Oh, joy!

This is the storyboard of my life today with two sick kiddos. Boohoo. Never any fun in that. Please send happy, healing, and non-contagious thoughts our way. We sure need them!

my first diaper cake

with as many baby showers i've been to and/or hosted, it's hard to believe this is my first time making a diaper cake. probably because i'm much more interested in the kind of cake i can eat. who isn't? anyway, my sister is preggers and i'm co-hosting her shower (blog post and pics to come on that later), so i decided to man up, er, woman up and make a cute, super-absorbent, baby bottom-friendly cake.

i browsed around on pinterest and got some ideas. i also watched a few youtube videos. i saw so many different ways to do it, and my way is just a mish mash of those. 

stuff i used:

size one diapers ~ about 70-75 of them

lots of rubberbands

plastic tray from the dollar store

15oz bottle of baby powder and baby bottle for structural support (i saw a few methods that used a champagne bottle, which is brilliant)

yarn

ribbon, toys, rattle, and other embellishments

roll up your dipe-dipes and secure with a rubber band.

place your baby powder bottle in the middle and surround with dipe-dipes. tie them in place with yarn. then add and move dipes around within the yarn until you get a nice, round shape for your base.

 put the baby bottle on top of the baby powder and surround with dipes, just like the first layer. 

  

then surround the top of the baby bottle until you have your three-layer diaper cake. decorate and embellish with cutesy toys, rattles, pacifiers, etc. i even threw in a couple rolled flowers made from washcloths. awesomeness.

in less than 30 minutes - TA-DA! - you have yourself a super cute cake that the mom-to-be will love. i don't know any mom-to-be that doesn't appreciate diapers, especially in such a cutesy form. 

now go and tell your sisters and friends to have some babies so that you have someone to make a diaper cake for!

8 is great!

last friday, this chubby-chub-chub little baby turned EIGHT years old. 

 

every year, isaiah's birthday stirs up bittersweet feelings. he's my first born. the one who changed my life. the one who made me a mother. and there will just always be something to say about that. 

he and his brother woke up on his birthday morning to balloons in their bedroom. i think mikey was more excited about this than isaiah. 

i was thrilled to be able to spend a little time in isaiah's classroom for a celebration with his classmates. 

we brought some birthday treats and he was excited to give "balloons" to his friends.

(they were just balloon cutouts taped to squiggly straws.) 

we even had a chance to spend some time with our favorite abris trio.

we took him out for dinner, then picked up a movie and cake.

he's got his "excited" face down, don't you think?

the three stooges that i have the pleasure of living with.

lucky me.

this kid is such a goofball. he never lets me get a good picture.

the next day was spent with his grandma, aunt and uncle. we enjoyed some arcade games and mini golf. the birthday boy and his brothers thoroughly enjoyed putting around on the green. 

until they were over it. which is when they started to just pick the balls up, drop them in the holes, then scream "YAYYYY!"

that works, too, i guess. 

and they ended the day with some brotherly quality time. 

 it was a fun few days for all. 

'til next year, birthday boy!

baby for sale or trade

 

just turned one year old. goes by the name of wyatt but also responds to "chubby". often has snot dripping from his nose and boogers crusted on his nostrils. otherwise, cute as a button but, oh, so incredibly (and destructively) curious. 

here he is dancing in his big brother's potty. thank goodness it was clean.

what do you mean those frames aren't up there for me to grab?

a couple of weeks ago, he banged a thomas train on his daddy's tablet and cracked the screen. bad. that may have been the first time i've ever seen the mister cry. 

and for today's installment of "what wyatt broke"...(drumroll......) 

i present to you mommy's netbook.

i came out of the kitchen and found him ON TOP of the dining table, picking the keys off. i swear, the breathing techniques i learned in my childbirth preparation classes come in way more useful during toddler-age than during childbirth. they should call them, "how-to-calm-the-f*ck-down-when-your-kids-break-expensive-things breathing techniques".

and because wyatt didn't think my heart rate was high enough to cause an aneurysm, he let me fish this piece of my keyboard out of his mouth.

he is my fourth child, so you'd think i'd be a pro by now, but i'm not even close. this little booger keeps me on my toes constantly and even that is not enough. my toes are, apparently, still too slow.


we have slowly been redecorating around the house to allow for his mischievous behavior without earning frequent flyer miles at the emergency room. there's a lovely plastic gate blocking the kitchen as off limits now. not an eye sore. not at all. and we no longer have chairs around the dining table so that he cannot climb up onto the table. if you want to come over for a formal dinner, you'll have to stand at the table. that's just that. 

i think we are experiencing early onset of the "terrible twos" with this little guy. 

if he starts earlier, does that mean we get past that stage earlier, too? 

i freaking hope so! 

march photo challenge day 4 ~ walls

i want our walls to come alive. our family lives a whole lot of life and i always want to put things up that reflect the life that we live inside and outside of these walls. 

i recently made this new take on a "bulletin board". the boys and i love to put up their art, pictures and other random awesome things that make us happy.  

to make the frame, the mister bought a long piece of wood from home depot with a 1" square cross-section. he cut it into four pieces then nailed them into a frame. i then spray painted it with some leftover paint i had laying around. added some rows of twine and clothespins and voila! a super cute new bulletin board!

march photo challenge day 2 ~ shoes

the little people (and big people) in this house have far too many shoes and wyatt loves to play with them. they're way more fun than any other old toy.