Thankful Thursday

today i'm just very thankful today for my family being home safe.

we had a pretty major tragedy occur in Ottawa yesterday.

a train collided with a city bus.

some people did not have their loved ones come home to them.

praying for peace and love and grace to all those affected by the crash.

Thankful Thursday

so very thankful this week for:

-date night! (and baby sitting swaps with friends who also have littles)-

-strong legs to take me running-

-Megan learning to say thank you all by herself-

-brunch on Saturday with the "Ladies and the Babies" (this is what Isla called it)-

-finding some cute pair of velvet skinny jeans and a polka-dot dress 

for Isla for a total of $5.23 at Value Village-

-Isla's first day of Sunday School *sniff*, she's in the 3-5 year old class, 

graduated from the nursery, where oh where did the time go?-

thankful thursdays

i've decided to start a little weekly thankful-ness on thursdays, it will help me remember to post weekly-insert sheepish grin here-

so thankful this week for:

-best friends having babies-my bestie Beth and her husband Pat just had their first little baby. and my oh my he is perfection, honestly the nicest baby i think i have ever seen!

-bonfires with friends at their amazing new home (on a tree farm no less!)

-strong legs to carry me while running

-a busy and fun long weekend filled with lots of visits with friends

-4 day work week ;)

-a stack of new books to read on my night stand


always so much to be thankful for!

a little secret

 i've been keeping a little secret around here... it feels big to me.  very big.
(it's not a baby)

i have recently taken up running... if you know me, you may gasp and/or snort with laughter.

i pretty much pledged to never run.

never ever ever.

if (and that sometimes has been a very big IF) i was going to do any physical activity, it was going to be a sneaky trick, as in it would be something that was fun and made me feel
like i wasn't exercising. like snowboarding, or wakeboarding or canoeing or maybe (maybe) going on a hike.

but running? no no no not ever.

 
then for some reason* in the past few months i started thinking about that "never ever never never never running"and i thought- maybe?

so i went all crazy town and decided to sign up for the color run, then i discovered that if you ran as a team, you could save $5, and me being just the little bit ridiculous that i
am, somehow i ended up being the captain of this team... oh my.

i downloaded an 8 weeks to 5K app on my iphone and finally mustered up the gusto to try it out on July 7th. Go me!

{after my first training run}

July 8th i trip over our computer cord, jam my toe so badly that i can't walk and end up needing an x-ray to make sure it isn't broken.

amazing, this is my real life.

so running gets put on hold for a few weeks.

then i started again. I have been going for a few weeks now and i find the first little run a bit daunting and then i get into it. it feels good, it feels fun, it makes me feel strong.
two weeks ago, for the first time, i did more running than walking.

{some post running pics... getting easier to smile after each run}

i am very very proud of me.

i also ran that color run two sundays ago, i didn't run the whole thing, but we ran at least half of it.
i also had miss Isla in a stroller, she wanted to be a part of the "big mess" run after she saw the promo video.
 

it made me feel like a real "true" runner.
i really and truly am enjoying my new found running legs and i am excited as to where they will take me :)

garden harvest!

oh man, my garden has started producing and i love it!!

this is where we started at the beginning of July...

now my lettuce:

and my beans, my delicious delicious beans!

i have been harvesting about a handful almost every night.

they are my delicious crunchy chip alternative

:) 

i'm linking up this week with Outside, At Home

the blog of two sisters who i love love love.

resolution update

back in January i resolved a few things to happen over this year.

here is the updated list:

1-to finally stop biting my nails for good -- disgusting habit, even more so when you are a nurse. blech.
update: well, they aren't being bitten, it's been about 2 months i think, but i go back to work next week, so we'll see if they last til then!!

2-to go outside with the girls in the winter! -- this is tricky for me, i don't like being cold and it seems like a 
tremendous amount of work to bundle up 2 littles when i don't want to be outside in the first place!
update: we went out a bit. proof: 

on this day Isla refused to let Megan sit on her lap

so she sat on Megan, then as we were coming home, the sled tipped, Isla barely fell out but cried like she was dying, and poor little Meggie basically did a starfish face plant into the snow, a poor little old man walking down the street jumped over about 3 snow banks and almost fell down to try and pick her up, small babies stuck face down in the snow i guess are a little alarming! anyway, when i picked Megan up she just blinked at me. This is a pretty accurate demonstration of first-born vs. second-born. 

just a little snow this winter

3-to get back into cloth diapering -- i was a cloth fiend with Isla, and i had a pretty decent start with Megan, but kind of fell off for awhile (mostly they get cleaned and then live on top of the dryer for weeks at a time!)
update: after a few fits and starts, we've been back on full time with Megan when she's not at daycare and with Isla during naps.  Yay!

4-to sew some things -- really i just want to sew, anything at all. 
update: sewed some amazing bunting for a friend's little nursery, and started a quilt! oh, and made some little face or bum cloths, hurray!

5-to read 40 books this year -- as mentioned here.
update: just finished my 13th, i would probably be further on if it weren't for the longest most disappointing finally give up JK Rowling book. 

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 ;)