Nannie's Magical Skylight

We are smack dab in the middle of our annual pilgrimage to Massachusetts and on the very last day of her sixth month, I was able to recreate something I'd had in my head for a very long time. 

You see, five years ago, almost exactly, we had another REALLY adorable baby to call our own, and while we were visiting Nannie and Grey for a beach day, an impromptu photo session on Nannie's bed yielded one of my FAVORITEST PICTURES EVER.

It was this one...

 

...be still my baby loving heart!!!  Are those just the juiciest peaches of cheeks you ever saw??

And there was this one too...

 

 

 

Can you even stand the chub??  I can't.  After another long beach day today, he's lying asleep in bed beside me now and I want to bite him for old times sake.

 

So I was really REALLY looking forward to getting Miss Maeve on this magical bed.  With windows on either side, a sliding glass door to the right and a skylight above, it is just SURROUNDED in natural light.  And even though the day was a little cloudier than I wished, Maeve and I had fun posing and snapping pictures.  Daddy even got in on the action and made faces and noises behind me to get some of the best 'Maeve' faces around.

 

Like this one...

 

 

..and this one...

 

 

and all of these ones....

 

This one is her 'talking' face, where she squeals and flaps her arms for effect.  It's one of my favorites!

 

 

And my personal favorite...

wait I lied, they're ALL my personal favorites!

 

 

 

Happy Sixth Month baby girl!

You are a total delight in every way and everyone adores you!

 

(except for the way you scream in the car still...and the way you scream at poor Daddy whenever Mommy tries to leave the house between supper and bedtime .  Maybe could we work on that this month?)

Baby's First Beach Day

Maeve LOVED her first trip to the beach!  We snuck down just before sunset our first day.  She wasn't shy in the least - she sat right down in the water, splashed at the waves, squished the sand in her hands, and had bunches of fun with her big sister.

Independence Day 2013

Don't have a heart attack now, but I'm going to post actual SAME DAY EVENTS, this may never have happened on the blog (and don't expect it to happen again any time soon) but I have a few minutes and I took a few pictures and hopefully I can make this happen before the clock strikes midnight.

This morning, I was completely unprepared for it to be the Fourth of July.  We had a party to go to, I had nothing to bring.  I'd dragged the bin of decorations out, and done nothing with them.  I'd bought no cute matching Old Navy tee shirts, had not a thing pinned on Pinterest, and was pretty much a Fourth of July Flunkie.

But Marc went to play golf, and Maeve took a two hour nap, and the big kids were happy to watch some extra TV.  That's really all it takes - one little window of opportunity can really make a difference!

I pulled festive outfits together from what we already owned, slapped a wreath on the front door and ripped out the fake pussy willows in the urns in favor of some fake geraniums (I've given up ever trying to keep anything alive out there - it gets so hot the paint on the front door blisters, there's no way a petunia or pansy could survive it!).  My step ladder didn't go high enough to hang the bunting, so instead I tossed it on the pram and wished I had a parade to walk in it was so cute.

And all is right with the world again (save for the fact that the dishwasher never got emptied and the laundry never got folded, and I'm not sure I actually fed anyone lunch?)

I can't tell which of these pics of all four kids is the best (or the worst?) but I was just happy they all looked at the same time.  That in itself was a herculean feat!

Here's Maeve, all decked out in the cutest outfit I ever bought from Baby Gap.

With hand me down socks from her big brother Jack.

Oh yes I did save those bad boys for 11 years...they're in perfect shape!!

And did I mention that this perfect outfit from Baby Gap was actually bought circa 2007?

I bought it for my cousin Heather's baby girl Chloe and procrastinated getting it mailed until it was too late and she'd outgrown it.

And then I decided it was so sweet that I was going to save it for the baby girl I was going to have someday (Molly was already two and too big for it.)

I even went back to Baby Gap and bought Molly a matching top when it was on clearance in a much bigger size than she wore so that she would be able to coordinate with my future imaginary baby girl.

Let's just say I have a preeettty strong imagination that somehow seems to work well.

And God is good. ;-)

Her eyelashes are getting so long!

And she did so well sitting in the pram. 

She just needs that little bit of support on her back and to the sides and she will contentedly sit for a long while.

She is just the darlingest Liberty Baby ever!

Marc was gone and my tripod went missing, so thank goodness for camera phones that reverse direction so you can take pictures of yourself!

 Our neighbors, the Singers, have the best 4th of July party and we've gone for three summers in a row now.  While the kids watched TV this morning, I managed to whip up some no-bake oreo cheesecakes.  It's really all about the packaging - the recipe is so easy and quick, but the mini cups and spoons (from Party City) are what make it look like a million bucks.

I rounded out the tray with a few storebought nut-free cotton candy cupcakes.

The reason I always make dessert is so that Ben won't feel gypped because he can't eat the desserts on account of his tree nut allergy.  The Singers 5 year old Colin is also allergic to nuts, so it's a win-win all around.

  

So Maeve got to walk in the Baby Bjorn and the desserts got a ride in the pram!

 Once we delivered the desserts, she was happy to be back sitting pretty.

The pram came in handy when nap time came let me tell you!  It's like a bed on wheels - so much nicer than a car seat on wheels!

She had her favorite blanket and her noise machine and drifted right off to dreamland.  

 I was always so jealous of friends whose babies would do this, and now I have one!

Meanwhile, the big kids were having a grand old time in the Singer's pool.

After six hours or so it was time to go home and get changed for the nighttime fireworks.

 i

Maeve went to bed so I stayed home while Marc took the kids back to the party.

I didn't miss the fireworks though!

Finally the kids came home exhausted and ready for bed.

And I am too!

Goodnight blogland, and Happy Fourth of July!

End of Year Teacher Gifts

I know I said "tomorrow" but anyone who knows me knows that "tomorrow" is a euphemism for "someday soon....I hope...I think....maybe?"

And today is that day!

Like I said in "yesterday's" post, I wanted to do something special for Ben's preschool teachers.  Not only because they are so special, but because I needed to commemorate something important.  You see, Ben's class will be the very last class, EVER, to graduate from the Wigwam.

The sweet, cozy, dear, one room schoolhouse, that is the only one of it's kind in the land of Naperville where everything is supersized...the Wigwam will be no more.  The city is building a massive, amazing, new nature center to benefit the entire area and to include two new preschool classes.  And the Wigwam is standing right on that Nature Center's parking lot.  

So the Wigwam...it is slated for demolition.  (cue the tears!!!)

Someone needed to make sure that this place is not forgotten, and that someone was yours truly.  I came up with some pretty good ideas, but what I needed was FUNDING.  So I set out to get the other parents in on a 'group gift' that I would gladly orchestrate (muahahahaha).

About half of the parents joined me, donating $10 per teacher, for a total of $200 ($100 per teacher).  Half of that money went to Visa gift cards for each teacher, but the rest went to fund my imagination.  See, I had this idea of a "Toadstool" themed gift basket, since our program at the Wigwam is called Toadstools and Pollywogs.  

I was SO HAPPY with the way it turned out!  I started out with a pot of perennial shasta daisies, a. because they are indestructible and b. because I knew the kids would be singing "I'm a little daisy" at the graduation ceremony (to the tune of I'm a little teapot) and I'd composed a poem with alternate words to the song to use as the card with the gift.  I wrapped it up in heavy duty wrapping paper (from Homegoods), tied it with a tulle bow and turned the gift card into a garden stake.

See?  A bamboo skewer left over from some fruit kabob making,
along with a strip of packing tape (which I always have on hand because I consistently forget mine at home, requiring me to purchase a new roll every time I mail anything)
...et voila!

Next I added some adorable toadstool garden chimes I found on Amazon.

The smoke and mirrors comes with the packaging...you can wrap anything up nicely and make it look like it came from a boutique.  Here's how they look wrapped up in polka dot wrapping paper (left over from two Christmases ago) with a raffia bow and some homemade gift tags (made from the brown envelopes and photo paper that came free with my printer ink)

I picked up some adorable woven baskets from Homegoods for $12.99 apiece and tucked everything inside with the piece de resistance...a framed photo of our beloved Wigwam.

I took the shot below at sunset, and then doctored it up in Photoshop.

I added a blue sky, a sunflare and a poignant title as finishing touches.

Because magic really did happen here.
(sniff)

As a finishing touch, I wrapped the basket in cellophane and tied a big red polka dot bow at the top, along with the poem I'd written.  Somehow in the INSANITY that was graduation morning, I forgot to snap a picture of this, but in my opinion, cellophane is KEY to making any gift look fancy.  It's not just for the Easter Bunny you know!

Here's a jpg of the card (I took a screenshot of the Word doc, so it's hazy) but you can take my word that it was much cuter printed out and attached to the gift with ribbon...

The fun didn't end there though, because I also had Ben's "Chidlren's Day Out" teachers Miss Marcia and Miss Jackie to thank.  Ben was only with them one day a week, but he just adored them and they had such an impact on him - he would always come home smarter and curiouser after a morning at "Knox" (the program was held in Knox Presbyterian Church, Knox for short).

These ladies were so special to Ben!
(Miss Marcia is on the left and Miss Jackie on the right)

There was no group gift this time, so I set my budget at $15 per teacher.  I gave them each a gift card plus a pretty gerbera daisy plant, all wrapped up like I'd wrapped the shasta daisies.



More cellophane and some curling ribbon I've had since Jack's 6th birthday party
(I kid you not, a big spool of that stuff lasts forever!)

The whole package was designed so I could attach this sappy card to it
(I'm a girl who loves a themed gift - I can't help it!)

From what I've read and heard from my teacher friends, the best thing you can give a teacher is a heartfelt thank you showing that you appreciate what they do each day.  The next best thing is a gift card because they have a closet full of knick knacks, pinterest-type projects and scented lotions already, not to mention more homemade goodies than one person can eat before they spoil.

Knowing my teacher friends as I do, I know that the Visa gift cards we gave the teachers this year will likely be used on their classrooms to buy things that aren't in the school's budgets...because that's how teachers roll.

As for Jack and Molly's teachers?  They got handwritten notes from the kids with a gift card.  Definitely not 'pinterest worthy',  but I think we hit the mark, and that all the kids' teachers know how special we think they are.