Bloom

 

 
At the end of last week I got a very special package in the mail.  It was a book that I had pre-ordered months ago, called "Bloom."  This long awaited book is written by Kelle Hampton, a Mom whose blog I read faithfully every day! 

Kelle has two daughters, her youngest, named Nella, is two and half, just like Sydney.  Nella was born with Down Syndrome and Kelle's blog is a wonderful memoir of her daily joys in raising both of her girls.  Kelle has taken what could have been a devastating life event for some people and turned her life into the most amazing, joyful, complete existence possible.  She has graciously documented her story in a beautiful book and I was thrilled to get it last week!

This book is so beautiful, hard cover and filled with fabulous colour photos which Kelle, a professional photographer, has taken of her family.  I haven't been able to put it down since I got it, her story is so personal, so emotionally charged that you really feel as though you are living through her experiences. 

Have you ever read a book where the characters come so alive and is so real that you actually feel a little sad while you're reading it, knowing that the book will inevitably come to an end and that your heart will feel as though you've lost a good friend?  For me, that's the mark of a really good book and Kelle's book has me feeling this way already.  She strikes so many chords with me in her experience in having a baby, I feel as though we are friends that have known each other forever.

I am slowly savouring this book, reading some every night before I go to bed.  It is such a lovely way to end my day, I have rarely known anyone who is so amazingly positive and joyful, it is inspiring!

Kelle's blog "Enjoying the Small Things" is well worth visiting, click here for a visit!

This morning Sydney and I whipped up a batch of homemade butternut squash and ricotta ravioli.  I found an amazing recipe online that uses wonton wrappers as the homemade pasta, works like a charm and makes for half the work! 

Sydney was only too happy to help me make the ravioli this morning and spent quite a bit of time stuffing and folding her own, very cute and quite talented I might add!

The ravioli was delicious, the roasted butternut squash made for such a tasty filling, next time I'm going to experiment by adding some different spices, maybe nutmeg, maybe cumin.  I will be making this again and again so I'll be sure to tweak the recipe to get it perfect, although it is great just the way it stands!  The recipe is below if you want to give it a try!

I got another parcel stuffed full of the cutest clothes for Syd for the summer season this week, here's a few of our favourites.  I especially love the flowered hoodie!
 

Hope you are having a great week, wherever you are!

Roasted Butternut Squash & Ricotta Ravioli

1 pkg wonton wrappers
1 butternut squash
canola or olive oil for cooking
salt & pepper to taste
1 cup ricotta or soft goat cheese
1 TBSP maple syrup

Preheat the oven to 400°F. Split the squash in half lengthwise, scoop out the seeds, drizzle with oil, sprinkle with salt and pepper and bake on a rimmed sheet or in a baking dish for 40 minutes, or until soft.
Scoop out the cooled roasted squash (you can do this in advance if you like while you’re cooking something else, and stash the squash in the fridge for a few days) and mash it with ricotta, a wee drizzle of maple syrup (and some of flax oil if you want to boost omega 3s) and some salt and pepper. Assemble them one or two at a time, placing a small spoonful in the middle of a wrapper, dipping your finger in water and running it along two edges, then fold over and press to seal, squishing out any air bubbles in the process.
Once the ravioli are assembled they can be frozen in a single layer and then transferred to freezer bags, or dropped into boiling water (don’t crowd the pot) for 3-5 minutes, until they float to the surface and the pasta is tender. Drain well and serve with butter – browned butter, if at all possible.

A Day at the Fire Station

 
Today is Sydney's buddy, William's, 2nd birthday.  His Mom is planning a huge birthday bash for this weekend, but because his actual birthday fell on Easter Monday and all of us were free, she arranged a special little outing for William and his friends this morning to visit our local fire station in Kerrisdale.

The kids were ecstatic!  Two very lovely (and very handsome, I might add!) firefighters, opened the giant garage door to unveil two shiny red fire trucks that the kids could climb right into.  Sydney boldly let one of the firemen lift her up into the captain's seat and sat perched there for quite some time taking it all in.  Then she jumped in the back of the engine with some of her buddies and tried on one of the giant, heavy helmets that the firemen wear. 

The firemen gave each of the kids their own little red plastic firefighter's helmet that read "Junior Fire Chief."  It was so adorable watching them all wander around the fire hall  in their little hats.  We tried, albeit unsuccessfully, to sit all the kids on the front bumper of the fire engine for a photo, but managed to get so many cute pictures of them all lined up together outside of the fire station after the tour was over.

What a great way to spend the morning!  Sydney left with a colouring book and stickers, along with her coveted red hat and spent the better part of the morning talking about the visit.  It was such a fun way to spend a morning with friends! 

Check out this cake that William's Mom made for him for when he got home from the fire station today, amazing!

This afternoon we drove out to Burnaby to meet up with my sister and her family for lunch at Red Robin.  My sister, who has two boys, can always be counted on to get the best girly-girl presents for Syd and today she didn't disappoint once again!  Sydney got a lovely little Passover gift, a board book, some ladybug hair clips and a a super cute pink purse complete with a shiny beaded handle!  I loved it so much I could have snatched it out of Sydney's hands and carried around myself for the afternoon.  I didn't, of course, but I'm just saying, it's pretty awesome!  It was so nice to see my sister and her husband and my nephews and catch up. 

When we got home we found a parcel waiting on the front porch for us, a box full of some new clothes for Sydney for the summer season from The Children's Place.  I am always so pleased with the clothes that I get from Children's Place, they are excellent quality and super cute and their sizing is great!  They have fantastic online sales all the time, it's fast becoming one of my favourite places to order stuff for Syd from!

 

 
Syd especially loved these strawberry sunglasses and the ladybug rain jacket that I got for her for next season.  She had both of them and her watermelon socks on and paraded around the house for quite some time today, it was very cute!

So we had a wonderful start to our week.  Everyone is starting to feel healthy and well again, here's hoping it lasts for a while this time and that we can enjoy the amazing weather and a beautiful spring in Vancouver!

Passover Weekend

 
It has been a full and fun weekend with the start of Passover on Friday night.  Passover doesn't always fall at exactly the same time as Easter every year, but this year it happened to start on Good Friday which made it convenient because everyone was off of work and feeling festive!

Poor Paul has been feeling absolutely awful for the past few days with yet another bad virus.  I kept hoping that he would magically jump out of bed and say that he was feeling better, but quickly realized that it looked like Syd and I were on our own this year!  Friday night we went to Paul's brother's house for first night of Pesach.  It was fun to see Syd's cousin Dana who is expecting her first baby mid-July.  I couldn't help but think back to Passover three years ago when I was just a few weeks pregnant.  Seems like just yesterday!

Sydney was such a good girl during dinner.  She and another wee guest, Sasha, snacked on matzah and celery for the first part of the Seder before dinner was served and seemed to enjoy the singing and reading.  I was so proud of Sydney, she was so well behaved despite the late evening!

The second Seder was at Paul's nephew's house, what a fantastic time we had!  Sydney played with another little guest, Chloe, who shares the exact same birth date as Syd!  They were so cute together playing with the doll house and cars in the living room while the adults made their way through the Haggadah.  Sydney wore her tulip dress that was given to us as a gift when she was born.  It is a size 2 and I remember thinking way back when she was just a little newborn, that she would wear it to Passover dinner when she was two years old.  At long last, we cracked it out of the closet yesterday and she got the chance to wear it!!  She looked so sweet!

Every year I grow to love the Passover Seders more and more.  It is such a wonderful time of recounting the miraculous hand of God in delivering the Jewish people from slavery in Egypt thousands of years ago.  I love recounting the story each year and remembering.  I am grateful to have the time to stop and be thoughtful at this time of year and am so glad that Sydney can be surrounded by family and tradition.  It really was a wonderful weekend!

Spring

 
I have been remiss at updating my blog this week, trying desperately to get a few extra hours of sleep instead of spending time on the computer while we're all fighting off our 100th cold of the season!  I've missed doing my daily updates, despite us feeling so lousy, we have had a good week!

Tomorrow is Good Friday and also the start of Passover.  We had fun doing a few things for Easter this week.  Syd and I decided to make a batch of sugar cookies and decorate them with Smarties for a few of her friends.  We had fun delivering them today!

Sydney got a very special package in the mail today addressed directly to her, a little Easter treat from Grandma and Grandpa!  Syd was so excited to get a parcel in the mail, she sat down on the front door step and ripped it open immediately when I told her it was for her!  Grandma sent a very cool egg decorating kit, with a neat holder to hold the egg while you colour in the stencil with markers, very cool!  She also sent some very pretty felt butterfly stickers which came at the perfect time just as we were heading out to deliver cookies, so we decorated the top of the plates with them!

Our friend Lori gave Sydney a little Easter present today too, a baggie filled with such sweet little things that Syd loved!  She even found some retro "Shrinky Dinks", for those of you born in the 70's you totally know what I'm talking about!  Remember colouring those little plastic pictures and then putting them in the oven and watching them shrink and harden and then using them for ornaments or keychains?  They still live on, and Syd and I are going to take an afternoon to make some and re-live the memories!

I've been finding a lot of this in Sydney's room lately:

She loves to lay out outfits on the floor, choosing carefully to find things that she thinks will look pretty together and it most often involves a skirt.  It's adorable!  I can see in the days ahead that she is going to have a strong mind of her own when it comes to her wardrobe but for now I am relishing in the fact that I can pretty much dress her in whatever I want! 

Speaking of getting dressed, my poor wardrobe is looking rather pathetic so I took a little trip down to H&M this morning and found a few new things for the spring/summer season.  The best find of the day is this tunic style dress which I am going to wear to dinner for the first night of Passover tomorrow night.  It looks so pretty on, very feminine and stylish!  It feels so nice to have something new to wear!

There were lots more great things to share about this week but I will keep it short tonight so that I can crawl into bed and hopefully sleep off the last bit of this wretched cold! 

Wishing you all a very happy long weekend, may it be filled with sun and celebrations and enjoying all the amazing things that spring brings!

A New Week

I don't know if it's all the flowers blooming outside, or the fact that the weather is notably warmer and less wintry, but it feels like everything is new right now.  I woke up this morning to a new week, a new month, a new blank slate to fill with my girl, and I love it!  These days with her are precious indeed and I don't intend on wasting one of them!


Early this morning, while we were still in our pajamas, Sydney and I whipped up a batch of our famous Avocado Chocolate Pudding.  This amazing raw food recipe uses two very ripe avocados as it's base and is healthy and delicious!  We had fun dipping fruit in it and eating it for a morning snack.

We headed off to gymnastics this morning.  Our friends Jack and Christina coincidentally signed up for the same class as us, so we were thrilled to see them there.  It's always so much more fun going to an activity when Syd has a friend there!  After gymnastics, we all went to Kokopelli Cafe on Dunbar for lunch.  Kokopelli is famous around our neighborhood for being THE place to eat with your kids.  When Syd was first born, I used to go there all the time to meet up with other Moms but over the past year or so we've found several other haunts to frequent in our neighborhood.

I was so thrilled to get reacquainted with Kokopelli today.  Not only do they have the most kid-friendly menu I've ever seen, they also have an amazing play area and have delicious and healthy food for adults too and great coffee!  Sydney and Jack played happily while Christina and I visited.  I sat wondering what took me so long to get there, Syd and I will be back in the days to come for sure!!  If you have kids and live in Vancouver and haven't been here, get in the car and go!

This afternoon while I had my Mother's Helper Eryn here, I decided that we should head out and do a grocery shop at the brand new No-Frills that has opened up in Kitsilano.  What a great place to shop, the prices are super cheap, they carry a great assortment of President's Choice blue label items and it's clean and spacious!  Syd was literally racing up and down every aisle chucking things into my basket faster than we could put them back.  I was so grateful to have Eryn with me to be an extra set of hands!

So that was the start of a new week.  Syd has this week and next off of preschool for the Passover which begins on Friday, so we plan to spend the morning tomorrow baking together in lieu of school.  Should be a great way to spend a day with my girl!