A crazy week.

This past week has been completely, 100% out of the ordinary.  It has been good, but I always come back from adventures ready to get back into my blessed routine again :)

It all started with a pastor's retreat that started last Sunday evening at a camp near here.  Nathan and I both went and it was our first time leaving Levi overnight.  My mom came out and my grandma with her to stay with Levi for the two nights we were gone.  If this retreat had been even as little as 6 months ago, I don't know how it would have gone to have left Levi overnight.  But he has grown up so much over the summer and much of his shyness is gone, at least with people he knows and remembers from one visit to the next.  He did wonderfully (I had no doubts that he would) and it was such a wonderful break to not wake up to crying through the night and first thing in the morning.  It was equally as nice to only have myself to look after throughout the day.  It's amazing how even just going to the bathroom alone, feeding myself with no interruption, or going to bed without fighting to put someone else to bed first felt like a bit of a luxury while we were away.  It felt lik ea rejuvenating break from motherhood and also felt surprisingly natural.  I didn't even end up having any contact with my mom for a full day while we were gone and had no temptation to call home.  How's that for letting go of control and "retreating"??  It was amazingly good to be alone with just Nathan for that amount of time too.  I'm pretty sure the last time we've had that amount of time alone together was about 2 years ago before Levi joined us.  But as wonderful as this retreat was, I was very ready to see my boy again when we got home!

When we got home from the retreat last Tuesday afternoon, I had about half an hour to unpack and repack before Levi and I got in the car with my mom and grandma to visit for a few days.  It felt a bit like whiplash to change pace so quickly but I'm very glad for the visit I was able to have with my parents at their house.

We had a few adventures while we were visiting:

Levi raked leaves with Grandma

We made playdough and did lots of playing with it

Levi got to see goats and chickens and ducks and a goose and a kitty and two puppies at a farm we visited.  He even got to hold a baby goat that was only a week old!  Too bad none of the pictures of that worked out :(

Lots of quality time with Grandma

Evidence of leaf raking...might have to frame this one!

Birthday cake baking

Birthday cake decorating...it didn't turn out quite how I was picturing but Levi didn't seem to mind!

Hanging out with Auntie Alicia, having fun with Mommy's iPhone camera

Hanging out with Uncle Andrew and Auntie Pearl (the newlyweds)...photo courtesy of Levi - as you can tell by the tiny foot in the foreground

Playing K'Nex with Grandpa

Having a pastoral coffee break with someone who stopped by the house to see my dad one day

Trying out his birthday present from Grandpa and Grandma, a hand-crafted rocking horse made by my very talented pops

More quality time with Alicia this morning before we all hit the road

It is so much fun to hang out with my family. We are blessed to be a family who enjoys being together and who laughs together. It was so good to be all together for a couple days and to celebrate thanksgiving and Levi's birthday together.  It is definitely something I don't take for granted! 

So that has been my past week.  Crazy.  No two days have been the same.  But it has been great.  And in celebration of Levi's second birthday, which is today (October 8), Nathan and I bought him a play kitchen.  As we susptected, he LOVES it.  It's a bit of an unconventional toy to buy for a boy, but as he was begging to "cook" until well past his bedtime tonight, I knew that it was the right decision!  Here he is filling up his cup with water from the fridge door water dispenser.  Man, play kitchens have changed since the last time I played with one as a kid!  Fridge water dispenser?!  Built in microwave?

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

Colouring in the Tub

I like to do fun, unexpected things with Levi.  Sometimes I find ideas on Pinterest, and sometimes I just think of them randomly when I'm laying in bed at night or working on Uniquely Me Design orders during naptime.  I think I get more excited about these things than Levi does at this point, but he seems to have fun with them just the same! 

Today we did tub colouring!  I was going to wait until Levi had a bit of a meltdown (not that he has those...) so that I could pull this out of my bag of tricks and distract him from being grumpy...but I couldn't wait.  He didn't even get dressed before I said, "Levi, would you like to colour in the tub this morning?!"  We took his Crayola washable crayons (brilliant invention, especially when he was learning to keep his crayons on the paper! - http://www.crayola.com/browse-products/16-ct-crayola-washable-crayons.aspx), dried out the tub after our morning showers, and went to work!  Levi had a blast.  The first few marks were cautious.  Levi knows very well that he's not supposed to colour anywhere except paper so he would hold a crayon over a part of the tub and look at me with question in his eyes.  I just smiled and said "yup!" and he drew.  Then he moved to another piece of tub and looked up at me again, making sure it was ok.  Before too long, he was just scribbling happily away.  I haven't tested how well it comes off the tub yet...I'm assuming since it comes off everything else with water, that it will just wipe right off...but it might leave some colourful marks for a couple weeks.  I'll let you know. 

Levi's colour of choice this morning was orange, as you can see.  He really seems to like it ever since I told him that orange has yellow in it (yellow is his #1 favourite colour right now...but orange will do in a pinch.  Unless there is green...GREEN GO!)

I'm so thankful that I have a little almost-2 year old to do these things with.  It just wasn't quite the same before we had kids when I had to do them by myself...

*Not even 5 minutes later, the tub is perfectly clean.  I used a Mr. Clean Magic Eraser since I was cleaning the entire tub while I was at it and it wiped off easily, with zero scrubbing and zero colour left behind! I'm sure they would have come off just as easily with a damp cloth.  

And other things...

Well, after the infamous pudding painting experience, and a more recent traumatizing first bubble bath for Levi (what is that stuff?!  Get it OFF of me!!!), I've finally found something that Levi loves and is enthralled with!  It's called "food-colouring-fun-in-the-bath."  Here's how it works: you run a bath.  You strip down the target.  You put said target into bath.  THEN, you direct the target's attention to a small bottle of food colouring being held just above their head, pointing down toward the bath water.  Squeeze slightly and *presto*!  One drop of food colouring goes into the bath water.  Target may not notice right away what has happened so you may need to point out the beautiful colour that is infusing their bath time with fun right before their eyes.  Target may attempt to "catch" the colour, which makes this activity even more fun as the colour will only spread instead of being caught!  Once target has tired of this first drop, try a second drop!  And a third!  The possibilities are endless (or at least endless until you've finished your bottle of food colouring and the bath water is no longer translucent because it is saturated with FUN).  Ta-da!  I will note, however, that green, yellow, and red food colourings may not be ideal choices.  To each their own, I guess, but don't say I didn't warn you...

What else have we been up to?  Hmm...well, Christmas is coming!  We will be celebrating Christmas as our family of 3 on Christmas Eve this year.  Then, after the church's Christmas Eve service, we will make the late-night trek to my parents' place to spend a couple days there with my family.  It is so nice that we will ALL be able to be together twice this year!  What a treat :)  Now that my sister is living back in Canada (as of yesterday), hopefully it can happen a bit more often.  Between Christmas and New Years, Nathan will be speaking at a summer camp staff retreat at a camp nearby.  Levi and I will be able to go with him and hopefully it will be a bit of a retreat for us as well as encouraging for Nathan as he really enjoys speaking at these types of events.  On New Year's Day, we will head out to Nathan's parents' place where we will spend two nights and celebrate the holidays with his family.  It is nice that everyone on this side of the family is within 90 minutes of driving so getting together is something that can happen fairly easily a few times a year!  So nice.

I have been busy crocheting (I've averaged about .75-1 toque EVERY SINGLE DAY since mid-October).  I've finished all my current outstanding Christmas sales, though, and now am only working on my own personal projects.  It's a nice change of pace.

Nathan has a week of holidays this week, but so far it has been spent doing alot of prep for his speaking engagement next week.  Hopefully he can finish that up sooner than later so that we can spend some quality family time together before he heads back to work in the new year.

Well, that's about all I can think of.  Oh wait, you're probably DYING to know what Levi has been up to lately!  Well, he's 14 months old and is walking, talking, dancing, pointing, asking, running, climbing, squirming, cuddling, reading, playing, rocking, throwing, and in general just MOVING.  He's a real joy (for at least a portion of every day) and we love him to bits. 

And that's our life in a nutshell!  I'm really hoping to get back into this blogging thing a bit more in the new year.  I've really missed it.  But now it's time to say goodbye and enjoy the last little bit of Levi's going-on-two-hours naptime.  Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

p.s-nope, no real pictures.  Sorry.  I'll try to get some up again in the new year :)

Pudding Painting

So...I thought it would be fun to shake up our daily routine around here and do some bathtub pudding painting one afternoon.  I made vanilla pudding and coloured it blue and purple (was supposed to be hot pink...oh well).  Then, after Levi's nap and lunch and outdoor adventure (aka. getting the mail and buying groceries), we stripped down - or at least the under 2 year old population in the house stripped down - got to work!  I put Levi in the bathtub, but there were still little puddles of water leftover from morning showers so the whole project started out with a slip in the tub and Levi almost landing on his back (I caught him) in cold, leftover shower-water.  There may or may not have been tears.  Now, I should have just gotten him out right then and saved the colourful pudding for afternoon snack.  But no.  I thought that might be robbing him of the greatest adventure of his lifetime!  So we did some finger painting.  Or at least I did some finger painting.  I'll let the pictures take it from here:

 Levi carefully (index finger and thumb on edge of container so as not to get dirty) put both containers on the edge of the tub.  The mess you see in the picture is compliments of mom, trying to show him how much fun it is to get messy...and did I mention that it tastes good too?!  He wasn't a fan.  He then proceeded to push the blue pudding off the edge and *SPLAT!* onto the floor. 

 "Mom!  Please get me out of here!  It's cold and icky and I just want OUT!"

 "Please, Mom?  Please can I come out now?"

 "Are you done taking pictures yet?  Can I come out?"

"Oh, ok.  You're going to run a nice warm bath for me.  This is good.  I can handle this.  Hey, I've never been in here WHILE the water is running...I'm going to try to catch it!  Annnnnd.....NOW.  Maybeeee....NOW.  Boy, this stuff is hard to catch..."

Ok, you'll have to forgive the cheesy Levi-commentary.  Parents just tend to have a hard time not putting words into their children's mouths.  (Alas, I'll have to work on it so that I do not continue to do this once he can speak for himself.)  It was an adventure and definitely broke up our routine, but I wouldn't say it's something I'll try again anytime soon.  I did discover that our boy prefers not to be dirty.  Face is good, hands is good, but it had better be food-dirtiness, and it's had better be there because I put it there and not there because mom is trying to rub slime all over me.  Haha.  I think what Levi needs is a little brother or sister so get right in there with him and show him how it's done.  Isn't the second sibling often much less worried about getting dirty and trying new things?  Don't worry, I'm not announcing anything.  I'm just saying, the thought crossed my mind as I was getting Levi cleaned up...maybe next time I try this, I'll have two little bodies to scrub clean afterward :)