Who has the addiction?

What a year can change. Here are various shots of my "binky queen":

*Last years Christmas photo shoot*

*What I will miss the most - see below*

*My BABY*

And, just like it began, it's over. My baby is over IT. Her binky is no more. I don't know if I had the addiction or her? Funny isn't it? I don't think I'm ready to accept that she is a big girl!!! The first time I ever saw my munchkin, there she was - sucking away on her little binky. I remember coordinating every pacifier with her outfits. I remember swearing I would never nickname a pacifier a binky haha! Funny how things change when you have your own children.

On friday night, we watched a Tinkerbelle movie. I had been wanting to wean the pacifier for months, much to my dismay. my husband has been arguing the fact since she was a year old, and I always had one excuse or another why SHE needed it (but now I realize it was me who was addicted). After the movie, I told her Tinkerbelle will be coming to take the binkies for another little baby, but will leave her a present for being a good girl.

I will miss her cute little face and dreamy eyes as she sucks away on that thing. I will miss her little "baby" sounds she makes and the little sucking noise she makes with it.

As hard as I thought this would be, that night, she cried a little and Antoine went in and told her "You're a big girl so no binky now". She called out for me (the SUCKER) a few times - which I ignored so I didn't give in. She fell asleep!!!! I couldn't believe it!!!

The next day she didn't ask for it ONCE! She whined a little at nap, but slept for 2.5 hours! That night, she went right to bed without asking for it!

At daycare yesterday, I took the 2 pacis with me so I couldn't give in and tell them "just give it to her if she cries". She napped there just fine. Last night, she didn't even ask for it.

SO, ladies & gentlemen, as sad as it makes me - I am about 99% sure we are over the binky phase. Everyone told me, she will give it up when she's ready. I sadly admit she must be over it.

I guess her dentist will be proud of me!

My main reason for giving up the binky? She's starting to get the lovely "curve" in the roof of her mouth that binky babies get....and I do NOT want to be the cause of that!

I will miss my binky baby....now if I can get the courage to throw away the tin container that houses all of them.........

We LOVE Play-Doh

This girl LOVES....I mean LOVES her play-doh. It wasn't until maybe a month or two ago that I figured she was ready for it. She's pretty good (usually) about putting stuff in her mouth now and so I figured it was safe at this point. Last week, I had 5 days off of work and figured we would spend one full day of doing NOTHING. By that I mean, no tv, no running errands, just lounging in our pj's all day. The first thing we did that day was pull out the play-doh (while still in our PJs).

SIDENOTE: Yes, as you can see, my child has a slight obsession with Dora in the background there.

This literally kept her busy for at least an hour! We made a snowman, tree, I brought out the cookie cutters, and we even made "jewelry" as you can see below:

Daddy had to work that afternoon, and he came home with a surprise for Noey. He bought her a Cookie Monster play-doh set (AND Santa might just be bringing her a jumbo pack of play-doh and an Elmo set). Daddy spoils her (even though he doesn't like to admit it!), they were supposed to BOTH be for Christmas, but he caved and gave her this one early.

She was in her glory. In fact, when it was time to clean up, she was sooooo sad. She had big crocodile tears and didn't want play time to end. One cute little thing she does when she plays with ANY craft, whether it is coloring, or play-doh, or just plain concentrating on a puzzle, is she smacks her lips hahaha! She has this little lick she does and smacks them together almost like shes ready to drool hahaha! I guess it's just her "concentrating" hard on something.  

At any rate, I cannot wait for Santa to bring more play-doh. She absolutely LOVES it, and I have found it's a new way for me to get stuff done in the kitchen (cooking dinner and washing my dishes!!!)

Thanksgiving Post

So here it is, our Thanksgiving post....way late. Noey had daycare the day before Thanksgiving, so I wanted to let her wear her headband we got at a craft show. A few weeks earlier, the day we got our house inspected, my sister and I went to a craft show. I left with 2 headbands, a ring for Noey, and 2 Christmas gifts. The little turkey headband I just couldn't stand it - too cute!

This is what she wore the morning of daycare. She was battling a terrible cold - which I ended up catching by that night:

I asked her to say cheese.....and this little girl is TOO MUCH - she had to pose for the camera: 

The turkey headband - see isn't it stinkin' cute?!?!

As I said, I caught her cold and really usually enjoy getting together with family and holidays. However, I wanted to do nothing but take Sudafed and lay in bed. BUT, when you are a mom, you cannot do that! SO, instead I decided, we were going to dress comfortable and relax. Noey wore a sweatsuit and I just wore a warm hoodie! We started off by going to my mother in laws house for a couple hours, and then ended up at my mom and dads. Here she is being entertained by my *wonderful* sister and mother - thank goodness for days like these where I can veg on my moms couch and have them play with her!

My dad opted for deep frying the turkey this year. With my mom having surgery, she wasn't too happy about the idea of slaving over a stove while balancing her cane. Myself & my sister both have in laws to visit, and while we were going to plan dinner if we couldn't do it at my moms - we ended up not having it. My dad deep fried the turkey in the yard, sporting the hat below, so of course Noey had to wear it haha!

 Noelani & Auntie Amanda:

 Noelani & Daddy reading books:

 She was curious about the whip cream...SO I had to do the old fashioned "spray it in your mouth"!:

And that was it! I didn't even have the energy to go black Friday shopping until the next morning. I went home miserable, went to bed and then when Noey woke up at about 6am, we went shopping! I actually lost my voice the next day and after a couple of shopping hours, it was home and to BED for a nice long nap for both of us!

Thanksgiving EVE....

Yes, I'm that behind! I haven't even caught up to Thanksgiving yet! Anyway, I always want to make sure I "make time" for my daughter, even though I work full time. This means, no matter HOW tired I am, I will push through our evening so I can create memories for her. I always make sure to send a snack for daycare for holidays/events. My mom always did this for my sister and I, and it's something I plan on continuing as Noeys mommy. 

I did however, have to work late that day, and knew I wanted our snack to be something fast! A few days earlier, a friend of mine had posted "Hershey kissed pretzels" and so I decided to make those. I always include Noey in everything - and YES she washed her hands first haha! She did more eating than helping anyway! Below is a picture of our mess!

To me, Thanksgiving somehow represents the start of Christmas to me - maybe because I know BLACK.FRIDAY is the day after. I bought this little kit at Target (best.store.ever!!) a couple of weeks earlier. It is to make a countdown calendar for Christmas. I know she doesn't understand it quite yet, but I knew she would have a ball making it. 

As I said before, I always make sure I have time for her. So, after making our snack for daycare, I gave her a bath, and put her pjs on her. We had dinner and proceeded to do our craft afterwards.

Noelani LOVES crafts. She is a VERY busy child and so I always try to let her do some type of art project each night. That can be anywhere from coloring, to a more detailed activity like this one. We have a bucket of art supplies and anytime I see something in the store to make, I try to pick it up. I think it helps her with her creativity AND motor skills. 

We will have a lot more of these little projects in the near future - Christmas is my FAVORITE and there always seem to be a lot of cute little things for the kids to do out in the stores.
HOPEFULLY.....I can blog about our Thanksgiving next time!

Catching up!

BOY do I have some catching up to do with blogging!!! I guess I will start with the oldest and then make a few posts until I am current.

This was a first for both Noey & I. We went on our first horse drawn carriage ride. Each year, the plaza by us has Christmas events for the kids. Everything is free (except Santa pictures), so we went to check it out.

They had "Hawk Creek"  there, which is a wildlife rescue organization. They had a few owls there - which is one of Noey's favorites! The picture below is of her looking at a 9 year old owl. She was the cutest thing I've ever seen - I thought she was a baby at first!

There was a cute little section where the kiddos could make a "craft" and Noelani was all about that! Anytime she can get her hands "dirty" she is all about it. 

She was so proud of it when she was done - my little girl is getting SO big!!!! He (the ornament) is now hanging on our door to our apartment. He was just too cute to toss! (Did I ever mention I have a huge issue with throwing away her artwork? This poor kid will probably have BINS full by the time she enters college!)

I don't know much about reindeer, but I have to honestly say, these poor things looked terrified. I felt completely terrible for them! I only let Noey walk over and as soon as I snapped this picture I could tell they were so scared. I kind of even made a comment towards their "owner", something to the effect of, "these poor guys don't want to be here, they are so scared". It really made me sad.

She looks terribly miserable here, but I assure you she wasn't! She was checking out the face painter. After we had a quick visit with the SCARY clown, Noey decided she wanted to get her face painted. I wasn't too sure how she would do, because I didn't think she would understand to leave her face alone. I was basically right in that assumption because two seconds after she got it done, she scratched her face - ah well, there's always next year, but it was cute while it lasted!

This year has really been a lot of fun! I actually cannot believe a year has flown by SO fast. LITERALLY, just a year ago, my baby could not even walk! Now she's running around, taking dance class, and telling me what SHE wants to do! Funny how time flies when you are finally a parent! This time last year, we were moving into this apartment. There was a huge snowstorm and Noey & I were stuck in the house for almost a week, without anything to do - we were literally still unpacking everything and the cable and internet hadn't even been turned on yet!

The holidays have been so much fun and I cannot wait until she opens her gifts on Christmas. She is finally getting a bit excited when I show her snowmen and Santa. She may not fully understand the concept of Christmas (Jesus' birthday) - but she sure as heck knows what a present is - haha!! 

I cannot wait to do other Christmas events with her. Sometimes I miss my little bitty baby, but most of the time I am just so excited that she is growing up and able to do all of these fun things now!!!!

Lesson 4,589 in parenting....

If your child is EXTREMELY quiet while you are taking a shower, and you think it's because she listened to your direction of "sit in your recliner and watch Dora until mommy is done". THINK.AGAIN. It is more likely that she has done something like the following. GUTTED her stuffed zebra. Poor thing didn't have a chance. I have no clue how she even opened it - but he had a hole leading from his neck to his butt.

This is what I saw when I got out of the shower:

 This poor zebra didn't have a chance:

I guess we won't be using him as part of the decor in her new room when we move! He was nothing but a flat carcass when she was don't with him. He is now in the garbage, waiting for his pickup from the garbage men tomorrow. Sorry mister zebra!

Staggering Statistic

"According to the National Center for Education Statistics, nearly two-thirds of low-income American families do not own any books for their children. Limited access to books is a problem for all young children, but for those in low-income areas, it may be tantamount to reading failure."


I heard this report sometime a few months ago on the news. The first thing I thought of was Noelani's birth sisters (I am not sure if that is what I refer to them as - anyone in the adoption world know the proper "term")? Noelani has 3 of them. All are 10 and under. In fact, one is a mere 11 months older than her. 


Something has me feeling a bit uneasy today. While I am VERY fortunate to be able to provide a nice life for Noelani, I feel sad that not every kid can grow up saying this. Some kids may never know what it is like to even have the simple things in life like a book. That really upsets me! 


I don't want to just assume Noelani's birth family cannot afford books, but I will make it very clear that from what I know of them, I believe they would be struggling to use their money in other ways. This does NOT make them bad people - it just shows that unfortunately, many families have to make decisions like this every.single.day. A lot of single moms fight to figure out where they will get money to feed their babies their next meal. I am fortunate to say that we have never had to do that.


WITH that being said, I have decided that Noelani and I will be making a trip to the store this weekend. I finished - ok I can't promise that I finished - but did a lot of shopping for Noelani today. I felt a bit sad bringing in all of these princess toys and dolls today. I felt like - what can I do for anyone else?


Noelani and I will be doing what I know is going to help her birth family. We will go shopping for books and mail them to her sisters. We don't get a response to our packages - but we will send them anyway! That's the beauty of "Santa Clause"......the girls won't have to know who they are from, but we will know we sent them.


I'd like to do something like this each year, but not sure if we will stick with this same theme or not. I plan to involve Noelani in this venture, and though she won't understand it now - she will some day. I hope that in a few years she will maybe even come up with some ideas of things to send to them.


PS....Tammy Wondra, if you are reading this...OR Michelle.....I haven't forgotten about Hannah....we are going to be getting that package out too :)