Beautiful Boy..

My blog acts as a memory book for my journey as a mom, teacher, wife, friend.... and today I have a moment that I don't want to ever forget...

It's my vacation so I decided I would lay down with my sweet boy until he fell asleep for nap (he usually just goes in his room and falls asleep on his own). So I go lay down by him, turn on his music, and do the typical mom-fake-sleep-with-one-eye-half-open business.  He looks through each of his bed time books independently and then gets his "nahnee"  (his very beloved blanket) and covers me up with it. He then scoots over as close to me as possible and starts patting my back. This went on for a good five minutes... just me laying there "asleep", his blanket on my back, and him patting away. He finally takes the blanket off me, lays it on his bed, and goes quickly asleep right next to me.  Melt.my.heart.

My little boy is just growing up way too fast. I just hope that he remains as loving, caring, empathetic, sweet, and just plain wonderful as he continues to grow...

In the NICU at one day old... first time seeing each other in almost 24 hours. So perfect

A little work update...

So it's be awhile since I posted on my new job (well... somewhat new job... I've been there for like 5 months now) so I thought what a better time than on my day off from that job :)

I am still loving it so much. Really... I do.  Despite being absolutely exhausted, mentally and physically worn out, I love it. If I was going to be working anywhere... this is the place for me. I love my kids and am super sad that I only have a month left with them before they move up to their new classroom. They have come so far in 5 months and I"m so proud of them... I'll miss them a ton. Even my rotten ones :)   I've seen some very heartbreaking things in the five months I've worked there but that only makes me love my job even more... knowing that for the 6 hours a day that I have those babies they have anything and everything they need. If I was in a position to adopt... I would run out and do it right now. I've always known that I want to adopt a little.... and now I'm even more certain of it. I can't wait for that day...

Well here are some pics of what's been happening in my room over the past 5 months (faces are blurred to protect my babies).

Our family tree. The kids painted the branch and I hung pics of everyone in our class on it. It's hanging from the ceiling first thing when you walk in the room

Some serious ramp action has been happening. They're pretty simple ramps but they're doing such awesome things with them.

We've been doing a nature study for over a month now. They're obsessed. I believe this was a millipede that they found.

More with out nature study. Our sensory table is full of items they/we have found and collected. She was saying, "it's so cold on my hand"   :)

This little love found some rocks and did some seriation/counting activities with them completely on her own. Melt.my.heart

Our nature study took a big turn to birds/nest. They loved looking at feathers on the light table.

They wanted to feed the birds and came up with the idea of buying a bird feeder. They filled it up and everything on their own :)

This turned out to be my absolute favorite project they have done. It started out as just a weaving project.... but the kids began calling it a "Birds nest". Beautiful. It's now hanging in our classroom and is perfect. I'll take a final pic soon and post it.

I found this best at home and took a pic of the eggs that were in it. They loved it! I also was able to get a pic of the baby birds a little later. 

Our science area is my favorite space in the room. I hung branches from the ceiling above it and from the branches have hung nature items that the kids have collected and painted. It also has our actual birds nest in it and some small ones that a couple of my girls made from paper.

We like to turn trash into treasure in our room :)

some watercolor paintings separate our room from the bathroom and our neighboring classroom (which is what you see in the background)

We did some seed planting in our room. The kids prepared the dirt, filled up the container, planted the seeds, wrote the labels (which is what you see here), and are watering the flowers each day.

Their finished planting project.

Well sorry for the picture overload... but there are so many awesome things happening I couldn't narrow it down :).... and I also love my job.... just a little...

Food Makeover

So our house is having a food makeover.  Dax has always ate great... we've made sure of that. But over the past several months Daniel and I have become major slackers (and I think that's putting it nicely!) I credit it to us getting use to my new work routine and Daniel's constantly changing schedule (thank you third year of medschool). With all excuses aside, we def. needed to start making some better choices.... and not only with our food, but with our money too. This fall is going to bring some major changes for us, one of which will be residency interviewing. If you're new to the medschool process, Daniel will probably apply to like 30 residency programs across the US (like literally across... one being Boston) and will hopefully do interviews at like ten of those. Needless to say that between applications, flights, hotels, rental cars, etc, this process gets really pricey, really quick.  Therefore, we really need to start getting a little smarter with our money... and that includes making a set budget for food and sticking to it. Before we've never really had a set food budget. We just went shopping and bought what we wanted.  Well my super awesome BFF post this wonderful blog post about their budget so we decided to try it out as well! 

Her idea (that we're also doing) is to budget $100 a week for groceries for us. Each weekend we go to the farmers and buy whatever veggies catch our eye. Where we live there aren't any huge farmers markets around... but there are a few different small ones that we have checked out (so we may drive around to each of them and get whatever we're wanting at each one). This is what we came away with on our very first trip to the farmers market..

Doesn't it look delish!? All of it was absolutely wonderful. Porter Peaches are by far some of the best peaches you'll ever have and the local honey was to die for. All of it tasted (and looked, for sure) ten times better than buying it at your regular grocery store where it has travel hundreds of miles before you can purchase it. I'll give you some of the recipes we tried out in another post...

Anyways, back to the plan! After going to the farmers market, we went home and made our dinner plans for the week. We decided what we would make each night for dinner using the veggies we got at the farmers market, and from there made a list of additional things we needed to get at the store. It was super exciting when our "store" list was so small. It felt good knowing that we would be eating mostly local, fresh veggies instead of processed things.

Now money wise we decided to get $100 cash out for our first trip to the farmers market. We used cash to make our purchases there, and at Target (where we do the rest of our grocery shopping) we use our Target Red Card (which if you're an avid Target shopper I highly suggest! It's pretty much a debit card that gets you 5% off your total purchase each time you use it... no strings attached!) Any cash that we had left over we put into a cookie jar that we have in our house and saved it for the next weeks trip to the farmers market or for an "eating out" fund. I'm not going to lie... there was one day last week where we were both exhausted, it was late, and making dinner just didn't sound appealing.... so we busted out our extra money in our food budget (I believe we had like $15 left last week) and got a pizza from pizza hut. Only using that cash for eating out keeps us from going over our $100 a week food budget.  We are also keeping a really detailed list of all the money we spend on food in the month of June so that we have a better idea of where our money is going to (this includes everything, from groceries to a drink at starbucks... which I had to add this morning). Now the first week we over bought at the farmers market because we forgot to take into account that there are some nights when Daniel won't be home for dinner because of his schedule. But this week before heading out to do our shopping we figured out how many meals we would be needing so we could keep that in mind when shopping.

Our new food budget has worked out awesome so far. We haven't gone over budget yet (granted we've only been doing it for two weeks), we're eating way better than before, and we're being held accountable for what we're eating/spending on food.  If you have any other ideas (on food or just budgeting in general) let us know!! We would love to hear them!

Dax's Top 21

It's been over a month since I last posted! Sorry friends... I one, haven't had time... and two, haven't been inspired by much to write.  But thanks to another blog I follow I got inspired to post Dax's Top 21 in honor of him turning 21 months old (thanks Ivory!)

Dax's favorite....
1. fruit: blueberries & watermelon
2. vegetable: peas
3. drink: water
4. snack: "bars"... they're baby granola bars from Earths Best... and he goes crazy over them!
5. song to sing: Twinkle Twinkle Little Star.... he does the motions and it's pretty adorable :)
6. song to listen to: "Hey Ducky"   It's a youtube music video and he's obsessed!
7. place to be: the lake!
8. thing to do outside: walk around and pick up sticks to give the dogs :)
9. thing to do inside: make a mess... I've decided it's his mission in life ;)
10. place to go: Target!  He loves riding in the shopping cart and goes "WEEEEE" the majority of the time
11. game: Tackle mommy and daddy. yikes
12. show: He doesn't watch much TV, but if he does he loves to watch Eebee (and it's one of the few shows I agree to let him watch!)
13. toy: A big ice scraper that was in my car... he calls it his "vacuum" and carries it around the house with him.... strange kid :)
14. animal: his puppies :)  But he's also a fan of fish and birds
15. word: "mine"... he's def a toddler!
16. way to make mommy go crazy: acting like his daddy ;)   He's extremely stubborn and strong willed... and it makes me want to pull my hair out sometimes!
17. person: Mommy when he's sleepy or sad... Daddy when he wants to play!
18. friend: Blake & Parker .... he has been in class with these boys for about a year and everyone calls them the three musketeers. He asks for them each morning and gets so excited when he sees them!
19. book: Llama Llama Nighty Night
20. thing to hate: Diaper changes... ugh
21. comfort items: "nah nah" (his binky) , "nah nee" (his blankey), and dino (a stuffed dinosaur he got for Easter).

Happy Friday Yall!!!!

20 Months

Woah... typing the title for this post seriously caught me off guard for a minute. In 4 short months and 7 days my little boy will be 2! How did this happen?! Just last week he was wiggling in my tummy.... and just yesterday I was planning his first birthday!  And now it's already time to plan his second birthday?  Yikes.
The past couple weeks have really hit me that he's getting big. He's now more a "little boy" than a baby for sure. But I'm not sure how I feel about that...

Only a few hours old...

Almost 20 months old...

 The conversations I can have with Dax now are what I feel blows me away the most. We have amazing back and forth conversations where we both understand completely what one another is saying. He's putting together great sentences, words are really clear, and he knows how to work the tonation of his voice to show a question and emotion. If he doesn't know the name of something he'll pick it up and say, "this?" until he gets an answer from one of us. Most of the time when we're in the car I'll jsut turn the radio off and talk with him. There is nothing more amazing to me than listening to his thoughts.

Daxton has such a loving heart. I know a big thing for Daniel and I both is to raise kids that are compassionate and empathetic towards others... and so far, Dax seems to get it. He has such a tender heart. He doesn't like to see others sad or hurting whatsoever. He worries about others. Daniel and I can't play fight because Dax gets really concerned. The other day at Smashburger Dax was watching a baby at the table next to us when it started crying. He started looking very concerned and saying, "baby" over and over. I eventually had to hold him and calm him down until the baby stopped. Precious. 

"Discipline" is so far so good for us. It's a word I hate to use but can't think of one to use in it's place. I don't think of it as disciplining him.... it's more us redirecting him, understanding where he's coming from, and helping him learn the appropriate ways to act. This is a big, new, scary world for him so we have to teach him the right ways to handle situations, not just "discipline" him for responding in a way that makes sense for him.   His two big problems right now are hitting and fits.  His hitting is usually a way of trying to play more so than hitting to be mean, so we just change our facial expressions and let him know "that hurts" and he is super, super quick to try a different way of playing. You can see in his face that he gets it. The fits I know are completely age appropriate. I usually just try to give him words to describe his emotions, take him to a quiet place (if we're at home) where it's less stimulating, redirect him, or just verify his emotions and then walk away and go about my business (once he sees he's not getting a big dramatic reaction from me he stops) .

My little boy has become quite the daredevil! Anything fast or high, or dangerous is something right up his alley... yikes. Him and daddy laugh... but I get knots in my tummy!  It must be a boy thing!

He's really into writing and painting right now. He also loves cars, books (this has never changed), baby dolls, his broom, phones, and balls. His love for music and nature continue to blow me away. He's fascinated with trees and birds. Music in any form, whether it's songs on the radio, a toy, singing songs, or playing instruments, is his passion.

He's a great helper!! If he finds trash on the ground he picks it up and throws it away, he has started putting his own dishes away (in the sink) after eating, and LOVES helping with laundry. He gets so excited when he sees me gathering clothes and says "laundry" super loud and will either 1) Pick clothes up and put them in the basket, or 2) take clothes out of the basket and start dragging them to the door of our garage (where the washer and dryer are).  He helps put the clothes in the washer, move them to the dryer, and then take clothes out of the drying and put in the basket. Adorable.

Super excited teacher mommy here!  This little boy can identify a circle and square! I was just drawing with chalk outside one day (and working with two and three year olds my "doodles" just happen to be shapes) and he asked "this?"  I told him once and he has them down ever since! Me and Daniel still get a little amazed each time he tell us.

Sleep is great for the most part. He's going to bed at about 7is, sleeps until 6 or 6:30, and is taking one 2-3 hour nap during the day. He's still putting himself to sleep great in his big boy bed! He has also quit taking his binky during naps at daycare (YESSSSS!) Next step will be at night.... yikes! He's in the middle of getting teeth so I'm not sure when that will happen. He just got his bottom molars (he's finally up to 9 teeth) and one other is right on the brink of coming in. Because of this we've had some restlessness at night... I'll be glad when teething is completely done that's for sure.


Well that's where our little man is now! He's getting way too big, way too fast.... but the process is so much fun! Tods and twos are my favorite ages so I'm loving every minute of it!