Wow! October starts tomorrow and it is my absolute favorite month of the year! My husband and I were married in October and this year is our five-year anniversary!

Cooler (relative) weather is supposed to reach Florida tomorrow.  I’m so excited because I am hosting a private art show featuring seven local artists at my house! I’ve been busy preparing for a few weeks.  As this is my first show of anything like this I am anxious to see what happens.

A special thank you to the following women who will be participating in tomorrow’s event.

Tina Adkins
Danean Hoenicke Ermentrout
Kate McKuhen
Joni Rollen
Beth Smith
Elizabeth Sullivan

~Life as Mom

Local mom, starved for creativity and culture in her life, attended the Samuel P. Harn Museum’s Tot time with her two-year old in Gainesville, Fl.

After a docent-led tour of the museum, mom and toddler work on an art piece to take home as a souvenir. Twice a month the University of Florida’s Samuel P. Harn Museum hosts a preschool hour that helps moms get out of the  house.

Culture for the preschool set! I love it.  I love that I can introduce my son to art in a more formal way.  This particular event is wonderful because the docents are prepared for little ones and I get to go to one of my favorite places in town.

He may not know his alphabet yet but he’s learning to identify elements in a piece of art!

This activity is low-cost, usually about $5, which is key to our participation.  One dollar is for the museum and four is for parking.

Another local activity that fills up half a day for us is the local library’s reading hour.  The newly renovated library branch that we go to added a toddler playground and a coffee shop.  Can you say heaven?

They have toddler-friendly computers which have touch screens and nothing but child-friendly games.  Aden finally figured out how to use the computer mouse this past month.  That has made the games a lot more challenging and fun for him.

Between these activities and play dates we stay busy!  Now if I could just get more efficient in my writing! Ha!  At least I have been taking a lot more photographs.  If only there were more hours in the week!

Are you a stay-at-home mom? What do you do to stay sane?  Do you take field trips?  Do you come up with crafts?  Does having more than one child affect your activities?

~Life as Mom

As a new stay-at-home mom, I am still getting my feet wet.  I am learning new routines, new sources of frustration and new sources of joy.  Although we don’t have a strict routine established yet, we have ditched the pacy (or shi as Aden called it), and are learning to use the potty.  I think we have a ways to go on that one. 

One of the best toy purchases I have made recently was a bug catching net.  Endless hours of entertainment for a young boy of two! We have already caught spiders, butterflies and lizards!

Unfortunately, my fear of spiders and most bugs doesn’t help in this source of entertainment.  However, I am NOT afraid of lizards and can be of great help to the young champion rescueing whatever lizard he can get his hands on!

~Life as Mom

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Blogging about parenting and life in general has been enlightening for both Kevin and myself.  We’ve learned a lot about blogging!  We’ve also learned a great deal about ourselves.  Sometimes my husband and I are able get a perspective on each other through our writing that we aren’t quite able to get across in talking to each other. 

Here is a quick synopsis of our past two years blogging as parents!

Getting Closer
Here is our first post, pre-baby!  Short but sweet.  My inspiration to start blogging was dooce.com.  I found her through an article somewhere.  I actually kept the article somewhere in the mess of my desk to always reference.  Here was someone laying her life experiences out there for the world to see!  If I could only be that brave!

Two posts I enjoyed writing the most were Nature Attack! and part II, Nature attacks, the House with the Mouse.  The situations were so funny and I still can’t believe I had a mouse in bed with me! UGH!!  Not too mention there have been updates that I haven’t blogged about yet.  How many times can one man get poisen ivy? 

Fall Behind on Spring Cleaning
Here is a post that had an interesting discussion comment in part due to my naivete and part due to my, shall we dare call it?, sarcasm!

I’m supposed to put in a post of something I wish I had written here by another blogger.  Can I say that every day I don’t write I wish I had and everytime I read another person’s blog I say to myself; that could be me.  There are so many brilliant talents out there working hard to let the world know.  Every day I find more and more bloggers I want to follow.  I just wish I had time to read them all!

Our most helpful post seemed to be Strategies of a Working Mom.  This was the most popular post of our blog!  I definitely need to write more posts like this as there seems to be a need for them, but who has the time now that the child is mobile?

All I want for my birthday is my son’s poopie diaper
One of the best titles we could have, or rather Kevin could have, ever come up with!  I don’t know what could possibly embarress our son more for years to come, unless it’s the picture of him on the potty!

Keeping Toddler Occupied
This is a post that I wish more people had read.  I asked my friends to pitch in and they had a lot of brilliant ideas.

Thanks for sticking around!!

~Life as Mom

Aden at Dudley Farm

A sun-filled day at Dudley Farm in Newberry, Florida.

This past weekend I spend some time at a local  working farm with Aden and friend. My goal was to get some great photographs of them to use in a future portrait portfolio. I wish I had taken more photographs of the actual farm. I will definitely go back as I had so much fun.

The problem with gorgeous kids is that when editing I never know when to quit. How does one perfect perfection?  We stopped at Publix and Aden got a balloon.  He didn’t let it go all day.

~Life as Mom