I finally captured one of these on camera - the elusive baby smile! Doesn’t he look like a charmer?

For more Wordless Wednesday head over to 5 Minutes for Mom!

After the girls’ party this year we decided to do video thank you notes to send to their friends. It seemed like a fun way for them to say thanks in their own words (since they can’t really write yet) and for their friends (who can’t read yet) to hear from them how much they appreciated everyone coming to their party. We’re still getting them all finished because it was quite an undertaking (each Thank You takes several takes to get it somewhat coherent) but we’re almost done.

This particular outtake I just loved. The girls loved this present given to them by some good friends of ours, but they were just confused about which thank you video we were doing. Still, I love how sincere she is until she realizes she has no idea which present she’s saying thank you for. Needless to say we tried again for take number 2 after I reminded her again what present we were talking about…

I’m the new Atlanta Children’s Crafts Examiner over at Examiner.com which means I’ll be posting several cool craft articles a week over there with fun ideas for things to keep little hands busy.

In the meantime, check out my first article on creating clay texture stones with kids. It’s a fun, easy & educational craft that my girls loved!

Click here to read the article!

I wanted to share this picture for Wordless Wednesday but hated to do it without sharing the recipe. So, forgive me for not totally following the Wordless Wednesday rules.

(Thanks to my brother-in-law and his iPhone for this great picture!)

For Father’s Day I made the dads in our family my favorite Apple Pie recipe. It is a seriously amazing pie. I found the recipe here on Recipezaar.com.

But, here it is for you if you’d like to try it out:

Yesterday was Trav’s 3 month doctor’s appointment. And the one where I finally came face to face with the dreaded vaccination question.

With Kai, I vaccinated no questions asked. That’s what you do, right? You vaccinate your kids. I honestly didn’t even know I had a choice.

With Ivy, I vaccinated some. But she had a terrible reaction to one of her vaccinations and by then I had learned that **gasp** some people don’t vaccinate their kids. And then I learned why.

And for the last 2 years I have wavered between vaccinating, selectively vaccinating and not vaccinating at all. And by “wavered” I mean I stopped vaccinating because I couldn’t decide whether or not to vaccinate and so I went into analysis paralysis. But, thankfully, my girls have been very healthy and even though they were both in preschool we never had any problems whatsoever.

Then when I knew Trav was coming I had to revisit this whole issue. And that meant getting a new doctor because our doctor told us that if we decided not to vaccinate fully along the schedule the CDC published then we should just move along to some other practice. Which, of course, we did. Because, whether we decided to or not I didn’t want a doctor who would take away my ability to make decisions about these things.

But, the question still remained, should we vaccinate or not? There are so many reasons to vaccinate. And so many reasons not to. I read Dr. Sears’ The Vaccine Book about 3 times. And Googled until I was fully freaked out by the arguments on both sides of the issue.

We declined the Hep B shots in the hospital. And didn’t have to face the question again until yesterday’s visit. But, I’d done my research and so I had it all figured out, right? Right. Two months ago I had decided not to vaccinate. Then a month ago I decided to do DTaP because of our potential travel to Hawaii this next year. Then the night before our appointment I read way too much on DTaP and decided not to vaccinate at all until he was 6 months old. But, at the doctor’s appointment my ped talked to me about the pros and cons. She is really truly an amazing pediatrician who is 100% fine with no vaccinations. But, she was concerned about our travel with Trav, too. Her honest recommendation was that I do the DTaP since Pertussis and Diptheria are potential threats when traveling to the South Pacific. But she respected my ability to make the decision enough not pressure me. And so I made the best decision I knew how. I got the DTaP.

But not before I sat quietly in the exam room and prayed over Trav that he wouldn’t have a bad reaction. That the scary side effects would not be an issue for him. And that I was making the best decision possible for him.

Of course, all the way home I worried. And panicked. And, above all else, prayed.

Some of you may think I’ve made the wrong decision for vaccinating at all. Some of you may think I’ve made the wrong decision for not vaccinating all the way. And some of you may be right where I am still struggling to decide just what is best for your kids.

Either way, it was one of the most difficult decisions I’ve had to make as a mom. The problem is, whether you choose to vaccinate or not you never really know whether you’ve made the right choice until something bad happens. And I don’t like those kinds of decisions.

But, I’m a mom. And I suppose that is why we get paid the big bucks, right? Yeah, I thought so.

Where do you weigh in on the vaccination debate?

Because he always has to share picture posts with his sisters I thought I’d share one of just him. On his own.

Our little guy went to the doctor today for his 3 month check up. He’s growing like a weed. Though he’s still really teensy. He’s in the 25% for his height and weight, but that noggin of his is measuring a whopping 50%. But, it is such a cute noggin you don’t even notice that it’s bigger than the rest of him!

He’s a far cry from his older sister who always measured in the 90% (despite being 6 lbs. 6 oz. at birth) so it will be fun to see if he gets growth spurt that will let him stand a chance against his big sisters!

I lost my keys. Six weeks ago.

And yesterday was abysmal. If you follow me on Twitter you already knew this. Actually, I’ve been whining all week. But yesterday? That was the icing on the cake.

First, there is this vacant rental house. And cleaning up the disgusting mess left by our tenants. And the stress of paying for it without getting rent. Then work has slowed down again unexpectedly for Thomas which is really bad when you’re an hourly contract employee. Not good timing. Either one of those things I could handle on its own. But together? It is bad. I’ve been trying to be positive. I’ve been praying a lot.

Then yesterday morning on my way home from dropping Thomas off at the train station, I said to God, “Could you please help us out? Could something good happen today? Even something small? Please?”

And when I got home and took Traveler out of his car seat I was in a better mood. And I thought things were looking up. Until I discovered that he’d had a baby poop blow-out in the car seat cover I had just taken out of the dryer. But that wasn’t the best part. There nestled snug in his car seat of poo was my Blackberry. Trust me when I say, you don’t even want to know what that was like.

That’s when I told God that if that was His idea of helping that I’d be fine without His help today.

Follow that up with an entire day of everything that can go wrong will and, well, you’ll understand why I tweeted “If God is the Heavenly Father, then I’m the bratty whiney teenage daughter today.” Boo-hoo. Poor me.

But I yelled at God a lot yesterday. We’re cool like that, though, so you don’t have to worry. He knows me. He gets me. And, thankfully, He puts up with me in this stuff. So I asked Him why He couldn’t give me one stinking good thing that day. Anything. I wouldn’t be picky.

And He didn’t remind me that my children and husband are safe and healthy. And He didn’t point out to me that I had a roof over my head. And He didn’t rub my nose in the fact that I have a pantry full of food to put in my children’s bellies.

Instead, last night after something I needed became annoyingly lodged in a crevice in the van and I had to get Thomas to remove the whole center console to get it out God showed me where my keys were. The keys that had been lost for 6 weeks. The keys that I thought I’d lost for good.

And for that moment, that one small thing was enough to let me know He was there. And that was enough for the day.

Cookers are what the girls call everyone from chefs to the people who make their Happy Meals at McDonald’s purely organic healthy take-out meals.

So, imagine their excitement when Dewde and Dewdette gave them “cooker clothes” for their birthday! Pretty sweet, huh?

For more Wordless Wednesday, head over to 5 Minutes for Mom!

I can do lots of things. I can write some kick-ass haiku. I can bargain shop like a mad-woman. I can do math in my head. I can read really fast. I cannot, however, cook well. Not at all.

On more than one occasion Thomas has come home to smoke and the scent of charred food in our kitchen. I burn lots of things. Steaks, hamburger helper, scalloped potatoes (see above pic). I under cook lots of things. Pizza, fish, chicken, biscuits. Have you ever had medium rare chicken? I have. I am a menace in the kitchen. To be honest, I’d rather clean the kitchen than cook in it. (And I hate cleaning so that should tell you something.)

These scalloped potatoes pictured above? I made them explode. Explode, people. Do I even need to say any more?

Oh well. At least I still have haiku.

A version of this post was originally published December 1, 2007. And, no, I haven’t gotten better at cooking yet! : )

Now it’s your turn. What is your worst cooking story?

Our first Artful Friday was last week and even though it was just the girls and me it was really a fun day.

We started out reading Leonardo the Terrible Monster which is a great book about not-so-scary monsters and then we set out to make our own not-so-scary monster friends.
Styrofoam eggs & balls, paint, glue, glitter, & BBQ skewers were our materials and the girls used them with enthusiasm!

Even though it nearly killed the control freak in me to do it, I let them have complete control over how they made their monsters. I didn’t tell them where to put the eyes or how to glue the hair. And you know what? I think they came out even better because I kept my hands off!

See what I mean?
This week we’re doing a dad-themed book/craft in honor of Father’s Day (shhh…don’t tell Thomas) and I’ll post pics next Monday!

Got any cool summer arts/crafts ideas for kids? Feel free to post suggestions/links in the comments!