The Firsts have Begun!

Well, it's been about a month now that Anya first started rolling over.  A couple weeks since she had her first big girl bath in the big tub!  So the era of firsts has truly begun.  Today she ate cereal for the first time!  Normally I would have waited until she was six months, but she's been eyeing our meal times so intently I thought today I would try it.  I would say that it was a success.  I was surprised how well she took to it.  There was no spitting, no struggling,  and virtually no mess.

         

     

This week was also extra special because she met her Uncle Yon for the first time.  He lives in Switzerland most of the year, and wasn't able to meet her until just now.  Thankfully it didn't take her too long to warm up to him and he actually was able to hold her as well.  Oh the joy in my heart!

It's been a long month.  I think I've averaged at least 1 doctor's appointment every two weeks for either myself or one of my children since I was about 20 weeks pregnant last year!  First it was pregnancy related stuff, then kidney stones, then a spike in my cholesterol, a mole excision,  and now to top it all off skin cancer!

Looking back now I guess I know why I named this "just take a little time".  Life is too short to not stop and be thankful for what we already have.  I encourage you today to take a moment and show those around you how much you love them.  Don't just say it, show them.  Just for good measure do something nice or special for a stranger and experience just how much God loves you too!

A Flurry of Feet!

Whew, what a weekend.  We just finished the second weekend of performances at the dance portion of the SE MB Festival.  Both older girls performed this year, and did quite well.  Last weekend was Kaia's very first Festival performance, she was so excited to be able to wear her beautiful costume and dance on stage.  It definately made her dance lessons more enjoyable and exciting again.

Hailey danced both Saturday and Sunday this weekend.  It was tough, 2 dances each day, 4 costumes, 3 hairstyles.  Trying to get all that done, plus keeping a 5 year old interested and a 5 month old happy was definately a challenge.  I greatly appreciated my Mom's help to get everything done and get our beauties where they needed to be when they needed to be there.

The younger ones are considered "Ribbon" category, where they basically go on and are only positively critiqued and each one gets a ribbon for their participation in the performance.  It helps encourage future interest in participating in the festival.  As you can see, Kaia was very excited to get her ribbon.  Hailey is in an older group and her performances are judged and critiqued by the same adjudicator.  Her classes earned 3 High Silvers and ended it off with a Gold performance.  They've worked  diligently so far and seemed pleased with the experience.  Maybe Hailey will even want to try doing a solo or small group next year.  Good job to all the dancers!  It was nice to see so many people interested in supporting their dancers.    

Over the last 10 days I have earned a greater appreciation for having access to my laptop and wireless internet.  For as much garbage you can find on the internet, there are some good nutritional nuggets out there too, you just need to know where to look for them.  My quandry: find a more efficient way to get proper hairstyles accomplished for my girls over the last 2 weekends.

I hate to admit that I am not necessarily the most patient Mommy in the world (shocker, I'm sure).  My mission this year is to be more patient, giving, and understanding to my family.  The problem is the first thing that goes out the window when I get stressed is patience!

Unfortunately trying to create all these fancy hairdos for these events stresses me to the max, or at least it has in the past.  My girls have been blessed with full heads of thick long hair, and growing up with long thick hair myself you'd think I'd be all prepared for this.  Uh, NO.  I mean I can do pony tails, and pig tails, and the occasional braid, but I never spent this much time on my own hair in my life!  If it can't be done in 5-10 minutes, it's not worth it for me.  So now here I am, wrestling with how to achieve the perfect "curly pony tail" or french braid, and ballet buns!  Seriously it took at least an hour, hour and a half to curl Hailey's pony tail each time last year, nevermind having to "quickly" change it from a bun to a pony tail between performances.  Now with an unpredictable 5 month old, I just don't have that kind of time, nor do I want that stress.

This year I decided to "do my research" and get smarter about this endeavor.  With the help of youtube, I was able to achieve proper french braids (which I've never done before, inverted yes, proper, no), and learned about pin curls and rag/paperbag curls.  The braiding was simple enough, I've braided my hair enough in the past to figure that one out.  So, the real challenge was accomplishing the dreaded "curly pony tail".  Why don't I just use foam rollers??  Believe me, I thought of that; but her hair is too long.  We tried that last year and even after 24 hours her hair was still too damp to keep the curl and we still ended up having to blow dry her hair and curl it with the curling iron.  Not very stress free for dancer or Mommy when your trying to beat the clock and get everything done before having to load up the family and dance apparel and get to a competition an hour away!  Compounding problem, this year we needed a bun for 8am this morning, but a curly pony tail for 12:30 with keeping in mind that baby might decide they need to eat at the very same time that I need to work on the hairdo.  What to do??  Pray!

We practiced a few different things through the week, and decided to do pin curls.   What a concept, you just put gel or putty into the damp hair and curl up around your fingers and pin in place!  Let dry and voila, or so it seemed.  Like I said Hailey has very LONG hair, so it was a bit of a challenge, and the pin curls were still a little damp when I took the pins out, but the curl still held (YAY!!).  I simply left out a small top section that could cover the pin curls and when we put her hair net on to make her bun you would never know the hair underneath wasn't in a traditional bun.  Tricky :)  That left only a small amount of hair to have to curl with an iron; which then only took me about 5 minutes (another YAY!!).  The pin curls weren't perfect, but the nicer curls disguised them (bonus).  Why is this important you ask??   Almost zero stress!

This discovery allowed me to take a little time to enjoy making up my girls for their dance performances.  To get into the van on time, with all the necessary tidbits, costumes and shoes, to get to the performance rehearsals on time, with little stress to me and almost zero stress to my girls.  What a priceless thing!

I encourage you to take a little time this week to find a way to reduce your stress level.  It's good for your heart, good for your health, and good for your family!  

Happy St. Patrick's Day

Well, I can't say that I'm being very festive on this fun "holiday".  I'm not even wearing green.  I don't drink, so the concept of heading off to a pub to indulge in green beer is lost on me, but I do eat, so I spent some time over the last week researching recipes to try out today.

For lunch I made Mini-Shepard's Pies

 (http://www.tasteofhome.com/recipes/Mini-Shepherd-s-Pies).  My 5 year old couldn't wait for lunch because the house smelled so yummy, but restrained herself from coming to the oven to come and peek because she didn't want to "ruin the surprise".  I had to come up with a biscuit recipe as well because I didn't have any store bought dough on hand like the recipe called for, and seeing as they were so simple, I doubt I'll ever need to buy that stuff again anyway. (http://www.tasteofhome.com/recipes/Fluffy-Biscuits)

Later I'm going to try Irish stew for supper, but seeing as we're not big lamb eaters, I'm making it a beef version.  Hopefully it's a good as lunch was.  (http://www.tasteofhome

.com/Recipes/Irish-Stew-2)

Until this year I haven't taken much time to make each holiday special, but I have decided this year to change that.  So why St. Patrick's day?  Why not wait until Easter?  I had intended to make a big deal of Valentine's day too, but having my husband away on business trips for most of the month, special Valentine's cookies was about all I could muster with a 4 month old, 5 year old and a 10 year old at home to keep up to.  I was hoping that Anya would be more predictable by February, but not quite, but now, being almost 5 months old, there is starting to be a little bit of light showing at the end of that tunnel.  

Again, why St. Patrick's day?  Personally, I think we've lost the zest for celebrating holidays.  I remember fondly wearing appropriate colours of clothing for different special days.  But there's something special I feel for St. Paddy's day, maybe somewhere down the line part of my family was Irish, who knows.  I realize there's little but myth about leprechauns, lucky shamrocks and pots of gold, but to a child it's a world of fun and imagination brimming with possibility.  I want my girls to find this intimate knowledge of imagination.

So today, amongst the hustle and bustle of mixing biscuits, and making Irish Stew and gold jello, I took a little time to reflect on the Shamrock.  A bold symbol of St. Patrick's Day, but what does it mean for me?  It is meant to symbolize the holy trinity.  Oh how thankful I am to have all three here with me, helping me be peaceful in mixing ingredients (thankful that I have food in the pantry to cook and bake with); helping me be thankful to be sharing it with 3 beautiful, healthy little girls; helping me honour ancestors past in tasting and sharing a little piece of Irish tradition.

May you find a moment to take a little time and find the life in the Shamrock.

Day 1 - A time for Firsts!

Welcome to my Blog.  This is my first attempt at a blog, so I expect there will be an evolution along the way.  Hopefully I can make this an interesting experience for more people than just myself, but I guess we'll find out.

I named this "Just Take a Little Time" for many reasons.  The main one being that we all sometimes need to be reminded to stop and "smell the flowers" so to speak.  We allow ourselves to get so busy in "life" that we forget to take a little time for ourselves, our families, our friends and neighbours... (you get the idea).  In taking a moment to stop and truly savour the moment, we can sometimes find some of the most precious blessings.

I am a Mom to 3 very wonderful girls.  My oldest is Hailey, she is 10 and has been a learning experience from the moment she was born.  Kaia is 5, and is enjoying Kindergarten very much; she looks up to her older sister and loves her little sister to pieces.  Anya was born in October.  We thought we might end up with 3 September babies, but she is almost a month later than the other two.  The three of them are the most precious blessings we have received.

My husband and I have been married for 15 years this spring.  Some days it feels like we've been together forever and other days I feel like we barely know each other!  It's not always been an easy and fun adventure, but I find it is important to try to take a little time to pray for our relationship everyday and I have hope that we will still be driving each other crazy for many years to come ;) .

I enjoy baking and trying new recipes.  I can't say I'm the world's best cook, and I prefer baking, but my family and I must eat, so I like to make it interesting.  I'm not into haute cuisine, I'm all about good "old-fashioned" home cooking.  I'm currently seeking out homemade recipes for some of my restaurant favorites as well as finding recipes to make more nutritious versions of my store favorites as well.

I am currently supposed to be on a mission to lose weight, eat healthy, lower my cholesterol and reduce stress.  I can't say to this point I've been really that successful at any of those things.  I thought I'd reduced my stress level finally being away from work, but considering I have a small infant at home I think I just changed the type of stress that I'm dealing with!

In creating this blog, I hope to be more accountable on this journey.  So the title "Just Take a Little Time" is meaningful to me in that I need to remember to do just that.  Take a little time each day for myself, my daughters, my husband, my friends and family, and most importantly time with my Creator.  If you are interested in joining me on this journey, I look forward to taking a little time with you as well.