Amy Beth

February 28, 2014

February in Review

feb-review

I stopped reviewing my months for a while there. The break in routine that is the holidays took a while to recover from this year. But now I’m getting back in the swing of things and am back to learning small tidbits during the month. Here’s what I learned in February.

1. Babies. They grow up SO FAST!
I remember as a young pregnant lady, people would get all nostalgic when talking to me about their own kids and say things like, “Before you know it they’re all grown up” and, “Having kids will change your life completely.” And I was all like, “yeah, yeah… everybody says that. You’re all just being nostalgic.” But now I know. ALL those people were RIGHT! My baby is about to turn two. How?

2. Potty training is exhausting, even when it goes surprisingly well.
OR, maybe it’s going well because we’re exhausted?

3. Sometimes I like to think that we have an awesome kid because we’re such good parents. But then I realize that we probably seem like such good parents because we have an awesome kid.
At least the kid is awesome though.

4. Global warming has undergone a “rebranding” of sorts.
I was realizing when listening to the news the other day that no one calls it “Global Warming” anymore. Now it’s “Climate Change.” I suspect this is to counteract all those naysayers out there who liked to make such remarks like, “You call this Global Warming? It’s the coldest winter we’ve had in years!” As if the temperature in their own backyard was all the evidence scientists needed to be like, “Oh, yeah. I guess we can go on polluting the earth then since this cold temperature you recorded is proof that our children will not suffer any devastating consequences from a warming globe.”

5. Speaking of climate change. It affects the jet stream. And that explains all the unfortunate weather we’re having all over the country this winter.
I found this story on NPR to be very fascinating and informative. Also, I am a nerd.

February 23, 2014

Calendar and To-Do List Printable

Every now and then I get a little overwhelmed with all the tasks and events in life that I have to keep up with. It’s as if all the “things I have to do” start swirling around in my brain at warp speed and they desperately need to be caught and pinned down so they can actually get done. But whenever I’m really feeling overwhelmed by the sheer amount effort all that catching and pinning will take,  I tend to find productive ways to procrastinate. Such as designing my own calendar and to-do list planner sheets. Would it be a better use of time to actually do some of the tasks? Of course. Would my planner be as pretty? Absolutely not.

planner-printables

Just in case you’re more productive than me and would like some nice calendar and to-do list printables without taking the time to make them yourself, I thought I’d share mine.

These sheets are designed to be printed on a full sheet of paper and cut in half. From there you can bind them however it works for you. I use the Levenger Circa System – Junior Size, but you could also use a simple half-sheet size binder or another disk-bound system.

The calendar is blank so you can fill in the month and dates yourself, with a column on the side for notes.

calendar-printable-img

 

The to-do list is pretty basic. Just a nice looking list of blank lines to fill up.

to-do-printable-img

 

Just click the links below to download the printables on your own computer!

Download the two-page spread calendar here.

Download the half-sheet to-do list here.

February 18, 2014

Rainbow Birthday Party

About a year ago I was busy planning a 1st Birthday Party for my baby. I couldn’t believe he was already a whole year old and I wanted to make sure his birthday was special. Or at least looked cute in the pictures. Because, really, what baby remembers their first birthday?

I knew this was probably the one year where I could choose a theme based on what I liked, so I chose rainbow colors! The party itself was kept pretty simple – just family, and cake, and presents. But the colors made it cheerful and fun. I thought I’d just share a few of the things we did.

The Decor

The decorations were very simple. Just several different colors of streamers hung around the house. Hanging the streamers straight down across a blank wall made for a really nice photo backdrop.

Charlie's First Birthday!

Read more…

February 11, 2014

Why is life so hard?

A while back I read a post on Steady Mom called “It’s supposed to be hard.” I especially identified when she said, “Instead of accepting this as the natural course of things, each time I noticed a difficult situation, I would push against it. Trying not to let it disturb me, I’d grapple and study and analyze it to death, looking for the “perfect” solution.”

The post gave me a lot to think about in terms of letting go of the need to make my days run perfectly smoothly and accepting that this way of life called motherhood is a lot more complicated than I’ll ever be able to handle perfectly. There are no quick fixes or magic systems, try as we might to find them.

But that still left me wondering, “why?” Why does life have to be so full of frustrations and disappointments and people (especially little people) who won’t do just exactly what you want them to do all the time?

Read more…

February 4, 2014

Snow Day Treasure Basket

We had a snow day this week. Since I am no longer in school and don’t technically get “snow days” I now define a snow day as a day when the snow is deep enough to play in. These days can be rare in our part of the world. Often any snow we get is just a dusting. But we had a couple inches this week – just enough to play in. So, it was a snow day.

Read more…