Daddy Day!

Happy Father's day to my wonderful hubby Chris!  I love how great you are with Casey nurturing the sides of him that I can't like throwing him up in the air and helping him take manly risks! I can't wait for you to meet your daughter, I know your heart is just going to melt.  I know she will find a compassionate comforter and a patient listening ear in you because are that for me.  I love you sweetie!

The Other Half

I recently posted pictures of Camille's side of the room and promised to post Casey's side once I was done.  My mom made this beautiful baseball quilt for his little bed and it turned out so great!  His bed is from Ikea and we love it because it's close to the ground but also has the bars on the side so he can get in and out with ease but not roll off at night.  However unless you like the strange bedding that Ikea offers for this bed you have to find a way to have your bedding customized, because it's wider than a crib mattress could fit and not as wide or as long as a twin.  So I am blessed to have both a mother-in-law and a mom who can sew!

Casey boy just turned 2 in May and he is a very fun little toddler!  Right now we're working on developing his language and he is using new words every day.  Some times I feel like he's behind a little bit with it but every one develops differently and I feel like it's always positive when I can see that progress is being made!  It's so fun as a parent to watch your child develop as an individual!  Right now he spends probably equal parts of the day being energetic and crazy running all over the house and yelling words I do not understand, he's very dramatic in his play, and then being quiet and calm playing by himself or wanting to be cuddled.  Honestly I enjoy both sides, it's fun to see him imagining and playing even if it gets loud.  Discipline is still something we are working out.  I'm pretty fortunate that he doesn't like being in trouble so one time-out a day usually reminds him that he has to chill out on some things.  But I know this is just the beginning of the "terrible-twos" so although we have chosen not to spank I know that I'm going to have to get creative but always stay consistent.

I'm looking forward to watching Casey become a big brother in just a few weeks. I felt even as a baby that Casey possessed the kind of sweetness my brother has and that he'd be a great big brother for a girl.  I used to jump on top of my sleeping brother on Saturday mornings and wake him up to watch cartoons with me by opening his eyelids, so unintentionally terrible of me, but he was very good-natured with me. For a while I was nervous about having two kids and how I'm going to deal with it.  But I am trying to find peace and comfort in the Lord and just telling myself that my children will adjust to each other and we will all be learning together.  I don't feel like last time I was very easy on myself, I think that fed into my anxiety.  This time I am going to take it day by day and try and remind myself that everything is going to work themselves out.        

Thoughts on Cooking

 source photo

Growing up my dad was the one who prepared the meals.  My mom is a nurse and when we were little she worked a lot of night shifts and it fell to my dad to feed us kids.  He did a good job but mostly I can recall pretty basic meals.  I don't think anyone ever taught my mom to cook like some families do, I think my dad was taught a little bit by his mom...but that teaching how to cook was not passed on to me.  I didn't care, I had no interest really in cooking until college.

As I've mentioned before I was an art major being raked over the coals for not being "good enough" so I turned my creative forces in a different direction.  I started to learn to cook.  How wonderful cooking is for creativity!  What is similar about cooking and making art is that you take a little bit of knowledge and then you essentially take a leap of faith that your knowledge as skill will be there.  It's exciting sometimes when I am drawing I am making decisions with my hands as I am moving them, something unplanned is always happening, it's a thrilling feeling.  Freedom! 

When you draw for example, you need to have knowledge about how to go about carving an image into or out of the paper.  Part of this is natural skill and part of it is watching teachers and learning how they go about it and trying to do the same.  I would describe this knowledge as pretty vague, hard to put into words probably because it stems from the right (non-verbal) side of the brain.  In cooking you need to have knowledge of what flavors go together along with technique.  I learned all this through the miracle of the Food Network. I soaked up everything I could, the new revelation about putting salt in the water you plan to boil your pasta in...so simple but I knew nothing!

For the past few months I have committed to making every dinner at home.  That means meal planning and everything!  Not letting ourselves go out is forcing me to grow as a home cook.  And the joy and the thrill I got from art is coming out full force.  Last night I just winged a meal purely from a picture I saw, crossing my fingers that all the flavors would come together, with out any instruction, and it did and it felt awesome!

The best part of this whole thing is that my son is always around when I am cooking.  And even though he's only 2 he loves to help, smell everything and put things in the pan.  I love that I'll have something to pass on to him.  What a gift something like cooking can be!

Camille's Room

I haven't blogged in so long some of you might not know that the Fletcher family is growing! We are expecting a little girl due July 11th.  But I hope she comes sooner because it's hot and I'm ginormous and she is a dancing fool pretty much all the time that she is awake!  Last time I was preggo I did not have that nesting feeling.  People would talk about how obsessive I'd become about cleaning and getting everything ready.  But at the time we knew we were going to move almost right after Casey was born so if I had the feeling to nest I just ignored it and the desire to clean didn't really come.  With this baby though I am nesting full force!  It goes beyond getting things ready for her...I am like literally excited to clean.  I'm cleaning everything and then like the other day I looked down and saw that my blanket was machine washable and I was like "Ooo I'm going to clean it!"  This is beyond crazy for me, but I like it.


This weekend we got Camille's half of the room ready for her.  I hope to post pic's of the kids shared room soon but I'm not done with Casey's side yet, which will be a baseball theme.  I just loved the way it turned out!  I got those old hankies at an antique store back I think when Chris and I were just barely married and I told the lady what I was going to do with them. I said I was going to hang them up over my baby girl crib if I ever have a girl.  And she was like you'll probably only have boys then.  Don't you just love people like that?  Boo.  Anyways I am proud of her room!

I've been getting a lot of comments on how unusual the name we picked for her is.  I know Camille isn't very popular but that's what I like about it.  My name is Megan and my husbands name is Chris.  I had at least 2 Megan's in my class all growing up, and everyone knows how common Chris is.  We always had to be known by our last name's initial. I hated it.  So I wanted both my kids to have familiar yet different names.  Also I never expected my husband would even like the name Camille.  We had kind of settled on Alice for her but I just didn't LOVE it.  So wrote out a list of names and put in Camille because I'd been watching a British show and there was a girl on there named Camilla and I liked that but I like the french version of the name better. So I slipped that name in and he liked it best! I really couldn't believe it!  But we both love it.  Camille means perfect and her middle name is my sister's middle name, Claire which means pure.  I would love for her to have a pure heart!  I just love name meanings especially when the child matches the meaning! Casey means brave, and boy he is very brave, willing to do anything and take any risk.  It's very fun!  I can't wait to meet her!