Preschool

It's Back to School time! Michelle is old enough now that, if Bryan and I wanted to, we could enroll her in Preschool. However, since I am an educated and certified Preschool teacher, I thought it would be a little silly to pay someone else to do something I am fully capable of doing myself. So, I sat down, made a curriculum, made a few writing sheets, and started getting a little "Preschool corner" set up in our house. 

Today was Day One of "Preschool" for Michelle and she did GREAT! I am so proud of her. We started the day with putting up the calendar and learning about the right way to say the date. It was a little confusing to say "third" instead of "three" (as in "Today is Monday, September third." instead of "Monday, September three."), but after a few reminders she got it. Then we moved on to ABC Flashcards (another homemade by Randi Special!). Michelle rocked out at parroting the letters and their sounds. Then we danced and sang the alphabet song. After being silly we sat back down and I introduced the letter of the week- A. We read "My 'A' Book", and focused a lot on finding all the 'A' words. After that we moved to the table and practiced writing. Michelle did AWESOME! I showed her how to do the first one, helped her do the second one, and then BAM- she was off!

 After writing all her 'A's we did a little art project where she decorated a large 'A' that I had cut out with a bunch of 'A' stickers. She only made one mistake and tried to put an 'R' sticker on there. Let's be honest though, sometimes R's can look a little like A's if you're 3 and trying to hurry. ;)

Then we had some Apple-sauce for a snack. I'm not sure if Michelle really liked it, but she thought it was neat to be eating a snack that started with the letter A.

 I know I've already said it, but I really am so SO proud of her! She did great and is really excited about doing more tomorrow.

We'll keep doing 'A' things for the rest of the week, and then move on to 'B' next week. I'm excited to do Apple prints on Friday! I remember doing those when I was little and thinking it was SO neat that there was a star in the middle of an apple. I can't wait to see what Michelle thinks of it!

Good News & Bad News

Let's start with the good news. Michelle does some pretty stinkin' cute things. One thing that she has been doing lately has been putting her dolls to bed or "down for naps". She'll do it all on her own though so you never know when someone is going to be napping. She'll just come up to you and randomly say something like, "Mommy, you have to be quiet! Mini is sleeping." And for the next few minutes you had better be quiet or you'll have to go to time out! Unfortunately Michelle usually forget's that she has a doll sleeping somewhere so every now and then, when I'm getting ready to go to bed I'll find:

Mini Mouse in my bed, on my pillow, covered with our jean blanket.

"Baby" on my floor with all of our pillows and a beach towel.

Tina also has some good news to share. She's eating all human food!! Lol! We are officially a baby food free home! She'll eat anything from Peanut-butter and Jelly to Turkey and Cheese! She is not picky at all. As long as it fits into her mouth, she'll eat it. And, yes, that includes shoes, belts, toys and whatever else you leave on the floor for her to find!

Now for some bad news. Last year for Christmas Michelle got an easel/white board combo. She LOVED it!! She wasn't very good at putting the lids back onto the white board markers though so after three sets of dried out markers, I had to find a different solution. About two weeks ago I found white board CRAYONS!! Perfect!! Michelle thought they were pretty perfect too.

Perfect for coloring the walls...

and her kitchen...

and her trampoline...

and the chest...

and the doors...

but not for the easel.

So, what did I do? I bought a pack of wonderful, awesome, amazing magic erasers, and took away the crayons. :) Kids are so fun!

It's been a while...

I know it's been a while since I've updated the blog, and I have a lot to talk about, but I don't really have a lot of time to sit down and do it. So here's a few quick things that I'll try to update about over the next few days.

We took Michelle to Chuck-E-Cheese! She had a B-L-A-S-T! (I have better pics, but am saving them for a separate post.)

We are also completely addicted to this game on our phones; and when I say "we" I'm including Tina and Michelle!

 

Michelle is probably the best big sister on the planet! She can make Tina smile and laugh like no one else!

Tina LOVES to eat! Especially when it's something she's not supposed to have in the first place!

We read A LOT in this house.

 A Year or two ago my sister bought Michelle this alphabet magnet thing for our refrigerator. Both of my girls like to play with it, but Tina just lights up every time she get's it to play a song!

We've learned some very valuable lessons. For example, don't leave your children alone with marshmallows thinking that they are a "safe, clean" snack. They are not.

 Another lesson we've learned is to keep the bathroom doors shut!

Did I mention that Tina is a very speedy crawler?!

I can't express how much I love these two beautiful, amazing little girls!

Try and Try Again

This year I have A LOT of goals for myself. Some of them I have already finished and am super proud of. Others I have come to realize are a little bit unrealistic. And some, one in particular, has been a goal of mine for about 7 years now. 

For the last seven years I have been setting the same goal over and over again. I bet it's the same goal most people set over and over again. I want to lose weight! 

When I started I had a goal to lose a bunch of weight and be super skinny for my wedding. Then, when that didn't happen, I decided that I needed a gym membership. After a few years of going to the gym about once a week (on a good week! Ha!) I closed the membership. Then I got pregnant and kinda gave up on the losing weight thing. I tried to lose weight again after I had Michelle, but didn't really have the energy to put much into it. I would go on spurts of dieting and working out, but burn out after a few weeks. Then, last year I gave up completely when I got pregnant with Tina. After I had Tina I decided that losing weight was kind of a silly goal to have while I was still having children. Why work so hard to lose all this weight when I'm just going to gain it back as soon as I get pregnant again?! I figured I would kinda watch what I was eating and try to work out when I could, but not do anything crazy. WELL- let me tell you how well that worked out. Have you ever thought you were doing really well with something and then when you really sat down and laid things out, realized that you weren't doing very well at all? Yep, that was me. Apparently only eating small meals is a really good idea, as long as those meals don't consist of a chocolate bar or cookies.

Recently my sister introduced me to a new app called My Fitness Pal. 

It's a pretty simple app, and not always 100% accurate. Let me explain. The app allows you to keep a digital food diary, and log any exercise you do through out the day. You can set a goal weight and then choose how much you want to lose each week. For example, I put in that I weigh 1** pounds and am 5'2". I want to lose 30 pounds. Then I said I want to lose at least a pound a week. (You could choose to do more then that, but I was trying to be a little more realistic with myself. ...I love Pasta and Ice cream and didn't want to have to give up too much.) Then it calculates everything down for you and gives you a calorie count. I'm allowed to have 1370 calories a day. So I scan in whatever I eat, and log any exercise I do and Voila! Easy-peasy. Now I can tell if I'm eating well or if I really need to watch it. Sometimes things aren't as accurate as I would like (for some reason Jessica and I can punch in the same recipe, but because the brands we choose might be different, we could come up with two different calorie numbers) but it's never more then a few calories off. And, let's be honest, if you're worries about 10 extra calories for your whole day... go run a lap! Lol!

So far I've lost a ton of weight!

Just kidding! That's not me! ;p But, I have lost weight! So far it's been 15 days and I've lost 3 pounds! Not too shabby, right? 

Michelle's World

I have one of the sweetest...

Craziest...

 Silliest...

Little girls on the planet! These are just a few of the fun things I've heard Michelle say today:

"Come here fly! You need to be killed! You are not supposed to be in my house, so just hold still so I can kill you!" (She shouted this one while running around the living room with a fly-swatter.)

"Mommy, my playroom is a mess again! This is not supposed to happen... Playroom, you are supposed to be cleaned up!" (Pretty obvious, but we went to clean up and she ended up playing again as soon as we were done.)

"Tina, hold still so I can shoot you. It will only hurt for a minute. You can be brave!" (This was said while playing doctor. Michelle was attempting to give her sister a fake shot.)

Happy Birthday Michelle

I'm not sure what it was about this birthday but I really wanted it to be special for Michelle. Maybe it's the "I have two kids now and can't give you all the attention I used to" guilt. Or, maybe it's because of all the awesome birthday inspiration there is on Pinterest. Whatever the reason, I had made up my mind that Michelle would get an awesome birthday this year! 

To start her day off right Bryan and I blew up a bunch of balloons and strung them up right out side her door. That way when she woke up the next morning she would know, right away, that today was going to be awesome!

Both girls thought it was pretty fun.

Michelle had a full morning of playing and being crazy with her Dad, and since we were expecting to see a lot of family that afternoon we decided to have a quick tub before nap time. Michelle thought that was SO fun! I really don't understand why this bath was so much cooler then her normal baths, but to her, it was pretty much amazing.

The original plan for her party was to meet at Celebration Park in Allen and claim two pick-nic tables for all of her party stuff. I even called a few weeks in advance to reserve the tables, but after finding out that it was going to cost $80/hour with a two hour minimum- we opted to take our chances. Well, it turned out that everyone and their grandma decided to do the exact same thing! I'm glad I got there early to set up because, not only was every singe pavillion and table taken, but there were people popping up card tables, and folding chairs to set up even more birthday parties! IT. WAS. NUTS. So I called my mom and, being the amazing mom that she is, she got her house cleaned up super-fast and let us hold the party there. 

While, Michelle was pretty bummed about not being able to go to the "swimming park" (that's what she calls it), she got over it pretty quick once she saw her cake and all the other rainbow stuff we had set up and ready for her.

Plus, I think it put everyone in a better mood to be inside in the AC rather then outside in the 101* weather. (Gotta love Texas summers!) 

Yep, she got some pretty cool stuff this year! 

Thank you to everyone who came and made Michelle's day so special! She LOVED all of her gifts! I'm pretty sure we play Hi-Ho Cherry-o on a daily basis. She gets so excited to use all of her Color-wonder stuff at church on Sundays, and Play-Doh.... oh what do I say about the play-doh... Michelle sure does love it!

After the cake was cut and food was served everyone hung out and had some good ol' family time! And what would family time be if we didn't snap a picture of me and two of my best friends in the world.

I'm not sure if I've mentioned it on the blog yet, but Michelle has decided that she is going to be a doctor when she grows up. I'm okay with that.

If you're ever feeling down, come see Michelle; she gives the BEST check-ups!

Happy Happy Birthday Sweet Girl!

P.S.- My dad was playing with my camera and took this shot of a few balloons that were still hanging around after the party was over... I thought it was a neat picture.... so I put it on here.... yep.