My baby girl is TWO today!!! I can barely remember her as a tiny baby anymore - instead I see a boisterous little girl who loves giving big hugs, running fast, reading books, eating any produce she can find, and generally creating chaos. She makes me laugh every day with her elephant impression and when she requests "blueberry tummy" and "strawberry tummy" after I blow raspberries on her tummy. I love that little girl to pieces!
After our giant birthday party for Mia last year (it was the last time we had people to our house!) I tamed it down a little, you know, mainly because of the pandemic. We celebrated over the weekend with just my parents and my sister's family, and a whole lot of balloons. I didn't go for a theme this time, and instead had the theme just be "pink birthday."
For decor, I found this balloon kit on Amazon. I keep complaining about the effort we put into it, but really it probably took Jeff and I an hour and a half to put it together, and that includes manually blowing up all of the balloons because I didn't realize until too late that the package said you should definitely use a pump ;) And the impact is real! It looks so good in photos, and is still looking pretty good several days later because I told Jeff we had to leave it up until Mia's actual birthday. The kit included balloon tape (a long ribbon with holes) that you insert the balloons into, which made things really easy. It also had glue dots for filling in gaps, which worked amazingly well!
I also bought the matching streamer kit off of Etsy. The balloon kit and streamer kit are made in the UK and I don't know what the deal is, but there were a ton of vendors on Etsy from the UK just straight up selling these kits they didn't make. Not sure how that's allowed, but if you see one with pictures that look like this, chances are it's the exact same thing. I bought two of the streamer kits and I definitely recommend that to get a full look if you're covering a space more than six feet wide. The streamer kits were way more frustrating for me to put up than the balloons even though they look simple (partially because Mia was refusing to nap while I was working on them and just screaming into the monitor). The problem is that the string they provide in the kit is stretchy, so it slowly drooped as I added more and more streamers to it. I definitely recommend using regular fishing wire instead!
The only other decoration we had this year was the Happy Birthday sign - I made it on my Cricut! That thing has honestly saved me so much money just in banners that it's going to pay itself off soon ;) I used this paper for it.
The cake was by my friend Laura at Butter Cream Flour. Her cakes are actually the best I've ever tasted and they're so beautiful too! She ends up booked solid some months so definitely reach out a few weeks early if you're interested!
And then I decided to put together a couple of little gift bags for my sister's kids and then for Mia to bring to her preschool pod buddies at school today. I made the little birthday cupcake cutouts on my Cricut (using this free SVG), and also wrote the names on the tags using the Cricut pen (note - the pen tool outlines fonts when it draws them, so I just colored in the insides of the letters by hand).
And now get ready, because here are a few more photos from the day:
Follow along with everything Kristina does via Bloglovin!
As soon as you have your kids figured out, something changes, am I right? Mia's growth had been slow and steady, and she was changing sizes every 6 months or so. She even somehow managed to always change clothing sizes with the seasons to make things easy for me, starting from when she was an infant! And then, since right before Christmas, she somehow went from wearing 18-24 month clothes, to 3T clothes. Someone send help.
(Except, I have to say, for cardigans and vests. What is up with baby cardigans and vests? I can't get her into tee shirts I bought in December, but she still fits into a 6-12 month vest and her cardigans from last fall. Someone, pls let me know what's up with baby vest sizing.)
On the downside, bye money! But on the upside, I am never upset to shop for a whole new toddler wardrobe. I get most of Mia's clothes from H&M kids (I shop in both the toddler and girls sections right now), with stuff from Monica & Andy, Nordstrom, Crew Cuts, Old Navy, and Baby Gap thrown in too. While I went for earthier colors in the fall, for spring I decided to go all in on pink. She just looks so darn cute in it!
(I recognize there are only two pairs of pants in this collage. Mia has more than two pairs of pants. They just are mostly these or these basic leggings that aren't very exciting.)
Follow along with everything Kristina does via Bloglovin!
Happy Monday!! We're *almost* in October, so naturally, I have Halloween on the brain! And I'm wondering - what are you planning to do for Halloween this year?
(was she ever really this little?!?!?!)
Last year I went the laziest route possible. Mia was a cool seven months old, so I just put her in a little skeleton outfit and called it a day (which LOL I found on clearance at the end of the season for $2 and bought a size for this year! #momhack). We were just getting her dressed up for daycare so I didn't quite see the point, especially since she'd mostly be rolling around on the carpet and ripping off any hats or accessories I tried to put on her.
But now that I have a cute little 18 month old running around, I want to put that girl in a costume! The only thing is, where to wear it?
My plan is, for pandemic safety, to just take her "trick or treating" (read: costume showing off) to a few of our family member's houses, and social distance while we're there. I'm thinking we'll also end up dressing up for a day at preschool, but that remains to be seen.
I originally got really stuck on the idea of dressing up Mia as Madeline after seeing this cute picture from Danielle Moss. But honestly pandemic me has no time to make Mia a complicated costume, and everything I wanted to buy was hovering in the $100 range. Seemed silly to drop a hundy on a costume we won't *really* get to use. Also, I knew my work was going to have everyone dress up on camera for a virtual Halloween and there's no way I was going to be one of Madeline's nuns 😆
So instead I pivoted. I bought Mia some green tights and a green dress, and we're having her go as Peter Pan! Add a couple faux fur items and some face paint, and Jeff and I will be a couple of Lost Boys. Easy peasy lemon squeazy. Costumes made mostly from items we have at home that won't be too hard to pull together. Perfect for a Pandemic Halloween.
What are you up to for Halloween this year? Are you still going all-out, or have you reigned things in?
Follow along with everything Kristina does via Bloglovin!
Looks like I haven't shared Mia's favorite things in months and months! (In case you missed it, our favorites for newborns, at six months, and at nine months. The smock bibs are my #1 overall pick though!) I, like every parent, bought approximately 1 million unnecessary items at the beginning of the pandemic hoping to keep Mia occupied, and of course her favorite activity is still taking all of our DVDs out of the cabinet. But, we do have a few new favorites I wanted to share.
Climbing Triangle - I saw these on Instagram last year and thought, well that looks fun but not like something we have space for. But as I'm preparing for #pandemicwinter, I thought having something Mia could climb on indoors would be really nice to have for burning off energy and getting out her need to climb. I love this thing so far. We got the triangle with the slide/rockwall combo, which I like now but assume I will love once Mia figures out how to get onto the slide by herself. The only note I'd give is to just get the natural finish, and the white finish has already started to chip a little on the slide from flipping it over.
Angelina Ballerina - Mia is obsessed with this book, we read it at least 10x a day. The story is about a little mouse who wants to be a ballerina. The book is so well done, the little illustrations are really cute and detailed. I remember reading the rest of the series that was written in the '80s and it turns out they're out of print! So I ended up finding a set on eBay to keep the love going (I found another set available here). I plan to give them to Mia one at a time as gifts over the next couple of years.
Soccer Ball and Net - When we first started thinking about outdoor toys for our roof deck, every idea I had seemed like a bad idea on a fourth floor deck. I just had images of baseballs and basketballs flying off the roof and hitting passers by. A slide Mia could climb on also seemed like an exceedingly bad idea if it meant she could then climb up onto the waist-high wall. So a soccer ball and net it was! She figured out almost right away how to kick the ball, and even if she isn't kicking loves putting the ball in the net and cheering.
Lovevery Toddler Kits - We received the baby kits as a gift when Mia was born, and I loved them. They are boxes filled with "Montessori" style toys, meaning they are mostly wood or natural materials, don't make noises or have flashing lights, and encourage babies to play in multiple ways to build creativity. There were always a few "filler" items in the boxes I didn't feel were necessary, but then all of Mia's absolute favorite toys came from the boxes too. The toddler kits, however, are a whole different ball game. Every item that comes out of them has been high quality and fun! If there's any problem, it's that we have too many toys now!
Water Wow Books - I want to get Mia into coloring, but she is so dang messy with everything that I don't always want to go through the effort of pulling everything out and cleaning it up just for five minutes of fun. These books are great for mess-free painting at home or on the go. You just fill up the little "pen" with water, and they paint on the blank pages to reveal color. They dry blank again so you can use them over and over!
Follow along with everything Kristina does via Bloglovin!
When this girl turn into a full-on toddler?!? I realized I haven't shared her schedule in a while, so I wanted to share before we start our preschool pod next week. (Yes, we are in a preschool pod. Words I never thought I'd hear myself say! Just with a couple of other toddlers we know and whose parents we trust. You can read about why we stopped going to daycare here.)
7am: Wake up and start the day! I'm in charge in the mornings, which is very handy for outfit selections. We head upstairs, immediately chug a sippy cup of water, and usually start our day with a few books.
8am: Breakfast! Mia really does eat as much as you may have seen in my Instagram stories, usually two kinds of fruit, eggs, toast with cheese, maybe some more fruit if she cleans her plate, and Cheerios.
8:30am: We usually head out for a long walk or to the park to burn off some energy as long as the weather is nice. Then we'll come home and generally destroy the living room until its time for lunch. No morning snacks here since breakfast and lunch are 3 hours apart.
11am: Lunch time! Jeff is usually in charge of lunch, but we aim for one fruit, one vegetable, and a peanut butter sandwich or leftovers from the night before.
11:30am: Additional living room destruction and wind down to nap time.
12:30-ish pm: Nap time! We are currently trying to push her nap back a little to get ready for the pod. Some days Mia naps for 2+ hours, but usually she wakes up screaming at the 45 minute mark and won't fall back asleep.
1:15pm: We watch an episode of Sesame Street or read books to try to calm down from the screaming end of naptime.
2pm: Snack! Mia usually eats some crackers, cheese, and maybe a little more fruit. Snacks are usually pretty small, she just isn't very interested.
3pm: More outdoor time - we head up to our roof deck or go for another walk.
5pm: Dinner! We try to mix things up but Mia usually ends up with a vegetable, sweet potatoes or another side, and pasta with meat and cheese in it. She often gets our leftovers here too.
5:30pm: We usually FaceTime with a grandparent, run around the living room screaming, and climb on furniture when we hit the toddler witching hour. If it's been a long day, we might do a little more screen time.
6:15pm: If it's a bath night we head on in to bubble up. Mia has really sensitive skin so we try to only do baths 2x a week.
6:45pm: We head downstairs to brush teeth, get in pajamas, read two books, and go to sleep!
So basically it's two five-hour awake windows, with a meal or snack every three hours. We try not to let Mia snack in-between meals so she'll be hungry for those vegetables.
Follow along with everything Kristina does via Bloglovin!
This whole pandemic thing - it's kind of crazy, huh?! If you have kids, what are you doing with them? Is it back to school or daycare or camp as usual, or are you keeping them home?
Just wanted to start out by saying that this is a judgement-free zone. No judgements here in what you've decided in terms of your own childcare or school choices, I just wanted to share our story.
Omgggg this photo is from March and how freaking cute is that squish?!?!!
I had in my brain that Mia was going to be a daycare kid until she went to kindergarten. And then two weeks ago, we decided to officially pull her out of school.
Our daycare closed on March 13th, and initially I was shocked. At the time there were less than a hundred cases of COVID-19 being reported every day, and the general consensus was that COVID wasn't affecting kids. Some of my coworkers in California had their daycares close the week before, and I really didn't think it would happen to us.
Having Mia at home at first was hard. If you have kids, you know. If you don't have kids, you've seen the memes. I had wanted to figure out how to spend more time with Mia, but trying to work full time while taking care of her wasn't quite what I had in mind.
It turns out though, we're lucky. Jeff and I both have bosses who are very understanding, and my company in particular has been very accommodating. March was impossible, April was hard, but now we've fallen into a rhythm of splitting our days and taking turns working and parenting.
My job has been amazing about scheduling "fun" meetings, this is the actress who played Angelica Schuyler in Hamilton doing a singalong! And yes this is what our kitchen usually looks like 🙈
Our daycare reopened in mid-June, and initially we said Mia would definitely be going back, but not for a couple of weeks. We were expecting cases to keep falling in Illinois, but instead since mid-June they've rebounded. The date was getting closer to when we thought we'd send Mia back, and suddenly cases in Illinois were worse than they had been since May.
Our daycare has 32 children plus 15+ staff members, which means sending her back to daycare, no matter how careful the staff are at cleaning and wearing masks, we have to trust that 32 other families are all social distancing and being as careful as we'd like them to be. We know some of the parents, but even in Mia's classroom of eight kids we haven't met all of them. It's a level of trust that I just didn't have, especially with case numbers continuing to increase.
Jeff and I sat down and talked everything through, and since we couldn't figure out when we'd be comfortable sending Mia back to daycare, it would be better just to pull her out rather than basically paying college tuition to hold her space indefinitely.
So what's our plan?
Basically, we're winging it 😂. Jeff's mom and brother are taking Mia when they can, and we're trying to arrange a weekly playdate or "preschool" situation between Mia and her Aunt Izzy (in case you're new around here, Aunt Izzy is Jeff's (almost) two year old half sister). And besides that, we're going to keep on keeping on with our crazy split schedule of work and parenting. I also put Mia on the list for the feeder daycare that ours goes into when the kids turn two with the hopes that she'll be able to go back to daycare in March.
So there's our little story! I hope you're hanging in there with this whole quarantine thing. I tend to waver between weirdly loving the situation and the extra time with Mia, and being totally overwhelmed and anxious about the future. If you're struggling, just know that even if I share rainbows and sunshine over here, we're all having a hard time.
Follow along with everything Kristina does via Bloglovin!
Oh hi! How many pictures of my daughter's first birthday party were you hoping to see today? Oh a million okay cool!
(PSA: No babies were put at risk for this photo, you can just barely make out that Jeff and my mom were both behind the table holding her!)
We threw a Mia in ONEderland theme party for Mia's first birthday party, and it was so, so fun to put together. If you're looking for some party inspiration, or maybe just some cute photos of a baby tasting frosting for the first time, then this is the post for you!
I've been putting off writing this post because I knew how much work was going to go into it. But, since I waited, it's already incredible to look back. The party was on March 1st, and I didn't think twice about having thirty people over to our house. I'm so glad we were able to have the party before the pandemic hit the US and we started social distancing. I know it's such a little thing when there are so many more sacrifices being made in the world right now, but the party brought me (and hopefully Mia!) so much joy.
I first started really thinking about Mia's first birthday party the week after Christmas when we were staying at my in-law's house. I was up with Mia waaaaaay before everyone else, so I hit up Pinterest to start looking for ideas. I wasn't actually setting out to have a true theme, I was really planning on just doing some pretty pink whimsical decorations and calling it a day. But the idea of an "Alice in ONE-derland" theme party was so fun it just stuck with me! Alice in Wonderland is such a fun theme because there is SO much content from the book and movies that you can really take it in a lot of directions and incorporate little touches everywhere.
I started with the idea for the greenery backdrop. One thing that always bothers me when I host parties is that I don't have a great staging area. My photos always end up with my giant bookcase in the background, which I usually love but ends up taking away from things. My initial thought was to just take everything off the bookshelf and decorate it with Alice in Wonderland themed items, but then I realized I could just cover everything up! I bought this green topiary backdrop, which is basically just a super-lightweight sheet, and draped it over the bookcase. (It was literally attached with packing tape after I kept neglecting to buy zip ties, whoops!)
The "Mia in ONEderland" words are just cut from cardstock on my Cricut. You can find them here if you want to download. Sorry, it isn't editable for you to be able to pop in another name - I don't own the font or I would! I'm happy to quickly edit the file for you if you shoot me an email.
For the display table, I mostly just shopped my house to find things that would work on top of this moss table runner. Some ideas of things you could use would be pretty jars and containers, cake stands, tea pots/cups (I bought this toy set on Amazon and planned for it to be one of Mia's presents), keys, anything rabbit-related, clocks, watches, top hats, etc. I added some "eat me" signs that were made with removable vinyl on my Cricut, the file to download is here. I added Easter candy (timing worked out pretty well for me!) but you could also order pastel candy online, as well as frozen macaroons from Trader Joe's. Yes, that is a thing, and yes, they were delicious!!
The cakes were by my friend Laura at Butter Cream Flour. (Cakes because yes, I did get a separate smash cake. I figured, if I was going to go for it, I should really go for it.) I wanted something that looked like the cake in the Disney movie, and she delivered! Laura is actually just starting doing custom bakery here in Chicago and is incredible, everyone was raving that it was the best cake they'd ever had. If you're looking for a custom cake or other dessert (her Reese's cheesecake was honestly one of the best things I've ever had and I don't usually even like cheesecake) be sure to hit her up!
The one thing I really knew about planning a first birthday party ahead of time (besides letting the baby eat some cake!) was that it was your chance to put all of those month-by-month photos on display!
I took photos in Mia's crib every month using the same sheet and similar outfits (all with some pink!) so they'd feel consistent. If I were to do it over again, I might also try to figure out how to get consistent lighting, as I just used natural lighting which was dramatically different in every picture and took some (pretty poor) Photoshop editing to attempt to correct.
Anyway, I got all of the photos printed as 4x6 prints, used a hole punch on the top corners, and then mod-podged month numbers on them. I used this gold glitter paper, and cut them out using my Cricut. You can download the month numbers file here.
The hanging flowers on the fireplace were an impulse buy from Michael's, they're just faux-floral garlands (not available online but here is something similar). I had Jeff hang them using little command hooks. They're so pretty, they're actually still up. Don't judge me, I swear I took down the rest of the decorations!
Another fun idea I had was to print out a bunch of photos of Mia from throughout the year, trying to get as many extended family members in with her as possible. I hung them on our little display board, and added an extra floral garland around the frame with more Command hooks.
For Mia's outfit, I wanted to find something that resembled Alice's outfit from the movie but wasn't a costume. This dress is so cute and easy (and the cake washed right out too!!) and could work for a number of occasions, but with the black hair ribbon, white tights, and black shoes, it was definitely a nod to Alice.
For beverages, I used a big drink dispenser with a "drink me" sign that was more removable vinyl that I printed with my Cricut - get the file here. I used this punch recipe, but since there were a bunch of kids on the invite list I left the alcohol on the side.
I made a couple of other things on the Cricut too, including This Way/That Way signs (vinyl stickers on construction paper) that I had lining the staircase as you enter our unit, "Recycle Me" and "Toss Me" removable vinyl on our trash and recycling bins, tea cup cutouts on one of the walls, little Cheshire Cat window clings around the room, a Cheshire Cat smile on the bathroom mirror to freak people out, and the "every adventure requires a first step" window cling on the mirror in our entryway. Here is a zip file with all of the free SVG files you can print yourself!
I designed the invites too, but ended up sending out a Paperless Post so the one in the pictures is one I printed at the last minute before the party.
