Wanna know what the best thing I ever baked was?
A little bun in the oven! And for the last few months, I have been very, very busy “baking up” another one! That’s right, we’re due to have a BABY BOY in October! 😀 We just had our big ultrasound yesterday morning, so you’re some of the first to know!
Do your best.
It was a mantra repeated to me again and again throughout my upbringing. Before piano recitals and exams (and I had many), my mom would smile encouragingly and say, “Just do your best!”
I remember asking my mom one time, “What would happen if I got a B on my report card?” I peered over at her with wide eyes, trying to gauge her reaction.
“As long as you did your best, that’s fine,” she said matter of factly.
“Really?! What if I got… a C?!”
“As long as you did your best, that’s fine.”
“So, if I came home with a D, you wouldn’t be mad?” I pushed.
“If you really did your best, then no. But I also know what you’re capable of and it’s usually better than a D, so if that happened then maybe you didn’t do your best.”
I sat, pondering this silently.
I can’t say I’ve always lived it out. By high school, I was the do-what-you-need-to-get-the-A student, and that oftentimes took a lot less than my best. When it came to things I really cared about, though–a basketball game, preparing a presentation in front of peers, leading a club–I gave it my all, my 100%. It was like I didn’t know how to slack off or tone it down when it came to these things, and I often pushed myself long and hard into the night to make sure everything was done in excellence.
Last weekend, my friends and I threw a super fun ocean themed baby shower for my friend Kim (and Dan)! Even though I helped to coordinate the event, I actually had to miss it because I came down with the flu :*(. SO SAD. But I am still so proud of how things turned out, and wanted to share some of my favorite ideas from the party!
Throwing a virtual baby shower? Read this post for ideas on how to make it more personal and fun!
We threw a fantastic ocean-themed baby shower for my friend Kim recently– here’s a sneak peek!
I actually had to miss the party since I caught the flu, but I am pleased with how everything turned out, and most of all with how happy it made Kim! I’ll share more details on the shower soon, but I wanted to share a fun and flexible baby shower activity idea with you: Baby’s First Alphabet Book!
I first saw this at my friend Wendy’s baby shower, and quickly made a template to use for another shower I hosted. Isn’t it cute? I like this idea because you can easily adapt it to any shower theme.
I think I’m about to contradict a lot of what I just said in my last post about Backwards Planning, because as much as I endeavor to plan out every last detail in our lives, I ultimately believe that I cannot control All The Things. And I don’t want to encourage you to try to, either. It will not only be a failed undertaking, but I don’t even think it’s wise or good. I don’t always live that way, but this is something I strive to believe in my heart and live out in my life. I know there are parents who don’t overthink their parenting half as much as I do, and their kids turn out just fine. The first example that comes to mind is my own parents.
While my husband and I researched the district and schools and city demographics before purchasing our home, I’m pretty sure my parents stumbled across what became my childhood home by accident and ended up purchasing it by God’s grace alone. Something about getting lost and running out of gas. It was really on accident. They never had ambitions for us to be athletic, musical, or at the top of our classes. It was never a goal for them to have their children attend two of the most highly-sought universities in the world, and if you asked them twenty years ago, they probably would not have imagined people would be seeking them out to instruct parenting courses in the years to come.
I came downstairs to find my mom watching my daughter and our friend’s child playing at the sensory bin. It’s literally a bin full of dried beans, where kids can stick their hands in and grab and feel and push and scoop and play.
(Pinterest it– it’s a thing.)
Now, think about it for a moment. Toddlers + a bin full of beans = beans everywhere, right?? That’s what I used to think, too.
I walked into the living room and smiled at the girls, “Having fun?”
They continued in their play, and then my mom made a remark about how nicely my daughter played with the beans. She was impressed with how my daughter would keep the beans over the bin and even cleaned up if they fell out. I explained that this was simply a result of training her.
There is no way you can stick a toddler with a bin of anything and expect things to stay neat and tidy unless you intentionally trained them to do so. I smiled with satisfaction. All those years of teaching in the classroom were really paying off. I hadn’t even realized it at the time, but months ago, I had used backwards planning to train my early one-year-old to have at it with a bin full of thousands of beans without making a mess.
What is Backwards Planning?
It’s just what it sounds like, and it’s something we all do at some time or another. It’s basically coming up with your final goal first, and then plotting out the steps backwards, one step at a time, to make that goal a reality. I first came across the official term for it in my teaching program. We practiced coming up with entire projects and units, first envisioning the end product, and then working backwards to make a unit to achieve the final goal. Ultimately, I think it helps you be intentional with everything you do. You waste less time doing thoughtless activities that don’t serve a purpose, and you add meaning and purpose to activities that would have otherwise been thoughtless and useless.
My husband is out of town this week, so I’ve got babygirl allll to myself. While I am blessed to have family and friends nearby to help out, there are still many, many hours to the day where it’s just me and her, so I am SO THANKFUL that I trained her on blanket time these last few months! Not only has it allowed her to learn to play more independently, develop her ability to concentrate, and given her the space to develop skills she wouldn’t normally work on when playing with me, but it has also been a lifesaver for me! Each day, I can carve out 30-45 minutes of time to do my own things, whether it’s getting dinner ready, cleaning, or working on my own projects (*ah hem* blog). I LOVE IT.
It was just another morning at Gymboree when my daughter got her chunky little leg caught between two dowels in the small wooden boat. No big deal. I stood off to the side and let her struggle to free her leg while offering encouraging comments, “Almost! Ooh good try. You’ve got it! Keep trying!”
She didn’t cry out or complain– she just tried to pull her leg out this way and that. I watched her reposition herself as she tried to maneuver her way out. She nearly had it a few times, and I had to resist the urge to nudge her foot juuuust a little to help her out.
She continued to quietly work away at it, focused and concentrated. I continued to stand off to the side and watch. A few moments later, the Gymboree teacher was passing by, saw her predicament, and immediately leaned down to scoop her up, “Oh, you got stuck! Let me help you out–”
“Oh, no!” I cut in, from my perch on the side, “It’s okay, please don’t help her out. I want her to keep trying on her own. Thanks!”
It all started with the new student– we’ll call him John. He was not only new to our school, but new to the country. He would sit each day in class, silent and expressionless until dismissal, then saunter off toward his uncle without even a good-bye or smile. The kids tried to be friendly at first, but when their attempts were met with a wall of silence and blank stares, they soon lost interest. The students were generally kind to him, but one quiet morning, I saw his look of annoyance as a messy classmate’s papers began to crowd over and onto his desk.
John wasn’t able to communicate his annoyance, and also chose not to push the papers back over. Instead, he simply shifted his seat over to work on a smaller section of his desk. He avoided the problem. That’s one way to deal with it, I thought. I observed as the classmate continued to take over John’s personal space, and before long, John sat, frustrated with just a tiny corner of his desk space left. Finally, he turned and glowered at “Luke,” the offending space invader, with a, “Get your stuff off my desk” look. Luke just looked at him challengingly, then said, “What?” and then continued working.
Not gonna lie. This one’s for me. I currently have about 50 tabs open on fun activities to do with babies/toddlers between 14-16 months, and wanted to summarize them for myself and my husband. So I thought to myself, Hm. Where should I make this list? Microsoft Word? OneNote? Email? …I wish I could just put it on my blog so either Ben or I could find it really quickly on our phones whenever we needed. Oh heyyy… there’s an idea. I do actually search stuff on my own blog (especially recipes) pretty frequently, so I decided to compile my list here for me and for you :).
Anyone with a young child (or expecting to have one in the future) can benefit from this list! Experienced parents, pleasepleasePLEASEpleaseplease add ideas to the comments below! You of all people know how wonderful it is to come across a tried-and-true activity to change up the long afternoons with our little ones!
I sorted the activities into easy, medium, and hard. The easy activities are things you can do pretty much anywhere, anytime. They require little to no purchases or material preparation. The medium activities are still fairly simple, but require you to dig up some materials (scarves, clothespins) or purchase others (blocks, bubbles). Once you have the materials, though, you can consider it one of your “easy” activities. The hard activities are more involved– for the parent. They require more preparation (finger paints), cost (sand and water table) and/or clean-up. They are the kind of activities I would choose on my more ambitious days.
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