Day 290 | Birthday Business: Take two

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As if Valentine's Day and my birthday weren't enough, we shoved celebrating Chris's birthday into this long weekend as well. Woohoo!

He managed to squeeze in most of his favorite things today: a trip to the casino, a McDonalds breakfast, snuggle time with the boys, ten hours of gifts (thanks to Chase and Robbe for helping me with this one), a surprise booze delivery (thanks Jason and Mike!), meat and potatoes for dinner, and dirt dessert to top it off. 

Whew. Now if only the weather cooperates and can give him a snow day tomorrow. Asking too much? No way...he definitely deserves it.  

Day 288 | Happy Valentine's Day

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Happy heart day! I've been fully enjoying the love from my favorite three valentines today. 

*Special note: in case you're curious what the perfect glaze frosting is to go with my cookies from yesterday's post, here it is:

 4 cups powdered sugar
6 Tbsp milk
6 Tbsp corn syrup
1 tsp almond extract (the most important ingredient!)
food coloring

 Just mix everything together and then you can dip the cookies in and let the excess frosting drip off. I've been working for years to perfect this recipe for Chris's dream cookie. This is as close as we're going to get. Try it. I promise you'll love them. I promise. 

Day 287 | Cookie Cuties

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*Photo credit to Susan. Such a precious moment.
Susan and Caroline came up to make cutout cookies with us today. Chase's attention span lasted about four-cookies worth but Caroline stuck with it for a long time. Don't worry, though, Chase's stamina for eating cookies was much more impressive.

It was so much more fun making my annual Valentines cookies for Chris with friends. This is going to be my new tradition, for sure. 

And the best recipe I've found? Right here. But good luck finding a cuter baker than the ones I got to work with. 

Recipe update:
Don't forget the frosting! Here's the glaze frosting I've landed on after years of searching for the perfect compliment to the perfect cookies:

4 cups powdered sugar
6 Tbsp milk
6 Tbsp corn syrup
1 tsp almond extract (the most important ingredient!)
food coloring

Day 286 | Valentines

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Chase has his first school Valentine's Day party at school today. So sweet!

The top photo is the Valentine I made for his classmate and the bottom left and right photos are of the goods he brought home from school (including a fun Valentine mask). He was so so excited!

As if that weren't enough excitement for this morning, I toured what I hope will be Chase's future school. It's a five minute walk away, great facilities, is super-diverse, and has passionate staff. Sounds perfect, right? Now hopefully we can secure one of the highly sought after spots. Think happy thoughts come March.

Day 285 | A Little Prickly

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Today was the next installment of the trying to clear up Chase's skin saga. Off to an allergist for a skin prick test. We found out a new possible cause of the rash: staph (not sure why the allergist had to tell us that). And we received some new treatment suggestions. We're headed back for another appointment in two weeks so we'll see what happens. Fingers crossed for a different outcome this time.

Day 282 | Turkey Thicket

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It's a beautiful day and I can't wait to get outside to work on a special Valentine surprise for the boys...but first, a photo from our morning. 

We ventured over to Brookland to visit the Turkey Thicket playground. It's a family-favorite. There's no doubt about it. Did I mention there's a train to climb in? Yeah. That's right. 

Day 280 | Sharing the Love

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Chase has been all about sharing the love the last few weeks. He's constantly pausing mid-conversation or mid-playing (and I mean about 10 times an hour) to look right into my soul and say, "I love you, Mommy." He does the same to Daddy and Robbe. It's probably one of the sweetest, most heart-warming sentiments ever.

The scene above occurred for the entire last five minutes of our grocery trip this afternoon. See? Sharing the love. 

Day 277 | Books for the Babies

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With two birthdays right around the corner (and two more if you include mine and Chris's), I've been pretty deep into bday planning mode around here.

One of the items high on my to do list for these birthdays is updating the babies' books. Seems simple enough, right? I've done a pretty decent job keeping up with the task along the way (I'm not even starting from scratch!) but the process of reviewing scribbled notes, writing everything out, and finding the perfect corresponding photos is crazy time consuming. 

Some tips I've learned along the way:

  • Jot down notes along the way. It's impossible to think you'll remember when things happen by memory. There are just too many milestones! Have a sheet of paper in a convenient spot (ours lives behind our calendar in our kitchen) that you can quickly write down the date when something fun happens. 
  • Keep photos organized. I know it's hard but it's worth it. It makes picking and choosing the right ones much less of an overwhelming task. 
  • Go with your instincts. Don't hem and haw about the ideal thing to write down for the questions. Your voice will shine through if you don't over-think them.
  • Know your style. I've realized after working through Chase's book that I prefer a fill-in-the blank type book, which is what I got for Robbe. Chase's is more free-flowing and open-ended. I've realized I'm much better at just filling in the "answer" and can do that much quicker. 
  • Start a box, too. There are a lot of random baby memories that can't live in a book. Claim a box for the sweet baby mementos (think: the hat he got in the hospital) so you know everything is in the same place.
In case you're interested, this is Chase's book (on the left) and this is Robbe's book (on the right...and this one even comes with a keepsake box).

Fingers crossed I can get these both updated in the next month!

Day 276 | We're Getting Closer

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Not to be outdone, Robbe added to our week of big (huge!) accomplishments last week.

Example #2: Robbe is no longer eating in the middle of the night. That's right: we're down to just three feedings a day (8am, 1:30pm, 7:30pm). Woohoo!

I'd like to say he dropped the feeding/waking on his own, but I decided it was time to nudge it along a bit. He's handled it remarkably well. He has still woken up most nights (though not last night!), but he goes back to sleep on his own and isn't starving when he wakes up. Progress indeed.

Day 275 | He's Kind of a Rockstar

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Remember when I mentioned last week was a big week?

Example #1: We're well on our way to a fully potty-trained toddler! Can you believe it? We can't either. It started on Tuesday night when Chase decided he wanted to wear his Thomas undies (that had been sitting in his drawer for a couple of months). Full disclosure: credit goes to Chris for broaching the subject again.

We spent two days changing pants a lot. I started to get a bit worried, I'm not going to lie. Did we start to early? Is it going to be like this every day now? Ahhh! Then, Friday he had no accidents. None! We did put a diaper on him for an outing and lunch and he came back dry. On Saturday we went all in. No diaper except during sleeping. He did it! Stayed dry all day again. And the same thing happened today. Three days seems pretty good, right? We're pretty stoked. I know we can slide backward but I think we've made good progress so far. Chase even earned his "potty train" (Get it? It's a train he gets for using the potty) in record time by getting a sticker every time he used the potty. Quite the motivator, I have to say.

We still have some work to do...I'll spare you the details, but hopefully everything continues as smoothly as the last couple of days have gone. Yippee!

Day 274 | Back At It

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I'm back to my regularly scheduled blogging. I hope you enjoyed a glimpse into the random things that bring a smile to my face these days. It's been a big (huge!) week around here while I've been distracting you with My Favorite Things blog posts. I'm going to keep you hanging one more day before divulging details, though, because we went on an outing too fun not to share this morning: to the National Building Museum.

I've talked about it before, but this is really one of my favorite indoor activities to take the kiddos to in the District. Judging by the crowd of people and two sold-out Building Zone sessions, a few other people think the same thing. We had lots of fun looking the Hot to Cold exhibit, playing in the atrium, and visiting the gift shop (Chase is really into picking things out for his birthday lately). The highlight for both boys was the Building Zone (no surprise). Then we packed up the car, braved DC traffic, and made it home in time for naps. Just perfect.

Day 273 | My Favorite Things: #5

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Home sweet home.

I'm in love with our house. It's the perfect size for our little family (not too big but room for everyone to spread out). I'm a big fan of the layout (it's very open). The kitchen couldn't be more ideal (yay for cupboard space). And any of the issues we've had since moving in have been quickly remedied by the construction crew that did the renovation (thank goodness for tough negotiations during closing). I feel very lucky and blessed to be living in this house, in this city, with these boys. 

Day 272 | My Favorite Things: #4

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I'm so happy that knitting is back in my life. I tend to do a few projects (love it!) then somehow stray away due to other crafts. 

I'm definitely back in a big way this round. I finished my first Christmas stockinge last week and then quickly transitioned to a project just for me (woop woop!): a stocking hat. A beyond-adorable, perfect-for-me hat that I can't wait to finish and wear it out. It's pushing my knitting capabilities: I've never done two colors before and it called for a different casting on technique. I'm happy to report I'm nailing it so far!

Here's the pattern so you can see what the (hopefully) finished product will look like.