Bear Hugs

Loving her daddy time

The other day Sarah found her bear costume in her closet. Amazingly, she could still fit into it. It was on the big side last year and now it's a little snug, but it still fits. She had fun walking around with the tummy and hat on. At this point she was getting a little hot so we took the tummy part of the costume off.

Drinking from a Straw

Yesterday, before my doctor's appointment, we went to Pizza Hut for lunch. We've become fans of buffet restaurants since having Sarah. There's no wait time, you just get your food right away. We love how we can easily give Sarah an assortment of food items. A little mac and cheese, pizza, salad bar items...good stuff.

Once we were pretty much done eating and Sarah was getting restless David let her out of her high chair to come stand next to him. She's always liked to play with straws but never figured out how to use them. Then all the sudden, she seemed to know what to do. She was having a great time drinking lots of water and sucking on our lemons (loves lemons!).

Another little milestone for our little one! She's becoming such a big girl already!

36 Weeks...Counting Down

Time is flying by! Today I had my 36 weeks appointment, now it's appointments every week...hate that part. All is well. My doctor is so... relaxed about everything. Today I finally asked him to actually measure me since all he normally does is weigh me, listen to the baby's heartbeat and feel my stomach. He said I'm measuring a little on the small side, but no worries.

So I thought it was time to post some pics again, I have indeed grown and become more uncomfortable. This baby continues to be a mover! I am sleeping well, it just takes me a little longer to get comfortable and fall asleep. However, I'm one of those people who falls asleep pretty much instantly normally, so this is not a big deal. By the end of the day I'm feeling pretty tired. I've actually had a nap the last three days in a row, which is really odd for me. However, I thought it was probably a good idea to start taking advantage of the down time I have to rest and relax. It's also wishful thinking that I might be able to train my body to nap better, especially once the baby is here. You never know.

David and I are both getting excited and looking forward to meeting our little mystery person. Will we have a boy or a girl? What will he/ she look like? Similar to Sarah or very different? We'll just have to wait and see.

It's kind of funny since I'm in no big hurry to get this baby out at the moment. I think the memories of labour are still a little strong in my mind, therefore no part of me is looking forward to this inevitable experience. I'm also aware of the reality of waking up in the night, all those feedings, constant diaper changes, etc. Sometimes I wonder what we were thinking having our kids so close together (not that we thought it would happen as it did, but we knew it was a possibility). Sarah's now at such a great age, and now we're heading back to the baby stage. I know it will all be good and work out; I'm just really aware of the reality that will be hitting us soon enough.

If you haven't filled out our baby pool yet and would like to, now is the time. Just visit http://bebepool.com/saysomsacks There's a Starbucks gift card in it for the winner. It's been fun seeing what people think.

Adventures in Eating

For the past couple of months feeding Sarah hasn't exactly been the most pleasant experience. She always wants to stand up in her chair (she can get out of all kinds of straps, even the shoulder ones), she takes forever, only eats certain things, makes a big mess. Neadless to say, lunch and dinner time resulted into my most grumpy times of the day.

That is, until this past week, progress...finally! Sarah had always been such a good eater and still loves to eat, so I couldn't figure out what was going on. All I knew was that she was transitioning between eating like a baby to eating like a todder. She wanted independence but seemed frustrated that she couldn't do things on her own.

So here's what we've figured out. Sarah needs to have an element of control in the feeding situation, not surprising. She must have her bowl of food in front of her and her own utensil to feed herself. She sometimes gets the food in her mouth and other times will take the time to put each piece on her spoon. I can still feed her at the same time to speed up the process and make sure she actually gets something.

She likes to have her cup available to her at meal times and throughout the day. She gets a bottle when she wakes up and just before bed. Sarah can drink out of a regular cup pretty good as well, but still needs assistance in order to not get it all down her shirt. I've also been happy that she seems to love water. For the longest time I would add a little apple juice to the water to sweeten it up. Then one day she seemed happy with just plain water, yahoo!


She eats pretty much everything, we're so thankful for that! She loves macaroni, stuffed pasta, rice, all meat, veggies, fruit, etc. She normally eats one of these bowls about half to 3/4 full of her main meal, then some fruit/ veg, some cheese, and perhaps a baby cookie. She continues to love tomatoes and will often eat a half a regular size tomato with her meal.

I'm happy to say that as long as she has her bowl, etc in front of her she rarely stands up while eating and is quite content with the whole experience. Thank goodness. Both David and I are glad that we're made progess in this area and that Sarah's learning to be a good little independent eater, especially with the baby coming.

Loving her pasta! I sometimes take off her shirt to eat, depending on if the main item is covered in tomato sauce or not. Keisha continues to be Sarah's little sidekick, always at her feet during meal times just in case she drops a "treat."

Little Pink Boots

I picked up these little pink boots at the baby/ kids sale that I was showing my cards at the other week. They are just too cute! Sarah loves trying to put them on herself and enjoys tromping around in them. They're still a little big, but she'll grow into them.

I've been playing around with selective colouring the last couple of days and thought I would apply it to these photos. I love how they turned out!

And yes mom, it seems that Sarah is a boots and dress kind of girl too. Thought you would enjoy these.

Most Annoying Toy

Yesterday Sarah rediscovered one of her old toys. The problem is that now she knows how to turn it off and on and change the music settings. This thing could sing forever! Sarah has also discovered that if she walks and stomps on it really fast it gets really noisy and makes lots of different sounds. Good times...

In Business News

I thought I would write a little update on my new little business. Things are going good. I'm excited to say that I had my 100th order this week, yahoo! This is a pretty big deal for me since it's only been a few months and only two of those orders are from people that I acutally know. I've now had customers in every province, which is also pretty cool; many repeat customers already and more and more referrals.

I am learning tons and often find myself thinking of new layouts, combos, etc that I could create and post. I'm thankful for photoshop tutorials online that I have had to access a few times already to figure something out. I love the challenge! It would be nice to take a course or have someone show me some tips. However, I haven't found any relevant courses in the area, and everything I've wanted to know I've been able to figure out so far.

I've been getting quite a few wedding thank you card orders, which has been really fun. I love seeing everybody's beautiful photos, it's like a peek into their lives. I've also had several requests from small businesses wanting to wholesale my cards. Yikes! I've decided to shy away from this (at least for now) and just focus on my own site, customers, and designs. I really don't like the idea of having a middle man to always have to go between, not to mention the added effort with less pay off. Oh well, it's been interesting anyways.

I've also made a few more connections with photographers across Canada, which has been exciting for me. I love being able to use their professional photos in my work and the potential advertising is awesome. I look forward to adding more in that area on my site in the near future.

At the moment I'm trying out a few different advertising ideas, so I'm curious to see how those turn out and which ones will equal results. This week almost all my orders have been referrals, that's super encouraging for me since it means that people are happy with the service, products and prices!

Anyways, that's about it for now. Thank you to so many of you who have been so encouraging with all this. I have really appreciated your kind words and thoughts. I'm always up for hearing advice and tips. I've got a long way to go; I feel like I'm just scratching the surface at the moment.

www.dolcettodesigns.com

Happy Sarah..and more free goods to come

I thought I would post a clip of Sarah as she is most of the time (minus those very rare tantrums). I just love her smiles and giggles. Funny girl was just laying on the floor for fun, smiling and laughing. She loves being tickled with our feet while she lays on her back. This is the happy version of the tantrum video. Thankfully we see this sisde of her much more than the tantrum side.

On another note, remember when I got all that awesome free shampoo and conditioner in the mail? Matchstick (the advertising company that sent it to me), e-mailed me yesterday to see if I wanted to participate in another similar campaign but for Green Works Laundry Soap (a new product). Of course, I said yes! I filled in the qualifying survey and received an e-mail today saying that I was one of 50 accepted into the campaign. Can you believe it?!? Now people are coming to me to give me their products for free. In return all I have to do is talk about it, try it and hand out more free stuff!

Yahoo, more free goodies here we come. So they say I will be getting laundry soap and other free cleaners to try out, not to mention 30 samples and 30 coupons for free laundry soap to give away. Laundry soap isn't the most exciting product to get, but it's something that we all need and use. I figure it should be great timing with the new baby, since there always seems to be lots of laundry with a baby around.

I'll let you know when I receive the goods. Hopefully I can send some of the free coupons out west with my mom when she comes to visit. Can't believe my mom, Michael and Rebecca come in just over 6 weeks already! That means that baby will be here by then (hopefully). Wow, is time ever going by fast!

Sarah going Golfing

I love end of summer sales. We were at Walmart the other day and David saw this little golf set for $5. which he had to get for Sarah. She's been having a great time playing with the set, the clubs and the balls. This morning she decided she was going to take her golf clubs in her car, go for a drive and then play some golf.

Trying to get her golf set in her car, just a little too big.

She figured out that she could get the clubs in if she took them out of the case.

All is well. Clubs in the car and ready to go.

The clubs got taken out this time.

Parks the car, it's game time! David's been working on how to get her to hold the clubs correctly, it's not quite taking yet. Oh well, she's having fun.

All done. Time to eat some tomatoes...again. Sarah and Keisha LOVE eating grape tomatoes from the garden. Sarah goes back and forth to the tomato plants to pick and eat. Keisha is a little more lazy...she just lays beside the tomato plants and continually eats and/ or waits for Sarah to drop tomatoes around her while she's eating. Weird.

Peek a Boo

Sarah loves playing peek a boo. The other day she was having fun walking around the rec room with her blanket over her head. She was walking into things and falling over, giggling and laughing. By the time we brought the camera out she was about done, oh well, you get the idea. We had a good laugh.

Baby Pool

With our due date fast approaching, I figured we would create a baby pool. Something that we didn't do when we were pregnant with Sarah. Since we were living around our friends and family it seemed like people were always telling us what they thought we were having. This time around, not being near people, we really have no idea what people are thinking (or if they have even thought about it).

Anyways, feel free to check it out at http://bebepool.com/saysomsacks

We're going to send out a $10 Starbucks card to the person that scores closest. It's not much, but it helps make things a little more interesting.

We look forward to reading your thoughts and guesses!

Static Slide

After dinner today, we went for a walk to the park together. Sarah loves the swings and the slide. Her hair gets staticy easily, but we thought this was incredible! Thankfully we had the camera along. Pretty amazing! There was a woman and her grandaughter at the park, they both thought it was pretty funny too (she's the one making the comments and laughing)

More fun times with our little munchkin!

Little Play House

This afternoon we went to Ikea for something to do and pick up a few things. When we were a minute from home we saw this little playhouse on the side of the road with a "free "sign on it. So we drove home, parked the car and walked back to check it out. Since it was just down our street, David carried it home and I pushed Sarah in the stroller.

Sarah was thrilled! She loves opening and closing the door and shutters. The back of the little house is an open door and says "garage," perfect for putting her little coupe car! What a great find! And just a 2 min walk down the road, perfect! What a lucky little girl we have.

Baby Update

Can you believe I'm already 32 weeks along! According to the baby centre, the baby already weighs approximately 3.75 pounds/ 1.7 kilograms and is about 17 inches / 42 centimetres long from head to toe. Sobey's (grocery store) had a sale on diapers the other day so we bought a couple of packs of size 1, I already have a couple of newborn diapers too. I can't belive how tiny they look compared to Sarah's.

David and I spent time yesterday going through a baby name website trying to find a boy's name. We now have a little list of ones that are 'ok.' We're both starting to feel the urgency in figuring this name thing out. Why couldn't there be a name that we both just love?

New Website...Dolcetto Designs

As many of you have probably noticed (thanks to facebook) I've finally got my new website up and running! www.dolcettodesigns.com. What a lot of work that was! The hardest part was figuring out how to do it all and where to go, especially for a fair/ reasonable price and a good product. I'm really happy that I got it figured out and actually did it all myself. David is the computer guy in our house so this was actually pretty surprising for me.

I was amazed how tedious the whole process was. Each photo on the site had to be resized to a low resolution image before it could be uploaded, every product had to be entered in seperately. Just when I thought I had figured everything out I would discover something new or be asked a new question that I would have to come up with an answer for.

I have really appreciated the use of my last site for the past couple of months. I have learned so much in this time and have been able to answer questions for my site that I didn't even know I previously had.

With the new site up, now it's just a matter of filling orders and creating new designs when I have the time. I still have lots of ideas that I would like to incorporate into the site and blog, but there's lots of time for that. Now that I've spent all my profits on the website, graphics and a large stock of envelopes it's time to start making some money. This week I'm completing two large wedding orders; very exciting for me!