Tuesday, December 27, 2011

christmas 2011

Christmas 2011 was a success! While I wish I had more pictures....I was trying to enjoy the moment and not be stuck behind the camera. Liv had a blast. She was so excited with everything she opened and all of the parties we went to. She is exhausted and her and I are having a relaxing day today. Well, she is...I am cleaning the up after the hurricane that destroyed our apartment. It is a disaster.

Some Christmas highlights:
- Skating! We did a lot of ice skating. We even did a little sledding. Liv isn't currently ready to play in the NHL, but give her a few years ;).

-Christmas Eve was spent at Great Grandma Doreen's house. It's the tradition and we had appetizers and opened gifts, all while enjoying each other's company.

-Christmas morning we had a big breakfast here: including red velvet pancakes, eggs, sausage, bacon, hashbrowns, cinnamon rolls, and of course some mimosas and coffee with bailey's. It was perfect and hopefully can be the new tradition!

-Christmas Day we had a nap, did some more skating, and then headed over to Grandma Carolyn's for food, drinks and visiting. Also, another tradition and is great to see everyone.

-Boxing day Pat took liv to the Mac's midget tournament, she was so excited. She had her new backpack from santa stuffed with stuff to do and snacks and headed out for 4 hours of hockey excitement. I did a little boxing day shopping and we had a nap together when they got home and headed over to Auntie Donna's for a "cousin's get together". This is another place that we look forward to because we get to see family we don't see very often.

Needless to say, all of us our exhausted. Liv had a few naps where I thought she would have slept all night if I let her and she did not want to wake up. Poor girl. I think she would agree though that it was worth it :).

and onto the pictures!
at GG Doreen's opening some gifts.



wondering what to do with this? (she got a leap pad for xmas :)

playing us some christmas tunes, Thanks auntie Dani for the dress!



christmas morning!







I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas 2011!!!

Thursday, December 15, 2011

sleep

We've had a little improvement in the sleep department.

Here's a re-cap of our sleeping timeline:
-moved into our new apartment early October.
-didn't bring the crib, so straight to the toddler bed.
-went home for 3 week, where liv slept in a pack and play
-came back and liv had a month of doing well at bedtime, sleeping all night in her bed.
-then came huge tantrums at bedtime which had me sitting on her floor until she fell asleep.
-got the tantrums under control and not sitting on the floor, but have to keep her door open.
-but now we are having issues with liv getting up randomly to come into our bed in the middle of the night.


Letting Liv sleep with us would be the easy thing, but honestly...none of us sleep well. Multiple wake-ups occur and coaxing ensues to get her back to sleep. So, last night at 1:30am I  was woken up by Liv, took a deep breath and pulled myself out of bed to put her back in her room. It was unpleasant but it worked. She came back in my room around 6:10am, but slept soundly with me until 7:20. I consider it a success!

The main thing for Liv right now is having her door open. It's not necessarily a problem if it's just us in the apartment, which usually it is...but obviously if something else was going on, i.e. setting up for xmas morning, it might become one.

If Liv wakes up and her door is closed, she gets up and cries to tell me she wants it open...once I get the waking up thing under control I might attempt to close it once she's sleeping again. Baby steps. I originally tried to fight her freak-outs and do a little nanny 911, which is basically telling her its bedtime once and after that, just putting her back in her bed with no words. Well, that escalated the situation to a point where she was SO upset I thought she'd throw up. It also lasted 2 + hours. I'm not willing to do that every night, so we are taking the baby step approach. So far it's working and I can only hope that if I'm consistent with putting her back in her bed that she'll eventually stop coming in our room.

My friend, Krysta, asked me to post about our sleep situation. It's definitely not perfect, but for now it's working and will ::fingers crossed:: keep evolving.

Friday, December 9, 2011

a month

With the anticipation of Pat finallyyy coming home today, today being a day short of him being gone for a month, I kept Liv and I busy. We did errands all morning, she got to visit with her gaga carolyn and auntie leslie and uncle ryan and baby jax, then we went home for a nap. She napped and weirdly enough I was excited enough to clean the house and do some laundry.

Then came the dreaded "I can't come home until tomorrow" call. So, now I can say "pat has been gone for a month", because tomorrow marks a month. I know how odd it sounds that my husband has been gone for a month, but thats the life we live. Its not often, but it can happen. We deal. I deal with extra glasses of wine at the end of the night/early evening, but deal I do.

While on our errand run today I got Liv some princess body wash an a cinderella loofa, Liv refers to it as a "foofa". Even though it wasn't bath night, we indulged ourselves. She polished herself clean with her "foofa" and extra squirts of princess body wash (which obviously makes you more princess-like) and practiced our back floats and front floats from swim class. I have to say that if swim class does anything for Liv, it will probably allow me to wash her hair like a normal human being in the bath tub! She is over her bath hating phase now...the fight continues to drag her out of the tub.

bath time baby.


back float!

Thank you swim class!

cinderella foofa!

baby bum

"takin' a break mama"

the girls of the hour.

happy after her bath.

princess pose.

can't forget about my other princess :)

ohhh lily ha!

Wednesday, December 7, 2011

poop strike

Potty training is going fairly well. Liv can wear panties all day and doesn't pee her pants. However, pooping is a whole other story. She continues to poop her pants, even with constant reminders.

So anyways, the other day she pooped her pants twice. I was livid after the second time. I try to talk to her and say "liv you can't poop in your panties, you need to tell mommy when you have to poop so you can poop in the potty". The second time though...I lost it. She went in time out, she got in big trouble. She knew mama was mad.

What does a two year old who won't poop in the potty do when she gets in trouble for pooping in her pants?? Goes on a poop strike thats what!

Liv is quite...regular. So 2 days with no poop was a bit of a concern for me. I knew what she was doing. So tonight she kept going into the bathroom and shutting the door. I would go in and she would come out. Then finally I heard her mumbling something about pooping. I followed her and said "liv do you have to go poop?". She said yes and she wanted to sit on the big potty (she only does this when she poops). And she did! She got down and said "whoa mom, thats a big poop!". Seriously, so proud.

I'll disregard the fact that she didn't exactly finish in the potty and I ended up cleaning undies anyways, but its the fact that she tried. Go Liv!

Friday, December 2, 2011

life lately

Life has been interesting lately. Poor Pat has been out of town for about 3 weeks. He came home on Tuesday for about 10 hours, but then was called back out of town. So, by interesting I mean stressful.

Liv decided that when Pat left she would be waking up and coming into my room. Of course the night Pat was home she slept all night in her room...so I'm hoping that her little habit is due to little disruption in her life. Obviously to her, its not such a little disruption.

I did do some Christmas Shopping this week, which is a relief. I hadn't done any. I don't want to go overboard, so I'd say I'm almost finished. Just a few more things here and there. Speaking of Christmas, I'm thinking Liv is going to have a repeat of her performance last year when it comes to sitting on Santa's lap. Which will include an all out tantrum...I fear for Santa's safety.

I've been a little off lately. Life has just been weird around here without Pat around. That is what I'm blaming this on...a little story. So, I bought a winter jacket from value village. I had tried it on and when I brought it home I washed it immediately. When I took it out of the dryer I tried it on again...and I realized the zipper was broken! I looked for the bottom piece and couldn't find it anywhere. I was mad at myself, but figured since I only paid $13 for the jacket, I could afford to get it fixed. The next day I brought it to the seamstress down the hill. Fast forward to today when I went to pick it up. Let's just say it was free. Free because the zipper was intact, it was a double zipper and the top part was up by the top and I guess I just....well, I overlooked it? It was a wee bit embarrassing.

With that little life update, I'll leave you with some pictures...

a re-decorated with some re-painted vintage platters.

a little holiday doily banner via Mandy's blog

new wall decal in liv's room

re-painted vintage frame with adhesive chalkboard (easiest thing ever!)

liv's updated picture wall...it's coming along

and liv and her new obsession, which includes filling bags up with toys and toting them around. This always results in a mess, of course.

antagonizing lily

the only good pic I have of my other re-decorated wall.

spinning.


whoa.


a little wind in the hair.


some turkey noodle soup from leftover turkey...we had thanksgiving dinner at our place, but of course I failed to get any pictures. Pat has been asking for this, so I obliged. Here is the recipe. I omitted the celery, because cooked celery is moogy and grosses me out. I also thought the addition of soy sauce was odd, but it tastes good!