Hanging Out in the SUN!

Ahhh, the sun.  How glad I am it's been around for the past few days!  We have had plenty of good outdoors time, without shoes, without coats, without umbrellas.  Awesome.

Ingrid has been getting really good at her tricycle.  We were thinking of getting her a balance bike.  Anyone have one?  What do you think of them?  Worth the money? 

Otis is growing like nonstop, I swear.  I had gone through to get his six month clothes out of the bin in his closet and now he's into 9 month clothes as well.  Our friends Jess and Ben brought over a bag of the CUTEST clothes for him last weekend.  He sported this plaid number today, which really brought out the blue eyes.  Dang, he's cute.

He's been eating oatmeal with various baby food mixed in.  I wasn't sure I was going to feed him solids yet but that kid was ready.  He stares at our food when we're eating like a begging puppy dog, and if you get anywhere near him, he'll grab your spoon.  Every feeding he eats a whole bowl, he's a pig.  Which is good, he has to catch up!

I got a ton of new bibs ready for the shop.  I took advantage of the nice day outside and had Ingrid model them.  She gave me this lovely fake smile after I kept saying "Come on, smile!  Look at the camera!  Cheese and crackers!  Smile!"  She was not having it, so she gave me this. 

I guess I asked for it.

Today Otis and I went to the park while Ingrid was at school and we saw that the wading pool is open!!  So we are headed there tomorrow with a picnic and lots of sunscreen and we're gonna get our summer on.  Finally.

First Week of School

Ingrid has now had two days at her Montessori.  She has loved both days and I'm sure will enjoy the rest of the summer.  Yesterday was her second day and she was so excited to bring her ladybug lunch bag and go see Miss Carrie and Miss Jamie.  When we got there, she ran up the stairs, ready to show me where she washed her apples and carrots!  I just love seeing her so excited and having so much fun while learning things.  And I'm really enjoying what little I know of Montessori, it seems like such a good match for Ingrid.

Yesterday she wore two of my favorite things together, a vintage Mexican top and a pair of green polyester slacks.  Seriously, they are slacks.  Crease down the middle of the legs, a little bell to them, they are soooo cute!

Once again I got so much done while she was gone.  I love having five hours with just Otis!  He has taken long naps while she's gone (imagine being able to sleep better without a screaming three year old in the house.  Strange.) and I get to get things done without hearing "will you color with me?  Oops, I spilled.  I have to go to the bathroom.  Play with me, Mama."  I got the whole house cleaned, four loads of laundry done, and I sewed the top of a baby quilt. 

Otis is growing like a weed, seriously.  He started eating cereal and fruit and veg and will down the whole bowl in about five minutes.  He's off his nursing strike mostly, so we don't have to feed him that many bottles anymore, hooray!  I had to go through his box of clothes and find more that would fit, since he was busting out of his 3-6 mo. tshirts.  I found this one at the thrift store awhile ago and couldn't wait to put it on him.

But his favorite is still to just be naked. Whenever he's upset, we strip off his clothes and lay him on the bed.  He immediately calms down, grabs his feet and starts talking. 

So Much Going on!

Well, folks, today marks the start of Ingrid's formal education.  After much debating whether or not to send her to preschool, we found a great starter program for the summer.  It's a Montessori program run out of a teacher's house, very small "class" size (I think there were three kids today) and flexible hours.  So we signed up for two mornings a week and today is her first day.

We got a backpack and lunch bag for her, which was so so exciting for Ingrid!  She has been wearing the backpack around since we got it yesterday.  She bounded out of bed asking when she was going to school.  From 6am to 8am, she kept asking "Is it time yet?" 

When we got there, she ran right over to the materials and one of the teachers started working with her.  I had to say good bye to her four times before she finally called out bye over her shoulder!  I think she's ready for school, but I guess we'll see how she did when I pick her up this afternoon.  I found a public Montessori school with spots open in K3, so if she does well at this class, we'll be sending her off to real school in the fall.  Gulp.

Meanwhile, Otis and I have been hanging out.  He is napping right now, I'm about to watch the DVRed 16 and Pregnant and fold laundry, and I already had a chance to list more washcloths in the shop! 

One last thing:  We got this ridiculous clown onesie in the mail yesterday.  I got it from Hart and Sew and it is the most adorable thing in the world.  It just fits Otis, though, and it's still only 60degrees, so I had to put him in it and take pictures now, since he may not get a chance to show off his chicken legs in it for real before it doesn't fit anymore.  Where is our summer?  It was here for awhile, now it's MIA. 

 

Oh my god, I'm dying at how freakin' cute he is! 

The Cottage

The cottage is getting a new kitchen, so it's been kind of a war zone around there.  Hence, we have not been there in awhile.  Today we had to go look at refrigerators so we braved it with the kids.  Luckily it was nice out so we could stay outside.  Hopefully the next week or so will see the end of remodeling and a return to calm.  It sucks when the place to which you go for relaxation is not relaxing...

Is there anything better than a drooly baby in a classic white Gerber tee?

Perhaps it's a muddy girl planting seeds with her Grandma.

They drive me crazy, but I guess I'll keep 'em.

Washcloths

I made a couple sets of washcloths for the shop this week.  I love how they turned out!  It's awesome that you can take some cool fabric and put it with something really absorbent and ta-da!  It's a washcloth.  I had some terry cloth I'd found in the remnant bin at Joann and I made these robot ones.

I also made some for friends having babies.  I love friends having babies, they keep me busy!  But alas, I ran out of terry cloth and started to look through my scrap bin.  I have a ton of odd shaped pieces of minky leftover from making bibs.  I love that fabric so I never wanted to throw it away, but what to do with it?  Cut it in squares and make the softest washcloths you'll ever use.  Seriously, these are awesome, I'm making myself some!  They are sooooo soft and absorbent.  I made these for the shop:

And I have lots of new fabric I haven't done anything with yet, so methinks I will make a couple more sets this weekend! 

Six Months Old!

Tomorrow Otis turns one half year old.  I cannot believe he started as a wee peanut, scaring the crap out of me by coming so early, and now he's this giggling little cherub.

His last doctor's appointment he was 13lbs 4oz, on the small side even if you go by the scale he'd be on if he were born on his due date.  Oh well, Ingrid was always small too.  He's catching up though.  Little mister went on a nursing strike and scared me that he was going to stop nursing but luckily we've made it through.  He is teething like a mad man but no teeth in sight yet.  We just supplement with bottles when he gets so fussy he won't nurse.  It seems to be working fine.

Today we had a little photo shoot.  Ingrid couldn't understand why I wasn't taking pictures of her!  She was seriously perplexed "Mama, I'm right here!  Take a picture of me!"

 

We also tried some cereal with Otis today.  I'm not too gung ho about starting food, but I thought we'd give it a try.  He seemed to like it.  Ingrid did not her first time!  It took her awhile to eat it, but we started way early with her.

After looking at pictures and videos, it seems Otis is doing things at six months that Ingrid was doing at four months.  I think she grew up so fast!  I'll go slow with Otis, I'm in no hurry with him.

Parkin' It.

Yesterday was the perfect day.  The weather was breezy and in the high sixties, which I would take over the scorchers any day.  If I could have a summer filled with this weather, I'd be a happy camper.  We packed up the stroller with food, drinks, a package to mail out at the post office, and the diaper bag.  Otis napped in the Moby, Ingrid talked about all sorts of nonsense in the stroller, and we made our way to the park.

This park is awesome, I'm hoping we can find a house pretty close by when we go to buy one.  It's got a playground, an amphitheater where they do live music in the summer, a lagoon with lots of ducks and people fishing, and tons of trails to wander on.  Also, the trees are ancient and enormous, which I love.  I love to look at big gnarly tree trunks and marvel at the fact they are so old.

Ingrid was pleased that there were other kids there.  She ran around chasing them, but not really playing with them.  She hasn't gotten to that point yet, I guess! 

Otis layed on a blanket and put his toes in the grass. 

I sat back and enjoyed some coffee and we stayed until lunchtime.  We came back to eat lunch and take naps, but Ingrid suddenly got a second wind so only Otis got to nap, lucky dog.  He is finally taking naps on his own, he slept for three hours!  Good kid!  Then we went back outside to the backyard, did some weeding and sweeping, and stayed out until dinnertime.  I love summer!

Summer Came With a Vengeance.

Dang!  We never thought summer would come and all the sudden BAM!  Here it is.  Brendan said he saw it was 102 degrees by his work yesterday?  Crazy.  It's usually a lot cooler by the lake and it was still in the high 80s yesterday.  It's 7:30am and 80 right now. 

I don't want to complain because it is better than snow, but I hate heat.  Why can't our summers be breezy and 72?  I really hate sweating before 8am.

Yesterday we got a Slip'n'slide.  And then got home to find there was a broken piece on the hose that made it impossible to hook it up.  Blah.  Ingrid was so happy when Brendan came home and fixed it!

Otis was pretty much naked or in just a diaper all day long.  Favorite part of summer, seeing all those squishy baby parts unearthed!

All the bugs are out, too.  Ingrid is still slightly unsure of them.  They gross her out but she knows they're really not going to hurt her.  So she has to tell herself how cool they are.  "I can be friends with the ants, right Mom?"  We saw this huge dragonfly on our rosebush.  He stayed there forever, sometimes flitting away if we got too close, but always coming back.  We got to really look at him, it was pretty cool. 

Today is supposed to be a scorcher, too, so we're off to find something water related or in the air conditioning.  I would love to just be outside but it's so hard when it just makes everyone sticky and crabby...

Camping with Kids

We are home.  We survived!  It was fun!  But man, am I tired. 

We had a great time.  The weather was beautiful, the kids both slept pretty well, and we just had a good time being together. 

I was so worried about how Ingrid would do at night, but she was great.  She had a hard time getting to sleep the first night, but once she slept, she slept hard.  Until 5am when the sun came up and she was up chattering away to herself, waking us all up.  Sigh...

She did so well, though.  She loved to putter around the campsite and play with sticks, sing songs, dance, and of course, eat.  Marshmallows are the best camp treat! 

Otis was also great.  He hates the car so he was more than happy to get out of it and enjoy the nature.  We layed him on a blanket amidst all the bugs and he just stared at the trees and babbled.  He recently found his feet so most of the time he was just sitting there eating his toes. 

We played at the park, threw rocks in the lake, Brendan took Ingrid for a nice long bike ride through the park, and he took Otis on a couple hikes.  I just enjoyed being outside in the nice weather.  I had packed for cold weather, since a couple of our camping trips we ended up with frigid weather and not enough warm clothes, but this time we had a sunny 80 degree day.  Ingrid ended up swimming in her shorts! 

It was fun to be in this state park.  Brendan has been going there since he was a little kid, so he had lots of fun memories.  We went there for our honeymoon and first wedding anniversary, so we had lots of fun memories of that.  And now we are making our own family memories with our kids.  Yay!

Since this was such a great trip, we are really excited to go camping a lot more this summer.  And thank god we're in Wisconsin, there are a ton of places we can go to without having to drive a long way.  Another reason we're so thankful to be back home!

One thing I did realize is that it is a LOT less relaxing to camp with kids.  A couple sites away from ours was a young couple.  I walked by one afternoon and they were both sitting around the picnic table eating, talking, looking very relaxed.  I realized if I didn't have my kids with me I would have taken naps, slept in past 5am, gone hiking, gone to the drive in theater, and I definitely would have enjoyed nights around the campfire more.  Instead I was constantly yelling at Ingrid not to fall in the fire (which she totally would do, if you know her you know how clumsy she is...) and getting up at the butt crack of dawn, and wanting so badly to take a nap in the sunshine but was denied by a crying baby.  Oh well, we had an amazing time anyway!

And We're Off!

 

We leave today for our camping trip!  We're going up to Door County, the site of our honeymoon and our one year anniversary trip.  Every year since he can remember, Brendan's family has taken a camping trip to Peninsula State Park, so he's excited to start the tradition with our crew.

Wish us luck with our five month old and three year old.  I know people go camping with their kids all the time, but I honestly don't know how!  I'm hoping all the fresh air will make Ingrid pass out and that Otis' teeth don't decide to bother him all weekend.  Crossing fingers! 

New Toys for the Shop!

I love it when I think I have absolutely no time to get anything done, but at the end of the day I realize I actually did quite a bit.  That's how today went.  It definitely is easier to accomplish things when you start your day at 5:30 AM, thank you very much, Ingrid. 

I had three giraffes I'd made awhile ago, my post-Easter stuffed animal for the shop.  Somehow I never got around to sewing the little hole shut.  Stupid things like that always keep me from finishing something!  But today I found ten minutes to close both guys up and managed to take pictures and post them on Etsy.  Hurray!

So here they are:

Cute, huh?  Ingrid thought so, she kept trying to steal them from me!  I also finished up a sensory toy.  I made a couple of these for friends and had been thinking about making them for the shop but, because I have two kids and move a lot, I never got around to it.  But alas, one got done today!

I love that Alexander Henry fabric! 

I hope to get more finished soon, but Friday we leave for our camping trip.  Ha!  I am both excited and terrified by that idea.  When we took Ingrid before, it was awful.  I asked Brendan about twenty times if this campsite was level.  It is.  Phew.