Daycare / Cesspool of Germs

We survived our first 'month' of daycare! It was really two weeks and then two weeks of holidays, but the germs she picked up lasted the whole month! Yay! OMG so many germs.

Montessori at Home

So what the heck is Montessori anyway? 
It is super hard to describe all that Montessori is! Liam's toddler room teacher said that the best way to describe it, is to see it in action, visit a Montessori classroom. From my experience, it will be transforming. But here is my best definition:

Beginnings and Endings

When you go back to work after a maternity leave and need to put your little one in some sort of care you do a lot of research. There are a lot of choices out there for childcare. Family, home care, childcare centre, nursery school, Montessori, etc. Our choices were kind of limited since we had no family in the area, there were no licensed home cares in our town and Liam was too young for nursery schools or Montessori, so I looked into daycares. I researched and toured 5 daycare centres before I chose one.

No sick days, but the benefits are good.

Fair warning: This is a pity party post. You don't want to join my party, skip it. 

Too Many Toys

Last year we asked our families to kindly cut down on the number of gifts given to our kids. It was very difficult having these conversations. In some cases I wrote emails in addition to multiple face to face and telephone conversations.  Hardest thing ever. To tell the people you love, and who love your kids, to please please stop buying presents for them. But we had to. Liam was only two and

You say tomato...

The harvest has begun! 

The September harvest I mean. Some things we have been harvesting all summer like Mixed Greens, New Zealand Spinach, Mint, Sage, Basil and Oregano. For some reason the oregano bush began attracting very large black flying bugs. I have no idea what they are or if they bite but they are HUGE and will let you know in no uncertain terms that you are too close to their oregano bush flowers. As a result, I am currently afraid to pick oregano.

Cleanliness is next to Craziness

I'm messy. My hubby is messy. The kids are messy. The cat is messy. We all live together in a messy house. And we are quite happy being little messy people!

When I'm big, I want to be a ....

Liam, at three years old, has a long list of things he has decided he wants to be when he grows up, here are some of those dreams:

Baby Addiction

We had planned on having three kids. More actually, but settled on three as a nice number, since the hubby and I both came from families of 3 kids and thought it was pretty fun.  But after the experience with Adeleine (15 weeks in the NICU is a little rough on people) we thought we'd had enough. I hesitated to make a full decision on this until Adeleine was older and the NICU experience was behind us a bit. I said we'd wait at least a year to decide if we were going to have a third child. A year is quickly approaching and

Terrible Parenting: Lessons learned

Raising kids, you have to learn as you go. I have no previous experience raising a three year old. It is all new to me. Every phase, every lesson, every food preference is a surprise. It is almost as if Liam is teaching me how to parent at each new stage. I wish I was more prepared, but mostly I'm just flying by the seat of my pants here.