"Felice giorno di San Valentino"

Happy Valentine's Day!

Valentine's is a fun Holiday in our house. No crazy expensive gifts, just fun wacky stuff and a lot of love.

Growing up I always looked forward to Valentine's Day breakfast. In my house Cherrio's and Puffed Rice where a staple. Valentine's day brought mini cinnamon doughnuts. I loved those things and my mother knew it.

So here at I Miei Due Bambini we are starting our own Valentine's tradition. Red Velvet Cupcakes...for breakfast. How fun is that.

Here's the cupcakes plus a few of the mini-cakes we made for Francesco's class.


Here is a photo of all the loot. The balloon was really for the boys to play with, the flowers were for Momma and the card was just as big as it looks. It was so much fun to open the huge card with Francesco's help. When I brought the cupcakes out we all had to sing Happy Birthday...not sure to who but we sang...since we had cake.


One lonely cupcake, I really should have taken a picture after it was bitten into so you could see just how red they were.


I took this shot out our back door this morning. When I showed it to Michael he said it was a Valentine's Sky. So that's what I am calling this photo.


We had a nice day here for Valentine's, I hope all the rest of you did as well. "Felice giorno di San Valentino"

Anointment

Some people have asked me what my WW picture was of and why did I take it.

1. This is a picture if the 3 type of Oil the Catholic Churches use for anointment.

The Catholic Church blesses three types of holy oils for anointing:

• Oil of the Catechumens
• Oil of the Infirm
• Sacred Chrysm

The first two are said to be "blessed", while chyrsm is "Consecrated" .

The Oil of Catechumens is used to anoint the catechumens (adults preparing for reception into the church) just before receiving the Sacrament of Baptism.

Anointing is part of the Sacrament of Anointing of the Sick, and the Oil of the Infirm is used for this. The Sacred Chrysm is used in the Sacraments of Baptism, Confirmation, and Holy Orders.

2. I took this picture while at my home parish taking other pictures for my mother. My mother is a DRE (Director of Religious Education). She wants to make a booklet for a couple of children she is working with that have Autism who are going to make the Sacrament of First Communion. She is going to take the pictures I took from around the church and make a booklet for them to follow along with the procession of the mass, much like we all do with a missalette. It was really fun to take pictures for this project, and I am still going to help he finish up the booklet with a little photo shop magic.

I really liked the way the Oils looked in the jars on the wall next to the Baptismal font. Here is as picture with a little wider angle.

Wordless Wednesday

Anointment

Is there anything better than a good old Wordless Wednesday here and here. ?

Best Shot Monday : at the park.

So the bed time battle continues, I am really praying this is a "phase", I am utterly exhausted!

On a litter note, with the heat wave of 50 degrees over the weekend we headed for the park. Nicolo love the swing just as much as Francesco did. I got a few pictures outside in natural light, I was so happy!

I can not pick just one. I think I like them all just because they were outside.

Head on over to Tracy's at Mother May I for more Best Shot Mondays!

It's a good thing he is cute (seriously)!

First, I just want to say thanks to all of you for the comments on my post about the Sleep Issue we are having with Francesco. The encouragement is awesome and the experiences of others helps me feel like I am not in this alone. Francesco is my first go around as a parent and I swear I learn something new daily. We are still having issues but I am trying different approaches. Tonight I was able to get him to dreamland within the hours, a new record lately. Maybe it had something to do with his belly full of pizza, pizza for dinner is why I love Fridays.

Here I go again with another picture of the kids with food on there face. Either I think its cute or my kids always have food on their faces.



I hope everyone has a great weekend. We are going to have a heat wave of 45-50 degrees this weekend, gotta dig out my flip flops!

P.S. I just want to give a little shout out to Shelly over at Aperture of My Eye for teaching me how to make the cool frames around my images. Thanks Shel!

Theme Thursday: Cold

I know that there are plenty of colder places out there but for us it has been really cold lately!


I love this photo because it looks like Francesco is doing all the work.


Head on over to Stacy's for more Theme Thursday!

I was just about to give the Binky back

It's now 9:52 p.m., is your 2 1/2 year old to sleep? Mine just made it there.

Lately, Francesco has been having a rough time getting settled down for the night. God I hope it doesn't last. I was just about to giving the Binky back tonight. I literally could feel the life being sucked out of me as I left his room, took two steps away from the door and he started to yell out again.

We started the whole bedtime ritual at 8:21 pm and at 9:52 pm he is finally asleep, I hope. I haven't been able to get squat done in the evening because of these episodes. I have no idea what had brought them on and even more clueless of how to deal with them.

We do the same routine, read 2-3 books, turn on the music, leave a very generous night light on and give lots of hugs and kisses. He then yells out that he is scared, sometimes he will tell you what scares him. The cat is on his ceiling (I think he see a shadow), there's a dragon in the closet, a train is going to hit him, the list goes on. Other times I totally don't get what he is saying or he doesn't have an answer. You can tell he is on the very edge of going to sleep, he is to the point that he can hardly keep his eyes open while yelling and crying about being scared.

I have tried making sure the closet is all the way shut, turning the over head light on, reading an extra book, reassuring him I am not going to let anything happen to him, etc. I try to leave the room and tell him I will be back in 5 Min's (with every intention to go back) but don't make it 30-40 secs out of the room before it starts all over again. This occurs for at least an hour, can you just imagine how exhausting this can be? All the while I can only think of all the things I still need to do before I can even think about sitting down and even doing a leisure activity.

So, you can see how I could just about give the Binky back, but I didn't. I'm not even sure if that would help, he hasn't had the pacifier in over a month and this is a new recent issue in the last 10 (very exhausting) days.

I am wondering if he is having some form of night terrors but he is not asleep yet. If anyone has any insight I am all ears.

It's 10:10 pm and all Wee One's are sound asleep. For how long is the next question.
Pray for me!