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Monday, February 17, 2014

A Full Weekend (and Heart)

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Even with Joe gone, Skyler and I had a very full and fun weekend just playing at home with the two of us, seeing many of our friends, and spending a lot of time with family. It was the perfect way to keep my hubby-missing self occupied!

This was actually before the weekend, but we braved the kid play structure at the mall on Thursday morning to have a play date with Skyler's newest friend. Even though they only recently started playing together, this was our third play date, Skyler always asks when he will see "Jack?" now. I love seeing him truly interact with other children at this age and ask about his little buddies all the time! I was hoping the mall would be a good meeting place for us to let the little one's burn off some energy, but it was absolutely crazy, so we are back to trying to find a good place between us to have the little's play.

As I mentioned on Friday, we had a Valentine breakfast date with three of Skyler's little friends from the New Mama class we took starting when Skyler was five weeks old. Talk about seeing Skyler interact with others? It is so weird to see all of the 'babies' from that class as toddlers now, and they all just love each other. It is the sweetest thing. It is like they know they have been friends since just after birth. I still think that taking that class was the best parenting decision I have made so far. Meeting moms (as we are the first of our friends to have children), feeling inspired to take more classes with Skyler, and having a safe place to talk about the intense joys and struggles of having a newborn was incredibly helpful. Because of that class, I have eight amazing friends and Skyler does too! This is a picture of three of the four buddies at breakfast, I couldn't get Skyler's sweet little friend sitting across from him to fit in the picture, but he was there too!


In the afternoon on Valentine's Day, we went to Grandma's house (aka my mom's in home daycare that we spend a lot of time at) for the Valentine party with all of her kids! We had so much fun, partially because Skyler got to eat a cookie (whoa!) and he devoured the entire thing - trying to reach more when he finished the first - and then was hyped up on sugar :)

Without daddy home to spend our Valentine's Day with, my in-laws were so sweet and invited Skyler and I out to dinner with them! I love the family I married into, I am one very lucky lady! It was quite the meal - I ordered Skyler chicken tenders and a side salad which I didn't really think he would eat, but I didn't like the other options. He picked at his meal, eating the food that every one else got, and then once we were done and our plates were cleared he finally started eating his own food (does that happen with anyone else??) I was completely shocked when, right after I said "I hope if I keep offering salad, he will just start to like it," Skyler started picking through his salad and eating every single piece of purple lettuce! He would shout "purple!" before picking up a piece and gobbling it up!! My boy does not eat vegetables, no matter how hard I try, and hasn't since he started eating finger foods (with the exception of sweet potatoes). I have found ways of sneaking them in, but now I am going to run out and buy purple lettuce and hope that we found another way to eat veggies without having to sneak them to Skyler!

We did some fun Valentine-y things at home over the weekend just because the day is done and we will not have so many pink and heart themed crafts for another year now.


Skyler took a fun Valentine bath with a few drops of red food coloring in the water - turning it a light shade of pink (which did not stain his skin at all, it was so diluted) - a ton of bubbles, and about 30-40 foam hearts that I cut out in shades of pink and purple. Inspired by these reusable heart clings from Fun at Home with Kids that I mentioned last week! Skyler really enjoyed the new sticky toys and the special water color, and mama got in on the sticky heart action as well!




Skyler was even alright with mama covering him with hearts :)

I saw this foaming heart sensory play activity this week and knew we had to give it a try! We have done a lot of just plain baking soda and vinegar experiments in our house (we have used food coloring a couple of times as well), and Skyler loves it, so I knew it would be a hit with him. All I had to get for this was the squeeze bottle (I see outdoor snow painting in our near future!)


He was so sweet while doing this activity. I had to show him how to squeeze the bottle, and he flipped it over and squeezed it perfectly onto the heart. It started to foam and he said, so quietly, "wow" and then "whoa" and then he waited and squeezed a little more "wow" and that is all he said for about two minutes. Once he had squeezed out all of the vinegar and the foaming stopped ("whoa...wow...whoa") then he finally looked at me and said "mo?" (more). I told him we couldn't do any more because it had used up all of our baking soda, so he was content touching the bubbles and squeezing the empty bottle over the foam, creating holes in the foam so that he could see the red liquid. Then he just wanted to do it again, so we had to be done and he was so bummed. I am going to buy a huge amount of baking soda as soon as possible!


Yesterday was incredibly busy, but wonderful, with a joint family birthday party and then a fun ladies night out for mama (with the new mamas mentioned previously!)

Weekends without Joe are always the hardest because that is usually when we get all of our time with him, especially for Skyler who goes to bed so early, usually Joe is just around for his dinner/bath time on weeknights. Two weeks down and just over two to go! Thank you to all of our amazing family and friends who kept us so entertained and happy on this weekend without daddy.

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