Thankful Thursday

this week:

-watching Isla fall in love with puzzles!! girl after my own heart!

{all by herself!}

-having my mom visit this past weekend

-talking to Auntie Rozzy on speakerphone and having Megan shouting "HI! HI! HI! HI! HI!"

       (we love our Auntie Rozzy!)

-family day pyjama day dance parties!

-my job

-having my lovely friend and co-worker Becky babysit last night... and i totally forgot to leave any kind of putting Isla to bed instructions... whoops! she feels like such an old friend that somehow i just assumed she knew the bedtime routine... even though it was her first time at our house! Sorry Becky!

-date night that turned into free meal date night because they forgot our order in the kitchen! i have no problem spending an hour chatting with my husband and get a free meal for it!!!

thoughts on potty training

so.
we've been attempting potty training for about 3 and some months now.

it went awesome the first few days, than poorly then well for a month and a bit, then poorly and then very poorly.

what i mean by this is that Isla always did well when we asked her if she had to pee, but probably only told us she had to pee a handful of times.
she also has very rarely pooped on the potty.

this has been a frustrating time, lots of pees all over the place: our house, outside, and at friends's houses.

i found myself starting to be angry with her.

i was rethinking the whole potty thing when the last thing that happened was 2 visits in a row at the same friend's house she first pee'd on the couch and then the next time pee'd all over her friend's room... that was covered in toys. oy vey. (to be fair, the second time i told her not to pee on the couch, i wasn't specific enough...clearly)

i think the main thing was that i almost felt a social pressure to punish, and not that anyone was actually pressuring me... but, you know.

so i took a step back, and then this showed up in my facebook newsfeed.

toilet learning vs. toilet training.

i'm going to go ahead and say that i won't necessarily do all these things, but what stood out to me the most was this checklist

(source)

in reading this list i realized that she had not been doing a lot of these things, and in fact still wasn't.

i also needed to check myself, and if my reactions always seemed frustrated and angry, we had to change something.

so here's the thing i think, if she's not ready, she's not ready.

so starting Saturday we put her back in diapers (mostly cloth-yippee!)

and told her that she could use the potty if she wanted to, but she didn't have to.

we had a much more relaxing weekend, with a few trips to the toilet or potty,

and this morning she asked to wear a pull-up and has been pretty much using the potty on her own (go figure).

so we'll see how this week progresses, but i'm happy to not be stressed and very happy to not feel frustrated  or about something she can't control.

live and learn.

poor first born trial children ;)

Day 20: a childhood anecdote

this is a kind of silly, kind of sad little tale.

it's a reminder that kids don't always listen and often they think that they know best.

i will remind myself of this story when Isla is growing and getting into more things!

when i was about 7 or 8 years old

i remember that we often had pie at our chalet.

my favourite was (and still is!) lemon meringue.

mmmmmmmm!

we were having pie for desert and i was pretty confident i could get it out of the fridge.

my dad told me to leave it.

multiple times.

i was still so confident,

so into the fridge i went,

the pie, in it's little silver pie tin slid out,

and

promptly folded right in half and fell on the floor.

as you can imagine my dad was not happy, 

-nor was anyone else who was expecting to enjoy that pie, i'm sure!-

funny how we carry some of these stories with us isn't it?

such a non-significant event,

but so vivid in my mind.

small style #18

the blog has been a little quiet this week!

sorry 'bout that, but we'd never miss a small style :)

Isla has truly become a well versed climber.

She is climbing everything so we have to really keep an eye on her.

She fell off of a small wooden chair the other day and she cried so hard and her mouth was bleeding and

it

was

awful.

But nothing a little cuddle and a bottle couldn't cure.

She was ok, just a tooth we were waiting for came through the gum.

Here is miss Isla climbing well supervised.

She was having a lot of fun, that's for sure.

Lovely little climber.

long sleeve shirt: Joe

pink t-shirt: Joe

jeans: H&M, consigned

socks: Old Navy

And now, you know it, I know it,

we're linking up with Morgan here:

If you haven't checked her small style, you should!
There are so many other blogs linked up with cutie cute babies!

cloth diapering part two: a disappointing start

i told you about my reasons for cloth diapering here.

here is the story of the start of cloth diapering for our family.

while Isla was in the hospital we used disposables, mostly just for easiness, 

but we had all the diapers prepped and ready to go.

so home we came, and i was so excited to put some cloth on that little booty.

i put on the prefold and i can' believe.....

how RIDICULOUS it looks!!!

poor Isla-who was not a tiny baby by the way, 8lbs 9oz thank you very much-seemed waaaay too small for these prefolds. 

i continue to describe it as what it would have been like if i wore a bath towel as underwear. 

not pleasant.

i was so so sad. my heart was a little broken indeed.

i felt silly that i had been talking this up for months, spent all this money, 
at that point, even my ideas of being able to do all my laundry in our building's washing machines seemed like a silly dream.


my lovely friend Maryann-worried for my heart and reputation-said:
"oh, don't tell anyone!"

i pretty much just packed up all the pre-folds and covers and just jumped on board the disposable diaper train.

i put all my reasons for cloth diapering to the back of my mind so i wouldn't feel so sad and defeated.

the first use of the diapers came a month or so later when i busted out the covers to put over disposables when i was flying with Isla to keep poop blowouts from ruining our flight.

but that was it.

until just after Isla turned 7 months. 
something changed. 
i actually can't even remember what it was, but i decided to give those cloth diapers another try.

and success!! they fit!

first small style in cloth :)

i was elated! my wet-dry bags kept the stink in, the diapers were working, and even washing them was working out!

so now we have been using cloth for 3 months and i have to say that I LOVE IT!!

i am completely in love with cloth diapering, if any one asks me anything about cloth, i can go on and on and on because i love to tell people my story, the things that worked for us (and the things that didn't!), how i deal with doing laundry when i don't have my own washer or dryer.

seriously, i am a little addicted.


living in an apartment definitely poses some laundry challenges, 
which i'll address in cloth diapering part three: these things stink!

some fall canning!

well, Maryann and I had been collecting mason jars of all sizes over the entire summer.

our homes were swimming with them, and we finally had last Saturday set to get those jars filled.

then, Mary came down with the dreaded flu.

So, the plans changed. To my house all the jars arrived and the 3 huge bags of tomatoes that Maryann had bought. Carla came over with all her bean supplies and Robyn met up with us halfway through the day.

Lots of beans, apples and tomatoes cut and peeled and blanched and peeled...
inducing a large mess!


a few mishaps followed, this is me realizing that our canning pot is WAAAAY too small for most of the recipes we had planned on. So off to Canadian Tire went Carla to buy our bigger.... MUCH BIGGER canner.

Then, while sterilizing our jars, we lost a 1L wide mouth guy :(
and then when we were boiling the filled jars we lost another, imagine our surprise when we lifted the lid to reveal a lot of apples swimming around our jars!!


Here is just a small taste of the end product!

There you have some of the many number of canned tomatoes, and some apple pie in a jar,
and not pictured are pickled green beans, strawberry jam and tomato-mango salsa.

Now that I have finally done this, one to cross off the to-do-list, it seems so much easier than anticipated. Next summer we have big plans to can all kinds of fresh fruit and veggies.