Growing Up

This week has been a giant whirlwind for me. Emily started walking and Conner started serious potty training. That is a lot of change for any family, let alone both happening in the same week.

On Sunday, Emily took her first steps and is a walking machine now. I have been working with her everyday and have only gotten two steps out of her. She has been strong enough to walk for about a month now. You would see her just standing and not touching anything and when she held your fingers, she would walk but would sit as soon as your fingers left hers. So Matt tries on Sunday while I am in the shower and she takes eight steps... And I wasn't even there to see it! I was very disappointed that I missed it, but Conner did the same thing to me. Oh well!

It is amazing and sad how fast this happened, she just turned 11 months! Conner didn't walk until he was 13.5 months old and it took him a couple weeks to walk to other things besides us. Not Emily! She will pull herself up on something and take off walking for a toy or food. She is going through all the major milestones way too fast for this momma. I need her to slow down!!!

On Monday, Conner went under the dining room table to do his business and I asked him if he wanted to go use the potty... He said yes! For some reason, he has been terrified of the potty and his underwear. I don't know why, but something changed on Monday. He pooped in the potty and let me put underwear on him and we haven't looked back since. I am so proud of him. We are going every 25 mins and he has only had one accident a day. I have nothing to compare it to, but I think that's great!

This week is so full of changes and big milestones. It makes me realize that my children are growing up so fast and that it all is happening in the blink of an eye. It makes me sad, because I love the stages they are in now. But it also makes me excited for the future and for all the fun things we are going to experience with them both.

Lemon Rosemary Cupcakes

I know the combination sounds weird... Believe me, I tried talking myself out of attempting this. But one night I was cooking dinner, using lemons and rosemary in two different dishes and I thought the smell was heavenly. I told Matt right away, that I was making that into a cupcake.

So I made a basic buttercream frosting and added some very finely minced roaemary, shaved lemon peel, and lemon juice and voila... It's a masterpiece!

Conner Loves Emily

When I found out I was pregnant with Emily, I had a crazy sea of emotions. And one of my biggest fears was how Conner would handle it. Up until that time, all of my time was devoted to him. He was the center of my universe and I didn't know how either one of us one handle sharing me.

When Conner came to the hospital to meet his baby sister, I was very apprehensive of his reaction... They are only 21 months apart and you never know at that age how they will react period, let alone meeting someone who is going to take time away from momma. But it couldn't have been more perfect. He was truly excited to meet her. Had the biggest grin and wanted to hold her right away.

We definitely had our issues with sharing momma in the beginning. I spent a lot of time breast feeding Emily and he didn't understand why I had to hold her all the time. It was sad and broke my heart. I tried to make him feel special and when she was sleeping, we cuddled and spent one on one time with each other. He eventually got better about it, not sure if it was getting used to it or him getting older and being able to reason.

With all that said, Conner adores Emily. Truly, he is in love with her. He wants to play with her, kiss her, hug her, hold her, rough house with her and make her feel better when she is hurt. He likes to keep her in line and tell me when she is getting into something she shouldn't or tell her no when she throws her food on the floor and laughs.

He is an AMAZING big brother to her. And I am so glad for it, and pray that their love continues to grow. I want them to be best friends and for him to protect her when we aren't around. I want him to watch out for her and make sure no stupid teenage boy messes with her (even though she will never date 😬)

Funny and sweet stories between Conner and Emily:

He will randomly tell me that he loves Emily. Even when she isn't around, he will ask where she is and then say he loves her.

Conner wouldn't say her name for the longest time, he would only refer to her as baby. But over the past 4 months he says it, but it comes out as "omilee" or "oddily"

Every morning, Conner asks where Emily is. She usually sleeps a little past him, and I tell him that she is asleep. When she wakes up I bring her to bed and we all cuddle for a little bit, he says "good morning Emily" and plants a big kiss on her head.

Conner constantly asks for Emily to come and play in his room. But momma can't come. Just him and Emily.

He likes to rub her head and say that she's cute. (About six months ago, it came out as "cuke")

Conner loves to hug Emily. Sometimes he is too rough, but today they rolled around on the floor hugging onto each other and laughing hysterically. (This makes my heart so happy)

Today she dropped her pears on the floor and laughed and said uh-oh... Conner comes running up to her and said, "No, Emily. We don't throw our food... It's not funny, Emily!"

Cupcakes

Some of you know that I have a love affair with baking. Especially baking cupcakes. I truly think they are the prefect dessert. They are the perfect portion size for a dessert, they are delicious and utterly adorable.

So one of my ambitions is to own my own bakery. It is a far fetched dream that I hope will someday come true. But until that time I am just going to bake away in my home, for fun and a little extra spending money ☺ One of my goals for the new year is to bake one thing a week. I want to build a repertoire of desserts and sell them. So I am going to use this as my outlet to share with the world my lovely desserts!

This past weekend was the Super Bowl. So I racked my brain for a cupcake that any guy would like. Then I started thinking of all the things that Matt likes (which isn't much, he isn't a huge dessert person) and I start thinking about candy bars. He loves snickers, so I made a snicker cupcake. Who doesn't like Snickers? Man or woman alike, it is a yummy treat and top it off with some caramel... Yummy!

So here is my Snickers Cupcake! In the future I plan to show pics of the process and the recipe, but to be honest I am too lazy for that today. Hopefully a picture will work for this week!

Parental Advice

When you have your first kid everyone gives you tons and tons of advice from breast feeding to swaddling to sleeping... whether it is wanted or not, people will give it to you.  And as a expectant parent you try your best to take in all the information. You think you know you will be up all night and you will get little sleep. You think you understand that when you breastfeed, it requires a lot of time... but you don't realize that you will truly be exhausted, your body is no longer yours, you will be very concerned with what your kid's poop looks like and you will smell like milk at all hours of the day. But when that baby is cuddled in your arms and you smell the top of their head, all the craziness goes away.  You fall so in love and can't imagine how you could possibly love another human being so much.

I have learned that each child is born different and unique. They have their own quirks and you just figure them out as you go along.  And I would also say that the second one grows up so much faster!  In the blink of an eye they start smiling, sitting, eating table food, crawling and then you are planning their first birthday party... Gulp!  I have to make myself stop and appreciate all the little milestones and realize that this very well might be the last time that I get to experience it.

So when people say that the second child is easier, they are partly true. With the second child your life has already made major alterations. You are used to having little people depend solely on you for their care, but you just adjust and now take care of another little person. You also learn that someone is going to cry. It's just the way it is. You can't make everyone happy and you have to prioritize needs.  You are going to lose sleep.  It is inevitable, there is no way around it.  As soon as your baby starts sleeping well they will get sick or start teething, and it is so disappointing.  My final tidbit of advice, go ahead and realize that coffee and wine are your best friend!

... And I am Back!

So I have been off the blogging world for some time now.  There are several reasons for this, but the main one being a had a baby... almost 11 months ago!  Two children under the age two is no joke!  It isn't hard, but you stay constantly busy. Even though I had a baby, I should have blogged.  Oh how I wish I had.  I wish I wasn't being so lazy and took the time to document my sweet children's life. 

Since I have last written in this blog I have begun staying home with my two darling children. I think I thought that it would be realtively easy.  That I would play with my kids all day and then be refreshed for when Matt got home.... Umm, not exactly!  You are not only staying home to just be with your kids... you are staying home to feed them at every meal, change every wet and poopy diaper, entertain them, put them to sleep, put them to sleep, put them to sleep (did I already say that?  yes, that's because 75% of my day is convincing them that sleep is a good thing), cleaning up after them... constantly, laundry, dusting, sweeping about twenty times a day (especially with a crawler who eats everything on the floor), cooking, grocery store, errands, and the list goes on.  So long story short, being a stay at home mom is tough work!  

I am by no means saying that a working mom doesn't have a tough job, because she does.  I truly believe that as moms we all struggle daily with balancing work and home life.  And one of the tough things about staying home with your kids is that in a sense, they and the house are my job.  And I don't like feeling that this is the situation, but it is.  So I feel like since I stay at home, my house should be immaculate.  When this is not what my primary job description is... that isn't even my title.  My title is stay at home MOM.  So I am going to do my best to keep a clean house, but not stress out if I have a ton of laundry and Conner wants me to play rockets with him.  I am going to play rockets with him and the laundry can wait.  

So with all that being said... I am going to start blogging again.  And it will truly be about Life, Love and Being a Mom!