Best of 2014! The Pierogie Mama's most popular posts

Here's a round up of the top posts from the blog this year!

Raspberry Creamsicle Popsicle Recipe

Sbarro Copycat Baked Ziti Recipe

Buttons Diapers Review

Boba Mini Review

Honorable mention.. Ruby's birth story! My baby is almost 10 months and I can't believe what a year it's been.

December in photos

This month flew by and I'm realizing that 2014 ends TODAY. So here's a quick recap of our month.

Lots of toddler art // cutting down our tree from the forest and riding it down the slope 

// hide and seek // holiday potty training // 

obsessions with battery powered candles // meeting Santa

 

Sister love x2 // belly off the ground crawling success // baby fairies are the best!

December is the best food month. 

Kozy Shack copycat rice pudding // home smoked salmon // 

It's not Christmas without pierogies! // Bavarian Soft Pretzels

 See you in 2015!

Visiting the Seattle Aquarium and how I almost lost my mind (I mean, my camera)

Lately I feel like I've been truly losing my mind. And everything that I touch. Doesn't normally mommy brain disappear after 2-3 months? I feel like mine gets progressively worse over time. In the last few months I've been continually losing my car keys, glasses, Boba and have broken a cell phone (but been on and off without one for almost 3 months). A couple weeks ago I lost one of my most treasured possessions - my camera. I'm a photoholic, ask anyone who knows me, and to lose the memory card alone was just devastating. Because I know computers crash without notice, I've been in the habit of using the memory card on my dslr as a mobile external hard drive and have gotten lazy about uploading them onto the computer. I mean, what are the odds that I'll lose the camera, right? It's certainly not small like a cell phone. Well, friends, it happened, but this story has a good ending, so read on!

A few weeks ago we visited the Seattle Aquarium. I hadn't been there since high school and Penny loved our visit to the Point Defiance Zoo & Aquarium shortly before Ruby was born (and we also visited the Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach back in October, still working on the post for that one!) so we took a family trip and were tourists in our own backyard for a day. 

It's a relatively small aquarium, and on the day that we visited it was very blustery outside so we opted to run through a lot of the outdoor exhibits on our way to the next indoor area.

The main room has a lot of viewing tanks that draw childrens' attention. Penny's favorite was the touch a tank, where she got to touch starfish, urchins and other coastal tidepool creatures.

My favorite exhibit, which is a curiosity to all, was seeing the Giant Pacific Octopus. Most of the aquariums that I've visited have an octopus, but they always seem to be hiding. On this visit, the octopus was out in the open and there even was a volunteer standing next to her with tons of information. 

I loved walking around and showing the girls all the gorgeous colors that you can find throughout the different ecosystems that make up the Pacific Ocean.

You can kind of begin to see my love affair with my camera, right? Don't get my wrong, my cell phone camera does a great job for 90% of life. But these scenes require a little more firepower and I'm thankful to have my camera handy for them.

The last part of our visit was at their felt board area where Penny got to make her own ecosystems using the felt creatures. Somewhere between taking these pictures, playing with the felt, changing diapers and going to the car, the camera was set down and not given a second thought until we came home and I went to upload pictures for this blog post. 

We scoured the truck to see if somehow it was tossed in there without us thinking. It wasn't there. I contacted the aquarium, only to get the voicemail machine for several days. I even put out a lost ad on craigslist! I prayed and prayed that someone had found it, saw that the memory card was full of pictures of our family and turned it in at the front desk. It was a long shot, unfortunately there are people out there who would just call it "finders keepers" and take off with it. I think a week passed by and I finally reached out the the aquarium one last time via facebook.

This time I got a message back and they had my camera! Joy of joys! We picked it up and now I have these pictures to hold on to forever.

It was a close call. I've had this camera for over 5 years, it was a college graduation present from my parents and it's traveled the world with me - on our honeymoon to the Dominican Republic, our babymoon to Europe and everywhere in between. I was beside myself that in all the places that I've taken it, that it could have been lost so close to home.

What it comes down to is that even though we get bogged down in life because of that jerk who cut us off or that unapologetic glare from another shopper while you deal with your toddler's melt down at the grocery store, there is still so much good in this world. There are still people out there who when presented with an opportunity to get a nice camera for free they choose to do the right thing and help it find it's owner again. For all the less-than-helpful experiences I've had from strangers since becoming a mother, I've been met with ten times as many helpful ones.

Have you visited the Seattle Aquarium?

or

Tell me about a time when a stranger was kind to you!

See what zoos The Pierogie Mama has written about

Overnight Potty Training?!

You're going to hate me. Potty training has been soooo easy for us!

As more and more of Penny's cohorts were potty training, I grew anxious to see what was in store for us. We had a couple experiences with potty interest when she was about 15 months old, and then I got pregnant and *I* lost interest in potty training and resigned myself to the couch. This past summer was also a failed attempt (mainly because, again, I couldn't keep up while having a 3 month old strapped to me). So we relaxed, enjoyed the fall and as the holidays approached, I had no hopes of her potty training because what kid potty trains around the holidays? We're constantly out of the house, out of our routine, the excitement of aunts, uncles and cousins...and how do we deal with public bathrooms?

It all started a couple days before Thanksgiving, where Penny woke up from her naps dry. I decided to give it a shot and put her in some Gerber cotton training underwear. I maniacally followed her around, pestering her if she needed to go potty and within 20 minutes or so she said she did so we got out her princess potty seat and plopped her down. To her great delight, it came and I rewarded her with a chocolate chip from a pretty jar that sits in our bathroom. We continued this for the next 3 days (with diapers during naps and bedtime) and she even stayed dry all through Thanksgiving weekend while visiting my in-laws and running around after all of her cousins.

For the following 2 weeks I would reward her with each successful potty by giving her a chocolate chip from the jar. She knows that a poop = two chocolate chips, a couple Frozen stickers and perhaps a tattoo if I have them laying around. We'd make a big deal out of successful attempts; I'd list of each person who is proud of her and I'd tell her to announce to Ruby that she went potty (because her sister's admiration is already important to her!).

Over the last week I cut out the chocolate chips for going potty. The little stinker was starting to play me and would go potty even if she just had one drop (because any potty meant a chocolate chip). So mama wised up and changed the rules to chocolate chips for poop (and she won't let me forget that she gets 2 Frozen stickers and a tattoo).

If I were to give anyone some tips on how we did it, this is what I would suggest.

• Keep it simple. I'm sure that she could have potty trained when she was 15 months old (not kidding), but the timing wasn't right. I was in my first trimester and exhausted. The following round of interest was when Ruby was brand new and it just didn't work for me to wear newborn Ruby and be standing over the toilet with Penny. So even though the timing wasn't ideal and I didn't get to capitalize on an early potty trainer, waiting until she was absolutely ready made it so much easier and less stressful on each of us.
• Figure out what reward system your child wants, and go for it. Even though we generally stuck to the one or two chocolate chip rule, if convincing her was a little more difficult that time I would allow her to grab more than her allotment. The stickler for rules in me had a problem with this at first, but I remembered that we're dealing with a child and honestly the toilet can kind of be a scary thing. Keeping it upbeat, happy and rewarding is important.
• If you are crafty by any means, sew a panel of fabric with your child's hero onto the front of the underwear. As you can see by my picture, it doesn't have to be perfect. Whenever I would put Penny into her underwear I would tell her "Remember, we're wearing our Frozen underwear. So don't pee on Elsa and Anna!" That was a huge motivator for her! I know that there is Frozen print underwear available, but I couldn't find the Gerber training underwear style and I already had a bunch of plain ones and also extra fabric laying around. 

I have to say, after cloth diapering 2 kids for 9 months, I am relieved in the break from laundry work. Penny is now 33 months old. It's a bittersweet transition though, because I miss that fluffy butt of hers. We still put on a diaper for naps and night time, even though most times she ends up dry. It just ensures that she will sleep longer. She's also passed the torch to her little sister is my resident cloth diaper model. 

How is potty training going for you? Any tips to share? 

Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links.

My mom life: "Why hasn't this been invented yet?"

If I had a penny (haha, so punny) for how many times a day I think "there's gotta be a better way of doing this," "why hasn't that been invented yet?" or "is there an app for that?!" then I'd probably be writing this post from my office in my winter getaway tropical cabana. You too, right?

I think that moms are some of the most driven people to innovate new ideas because in the midst of our daily lives while we're trying to accomplish whatever it is we're trying to do, we've got the littles pulling us in the opposite direction. Bless their angelic little hearts, but whether you work inside or outside of the home, you know this plight. So many times a day I'm caught doing the same work over again (Ruby now finds it hilarious to unpack everything that I just put away into a drawer two seconds ago) or I'm literally juggling two kids and 5 bags of groceries. My stress level heightens, I become a crabby mom and sometimes there are days where it doesn't look like I did anything at all. I think to myself "there's got to be another way."

Well, to be honest, all of the innovating juices in this family come from my engineer husband and I am awfully pleased with myself when I go on a crafting spree and have something cute to show in the end. That's the limit of my creativity! So I will be relying on another mom who's had enough of whatever it is that's holding her back to come up with a better solution. "Like" if you get me.

Did you know that there's this new website, Mumzy, that speaks to all those things? At Mumzy, moms with ideas come to this place with a crowdfunding campaign and work with professional resources to help develop her small business. 

Mumzy is the first and so far only crowdfunding network for moms. This unique project tailors their support to this specific demographic because we, more often than anyone else, are faced with those problems and questions that I shared earlier. The US Census estimates that there are 82.5 million mothers of all ages in the US and with 4 million babies being born annually (Source: eMarketer, 2013), we've got a lot of incentive to be inventive. 

But what if you are like me and aren't really an innovative problem solver? Mumzy also gives you the option to explore the current campaigns and support the ones you love! Currently there are four live campaigns on Mumzy and as the network grows and raises awareness, who knows what mom will be inspired to fix that annoying problem that you, I and every other mom deals with? How exciting is that?

What I like about each campaign is that they feature a high quality video that tells you about the cause. Each one also outlines different incentives for however much you choose to donate - from a facebook shout out to a cameo in a video they produce. Mumzy is offering their own incentive to boost interest - the first 100 people who post a project to MUMZY will have a chance to win $1,000 back towards their project's funding goal!

Are you that mom who's been holding onto that great idea that's going to be a game changer for all of us? 

Disclosure: I was selected for this opportunity as a member of Clever Girls and the content and opinions expressed here are all my own.