Nora is nearing 4. Vivienne is nearing 1. We’ve served them both gosh knows how many meals by now, and we’ve had a handful of high chairs and booster seats in order to do so.
We started Nora in a pretty traditional high chair. A standalone chair with its own legs, takes up a lot of space. But we had a good spot for it in the condo, and then when we first moved to our new house, we didn’t have any furniture in the eat-in kitchen area—uh, for like a YEAR—so Nora’s high chair lived in that space. And when we ate dinner as a family, we would move her high chair into the dining room, where we also had the room for it. So “space-saving” wasn’t really a priority. But once we did get a kitchen table, we started eating the majority of our meals there, and we had to make a change. By then, Nora was about two years old, so we transitioned to using a cheap, plastic booster that attached to the kitchen chair and allowed her to eat off of the table. It worked fine, right up until this past winter, when we decided she was getting a bit big for it, and didn’t really need to be strapped in anymore. We upgraded to a “big kid” booster.
In the meantime, Vivienne was starting solids, so we lugged out the big high chair again. But because space is tight in the eat-in area of our kitchen, it wasn’t ideal. And we had JUST gotten rid of the plastic chair for a bit, so we weren’t thrilled about going back to that so soon.
Luckily, Summer Infant has developed a booster that is both functional AND more visually appealing. It’s the Bentwood Booster Seat in a dark stain.
We’ve been using this for a few weeks now, and we like it a lot. It looks nice, tucks in under the table when we push in the chair, and Vivienne seems to be comfortable in it, too. Here are my observations, organized by pros and cons.
Pros:
– Its appearance. I like the dark wood stain, the lime green pad, and overall just the “neutral” design of this. It’s much more pleasing to the eye than the plastic primary colored booster seats we’ve seen and had before.
– Low profile, truly space saving. We leave it attached to one of our kitchen chairs pretty much at all times, and it tucks underneath the table easily when the chair is pushed in.
– Tray is lightweight and easy to clean.
– Seat back reclines a bit so if you have a younger baby, he or she will be supported adequately and not slumping over in a chair that is too upright.
– Easy to attach, detach, and adjust sizing for any chair.
Cons:
– Although the fabric seat pad is cute and makes the seat more comfortable, it’s a little bit impractical for a baby seat since… well, it gets dirty. If Vivienne drops pieces of food down beside her, it lands on the seat pad. Realistically, we can’t wash the thing every day, so it just remains dirty sometimes—which takes away from its appearance. I wish it was made out of a material that is wipeable for easy clean-up.
– One thing that’s different than our former (cheap, plastic) booster seat is that this one is not height-adjustable. So Vivienne is a little short when she’s sitting in it at the table. That’s not a problem for now, since she’s using the tray anyway, but once we want her to eat at the table with us—we’ll have to see if she’s tall enough to do so in this seat.
– The tray can be a little difficult to slide on if you don’t get it in the grooves right off the bat. This is kind of nitpicky, since it’s not really cumbersome, but I’ve had it happen a few times where it has taken a few tries to get the tray on correctly.
Overall, we really like this booster and look forward to seeing how it works for Vivienne over time. It’s definitely a win for now!
Disclaimer: Summer Infant contacted me and offered me a complimentary Bentwood Booster in exchange for my review. The opinions expressed above are entirely my own.
We had a VERY busy weekend. The biggest event? Nora’s first dance recital.
Last week was a week FULL of dance for Nora—with dance pictures, two extra rehearsals, and then, of course, the recital. It was busy and honestly a bit intense for a 3 year old (in my opinion, not Nora’s!) but the payoff was worth it.
On Monday, I tried my hand for the first time at being a dance mom. I had to get Nora all dolled up in the hair and (little bit of) makeup for her pictures. She was SO EXCITED about this process. After I finished her hair, she ran off saying, “I want to go look in the mirror.” I found her in front of the full-length mirror in our room, turned around, trying to get a glimpse of the bun at the back of her head. She was smiling from ear to ear, “Mommy, I getting older,” she told me. I pulled her back to do her makeup. Again, as soon as I was done, she ran to the mirror. “Mommy, I getting so old!” again. Not too fast, baby. Not too fast.
Before we left for the studio, I took a few of my own photos of her outside:
At the studio, she did great with her pictures. I peeked in on them when they were taking their class picture and OH MY GOSH. So much cute. Three year olds are adorable; I swear it is the best age!
A few days later, I had the official photo file emailed to me by the photographer:
Smile is a little fake, but it is still darling. Worth the whopping $22 they charged us for the digital download. (By the way—dance is expensive, yo. And I’m convinced they totally take advantage of parents’ emotions, because seriously. Who can resist?)
Recital day came on Saturday. I took Nora to a quick on-stage rehearsal (rehearsal #4 within the past week!) at the school. It was then that I got my first glimpse of their number. The teachers and the dancers had done a great job of keeping it all under wraps. They had encouraged the kids not to show their parents the dance so that they would be surprised on recital day. Sure enough, every time we asked Nora about it, she told us, “You have to wait. It’s a surprise!” The only thing we knew was that they were dancing to the song, “Rainbow Connection.”
At the rehearsal, the moms got to walk the girls to the stage and then we saw them go out as we stood in the wings. The music played and they performed and we all cried. WE WERE SUCH SAPS. Dance recitals make moms cry, apparently.
After they ran through it once, we went back home. We had a whopping 15 family members buy tickets to see Nora’s dancing debut. So before the show, we had everyone over to our house for a picnic. Soon, it was time to get Nora ready, so I took her upstairs and did the hair and makeup routine again. I did a better job the second time around (yay!), and then she was super excited to go downstairs and show everyone.
And then we were off to the show.
I took Nora backstage to meet up with her class. We took some photos and then as we stood waiting, we looked over and saw this:
The girls in her class were all embraced in a group hug. All by themselves. It was like a little pow-wow/pep rally before they hit the stage. ARE YOU KIDDING ME, UNIVERSE?! Crying again.
I scooted out of the room and into my seat in the auditorium. The show was “Dorothy’s Adventures in Oz” and our girls were rainbows. The lights were turned down, and then the curtain opened… and there stood my little girl. The stage lights came up, the music started, and the girls put on a show.
{If you can’t see the video above, click here. Nora is third from the right, by the way.}
Of course, I cried again. And then my heart burst because I was just SO PROUD OF HER. Nora is naturally shy, and always has been. There was always part of me that wondered if she would 1) refuse to go out on stage, 2) have an emotional breakdown, or 3) get out there and freeze. She did none of those things. She rose to the occasion and danced—with gusto! It seems perhaps we really have done a good thing by getting Nora into dance classes. She loves it (most of the time), and I think it has been great for helping her overcome some of that shyness. I mean, hell, getting up on stage like that makes MY stomach churn, so for her to do it? At three years old?? Again, just so, so proud.
The only negative about the recital was that they were first—then we had to sit through everyone else’s numbers. :) The littles did come back again for the finale/curtain call, during which Nora got visibly terrified by the older girl playing the Wicked Witch. As soon as she came out and the voice over the music cackled and said “I’ll get you my pretty,” Nora jumped out of her skin and scurried back to take cover in the arms of her teachers. Poor kid.
After the show, we took some family pics outside with our little ballerina.
She was very excited about the long-stemmed rose that her grandma brought for her.
As I was tucking her in that night, I asked her if she wanted to dance again in the fall.
“You’ll learn a new song and new dance, and then eventually have another recital with a NEW costume,” I told her. “Do you want to do that?”
“YES,” she answered. “But only the recital.”
Sweet, funny girl. I guess the recital part was more fun than all of the Saturday classes to get to that point. And apparently she really DID love being up on that stage!
My tiny dancer is getting so big.
I feel like it’s been a long time since I’ve written a real blog post. And this doesn’t exactly qualify as a “real” one, but we’ve been busy and I feel like I need to somehow catch up. The result is this collection of random thoughts and things that have been going on.
– Vivienne recently had her first ear infection—a double one. Both girls had been coughing for several days, so when I picked them up early from daycare a couple of Fridays ago and noticed that Vivienne felt hot, I took her temperature to discover a fever of 102+ degrees. I called the pediatrician since I was worried the cough had turned into something like bronchitis, and didn’t want to go into the weekend without having them checked out. I took both girls in. The result was a double infection for Vivienne and a wheeze for Nora. We walked out with prescriptions for Amoxicillin (for Viv) and an inhaler (for Nora). Fun times in JUNE! What the heck? We actually held out on the antibiotics for Vivienne until the next day, to see if she really needed them. But the poor girl was MISERABLE with her fever and it was barely manageable even with alternating Motrin and Tylenol, so we went with it. Even then, it took three days for the fever to go away completely! Poor kid. But she finished her antibiotics yesterday, Nora’s been using the inhaler, and their coughs seem to finally be subsiding. We had a pretty great winter as far as illness was concerned, so I hope we’re not going to pay our dues with random summer illnesses!
– I re-stained the deck last weekend. It sucked so bad, you guys, and I only did the floor. Stripping, cleaning, staining… ugh. At least it looks BETTER. Since we have never stained it (just the previous owners), we had to guess on the color using the swatches, and it’s not an exact match. The floor looks pretty dark right now, but I think it’ll fade over time to look a little more even with the sides. The color difference is most obvious in the direct sunlight (as seen in the bottom picture above), but is actually less so under other conditions. Is it bad that I really don’t care? I classify the result as “good enough.” The deck is really old and weathered, and the wood is in crappy shape to begin with. Staining it is a project I really didn’t want to do in the first place, and the process just solidified our desire to rip the whole thing out and get a patio instead. Hopefully we can swing that next spring, although gaaahhhh. SO EXPENSIVE. I still need to stain the top rails some night this week, since we’re having a family get-together here on Saturday.
– We officially bought a swing set. We ended up ordering one from Costco—a set that was actually brought to my attention by a reader after I posted about it last time! We weren’t even Costco members, but the cost savings was enough that it made it worthwhile to become one. The set was delivered via freight this morning, and it sounds like my brother(s) is going to try to get it assembled for us this weekend. Exciting! I think Nora is going to lose her mind. Fingers crossed that assembly is not too stressful and goes relatively quickly so my brother won’t disown me at the end. :)
– I took Nora to her second dentist appointment a few weeks ago. She was such a rockstar about it. On the way there, she told me that last time (in December), she was scared, but this time she wasn’t, so she wanted to go first (before me; I was also scheduled for a cleaning). She was perfect and let the hygienist give her teeth a really good cleaning, complete with some light scraping, and flossing. I was proud of her.
– I’m trying Couch to 5K AGAIN. Every time I’ve tried the program in the past, I’ve had raging problems with knee pain that have caused me to need to stop. I think (hope?) that I’ve finally figured out how to combat that, so now it’s just a matter of working it into my schedule. It’s only three days a week—and about 30 minutes at a time—so it really shouldn’t be as difficult as it is, but somehow, it is still a challenge. I’ve already had to go back and retrace my steps a little bit within the program, repeating runs if I go too long between them. But I did Week 3, Day 1 this morning and felt good, so I’m optimistic about my progression through the program. Maybe I will actually finish it?! Oh, and also? doTERRA’s Deep Blue has been AMAZING on my knees, you guys. I have been mixing a few drops of Deep Blue essential oil—good for sore muscles and joints, or pain in general—in the palm of my hand with some Fractionated Coconut Oil (as a carrier oil), then rubbing it over my knees in the day or two after my runs. This, coupled with icing my knees for 20 minutes after every run, seems to be doing the trick. doTERRA also has a Deep Blue Rub that I want to try, but this is working great for now. (More on my journey with essential oils here and here.) Hoping for success in building up to running a 5K!
– Father’s Day. It was the day I stained the deck (and Michael busted his ass in other areas of the yard), so not quite a relaxing day for anybody. But we did a few “special” things. We surprised him with a grilling platter that the girls and I made at a local pottery painting place a few weeks ago—”Grilled to Perfection on Daddy’s Grill” with the girls’ handprints made into hamburgers, and their footprints made into hot dogs. I’m not an artist, but it came out pretty cute. We made Trader Joe’s cinnamon rolls for breakfast (Heaven!), had a little barbecue for dinner, and then went out for ice cream since it was such a beautiful day outside.
– The spambots continue to attack my poor little blog. I received 76 spam comments over the weekend, you guys. SEVENTY-SIX! So annoying. What do people even get out of these comments? What is the point? It’s so dumb and I hate it.
– We had new family pictures taken a few weeks ago. Not just our little family, but with Michael’s side of the family—including his parents, sisters, our nephews. We’ve seen a few sneak peeks but we are waiting to get them all back. It was great and I’m so happy we’ll have photos of the extended family for years to come. I think we’ll plan to do this every few years (2-3 years?) because it’s nice to have pictures that everyone is included in. I want to do the same thing with my side of the family, too, perhaps starting this fall.
I think that’s it for now. I leave you with a few random pics from the last few weeks:
Now, back to the daily grind… enjoy the week!
Have you not yet bought into the idea of quinoa? Well, this will be the recipe that converts you. You NEED to try this.
And if you already love quinoa, add this one to your arsenal of recipes. It is fantastic.
I love Mexican-inspired food, and I don’t think that’s ever been a secret on this blog. But the great thing about this one is how healthy it is for you. It’s vegetarian, the quinoa is a superfood, and the rest is just vegetables and beans. The only real downside I can find is that it might contain a good bit of sodium due to the broth and canned goods, but there are ways to adapt the recipe in order to reduce that.
This quinoa is flavorful, can be made spicy or mild (depending how many jalapenos you use), and is great for leftovers—served hot OR cold. It can be a main dish, or you can serve it as a side. Whenever we make it, we make a double batch so I can bring leftovers for lunches at work and we can eat it for another dinner later in the week.
This recipe also comes together very easily. I love that I don’t have to cook the quinoa separately—it’s a one-pot meal!
Try it and enjoy!
Mexican Quinoa
(Source: Annie’s Eats)
Ingredients:
– 2 tsp. olive oil
– 2 cloves garlic, minced
– 3-4 jalapeños, seeded and finely chopped
– 1 cup uncooked quinoa, rinsed well and drained
– 1 1/4 cups vegetable broth
– 1 can (1 1/2 cups) black beans, drained and rinsed
– 1 (14.5 oz) can diced tomatoes, with juices
– 1 cup frozen corn (or kernels cut from 2 cobs of corn, or canned corn)
– 1/2 tsp. kosher salt
– 1/3 cup chopped fresh cilantro
– 1 quarter of a lime, juiced
Toppings:
Shredded cheese, sour cream, salsa, and/or avocado (optional)
Directions:
1. Heat olive oil in a medium saucepan over medium-high heat. Add garlic and jalapeños to the pan and sauté until fragrant, about 1 minute.
2. Stir in the the quinoa, veggie broth, beans, diced tomatoes, corn, and salt to the pan. Bring to a boil. Reduce the heat to medium-low and cover.
3. Simmer for about 25 minutes, or until the liquid is fully absorbed. Remove from the heat. Stir in the cilantro and lime juice.
4. Serve as desired with cheese, salsa, avocado, and/or sour cream.
In the middle of last week, I got a text message from a friend of mine. She said that her usual cake lady was booked up and unable to make her son’s birthday cake for the upcoming weekend—and she wondered if I might be interested.
Now, I very rarely do cakes for money, because honestly, in order to make them worth my time, I’d have to charge a lot more than most people are willing to pay. They take a lot of time and effort. However, since this was for a friend in a bind—and since it had been a long while since I’d made an elaborate cake like this—I decided to do it for the fun of it. (For the record, my friend did give me a little bit of money, too.)
Jack was having his 8th birthday party at a miniature golf course, so Julie asked if I could do a golf theme. A few Google Image searches later, and I found my inspiration cake. And then a few days later, I had this:
When planning the cake, I sketched it out on a post-it first. I made the 8, and then decided to fill in the holes of the 8 with “sand” as if they were sand traps.
I made a half sheet cake, torted it, filled it with buttercream, then iced it with a green buttercream. I got it as smooth as I could—or at least as smooth as I had the patience for. I used round objects from my kitchen (think bowls, containers, etc.) to draw an 8 on a piece of parchment paper. I cut it out, including the circles in the middle, and then placed it on top of my cake. I traced the 8 into the icing with a toothpick. To make the sand traps lie more level with the icing, I dug little pits in the surface of the icing where the circles were. I put shortbread cookies in the food processor and then sprinkled the crumbs into the spots for my sand traps. I then removed the parchment template.
Next, I took my remaining green icing and added more brown and green dye to it in order to make it a darker shade of green. From there, I made the “grass” with a Wilton #233 tip.
Earlier in the day, I had made a half batch of marshmallow fondant, and split it up to make several colors (I made a handful-sized amount of each color). I used a mix of Wilton and Americolor gels to dye the fondant. I shaped all of the little fondant items—a “tee pad” (or whatever they are!), golf clubs with colorful handles, golf balls, and a flag (which is attached to a cake support dowel). I let the fondant pieces sit out on a cutting board overnight to dry out a bit so they would harden.
The morning of the party, I used my leftover fondant to make all of the letters, cutting them out with cookie cutters. I put all of the fondant pieces on the cake, laid out the letters and… boom. This cake was done and ready to party.
This cake was time consuming—as is any cake that requires so many fondant colors/pieces—but overall, it was relatively simple (as far as cakes go). I’m glad that I did it, because I did have fun with it. It’s crazy to think about how I used to have so much time to do stuff like this more often! What was that even like?! :)
Also, a special shout-out to Michael for supporting this effort. He picked up my slack around the house—entertaining the girls, carting Nora to dance class, cleaning before we hosted dinner on Saturday night, and of course, help with all of the DISHES! It would’ve been much harder to do this without him.
About
I'm Heather. I'm 33 and have been married to Michael for seven years. Together, we have two beautiful little girls we love more than anything, and a miniature dachshund who drives us crazy. I'm a full-time working mom who has very little time for my own "stuff" these days, like home improvement, cooking/baking, cake decorating, and photography. Despite the team not making the playoffs since 1999, I'm STILL a Buffalo Bills fan, which I think speaks to my loyalty AND sense of humor. I can't wait to pick up the pace with travel again some day... you know, when we're done being ruled by tiny fists. Welcome to my blog.
