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4. These Zoli Gummy Sticks
are the best teethers on the planet for molars. And how is my baby getting molars already?5. My girls LOVE being outside. I am attempting to put together a little rubbermaid box of some low-key fun activities that they can do on the back porch in the early mornings or late afternoons. I am thinking some dollar section water toys, plastic stacking cups & some kinetic sand. Although Eloise would definitely just eat that. I am loving this bubble set too, sooo adorable! I love that it comes with more than one wand & a flat dish that won’t easily tip over. I want to find some homemade bubble recipes that will be safe for Eloise to put in her mouth, if such a thing exists. If you have any additional suggestions for age appropriate activities (aka. Eloise puts everything in her mouth, but Harper gets bored easily), please share!
6. I am seriously excited to add another baby girl to our family, and we have less than three months to go!!
In some other, not so fun news, our bathroom update has been a nightmare. The contractors we initially hired to do the tile work let us down big time, despite their great reputation & reviews. I won’t get into the details but basically they had all sorts of other stuff going on outside our job so they half-assed the entire project & then admitted to dropping the ball, gave us back our money & bounced. So crazy unprofessional, and we were left with a half finished bathroom & a monster headache on our hands. With half the house covered in plastic so they could walk around freely, it feels like so much space has been dirty & unusable, so we were really frustrated to drag this out another week. We ended up doing some work ourselves (like putting down hundreds of mini hexagon floor tiles one by one around the edges of the bathroom & shower floor) just to call it finished, then hired a new company to come demo the existing shower work & start over. The good news is, they are almost finished & have done a wonderful job so far. This being one of our first actual home renovations, we had no idea this type of stuff could happen. I will be so happy when it’s all over with! 🙂 Here is a sneak peek of some progress from this morning, I can’t wait to share the finished product with you all!
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Have a happy weekend, friends!! XO
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I have an almost four year old and an 11 month old who loves putting things in her mouth. I fill up water bottles, and different sized bowls with water and let them have at it. I just keep filling everything up with water when they dump it out! I add measuring cups, spoons, wood spoons, wire whisks and it keeps them busy for a good hour! I've found they are entertained with the least expensive things!
http://www.mylittlenest.org
Both my kids love shopping carts outside. Both of your girls can push one around. We bring out all the little plastic food and they are busy. You know the huge cheap set at Target. Someday we will see the sun in New England, enjoy your weather.
Those mermaid jammies are the cutest thing! That is so frustrating about the bathroom renovation but I am in love with the tile!
Aspen Kelty Marie
Can't wait to see the bathroom eeee!!! 🙂
Painting on the patio with water and paintbrushes! I also throw in a ton of ice cubes for kicks and giggles. We have a concrete patio (works for the driveway too) and just fill up some big bowls of water and let them "paint" away. My 4 year old loves it and my 2 year old enjoys sucking the water off of the brushes and painting equally. Fun all around 🙂 we also make "soup" and find outdoor stuff like leaves, rocks, twigs, grass and whatever else we can find and stir and pretend to eat it. Not the end of the world if she actually throws those things in her mouth and they have a blast "cooking" 🙂 have fun!
Fun at home with kids – she has a great blog and even a book now with TONS of ideas for kid play ideas, many that are taste safe! 🙂
Try dry rice, beans, or noodles. I use it in my classroom instead of sand 🙂
So I just discovered the no-spill bubble containers! My 2 year old loves trying to blow the bubbles herself and now her independence can be mess-free!
oh my gosh, those outfits! And is that how your bathroom will look? It looks to die for.
Sorry to hear about your bad experience with those contractors! It's unfortunate that those bad seeds make most homeowners wary of any contractors! Your bathroom looks great so far though and the girls are as cute as ever, enjoy your weekend!1
Oh man, that is a bummer about your bathroom!! But the sneak peak is looking awesome! That's the same tile I have picked out for our bathroom reno. Which we've been putting off because we're terrified of the two week impact it'll have on us and our two bathroom old ass house, eek! This story didn't help! lol. The girls look adorable! We just bought our daughter (2.5) a water table and she LOVES it! We got a sand/water combo one. I bet the girls would both love one!
I love all the matching outfits! What a nightmare on the remodel, atleast it's nice enough outside to be able escape the mess-and enjoy a popsicle or two!
http://www.tisourlife.blogspot.com
Oh jeez, what a nightmare with the contractor! At least you know this can happen, though, and then you can budget some extra time/money for future projects? It's happened to my family as well. Guess it's a right of passage for homeowners!
Awesome tip re: the cooler for summer outings. I'd been toting an ice pack along in a plastic bag, neither efficient nor eco-friendly. Definitely going to purchase a real cooler asap!
Good luck with the molars, always a rough stage huh? At least it's the season of frozen popsicles and frozen fruit. Here's hoping little Ellie doesn't have too tough of a time with them so Mama can get some sleep!
Ah! I love that you dress them alike. I used to think it was so cheesy, and of course loathed when my mom did it to my sister and I. But now, I just want another little one so I can coordinate them! (; That bathroom revamp sounds frustrating. But hopefully it's finished very soon! (: Have a lovely weekend hopefully it's full of sunshine!
So sorry about your bathroom! Can't wait to see the finished product! Love the white! And try Sun Bum sunscreen! The kids never get burnt with the 70 and it smells amazing!!!!
I love Winter but I'm actually really looking forward to Summer to be able to let Elliot run around! Contractors are a nightmare! Our house was a foreclosure, therefore, a mess. We hired contractors and made them sign a contract that we wrote by hand with all of our requests and how much money we were willing to pay up front. We needed new flooring in the entire house, paint, faucets, you get the picture and we still need to upgrade our master bathroom. Also making sure they are BBB certified makes your job of finding a good contractor so much easier!! We learned a lot about that as we went ha. Number one lesson learned was to never pay upfront, if they need material, that should come out of their pockets. Number 2 lesson- always write a contract and make sure you get their signatures!! 🙂 Love that tile!!
I love Harper's scrunchy face smile~ my 3 year old Amelia does the same thing! I am so ready for summer! Not that I want it to be super hot, but all of this cloudy weather and rain is such a bummer! I'm ready for sunshine everyday!
Aww, I loved seeing these photos of your lovely family! Wishing you more productivity and a happy ending to your bathroom renovation.
Happy Saturday, Jessica 🙂
http://www.lovecompassionatelee.com/thinkoutloud/2015/4/7/4715
Love how your bathroom is looking- we redid our master between Thanksgiving and New Years (yes, it took that long!) and I was 8 months pregnant and so ready to have the contractors out of our house – even though ours were good! (http://heylittlemomma.blogspot.com/2015/01/our-bathroom-so-far.html)
I'm so sorry that you've had a rough time with yours; we have done a lot of work to our house and had some really great contractors and really really terrible ones. I hope the new ones work out well and you get your bathroom back soon! Happy weekend to your sweet little family!
Where in New England are you? I am in southern NH and the forecast for next week is so nice! I'm pumped to finally be getting outside with the kids!
I would be interested in a toddler-safe bubble recipe as well! My 2 year old tried chugging some bubbles yesterday. We are in NH and yesterday was the first day the weather has been really nice enough to let the girls run around outside even though there was still about an inch of snow covering most of the yard. We just moved into our first house (rather than apartments/conjoined condos) and we are so NOT used to a huge backyard so I am loving reading through all the suggestions for outdoor fun!
Also.. those mermaid pjs.. totally to die for!
Oh their matching outfits kill me! Makes me wish #2 was a girl too so I could match them! Nice to hear about the warmer weather. We're headed to Atlanta next week to visit family. Besides the Aquarium, any suggestions on things to do with a 2 year old? I don't think you're too close to Atl, but if you have any insight, I'd love to hear. Oh and yuck on the bathroom reno. I hear horror stories like this way too often and scared to do any kind of work while living in the house. lol Happy weekend!
xx Viv at JoieDeViv
I fill up a big bowl or sand bucket with bubbles by running the water with bath bubbles until it's really frothy and slowly drain out most of the water. Then my little guy can play to his heart's content without much spilling.
tile looks great, and what a nightmare! We've had some major issues with past renos, but nothing like that… that's insane! The girls are so cute, I had the girls in those mermaids pjs last year and now wish I bought another size up!
At my preschool, we'd freeze toys in the little Rubbermaid shoe box size containers of water and let the kids pour more water on them or rub them to get the toys out. It keeps them occupied and cool.
They are precious. Hooray for Spring!
UGH. Glad you got your money back and that the issue is being resolved by a good company.
Gymboree bubbles are the best! And safe :). Is there a before pic of the bathroom? We are hoping to switch our framed shower into a frameless. So glad your nightmare of reno is almost over.
My older daughter loves her water table and I'm sure my little one (who turns 1 tomorrow!!!) will love it, too. That would be a great back porch activity, and not messy at all.
Absolutely adorable! Love reading your post, finally commenting after lurking for a while 😉 I'm in my second trimester with our first baby, and I find your posts very helpful. Hope you are doing well with your third pregnancy!
Harpers little toothy smile cracks me up.
Love the bathroom updates! Will you be doing dark grout or white? Cant wait to see!
Regarding the bubbles, I highly recommend a bubble machine. It's so much easier when you have two kids because no one is fighting for a turn and there's really no way to spill it. My kids are entertained for at least an hour with it! Also, we have done sensory bins for outside play- all you need is a big, low Rubbermaid container, a filler (we like rice because it's ok if it gets swallowed) and then toss in some small bowls, shovels, sand toys, whatever you have on hand. We made rainbow rice one year and the kids loved it. Also, this is so silly but it seriously keeps my kids so entertained- I fill one large bowl or bucket with ice cubes and give them tongs or spoons and a second bowl and have them move the ice cubes back and forth between bowls. Enjoy the warm weather!
Very Nice Post. I hope I see another beautiful post next time. Thank you. New Born Baby Clothes
I LOVE their matching chambray outfits! swoon!
SO FRUSTRATING about the bathroom! We just renovated our entire house – tore down stairs, rebuilt them, moved doors and windows, etc….it's INSANE how unprofessional and incomplete so many contractors are!! We have finally found a solid crew (if we ever decide to do this again), but it took a lot of bad ones, too. I am so glad it's finally almost finished – I can't wait to see!! And, the girls just keep getting cuter…I can't wait to see THREE together!!
So sorry to hear about your hassles with the bathroom remodel. I am a project engineer for a commercial general contractor and we have these types of issues all the time with the subcontractors we hire. In fact we just finished a project with a tile contractor that WILL NOT be asked to work with us again…it was that bad. I'm glad to hear that they stepped up to the plate and gave you your money back. Most I have dealt with just shrug their shoulders and say "sorry". I hope the rest of the remodeling goes much smoother. I love your blog and strive to be the fun creative mom you are every day! 🙂
Honest company bubble bath comes with a bubble blower stick so I'm sure it can be used 🙂