I’ve been a mother of two for five weeks now and I’ve got to say it’s made me realize how much time I had before I had kids. Sometimes I reminisce about those carefree days and wonder what the heck I did with all that time! Besides the lack of time do everything I want, I’ve also noted other changes in me as I’ve experienced motherhood (I’m wondering if this might foreshadow a book in the future!).

1) Make-up optional – I remember back in the day when I wouldn’t step foot out of the door without putting on some make-up. Even if I were going to make a quick trip out to the store, I’d at least put on some lip gloss. Now, I can go just about anywhere without an ounce of it. It’s not that motherhood has brought out my natural beauty ; rather, I know that I can spend 5-10 extra minutes at the grocery store than if I were to “get ready”.

2) Ready in under 30 minutes…and this includes a shower! I’ve always prided myself on being relatively low maintenance but motherhood has taught me how to be even more efficient. Because kids can be unpredictable, I have to devote more time to getting them ready, which means less time for me. To me, just because I have kids doesn’t mean that I know longer have to abide by the clock. My time is no more important than someone else’s and I just have to allow for more time to get where we need to be - ON TIME (tardiness is my ultimate pet peeve).

3) Cold (leftover) food is okay – back in the day when I had more time, I had to have my food piping hot. It just tasted better to me. Moreover, I wasn’t too keen on eating leftovers. Now, I’m lucky if I can eat without being interrupted or sidetracked. My son is getting a little more finnicky about what he eats too so that leaves me to clean up what he doesn’t (I do have my limits on certain foods, hehe!).

4) Workout when? - Before I had kids, I had a pretty solid workout routine. I exercised at least five times a week – a combination of both cardio and weights…and at a gym! Now? I’ll be lucky to get at least two days. Working out is carrying my 2-year old on my hip. And for strength training, try carrying him upstairs! With a rambunctious son, my workouts have gotten more creative – playing hide and seek, running around the coffee table, pushing my son around while he sits in his Cozy Coupe, etc. I guess I shouldn’t mind not working out so much; it just gives me more time with my family.

There have been some welcome changes as well

5) Speaking Vietnamese at home - I remember growing up, we were forced to speak Vietnamese at home. The problem was that neither me nor my siblings were very good at it so we ended up not talking at all or breaking the rules! My parents were super busy raising seven kids in a country that was not their own so I could only imagine how difficult it must have been for them. Now that I have my own kids, we speak primarily Vietnamese at home. In fact, my Vietnamese has improved quite a bit because I speak it at home with my son. He and my daughter will grow up to be bilingual but I think it’s important for them to learn Vietnamese because I know that once they start school, English will be their primary language. It’s up to me to make sure that they are continually exposed to the Vietnamese language and preserve that part of their culture.

6) Regular communication with my parents – to be honest, I never had a really close relationship with my parents. Being one of seven kids, it was easy to fly under the radar and just check in every now and then. But once I had a kid, that all changed. My kids bridged the relationship gap and it’s been great to be able to share my motherhood experiences with them.

There are a ton more changes that I’ve experienced since entering into motherhood (you can read more of it whenever I get to writing that book!) but one thing remains constant – I’d do it all over again for my kids.

Last week we launched our spring catalog…which was the same time that my daughter made her entrance into the world (her timing is impeccable!). Up until this point, most of my creative inspiration has come from my son who is a rambunctious 21-month old and is now trying to adjust to life as an older brother.

Having a daughter is so different. Pink is everywhere, her cry is girly and she already has her daddy wrapped around her little fingers! These new experiences will definitely inspire me creatively (I have at least five new ideas that I’d like to try out ).

With that, I’d like to introduce my brand new daughter Sophia! (She inspired the creation of our cushy wall letters!)

My little ones first Christmas card photo!

My family has quite a few holiday traditions and now with my own little one I hope to continue those and start a few new ones that we can continue through the years. Last year she was only 4 weeks old so while she celebrated Christmas she didn’t get to participate in any of it. While she’s not old enough to understand Christmas I believe she does know that it’s a special time of year.

For as long as I can remember my family has had the same Christmas tradition. All morning my mom would be preparing pho (Vietnamese soup) for our after mass dinner. Before we left for mass my mom would line us up in front of the tree and take photos in the new Christmas outfits my mom had gotten for us. After mass we would head home to devour the Pho and open gifts.  We were either too impatient to wait until morning or my parents didn’t want to wake up early with us! (As a new mom, I think it’s the later one!)

After my brother was born (he’s 10 years younger then me) he started his own tradition and got to open one gift on Christmas Eve morning. After the gifts we would light a fire and play with our gifts or watch a movie. Then we would leave out the cookies and milk for santa before heading to bed.

On Christmas morning we would wake up and race out to see what Santa had left us in our stockings. To this day we still have pho and open gifts at my mom’s house after mass.

With such fond memories of my family Christmas I hope to provide the same for my kid as well as starting a few of our own traditions. Such as:

1. Buying a new ornament or adding to our snow village each year. My husband and I have been doing this since we got married.

2. Baking cookies on Christmas eve. Gingerbread cookies are one of my favorites and I love having them to munch on during the holidays.

3. Making and using an advent calendar.

4. Decorating the house and tree with home made crafts and decorations.

A few weeks ago I posted about some party theme ideas I found. In the end I decided to go with a color theme of pink and green and to save the more specific themes until our little one was older.

The color theme came about when I was making the invitations. I turned to scrapblog.com to create it because I knew it would give me the stickers I needed and the freedom to create the invitation I envisioned. Scrapblog offers printing but I had some cardstock already and decided to print the invitations at home.

After that it all came together….

From top to bottom:

The “happy 1st birthday” banner was  home-made using scrapbook paper, cardstock, and paper string. Look for a tutorial in our craft tip of the week soon!

The scrapbook pages were displayed on a wall and featured a lot of our baby’s firsts and milestones.

I wanted to share with our guests the monthly photos I took so that they could see how much she had changed. Each month had two photos tied together with ribbon and pinned up with a clothespin decorated with flower punch-outs.

No party is complete without a birthday hat! There will also be a tutorial for this in the craft tip of the week soon as well.

We started the party in the birthday shirt and tutu, which were a huge hit. The front is our little one’s first initial with a little crown – for being the little princess! The back of the shirt says, “I’m one!” with a large one underneath. The onesie was made using photoshop and iron-on sheets. The tutu was bought from Trinity’s Tutus on Etsy.

It was a lot of fun making many of the decorations and celebrating our little one’s first birthday with family and friends. I think she really enjoyed it too!

This weekend my little baby turns one. I can’t believe it! How fast the time goes by. The last few months have been so much fun, watching her learn new things and put associations together. These are a few of her milestones and favorite activities:

More pictures mommy?

1) Walking at 10 months. She didn’t roll over until about 6 months so we were surprised to see her learning to walk so early. For awhile she preferred crawling over walking but has been toddling around a lot more recently and even has tried to run.

2) Communicating with gestures and sign language. We started teaching sign language (eat) at 6 months when she started rice cereal. She didn’t pick it up until about 10 months when she learned “more” in one day! Since then we’ve added eat, drink, no and carry. We’re working on “poop” and “book.” Gesture wise our little one has been pointing for a long time. Now she knows what she wants and will point in addition to grunt. Sometimes she’ll start babbling too.

3) Playing peek-a-boo. She’ll go around a corner and will pop her head back out smiling. If we respond she will start to run away and squeal. She also take her burp cloth and cover hear face with it and giggle until we ask, “Where’s baby?”

4) Reading. Our little one loves to read. Sometimes first thing in the morning she’ll bring a book over and sign more. Then when we’ve finished reading the book she’ll sign more again! We go to story time at the library weekly and always try to borrow new books so we (mom and dad!) don’t get tired of reading the same stories over and over again.

5) Tricks. Well we call them tricks- things like waving, clapping, touching her nose and toes are a few. She’s also just learned how to answer “how old are you” by holding up one finger. One of our favorites is the small bow when greeting elders and doing the cute pose (putting one hand on her cheek and tilting her head to the side). Lately she’s been picking these up pretty fast so it’s fun to teach her new things!

It’s been about 6 months since my daughter started watching the Your Baby Can Read videos. While I was skeptical of the program when my MIL first mentioned it, we gave her the go ahead to purchase it for our daughter anyway. Our thoughts were that if she learned to read- great! If she didn’t – well the videos would help her learn new words and actions.

We started the videos when she was about 5 months. The first month, she wasn’t very interested in watching at all so we only had her watch it occasionally. At about 6 months we tried again and this time it held her interest and we began to have her watch the videos daily. She’s almost 12 months now, but has yet to “read.”

I’ll admit that we’re not following the program to a T since there are so many components. The flash cards, sliding cards and books are hard to fit into our day and sometimes she’s more interested in playing then learning. There are also the days she goes to grandmas that she misses the videos but we’re trying!

She has learned a few things though. We’re a bi-lingual family and try to speak 100% Vietnamese to her. So when she started waving and clapping only when she heard the words in English we knew it was because of the videos. We’ve seen her touch her nose, shake her head no and do “arms up” a few times when the video says to but she is not quite at the reading yet.

Just yesterday I did the flashcard test where I laid out clap and wave and asked my daughter which one said clap. She went for both. I think the videos (and books, cards etc…) need a lot of time and emotional investment for the program to work as promised in the infomercials.

We’ll keep having her watch them and try to do more of the books and cards and hopefully soon I can report that my little girl is reading.

Having been a mother for a little over a year, I learned very quickly that mother/parenthood is all about making sacrifices. And boy did I sacrifice my body! I gained almost 30 pounds with my pregnancy and have since worked my way back into my pre-pregnancy weight. Ironically, I actually fit my clothes better post-baby, but I also lost a lot of muscle tone.

P90X - YogaX

The other day, my son Isaac lifted my shirt up and patted my soft, jiggly belly (what Bridget Jones would call “wobbly bits” ) and it was then that I decided that I really need to tone up. So, I recently started doing the P90X workout again–it’s a series of workout DVDs with trainer Tony Horton. His workouts are about muscle confusion–switching from one area of the body to another so that your body doesn’t get used to one routine and therefore plateauing and not getting better results.

I’m on day 24 and am feeling really good. There are days that I almost talk myself into skipping, but I try to remember the increased energy and stamina I have after my workout. And with a 13-month old who is now walking, I need all the energy I can get!