose. Nothing like a little sibling rivalry.I love it when Paige is in a good mood - she's so darn cute. Those eyes could just melt you.
The annual Halloween bag making night. I buy Halloween bags from the dollar store, and about $50 worth of candy and we have a little assembly line to make up bags to hand out to all the trick-or-treaters. I find the bags of candy much easier then letting kids choose what candy they want, or just giving each kid a handful. Much more efficient. I think that Halloween is Emily's most favorite holiday in terms of her helping factor - she helps make the bags, pick out pumpkins, and she LOVES scooping out the goop when we carve them - which we are postponing to Tuesday nite.
My most current favorite Paige outfit - could she BE any cuter??
We also made pumpkin cookies - Emily helped decorate with sprinkles. The cookies were her whole motivation for eating all her cauliflower at dinner tonight. Whatever it takes.

Ironic Sunday

Some of you may know, although most probably don't, my sweet little Emily is an EXPERT on Fire Safety. It started last year when the fire department visited Emily's school to talk about fire safety. They gave out coloring books, plastic fire hats and lots of fire safety rules. Emily, for some reason, really took to it, and we heard all about emergency lights, smoke detectors, emergency plans, and pretty much anything else for about three months after the visit. I was glad she was so into it, but at the same time, I was over hearing about it nonstop.

Last week the fire department made their annual visit to Emily's school again. Once again we were relegated to talk of fire safety. This time, the fire department brought each one of the kids a DVD that they could take home. OH GOODIE. It even had a catchy tune that has been in my head for a week. Emily has been sharing her fire safety knowledge to pretty much anyone, my Mom, my Aunt, strangers in a store.......

So why the title Ironic Sunday? Well, here's the story. On Saturday Eric went with my Grandfather and Uncle up to the Mount Pleasant area to my Grandfather's cabin to help out with the delivery of a new shed/barn. They stayed the night and returned on Sunday evening. My Mom, Emily, Paige, My Aunt Teresa, and me went to Somerset Mall for some Saturday shopping and lunch. On the way there Emily filled my Aunt in on all the fire safety things she learned. It was GREAT. That night I put the girls to bed, and collapsed in my bed at around 10pm. I was EXHAUSTED for some reason. At around 12:30am Paige woke up, I went in a gave her the pacifier and she went back to sleep. I went to the bathroom, only to find that the toilet was backed up. Great. I didn't care, I went back to bed and vowed to fix it in the morning. At 3:03am I was woken up by a chirping sound....was it a cricket? That would be no. I was the smoke detector in my bedroom. I guess the battery was dying. From experience, I knew that it would chirp until the battery was replaced. No big huge deal right? Well, yes it was. We have a vaulted ceiling in our room, and I could not, without getting the HUGE ladder out from the garage, change out the battery. I decided that maybe if I hit the test button it may stop....it was 3am, I was sleepy. I went downstairs, got the carpet rake (it had a long handle) and went back upstairs. I ran into Max on the way back up - he was on his way down, freaked out by the chirping. Of course, it didn't work. So now what do I do? I went back downstairs to get the stepladder to try and reach the smoke detector. On my way to the laundry room I came across a pile of doggy doo doo left by Max. Lovely. He is such a scaredy dog. Nervous pooper. Got rid of the poop - cursed Max who was watching the whole thing. Of course, I could not reach the smoke detector with the ladder combined with the carpet rake, but for some reason it decided to stop chirping. At this point I was covered in sweat, so I now had to change my PJ's. It was about 3:45am at this point. Went back to bed, laid there waiting for the smoke detector to start chirping again - it didn't, so I rolled over and went back to sleep. 3:53am - Paige wakes up for her middle of the night feeding. I went downstairs for the third time that night to get her bottle, and almost stepped in a pile of dog pee left by nervous Max. Is the Humane Society open at 4am? Got the bottle, fed Paige, went back to sleep at 4:20am. Paige woke up again at 7am, followed closely by Emily at 7:25am. Irony is amazing. I should not have made fun of Emily and her fire safety. Someone is watching!

Carving pumpkins tonight - something we didn't really get to do in Florida. Should have pictures tomorrow.

Three Months Old

Just some photos from Paige's three month photo shoot. This is my most favorite photo of the girls. I think they still look a lot alike - what do you think? I think Paige will probably be a little taller than her sister, but the hair color, the eye color is pretty much the same. They even have the same sparkle in their eyes.

The picture on the left is from when Paige was one week old, and now three months old. It's getting a lot harder to keep her on that doggie. She still fits just fine in his "lap", but she's getting much more squirmy and ended up falling off quite a bit. Luckily I was right there and caught her each time.

These Girls

Some days, actually most days, I can't help myself, but I just have to stop and squeeze Emily and Paige. Emily is much bigger and can run away from me, but most times she doesn't. She, in fact, will usually oblige me with a kiss anytime I ask. The best part about an Emily kiss is that you ALWAYS get a hug to go with it. A kiss and a hug - what could be better? Paige, on the other hand, does not exactly give you kisses and hugs, but you can get in all the squeezes you want....and all you can squeeze buffet if you will.

Yesterday, when I was driving with Emily after I picked her up from school, she was telling me about her day....actually, I was prying information out of her and not coming up with much. A typical conversation:

ME: "What did you do today?"

EMILY: "Ummmm...I don't member."

ME: "Did you play outside"

EMILY: "Yes."

ME: "Did you have snack?"

EMILY: "Yes. I had an apple and one cracker."

ME: "Did you do any work?"

EMILY: "Yes, but I don't member."

This plays over every Monday through Friday. Yesterday though, Emily told me that she was trying really hard to remember, and she got very "frusterated". She used this term all day. It was so cute. I don't have the heart to correct her. Pretty soon she'll be saying it correctly, which means she's growing up. This just makes me want to squeeze her.Last night we were going through the normal bed routine - bath, pj's, brush teeth, clean room. The cleaning the room part always gets me - Emily has about twenty stuffed dogs now (that's just an estimate, I stopped counting at about 15), and she has to put them to bed every night. They don't sleep in bed with her - they either sleep in a little doggy kennel, or the Build-A-Bear box that she got from one of her original dogs - Joey. She has to make sure all their night time collars are on them, and that they are in their appropriate sleeping quarters. I tried to do this once for her to speed up the whole process....guess what? Yeah, didn't work. Even though I put them in their correct places - SHE had to do it. It's kind of like when I switch off her light at night - it's her job, and she will literally get out of bed, switch it back on and switch it off again. I don't know about you, but all of this Emiliness just makes me want to squeeze her - and when she all tucked in bed at night - I can usually get all the squeezes I want.

Today, Paige is three months old. No longer considered a newborn. She had a BIG event here yesterday. I put her on her tummy for a little "tummy time" and she just decided that she wanted to be on her back again, so she rolled over. Yes, you heard me correctly, ROLLED OVER!!! Of course, she doesn't want to do it today....typical Paige. Happy Birthday sweetie.

These are pictures from the most beautiful sunset last night - Emily noticed it. She went racing through the house so we could all see the pretty sky.

Where have I been?

Well, I have been busy. I have been holding a baby non-stop for five days- or rather, a baby has been holding me hostage for the past five days. Paige has decided that she does not want to sleep at all during the day. I guess she thinks she's going to miss something. Well darlin' - we are a very boring family, so go to sleep!!


We did do something exciting on Saturday - we went to Stoney Creek Metropark and did a little hiking. The weather has been so beautiful here that I could not pass up the opportunity to enjoy it. Ironically, Paige pretty much slept the whole time.


We also went to Denewiths - a local plant nursery - and enjoyed some of their fall festivities on Sunday. It is still beautiful today, but I have lots of things to do inside - like update my blog - so here I sit.


Here's some pictures from the past few days:


Emily "cooking" at the sink. She was making some sort of soup. Actually, she was making a total mess, but she was having a blast.




Paige is very smiliey lately - she even wakes up with a silly little grin on her face - it makes this whole not sleeping thing a little more bearable.

This picture is of a backyard that we see everyday on our ride home from school - the colors are almost peaked right now. They are not as vibrant as they should be, but it's still pretty.

This picture is from our hike at Stoney Creek. I didn't think 1.8 miles sounded like much - but I forgot to add in the four year old factor. Emily did just fine until about a mile into it. Then she complained the whole rest of the way - she was hungry, tired, had to pee.....what fun it was. She did enjoy all the leaves that we collected.

And finally, this is from Sunday at Denewiths - the corn maze is behind the girls. It has been really windy here - we have even lost a few tombstones in our front yard. Luckily they didn't go far....just the front lawn.

Good Day

I got a lot accomplished today. Emily finally got a haircut, I returned some stuff to Babies R Us and got Paige a new hat and mitten set so she can now brave the cold. They only had size 12-24 months, but I got scared that I would not be able to find anything - so I bought it. I think she looks pretty darn cute. So, she'll have it for a couple years.

Because my Mom has a cold, I have been on dinner duty for the past few days - roast beef with mashed potatoes, carrots and green beans, plus rolls on Sunday - tacos, both hard and soft with homemade salsa on Monday, and tonight I made - courtesy of Ann Marie - Garden Tortellini Bake. My mom was not really into it...she kept saying..."This is interesting." But the rest of us almost ate the whole thing. Thank You Ann Marie!!!

I finally found a "G" for my shelves in the kitchen. I will have to take a picture of the things I have made for those shelves. AND most importantly, I found the rub on stitch runner at Archivers. Life is GOOD.

Emily and I are on chapter 4 of Charlotte's Web. She is liking this whole novel thing. Even Paige has cooperated and let us read in peace while she takes her early evening cat nap. (I took the picture with the self timer since Eric was at his train club)

Oh, and I finally have some pictures of Paige and Mommy courtesy of our resident four year old photographer - Emily. She's pretty good.

Blog Action Day

Okay, so apparently today is Blog Action Day - where everyone who has a blog is supposed to post about a single issue - this year it's no surprise...the environment. Since I don't Blog about any particular subject, I can just tell you the couple of things that I have done for the "greener" good.

We do use the fluorescent light bulbs in a couple of our light fixtures in the house. I find that they are really bright, so I am not really inclined to get more....but I will try.

I have been really trying to use my scrapbook scraps instead of just throwing them all away.

I turn the water off while I am brushing my teeth.

We only drink organic milk - does that count? For those of you who are not drinking organic milk...seriously, throw out that gross stuff that you have in your fridge right now and make the switch. Trust me, you DON'T want to know what's in there.

We only have one car - yes it's a Minivan, but it's still better than having two cars that we have to fill up with gas. Plus, because Eric and I work from home, we have a very small commute.

Okay, so I am not really that green. In fact, in making this list I can now see how pathetic I am really being in my quest for being more in tune with the environment. I am right here, right now, making a promise to myself that I will try to be greener in the future.

Pumpkin Patch 2007

So, we visited the pumpkin patch today. While Emily is a pumpkin patch veteran, this was Paige's first time. As you can see from the picture - she was totally into it.

Anyway, I think this was the first time that I have gone to the pumpkin patch and taken less than 50 pictures. You would think 2 kids, twice as many pictures - but I forgot to add in the factor of holding a baby, camera and a purse (which I accidentally forgot to leave in the car). We did end up with 3 large pumpkins, a green squash, and 3 baby pumpkins. We will be carving them in a couple weeks and Emily can't wait to get her hands on all the goop.

Paige's first video

Giving a video upload a try....Paige playing with Emily this morning in Emily's room.

My Little Bookworms

Every night before Emily goes to sleep I read her at least one book. Sometimes Eric does it, but mostly it's me. I have been doing this since she was just weeks old. It was one of the things that I looked forward to most about being a parent - sharing books, and reading in general. Emily, in turn, loves books. She has a very full bookshelf to prove it. It's one of the only things that I never say no to in a store - another book to add to her collection.

I had this sweet little vision while I was pregnant - Emily, Paige and myself all snuggled in Emily's bed reading books and loving life. Well, it was not to be. I tried this my first night home from the hospital, and Paige wouldn't have any of it. She cried the whole time, and I ended up shouting the words from the book I was reading so that Emily could hear me. Not a very sweet and peaceful moment. We have retried that whole scenario a few times, with no success. I have tried with Paige in a good mood, pacifier in her mouth...nothing has worked. I was pretty upset about the whole thing because I am a book person, Emily is a book person, Eric is always reading something....how could this child not like the written word??? Was she switched at birth?

Fast forward to this week. I decided to try again, but this time with just Paige and me, in her room, in the rocking chair. Guess what?? It worked!!!! She loves books!!! I started out with Emily's first book - The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle. I love this book for little ones - great, colorful pictures, repetitive. Paige loves it. She tries to grab it - although she hasn't quite found her hands yet, and she babbles the whole time I am reading. I have added Brown Bear, Brown Bear, and Good Night, Sweet Butterflies - both of which she LOVES. Okay - she's my kid.
I cannot stress enough, how important it is to read to your kids. I truly believe it is why Emily is so verbal. Some days, when she never seems to STOP talking, I wish we had skipped reading to her altogether - but those thoughts are fleeting. She is beginning to read books all by herself - which is great, but I will make sure, until she kicks me out, that I always make time every night to share a good book with her. I am thinking that later this month I will introduce her to chapter books - with little or no illustrations. I will probably start with Charlotte's Web. She saw the movie with Dakota Fanning, but I think she'll still appreciate the book. It was my first novel - and one of my favorites. It's funny - most readers that I know can name their first novel that they read - or heard read to them, and can name their favorite. As I said, my first novel I had read to me was Charlotte's Web. But, my favorite childhood novel, that I read was James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl. What was yours?


BTW - I would have a sweet little picture of me reading to Emily or Paige, but apparently my husband doesn't know how to work a camera. :) So, just a few pictures I took of Paige yesterday.

Look - she's annoyed with me and the camera already.....just smile and get through it honey - just ask your sister. We'll hound you until we get the right picture. Parental Paparazzi!!

Happy Halloween - a little early

Today we went to check out one of those Halloween stores to see if we could find anything good to add to our existing decorations that we have outside. Well in order to get anything really good, we would have to take a second mortgage out on our house. Oh well. We did end up getting a hay bale to hide our extension cords, as well as a place for our electric pumpkins.

The "scary" thing about going to the Halloween store is that Emily loved all the scary things. She'll probably have nightmares tonight, but she just loved looking at all the animated characters making spooky voices or faces. She wanted to look at them over and over again. She was intrigued with the "Meat Dept." which had all these severed body parts. Ewww...gross. They even had this life size guy in an electric chair, which when they turned him on, he went spastic like he was really being electrocuted.....I wouldn't let her get close enough to really see that one....it even freaked me out a little.

Anyway - so here's a little bit of our Halloween decorations. I think I may have Eric take a picture at night when it looks even spookier.

The ghosts and goblins are coming......BOO!! And by the way, I know....Emily looks REALLY grown up in this one. That's SCARY - no Halloween costume required.



And one of Paige just being cute. She does this thing now where she tries to imitate sounds that you make. So far, I have gotten her to say goo, and da. No Mama yet. She's almost sleeping through the night - in bed at 9:30pm, and up around 5:30am. Not too bad.

Kids Say the Darndest Things

Sometimes I just have to sit back and laugh - actually it's more than just sometimes, practically all the time - at the things that Emily says. She has not quite developed that filter that tells when it's appropriate to say something to everyone, or when she should whisper it to JUST me.

We were at my sister Suzie's house for her housewarming this Saturday. Emily was having a great time playing with her cousins that she hasn't seen since she was one and a half. I had reminded her to go potty a few times. Apparently she went on her own...found the bathroom and everything. I was having a proud Mama moment. As I was basking in this moment, Emily leans her head out the door and says,to all of us sitting on the front porch, "Mommy, I am going poopy now, so I am probably going to need a butt wipe in a minute." Ahhh, the innocence of children.

On another note - it's freakin' hot here. We are practically breaking heat records. Almost 90 degrees yesterday, and again today. Not just hot, but HUMID too. Didn't we leave Florida?? I have heard that it's going to be MUCH cooler by the end of this week.

If I get a chance later today,I will post pictures of our Halloween decorations. Eric goes all out.

What is it about blogs?

So, I don't know if you know this, but I am addicted to blogs. Now, I don't mean writing for my blog, but I mean I am totally addicted to reading other people's blogs. I guess this addiction started when I found out that Ali Edwards - a very famous scrapbooker, and all around cool chick - had a blog. Well because I like her so much, I just had to read her blog - which I do, everyday. This lead to many other famous, and some not so famous scrapbookers blogs. Now, I read the blogs that are listed on the Blogger sign in page, or I click on links to people's blogs that I find on some of the message boards that I frequent. I AM ADDICTED. Why is this?


I personally think that I am just a very nosy person and I feel like this is a cool way that I can pry into other peoples lives undercover. Also, I have learned a few things from reading blogs. For instance, on Heidi Swapp's blog, I stole her really cute idea for an end of the year teacher's gift (a beach towel, good magazine and some spray on sunscreen all tied with a pretty bow). I have also read some pretty thought provoking things on Ali's blog. In any case - I just like to enjoy my downtime by relaxing and reading up on what my girls (the blogs I read) are doing.


Okay, enough about that. Paige is still doing okay on her schedule. She slept from 10pm last night, until 4:30am this morning...pretty good. She got up at 7am, had a bottle at 8am, napped at 10am, bottle again at noon, and then got all screwed up because we went shopping. She is currently screaming because she is overtired...so we'll see what we have in store for tonight.


For those of you who are wondering about our beautiful fall colors....well we have none. I was told that because we have had such a dry summer that the colors would not be very vibrant, and that some leaves would just fall off the tree without changing color at all. Now that's depressing. Our maple tree still has all it's leaves, and there's no sign of color yet. Of course, the fact that we have had temperatures in the 80's for the last few weeks is probably not helping. Snow on Easter...what's next, bathing suits on Halloween?


A couple of pictures from this week - those are slippers that I got as a present from Glenda in my office. They are Holland America ship slippers. Eric has pretty much claimed them, and I don't know what's funnier...seeing Paige wear these huge slippers on her tiny feet, or seeing them on Eric's feet. I'll have to get a picture of that. The other picture is of Paige sleeping in her crib. She just looks so big. That's a Gymboree 0-3 size outfit, which is not really fitting her...and Gymboree has always tended to run BIG. At this rate, she'll be going thru her whole wardrobe in a couple months.

SO BIG

So yesterday was Paige's 2 month old check up. She did GREAT. She is now weighing in at 11 pounds, 11 ounces - which puts her in the 75th percentile. She measured 23 1/2 inches long - which puts her in the 90th percentile for height - she's pretty long. She got 4 shots, which she only cried for a second each, and smiled immediately after it was over. She was a little crabby last night, and didn't have a great sleeping night, but overall it was good.

We had been teasing Emily all day that she should get a shot too since Paige was getting some, and she thought it was pretty funny. That is, until we said something to Dr. Ventimiglia when he came in the room, and she immediately thought we were all serious, and starting crying. Oops, I guess we took it a little to far. Sorry Em!! Of course, she wanted to be front and center for when Paige got her shots....what a nice big sister.

I have been trying so hard to get Miss Paige on a schedule, and it's not working....until today. She took at nap from 10am until 12pm - just like I wanted her too. And she is now doing her afternoon nap, and will hopefully wake up at around 4.....we'll see. She has been much happier today, smiling and talking a lot. She is consistently inconsistent - it's just her thing I guess.

Emily is recovering from a bad cold/cough. She missed Monday and Tuesday at school - but went today, and did just fine. Thank goodness I got that cough syrup with codeine from the Dr. It's the only thing that works for her - she just needs a good nights rest, not staying up all night coughing.

By the way - don't be afraid to leave a comment....sometimes when I am writing a new post, I feel like I am talking to myself...am I??

They Call Me SUPERMOM

So here's a short list of what I have done so far today:

2:45am - jumped out of bed to feed Paige...then realized it was Eric's turn. Woke him up, went back to sleep
5:00am - gave ailing Emily some Children's Tylenol for her raging fever
5:56am - Paige wakes up again, shove pacifier in her mouth, not time for bottle until 7am
6:01am - shove pacifier in again
6:07am - see above
6:15am - shove pacifier in again, wait until she really does fall back asleep, haha!!
6:16am - take shower
6:25am - shove pacifier in again.....what is up with this kid???
6:26-50am - finish getting ready while listening to the soothing sounds of Paige crying
7:01am - feed Paige
7:20am - get Emily new better tasting water
7:35am - sort laundry
7:40am - throw a load of light colored clothes in washer
8:00am - hand off baby to Eric so that I can turn in ARC report, answer emails, etc.
8:30am - eat a PB&J, make breakfast for Miss Emily
8:35am - put wash in the dryer, put dark colored clothes in washer
8:45am (Paige is now sleeping in her swing) Wash Paige's bottles
8:55am - Make Max's food
9:15am - Go to Emily's school to get waiver for Pneumoccal vaccine (long story), deposit checks in bank ATM
9:45 - Arrive home...Paige is still sleeping in her swing?
10:15am - Mix Paige's formula for the rest of the day, Paige awakes
10:30am - Feed Paige again
10:32am - change Paige's really STINKY diaper, get Emily's clothes out...she must be feeling better, she wants to wear clothes today, not PJ's.
11:40am - read Emily 3 stories
12:30pm get stuff out of dryer
12:31pm - Eat lunch that Eric has brought from McDonalds (we both had a craving)
12:45pm - decide that updating BLOG is more important than folding clothes....no wonder my laundry never gets done
1:07pm - finish my blog entry and go fold clothes, and put new load in washer

Paige has a Dr's appointment today - I think she's getting a bunch of shots....will update later with a 10 week photo, and Dr. appointment recap.