Saturday, December 29, 2012

Some fun for your weekend

A short list, because it's been a long week.

  • Stephen just sent me this which I think I totally need to learn. And check out the end of this one, I'm thinking of teaching the girls so we can do it in a trio like that guy.
  • The cold to end all colds will not leave this family, so I don't think we'll be doing anything too exciting to ring in the new year. But even if we're staying in we've got to do SOMETHING festive and I think this is just the ticket. Maybe not so sparkling for the family matriarch and patriarch.
  • Any Doomsday Prepper fans out there?? This site looks pretty cool. They have a great emergency binder tutorial that I think I'm going to try...I've been meaning to do one of those ID kits for the kids forever.
  • Story of my life. So true.
  • What to do with your old Christmas cards. They take other types of cards too.


Happy weekend to you all!!

Friday, December 28, 2012

Quick Takes The Third

1. My first and only public service announcement for the year...if you have a baby during cold and flu season, you must...MUST...own a Nosefrida Snotsucker. It is not optional. Yes it is actually called "snotsucker". And yes, I know it is disturbing. But no joke, it's the only way to go when you've got a congested infant.

No children were harmed in the staging of this shot.


2. As mentioned before, we got Ava a bow and arrow set for Christmas and much to our chagrin she figured out how to use it.



Look, Ma!! It's my first animated gif!!


3. While we were coloring that target in the video, I was explaining to Ava that this was called a target...and then exclaimed "so THAT'S why it's Target's logo!!" As in Target the store. As in, I've never connected the two in my life.

I'd just like to retract #3. That's just embarassing.


4. I don't think I realized just how much Dora we had consumed in this household until I found myself trying to remember my grocery list at the store this week and had "milk...coffee...chocolate chips! milk...coffee...chocolate chips!" playing over and over in my head.

Surprisingly though, this memory technique works pretty well.


5. I think I've stumbled across a pretty amazing way to occupy children for hours on end. Spent brownie pans.


That's right. Ava asked to eat the crumbs out of the pan after all the brownies were gone and I kid you not - it kept them busy for at least 45 minutes. That's solid gold in mom time. I feel like there is a business opportunity here - I'll eat the brownies, then send out the pan of crumbs so you don't even have to do the work!! Send your order requests to jamiegewand@gmail.com.

Don't judge me.


6. I'm tired and I'd like to finish these quick takes before 10pm for once. So here's a lazy take pic of the most adorable 8 week old man you've ever laid eyes on:


I feel like I need to audition him for an e-trade commercial or something.


7. And I'll leave you with the most miraculous picture ever taken of our family. Miraculous because the girls just stood there. Nobody tried to run away, nobody threw a temper tantrum, nobody crossed their eyes or flashed their princess panties, we just stood there and took a picture. And it turned out completely fine. Seriously...Christmas miracle.



Go see Jen for more quick takes!!

Thursday, December 27, 2012

ChristmasGram



Heh heh, gotta slip in the Elf humor wherever I can. Anyway, I'm Catholic, so the Christmas party's just gettin' started around here. Therefore, I do not feel ashamed that I'm 2 days late with my Insta-Christmas roundup.

First, I had a serious lapse in judgement and decided to purchase a bow and arrow set for my 3 year old. In my defense, I thought that she couldn't possibly learn to shoot it, at least not with any amount of force or accuracy, but of course she proved me wrong by approximately 4pm Christmas evening. Videos to come...


We managed to keep ornaments on the tree for a whopping 3 days or so. Then we opted for a few toddler-made foam wreaths placed at the top where nobody could reach...of course, the girls found a way around that. Lost count of how many times I came out of the bathroom to this:


I don't always make my family breakfast, but when I do I make something seasonally appropriate and delicious. I am...the most interesting mom in the world.


How to take Christmas card photos with 3 children 3 and under: Put them in semi matching p-jams. Scatter copious amounts of candy corn on the bed. Bam. Christmas card.


My husband is pretty much the coolest ever. He decided one day "Hey, I'm going to learn how to make rosaries." And he did. And he is awesome at it. So now he's expanding his horizons to jewelry and he gave me these earrings on Christmas Eve. Best part? He's on Pinterest, and told me to pin jewelry I like so he can make it for me. Like I said, coolest EVER.


Lamest show of presents ever. Thought we'd be with family and was counting on them to bolster the supply, but we had to cancel our plans last minute. :( 10pm Christmas Eve: "Hey Stephen, can you run down to the recycling room and see if you can find any newspaper to wrap this stuff in??" Eco friendly or cheap? I'll let you decide...


Ok, that's all I've got for now. Still trying to find some time to catch up on my feeds and hear how everyone else's festivities went!! Merry Christmas!!

Friday, December 21, 2012

7 Quick Takes #2

1. Well after waiting for months to do my first quick takes, I procrastinated last Friday and after all the news broke I didn't have the heart to write out the silly nonsense of the week. So much has been written about the tragedy of last Friday, but I think the post that resonated with me the most was this one from Kelle over at Enjoying the Small Things. Also, I LOVE the idea of 26 acts of kindness, and it's making me tear up reading through the twitter feed.


2. Speaking of twitter hash tags, I was cracking up at the trendy #EndOfTheWorldConfession tag today...


3. My sister introduced me to "Kid History" and Stephen and I have been laughing our heads off watching these at night. Basically, they get the kids to tell stories and the adults act them out and the kids voices are dubbed in. Go check out all of "BoredShortsTV" on YouTube, but here's one of their shorts to get you started,you and I'm sorry in advance if this is last year's news or if you've never seen it and I just sucked your evening away because of all of the awesomeness.


4. I absolutely loved Ana's post about how to travel with 3 kids because well...it describes my life perfectly right now...and have to give her mad props for giving me the GREATEST IDEA EVER to remove one of the seats in our minivan to make room for diaper changes and nursing. Seriously. Why didn't I think of this?? Sadly, there is no room to store an extra minivan seat (except maybe as additional living room seating??) in a 2 bedroom apartment with 3 kids so this trick will probably only be pulled out for the long car trips.


5. Crayons. I tell ya. I do my best, but all it takes is that one...ONE...getting knocked under the booster seat where I don't see it and 10 minutes later, bam:

Just in case you are wondering, the rogue crayon is red...the other marks are watercolors. Don't ask me how that one happened.


6. Anyone need a last minute baby Jesus/shepherd? Baby Jesus even comes with an understudy...
He did totally awesome and slept the whole time - this shepherd did NOT have to come on stage to rescue him. Whew.


7. Last but not least, congratulations to my SIL Anne and her husband George on their new bambino born this morning - I'm an AUNT for the first time ever!!! Looking forward to spoiling and corrupting :)


Go see Jen for more quick takes!!

Tuesday, December 11, 2012

The real story of Christmas

This is how I envision Christmas with children:

Image Source: Gaylord hotels

Image source: SheKnows

Image Source: Doug Stuff with Kids




But this is how it really goes down:

No more ornaments left to hang. A sad moment.

I think next year we'll just put the kids to bed, pour ourselves a large glass of wine, and invent a story about magical Christmas tree decorating elves. Anyone with me??

Friday, December 7, 2012

7 Quick Takes - FIRST EDITION!!!

1. I don't think I can really describe how excited I am to be participating in my first. ever. QUICK TAKES!!! Actually, I don't think that's quite accurate - I've been doing my own quick takes in my head every day for months thinking "one of these days I'll start a blog..." Does that make me sound crazy? Perfect. Moving on.

2. This is actually an old blog of mine that I used to write in back in the day when I only had one child who wasn't old enough to walk or talk and therefore had time to actually keep a blog. So please excuse all the old posts that I am too tired to go back and remove and the layout and basically everything about the blog - I'll get to it someday. Now let's address the elephant in the room - why am I starting a blog when I can barely find time to get dressed? Excellent question that I will also get to answering someday.

3. After months of stalking Catholic mom blogs, I've observed there are two categories that most blogs seems to fall into - the "holy, pious, observe-every-feast-day-complete-with-relevant-crafts-and-food" type, and the "holy crap I have a lot of kids and my life is insane and/or out of control" type. Just to be clear on what type of blog this is, I'll leave you for a moment to ponder a photo taken this week in our household:

(Description: my girls eating the burnt remains of hash browns out of a pan on the floor at 7am while watching the Disney channel. One is pant-less.)

4. I'm nearing the end of my second week of postpartum life without my sisters or mom around to help. After several trips out to run errands by myself with a 3 year old, 2 year old, and a 1 month old, I think I've perfected the ideal algorithm for managing the minivan loading/unloading part and thought I'd share in case anyone else has children of the same age and hasn't nailed it yet.
What, you couldn't tell by the fact that I came up with an algorithm to load and unload my children from a minivan that I'm not an artistic person?? More proof that I fall firmly into the math/science brain category: when I was mulling over the order in which to load and unload children, I was actually thinking to myself "Should I queue them or stack them?"

Now back to the algorithm. I always wear baby E on me in the carrier, leaving 1 hand for each girl as we walk to the minivan. I let go of Ava's hand first to open the door since she can generally be trusted to not dart into the path of an oncoming vehicle in the next 3 seconds, then swiftly lift Clare, who is 2, into the van followed by Ava. They climb into their designated car seats and wait for me to lift Emeric out of the carrier and into his seat before I come to help them get strapped in. A 2 and 3 year old who voluntarily climb into their car seat and wait?? That's right, and the secret is a big fat bribe. 1 M&M or candy corn per child who gets strapped in without incident. Clare gets strapped in first before she eats a piece of dirt or an old Cheerio off of the floor, then comes Ava, and finally I finish strapping Emeric in before exiting through the side door and walking around to the driver's side. On the way out we went with the "LIFO" approach, meaning I unbuckle Ava first followed by Clare, and they wait at the side door while I put Emeric in the carrier before lifting them out. (Additional candy bribes sometimes required for this step as well.)

5. This may seem like overkill, especially to those without 3 children 3 and under, but here's a sample of some of the things that can go wrong when the algorithm is off:
  • Let go of the 2 year old's hand instead of the 3 year old while opening/closing the door: 2 year old darts into traffic
  • Let 2 year old sit in back instead of the 3 year old: 2 year old will choose trunk diving over candy bribe
  • Unbuckle the 2 year old before the 3 year old: 2 year old climbs into the front seat and blares horn or attempts to exit the vehicle
  • Entering the vehicle through the side door opposite of the baby's car seat: So many things wrong this this scenario I don't even know where to start. But all of them start with "the 2 year old..."
I think I may see the problem here.

6. The girls have a santa doll that laughs when you "tickle" his belly, laughing harder and harder the longer you tickle until he finally finishes with a giant sigh, exclaiming "Oh, by golly!". Lately we've been hearing him laugh when nobody is touching him or even near him, and once this week the girls and I were sitting and reading/playing quietly when he worked his way up through the full set of laughs at the other side of the living room. We all stared at him silently through the entire thing until he stopped - and then we looked at each other for a moment before starting to laugh nervously...I think it might be time to call a priest. Opinions??

7. Finally, I am pleased to announce that baby Emeric has been cast in his very first stage production as baby Jesus. Send me your recommendations for an agent ASAP, because this kid is going to be a star. Or he's going to scream bloody murder necessitating a kindly shepherd otherwise known as mom to step in and intervene. We'll see.


Go see Jen for the rest!!