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Yay, I love Christmas 
We are having a wonderful Christmas vacation so far. We’ve been having fun celebrating with Lorne’s family this week and tomorrow will head out to bring the celebrations with my family. The girls are having so much fun and have already been so spoiled and we aren’t done yet. Christmas through the eyes of a 4 year old truly is magical!
I hope all of you are having a wonderful holiday season so far. I hope this weekend brings you together with friends and family and that much joy, merriment and love fill you home.
We Wish You a Very Merry Christmas!
Thanks to Meghan for hosting the Great Bloggy Holiday Card Exchange again this year. I wish I could send each and every one of you a really paper copy of my holiday card, but, since that isn’t possible I’m glad to share it with here.
Happy Holidays to all of you. I hope you get to spend lots of time with family and friends, eat great food, and just have an all around amazing time.
Today is Maddie‘s birthday. She would have been 4 years old today. It is easy for me to remember her birthday because it falls so close to Maya’s and because not a day goes by that I don’t remember this amazing little girl and how she touched my heart.
Today I remember a wonderful, beautiful little girl. Today I try to imagine what she would have been like at 4 years old. Today I shed a tear for her family and what they lost. Today I send so much love, so much light and so much peace to Heather and Mike Spohr. Today I do a little something to honor Miss Maddie and celebrate her birth and life.
I hope you will do a little something in honor of this amazing little girl too. Today I hope you will head on over the Heather’s blog and let them know they are surrounded by love and support. Today I hope you will head on over to iTunes and purchase Mike Spohr’s beautiful song as a birthday gift for Maddie (all proceeds will be going to Friends of Maddie).
We are in the midst of a big backyard makeover. Lorne has been busting his butt for a couple of months now. Things are finally almost done. The huge old tree is gone, the yucky old patio and the pathway to nowhere are gone, the yard has been properly graded so that water flows away from our house, and the biggest thing of all is the brand new, gorgeous patio is done.
One of the things that made me fall in love with this house last year when we bought it was the backyard. It is huge, and shaded by gorgeous mature trees. I had grand visions of beautiful gardens and dinners outside on a new patio. The backyard was everything I was looking for, once we did a little work of course.
Before
Last summer, right after moving in, we got down to business working on the backyard. The first order of business was getting rid of the ridiculously large amount of pesky ivy growing in all the flower beds and up a huge elm tree. It took months of hard, like really hard, work but I eventually got it all pulled out. I held my breath to see if it would return in the spring and I would have more work to do. Luckily, I am, apparently, a badass ivy remover because none of it came back!!
So, with the ivy gone we had to decide what to tackle this year. We knew one of the main things we wanted to be able to do in our backyard was sit out on a nice patio and eat dinner, have a few drinks, watch the kids play, etc. So, that meant doing something about the old, falling apart, unusable existing patio. After much research and deliberation we settled on putting in a new stone paver patio. It would require a lot of work, mostly on Lorne’s part, but we (or rather he) was up for the task.
First things first the large elm right out our back door was removed along with a ton of roots. Next Lorne rented a jackhammer and removed the weird little pathway to nowhere that started at the patio and headed part way into the yard. Followed, of course, by removing the existing patio (thank goodness for craigslist and people willing to do work for free stone pavers!). Once all that was done the next order of business was getting the yard ready for the new patio. That involved hiring a guy with a bobcat and getting the area for the patio dug out and a huge portion of the yard graded. Our backyard was such a mess, it was so hard to keep the vision of why we were doing this and that one day it would look nice again.
Midway Through
Once everything was pulled out and our backyard was at its worst it was finally time for the new patio. We picked out our stones, had them delivered and Lorne and our lawn guy who he hired to help out set down to business. 3 full days of work later and the patio was in place. It is gorgeous!
After
There is still work to do. Lorne is busy right now filling the dirt around the patio and throughout the area of the yard that was dug up for the grading. And, of course, next spring we’ll be very busy putting in the garden beds around the patio. But, we’ve already eaten dinner outside on the new patio a few times and enjoyed sitting outside just enjoying our backyard space. The new patio is exactly what I had envisioned and once the gardens are in place next spring the backyard will be a perfect replica of what I envisioned the first time I saw the house and started picturing myself living here.
Apparently, an infant car seat is equal to some sort of evil torture device, or at least that is the message I’m getting from the backseat of my car every time I put Anna in her car seat. The girl just does not like her car seat, and by does not like I, of course, mean absolutely HATES. And, she is not shy about letting us know. Before the buckles are even done up she is usually screaming her head off and unless she happens to fall asleep (which is a rare occurrence) she will scream until you take her out of it.
Maya was a fan of the car and her car seat. She would sleep comfortably in it as an infant if she was sleepy. When she wasn’t sleepy she would just calmly watch out the window or stare at her reflection in the little mirror we had put up for her. If we took her into a restaurant in the seat she would pretty much sit calmly in it the whole time we were eating. We could use it as part of the travel system we had purchased to take her for a walk. Take her into a store and put her in the cart to watch the world go by as we went shopping. It was a useful tool. I had no idea that other kids didn’t feel the same way about their car seats, until Anna was born.
The car seat is now used strictly for transporting a pissed off, screaming baby from point A to point B. It is rarely used with the travel system except for those rare occasions when she falls into a deep enough sleep on the trip to Maya’s preschool and I can plop the seat in the stroller to make dropping Maya off at school a bit easier. I’ve managed to use it to take her into the store twice now. Once it went well and she drifted between sleep and observing the wonders of the grocery store for 10 minutes we were there. The other time ended in her screaming and me leaving the store abruptly (luckily Lorne was there that time too and was able to make our purchases while I took the screamer out to the car). She finds no comfort in her seat. The shorter the period of time she must sit in it the better.
As a result of her disdain for the car seat I’ve taken to wearing her everywhere we go. She spends a lot of time in the ERGO carrier when we are out and about whether we’re headed to the park, dropping Maya off at school, grocery shopping, doesn’t matter what we are doing she is in the carrier. Which is fine with me since I love babywearing. But every now and then it would be nice to be able to leave her in her car seat for a quick 5 minute trip to the grocery store. It would also be nice not to have to listen to her blood curdling cries every time we take a trip in the car.
Unfortunately, I can’t wear her when we’re driving. Instead I have to listen to my sweet little baby cry her full on angry cry and there is nothing I can do. I wish there was something I could do to help her like her seat better. I’ve tried toys, she has a mirror, I’ve tried giving her a pacifier (she won’t have it), we talk to her nonstop, nothing helps. I’m hoping she out grows this dislike of her car seat or else our next road trip up to Canada to visit our families is going to feel a whole lot longer than it already does.
Any of you suffered through a baby who hates their car seat? Did you find anything that helped? Did switching from an infant seat to the bigger convertible car seats help? I’m willing to try anything at this point.