Saturday, April 23, 2011

Easter part one




The most recent holiday tradition in our family is for me to host Easter. Sticking with my New Year's resolution of making our family more active, I signed us all up for our first annual 5K! Joe and my dad ran the 5K while the rest of us walked the 1 mile. Next year I think I'm going to attempt the 5K. I can do it!


The little ones pretty much hung out in the stroller the whole time, but did a really good job!


After the 5K, us ladies went to a local nail salon and got our nails done. This was Rosemary's first manicure! Spoiled little girl. I think I was 18 before I had my first professional manicure! She was so cute. She did so well while the lady painted her fingers. My little princess!


While the grandma's got their feet done, Rosemary and I headed to Target for my favorite mommy-daughter date: Starbucks!

Later that evening, we headed back to the house and settled in for dinner and to rest up for the next day's festivities! (To come in a future post)
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Friday, April 15, 2011

Finger paint or carrots?

You know mommy is going nuts when I just give up and let him feed himself carrots. At least it entertained him for a few minutes.
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Thursday, April 14, 2011

Mermaid hunt

One of my favorite things to do on beautiful days is get lost in Pinellas County until I find one of their gorgeous waterfront parks. Today we found our way to H.S. Pop Stansell Memorial Park.


From the parking area I noticed a little area that looked like a dock, so we walked around some vegetation and found a kayaker's nirvana. I am definitely taking my parents here if they ever bring their kayaks. The water was still and gorgeous. My new favorite activity with Rosemary is looking for mermaids whenever we see water. We saw lots of fish jumping and a heron fishing, but the only mermaid was this cutie I brought with me. Maybe next time!

See? Beautiful.

Walking down the boardwalk. Strutting her stuff.

I had to get a pic in front of this little sandbar. It was just such a nice day out that I wanted to stay near the salty fresh air for as long as possible. She just wanted to go to the playground. So I procrastinated by taking a lot of pictures.

We made our way to the playground and had a little snack.

On the way to the bathrooms, Rosemary noticed this eyeball on a tree. I wanted to take her picture near it, but it scared her and she wouldn't get near it!

Even the graffiti in the bathrooms is polite here.

Rosemary tried and tried to get up on this weird seat by herself.

She finally figured it out, but it took a lot out of her!

I LOVE the parks in Pinellas county where the swings overlook the water. Beeee-yoooo-tiful!

I got both my kiddos swinging for a while! I would alternate playing "tickly, tickly toes" with Xander and singing "Love Grows Where My Rosemary Goes" to Romy. It's a good thing there was no else at this park, I was sort of putting on a show. I was singing pretty loud with Rosemary trying to sing with me. And I don't have a pretty singing voice ;) I sang the entire song about 12 times.

After the park, we went home and Rosemary helped me make pigs in a blanket and special celery treats for lunch. Earlier this week we did our grocery shopping and I let her pick out one fruit and one veggie- in the hopes of getting her to try something new. She chose watermelon and celery so every day this week I've tried preparing them differently. Today we had celery stuffed with cream cheese, with another piece of celery sticking out and then cut into what are supposed to be flower shapes. My mom tried explaining it to me over the phone, and mine looked nothing like flowers so I think next time they're in town she's going to have to show me how to do it! And I cubed the watermelon and ate it with a fork, which was novel because we usually eat it sliced. Either way, it's getting her to eat her veggies (fruit has never been a problem).

p.s. For those of you interested- the sticker chart is ah-mazing. It's been like a godsend. We've gone from- no exaggeration- at least a dozen full-blown meltdowns a day (usually there are 3 before breakfast) to one in the past three days (I called the pediatrician who was NO help and I've been working with a childhood specialist since birth doing evaluations on the kids and they had no answers. Was it too hard to tell me "sticker chart"?). At one point I even saw her get mad, take a deep breath, walk into Xander's room, put her head down on the bed, them come back into the room and talk to me. I have a different child. We moved on from the tree (she had to earn her way to a big star for the top) to a more traditional print-out sticker chart with about 20 boxes that she has to fill with stickers before getting something from the "goodie box"- a box we filled with things from the Target $1 section. It was fun picking the things out for the box! We made a special trip to Target for stickers and goodies for her box. I'll post an update when she gets her first goodie!


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Monday, April 11, 2011

My latest attempt at positive parenting

I have been making a lot of difficult, and quite drastic changes in our household. Things haven't been running as smoothly as I would like. We finally have Xander sleeping in his own crib, waking up usually only once to eat, and one night sleeping 10 hours straight without waking up. This was essential as we are all getting over a nasty flu-bug that invaded this house over the past couple weeks and a good night of interrupted sleep- my first in about 15 months, since I first got pregnant with x- really helped me through the worst of it. As for Rosemarys frequent meltdowns, I have several changes in place. One is this new sticker tree I made for her. So far I've had 2 hours without a meltdown, which, sadly, is the longest we've gone in a while. Let's hope this helps for a while.
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