New Room (in progress)!

Check out bits and pieces of my new big girl ROOM (in progress)!

We have been wanting to make Loralai a big girl room for a while now, but because of lack of funds we have not been able to create what I have envisioned for her space. Although it definitely is far from what I would like the end product to be, it is starting to take shape.

So last night I went to Winners just for a little retail therapy after a stressful day, I stumbled across this bedding and I fell in love! It is bright, vibrant, fun, and incorporated all the colours I wanted in her room. I also did not want to get her bedding that was too toddler like and that could grow with her for a while. It was a fabulous deal as well, it came with 9 pieces: the comforter which is reversible, two pillowcases (that I actually sewed together because she has a body pillow), an over-sized pillow with pillowcase (she is sitting on it reading her book), the sheet set (the top sheet I actually made a curtain out of), the wall stickers, a pink blanket, and a hamper, all for $80. You would think that for that price something would be lacking, but the quality is fantastic as well!

Eventually I would like to paint her room purple or green, put up wainscoting, and of course pick up her bed which is a hand me down from her cousin Charlie (Thank you Lissa!). Although the mod vinyl circles were not something that I necessary wanted to incorporate, she definitely needed something to spruce up her plain walls. I would like to get a book shelft, and I also ordered a couple of prints courtesy of Etsy! Which will look a little something like this:

Obviously the first picture will have all of Loralai's pertinent information and instead of a flower and ladybug will have a owl and a bird! If you like this is it by a talented local Etsy seller named Potatopatch. The 2nd print is from a talent Etsy seller Sugarfresh.

Did I mention Loralai loves it! She was so excited and was running around like a crazy little lady all day!

Hope you enjoyed your long weekend!

Push and Pedal!

It is very cool here yesterday to start off the last long weekend of the summer. We have had a heat wave for the past week but of course when Saturday rolls around we only had a high of about 16'c. But even with the cool weather we were productive and we had fun!

Loralai showing Mommy the tomato that she picked from our garden. There is also a large green pumpkin that is growing great and should be orange and ready for its debut by Halloween!

Now onto the reason for this post today: Loralai rode her tricycle correctly the first time last night! YAY!! Up until now she has sat on it and used her feet to move her around, we have kept encouraging her to use the pedals and push and last night she did it!!!

Other funny Loralai stories:

Loralai came running out from her room yesterday afternoon saying "egg egg", of course I walk over to her and she is pointing to her bum, so I asked her if she went poo and she replies "no, egg egg" lol. So of course I explained that she did in fact go #2 and there was not an egg in her diaper...lol I love the randomness, she just cracks me up!

Loralai was at the sitters on Wednesday and it was a beautiful day so the 2 little kiddies Ian and Ethan (both 2yrs old) wanted to run around the backyard naked, Loralai was hesitant but then decided that it looked like fun, so she also joined the boys bare bummed. Well when she walked outside the two boys looked and pointed at her and said "look", (I am assuming just thinking oh she is naked too) Loralai looks at them covers her chest and says "no my boobies!" haha too cute!

Birthday's!

We celebrated two birthday's this week; first my grandmother's 97th birthday and my 27th birthday! How great is it that my grandmother is exactly 70 years and 2 days older then me!

The whole family met at her retirement building last Sunday the 22nd, and my grandmother had such a great time! The pictures are not the greatest because they are taken from Todd's Iphone since the battery in our camera decided not to cooperate. If you look in the lower left hand corner Sofia, Loralai's cousin is wearing the dress that I had originally made for Loralai but did not fit her, but fits Sofia great! It was my first attempt at a pillowcase dress so it was not the greatest but looked super cute!

I went out with some friends last Saturday, and then on Tuesday the 24th for my actual birthday Todd took me out for dinner, and then tomorrow we are having a family BBQ. So I will update with photo's tomorrow night!

It has been a great week of celebrations!

26 months or 2.16 years

Loralai Fun facts:

• Loralai is 29lbs

• she loves to paint

• Loralai loves to help make smoothies with Mommy. Her new favourite phrase is "I help?"
  

• Loralai is starting to listen and understand much better everyday, which is a heaven sent for Mommy.

• When we are about the cross the road she will stop, take my hand, say "cars", look both ways, and say "no cars"! I was so proud of her every time she does this! However, I know that she does not quite get the whole concept yet about cars and the road being dangerous, but she does understand that is rule when we come to the road!

• She is starting to become more independent, and she plays and shares very well with other children.
  

• Loralai can meet friends fairly easily when we go to the park

• She is starting to speak in sentences, the most recent was when she was looking at my phone which has her picture as the screen saver, she looked at said "Mommy look it's me Loralai". I was so proud of her because she never says her own name, so it was exciting.

• Is pretends very well and you can tell that she has a great imagination!
  

Play like you mean it!

Over the last couple weekends we have gone to a quite a few parks and/or indoor play places with Loralai. I felt as though we just kept doing the same old thing all the time and we needed to switch it up a little, and Loralai definitely appreciated it!

We do have a park just by our house but on the weekends the three of us like to either find a new park or drive down to one of our favourites by the lake. This park in particular below is the first time we had taken Loralai to this different park by the lake, every time we have driven by in the past it was always so busy, and Loralai although not particularly shy or anything does retract a bit when a place is too busy mostly when there is a lot of older kids. But we were at Kempenfest which is a large outdoor vendor market, and although Loralai was being good you could tell she needed some let loose, run around, and be a wild 2 year old time!

In addition to the parks and which I have to admit was more for Mommy then Loralai, was taking a little time and trying out a couple of indoor play places we have in our city. Now I say more for Mommy because at the park Loralai is not content playing with the equipment that is recommended for her age, and I end up having to climb and stick within arms length of her at all times, which I do not mind doing but it does get exhausting. So one day when Daddy was working Loralai and I packed up and headed to a place called The Little Kridders Klub. We went on a beautiful day outside so the place was quiet other then about a handful of other kids, so it was perfect!

When we arrived you should have seen Loralai's face, it is like we went to heaven! As you can see by the pictures most of the place is climbing and tubes, Loralai without any fear went up and started exploring, needless to say we were there for 2 hours and she probably came down 4-5 times! She LOVED it! Last weekend we went to another indoor play place and it definitely was not as good, and Loralai noticed and had Mommy climbing up in the tubes with her...and although at both of these places they encourage parents to get in there and play with their kids, it was tough climbing around and I got several bruises on my chins! lol.
Well we will definitely be going back to The Kridders Klub soon!

Sending a little love

Loralai's Great Grandmother fell recently and ended up fracturing her wrist. She will be in a cast for 3 weeks :( so Loralai and I decided to send her a few items to let her know that we are thinking about her, and hopefully to cheer her up!

So up first is the simple card that I designed.

Next is a project that required a little help from Loralai. Now I do have to admit that this project was a little tricky for Loralai since it required her to listen and be patient instead of the usual letting her be creative and go to town! But she did great as you can see by the successful result, although she did go creative crazy after we were done and I gave her some bigger paper and the go ahead!


Since Great Grandma likes receiving surprises in the mail, Loralai and I are going to ship both items off this afternoon! I can not wait to hear what she thinks about them both :)

Bad Mommy??

So it was just Loralai and I all day today, and I really needed to go and workout since for the last few days Goodlife just has not made it into my schedule! I know that they have childminding at the Goodlife so I decided that I would bring Loralai and she could maybe play with some new toys and meet some new friends, and for an hour it might not be too bad. Well...I think she was traumatized! At about the 35-40 minute mark the lady running the childminding came and let me know that Loralai was crying and they could not get her to stop. I felt awful.

Loralai is normally pretty adaptable so I thought that the best way to approach leaving her would be to not make a big deal about me leaving. I think that if I choose to try and take her again that this time I would stay for a few minutes and get her accustomed first before I leave...I don't know. The women that work at the childminding were really great though, they told me that they knew she needed more attention, but because it was so busy in there this morning they just could not give it to her. So they advised that next time I bring her a little later when it is not as busy, which I think that I definitely will do.

Loralai does go to daycare everyday but it is with her cousin/godmother Carrie and she started to go to Carrie's when she was 11 weeks old, and all the kids she has known since they were all little babies so they have grown together. So Loralai has not had to ever deal with being sent to a new environment like that before so I guess I should have expected it. So I think that places me in the bad Mommy books for this morning :(

Sunshine and Fairy Tales!

I am a big fan of impromptu photo shoots, and on this beautiful Sunday afternoon while at my Aunts house celebrating my cousins birthday seemed like a great time to pull out the camera and capture some memories!

So below are the result of some sunshine and my fairy tale girl!

Loralai takes shaking her groove thang very seriously! lol she literally danced for about 1 minute with this exact expression on her face!

Now I just have to decide which ones that I want to enlarge and frame! hmmm...tough decision I think!

Update :)

So Mommy has been a bad blogger lately :( So I wanted to give a brief update of what has been going on in the Baker world these past few weeks.

We celebrated my uncles 65th birthday last weekend and some family that we unfortunately do not get to see very often because of distance came, and it was so great catching up! Below is one of my favourite pictures; Sofia (Loralai's cousin) who is about a year and a week younger then Loralai, looking up so fascinated at my big girl! It was so sweet and so interesting how much children can grow and change within 1 year!

This picture was taken when all the kiddies were getting ready to head into the pool.


Loralai update:

Loralai is now fully immersed in the 'why' phase.

We went grocery shopping the other day and she wanted to get down the from the cart, so I said to her "you have to listen to Mommy" and before I could say anything else she looked up at me and said "no running?" It was the sweetest thing and melted my heart! Just when you don't think that they understand or listen, they do!

Loralai being Mommy's little hair clip model! :)

▌♥ ▌Happy Birthday Canada ▌♥ ▌

We had a great day celebrating Canada's birthday! There was a party in the park near our house and they had free hamburgers, drinks, freezes, and a jumpy castle for the kids. The festivities started out by raising the Canadian flag and singing Oh Canada which was the perfect introduction.

We then went to Carrie's (Loralai's Godmother) for a BBQ dinner! It was Yummy :)