Until today, we really didn’t know what Grae would be doing Kindergarten wise… It’s a whole thing, but because we were in Kuwait last year and didn’t know what part of the city we’d be living in this year, we weren’t able to register her in a school during the usual November to January registration period… We were late to say the least.
When we packed up our little Vancouver house and took apart Grae’s beloved closet book nook, I knew I wanted to create another cozy reading space once we arrived and settled in Kuwait. Well, eventually arrived and settled, but the book nook just never really happened. Oops.
Our healthier {butter and marshmallow-free} version of rice crispy treats have been a huge hit in our house since we first created them a few months ago. For Valentine’s Day we made a heart-shaped strawberry version, and I knew I wanted to come up with an Easter version too. As it tends to, my mind went to getting more use out of the plastic eggs I still feel guilty about buying (even though we reuse them year after year, use them for sensory play, turn them into bath tub toys, and make fun popsicles with them).
While I had grand plans of creating a little hallow in the centres of the eggs and placing a couple of small treats in the middles, we ended up just making solid eggs. To do so, all we did was fill up each side of the egg generously with warm crispy rice treat mix, packed them down a little, and shut the eggs while they were still warm.
We let them cool and ended up with perfectly formed eggs that pop out of the shells effortlessly and make great on-the-go treats (the plastic eggs double as containers until you’re ready to eat them) . They were also a lovely addition to Gracen’s egg hunt and she’s been enjoying one every couple of days since.
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Since returning home from a long vacation 2 weeks ago, playing independently has been a lot more difficult for Grae. Instead of playing on her own, she wants to be right beside Mama {if not right on top of me} all. of. the. time. When I explain that I need a little bit of personal space to get something done or encourage her to play, she responds with, “But Mama is the best…” or “But I just want to watch what you’re doing” or “But I LOOOOVE you!” Oy. It’s not easy.
The one time she seems to be happy to play on her own right now is while I make dinner (thank goodness for that). She often does puzzles, reads, or plays dress up, but tonight she set up one of her long time favourite games… A sink bath for her animal friends. She pulls up a stool, collects her sea creatures (sometimes it’s a baby or rubber ducks), and grabs a wash cloth while I fill up the sink with warm water, get out a squirt bottle or a sponge, and retrieve some soap or a little chunk of FUN. Together we add a drop or two of food colouring to the water, and that’s it. She plays and splashes and washes her animals in there for a good long time, and by the time she’s done, I usually have dinner on the table.
A sink full of water… Who knew? Works like magic every time.
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Watching: Strangely enough, this video. Brad and I laugh about it all the time. Not only is about all things spooky {and our little girl has been known to be frightened of a loud sneeze}, but the song itself is hilariously odd. It’s slow and soft, yet surprisingly upbeat all at once. “Spooky things doing a spooky dance….” Kills me every time.
Singing: Right now, every song she hears. This little lady is a total music lover who chooses to watch music videos over television and can often be found dancing and singing while doing other activities. New favourites added to her repertoire include Take Me Out to the Ball Game, Rock-a-Bye Baby, Spooky Spooky, and I’ll Love You Forever.
Playing: Dress-up. Constantly. Poppop recently made her a wooden dress-up centre and she got all kinds of costumes and accessories for it for Christmas. It’s not unusual for us to have a fairy, jester, or cat roaming around the house nowadays. In fact, yesterday I took a pink poodle out for a walk around the neighbourhood.
Talking about: Everything. Non-stop. Our days are question after question after question. “What’s that?”, “What’s it called?”, “Why for?”, “Who’s dat?”, “What his name is?”, “What dat sound is?”, “What’s Mama talking about?”
Reading: Goodnight Goon by Michael Rex. She and Papa picked it our at our latest library visit, and despite the fact that she can be ultra sensitive and the book is about a ‘cold gray tomb with a black lagoon, and two slimy claws, and a couple of jaws’ etc., we’ve read it every day before both nap time and bedtime since we checked it out.
Eating: During our 3 weeks of vacation, I think she ate her weight in pistachios, cashews, and other fancy nuts we don’t normally keep around. Now that we’re home and getting back into a routine, we’ve been making smoothies each morning (which has been great for getting a good amount of green veggies into our breakfasts) and she loves the whole process – gathering ingredients, making the smoothies, and slurping them up.
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Danielle from Sometimes Sweet, a blog I’ve followed for a very long time now, does regular Currently posts which inspired my Gracen-modified ones. ☺
We’ve had such a lovely time at my Baba and Opa’s house the last couple of days… Besides being a wonderful host, amazing cook, and very talented painter (giving us wall after wall of art to gaze at), she’s so, so great with Grae. I swear she still has all of the patience, motivation, and creativity she did when my brother and I used to stay with her as kids, if not more. She’s read books, played memory, fashioned doll clothes from scarves, crafted mini snow ladies from styrofoam and toothpicks, and served all of Grae’s drinks in fancy teacups and glass goblets since arriving a couple of days ago. She’s also given Grae full permission to roam and the four levels of their giant house as she pleases and swears “There’s nothing she can break. And if she does break something, then great. It’s one less thing I have to clean.”
Gracen absolutely adores her, and so do we.
Love you, Baba!
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After a fairly uneventful drive home yesterday, we’re back in the Okanagan to kick off our Christmas holidays. Today involved sled rides, icicle pops, and plenty of snow – the perfect winter combination.
Upcoming destinations on our Christmas 2012 adventure include Cochrane, Edmonton, and {the wee little town of} St. Paul. Fingers crossed the nearly 40 hours on the road will go easy on us…
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Today was our last parent and tot ballet class. Grae was so excited about it (and so thrilled to hand out her ribbon wands), that she didn’t have a nap beforehand. She just couldn’t fall asleep. Of course, we all know how that turns out…
Needless to say, come time for class, she had some of her classic overtired crazy energy going on.
Of course it all turned out alright. She proudly handed out her gifts, danced her little heart out, and said goodbye to her dance buddies.
Miss G loved this class so much that we will definitely be signing up for the next session starting in January. Billie is amazing with the kids and the class was the perfect blend of ballet moves, good old fashioned dancing, singing, and ‘acting’.
For more info on the classes Billie teaches around Vancouver, visit her Facebook page here. I promise you’re going to LOVE her!
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Gracen: (as she slowly walks towards the kitchen while giving me a adorably sly sideways smile) Grae Grae have some yogurt raisins?
Mama: (raises her eyebrows)
Gracen: (in a sing-songy voice mastered only by hearing it time and time again) It’ll cost three kisses… (she quickly jumps into my lap, takes my face in her hands, delivers three very purposeful kisses, and jumps down again)
Mama: Thanks for the kisses, Love.
Gracen: Grae Grae has yogurt raisins now. Dat’s a treat. Grae Grae has a treat, Mama has a treat. Mama has TWO treats!
This girl’s got skills…
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Though we had a particularly dry summer / early fall, the rain has officially made its way to Vancouver and it looks like it’s here to stay. It’s the time of year when park visits, beach days, and walks around the neighbourhood beg to be broken up by time spent in the warm, cozy indoors, and preferably not always in your own home. With the amount of rain we get here on the coast, coming up with new, fun ways to spend your days with little ones isn’t always easy. And though we’ve found many favourite indoor spots around our lovely city (the aquarium, Coquitlam’s Kinder Cafe, The Outpost Cafe, the many indoor pools, the airport’s public viewing area, play gyms, the Bloedel Conservatory, Science World, the local libraries and story times…) it’s always nice to add another spot to the rainy day list.
I originally learned about SweetSalt Baked Goods and Playscapes on yoyomama.ca and couldn’t have been more excited to visit. Authentic German baked goods {all made with local organic flour}, hot drinks, a play area for munchkins all in a stroller-friendly shop? Yes please. So this afternoon, with the rain doing what it does best, we made our way down Fraser Street to check it out.
Located on the corner of Fraser and 19th (not far from our other munckin-friendly cafe, The Outpost), SweetSalt is super bright and inviting, even on the gloomiest of days. We ordered some hot drinks, a couple of baked treats, and settled in.
The coffee was strong, the pretzels were exactly as they should be, and Brad’s hot chocolate was ridiculously large and served in a beautiful bowl (we also ordered a cinnamon bun, but it disappeared so quickly that I didn’t manage to get a bite… I take it it was delicious).
The cafe, though beautifully decorated, maintains a very laid-back vibe, making parents visiting with children feel completely at ease. Gracen (along with two other little ones at the cafe at the time), played freely in the kids’ corner, made her way back to our table for a bite of pretzel now and then, and then back again for more fun and at no point did we feel like she was in the way or bothering other patrons. The play area was fully stocked with a mini kitchen, cooking tools, a chalkboard-topped table, colouring pages and crayons, wooden building blocks, nesting cups, and toy trucks, which was perfect for keeping our little lady happily busy for our entire visit. And though we didn’t bring ours in, there was plenty of aisle space for strollers, not to mention a big bathroom, complete with stroller space, a change table, a step stool for hand washing, and possibly the most adorable alphabet-cards-turned-wall-art I’ve ever seen.
On the way out, the super sweet owner, who is also a local mom, sent us on our way with a loaf of pumpkin seed bread and this adorable little dragon-shaped chocolate chip pastry (we visited just before closing on a Saturday) and both were absolutely delicious. So delicious, in fact, that we may have to make a weekly trip just for the bread alone.
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SweetSalt is located at 3497 Fraser Street and is open Tuesday to Saturday from 8 a.m. until 5 p.m.
Take a look at their amazing space & baked goods by joining them on Facebook here.
Looking back on my childhood, some of my favourite times were the ones when we got to play with “the real thing”. Using Dad’s real tools, playing with Mom’s real make-up, creating a store using real pantry items and real money… Those times were the extra special ones.
So today, Gracen and I set up a little tea party using some real things… Real snacks for one, and while I’m not quite ready to let her drink real tea, real water was a substitute she was perfectly happy with.
Sure, her tea pouring skills haven’t yet been perfected and most of our blanket and snacks were covered in little “tea” puddles as a result, but at the end of the day, blankets can be washed and puddles can be wiped up. What matters is that our little lady spent a special afternoon tea-ing with Mama and Sophie and got to practice all kinds of everyday skills by playing with ‘the real thing’.
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There are few things Gracen loves more than getting mail, even if it’s just flyers and junk. So imagine her excitement when we arrived home to this heavy cardboard tube and I told her it was for her…
Ya, she was beyond thrilled.
She let me hold it just long enough to slice the label that was holding it together, and then carefully went about opening her mystery package, not knowing that it was going to be filled with goodies she (and her Papa) had helped me choose and personalize online.
The first thing she found was this beautiful growth chart, personalized with her first and middle names, and printed with gorgeous babushka dolls. She loved it so much that she was doing a nervous-sounding giggle in between little shrieks and stomps. And I’m so glad she did. Being half Ukranian, I’ve always loved babushka dolls too. My Baba had several in her house while I was growing up and I always thought they were very special. Later, when my Dad went to work in Russia when I was a teenager, he brought me back two of the largest, most beautiful matryoshka dolls I’ve ever seen, and I still have them to this day (note to self: they need to be dug out of safe keeping and displayed in Miss G’s room asap).
Also inside the package were a ton of gorgeous personalized labels. What I hadn’t thought of in advance, unfortunately, was the fact that Grae would think that they were just stickers and immediately want to stick them in her notebook (obviously – com’on Mama!) I explained that these were special stickers… Ones meant for lunch containers, drink bottles, and clothes – not just paper, and she seemed to be semi-okay with that.
I quickly tucked the labels away and asked if she wanted to help me hang her growth chart up – luckily, she was sold. She was a great little measuring tape/pencil-tack passer and in no time, we had her new growth chart hung.
Once hung, it was time to measure her… 86.5 centimetres – meaning that if the whole ‘measure at age 2 and multiply by 2′ theory turns out to be true, she’ll be taller than her 5’ 4” Mama. Yay for that!
Here’s a closer look at Grae’s labels. Aren’t the woodland creatures and the muted colours paired with red adorable? These are iron on clothing labels that are washing machine and dryer safe!
And these little babushka doll ones are stick on name labels that are dishwasher and microwave safe, but can be put on almost anything.
In the next couple of weeks, Grae and I will be putting all of these new goodies to the test and seeing how they hold up when paired with a very busy toddler. We’ll be sure to share our findings with all of you soon!
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All items are from Stuck On You.
For a long while now, Grae could count to 2 and would just continue saying, “One, two, one, two, one, two…” for sets of objects larger than a pair. Just before we left on vacation, she added 3 into her repertoire, and while in the Okanagan she added 4 and 5. It’s really incredible to ask your firstborn baby how many blueberries she has or how many markers there are and watch her count them up and proudly announce her answer.
How she grew up and learned all of these things so quickly is beyond me, but she can now count sets of things up to 7 on her own, and up to 9 if you help her with the number 8…
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