Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows...for Toddlers?

This morning I brought the boys upstairs to get dressed so we could go to Target for some Christmas shopping. Aidan immediately told me he needed to go to bed and jumped in on my side of the bed, and got under the covers. 

I decided to get Mason ready first since Aidan was otherwise "occupied", and when I came back into my room Aidan was sitting up "reading" my Harry Potter book.

I ran and grabbed the camera, so when I snuck back in with it, this was the shot I got, haha.

He proceeded to tell me he was reading, and that it was his favorite book.

Yup. That's my boy.

A favorite handmade gift for kiddos-molded crayons

Ok, so I I'll admit I got my inspiration for this project about 2 years ago from Martha Stewart's website.

http://www.marthastewart.com/267304/crazy-crayons

I made a few molded crayon gifts Aidan's 1st Christmas for some of our buddies who were a bit older than him.

This year I thought I would try them again, especially since reading on a Mommy blog about how Crayolas were best for melting. Last time I bought a few big boxes of RoseArt because they were cheaper, but they didn't melt all that well and I decided not to do this project again. 

Until I read the tip about Crayola.

Over the summer and fall I collected little 24 packs of Crayolas when I found them for like 44 cents. 

I also had bought a cookie/cupcake pan that has snowmen and mittens to use as my mold the first time around which makes cute Chistmas themed crayons.

Ok so I sat here early yesterday morning while the kids were asleep and started peeling crayons. And after about 10 crayons I was cursing and almost gave up.

Have you ever tried peeling like a million effing Crayolas? Their paper is glued on like crazy and peels off in tiny little shreds. I was soooo aggravated!

Then I had my "aha!" moment.

I ran to the kitchen drawer, pulled out the scalpel we keep for pumpkin carving and sliced the paper down the middle.

It popped right off! Yay now I could continue with my project!!

I broke them up, organized them into similar color groups, put them in a low temp oven (250-300*) for 15 mins, and voila!

I did learn the trick for getting them out of a metal pan is once they've cooled a bit put the tray in the freezer for a few minutes...the crayons pull away from the sides and then you can tip the tray over and they fall right out.

Once Aidan woke up I let him put all the crayon pieces into the molds so the color combos got a bit crazy and disorganized, but he had fun so who cares??

The first Batch

I hope his friends enjoy their little treat from us!

ps you don't want to use a pan or tin that you plan on using for food because there is lots of crayon left in the pan that you jut can't get out. My Christmas tin is exclusively for melted crayons.

O Christmas Tree

This is the first year we have ever gotten a real tree. I have always been against them because they're expensive, they shed and you have to worry about things like watering it and then disposing of it after Christmas.

But Ryan talked me into it.

We really wanted to go to a tree farm and cut one down ourselves, but the weekend we got it it was 60* and sunny. Not what either of us had imagined cutting down a tree weather would be like. We were thinking snow on the ground, pulling the kiddos in a sled.

Not in PA...what are we, insane? I don't think we've had a white Christmas yet since moving here. 

SO we went to Lowe's to pick up some faux hardwood flooring for me to use for my photography stuff and while we were there we saw they had trees, and yes, we grabbed one.

My tree is from Lowe's. And it was under $30.

Yup.

Oh well, it's real, it's pretty, and it smells yummy too.  I really only had to vacuum up after we decorated it because we knocked the needles all over, and Ryan has been watering it so I guess it's really no that much work after all.

Aidan got to help us decorate it, and he started by putting all the candy canes on it.

All on the same branch. 

Every time I turned to look he was adding another one to the same spot.

We gave him a few ornaments to put on as well, but he had a hard time hooking them on the branches so he got frustrated and just stuck to the candy canes.

So far I've only caught him messing with it once. He had pulled his ride-on dump truck up to it and I walked into the living room to find him standing on top of it grabbing ornaments off. 

He still brings me Candy Canes from it though asking me to open them for him, but they're so old I'm pretty sure they're inedible. They've been in the box with all the ornaments for like 5 years or so, so I took pity on him and bought him a box of candy canes that he could eat the next time I was shopping.

The helmet....camo style

Well, it finally arrived. 

The Helmet.

We went to pick it up and Mason's head got measured a bit more and the ear cutouts got personalized for him but once it was all set we plopped it on his head and out the door we went! well, after Aidan played around with my sunglasses while waiting, and got some new stickers from the Orthotist for his truck.

Oh and when he put the helmet on Mason at the office for the first time Aidan stated that "now Mason can ride a bike outside!" Yup, I can't make this stuff up!

You have to gradually increase the time you wear it each day to let the scalp and skin adjust to it properly, and to make sure the fit is alright.

Mason has excema and super sensitive skin so they told me I could go slower than the written out plan, so that's what I did.

By the time we got to him wearing it the full 23 hours a day and to bed for 2 nights in a row he had developed something akin to a blister across the side of his forehead that has the bulge that the helmet is supposed to fix.

I slightly freaked yesterday after work when I took it off to let his head air out for a bit (it can get pretty sweaty and gross under there, poor buddy) and saw the giant red mark, and it felt squishy, like a giant blister! I left it off right then and there and then this am I called and we got in in the afternoon to have them do some more adjustments.

Unfortunately now though because of the texture that was created by grinding out some of the inside to make it push less against his forehead, he put some smooth tape across the spots where he had to grind it inside so it does;t rub on his skin. The tape extends out over the front outside of the helmet and boy does it look GHETTO.

White tape against brown and green camo? Extremely obvious.

The he also did some sort of heat treatment on one side too because it was pushing and causing a bad red mark in one spot, and we were afraid he was going to develop a pressure ulcer there. So now the pattern looks all scratched off on one side too.

The orthotist joked that now it looks like a battle helmet.

As if he didn't look weird enough with it on, right? ARGH!

Although I did make a Christmas card with this picture on it (taken before the helmet was altered to look terrible)  for the orthotist and brought it to him today, and he thought it was great. Asked if he could hang it up at the office, haha!

Dishes

Isn't this how you do the dishes at your house too?

Thanksgiving

For Thanksgiving this year my dad and brother joined us since we couldn't go anywhere due to Ryan's work schedule.

The festivities began the night before with Aidan helping me make the pumpkin pie. I get out all my spices only to discover I only have enough nutmeg left for one pie. I planned on making an Apple pie later as well.

SO I leave Aidan standing at the island with the bowl of dry ingredients (sugar, salt, cinnamon, nutmeg, baking powder, etc) already measured, and head into the living room to get my phone to call Michele to see if she has any nutmeg I can have for the next pie.

I walked back into the kitchen mere seconds later to find Aidan standing over the bowl pouring salt in.

AAAAAAAHHH!

Ok, so in reality since the bowl was mostly sugar I guess it's a good thing I caught him doing it because otherwise I never would have noticed. Can you imagine what that pie would have tasted like? eew.


Mason passed out in a snuggly blankie while the pie was in the oven...because watching Mom and Aidan bake sure is tiring!

Grandpa and Uncle Larry arrived shortly before dinner was ready, and Aidan fell out of his chair while playing at the table with them and bonked his forehead, started to cry and insisted he needed a band-aid for it.

Then he insisted he needed another one to match on the other side.
What is it with kids and bandaids?

Uncle Larry even had a video of Santa talking to Aidan from the portable north pole, which Aidan found amazing.
Santa knew his name, had his picture and even knew he lived in Pennsylvania. He was certainly amazed.

We had a great time together, stuffed our faces, and even the dog passed out that night...with his reindeer ears askew (courtesy of Aidan of course)

Sitting and onions?

Sooo..my kid smells like onions right now.

Why, you ask?

Well because he insisted he wanted to take a bite out of the onion I had out for dinner. 

Insisted.

So Ryan peeled it while I yelled "wait! I need the camera!"

SO stubborn stinker Aidan (who I tried to talk out of it), took a bite.

And hated it.

Soooooo glad I grabbed the camera hahaha!!

This afternoon we had some relaxing fun...I'm not going to lie.  I broke out the Christmas movies for Aidan today.

I'm hoping it will give him a better idea of Santa and Christmas before Christmas Day is actually here.

Mason is now getting pretty good at supported sitting. He can actually sit up with his butt snuggled inside the boppy for a decent amount of time.

He and Aidan had some quality time today, and it was so cute because as soon as I had Mason sitting up, Aidan exclaimed" I go get you cars Mason!", and came running back with his giant remote controlled Lightning McQueen.

And Mason loved it.

Waffles and Rocking horses

Just a quick memo about our Sunday morning.

Aidan helped me make waffles, so we pulled up a chair and got busy. Once we were done, he insisted he had to eat them with powdered sugar on them, which is how Michele's guys eat theirs. Ok, wish granted.

There was powdered sugar everywhere, because he insisted he had to eat them standing on his chair at the kitchen island. Ah well...pick and choose my battles, right? 

At least he ate breakfast!

After breakfast I got out the wooden rocking horse that was Ryan's that my in-laws brought down to us. I plan on using it for photo sessions, and have a super fun idea for a christmas picture for Aidan. 

But first, poor horsie needs a new tail. I got some yarn this week to fix him up, but today I just didn't have time since I was on my way out the door to do a photo session. 

Well, anyway Aidan hopped right on the horse and has been playing with it ever since. There's a reason classic toys like that are so classic!!

Mason updates

Hmm...where to begin?

With Torticollis. Which is what Mason was born with. It just means that on one side of his neck the muscles didn't develop properly because of how he was hanging out in the womb. This caused one side to be tighter than the other, causing him to have a tendency to "look" to the right whenever he was laying down. We noticed it very shortly after he was born because Aidan had it too.

 I guess we can totally blame my shortness and the fact that these poor kids had no room in the womb to stretch out causing this mess.

With Aidan it was a relatively easy fix. We would stretch his neck to the opposite side and eventually he started looking both ways on his own.

Mason has been a much tougher nut to crack.

The pediatrician had pointed it out at Mason's 1 month visit, long after Ryan and I had already noticed it. It was already starting to cause a flat spot on the back of his head because he was always laying on that side, even though Ryan and I had been proactively turning his head to the left whenever we saw him looking to the right.

She said if we didn't have it under control by the 2 month visit that we could contact Early Intervention and get a physical therapist that would come to the house to work on his neck with us.

Well, like I said Mason is a stubborn kid (Nooooo idea where he gets that from) and would fight us turning his head left at every chance he got. In the summer when we would take nightly walks I would try and jam a receiving blanket next to his head to try and keep him from turning it back to the right. Totally didn't work, he would just smoosh his face into it. I would sneak in while he was sleeping, turn his head, and then check on him 30 mins later and it was right back to the other side.

AAAH frustrating!

So anyway by the time his 2 month visit came, the flat spot on the back of his head was much worse, so we decided to call Early Intervention to get some help. By this time his hair was starting to come in pretty good and you could see that the spot where he always lays has almost no hair compared to the rest of his head.

It took almost 8 weeks just to get them to our house for an evaluation, and another 2 weeks from that point to even get a Physical Therapist to our house to work with us.

Once our therapist started coming she mentioned she was concerned that the pressure on the flat spot on the back of his head had created a slight bulge to form on his forehead. She mentioned he might need a helmet to help correct that but since it was so minimal she wasn't sure. So she called the Orthotist in Allentown and he offered to measure his head, and then measure it in another month to see if it was getting any better.

So we went for our consultation and it turns out that his poor little head is more misshapen that it actually looks. He said we could still wait a month and measure him again, but I could tell he didn't think anything would change. 

SO I decide right then and there that we were going to go forward with the helmet to help Mason have a nice round dome for the rest of his life. 

Sure, people at the grocery store will stare. People will wonder "what's wrong" with him, but I don't care. He'll have a nice round normal head later on in life and hopefully he will thank us for it.

He went on Tuesday to get a mold made of his head with plaster. I wanted to take pictures so Ryan was going to come along and help out, but Aidan spiked a fever that day so Ryan stayed home with him instead.

They put a sock over his head and put the plaster on in 2 pieces, and let it dry. The whole thing took maybe 10-15 minutes total. Not long at all, and Mason did really good, he grunted a lot but didn't actually start crying until about 30 seconds before the guy was done. Not bad considering he said most babies let out blood curdling screams throughout the whole process.

My buddy is a trooper though. :)

SO it will come in the week after Thanksgiving, and he will have to wear it for 3 months. We ordered it in Camo, so he'll be jut a little bit cooler, and hey, maybe we'll let Aidan put some stickers on it for him too.

Stay tuned for Double H's pics coming soon! (Double H stands for Helmet Head hahaha)

"You're going to make me wear what?"

Pumpkin Bread

Since we never got a chance to carve our pumpkins this year, (yes the week before trick or treat night was THAT busy around here) I decided to turn the pumpkins into my favorite homemade pumpkin bread.

I used the recipe from my Better Homes and Gardens cook book, which I refer to as my Cooking Bible.

You need to know anything about anything cooking related? You can find it in this book.

Anyway after nap time I had a very happy Aidan so I decided a project would be fun. He loves to wear his apron and be my helper.

Now that's some HOT pumpkin!

When I got out both my bread loaf pans he was insistent that the one with all the old burnt on stains was to be mine, and that the new clean one would be his.

Since I was making 2 loaves I decided to add chocolate chips to one which proved to be a giant fail.

They all sunk to the bottom and burnt to the pan so when I slid the loaf of bread out of the pan all the chocolate chips stayed behind.

Hah you would never even have known it had chips in it!

Of course you can't have chocolate chips out in front of a 2 yr old without letting them indulge just a bit....

It turned out delicious but I sent the majority of both loaves hunting with Ryan and another chunk with Aidan over to Michele's house. If I hadn't, both loaves would have been gone in 2 days!