Speed Bump

I have to download some pics from my camera for a birthday post. In the mean time, check out this  video of Charlie devouring some cake with his frosting. And here is his first glimpse of the Lightning McQueen cake, it was a hit.

It is a big weekend in the Maniger household. While Charlie is turning three next week (how can that be??), we are having his birthday party this weekend. As has been clearly stated on this blog before, I am not the creative, artistic, talented Mom that can whip up a fantastic birthday party out of thin air. There are many occasions when I wish I was that Mom, birthdays are usually at the top of that list. But I am a firm believer in utilizing the talents of others when you know you just can't deliver the goods. Why kill myself trying to make a creative and fun cake, for example, when I know it will come out looking like Charlie made it himself in his play kitchen? I am old enough to know better and not too proud to admit it. I have a friend at work that makes awesome cakes. She could make and design cakes for a full time gig if she wanted, but she does it on the side and maintains her day job as a scientist. I think her science background is one part of why her c...

Charlie was very insistent about what he wanted to bring to his birthday party at school: pink cupcakes! We're not allowed to bring homemade treats to the school (boo to that policy) so I picked up these lovelies from McLain's Bakery.

Charlie loves to 'help' at home. He learns this from school where everyone helps clean up, puts away dishes after lunch, etc. So now after dinner he takes his dishes to the sink and then likes to help wash them. I am not going to discourage this great behavior, even if it does mean some water on the floor and rewashing the dishes later myself. We have to start somewhere! Izzy is fascinated by the dishwasher and it is the perfect height for cruising around. Now, if I could only get them doing the laundry...

Charlie's teachers keep a blog to post the activities the kids do at school during the week. I went back and collected some images just over the last couple weeks. Whenever I feel the working mom guilt creeping on, I look at images like these and I am rest assured. Charlie is in a stimulating, fun, creative and loving environment. I cannot provide him with this variety of learning and experience. Everyone should be able to run around with a cape and a ribbon to their heart's content!

I would be remiss if I didn't include my valiant attempts at getting a Christmas card picture on this blog. I started early this year, knowing two kids would be more challenging than one. I am happy with the picture we used for the cards (none of these) but a few of these are cute, funny and perfectly imperfect.

Hello blog, it's been awhile! Like everyone else, the holidays swept by us and I have no idea where the time went. I hadn't meant to take two weeks off from this blog, but there you go. I think on some subconscious level I felt some pressure to put together a fantastic end-of-the-year post with a photo montage and a video set to music, full of my musings on a fantastic year and waxing poetic about the New Year. That was not going to happen, so I just stayed away. But I'm back. And rather than try to put together a tardy grandiose post, I'm just going to skip forward to the present. I will give you a quick run down on life between the speed bumps over the past two weeks: 1. Christmas was wonderful, shared with both sides of the family. Charlie really started to get the Santa thing this year and we had lots of fun with our Elf on a shelf - Meghan (after his favorite teacher/babysitter). Something to work on for next year - incorporating the religious aspects of Christ...