Last Post

As some of you have realized, I haven't been posting on the blog much lately. Turns out, it is MUCH easier to post to Google + from my phone, which is mainly how I get my pictures and videos these days {somehow it's hard to find the time to sit at a computer in between running after two toddlers}. So I have decided to stick with that and stop stressing over it.
For the kids stuff I have been using Google + almost exclusively. It automatically uploads each picture and video I take without me having to do anything, I just pick and chose which ones I share and with whom. It makes it effortless. I realize not many people are on Google+, and with that, I strongly encourage you to sign up. Facebook's sharing of pictures and videos are just not as simple, and it's hard to pick and chose who you share your pictures with. Some pictures, I only want to share with family, not all my old high school friends.
I will continue to post a couple here and there on facebook, but I have been and will continue to post almost all of my pictures and videos on Google +.
For anyone interested in my toddler activities, I will continue to post those on Google + as well, as public. Feel free to add me to your circles and you'll get the posts as I share them.

So, cheers! to a fun blogging experience! And cheers! as we move on to the new frontier.

How to Hold a Crayon

Today we worked on color recognition. These Sesame Street books are so great!
I was told at our last Help Me Grow meeting to go ahead and work on how to hold the crayon. I tried a few times, but Eli wasn't interested in coloring if I was going to "help" him hold his crayon so I backed off.

Well today he was into it! We worked on pinching the crayon and coloring using the thumb and pointer finger instead of the whole hand. He did great! We will continue to work on it as it will start to feel natural to him. Really at this point I'm accepting anything that isn't whole hand grasping. He picked up on it faster than I thought he would, though.
His color matching also made me laugh because he would color with the right color, and then would do 3 or 4 colors on top.
I love his creativity!

Just a Little Something I Made

One of my favorite quotes:)

Liv is Walking!

My Messy Kitchen

I have decided to embrace something this week: My family uses the kitchen.

We do not eat out very much. My husband hates going out to eat, we don't think it's the healthiest option for our family, and it is ridiculously expensive. I love the experience of going to a restaurant, having endless options about what to eat, and making on the fly decisions about drinks, dinners and, most of all, desserts! I love coming home, stuffed to the brim, and sitting on the couch not thinking about what a mess I made in the other room.
Since I married Keith, I have learned to embrace eating in the home. In fact, I love it! Researching a good recipe, or experimenting on your own, it's all fun and scrumptious. We do breakfast for dinner on days that we are lazy, and stir fry, a lot! Don't know what to make? Meat and vegetables with a garlic bread on the side make fabulous impromptu dinners. Planning, shopping, preparing, and certainly not eating, are not the part of eating at home that makes it hard for me to keep up with. What I hate most about eating at home, is cleaning the kitchen. I have a small kitchen, with about two feet of counter space, but it's always dirty. Two feet of dishes, food, coffee pods, and crusted scrambled egg on endless pans.
I have tried my best to clean it and keep it clean. But, my husband can smell a clean kitchen, and inevitably comes up with a most delicious meal to cook. I love Keith, but he tends to be a bit of a mess in the kitchen {that's an extreme understatement}. So I would get frustrated. I would pout, and I would just simply refuse to clean it. It got gross, and impossible to cook in. It wasn't inspiring, and making a meal seemed daunting. And that's how it stayed for a long time, until this week.
This week, something clicked. My family uses the kitchen. It's not supposed to be perfect, it's used all the time. We eat breakfast, snack, lunch, snack, dinner, snack, snack, snack. Oh, and dessert, and snacks. Somehow, when I realized that my family is supposed to make the kitchen dirty, it seemed more ok to have it not look perfectly clean all of the time. I'm not sure why, but cleaning it little by little seemed less overwhelming, and once keeping it clean became less of a need, it became a reality. I cleaned the kitchen three times yesterday, and twice already today.
There will be days that I am too busy to clean multiple times a day, or even once a day, but I'm ok with that. I'm thankful that me and my family eat home made food. I think a messy kitchen is worth it. Don't you?