Sunday, June 28, 2015

Cocoa Daisy Bistro Kit Reveal

This was a really fabulous month at Cocoa Daisy.  I got the Main kit, Day in the Life kit, and Corner Cafe Add-on Paper.



Holiday Mini Book | Summer Lists  
The Holidays Mini Book is back!  I love this little project I started in January to document different celebrations and holidays throughout the year.  I have a tendency to start these little books and not always finish.   Getting to the half way mark is a big help.

I love having a transparent pocket on my pages.  I stapled the month cirlces directly on to the plastic for a fun overlapping color effect.


To celebrate the start of summer I added a summer bucket list and reading list.  No photos, just fun ideas to record.

Originally shared on IG, I made this gif to show  how I embellished the library books DITL card. I love to add an extra special card to a pocket page.  I think it keeps thing interesting while allowing the page to not get too cluttered.  

Swim





I love all the Crate Paper ephemera in the main kit.  Just perfect for creating a loose grid design.  I love that big yellow tag, it adds so much color to the page.  I used a combination of pop dots and stitching to add depth and texture to the page.  Those wooden buttons from the BYOAO section are really thick and lovely feeling.

Hello Pooh Bear



Lakshman was just the cutest when meeting the characters at Disney World.  I layered the cloud vellum from the Shimelle line, over the dark blue paper to tone down the femininity a bit.

Honeyduke's Sweet Shop




This was such a fun layout to work.  I was going through my photos from the World of Harry Potter trip and found so many delicious little moments.  I printed out a bunch of them and scattered them around the page.  I added journaling with some hand drawn doodling here and there.  Love the how eclectic feel of the page captured the mood I was trying to convey.  It's always fun to try new techniques to add a little variety to my albums.


Thanks for looking!  Check out all of the kits and add-ons over at Cocoa Daisy here. Hope you enjoy this month's Cocoa Daisy kit as much as I did too ;)

You can see my other Cocoa Daisy Projects here.

Tuesday, June 23, 2015

Around Here | June 2015

**This post contains affiliate links and I will be compensated if you make a purchase after clicking on my links.

Slowly getting out of the Disney fog.  Nandini asks when we are going back almost daily, with the one notable exception of water day at camp.
"We can go to Di-ney World the next day after water day, ok Mommy?"


Already scrapping about it of course, but not getting enough time as I want to get all these memories down.  It is so much easier when they are fresh!

Going to the movies. I may have cried for over half of it, but it was so good.  Nandini asked for her "movie dress", like dressing up in character is now a given everywhere we go.  I dressed her up like Mindy Kaling's character "disgust" of course.  Avinash was anger in red.

Lakshman was sporting the bow tie like Fear.  People just assumed we wanted to dress up him in formal attire all day. Which makes sense because he's a very formal baby.

Feeling a little better about him.  I can't thank everyone enough for all their kind words here and on facebook after my last post.  Your support means so much!!

Attempting to get out of my yoga pants and T-shirts rut with a ten pieces in ten days type challenge.  Will post about that soon. It's been kind of a success I think.

Going swimming about once a week.  There are so many great pools around Austin.  I love this one because of the huge kiddie pool.  It's great for all of my kids, even the little guy.

Loving Tea's India collection.  I have been stalking it for months and was so excited to see it go on sale finally.  I may have gone a little crazy after that. Check out the sale here: Tea Collection's Summer Sale, 50% off 


Reading all the books.  When we are not at home reading and re-reading The Little Red Caboose, we are out at Book People finding new favorites.


Thursday, June 18, 2015

Dear Facebook, I'm feeling a little insecure | Feeding Disorders Are Hard

After gaining two pounds at Disney World, Lakshman has, in protest I think, decided to lose it all back again.  Every day this week his weight has dropped below 17 pounds.  He usually gains back half a pound or so during the day, but the weight can't seem to accumulate.  To say we are feeling stressed about this would be an understatement.

His intake hasn't really changed, so we are a bit stuck.  Objectively he is really really small and not even close to getting back on the growth curve one hospital stay, several feeding tube trials, three different pediatricians, four GI specialists, and two therapists later.

Having this stuff stress us out does nothing to help the situation of course.  We both get nervous about every feeding.  Missed ounces feel like a tragedy.  I become very sensitive to remarks from random strangers.  Probably unnecessarily so.  But why does every part of parenting have to turn into a competition.  The stupid growth chart, with it's grade like percentage points, really isn't helping.

I know, I know, the percentiles are nothing like grades.  Getting a 99 isn't analogous to an A+ or something.  I still can't help feeling a bit jealous though.

The way the facebook comments erupt into a shouting match below an article posted about breastfeeding.  Bottle feeding parents feel slighted and want to let everyone know.  (All of my kids have done both for the record.)  In reality, I think, the articles are often referencing pretty dry study findings.  The judgement and guilt we read into those findings are our own.  '

I spew all my random frustrations about comments on Lakshman's size on facebook too.  It's my favorite place to vent.  I mean, if I never felt insecure I would probably never be on facebook at all. 

Of course I think that other parents should feel proud of their kids and how big they are.  I feel the same way about my one child who actually does willingly eat his food and seems to be growing.

Of course people may comment on his size or ask his age.  It's just small talk.  I pretty much have nothing to say to other kids other than comments about their appearance.  "Hey [kid]!  I like that shirt/pants/dress/shoes."  I don't know.  What do less awkward people talk to other kids about?  Seriously, I have no clue.

I know all this, but the insecurities still find me.  I feel like he is being judged as lacking.  I'm sure he probably isn't. But his weight is all I can think about anymore.  It's hard feeling like I am failing him so badly that random strangers can't help but point it out to me.

With the weight of all this stress on me I was starting to feel underwater.  The facebook comments and support from friends were nice but I needed a big win today.  Or several small ones even.

In the spirit of memory keeping, this is what I need to remember right now.


  • We had therapy this morning.  He eat one shred of cheese total.  But his face.  His face when he was blowing bubbles with the therapist. It was too cute for words.  He pursed his lips and tried to help but didn't actually know that he needed to blow air out.  The therapist and I both died of cuteness for a minute there.
  • Despite the call for a tropical storm in Texas, we actually had a delightfully sunny morning.  Lakshman played on the water table while I sat on the garden steps reading a book!  A book.  A really real book.  Not The Little Red Caboose, not Guess Who Elmo.  Not even Barbie the Bunny. But a real adult fiction book.  This last almost fifteen minutes and it felt awesome. 
  • I took the kids to get pie before taking them to a promised bouncy house visit.  This took almost an hour (one less hour trying to keep Lakshman from jumping into the ball pit that you know is fullllll of old bandaids, ew).  They also completely filled up and forgot to ask me for snacks every ten minutes at said bounce house.  Because they never want the snacks I bring.  They only thing they will eat is the $5 bag of microwave popcorn.  Or pie apparently. 
  • Eating apple pie gave me so much energy I actually ran around the bounce house with them instead of sitting catatonically in a chair like I usually want to do.  
  • At home, Avinash told me to come upstairs because he had a little surprise for me.  I sort of panicked on my way there expecting to see a dried up lizard carcass or something.  Instead he had written out "I love you" with his locker magnets.  The amazing part is that his room was clean too.  I know. Will wonders never cease.  He asked me to watch TV exactly zero times today.  Not exactly normal behavior. 

  • My random decision to make quinoa for dinner tonight actually paid off.  I haven't thought about eating it in at least a year.  Not only did Ryan not complain, he enthusiastically ate it.  Then Lakshman watched Nandini take a spoonful in her mouth and decided he wanted some too.  On a spoon.  Fed by us.  I started getting heart palpitations from joy and the fear that this wouldn't last. It didn't. He only had one or two bites, but he let me hand feed after that.  When he wasn't wildly craning his head in the other direction, he even smiled and seemed to be enjoying the taste.  The kid who wouldn't try pie today.  Not apple, not blueberry, not sweet and salty caramel chocolate.  That kid was enjoying quinoa. I know it wasn't many calories, but I was still thrilled.  For our very stubborn and won't take food from anybody this was huge.  I know that breakthrough is coming.
Maybe try to put some of that cereal in your mouth instead of all over the floor?  That would be great, thanks. 
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