Craft and Cookie Day!

With Valentine's Day just around the corner Lauren and I had some pink and red fun yesterday. We spent the day making Valentine's Day cards and baking cookies. We started the day making our dough because it had to chill for two to three hours before we could roll it out. So still rocking our jammies, we put on our aprons and got in the kitchen.

After the dough was ready we put it in the fridge, cleaned up one mess and immediately made another one. While Lauren was at pre-school Tuesday Nicholas and I went to Michael's Arts and Crafts and loaded up on Valentine's Day art supplies.

She was pretty excited to open them up and start creating.

We made Valentine's Day cards for select people in the family and you'll receive them this weekend.

While Lauren "did art" Nicholas got in his daily workout

and played with his tongue...

...which he thought was pretty funny.

Eight cards later, Lauren was ready to clean up and move on to the next project. However, if you don't get one it's not because she doesn't love you, it's because I could only stand so much glitter in my kitchen.

Next up...baking cookies!

Eight to ten minutes in the oven, 30 minutes to cool and a two hour nap later; it was time to decorate them.

I let her try doing icing on one, but she much preferred sprinkles.

All done!

After dinner it was time to taste test...

They got the Lauren seal of approval. After dessert we once again cleaned up and got back in jammies. However, before bed it was time for homework. Yep, homework. Lauren had to bring 20 Valentines for her friends so we got to work. Well, I got to work. I had to write her name on them and she was in charge of handing me stickers.

Homework done and belly full, it was time to brush teeth and go to bed.

Conversations with Nicholas

Nicholas was quite chatty last night so I grabbed my camera...

Changes in Lauren Land

Lauren has had lots of changes in the last three months. Most notably she got a baby brother, who she absolutely adores. She loves to be with him, telling me she's going to "potect him" (protect him). She says she's going to teach him to talk and eat "when he gets bigger."

She's also been potty training for awhile now, but we finally got serious about it shortly before Nicholas was born. Unfortunately the addition of baby brother caused her to regress a little bit so she's still working on it. She's motivated by rewards though. Her motivation for pee peeing in the potty consistently is two My Little Ponies, a pink one and a purple one. She's good with pooping on the potty, (thank God), but she gets busy and forgets to pee pee. She's working on it.

Speaking of motivation, about a month ago she gave up her beloved "sassies" (pacifiers). When we discussed giving them up I asked her if she wanted new baby doll if she had no more sassies and she said, ummm...I think I want a pink puppy. So I said okay. We started with no sassies outside of the bed and we did that for about a month then we moved to no sassies at all, which I thought would be difficult, but it happened to coincide with the delivery of her new big girl bed!

We kept her in the crib as long as we could but in December she started climbing out so it was time to order a big girl bed. When it came the new rule was no sassies in the big girl bed, which she was totally fine with. We've been sassy free ever since.

Now that Lauren is in a big girl bed it was time to set the crib up for baby brother. Originally the plan was for the office to be converted into a bedroom for Nicholas, but that was going to take a lot of furniture shuffling so for now he and Lauren are sharing a room. Thankfully he's too little to realize his room is pink and purple. As for crib bedding, I wanted something that was kind of neutral in color so it would blend into Lauren's room. We went with a safari theme. It's cute and even though the room's not perfect, it works.

Lil' Jon likes Lauren's new bed because it allows him to recline as he looks out the window.

The last and most recent change is pre-school. Last week Lauren moved from the toddler room at daycare into the pre-school room. She was VERY excited about it, even though it meant leaving her favorite teacher behind. She's the youngest one in the class now, but she's doing great according to her new teacher Ms. Belfield. What's cool is Ms. Belfield used to be a caregiver in the infant room and she took care of Lauren when she was a baby. Now she’s a teacher in the pre-school room and she once again takes care of Lauren. So she's seen her grow up.

The pre-school room is very structured. They don't just play all day. They have lesson plans, they go on field trips and they even have homework. Lauren likes her new class and she's finally learning some of her friends’ names. The first day she came home and I asked her who she played with and she told me "I don't know. They didn't tell me their names." By the end of the week I learned she has friends named Taylor, Shayla, Logan and Christian. She also has a couple of familiar faces in the room. Her friend Chloe' from the toddler room started pre-school shortly after Lauren and of course Tomarion is in there too (but he's a biter so Lauren doesn't like him).

Ol' Blue Eyes

Hopefully they stay this color 'cause they're really pretty! If you click on the picture it will make it bigger so you can see them up close.

Pea-yo

Last February Patrick and I were shopping at Sears and as we maneuvered through the home department, I noticed a rack of fuzzy, furry pillows. I picked up a round, pink one and shook it at Lauren. She laughed and giggled. I put the pillow down and began to push the cart away when she said "I want it." I told her no, she didn't need it and Patrick said it was cruel to show it to her then tell her no. So we bought the $6 pillow. Lauren was just about to turn two years old at the time and she could talk really well, but she couldn't pronounce some words perfectly just yet and "pillow" was one of them. So the fuzzy ball became known as Pea-yo.

Lauren LOVES Pea-yo and it's funny, if you ask her who gave it to her she says "Daaaad…da" dragging out the first syllable really long to prove a point that Mamma had no part in it.

Pea-yo is about to turn one soon and he's had a hard life during the last 365 days. He's quite well traveled; he's been to Destin, Fort Walton, Panama City as well as many trips to Birmingham.

However, he suffered a horrible accident last spring. Lauren was sick and when she threw up in her bed some of it got on Pea-yo, so I washed him. Not a good idea. You see, when we got Pea-yo I cut off all the tags (including the one that said "spot clean only." Whoops.

Sick Lauren wanted him back because she didn't feel good so I threw him in the dryer on low heat delicate for just a few minutes to speed up the drying process...big mistake. He came out all matted down and even though I combed, brushed and fluffed him he would never again be the fuzzy ball he once was. Lauren didn't care. She still loved him.

Well for the last few months Patrick and I have looked for another Pea-yo both at Sears and online, but we couldn’t find one. It would help if I knew who made him, but again, I cut off those stupid tags so I didn't know the brand. Well a couple of weeks ago Patrick and I were back at Sears and as I looked at baby clothes I told him to run over to the home store just to see if they had any Pea-yos. I finished up shopping and went over to see if he had any success. He sort of did. He found a blue one and an orange one, but no pink ones. So we asked the sales associate if they planned to get more and she said probably not because they'd had those for awhile now. They had been in the back during the Christmas season and they just put them back out to get rid of them.

So we asked Lauren which one she wanted and after much deliberation she chose the blue one. I don't remember poor Pea-yo being this fluffy.

When we got home I again cut the tags off, but I saved them and while Lauren napped I looked online to see if I could find a pink one. No such luck, but it doesn't matter. You see even though she has a nice, new, clean Pea-yo, Lauren still prefers her old one. New Pea-yo gets no love. So I've called off the search because Pea-yo can't be replaced.

Christmas 2009 (part I)

Ahhh...February...time for cupid, hearts, valentines and of course...Gordon family Christmas photos! We're a little behind in posting so to catch up, here is how we spent the holiday season...

Nicholas was born November 21 and Thanksgiving was five days later so I wasn't sure I'd be up to shopping on Black Friday, but turns out I was, and since mom was in town to help with the kids, we left them with her and Patrick and I did some Christmas shopping. After we hit the mall we decided it was a great day to get the Christmas tree because we didn't have to worry about dragging both kids out in the cold. We ended up at this quaint little tree farm out in the country where we cut down our own tree. Okay not really. We actually went to Lowes because it was convenient and they had lots of pretty trees at awesome prices. Maybe we'll try the tree farm next year when we don't have a 6-day-old baby.

Lauren was WAY excited when we brought the tree home strapped to the top of the car. She and puppy watched from the front door as Dadda got it ready to bring inside.

After we got the tree up Patrick got all of the decorations out of the attic and I sorted through them to decide what made the cut this year.

Patrick and Lauren set the deer up in the yard and tried to figure out why the "Lauren deer" wasn't moving.

Puppy was excited to see his Christmas toys...

And Nicholas didn't help decorate AT ALL...

The day after Thanksgiving was also the day of the Alabama/Auburn game so at halftime I got the mantle decorated.

Then over the next few days we finally got the Christmas tree decorated.

And here is our exterior illumination...

I decided to do a combo birth announcement and Christmas card this year since Nicholas was born so close to the timeframe of sending out Christmas cards. However, I didn't realize how difficult it would be to get photos for it. This was the card we sent out...

But what you don't know is that middle picture took 85 attempts to get just right. Yep, that's 84 out-takes that didn't turn out. I wanted Lil' Jon on the card too, but we couldn't get a good one of him with the kids in time for the cards to go to print. However, later in the month I snapped this shot of pupper by the tree.

Since I was off work I decided to spend some time with Lauren doing fun arts and crafts projects. Here is her handprint wreath.

We also built a gingerbread house. I had never made one before so I thought it would be fun. What I didn't know was how quickly the icing would dry and how frustrating it would be to build one with a 2-year-old. Here is our gingerbread house construction lot -- all ready to build.

And here is Lauren -- all ready to eat the ingredients, I mean decorate it.

She was very careful about where she placed the gumdrops and silly me bought the big house because I thought we needed it. Next year we'll go with the smaller model.

Whoops! Got some on my hand...

No problem...we'll take care of that...please don't call the health department.

After about two hours and two pounds of candy later, we were done with our confection creation...

Okay, so we spent too much time on the roof and we got lazy on the sides. It was a BIG house. Lauren was very proud of the "candy house" and she kept asking when we could eat it.

That about sums up our holidays at home in Columbus. I'll post Christmas Eve and day photos later along with New Year's Eve.