The world, in pictures, according to 3 year old ms. e

Ms. e has been taking pictures with my iPhone for a while now, but just recently they started coming out clear.  I thought it would be fun to post some pictures of her world and what she finds important, literally through her eyes, every once in a while.

So here is her first installment.

I was in the shower when she made her request to “take pictures of her cooties,” and I think that most moms will agree that pretty much all requests are granted when you are dripping wet and have shampoo in your hair!  There were over 60 pictures taken!  She put her cooties in ALL KINDS of places and made her feet do all kinds of funny things, but these are the highlights.. and the ones that are clear-ish.

We’ve been playing Cootie, LOTS, in an attempt to stay busy inside while our a/c keeps us cool and sane INSIDE and away from the 110+ days we have been having in our neck of the woods!

New design wall!

Around here laying out anything on the floor is no longer an option with little ‘a’ running around, so I finally bit the bullet and put a couple of nails in my wall to hang some batting as a removable design wall!  This is until I cash in on next years planned Mother’s Day gift and a get a real one like Ashley’s!   Until then, Ms. E and I are going to get some good miles out of this solution.

Please excuse her end-of-the-day-wild-hair and flash photography… but I’m usein’ what I’ve got!

A whooooooole new generation…

… my girl doesn’t like to pretend talk on phones or cell phones anymore.  She prefers to be hands free!  If I let her get her fingers on my jawbone she would be all over that too, trust me.  At least I am being a good example, right!?  Don’t answer that!

Here is a video of her making some very important calls over lunch (It’s long, you don’t need to watch the entire thing to get the point).  There is nobody on the other end of that pretend cell phone, and this is just a sliver of how her mouth runs all day.  I tell you it never stops!  I am not complaining– just telling it like it is.

What I can learn from this… apparently I call my mother too much while on the road hands free (hence her permanent connection with the hands free beep on the iphone with “Call first last Mobile”), I guess I help my sister push buttons a lot, and evidently i clear my throat more than i should.  And I think maaaaaybe I talk on the phone too much at lunch.  But come on moms!  They are sitting.  Contained. And more quiet than any other time.  Perhaps I have taken advantage of this one too many times.  Thanks Ms. E.  Duly noted.

Oh, yes…

… I DID!

I let her touch it….

…. and yes, I know I’m crazy!

But if you saw the precision & gentleness that she was useing to press those buttons and organizing those charm squares;  you would have thought she was actually producing something those 30 minutes she sat there and carefully worked that needle threader!

love bird

My list of things to blog about is getting too long, and my “free” time is getting too short!  Not a good combo!  But I had to share our last little project.

This is the love bird ms. e made for daddy this past “Love Day,” as we call it around here. It was painted with tons or care and with mamma enforcing the rule of NO BLACK… which seems to be her color of choice for EVERY drawing these days! Love birds are not black I tried to tell her… she almost talked me into thinking they were!  We just painted a little green-ware ceramic figurine we picked up at Michaels the last time we were there, and painted it with her super fab bright water colors, I talked about them here.

E’s new art journal

This was one of the few gifts I managed to finish this Christmas, I had grand plans, honest!!  But only three gifts reached completion in time and this is one of them.  Last year I gave two of Ella’s friends decorated journals with some rock crayons from stubby pencil studio, we LOVED ours so nauraly we had to spread the love… but I never got around to decorating E’s OR photographing the other two that I made. BLAH!  The back story is that I learned early on when the little lady was 18 months or so that having paper out for her to color on  was NOT the best idea!  She spread it out everywhere and I was frustrated with the mess, so I hatched a plan!

I found these 8×8 Kraft sketchbooks at stubby pencil studio, she could color on them any way she wanted as many pages at a time as she wanted and it didn’t get all over my house!!!  SCORE!  They proved to be of super great quality too, I was please to find out that they worked great with water colors to boot…. well the good kind at least– I am not sure how cheap-o Crayola water colors that you have to saturate with tons of water would work.  Anyway, we had one that she colored in all the time, it had finally reached its capacity, and our resident artist needed a new one!  So this year I managed to decorate it for her so 2010′s would not be so brown and boring!

Here are a couple pieces that I took out of last year’s journal done with some water colors, similar to the ones listed here… but not quiet THAT nice. And I matted and framed them up with some inexpensive CLIP frames from IKEA above her new art center!

really, it isn’t as crazy as it sounds!

what?  You ask?  Dare I say it?  shhhhh….

…

…cloth diapering….

I finally took The Plunge and it ended up being more like a small hop, not so bad.

Honest!

I really REALLY wanted to do this when Ms. E was born, two years ago, but I chickened out.  I felt like I couldn’t handle one more thing on top of all the other changes, so I adjusted my goals, accepted defeat, and for some reason I didn’t address it again until Mr. A came to stay.  I blew through all the disposables that seemed to make their way into the house for free and finally took my first trip to Target to actually BUY diapers when the reality set in.  While standing in the diaper isle, the epiphany that I was going to have to buy TWO SIZES hit me!  I know! Crazy, how that works!  As with most things in my life… I. had. a. PLAN!  I marched right on out of there with just a package of pull-ups, a determination to potty train Ms. E the next day (I had been putting it off for a couple months), and a scheme to get some magically-smart diapers asap!

I called up a couple of late (but very considerate… they wanted to make sure to get me something that I wanted) gift givers, g-ma Clare & Aunt Brandy, and pitched them my plan.  By the end of the week six of these beauties were on my doorstep, and I have since added six more.  So now we are a BumGenius operating household of 12, and doing wonderfully!

see… (this was after Mr. A braved his fourth month shots)

Here is where the non-crazy part comes in.  They are the most simple darn things EVER.   They go on just like a diaper, no folding, no plastic leaky covers, no pins or fasteners, and virtually no staining… at least none yet that the sun hasn’t been able to take care of in a couple hours.  There is no rinsing for now, since he is still an infant, if you get my drift.  I just separate the inserts from the diaper, throw it all into a cold wash, then a hot one, and an additional rinse. Presto.  Line dry the fancy parts, throw the rest in the dryer.  Detailed washing instructions and troubleshooting, here.

One size will fit Mr. A his entire diaper career, thereby saving ME tons of money and guilt every time I throw the other kind away.  Did you know 1/3 of our landfills are diapers!  We do our part around here to conserve and purchases environmentally friendly when possible, and every time I took out that big ol’ diaper genie of diapers I felt like I was voiding our efforts.  There are so many alternatives to strictly disposable diapers now too, even hybrid options.  I guess it is no surprise that I choose the most high tech option I could find, (no comments from you, Mr. K, you hear me?!) but this time I’ve got economics on my side.  Even at 18 bucks a pop, they pay for themselves quiet quickly– especially since my first six were gifted, woohoo!

Now, what about the wipes you ask?  That is what I have received the most questions about when you guys have seen me changing his fancy new pants.  Oh you just wait!  I’ve got a whole blog about that too!  Riveting. I know.  Tomorrow, promise.

In the mean time, do any of you cloth diaper?  Or did you?  Do you want to?  Or am I more off my rocker than I am willing to admit?

WORST news of the week

Apparently Wondertime Magazine, a great parenting publication put out by Disney of all people, is going under! No. THIS is NOT good!  According to Courtney at two straight lines, a contributing editor, the economy has done them in too. UGH!  This is the only magazine that I really enjoy reading every month, keith too.  It is the only magazine that I found with REAL parenting content, not all the fluff.  I think Courtney says it best,

…a magazine for thinking parents, not one based on alarmism or fluffy content, the two hallmarks of parenting magazines.  They (staffers) aimed to show you the good and bad of parenting, not to tell you what could go wrong, or what you were doing wrong.  It’s sad that we won’t have it to inspire us, or just make us laugh, anymore.

So Goodbuye Wondertime, I will surely miss you, and will be in search of something to take your place, if that is possible…

Acorns, the wooden wonderful kind

I just have to tell the Internet about our latest excitement and endless activity in our household– wooden ACORNS!  My little Ella has a knack for finding things to collect, be it her prized rock crayons, hair clips, or any other small choice items that I am SICK of picking up and putting back!  Aside from the constant rounding up of these small things, she always seems to choose the ones that are most nerve racking to find when in a rush, it was time to make some changes!!  It got me thinking about what I could give her with the sole intention of actually collecting and spreading about rather than put an end to her madness all together.  It had to be something I wouldn’t mind kicking about, but wouldn’t go far when I did, but also wouldn’t be a shocking hazard.  Wooden beads seem an obvious choice for little hands to collect but they don’t fit the bill and they freak me out.  Beads are too small and too perfectly round to get stuck in her mouth if she lost her senses and tried to eat them… she is still too young for me to trust her completely, and plus, because they are round there is no telling where they would end up after a good day of playing–err tripping.  The solution?  These wonderful lovelies from Casey’s Wood Products back east.  I remembered reading something about these a LONG while ago from SouleMama, so I can’t take credit entirely for the find, but I am sure glad to reap the benefits.

The idea worked brilliantly!  I purchased three dozen because it seemed like a nice number, but after all the playing, spreading, tea party and collecting that has gone on we could have easily have welcomed six dozen.  Maybe I will put in another order when their numbers start to dwindle in a few months.

What makes them perfect is that they don’t go very far when you stumble upon them, or when they get dropped/dumped on our hard floors all over the house.  They also are big enough for her to not be all that interested in putting them in her mouth, she has tried but decided that it wasn’t a good idea and I haven’t caught her since.  And of course they are perfectly safe, untreated raw wood so there is certainly nothing to worry about there.

So that’s us, that’s what we have been up too, playing tea/acorn party all the live long day and dumping them repeatedly inside and out.  FUN!  And the best part?  I don’t really care if they aren’t picked up, they are so cute, who would?

Oh, and the tea set.  I have been meaning to post about that too.  I found it on Etsy a while back, it is a little vintage set that I stumbled upon and was a steal of a price.

categories parenting & child's play | 1 comment, YEA, be #2!

want a boy? eat breakfast cereal! Honest!

A new study out of the University of Exeter suggests a strong link between high glucose levels in the early days of your pregnancy and preconception and having a boy.

“According to a survey of 740 British mums to be, a high-calorie diet is more likely to lead to a baby boy in nine months’ time.”

“The level of calorie intake was the main dietary factor that affected offspring sex, say the researchers, who report their research in Proceedings of the Royal Society B ¹. Overall, women in Matthews’s study who produced sons ate an average of 180 calories more per day than those who had daughters — “the equivalent of eating a banana”, she says.”

Higher glucose levels were found in mothers who gave birth to boys, but interestingly there was also a correlation between mothers who routinely ate breakfast cereal.

“The researchers are unsure of why this happens, although they suggest that it could be to do with levels of glucose in the blood. Male test-tube embryos generally require a more glucose-rich growth medium to survive in the lab — Mathews suspects that a similar process may operate in the uterus, so women with higher sugar levels are more likely to nurture a male embryo as it is implanted in the womb lining.”

So eat up! Or don’t. Personally when that time comes I am going to load up on Whole Food’s Fruit Loops!!