High Tea was a success!

The food was great, the friends are awesome. What more could a girl ask for?

High tea

A bunch of my mom friends wanted to throw a baby shower for another mom friend who`s due in July with her 2nd baby. One mom suggested a catered high tea which would have cost $20-25 per person. Unfortunately, the caterer was already booked for all the dates that we were available so I volunteered to be the caterer since I have a set of fine china that we hardly ever use. This will be my first time hosting a high tea.

Here`s my menu:
Smoked salmon and capers finger sandwiches
Cucumber and cream cheese finger sandwiches
Egg salad finger sandwiches
Classic scones with devon cream and raspberry jam
Platter of cheese, crackers, and berries
Mini blackberry shortbread tarts
Lemon bars
Mini brownies
Mini cupcakes
Variety of teas
Cream and sugar

I`m making everything except for the mini brownies and mini cupcakes which another friend is bringing. Can`t wait to eat it all up. Yum!

Big boy bed

Tonight was the first night we let our son sleep by himself in his new double bed. We've been sleeping with him in the bed for the past several days to get him used to the bed and to make sure he doesn't fall off in the middle of the night. When I left him tonight, I told him that he is going to have to sleep all by himself and he started to cry. I gave him a hug and a kiss, reassured him that mommy loves him, and left the room. I was so sad to leave him. he looked so small in a double bed. I'm going to miss putting him in a crib. Children are forced to grow up too fast.

Well, turns out he cried for only 5 seconds after I left his room so maybe he's not that sad to be transitioning from his crib afterall.

Conversations

I was changing my son's diaper at toys r us today. After changing his diaper, I washed my hands and he said he wanted to wash his hands too so I put soap on his hands and proceeded to dry my hands so I could lift him up to wash the soap off his hands. Then he freaked out and said, "I don't want to wash my hands!". I told him that he has to wash the soap off his hands and he said, "I don't want to dry."

then I understood that he was scared of the hand drying machine, probably because it made a loud noise, so I told him that we would dry his hands with a paper towel. Then he let me wash and dry his hands; he was happy as a clam. What a difference communication makes. I'm so proud that my son is now able to carry meaningful conversations.

Now, on to potty training...

Transition from crib to big boy bed

We bought a new bed for our son over the weekend. After looking at many different stores, we decided on an Ikea Brimnes double bed. Despite the fact that the computer room where the new bed is going into is really small, my husband really wanted a double bed because he wants to sleep with our son sometimes and he didn't want our son to grow up in a single bed. he is convinced that our son will live at home until he is 35 and it's kind of embarrasssing to still be sleeping in a single bed when you are 35. I digress.

So we spent Sunday afternoon putting the bed together. It took about 2 hours but it was relatively painless. The last step was the slats. We bought an upgraded slat base (Sultan Laxeby) because I think it's important to have a good foundation for the mattress. It's like getting good bras. I digress again.

We quickly discovered that the assembly instructions
were missing as well as one of the components and we had a dinner to go to so we stopped for the day. So today, we went back to ikea to get the part and the instructions. We got home and started to put together the slats. It took us 1.5 hours to put half of it together and then we discovered that half the screws were missing. Very frustrating. We'll need to go back to ikea again tomorrow to get all the screws. Argh...

The moral of the story: pay for the assembly service (15% of purchase price, min $50) or don't buy an ikea bed with laxeby slats.

We're having a girl!

We found out on tuesday that we are having a girl. I feel so blessed to be joining the "one boy and one girl" club. Since we already have a son, we wanted a girl for our second one so this worked out perfectly. We'll see if having a girl is what I think it's going to be like: dressing her in pretty clothes, doing her hair, dealing with boys when she gets older, etc... I'm also looking forward to my kids playing together, hopefully they will play together more than fight together.

The best parenting advice

I think the best and most fundamental parenting advice that I've gotten is this: work on your marriage. It has nothing to do with parenting but, at the same time, it has everything to do with parenting. Commitment, respect, and love for my husband is the best gift that I can give to our children.

Please and thank you

I'm so proud of my son. We were at a restaurant for lunch yesterday and, unprompted, my son said "thank you" whenever the waiter gave him something or took something away. He even said "can I have a plate please?" when the waiter came around with the bread plates. I was very impressed.

No gender yet

We went for our dr appointment and a detailed ultrasound last week. My OB has an ultrasound machine in his office but when he looked, he couldn't see the gender. At the detailed ultrasound, the tech said she wasn't allowed to tell me but she took lots of images and it would be read by the radiologist and I would find out at my next doctor appt, which is in another three weeks.

However, the ultrasound place called me back and told me that I have to go back for another ultrasound because they didn't get enough images for the heart. So I'm going again next Tues and hopefully I'll get a tech who will tell me this time.