Author Archives: Larissa Sevenhuysen

About Larissa Sevenhuysen

Born and raised on the West Coast, I went from a single working girl there to a stay-at-home mom on the Prairies in 2.5 years. Life comes at you fast, and you just gotta go with it!

Calvin’s Birthday Present

Tim and I are not huge gift givers. We didn’t get Calvin a Christmas present, and were thinking that we wouldn’t get him a birthday present either because really, how does a one year old know what a gift is and miss it if he doesn’t get one? Money saved!

But I was at our local Goodwill thrift store and came across a bunch of bags and boxes of Mega Blocks and thought that would be a great toy for Calvin. So for $11, a grabbed a large box and a medium sized bag and took them home.

Of course I had to clean them, and originally thought I would just throw them in the dishwasher, but I didn’t have any mesh bags to keep them contained. So after a quick Google search, I discovered that the washing machine works just as well! So I divided up the pieces into four pillow cases, and then into the washer they went, on a hot cycle.

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When it was completed, I just laid the pieces all out on some towels to air dry.

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I didn’t have a basket big enough to fit all of the roughly 160 pieces, so I picked out the best ones, and now they are ready for play!

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And that is how gifts work in the Sevenhuysen house. What might be a random, everyday toy purchase by one family is a gift in ours.

Oh, and his birthday isn’t for another two weeks, but I’m sure he doesn’t care that he is getting it now and not later. I don’t want to have to keep them somewhere else just to “surprise” him on his actual birthday. I’ll save the surprising for when he actually knows what a birthday is.

 

 

 

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Meal Planning

Over a month ago, I wrote a post telling of my dislike for deciding what to make for supper. After that, I decided that I would try my hand at meal planning, and filled the entire March page of a calendar with ideas for every day. Except Sundays. I left Sundays blank as a flex day, just in case we went out one day during the week, or ended up with extra leftovers. If nothing else, eggs or sandwiches did the trick.

I enjoyed not having to think of what to make every day, so I have now done the same thing for April. These are the short steps I used:

1) inventoried the freezer so I know what I had on hand and what needed to be used

2) plugged those items and other ideas onto every day

3) wrote a shopping list

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There are so many ways to go about meal planning, and this is my easy peasy version.

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Photo Book

Last week I got an email from Shutterfly (I am on their mailing list) letting me know that they had a free book special on! It was valid for a hard cover 8×8 book. Of course I had to jump on that, and it was perfect because with Calvin’s birthday coming up, I could do the whole book of his first year! So I quickly got to work since I only had a couple days until the coupon code was no longer valid.

I just finished and ordered it, and am excited for it to come! I have made one other book like this, when I got the same offer from TripAdvisor as a thank you for writing travel reviews. It was supposed to be for making a photo book of vacation memories, but I used it for wedding photos instead. What can I say, I didn’t have any wedding photos printed yet, so I took advantage of an opportunity given to me.

These books are nowhere near fancy, and I really don’t put that much effort into them (especially this new one since I could really only work on it during nap time), but they are fun to have and flip through once in a while.

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I find Shutterfly okay to use. There are things that I would change if I had a choice, but it does the trick.

Have you made photo books online? What sites do you use?

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Weird Drivers

In my life I do not normally come across strange situations. Some people attract them; I am not one of those people. But this evening as we were driving home from Bible study, we were presented with a strange situation.

We were driving south on Street X. We came upon our Avenue Y and stopped at the red light, waiting to turn left. However, we were behind a car that was approximately one car length behind the stop line. I right away said to Tim, “I hope they are on the censor.” This light normally turns to a green arrow fairly quickly, so after two turns of the Street lights going red so cars from the Avenue could have their turn, I asked Tim if I should honk. We decided to wait for one more light cycle. It came and went, so I let Max give out a polite little “honk”. The car did not budge. One more light cycle happens and by this time there are two or three more cars behind us.

I decide to get out of my car and get the attention of the driver. I was smart enough to wave and not knock because that would have been frightening for her. And she was smart enough to open her back window and not the front window because I could have been a crazy person. I say something along the lines of “I think you may need to pull forward a bit so you are on the censor.” She shakes her head like she thinks I don’t know what I am talking about and silently closes her window.

I walk back to the car and decide that I will pull out of the lane and turn right instead, then pull a u-turn so I can go straight through on the Avenue. As I am waiting for the traffic to clear so I can do that, the driver in front of me decides that the light must not be working and pulls into the other lane and goes straight through, down the Street. Yay! Now I can pull forward and the whole lane of cars will be able to turn left! So of course, as soon as I get to the stop line, I notice the light coming north has turned red to let us have a turn because a truck stopped. Right away we finally get our green arrow!

But wait! The story doesn’t end there! As soon as I start turning, the truck, that was already stopped at its red light, decides to continue straight through, as I was turning left! Thankfully the intersection is huge so it was nowhere close to hitting me, but what a crazy little string of events!

Then we got home and everything was back to normal.

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Baby Sign Language

I knew I wanted to try sign language with my kids before Calvin was born. My sister in law used it pretty effectively, and it is a really handy tool to help the kids communicate before they can use words. So I started signing to Calvin words like “milk” and “all done” and “more” on a fairly regular basis. I never did the songs or things that really gung ho people do. But I don’t think Calvin really understands that it is something he can use to talk to me instead of just me talking to him.

He gets excited when I sign “milk”, but never asks for it with the action. He will repeat “all done” if I am asking him if he is finished but never volunteers to do it. And I think he repeats “more”, but it is just him clapping his hands.

I’m not frustrated that he is not really picking it up, because really, I’m not putting a whole lot of effort into it, but I would love to hear your experiences with it.

Did/do you use baby sign language? When did you start? Did your child pick it up pretty easily?
Maybe you didn’t use it, but wished you did? Or perhaps you taught your child but didn’t really find it that useful?

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