give thanks / daddy goes back to work

we have enjoyed 5 amazing weeks with daddy home.

it's been so sweet and so, so helpful. but now we enter "real life" as daddy goes back to work today.

thankful for God's grace that has sustained us thus far. for confidence in His ever-present help to continue to push us forward. and for His gift to us in friends + family who care for us in such tangible (+ delicious!) ways while we work out all the details of life as a family of 4.

 

i'm nervous about having enough energy to care for/love on/play with and faithfully discipline asher during the day after a long night of MOTN feedings and whilst nursing/rocking/holding baby - but I have a meal delivered from a sweet friend (thanks, esther!), instant coffee ready to be brewed on the keurig and some freezer zucchini bread and broccoli cheddar bites and mini oatmeal cookies from trader joes to help me hold the fort down tomorrow. let's do this. here we go!

toddler tuesday: fun indoor activities

happy tuesday, friends!

 we have survived our first month with baby #2 and our transition into a family of 4 is in full swing. that also means that our month-long house arrest is pretty much over (hooray!) and we can be out and about at last. this past month pretty dang exhausting  - but also a lot of fun! i think apart from the newborn things - the hardest part was helping our 21 month old toddler transition into big-brother mode and keep him busy and occupied while we are cooped up at home.

before baby, we were out all the time. at least once a day and sometimes as much as 3 times a day (yes, i was crazy!) he was constantly interacting with other kids and other people, running around and burning off energy. hence, this month he was a little bit stir-crazy and restless so we were constantly trying to find things to do. thankfully, eugene being home has been THE BEST and he has been trying his best to take him out and do things with him, but of course we had to find things to do indoors. thankfully, I had saved and stored away (in my mental archive + closet) a few new (to him)  and fun activities/ideas specifically for this special time.

and it has PAID OFF!

so I thought I'd share a few of my faves:
ps. this post contains affiliated links. (read more)

PUZZLES

I have been collecting puzzles for over a year now, and though he was way too young for them when I started, I am so glad that I did! I bought many used ones for dirt cheap from other local moms and received many as gifts for Asher's 1st birthday. We LOVE Melissa and Doug puzzles. They are seriously the best! I have been reserving some of the more fun ones for this month so he was really excited to start playing them.

This Melissa and Doug fishing board is really fun! It's a fishing activity with magnets and a
little fishing rod. It's great for hand-eye coordination, concentration
and matching. Best part is, it keeps him quiet for a good amount of
time (5-10 minutes!) which is pretty much golden hour with toddlers at
this age!

 

Also, being cooped up inside did have some advantages because it gave us some time to practice numbers and colors with Asher. Daddy is the best teacher - and he made doing this particular Numbers Puzzle super fun for him and now he loves doing it. He just needs a drink and some snacks and he's golden.

Do-A-Dot Art Activities!

I scored these Do-A-Dot-paint markers on sale a few months ago and they are really cool!  They help keep mess to a minimum, are easy for little toddler hands to use and provide so many cool activity opportunities! At this particular age + stage, there aren't a lot of focused activities I can use these for, but he has fun messing around with them! The chuck pads that I received from the hospital serve as the perfect canvas (completely absorbent, har har) for practice! 

I'm excited to use these dot markers for other fun learning activities when he's a little older! Here are some cool ideas that I've found online so far!

 Car parking lot


This one is kind of silly but was kind of an emergency one when I needed to do something in the kitchen and Asher kept wanting me to hold him! The best thing about this is it's FREE and you can fancy it up however you'd like. It doesn't keep him preoccupied for terribly long - but it's an easy set up and gives you the 5 minutes of hands-free time. All you need is some painter's tape and toys!

On the Go Water Wow! Water Revealing Activity Pads

These are one of our favorite things ever. They are pure genius and are perfect as an indoor activity or if you need something to help keep toddlers preoccupied during long car/plane rides! They are essentially blank coloring pages that reveal color when painted with water. As you can see, Eugene was completely blown away by it and was having the time of his life and left little room for his son to take part.  

Blocks

A few weeks before my due date - I found this building blok set on the floor next to our apartment complex garbage area (yuck, I know but can we say JACKPOT?! Don't judge me!) I threw them in the washing machine and got em nice and clean and they have been Asher's fave thing to play with! It keeps him busy for FOREVER and there are so many different ways to play with them! Here we are building something to hold one of his favorite books in (LOL - see photo below). Don't tell anyone but when Asher is sleeping at night, Eugene stays up to practice building really tall structures in peace (without Asher destroying it every 2 minutes). Do all dads do this? 

Besides these things, we have been reading a lot of books, watching A LOT of videos (The movie Moana and the Little Baby Bum Learning Songs show has been Asher's faves) and listening to the same songs on repeat and going a little bit cray. But we survived our month-long stay indoors and these have been our BFFs.
Cheers to finally being able to go outside! But we are looking forward to diving into these fun things during the rainy days (that are hopefully) ahead. once this crazy hot weather realizes it's October and gives us the pumpkin-spice latte/boots/coats weather that we're anxiously waiting for! BOY BYE!!!
xoxo

avery: one month

Dang, that month flew by. 

And of course I'm about a week late -- woops! 

But, what a month! 

Happy 1 to our chubby, balding, always-grunting, bottle and pacifier loving (hooray!!!), sweet + dainty baby girl. This first month was full of all the normal newborn things: learning how to breastfeed (again), changing diapers constantly (12-15 a day!), yellow + seedy poops (which she produces at an inhumanely insane rate which awarded her the nickname "lady dijon"), getting stircrazy from house arrest, newborn smells, awkwardly trying to figure out how to hold baby correctly, burping and spit up parties, doing laundry almost every other day, milk curds hiding in neck folds, waking up every 1.5-2 hours at night to feed, trying to keep baby awake during MOTN (middle of the night) feeds so that she eats longer than 4 minutes or else she wakes up in 45 mins again to eat again (boo...) It's been quite a ride. 

As exhausted as I feel every day fumbling through thia newborn craze while also trying to keep other things in order (other things meaning keeping toddler fed and entertained, and apartment somewhat in order) it's been a blast and we are loving our little girl to pieces. 

Both Eugene and I agree that girls are pretty different! They have cuter clothes, she looks/seems so girly to us and is just so dainty compared to how Asher was when he was a newborn babe (ie the way she positions her hands when she sleeps and her little cries). Eugene is absolutely smitten and I think she already has him wrapped her tiny little (but friggin long - thanks to my genes) fingers. 

Asher has been adjusting better than we expected and he loves her too. Yay! He loves to greet her in the mornings, runs up to her in the middle of playing squealing “baaaby” in the highest little voice and gives her kisses all the time. Sometimes his affection is a little too intense and gives us 100 heart attacks but we are all just learning and taking it day by day.  People are right when they say that your first looks HUGE after baby is born because asher seems so much older and bigger to me. His head, hands, feet and poops seem so much bigger and it gives me all kinds of feels. The adjustment in the beginning was personally a little hard for me because I was wrestling with feelings of guilt and I missed playing with him but by now we have gotten a better hang of things and I'm learning how to involve him in caring for baby and still making time to have fun with him everyday. I love my little guy. 

the newborn stuff second time around has been a little bit easier to handle, too. I'm definitely not as paranoid and anxious as the first time and only Google about 20 things a day instead of 500. Also I think because I know that eventually they grow out of this stage - it helps me to savor and enjoy it more. I'm so grateful for the ways God had sustained us this far and I'm excited (and a little anxious) to see how we do next week when Eugene hours back to work! 

God's grace has brought us this far. I'm excited to see all the ways I will be able to testify of the grace and help He will continue to provide as we venture into the next month!

Ps. Here's a one week vs one month picture of asher. So crazy how fast they grow and change. 

And the same one for Avery! 

 

Talk about chubs! 

<3