When you were >1

I can't believe that Tyler has been in our family for one whole year already.  Time sure flies.  It seems like yesterday that they were putting a little boy on my stomach and I said, "Boys aren't that bad." And now my baby is no longer a baby.

Here are some things from the past year that I wanted to remember:

Dear Tyler,

• You started sitting up all by yourself at 9 months

• You LOVE to talk.  Favourite word seems to be "Dad", although you have been heard saying "Mama"
• Your father has come up with a special nickname for you.  It's kinda cute.  He calls you Ler-Ty.  I don't think it would work if I tried calling you that, so I'll stick to your real name and leave the nicknames to your father.
• You LOVE your sisters.  They usually don't have to work to get a smile from you.  Anyone else is a different story.

• You started crawling at 11 months.  At first it was kind of a stomach scoot, but then one day the cat walked into your line of vision and you started crawling after him.  You also like crawling to his water dish.
• You are so strong.  You can pull open the drawers in the kitchen.
• It doesn't matter what kind of food I put in front of you, you like all of it.  You do this little giggle whenever you see it.  Have I mentioned yet how much like your father you are?
• You seem to prefer to sleep on your side.
• You are very serious. 
• My heart melts every time I walk into the room and you catch sight of me.  You break into this grin that seems to stretch over your face.  It disappears quite quickly, but I love knowing that you are so excited to see me.
• You give the best hugs.  They are few and far between, but when I get one, I make it count.
• You love having baths.  The only part you don't like is getting your hair washed, because the water streams down your face and gets into your eyes.
• You love going to the swimming pool as well.  That makes me happy, since your sisters are such water babies.

• Your favourite game to play is peek-a-boo.  You'll use your hands if you can't find a blanket.
• Sometimes, you'll put a blanket on your head and sit there very quietly.  I'll then say, "Where's Tyler?" and you'll giggle under your blanket.  I love playing that game with you.
• You have six teeth, but you're working on two more.

You have been such a wonderful addition to our family, I can't imagine our lives without you!  We love you baby boy!!!!

Love,
Mom

Saturday snapshot ~ I always knew they were a little bit goofy

Can she bake a cherry pie Billy Boy?

When we moved into our house, our neighbours across the street, Fred and Kathy, brought us a fruit tray and introduced themselves.  It was really sweet of them, but I promptly forgot their names since I figured that we would never talk to them again.  That didn't happen, they're pretty friendly people.  I'm just glad that they use their names in front of me, so eventually I found out what they were called.  For the longest time, we were calling them Fred and Ginger (sometimes I would change it up and call her Wilma).  Anyway, while walking behind their house the other day, I noticed this tree hanging over their fence with pretty red things hanging off the branches.  The next time I saw Fred, I asked him what it was, and he told me cherries.  I said that was really cool, and he told me I could go and pick a cherry from the tree and plant it in my backyard.  Their cherries grew from just one tree and he now has five in his backyard.  I took the information and filed it into my head until Saturday morning, when the doorbell rang.

Mr. Fred was there with a box of cherries he had picked from his tree for me.  I thought it was pretty sweet of him and I was very excited to try this recipe from my friend Alison.  The only problem is, I don't have an ice cream machine.  That will hopefully be remedied at the end of the month when we go to Great Falls.  Until that time, I had a box of cherries I needed to do something with.

I have never had cherry pie.  Clark asked me to make him one, and because I love him, I thought I would try my hand at it.  I have never baked a pie.  Well, that's not quite true.  I make impossible pie, impossible pumpkin pie, and lemon meringue pie but only with pre-made crusts.  This was my first ever pie that I made 100% from scratch. 

On a side note, I think I need to purchase a cherry pitter.  It took me over two hours to pit 20 cups of cherries.  It was sticky business.  I got pretty good at it near the end.

Before it went in the oven.

After it came out.  It looked pretty good!

Here's a problem I had, maybe one of my baking readers can help me out with it.  My pie didn't set and was quite watery.  It still got an enthusiastic two thumbs up from Clark, so I don't think the taste was compromised, I just thought it would maybe taste more like the pies you get when you use the cherry pie filling.  More like a jello with cherries in it. 



Saturday snapshot ~ Ranch dressing

Homemade.  So good.

I failed Him today

I'm going to date myself here, but when I was little, we had records with books.  You read the book while the record played.  One of my favourite stories that we had on record was a story about a cobbler who had received a letter from Jesus telling him that He was coming for a visit.  So, the cobbler waited, and waited.  I think there were three people that came into his shop while he was waiting that needed some sort of help, and each time he helped them.  One of them was a little old lady who was hungry, and so he fed her the food that he was saving for Jesus. 

At the end of the day, he was upset because Jesus never came for a visit, but then he was told that Jesus had come that day, just not the way the cobbler had expected.  He had shown up in the three people that came to him for help. 

The premise of the whole story is based on Matthew 25:40 ~ “The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’

We ran out of milk this morning, so I took the kids and we headed to Wal-Mart.  I was in a bit of a rush because I wanted to get home before Clark left for work.  When I got to the van to start loading it up with kids, this person appeared out of nowhere.  I`m not quite sure if it was a man or a woman, but they asked how I was doing that day, to which I replied "Fine, how are you?"  They said, "Not too good, I'm homeless, tired, hungry and cold.  Do you think you could spare two dollars?"  I looked in  my wallet, didn't have any change and told them no.  So they left.

Abigail, who I thought wasn't paying attention to my conversation, piped up and asked "Mommy, is that man hungry?"  I said yes and continued putting the kids and the milk into the van.  But, as we were driving away, it hit me that I could have taken him (or her) back into Wal-Mart and bought them a meal.  And my Abigail noticed that they were hungry, and I didn't do anything about it.  How am I expecting my children to respond with compassion to people if I can't do it myself?  And because of this, I failed my God today.

Last night

Last night was a bad night. 

Abigail couldn't find a soother, so she didn't sleep well.  It's her own fault really.  In the morning, I usually take the soother from her and put it on top of the fridge.  But, if Clark gets up with her and not me, he usually lets her keep the soother.  She put it down somewhere yesterday and couldn't find it before bedtime.  Oh well, she has to get rid of it sometime.  It made for a rough night though. 

Abigail's diaper leaked last night.  She wasn't too happy about that.  Truth be told, I wasn't too happy about it either.  I guess I'll have to make the extra padded soakers for nighttime.  I had to go into Tyler's room to get her a new diaper, which woke him up.  That did not make me any happier.

And to top it off, I found a blog that kinda upsets me too.  The premise is she takes pins from pinterest and tries them out at home.  Some of them are kinda funny, but her language is atrocious.  Also, the part that irks me, is she doesn't seem to want to try it 100%.  Sometimes it seems like it's an "oh, I'm going to try this, but I don't have this ingredient or this ingredient...." so of course it isn't going to work out. 

I really don't know why it would upset me so much, but I guess it's just because if I was going to do a blog like that, I would try to do it more like Mythbusters and try multiple times and multiple ways before declaring a pin to be a fail.  That's just me, but I had a hard time sleeping last night because of it. 

Anyway, now that I've vented, back to our regularly scheduled program.  I took really cute pictures of the kids tonight.  Watch for them coming up on a Saturday Snapshot very shortly!

My latest project

I appear to be a bit of a bandwagon jumper.  This might not necessarily be a bad thing, I guess it just depends on my follow through.  My friend Ashley made reusable diapers for her son Caedmon.  I was a little sad about this, because she had mentioned for baby #2 they wanted to do cloth diapers, and I had big plans to make her some.  I even went on pinterest and pinned a couple of diaper insert patterns.  However, she beat me to it. 

My friend Sarah, whose son Wesley is 10 days older than Tyler, mentioned that she might be interested in trying cloth diapers out, and it made me happy again, because here was someone I could try my sewing out on.  I went out and bought the supplies and thought that just maybe I would try it too, since I seemed to have a lot of material.

Then today, Abigail ran out of nighttime diapers, and I thought...why not make her some cloth diapers to wear at night?  That would definitely make her HAVE to go on the potty, since there would be no more diapers in the house.  And so, the bandwagon has been jumped, the material purchased, and I am now cloth diapering two of my children.

Ashley was very kind and lent me her pattern book and snap attaching tool, which saved me some money.  Still, I have not been this frustrated when sewing something in a long time.  The pattern is HORRIBLE to follow.  I ended up borrowing one of Ashley's completed diaper covers and kinda making up my own pattern.  I think it turned out pretty cute.

The inserts were pretty fun to make, just really time consuming.  You have to cut four pieces of flannel and two pieces of batting and put them all together.  Because I'm a bit of a perfectionist who wants this to be pretty, I had two different colors of flannel I had to cut out, which took a bit more time.  Here's the finished product.  Oh, and YAY! for sergers.

And then, because Abigail is a girl, she got a special insert just for her.

The best part is, they fit really well.

The best BEST part is that after my initial investment, I shouldn't have to buy diapers again.  So in approximately two months, I will have saved what I paid out.  These diaper covers I made for the kids are the same size, 28-40 pounds, and they seem to fit both of them very well.