Raising Best Friends

So we are entering a new phase of child rearing in the Schuyler family. Charlotte is finally on the move and so her care is mostly survival: protect, feed, change, love. Savannah on the other hand needs more character building care, plus she is just a kid who loves to learn. I had her on the waiting list for a parent participation preschool where she would attend twice a week and two days a month I would be the instructor (teaching what I know- Sign Language). There was a slim chance of getting her in for this school year as she was #11 on the list. I, however, just got informed that there is space for her. So my "mundane days" of motherhood are over. 

Mondays we will have a Learning Links class. 

Tuesdays currently the girls are in swim class but that will soon end and will be replaced with one of two days of Savannahs new preschool class. 

Wednesday day is free but we have bible study Wednesday evenings. 

Thursday is preschool again.  

Friday I am attending a moms group at a local church. 

Don't Forget I teach every morning 7am-8am

Tutor generally on Sunday or Monday evenings

Have several bookkeeping clients whom I do monthly data entry, reports and reconciliations for.

AND I will have to teach one of Savannahs preschool classes every other week.

When I look at it like that and add the normal mothering (breakfast, lunch,dinner, laundry, dishes, nurse-duty, sanitizing, bathing, dressing etc etc etc) it does seem like a lot but I love having something to do everyday and having a schedule.  It does remind me of about 3 1/2 years ago when i just kept taking on more part time jobs.. I had 5 when I found out I was pregnant.  I tapered that down to just "stay at home mom" but after she was born but I found myself again seeking out stuff to do and ended up landing a teaching job and some bookkeeping work right before finding out I was pregnant again. Am I saying I'm pregnant again? No, but I am saying that I notice a pattern with myself... I get a little too ambitious and God slows me down and brings me back to whats really important: Family. So I got these two girls and despite how crazy my schedule may seem to become in the next few months I am determined to make it fun, carefree and encourage my girls to truely be best of friends.

My New Camera

So its here, the "nice" camera that Josh bought for me for my 29th birthday. I don't have a lot of time to learn how to use it but I have learned that I am going to probably want an external flash as my next gift! I am watching tutorials online to learn about the basics of photography. Come to find out that light is that biggest part of it all. I have learned that aperture controls the amount of light that goes into the lens and the depth of field (something I still cant really figure out). Shutter speed also controls how much light goes in along with the amount of blur made by moving things in the photo. I am trying to do everything OFF auto so as to learn how the camera actually works. I am hoping that this will be a fun adventure with some cute people as my main subjects: my kids! Here are some that I took of the girls!

Savannah  was laying on my lap here.

Thought this pic of Charlotte looked kind of old so tried to enhance that idea a bit

Learning about continuous shots I caught these on their way to a wail

Muffin Tin and Ice Cube Tray Meals: Making Eating Fun

So Savannah hasn't always been a good eater but lately she has been doing great. She is totally into RAW GREEN veggies... every mothers dream right? Well I saw this idea in some magazine awhile ago and have been using it randomly for the past few months. It was an ice cube tray filled with goodies.  I make her meals like this when I have a little of everything. 

I later learned of using muffin tins for the same purpose. Cool idea huh? Well from it I got my inspiration for the girls birthday theme this year. See Savannahs birthday is right around Thanksgiving and Charlottes is right around Christmas so this year I have decided to have a joint birthday party (Savannah will be 3 and Charlotte will be 1). I could have done a theme based on something one of the girls liked (Savannah: Little Einsteins, Signing Time, Super Why or anything Purple... Charlotte: Anything Sparkly or Red haha) But instead I decided I would do a more broad theme. I was thinking Butterflies and Flowers or Ladybugs and having two separate cakes but after this muffin tin lunch idea Im going to have a cupcake themed birthday for them.

My ideas so far: Cupcake invitations and e-vites. Cupcake shirts for the girls. Decorating cupcake shaped cookies. A cupcake mix with a whisk for party favors. One large cupcake shaped cake plus individual cupcakes of course. And lunches served in plastic to-go muffin containers with lids pre-filled with goodies. Still have more planning to do as the party wont be till mid December so if you have any other super cute cupcake themed ideas send them over!

My Girls

So for my birthday this year (just a few weeks ago) Josh ordered me a "real nice" camera. I am NOT a photographer and have no idea how I'll ever have time to learn how to use it but I am excited because I am always wanting to caught those precious moments and silly faces and have fun but don't really have to budget to be constantly getting professional pics done. I do know some photo editing from a previous job I had doing just that with photoshop. These pics were taken as practice for when the "real nice" one gets here. My plan: to get some professional quality pictures myself WHENEVER I WANT.

Edited with GIMP0 a free program I dont really like yet.  I have to reinstall photoshop but also just got introduced to something called Picasa by Picnik that is pretty cool.  I plan to look into that a bit more.  It has a bunch of shortcuts that I dont really have time to re-develop in photoshop.

This is some neighbors stairs

Love capturing a true smile!

Dear to my heart

Charlotte on the same stairs.  Made me a bit nervous as she only started sitting up on her own about 2 weeks ago.  Didn't want her face planting into the cement.  Plus look at those tired eyes!

Had Savannah hold Charlotte but I was still within arms reach, just in case.

LOVE this pic.  Plan to edit it soon too.  This is across the street from our house.  What a little HAM

Savannah taking the grass that Charlotte was about to eat away.

Uncle Jacob

My brother Jacob tends to stop by unannounced and randomly and we just LOVE that.  Savannah is just in love with "Uncle Jakey".  On this particular day I was cleaning out some bathroom hair curling stuff and Savannah was showing interest and she let me put her hair in curlers!  She's let me braid it before so shes real good about staying still, as long as she has something like "Little Einstein" on (her recent fav). 

Still fascinated with Little Einstein.  I just played it through Disney Juniors website and connected the television as an extended monitor since we don't have cable.  It works great!

Finally ready to pose

Uncle Jakey randomly stopped by and graciously volunteered to remove the curlers.  Unfortunately the curls didn't stay.  The girls had swim class earlier in the day and the salt water pool water isn't great for curlers I guess.

Charlotte and Jake resting on the swing

Jake is so sweet with my girls!  Its precious.  It was blazing hot on this day, record highs for the year, so Charlotte was in her swim diaper and nothing else so I could dip her in and out of the pool when she got too hot.

The shirtless trio!  Too hot for shirts!  Shortly after this Jake joined Josh, me and the kids for a night at Los Patios for TACO TUESDAY!  So nice to have him nearby!

Just a few days after this was the massive blackout to most of southern California, parts of Arizona, Mexico and Baja California.  Jake came over that night too.  He helped us devour perishables and started the firepit on the deck!  Savannah wished Rachel was around too.  Rachel is her soon-to-be Aunt Rachel (Jacobs fiance).  We are already working with Savannah to get her excited for her flower girl debut with Charlotte June 9th 2012.

Home Improvement Project #1: The Deck

It seems there is always something to be done around our place.  Josh would call them "arts and crafts" and therefore does not participate in these home improvement projects, shucks for me!  This last month I have been working on a lot.  I started with the deck.  We have a HUGE deck that is the top of three garages.  We only rent, but we have lived here almost 7 years now and boy has the deck been trashed.  I decided to paint it.  I found some paint in the garage that was actually used on the deck when it was first repainted 7 years ago when we moved in.  I started in the middle of the night (to be sly) and used a shoe brush.  I know that is pathetic, but my idea was just to do a patch, see how it turned out and then do more.  Well I ended up doing a quarter of the deck with the shoe brush and since it was the middle of the night I didn't notice that some dirt had got on the paint/shoe brush and started making dirt streaks in the paint.  For the next few weeks I would do a small patch at a time, with a hand paint brush.  Unfortunately I ran out of the garage paint I found, found some more garage paint that I continued with... which wasn't exactly the same color, and then ended up running out of that too.  SO I forked out the $16 for a gallon of exterior flat paint from Walmart and finally finished!  I do need to go back over the area where I started and the dirt streaks are BUT it looks soo much better out there now!  Of course I was really only able to paint when one or both of the girls were taking a nap, hence a simple project taking this working momma 2 weeks!  Charlotte was there to celebrate my achievement in her Jumpy Jumpy toy!

Left Side of deck... (Note Charlotte in the Jumpy Jumpy in the corner by the pools)

Right side of deck, still needs to be repainted in some areas but MUCH better than it was

My little Happy-to-watch Helper

Just a week since her surgery and just as sweet as ever!