Tot School: Week 7

-Ella is currently 21 months old-

Check out what we did in Tot School last week!

Do you ever have one of those weeks where you look back and it went by so quickly you don't even feel like the week existed? I had one of those weeks last week. Needless to say, Tot School activities were a bit slacking in our house last week, but that's ok - it is part of life! And, unfortunately, I didn't get many pictures this week either. :(

We did a lot of work on continuing to recognize the letter "A" this week. Ella consistently identifies the letter "A" now and she is so proud when she points it out. One day she brought me a book and pointed out letter "A"s on the pages for probably 15 minutes. It was so cute! I try to take every opportunity to show Ella the letter "A" as we are going about our daily activities. I think it is good for her to learn to recognize the letter "A" in many different situations. 

Ella loves to play with her pegs and pegboard. I tried to work on sorting colors with the pegs, as well as identifying colors, but this week she was mostly concerned with building the longest stick of pegs possible and saying "tall! tall!"

This weekend we had the opportunity to take Ella to her first University of Texas football game - this was quite the learning experience for her! There were so many things to watch and learn about at the game. She had fun clapping along with the crowd, identifying the longhorns that were everywhere, watching the football game, as well as learning about the band.

The Paper Mama Photo Challenge: Eyes

I had a very difficult time choosing a photo for this week's challenge because I love Ella's eyes, especially when the sunlight hits them.

Our Thanksgiving Meal

I've certainly always enjoyed eating our Thanksgiving meal, but as I've gotten older I've found that I also greatly enjoying preparing the meal as well. This year we have the privilege of hosting Thanksgiving at our home, so I'm busy preparing the menu, making sure to include everyone's favorites. Here's our typical Thanksgiving menu:

• Turkey
• Ham
• Cornbread dressing - my favorite dish of the meal!
• Mashed potatoes. I'm thinking I might try Pioneer Woman's recipe and make them a day ahead of time.
• Sweet potatoes. I use this Tyler Florence recipe, minus the bananas and I substitute marshmallows for the crumb topping.
• Crescent rolls
• Fruit salad
• Green Beans
• Corn
• Gravy
• Cranberry sauce
• Dessert
• Our desserts vary from year to year. I think I might try this pumpkin cheesecake recipe this year.

What will your Thanksgiving meal include?

On a side note, please continue to bare with me as I'm changing the look of my blog a bit. It still isn't looking quite like I want it to look yet!

Tot School: Week 6

-Ella is currently 21 months old-

Check out what we did in Tot School last week!

One of Ella's favorite things to do over the past several months is to put things into containers, take (dump!) them out, and put them back in again. After I saw this particular idea (straws into a container) I knew Ella would love doing this activity and it would be a great time for her to work on her fine motor skills. I was right - she loved it! She played with this all week long!

Ella is still a little bit too young for me to venture into making cookies from scratch with her (I think she'd get bored with the activity before we finished), but my mom had the idea a while back to make cookies using the pre-made cookie dough. The week after Halloween I spotted these pumpkin cookies on clearance, and thought they'd be perfect for us to make.

Ella loved that they had pumpkins on them since we've been doing a lot of stuff with pumpkins lately.

I turned the light on in the oven, and showed her how to watch for the cookies bake.  Of course, she had to have her monkey with her! :)

While the cookies finished baking, Ella wanted to color. Once they had cooled off, she tasted the cookies, and loved them! (See the huge bite she is taking, lol!)

We continued to do a little work on recognizing the letter A. She loves to say "A for Apple" but hadn't really been recognizing the letter A when I asked her about it, until last night. Last night she identified the letter A several times! We'll continue to reinforce the letter A this week.

We also did some coloring activities with turkeys (since Thanksgiving is coming up very soon, yay!). I hope to do something along the lines of this Thanksgiving turkey activity this week.

The Paper Mama Photo Challenge: Cozy

I debated whether or not I really wanted to get involved in yet another photo challenge considering that I already pretty regularly participate in two photo challenges (I Heart Faces and Shutter Love Tuesdays). However, when I started this blog, one of the areas that I mentioned I wanted to improve was my photography, and these challenges give me that opportunity by stretching me creatively and pushing me to try new things with my photography. If you browse through my entries in these different photo challenges, I think you'll easily be able to see improvement. I want to continue to improve with my photography, and one way to do that is to continue to enter these types of challenges.

Ha, now, with all that said, the photo I'm submitting for this new challenge at The Paper Mama isn't anything great photographically-speaking, but I do think it fits the theme very well: cozy. Here, Troy is crashed out wrapped up in his swaddle blanket (the best swaddle blanket I've ever used, by the way!). Troy is sleeping just the way he likes . . . . with his arms out of his swaddle. :)

Wordless Wednesday: Twins?

Ella:

Troy:

I've Got a New Good Habit

And I didn't even realize I had this new habit until I broke it.

I've mentioned several times that one thing I want to improve on in my life is how I take care of my house. I'm not striving for perfection in my house. I know that, at least for me, with my schedule, my personality, and my life with a toddler, newborn, and two dogs (not to mention me and my husband) a perfectly clean house just isn't going to happen. But, I do want a cleaner, more organized house than I currently have.

To help me in this journey, I've employed a lot of techniques I've found through the Flylady's website. The first step in her method is to shine your sink. I shined my sink, and it was a great step in the right direction for me. Since that time, I've been constantly encouraged by her daily emails to keep at it, and this weekend I finally realized something.

I consistently keep my dishes washed and my sink clear and clean now.

This is such a huge thing for me. I'm the queen of procrastinating as well as the queen of waiting till everything piles up so I can clean everything at once. And, at least in one area of my life, I broke my bad habit in both areas. I don't procrastinate on getting my dishes done anymore. I don't wait until I don't have any clean dishes in the house to wash my dishes. I do them when they need to be done. I now have countertops clear of dirty dishes (I'm still working on getting rid of other piles of junk on the countertops, but at least there aren't dirty dishes piled up on them!). My sink is clear and clean, and if, for instance, we have to give Troy an emergency bath because his diaper overflowed, I don't have to worry about washing the dishes before I can give him a bath, and that is a great feeling!

This weekend was the first time I realized how much of a habit keeping the dishes washed and the sink clean had become for  me . . . because my dishes weren't washed and the sink wasn't clean. In fact, when I caught up on my dishes this weekend, it took my three loads to get everything washed. That used to be a regular occurrence in our house, but until this weekend, I couldn't tell you the last time I had to wash more than one load of dishes at once. It feels so good to realize my good habit!

Now onto my next good habit . . . laundry. As the Flylady says, "A load a day keeps the CHOAS (can't have anyone over syndrome) away!"