Dear Desmond, on your 2nd birthday.

{traditional birthday breakfast at Original Pancake House}

Dear precious Desmond,

You have grown from my baby into my little boy very quickly over the last 2 years! You've worked hard to keep up with your big brother and are always found by his side, usually mimicking his every move and word. You've picked up on a lot language over the past year and I'm still in awe over the full blown conversations we've been having over the last few months. I love that you can easily tell me how you are feeling and even why. Your verbal skills have surely come in handy in holding your own when your brother gets a bit bossy. 

You've always been our little climber, before you were walking you were climbing. Just the other day I caught you climbing your chair to reach something on the table, you waved me off and said "no problem, no problem." Sadly you're starting to tune me out when you're intent on doing something that you know you shouldn't. I see the same fierce independence Malakai had at this age coming through in you as well. 

I love watching you learn and grow. You love numbers and shapes and devour books by the dozens. We have to go to the library once a week to keep up with your appetite for reading both with someone or thumbing through picture books on your own. 

Your favorite things are animals, especially those that say "ROAR", like lions, tigers, bears and dinosaurs. You love to say chomp like a crocodile as well. You are obsessed with trucks, trains, planes and pretty much anything that goes "vroom". Your party theme was modeled after this, "things that go". You remember the different sounds that fire trucks, dump trucks, trains and other automobiles make and you've memorized a few of your favorite books. 

Running and hopping come easy to you. I'm sure you'll be pedaling a bike with ease by next spring. You are a phenomenal eater, trying almost anything and going back to try several times even when you've decided "I don't wike it!"I'm so thankful you haven't started to mimick your older brother in this regard. You have always grown fast and are now growing into Kai's clothes almost immediately after he grows out of them. 

Sleep has been a struggle for the past 10 months or so. You did well as a baby, but since last December you haven't been able to go to bed for anyone but daddy at night. The last few months have been rough even with daddy by your side. Thankfully you nap pretty consistently, although that tide is changing as well. I'm praying hard you hold on to your afternoon nap for at least another year, I know you need that rest because you get VERY cranky at dinner time without it. 

Your favorite places to go are Grandma's, Mima's and church. Whenever we get in the car you say, "go to church!" and half the time, that's exactly where we are headed. You've learned the look of our neighborhood and shout "we're home!" when we turn onto our street. 

Sweet Des, you are very social and love to play with bigger kids. You shout hello to the neighbor boys whenever the front door opens and run to greet your daddy each afternoon when he arrives home from work. You transition to new environments quickly, even when you shed a few tears of protest they dry quickly and you have a great time making friends wherever you go. 

My good natured boy, I love you dearly and am so proud to be your mama. Let's continue on this adventure and keep on growing together. Happy Birthday Desmond!

Yours, mama.

_______ ___ _______ ___ _______ ___ _______

On Desmond's 2nd birthday we woke him up and whisked away, just the 4 of us, for an early breakfast at Original Pancake House. This is a tradition we started on Malakai's 2nd birthday. It's easily one of my favorites. 

Desmond was very excited for pancakes and especially blowing out his candle. He blew it out as soon as the plate was set in front of him. We clearly needed a do-over, so the waitress came back to re-light the candle so we could sing to him and I could capture the obligatory photo. That scrunchy face didn't disappoint. Oh how I love a good 2 year old facial expression

{waiting is more bearable with a bendy-straw}

Both boys were on their best behavior and we all thoroughly enjoyed ourselves as usual. Taking kids out to breakfast is much more preferable than dinner!

Just before we headed out we got a quick family "selfie" and by some miracle Ben captured all of us smiling (albeit Kai's is quite goofy, but it's still a smile). 

Ben headed off to work and I took the boys to play indoors at the mall (it was freezing cold and windy that morning so the park was not a great option). They had a great time and walked hand in hand so sweetly. 

{Des LOVES trains!}

Before lunch we headed to the downtown library, which is much bigger than the little branch on our side of town. Malakai was looking forward to the elevators and Desmond enjoyed running around the aisles. I grabbed a ton of books to keep them happy later that afternoon. 

We headed home for lunch, Des took a nice little nap and once Ben got home we had dinner, cupcakes and gave Desmond one of his presents. Then off to bed! It was a whirlwind of a day but Desmond had a great 2nd birthday and we still have his party to look forward to!

blog changes...I need your help!

It has been a long time since I've posted regularly, really ever since Desmond was born. Two little kids is a pretty time consuming adjustment. Then they go through so many different stages both as individuals and in their relationship as siblings that it's a wonder I can keep up at all! Sometimes I can't!

I've been brainstorming some changes for a few months, but even those are mostly just stirring around in my head. I'm hoping to carve out some time to implement some soon, and to get posting here more often. I've already got a great new handmade shop feature in the works, that I'm VERY excited about and a few others that I hope to come up after that.

I'm not changing the blog name, but I'm definitely going to update the look around here as soon as I can decide on what I like best and what most fits with how I want to use this space now and in the future.

The biggest change I'm considering is my url. I've never loved the .us web address but I don't know if I'd mess too many people up and lose some readers if I change it. A .com is easier to pass along to people without explaining, .us never became mainstream as we had thought it might. I'm considering the following replacements, breakingnewgroundblog.com or simply bngblog.com but I'm also taking suggestions and let me know if you prefer either of those two. I know the first is sort of long, but once you get it into your browser or reader once, you shouldn't have to worry about typing all that out again, so maybe length isn't a problem? Let's take a "vote", because I truly want your opinions!

Thanks for your input!

every 4-6 weeks

That's about how often I've been posting lately. I'm okay with that, life is for living. The internet has become sort of over rated for me. I guess I've become a bit disenchanted with social networking or how it can be abused. I've been pulling back some, putting my phone away a lot and just being present with my family and friends, especially my kids.

We are approaching week 7 of homeschool preschool. We've already had quite a few ups and downs, the biggest of which is a cold that knocked me out for nearly the entire last week. I can't really call in sick, but I can certainly simplify or take a rest day with my boys. That is exactly what we did. 

Last week Malakai had an unexplained case of hives. It was nerve-wracking to say the least. I tried to figure out what was causing it (still don't know) and how to get rid of it (my awesome sister ran to the store and got some benadryl). It was certainly a comedy of errors, at one point I got the boys out of a late morning bath,  Malakai's hives were worse, Desmond peed on me and then ran away to pee in his brother's room, and all I could do was laugh to keep from crying or screaming. What a weird day that way. There seem to be a lot of those with little ones in the house, it's surely an adventure. 

After the benadryl Kai totally passed out. I've never seen him so sleepy, Desmond wasn't a fan. He wanted his playmate back. Although he did enjoy trying to wake him up...

Late last month we started going to church on Wednesday nights for their "Kid Life" program which is life groups for children ages 3-5th grade. They also have the nursery open for babies, so we take the kids to their classes and then sit in the lobby and enjoy some uninterrupted conversation. It's been wonderful, and the boys love it. Between Bible studies and regular services we are at the church at least  3 times a week and they always ask for more. I couldn't be happier about that. 

In less than a week my baby turns two. I have mixed feelings about this, mostly disbelief really. Sometimes I still feel like I just got married 6 months ago, other days I feel like I've been doing this forever. I love our little life, the highs and lows and everything in between. We count ourselves blessed through trials and triumphs and I couldn't have asked for a better husband to be raising our children along side me. 

I never did get around to posting photos of Kai's "Rockin' 4th" party last July, I'll see about getting them from my mom to put them up here. 

Desmond's birthday party will have a transportation or "things that go" theme, as he is pretty obsessed with cars, trains, airplanes, and especially trucks. It has been so fun to watch him grow from my baby to my little boy this past year. I'll be sure to write more about him closer to his birthday next week. 

So that's just a few highlights (and low-lights) of things that we've been up to and had happen over the last month and what we have coming up soon. 

Mrs. P's Homeschool Preschool- week 1

Last week I started homeschooling my boys. To answer the most often asked question- I don't know if I'll continue to homeschool them into grade school years. At this point, that is not my plan, but I'm keeping myself open to God's calling on the subject. For now, I'm putting my degree to work  and throughly enjoying it. Thankfully, my boys love it even more.

side note: for those who don't know, I have a BA in Elementary and Early Childhood Education and was licensed to teach K-5 in the State of Oregon. I started on my M.Ed when I got pregnant with Malakai + decided to stay home full time. 

I felt like I had all the time in the world when I started really planning (not just pinning) at the end of July. We had no big plans for the entire month of August and I figured I'd start school when everyone else did after Labor Day. I planned my brains out, was going to start on August 19th at one point to have the curriculum line up with holidays and then decided I was overdoing it and pushed it back to September, and then finally landed on this past week. I don't know what I was so worried about, I think I just really wanted to get it right and I was a teensy afraid of ending our summer too quickly. Thankfully, preschool is short and flexible...especially when homeschooling. 

I had originally drafted a schedule with school work interspersed throughout the day Monday-Wednesday and Fridays. Then I kept whittling it down further and further until it was flexible enough to just do calendar time and memory verses some days (like Thursdays when the boys spend their mornings at Grandma + Grandpa's house...I know, I'm spoiled). After doing it for a week I'm happy with how it turned out and glad that I planned extras because Malakai has been asking for "more schoolwork" every day. 

We are basing our lessons on curriculum from ABC Jesus Loves Me and then I'm throwing my own thing in and taking some of their stuff out (like the letter books and all the DVD's). I'll throw in some basics I taught in Kindergarten like gluing, cutting, sitting quietly and grab some ideas Pinterest as well. I am mostly using the 4 year old curriculum with both boys, but throwing in colors, shapes, and manners from the 2 year old curriculum as well. Desmond is loving school time, his favorite part is getting stickers.

We start our day after breakfast, often still in PJ's and go into the front of our house where I've set up an are for "Number wall" which is when we update our calendar (people, run to Target and grab up all their adorable classroom supplies from the $1 section), talk about and practice the number, shape, and color of the week. We also update the weather and sometimes do our memory verse before going back into the family room.

Next we practice our memory verse, sing a song or two, review the Bible Story and possibly do a craft to go along with it. 

We take a break for play but all this week Malakai has wanted to do more school work so I'd give him a letter writing worksheet or have him paint or color something. 

Then we'd practice letters, shapes and colors with worksheets, activities, stories, etc. I'd save most of the "desk work" for when Desmond is napping and Malakai is done with quiet time in his room.

{singing "Deep and Wide" and Kai reading the Bible to Desmond}

Once a week we do a focused gross motor skill, a focused small motor skill and a visual perception exercise. All of these ideas so far are from the ABC Jesus Loves Me curriculum. For gross motor we played a game outside after nap time called "put out the fire" where I drew flames and a ladder. The boys had to hop up the ladder to dump water on the fire. They wanted to play over and over again. Later that day when Ben got home they wanted him to play, I came to get them for dinner and they had all the neighborhood kids (all much older) playing with them, it was a big hit.

{playing "put out the fire"}

We also get a lot of books at the library. The curriculum has a book of the week, so we get those for the 2 year and 4 year curriculum, plus whatever the boys want to pick out. 

On Mondays I introduce the new subjects for the week, Tuesdays we do activities to reinforce, and by Wednesday I let the boys run the show to see if they can identify them. Then Thursday afternoon and Fridays are for review, catch-up, play dates or other outings. 

With how well it has gone, I wish I had started doing preschool earlier. Having structured activities has really helped my kiddos to not get stir crazy or too wild. It helps me to structure my day a bit more and while we are surely busy, they are more preoccupied for me to step away for a moment during play time or while they are coloring/writing to start a load of dishes or laundry. I know that the school year always starts off with a high and can get pretty dismal as the kids get used to the routine, and even bored with it, but I'm hopeful that my boys will continue to like homeschooling and we'll enjoy it for the rest of our school year. 

Quick + Easy Fruit Cobbler Recipe {using cake mix!}

I'd like to come back from yet another inadvertent blogging hiatus (such is summer-time) with a delicious recipe that you should probably go ahead and plan on making tonight...which is right now. 

There are a few versions of this on the internet, but this one is the easiest in my opinion. It's not SUPER quick in terms of the baking time, but good things come to those who wait. 

My Great-Grandma's blueberry cobbler was always one of my favorites growing up. Buttery + sweet, perfectly delicious. Imagine my surprise when I asked my mom for the recipe a couple years ago and it ended up being this easy...

Ingredients:

• 1 box white cake mix (I'm sure yellow would work just fine as well)
• enough fruit to cover the bottom of a 9x13 baking pan. 
• 1 stick of butter

Seriously, that's it. 

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Spread fruit across bottom of 9x13 pan (this recipe can be halved as well, I use an 8 inch pie pan)

Sprinkle cake mix evenly across the fruit. Slice butter thinly and layer on top of cake mix. Don't stir, just let the layers mix when the butter melts. 

Bake until brown and bubbly. The edges will brown first, but don't take it out until the center is golden brown, even though the edges will darken. For my oven it takes 30-45 minutes. 

I've made this cobbler 4 times this year using blueberries (even straight from the freezer), fresh picked plums, fresh picked peaches and tonight's is a combination of peaches + blueberries. 

{blueberries + peaches}

You MUST eat it hot, topped with vanilla ice cream...unless you're having it for breakfast, then it's perfectly acceptable (and delicious) to eat it cold, straight out of the fridge. I'm all about desserts for breakfast. 

Enjoy!