Tutus For Sale!

Tutus for Sale! Tutus for Sale!

These fun, whimsical tutus are great for birthdays, special events, or just fun to put over a pair of leggings and tee shirt. I can make them in any color. The tutus are made with the softest tulle and elastic waist band, to make sure your little girl is comfortable. They are fluffy and have I mentioned so much fun?
I will include a flower headband for FREE with your tutu.
Please email me at NicParrish7@gmail.com to place your order, or visit my Etsy store.

St Patrick's Day Tutu

Today I tried my hand at making tutus. I decided on a St Patrick's Day tutu, because I thought it would be fun. I used white, an olive/sage green, and forest green colors. Although in the end I think I overestimated the size of Keira's waist, I still am overall very happy with the end result. Here are the photos.

I've Got Nothing

No quirky or relevant title here. We were attacked by intense winds last night and I am running on less than three hours of sleep. Nathan and I moved the boys out of their beds and brought them to the main floor to sleep because we were that worried about a tree slamming into our roof. Thankfully that did not happen. Although most of our street lost power (we did not), and there were trees covering our street (we were finally lulled to sleep by the flashing of various police/fire trucks), and I guess I could tell you that it looks like the trees threw up all over our yard (but in light of other folks' stories, I feel blessed) our shed ended up the only REAL casualty. A tree was uprooted and fell smack on the roof of the shed, crushing it completely. We are all running a bit on empty at this point. Nathan is trying to make the clan happy, and offered to accompany me to the grocery store, which has only happened oh maybe four times in seven years. He enjoys teaching the boys to cook, and honestly I learned how to cook mostly from him (he'll gladly tell you what a terrible cook I was when we met, but will quickly follow up with what a maestro I am now, ha!) Tonight he has chosen to cook ribs (from scratch) and fries (from scratch) which is actually a surprisingly inexpensive meal. Ribs were 12- and potatoes were 4-. I chose to make a big salad for me (and everyone else, but honestly it's because I could eat the whole thing myself.) On that foodie note, I know a few have asked me about how I'm doing so far. Well, I'd like to say so far so good. In some ways I am eating more, but it's all smaller portions and as far as what I am eating, lots and lots of green things. Seriously. I'm consuming entire crops of veggies and beans. I am also (besides drinking lots of water) keeping the green tea industry in business all by myself. I feel much better. My body actually feels cleaner. No joke.
I have begun reading Shutter Island and am hoping for my eyes to cooperate and let me stay awake enough tonight to actually finish it.

Spring Is In The Air ~GIVEAWAY~

Spring is quickly approaching. Okay, maybe it doesn't feel like it, especially if you live on the East Coast like me, but I know it's coming (it WILL come soon, it will, it will!) In my anticipation for the loveliness that is blooming flowers, growing grass, longer days and color I have been crafting some spring worthy flower power headbands. Turns out I made way more than Keira could ever need, so my overstock is your gain! These are white, stretch lace fabric that is comfortable for your little princess, and they are adorned with a magenta flower and a purple flower (one on each.)
These are fun, and super cute. Below are photos.
How to get your hands on these for your little flower child, or as a gift for someone you know?

1. Make sure you are a follower of my blog (worth one entry) and let me know you are.

2. Leave me a comment telling me what your favorite springtime activity is. (worth one more entry)

3. Advertise this giveaway on your blog, facebook, or twitter account, and let me know about it (worth three entries EACH site.)

winners will be chosen using random.org

winner is announced Friday March 5th

Good Luck!

Girly Girl

Keira's carseat cover came in the mail today. I ordered it from Elizabeth Park Designs on their Etsy site. I am in love with this. It came in a pretty pink bag and is soft and cushiony and as girly as I could get. Elizabeth Park Designs makes carseat covers for various Britax car seats. I could not be more pleased with this. She even includes a belly pad and strap covers with the carseat cover. Keira is clearly just as pleased with her new cover as I am. Elizabeth Park Designs has so many great covers to choose from. I enlisted the help of my friend and my mom when I was trying to narrow them down. Ultimately we decided on "Pretty Kitty".

Farewell Dear Friend

Today I am mustering up my inner strength and bidding all the yummy comfort that is referred to as carbs farewell. It has been fun, but almost 11 months after the birth of Keira, I can no longer refer to this as baby weight. It's fat, plain and simple. I can either accept that, or do something about it. Yesterday I ate about half a box of reduced fat cheez-its, but I had a lovely salmon dinner with steamed broccoli! What that doesn't make up for the carb fest? They were reduced fat, doesn't that count? Nope. Can't kid myself here. I have managed to keep off the weight I lost from being sick, and even have lost a couple more pounds on top of that. I need a major body makeover. This mama needs to start loving herself again, and as vain as this sounds, that means I need to love my body and feel good about it.
So if you have been keeping track, and reading my blog you will notice slowly I have been making changes. I said buh-bye to the death that is soda (and with that the silent, horrid additive aspartame) and I have strictly limited dairy due to Keira's tummy, and meat is gone as well (okay meat for me doesn't include fish, I love fish, what's that called a pescatarian?) Yes, now I will add carbs, that comfort deliciousness that I know all too well.
So I say so long for now. Hopefully I'll see you again when I have the ability to not eat half a box of cheez-its and can stick to the 26 cracker serving size recommended by the box itself.

New Do

Brody and I got new hairdos. I chopped many inches of mine and got a choppy layered style, Brody got a "big boy" hair cut, and boy does it make him look all grown up. We now refer to him as Dennis the Menace.

See?

Get Ty ready for school
Get Nate ready for school
Get Keira and Brody up and ready for the day
Drop Nate off at school
Brody's Early Intervention Visit while Nate is at school
Lunch for Brody and Keira
Pick Nate up from school
GO REGISTER NATE FOR KINDERGARTEN
Attempt to do some cleaning in the 45 minutes I have before
Ty comes home from school
Help with homework and practice MCAS
Make dinner
Take Ty to basketball
Come home, give kids baths
Pick Ty up from basketball
Put kids to bed
Clean the house

I'm looking at what 11pm before I can stop? This week is INSANE!

Bliss

School starts tomorrow. Happiness has filled my heart. I don't even care that my house is loud and the kids are going crazy because I know tomorrow, despite my insane weekly schedule, we will at least be back on a schedule at all. I got to take an ah-mazing two and a half hour nap with Keira this afternoon. Let me repeat. I got to take a TWO and A HALF HOUR nap this afternoon. I woke up and made a quick trip to the grocery store for some fresh veggies for homemade pizzas, which are currently cooking and filling my house with mouth watering scents. To top it all off, Nathan has okayed painting my living room wall tonight once the kids are in bed! I have only been asking to do this a few times a week for say, two years! I'm so happy I feel like breaking into hardcore hymns... Glory, Glory Hallelujah!
On a quick side note, my ever entertaining five year old has been singing "All the single ladies, all the single ladies... if you like it then you shoulda put a ring on it..." and ALL I can picture is the episode of GLEE which revolves around this song. Seriously. All I can think about.

Dear Keira (The Power of Friends)

Dear Keira,
Last night we went to Auntie Kerrie's house for a much overdue girls night. Auntie Meire was there and Auntie Victoria, and later Auntie Kerrie's friend Amanda joined us too. My sweet Keira, my prayer and deepest wishes for you include friends as amazing as mine. I know you will have many people come into your life. There will be friends that will help you through difficult times, there will be friends that are so much fun to be around and make you laugh, there will be friends you make because they are at the same point in life and going through the same things as you. My wish baby girl, is that you find friends, or even just a friend that is a forever friend. I want you to have the bond of friendship that is so deep and so thick that it can carry you through whatever life throws at it. I vow to you to help you always nurture and respect those friendships. There is more power and strength in a woman's bond with those special friendships than I could put into words. Those friends will know you in a way others won't. I know the term soul mate is given in the context of love and finding a partner, but I believe your soul also has counterparts in friendship as well. Why else do we bond so closely with some friends and not others? Why couldn't the answer simply be somehow our souls already knew each other? Last night while you were sleeping like a little angel on Auntie Kerrie's couch, wrapped in her red blanket, your aunties (and I use that term because they are our family) and I laughed, and cried, and caught up. In the midst of all this is when I started to think about you, and yearn for this in your life. I want you to have the kind of friendships that are selfless. I want you to have friendships where you can speak your minds, and give advice (advice that is given even when it's tough), and genuinely trust each others insight. I want you to have memories that you can spend an entire night retelling and laughing all over again. I want you to go through life with these friends, experiencing all the highs and lows together. I want them to be your children's aunties one day, and you their children's auntie. Keira, friendships like that are to be cherished. I can not wait to meet your forever friends. They will be surrogate daughters to me, and I will love them for loving you.
Love,
Mama

Durga

I have survived folks! February Vacation week is rapidly coming to a close and gosh golly gee willakers, I SURVIVED. Please see slideshows in my previous post for proof of survival.
Last night Keira participated in her first pageant. It was fun, and I'm glad we did it. Before you get all Toddlers and Tiaras on me, it was a natural pageant. No make up, tanning, false anything was allowed, not even in the older divisions. Give me a break, I have a girl now!!!
In other news, Brody met with his speech therapist this week (I am patting myself on the back for being able to juggle two speech therapists, early intervention, kindergarten registration, a pageant, policy council for Nate's school, pop warner board meetings, basketball practice, and vacation week ALL AT THE SAME TIME, in other words I am channeling my inner Durga.) I felt validated and like we are finally getting somewhere with Brody. She picked up on the tone issue in his voice that sounds a bit off. She described it as a poor quality of voice. She actually said it sounds like there is an obstruction causing the poor quality of voice. She had me discuss what she observed with Brody's pediatrician and he agreed with her. Brody is set to see his Ear, Nose and Throat doctor in March and will be discussing having his tonsils and adenoids removed as well has having tubes put in his ears. Hopefully we will get this taken care of sooner than later and he can continue to develop normally. The speech therapist did pick up on the letters and sounds Brody has the most difficulty with and the correlation with high frequency hearing loss. It seems those sounds are in the high frequency and although he is attempting to say them, but is just having so much difficulty, it makes sense in that he can hear some high frequency (in one ear more than the other), but he can't hear it completely., thus causing the difficulty. All in all I just feel so happy to be getting somewhere with all of this.
I got to fill out the mound of paperwork that goes along with kindergarten registration this week. I can't believe my baby Nate is going into kindergarten!!! It just goes by so fast. Moms with children not in elementary school yet, it goes by SO fast. The thing is, once the enter the school system, you just have t pray you did everything you could to prepare them. This sounds depressing, because they are still your babies, but once the enter elementary school, they enter their new world. It is possibly more emotional for me this time around because I know how incredible a change it is. I won't even get started on the fact that when Nate enters kindergarten this also means Ty will be in his LAST year of elementary school. Yikes.
It is gorgeous out, and I am aching to get out for a walk, so I will bid you farewell. Hope everyone's weekends are enjoyed and fun!

Photos from bowling and February Vacation week


Keira's first Pageant Slideshow

Love Bug

I hope you all had a wonderful, love filled Valentine's Day! Although our normal tradition is to make our own fondue, but since I still am unable to eat much, and I really look forward to once a year cheese and chocolate feast, we opted to hold out for a couple of weeks. Saturday night Nathan made the boys a steak tip dinner with rice and butternut squash. We all cuddled up and watched a movie together. Sunday morning Nathan got the boys donuts and I set their places with their Valentine's Day gifts. The boys and Nathan gave me a gorgeous new jewelery box and two new pairs of earrings. Ty had his last regular season basketball game, which they won! Ty got two baskets and did great. We then headed to Nathan's parents house for his mother's birthday dinner. It was a great day. I even have come close to catching up on all the laundry from when I was sick.
Now I am at the beginning of vacation week and am praying for sanity for the next seven days.

Lion

Listen at the 10-11 second mark, Keira says Lion. I have wondered for a while if this is what she was saying, and finally got it on video! Now I know I'm not crazy!!!

Hello Stomach, I'd Like to Eat Now

Silly me, I thought I could eat a piece, ONE BITE SIZE PIECE of pineapple yesterday. It was my first attempt at food in two days. Well that backfired miserably. Although I no longer feel like I'm on my death bed, my stomach would beg to differ. Or maybe it is telling me it's time to lose the baby weight, and wants to give me a jump start in the process. Seriously folks, 9.7 lbs in three days. Losing water weight can be my only silver lining in this whole fiasco. In all truthfulness though, I really want to eat.
Amidst the audible screaming my stomach has been doing these past few days, we did have one piece of excitement. Keira decided yesterday to walk! She is right on target with Nate who also walked the week he turned 10 months old. Keira was cruising around the coffee table, which was pushed in the middle of the living room, and I was laying on the couch. Keira spotted my phone and low and behold the girl just walked over to me! I thought at first I was delirious and may need to call 9-1-1, so I decided to test my sanity and pushed through the agony to move, and put her back to the coffee table, went back to the couch, held up my phone, and the girl did it again! We've known Keira was capable of walking for a few weeks now, we would only allow her to touch, no longer hold on to a finger of ours while walking, but man Keira is cautious. If there is one personality trait I could use (okay well this may not be the one, but one of the many I could us) it would be cautious. She is concerned with her family's activities (some may call this nosy, but I say concerned because she furrows her brow while searching for or observing them.) Keira also seems to be a worrier by nature. She is always cautious, and worries about falling, or the possibility of getting hurt. I know it seems insane to read all of this into a ten month old, but it's SO true. Keira has never attempted to crawl off a couch or my bed (yes as a mother I know we should avoid these things anyway, but babies usually don't perceive depth. Keira will look at the edge, and back away.) Maybe this is a girl thing. I have only been exposed to loud, daring, active, rough and tumble boys, and I have been conditioned by them for almost nine years. Oh my, I have been a mother for almost an entire DECADE. Well after that revelation and at my stomach's insistence I'll end cut this short. Damn gatorade.

BLAH

I am SO SICK.



Isn't that enough of a reason to write something??? Who can I complain to if not you, dear readers? Didn't you want to know that I can't be less than 3 feet away from the toilet? (I calculated that. Three feet is the exact distance I can magically leap from the point my stomach cramps into a ferocious ball of fury to point of impact.)
Where are the fairy nannies when you need them? I actually contemplated keeping the kids home from school today just so I didn't have to get up. Then I remembered yesterday's useless snow day massacre and came to my wary senses.
Aren't you glad you decided to check in with me today?

What Animal Are We Eating?

I am a pseudo vegetarian. There. Make sense of that. It all started when I was younger and learned the working of a farm (sorry Dad, just know I'm not blaming you directly.) I have gone years, months, weeks, days, even just mere minutes being vegetarian. I held out the longest from some time towards the end of high school until about three days after I found out I was pregnant with Ty, when his Nana and I went out to Fridays and I ordered a bacon cheeseburger. I then proceeded to eat bacon at all 5 meals I ate every day for the remainder of the pregnancy. Suck on that PETA. (You'd think I was joking but the 57 pigs I put in the ground will vouch for me.)
Recently my children have realized that meat was once living, and enjoy grossing each other out, okay grossing me out by asking what animal our food came from and then making that animal's designated "sound" throughout dinner. Well folks, 9 years later, with all the credit due to my lovely boys, I have once again converted. It started out slowly, pushing the meat to the side of my plate or hiding it in my napkin as I told the boys they had to finish their food, but Nathan's meat and potato appetite has made me aware I have avoided making meat in the past week. The boys' groans over "more black beans" and my response lectures about the amazing amount of protein they contain have reached their peak.
I should tell you just because I am a herbivore does not mean I make the rest of the family eat that way. HOWEVER with that said, I have been slowly and secretly changing the eating habits of my family. It started out years ago with eliminating white pasta, white bread and white rice. Trust me, Nathan was not too happy with the no white bread rule. He rebelled often and on grilled cheese or sandwich days went out and bought a loaf of white bread "just for him." About two years ago it was no white flour. Last year I eliminated soda. I am *hoping* that by slowly making these changes over the years it doesn't shock them too much and they just get used to them. Folks, I am fully aware I will have to make two or three trips to the grocery store or farmer's market a week now, but honestly I don't mind. It gives me less to remember at once.
And that is my post for the day.

Winter Vacation 2010

We're home! Despite earlier plans to stay until Monday, we decided to come home tonight. We had so much fun. Even though vacations with children are far from what normal people call a vacation, I think the rewards of seeing and enjoying everything through the eyes of a child is worth all the packing and exhaustion and are we there yets. Here are a few highlights of the trip (I'll spare you the details)

• I could have spent all three days shopping at the outlets and would have been happy.
• Watching movies snuggled under blankets by the fire is one of most peaceful events of my life.
• Snow tubing down mountains=awesome.
• Keira was an angel all weekend.
• The boys did amazing ice skating.
• Brody is now convinced he can "hit puck goal Brody Bruins"
• I can no longer do fast spins without warming up first.
• I will take a picture of the bruise on my leg/.butt to prove the above statement.
  
• I hid in the shower and scared the boys when they were brushing their teeth. Call it mean, scarring my children for life, but I have never laughed so hard.
  
• I caught that last one on video
• The boys are determined to get me back and scare me.
• What is better than hot chocolate to drink with breakfast?
• Keira took her first step!!!
• Okay, it was one step, but she is now taking ONE step consistently unsupported, and that's something!
• The mountains are mesmerizing.
• I love my family
  

Winter Family Vacation

This morning we are escaping to the mountains for a long weekend. I will be technology free for four days and couldn't be happier! Fingers crossed for no broken bones, twisted ankles, concussions, and (wishful thinking) sibling rivalry. I'll be back Monday with lots of pictures and hopefully accounts of me winning all board games. What, that seems selfish? I'm a competitive person.
I hope everyone has a great weekend and enjoys the company of friends and family and guilty pleasure food that you really don't need but it looks to good to pass up on Sunday.
:)

A Great Contest

My dear friend Sarah, owner of Abigail's Bake Shop makes quite possibly the most delicious baked goods in the world. Seriously. Don't believe me? Order some for yourself and try them! Or enter this cool contest hosted by the blog Blissfully Enamored and hopefully you can win some FREE. What in this world is better than free cookies delivered to your door? The best part is you don't even have to share with the kids or snack hungry husbands.

New Videos

Uploaded four new videos for your viewing pleasure, ENJOY!!!

Keira practicing walking

Brody playing basketball

Sneaking up on Nate (he was singing and building models)

Ty and Keira dancing