How do you.....

encourage a creative, artistic spirt in your little one?

A challenging question sometimes as I find myself getting wrapped up in my chores. Lately, I've been reminding myself to focus more on Madilyn, and helping her to express her creativity.

She LOVES art. In all forms. Sit her down with a coloring book and crayons and she'll color for quite a while. Especially with someone by her side. Hey, things are more fun as a team! She's also gotten better at staying within the lines. Something I'm quite impressed by at only two and a half! I've recently been searching out various fall and winter projects for her to help with. We're going to try and make most of our holiday decorations this year now that she's at the age where she understands. I think it's going to be lots of fun!

We also encourage her to help dress herself, even if the color combination might not always be something mommy or daddy would have pick out ourselves. For Madilyn, this usually means leggings of some sort and  any one of her shirts. She's not too picky about the shirts. But, we can forget the most important part of her outfit.....a tutu! Yes, our little gal has declared that she is in fact a ballerina and must wear her tutu not matter what else she is wearing. She only takes it off for sleep. I love it.

This blog post was actually inspired by the new artist series diapers put out recently by bumGenius. They are manufactured by Cotton Babies and they have been our favorite diapers since we started cloth diapering when Madilyn was 9 months! (And let me just tell you how excited I am about an itty bitty in cloth soon!!!!) Anyway, this first collection is just the first in a series BumGenius will be releasing. I think it's great that they are giving independent artists a chance to place their creativity into such a wonderful product.

So what about you, what do you do to encourage your little one's creative and artistic spirit???

Pregnancy Update

Since I have neglected to post about baby #2 for quite some time now, I'll do my best to play catch up.

When we got to San Pedro, I was assigned to a doc at a local office. She was nice. Nothing "special", but I thought she'd be alright anyway (it's hard to find a doc you really love....especially when you really loved your last one! The bar just gets raised.). The office informed me that she delivers at two hospitals, both in Long Beach, CA. I thought, "Okay, not too bad, LB is only 12 miles away and I'm sure the hospitals are great." I continued to focus on moving in and getting settled.

Well, a few weeks ago Matt and I went in for our hospital tour. It didn't take us long to see that this was NOT the hospital for us! The rooms were small, dirty, and policies were more than dated. I really wasn't comfortable with how much control they wanted to take over OUR birth (not theirs!) and baby. Way too many places Matt wouldn't be allowed to go with me or baby. I could write them all out, but lets just say it was bad news.

The other hospital wasn't an option for me either.  While researching, I found this hospital to have one of the top NICUs and look pretty high tech. But that's just it. I don't want high tech. I don't want every intervention coming my way unless it's actually needed. I also don't want to share a recovery room.

So, I did what anyone would do at 33 weeks.....panic! Here I was just weeks from my due date and suddenly feeling out of control about the delivery. Luckily, I had spoken with a neighbor of mine a few weeks prior who had great things to say about her OB. On our way home from the tour, we stopped by her house and got the info for this new doc. I knew changing wasn't going to be easy though. I called my primary care doc and requested a referral to the new OB. Once that was settled, I called to schedule an appointment. Uh oh, more bumps in the road....

Turns out I was so far along, she wanted all of my records to review before she would consider seeing me! Yikes! I knew I was cutting it close and scrambled to get my records to her as quickly as possible. Yesterday, I finally received word that she's accepting me! Woohoo!!!! So, I have my first appointment with her on the 14th. (Never-mind that I'll be 35.5 weeks along at that point...)

Anyway, I'm really hoping I like this one! The change is good for many reasons, really. This change means we're going to be delivering in Torrance. I've decided on Little Company of Mary Hospital in Torrance. Location wise, it is about 9 miles from our house. Torrance is also halfway between Matt's work and our home. This is great because if I were to need him to meet me at the hospital, he could get there much faster!

So there it is. I've got 5.5 weeks to go until our due date. CRAZY.  Any way you look at it, we'll be meeting this next little one soon. I'm so excited!

And just for fun...