more Christmas Crafting

I have some more of Rory's gifts to share:

First, her doll house didn't come with a baby, so I needle-felted a wee one, along with a small baby bed for it.
These are a couple of wet felted balls that I then embellished with needle felting.

felt play food (just acrylic felt this time :( Wool felt is expensive!):
A pizza with all our favorite toppings (we make pizza at home every week)
An almond butter and jam sandwich
and a Gingerbread cookie set.
Aurora's favorite book right now is Angelina Ballerina and she's always dancing, so I hope she'll like this tutu I made her (so easy!!!).

Cinnamon Applesauce Ornaments

I thought it would be fun to have Maddie over to make Christmas ornaments with Aurora. The recipe is super simple: mix equal parts cinnamon and applesauce (store bought) into a dough and roll out (we found wax paper and an extra sprinkling of cinnamon helped with this. Cut out shapes and either let dry a couple of days or bake in a very low oven until dry. Then we let the girls paint them- mostly to convince Aurora that they were not cookies, she kept trying to eat them! They turned out beautifully and smell so yummy!

an emergency trip to the Pediatric Dentist :(

Last night, Aurora was dancing around in the kitchen when she tripped and fell smack onto her face. She was really upset, so I checked to make sure her teeth were there and not wobbly, and then did my best to console her and stop the bleeding from her gums. It was almost bedtime.
This morning, after her fat lip and bit of gum swelling had gone down, we noticed that one of her front teeth was pushed back ever so slightly. And she still seemed like it was bothering her (although she would still eat a cookie :)). So we put a call into the Yale Pediatric Dental center and they had us come in for an emergency appt. Poor girl! She, of course, didn't cooperate at all, and I had to use my legs and arms to keep her still for an x-ray. Luckily the root bone isn't fractured, but there is some discoloration that was visible on the x-ray and her tooth may become discolored as well. We don't know if it was subluxed enough to cause damage to the nerve, but if it did, and infection sets in the tooth would need to be pulled!!! Any prayers you can offer up that her tooth won't need to be pulled (or horribly discolored), would be much appreciated!!
We go back in 3 weeks for a follow up, unless there are signs of infection which would bring us in sooner, of course.

Eeek, this is so not how I wanted her first experience at the dentist to go.

Christmas Crafting

I've decided to make several of Aurora's Christmas gifts this year. Not all, but several at least. At first, I thought this would save us some money. Not so. Homemade gifts save you some money, certainly, if you've already got a fully stocked craft room. I've put out a pretty penny for supplies- maybe next year it will save us some money. But, they are hand made with lots of love.. and totally worth it I think. Plus, they're not plastic :)

We've asked Santa to bring Aurora a small wooden doll house, and since I know we can count on Santa :) I needle felted a garden play mat to go with her doll house. I'm really happy with how it turned out, since I'm so new at needfelting.
Shape matching bean bags with a drawstring bag to keep them in and use as gift wrap. (there's a matching bean bag for each of the ones pictured)

Ribon streamers for dancing (still got to make one more of these)

And cloth diapers for Baby. (and her dinosaurs- since she's always putting the plastic-y one we have on them)

There's still lots more to come! I'm starting to feel the crunch!

file folder painting

Aurora had a blast making these very simple paintings. You simply take an empty file folder, cut a design out of the front to make a stencil, slip a piece of construction paper in the folder and start painting. Easy peasy, even for a two year old.

And, just to prove that she can do anything while sucking her thumb:

a very peaceful morning

Yesterday, Rory and I had a very peaceful morning together. While I needle felted this lil' guy... Rory watched her current favorite- Riverdance. "sit and watch Rahdance, baby" she told her doll.

But it wasn't long before her seat was abandoned for her own tap/ballet show:

It was a lovely morning.

Snow!!!!

Yesterday morning we woke up to this!!! Now, people who know me well, know that I'm a fourth generation Californian and complain often of the cold in new england. But I will say this- when it snows, especially those first few snows of the season, it is absolutely Beautiful. And, being a parent now, I'm finding much more to enjoy about the cold weather this season-- snow is fun! I just wish winter didn't last so long....

At the Foote School ( a private school next door to us) there is this really awesome climbing structure. It really is the coolest thing ever- full of slopes, twists and turns, and crevices where only a child can fit. There's a similar, bigger version at the Boston Children's Museum. Aurora spent the Autumn building up her gross motor skills in order to traverse this thing- it took a lot of work on her part, she's still so small yet- but she had finally gotten pretty good at climbing in it. This was the first time she's tried in her full on winter gear though. A whole new challenge, for sure!