Reading Break

 
It is only Wednesday night and I feel as though I've been through the wringer.  Sydney has been quite the challenge these past few days.  It's been the perfect storm of her being two, still being a snotty mess with this cold that won't seem to go away, and cutting a new molar ~ her last baby tooth, hooray!

To add to the challenge, this week is reading break for the universities, so both of my Mother's Helpers and housekeeper are off this week so I haven't had a break even for a minute and I am feeling it!

But I know that the whole point of this blog is to find the extraordinary in an ordinary day, so here are a few of the highlights of the past few days:

Tonight in the bathtub I asked Sydney how to spell her name, totally thinking that she would never know how.  Without missing a beat, she clearly said to me S-Y-D-N-E-Y.  Amazing!  Her mind is like a sponge right now, it is absolutely incredible!

We had lunch on Monday with my brother Paul who celebrated his 34th birthday on Sunday.  It was so nice to see him and to be able to bring him a little treat for his birthday.  With his birthday being so close after Christmas, it was hard not to duplicate anything that we'd given him for the holidays, so we got him this gift set from the Body Shop with products from the new White Musk Sport fragrance.

While we were downtown meeting with my brother, I popped into Baby Gap on Robson and they had literally racks and racks of clearance clothes, making room for all of their new spring wear.  I got Sydney a bunch of things at rock bottom prices including a huge stack of new socks, gotta love a deal!

And speaking of deals, today after art class Sydney and I popped into Peekaboo Baby on Dunbar and got two super cute things for 70% off on their sale rack!  We picked up these very cute Roxy flare jeans and this Dr. Bon bubble dress, I think it's going to be adorable on Syd!

I also started reading a new book this week: "Girl Meets God."  This interesting tale, written by Lauren Winner, is her own story of finding God.  Being born to an Orthodox Jewish father and lapsed Southern Baptist Mother, she decided to become an Orthodox Jew in her teens but through a series of events ended up converting to Christianity.  It is a very interesting read of one girl's struggle to find her religious identity, plus it just feels downright good to be reading a novel!

This afternoon we had our friends Mel and Logan and Sarah and Emma over for a playdate.  It was so nice to reconnect with them both and to have our first official playdate in the new playroom!  The kids loved the space, I'm so glad that we spent the time converting the room as a space for the kids to play.  Sarah and Emma had just returned from a week's vacation in Mexico and brought Sydney this very cool set of maracas as a gift.  They will be a great addition to her music station in the playroom!

So despite the hard week that it's been, there have definitely been some good things too, some weeks you just have to look harder than others to find them!