"Aubrey, Be Nice!'

The most common phrase out of my mouth while my daughter is awake, closely followed by "Aubrey, No! Go to time-out." Yes, my toddler, not yet even two-years-old, is officially a bully. Today at the gym's kid's club (babysitting room), Aubrey scratched a little girl's face, drawing blood, which resulted in Aubrey getting a written warning. AGAIN.

Yes, that's right it's not the first time. The first time, at least, was someone we knew (Sorry, Eli). His mom suggested that he might have pestered her, but none the less, Aubrey was the one to draw blood and receive a written warning. Then, at church on Sunday, the nursery leader let me know that Aubrey scratched another little boy but not to worry because the boy pushed her first. "Her brothers have taught her well. She never picks a fight with the other kids, but she's always the one who wins a fight picked with her," the leader jokingly assured me. I'm not really comforted by that. I mean, maybe when she's like 12...I don't know. My only comfort was that she wasn't the one initiating. Until, today...

Today, she was in a mood and I had a feeling that going to the gym might not be such a good idea, but I needed to workout. Should have followed that gut feeling, because apparently it was not a good idea. After the incident, the kid's club sitter told me that the girl Aubrey scratched was sweet and never fights or pesters anyone, which meant that Aubrey initiated. Great. Now, my daughter is attacking people. Oh, and the best part (sarcastic), one more written warning and Aubrey will be suspended from the kid's club for awhile. Great. Not even two yet and she's on probation. Any great ideas? I could use the help.

(See how Charlotte is mad at her? It's because Aubrey stole a toy out of her hands and then tried to scratch her as I'm taking the picture.)

Of course, she's like this at home as well, but there I can put her in time-out or down for a nap. And trust me, I do discipline her. But how do you explain to a not-yet-two-year-old the consequences of her actions?

When she was younger (and sometimes even now), people would look at her curly-headed cuteness and say, "Oh, how sweet. It must be nice to have a sweet little girl after two boys." Then, I would always tell them, "I don't know, she's pretty tough. She even makes her brothers cry," and they would laugh and think I'm joking that a cute little girl could be mean. In case you don't believe me that this girl...

could ever be anything other than sugar and spice and everything nice, take a look at this...

(Attitude I get from her all the time)

or this lovely video. I asked her if I could take her picture and this is the response I get. (See if you can hear her say, "No Way!") Just imagine if she were actually mad at me.

Yeah, a minute more and she probably would have scratched me. :) 

P.S. ...I do love my daughter, very, very much. She means the world to me, hence the concern.

Eye Doctor

As most everyone in my family knows, I have HORRIBLE vision. You know the scene in movies where the visually-challenged character drops her glasses and is on her hands and knees feeling around trying to find her glasses and she so blind she can't see that they are like 3 feet in front of her. Yeah, that's me...no joke. Just ask Aaron, that scene has played out in our bathroom many nights as I forget to find my glasses BEFORE I take out my contacts.

Anyways, I was in desperate need of new contacts so I set up an eye exam with my eye doctor who is great. I'm a little worried that my vision has gotten worse, so I concentrate like crazy trying to focus, praying that I don't mess up, and she suddenly declares me to be legally blind. (Seriously, not that far off.) We finish and she says that even with glasses/contacts I might not have 20/20 vision in my left eye. What does that mean?! She gives me a pair of contacts to try and then we do the exam with contacts in. She does the whole drill again, you know, "can you read anything on this line?" and seems a little shocked when I get them all right. "That's 20/20, I'll take it!"  Yes, I passed!!! I was totally thinking of this video the entire time...

So true. :)

Resurrection Rolls

image source

I made resurrection rolls for my Primary class today and they loved them so much that I thought I would pass it on. We also did these as a family for our activity/lesson for family home evening.
I originally got the recipe from here and used the scripture at the end.
(Just look for her resurrection rolls link.)

But this adaptation includes more of a lesson and uses crescent rolls with the cinnamon and sugar inside.


I used this easy and quick homemade roll recipe to make our rolls.
(I sometimes make my recipe with half wheat/half white flour if I don't have enough wheat flour on hand. Also just use 3 eggs if you don't have egg powder).

This is how our resurrection rolls turned out.

I put the cinnamon and sugar inside with the marshmellow so that I could include the lesson (like the 2nd recipe) but used the homemade rolls (like the 1st recipe). Either recipe is delicious and achieves the same hollow effect. We made them from start to finish with our kids, so that they could see the marshmellow "disappear". They loved it! It was a great activity and lesson and I think we might continue this as part of our Easter traditions.  After we finished eating them, Seth asked if we could eat the rest for breakfast the next day and make them again. Then, Josh asked if we could make them EVERYDAY!....Um...no...I told him that might be a bit much, maybe once a month would be more in our realm of reality. :)

On a side note: if you make these, use parchment paper under the rolls because inevitably, no matter how well you think you've sealed them, your pan will probably look like this...

This was the second batch...I won't even show the first batch where I didn't use parchment paper and they burned a little bit. I'm sure you can imagine how horrible THAT pan will be to clean. Yeah...use parchment paper.

Happy Easter!

Kitchen Dreams

A friend mentioned I should check out The Handmade Home. Let me just say I fell in LOVE with her kitchen. Absolutely awesome! White cabinets, farmhouse sink, chalkboard fridge, screen door pantry, school house pendants, yellow and aqua accents...LOVE it!!! The best part, they did it all on their own. (The before also looks similar to our current kitchen, except that we have white appliances, so we could totally pull this off.)

images via The Handmade Home

So, I showed the pictures to Aaron and he actually liked it! Okay, you have to understand that it is hard for us to agree on anything when it comes to design and decorating. We actually even talked about it once with a counselor in our marriage enrichment program (Shout out to VOW!) Anywhoo...when I explained that they basically just painted the cabinets, added beadboard, and a farmhouse sink (with a few other small changes) he seemed impressed, like a "hmm-let-me-think-about-it-since-it's-not-as-impossible-as-I-thought" kind of impressed. (We repainted the cupboards in our last house, so we know the work it would mean.) Do you think I can convince him we need white cupboards?

Check out The Handmade Home to see before and afters and find more details on the whole redo.