A Forest-Themed Toddler Room...it's a work in progress.

Butterflies

I ordered these butterflies from a shop on Etsy. Check out the collection HERE. Normally they come with magnets on the back, but I had the artist leave the magnets off so that I could stick them directly onto the wall. I already had the antique oval frame which created this whimsical look.

Storage

I wanted as many of Babe's toys as possible to be out of sight so they don't take over from the simple forest theme of the room. I started with the above unit with the pink pull out tubs from Ikea (wish it had come in plain white or green) to store most of her loose toys. I bought some pretty little labels and applied them to the front of each tote. And then I bought the shelving unit below for inside her closet to hide all her books but still keep them accessible for her. I wanted to keep her old crib rails safe in case I sell the crib later so I stashed them in the closet and am currently using them for shoe storage. I also hung hooks from her slatted closet doors for extra hanging abilities and traded out the old seventies knobs for some pretty little glass ones from Home Depot.

  

Lighting

Babe still has the old wall-mounted light that I featured in my old post on her nursery. It still fits as it has a monkeys on a vine theme. But I am loving this new squirrel lamp which was a gift from Babe's grandmother. The mushroom nightlight was purchased from Canadian Target before it closed shop and vanished from the Land of the North. It's convenient that the nightlight can plug in or run on batteries.

Here's the old lighting that we still use that was featured in the Nursery post.

Cushions

I'm still looking for the perfect forest-themed bedspread so for now we are using an inexpensive Ikea option. I might have to end up buying a fabric that I like and sewing my own. The fox and deer cushions were purchased from Home Sense.

More Forest

I have had my eye on a gorgeous, realistic forest mural wallpaper for Babe's room ever since I got pregnant. But we are always renting and I haven't wanted to commit to the cost of it or the application and eventual tear down. But last spring we grabbed this three panel forest screen at a fundraising auction. It goes great with the grass-like shag rug we got from Ikea and the adorable fawn wall decal I ordered from THIS SHOP on Etsy. The mini grand piano is from Chapters/Indigo. The carpet and screen combo create a temporary little forested corner until I can get her a room where I'm happy to commit to a full wallpaper/mural effect.

Mounted Stuffy

This was featured in our trip to Calgary post but I'm still loving it and it still fits the theme. It was purchased at the Calgary Airport.

Sky/Ceiling

Babe has one of those little stuffies that projects stars onto the ceiling at night and plays ambient noise. But I wanted a touch of nature on the ceiling in the daytime too. Enter THIS TUTORIAL VIDEO on making a cloud with lights and I thought I could do that, but with a mobile twist. It's kind of still a work in progress as I wanted to use clear fishing line instead of basic thread. But the fishing line of course has a lot of curl to it. I discovered I could get about 75 per cent of the curl out by using my hair straightener on a low heat setting and pulling the line through quickly (a hint that also works for quickly ironing your boxing hand wraps) but some of the kinks still remain. I'm hoping they will straighten out over time otherwise I guess I will re-string all the beads with plain thread. The cloud is made with paper lanterns and synthetic batting. In the video they use a glue gun to attach the batting to the lanterns but I found spray glue worked much faster. Stinks a bit though so the cloud spent a couple nights outside. The video peeps hung little curtain lights from their cloud but Babe and I wanted rain drops so I bought the blue and clear beads from Michaels. I may still put a battery-powered light inside the cloud at a later date - a nice perk to the cloud shell being made out of lanterns and not a paper mache ball or something is that you can still reach inside of it.

Another App Review.

So it's been a long time coming but I wanted to quickly review a few more kid apps for you all. Babe is nearing three years old now so of course her taste in games on my phone have changed since my last app review page.

Now some of you may be pro iPhones, iPads etc for little ones and some of you may not be. I myself go back and forth. But for anyone who does utilize technology babysitters from time to time, here's my top picks for Babe...or rather, Babe's top picks.

Top of my list is My PlayHome. I have no idea why this dollhouse app hasn't gotten more review attention online. There's some of course, but when I searched best apps for kids it didn't come up. I love this app. I originally downloaded the free Lite version but it only came with two rooms. Babe loved it so much I paid to download the full version which I think was about $3.00.

It's a full dollhouse and everything in the house is interactive. Babe can change CD's on the stereo, dress the people, flush the toilet, get food out of the refrigerator, put toothpaste on the toothbrushes and pull carrots out of the garden. This app has held her attention longer than any other and she has loved it for about a year now.

The only down side is everything is so tiny that on an iPhone younger kids may have some trouble manipulating everything. But now that Babe has it on her iPad it's much easier for her to use.

I also downloaded the DooDoo Pad for Babe about a year ago and she still uses it all the time. Not sure if the name is a lost in translation deal, but whatever.

I originally got it because I thought I would like it too and I was right. The pens are super cool with neon lights, beads and an array of colours and paper backgrounds.

You can also import photos and draw on them. Babe loves to colour all over pictures of herself and save them to my photos.

The Lite version is of course free and although it does have an ad banner at the top it doesn't seem to get accidently tapped as often as some of the others.

The only downside, and maybe that has changed since we downloaded it, is when you are drawing with one pen, every time you lift your finger the colour changes. So if you wanted to stay with pink you'd have to keep drawing a line, then undoing it until you rotated back to pink. But I did notice that there was a colour wheel when I looked at the newer version so maybe it's a little different than the one we have.

To compliment Babe's letter learning I chose the Endless Alphabet app. It got good reviews and they weren't kidding around when they made this bad boy. It's so awesome. But the makers know it too and the app will set you back a whopping $6.99.

It has a ton of words to learn and not just ones like; cat, dog, hug and pretty. The kids choose a word and the funky cartoon characters make a big mess and scramble the word up. Then the kids have to drag and drop all the letters back into place. As they drag a letter the app makes the sound that the letter makes. Then once they have fit all the letters back into place the voice says the word, then shows a little cartoon of what the word means and explains the definition to the child.

There are so many funny characters and interesting sounds that Babe can spend a long time working on her letters with this app.

The only downside that I see is she can place the letters back into their spot in any order she wants. Meaning, if the word is BELLOW, Babe can place the LL's first, then the W in it's place and the B last. I would prefer if she were learning how to spell the word out in order from left to right.


Babe likes puzzle games, we have tried a few over the last year. But so far her favorite by far has been the Shape Builder app. It was a good buy at $.99.

It's very simple. Colourful shapes scrambled up, drag them into place and it becomes a picture of something. It has numbers, letters and images to fit together.

It doesn't keep Babe preoccupied for as long as some of the others but she keeps coming back to it.

Also for some reason, because the shapes are random splotches that only reveal the real picture once they are in place, some of the shapes frighten her. I have no idea why or what they look like to her but once in awhile she gets to a puzzle that she says is scary and she wants to skip to the next page. But that's probably just specific to my precious little weirdo.

Both of us LOVE the Nighty Night app. The pictures are really cool with a combination of realistic textures and cartoon characters, kind of like the Little Big Planet video game. The app is $2.99 which is pricy for a kid app but I would buy it again if I had to.

A soothing male voice starts with an intro about everyone going to sleep in town but says there are still lights on at the farm house. Then Babe has to turn off all the lights in the farm house to put all the animals to bed.

Again, it's interactive so whatever she touches makes noise and she loves going through the house and putting the animals to sleep (just for the night, it's not a euthanize the farm animals kind of game).

The end has a little girl waving out her window and Babe finds that part really intriguing. She always waves back.

This app is part bedtime story and part play and it's very calming. No bright, flashing lights or loud sounds. Just farm animal noises and lullaby music. A good short game to play at the end of the day to calm your child down.

And that's it for now folks. Check out some of these apps and let me know what your child thought. And of course let me know if you have any I should be checking out.

When Will My Baby Stop Crying? The little rays of light that might bring peace to your infant.

Right from the get-go Babe was a pretty fussy little princess. In fairness, for the first three or four months she had terrible tummy troubles, so she was fussy for good reason. She spent almost every waking minute (which was 90 per cent of the damn time) being coddled in someone's arms because her little body was just writhing with gas pain. So by the time the tummy troubles subsided she was so used to being cuddled and catered to that she was furious any time she was "abandoned" for even a couple minutes.

For whatever reason she was and kinda still is a really fussy baby. She hated the car and screamed throughout the ride. She wouldn't sleep for longer than an hour at a time and woke up anytime she was put down in her bed. As she got bigger she grew more and more frustrated by her own limitations and so she screamed when she wasn't happy, at any time, for any reason. Sometimes she would simply stop what happy little thing she was doing and scream for no reason at all other than to remind me that, although temporarily sated, overall she was still miserable.

According to various statistics approximately 20 to 25 per cent of babies have colic - which is just a fancy word for, "We don't know what the hell is wrong with this miserable child". Babe was definitely colicky. For sure. And when doctors said that it usually resolves itself in the first four months or so I thought I was going to die. Four months seemed like a long time. But the days turned to weeks and before long Babe's colic had passed. Of course it was replaced by her general bad attitude so I never really noticed that I'd made it past the colic finish line.

Now Babe is almost 16 months old and often still cranky but looking back there were some points along the way where her temperament improved; milestones that helped ease some of her misery and made both our lives a little better. I thought I'd share them here so that this post can stand as a beacon of hope for any new mothers that are wondering, "When is this baby going to stop crying?"

I shall call these milestones or changes "rays of light" because that's exactly what they are and you'll only understand the term when you're buried in the dark cloud of exhaustion that a fussy newborn can bring. And don't be surprised if you don't notice the improvement until later, because for me anyway the improvements were subtle.

The first two rays of light happened around the same time, I can't remember now which came first.

Babe just didn't know how to settle herself at bedtime. She was fussy and fidgety and needed constant cuddling and shushing etc. to get her to sleep. And then she never slept for long. But I knew early on that part of the problem was that she was uncomfortable sleeping on her back - which is the recommended way for babies to sleep. And sure enough, as soon as she learned to roll over I couldn't keep her on her back anymore. I was still paranoid about SIDS and for a while I would spend my nights reaching down and rolling her back over. But I gave up after the health nurse said that if she was strong enough to roll from front to back and vise versa she was strong enough to sleep on her tummy without suffocating. And it did make a difference. Babe started sleeping for longer periods - not much longer - but any little bit was a blessing. And the more sleep she got the happier she was during the day.

Babe still sleeps mostly on her tummy.

Also around the same time Babe started solids. Always a big milestone for babies it definitely calmed Babe a bit. For the first while eating carries provides a lot of entertainment value for babies. Everything is new and exciting and meal times help break up the day into manageable chunks. I don't know if Babe was just really hungry when only supplied with breast milk or if the solids helped settle her tummy a bit but whatever the reason, when she started eating she did become a little less fussy.

The next ray of light shone when Babe became mobile. When she could crawl around and explore and wasn't just stranded on a mat on the floor every time I left the room she became much happier. Again everything was exciting, she had more independence and it seemed to calm her.

Then when she started walking she took off and left her bad attitude in the dust. Of course, she went back and found it later. But walking has made a huge difference in her general disposition. She's free, she's fast, she's a big girl and it makes her really happy. Plus she uses a lot more energy during the day which translates to better sleeps at night which translates to a happier baby during the day. If you have a baby that seems bummed out maybe he just hates sitting still. Look forward to crawling and walking, it might bring out the best in your little one.

As far as the car goes Babe still hates it. But being able to use a forward-facing car seat did help a bit. Babe can see out now and I can see her and interact with her more while we are driving. She can see me in the mirror, we can point things out to each other and I can pass her snacks or toys if needed. Babe is probably never going to be pro-road trip but at least she's not as anti-car as she was before. Of course now the recommendations for car seats have changed in Canada and they say a baby should stay rear-facing until they are two. But trying to drive while Babe shrieks in the back isn't safe either so I'm gonna stick with our forward-facing seat. Whether you choose to put your little one in a forward-facing seat after age one or not until they are two just know that you may get some relief from your cranky passenger once they are looking forward.

Sculpture at the Flora and Fauna exhibition at The Bloedel Conservatory.

I hope that my personal rays of light have given you some hope that things will improve. I know it seems like nothing works with your cranky baby but I bet in a couple years you'll look back and realize that there were some key changes that gradually helped lighten their little spirits.

Good Luck.

The Last of the Summer.

Inside the Little Cabin.

Babe and I are back in town now. We had so much fun on Hornby. I wish we could have stayed longer but we were gone for three weeks and J really wanted to see Babe, so we came back.

I still haven't decided if being alone on vacation with Babe was easier or harder than I had imagined. Definitely not having running water was a total drag. I'm used to it but with a baby who is constantly covered in poop, food or dirt it was worse than I had remembered.

And I had planned to re-sleep train Babe while we were at the cabin...but...

Yup. Once again I have failed at sleep training and given into my little devil. Which is just the absolute worst thing you can do. But in all fairness to me she is really, REALLY stubborn. Last time by night five Babe was sleeping through the night in her crib. This time I made it to night seven and she was still screaming for hours. She's always had the same bedtime routine and she is happy as a clam until she sees that we're heading for her bed. Putting her down in the crib is like lowering a cat into a bathtub. She wraps herself around my arms, digs her nails in and starts screaming.

But now I have decided that I actually like sleeping with her and I don't need to make her spend the whole night in her own bed. I do however, need her to go to sleep in her own bed and stay there for the first few hours so that:

A: I don't have to go to bed when she does.

B: I can leave her with a sitter and have the sitter be able to put her to sleep without crawling into my bed.

So that's what we're working on now.

Babe winning the battle. In bed with Mommy early one morning.

The trip was made a lot easier by having my aunt and uncle right next door. They were able to take Babe off my hands sometimes so that I could get things done. Everything at the cabin is dirty and not baby-proofed so there was literally nowhere to put Babe down. I did have her playpen with us but she'll only stay quiet in that little padded cell for so long. So I had to get used to doing everything with Babe hanging onto my leg. Washing dishes, cooking, cleaning, doing laundry - any chore I had to get done took twice as long with her attached to my body. So it was great when my aunt would hold her for twenty minutes while I showered or went to the bathroom (can't put Babe down in the outhouse either).

My aunt giving Babe a bath in a bucket. Our beautiful beach in the background.

And even as the trip wore on and I got more and more used to it being just the two of us, there was the occasional shitty moment.

One night Babe and I went to a party at a friend's house. It was way past Babe's bedtime and I was prepared for total meltdown. But Babe was an absolute doll the whole time. She crawled all over the house, chasing the children who could easily escape her grubby paws. She danced to the music and flirted with all the grown-ups. We were having a great time and I hadn't yet really noticed that almost everyone else were in pairs. Single pairs, married pairs and pairs with their babies. If I had noticed I guess I hadn't given it enough thought to bother me. But then a woman whom I hadn't seen in a long time came over to congratulate me on my baby. And as she was watching me watching Babe she casually asked, "Are you alone?" She's the sweetest lady and didn't mean anything by it but I felt like I had been punched in the gut. I don't even know why really. On another day with another person asking, the question wouldn't have fazed me. But I guess I had forgotten for a second and was unprepared for the look of concern on her face.

But these moments were few and far between and mostly we had great weather, great fun and made many great memories.

Babe loves music and was thrilled that my friends had so many instruments at their house.

Cymbal, marimba, cymbal, marimba...

She went straight for the drums every time we went over to their house.

In the lagoon. I know she isn't wearing a life jacket. Relax.
We're in two feet of water. Photo and kayak loan by Judith Coleman.

Napping in the hammock.

Again in the hammock.

Photo by Sung Van, a family friend who rents my aunt's
cabin every summer. I love this shot.

Babe with my good friend D on the beach the day before we left.

This summer I finally got to read some books too. From the time Babe was born until last month I haven't been able to finish a newspaper article never mind an entire book. After finishing Two Kisses for Maddy I read The Birth House (which has been sitting on my nightstand since Christmas).

AMAZING book! Loved, loved, loved it. It's happened to me before that I've had a book kicking around for a long time and then when I finally read it I can't believe that I just let it sit there for so long. The Birth House is one of those books. It's the first book by award winning journalist and author Ami McKay. It's about the practice of midwifery on the east coast during the first world war. The main character reluctantly takes over as the single midwife of a small fishing community outside of Halifax. Even as she helps women through the birth of their babies, protects them from their husbands and a solicitous doctor and keeps their secrets safe she is seen as a witch and treated as an outcast. "The Birth House is an unforgettable tale of the struggles women have faced to have control of their own bodies and to keep the best parts of tradition alive in the world of modern medicine," says McKay's website. I haven't enjoyed a book this much since The Help and I found myself hoping someone would make a movie out of this one too. 

On the way home I detoured a little to take Babe to see the goats on the roof at the Coombs Country Market. I think she was a little surprised to see a big animal on top of a building. We were lucky to see them. I've been many times when the goats haven't been on the roof as advertised. We shopped around the market and the surrounding stores and it was a nice break from the drive down Vancouver Island (which Babe spent the first half of screaming while I sang Old MacDonald over and over).

Goat.

Babe watching the goat.

After the market we caught a night ferry back to Tsawwassen and stayed at my parent's place before coming home the next day. I miss Hornby Island already but it's good to be home. How long we get to stay here I'm not sure. I've just started applying for jobs and most of them aren't in the Vancouver area.

Sailing home.