Hot Days In The Summer

I love hot summer days. I grew up in Chicago, where, when it was hot, it was HOTT. I loved midwest summers. The fondness I have for the memories of those sweltering hot days is immeasurable. Seattle summers are decidedly milder. It is pretty rare that the desire for a tall glass of ice cold lemonade enters my mind. The thought of going to the beach makes me shiver, and the realization that lightning bugs don't exist here makes me sad. A day like today, however, was just what I needed to get my spirits up! 81 beautiful degrees, and I was itching for a little kiddie pool action and some ice cream cones with the little bit. Harris and I sat with our friend Crystal on our front porch- our thighs burning from the dark brown painted concrete. We all huddled into the tiny bit of shade calling from the welcome mat. There, we indulged in Cookies 'n Cream ice cream, smooshed into sugar cones. MMMMM

Following a little ice cream love, Harris cleaned up in the kiddie pool, all the while, enjoying our newest pool addition- His sponge balls.

(photo by momadvice.com)

They were a big hit in the kiddie pool, and surely followed him to bath time later this evening! The sponge balls are super easy to make and way better than water balloons any day of the week!

Cooking Question

When cooking a vegetable based (meat free) broth soup, is 2 Tablespoons of oil for 64oz of liquid

1. Too Much
2. Just Right
3. Not Enough

Thoughts?

Feeling Crafty

Selling your house really sucks. Selling your house especially sucks when you are still living in it.

Having a one and a half year old, with all of his adorable messes, combined with the necessity to always have your house in showroom quality creates a daunting situation. Let's not forget the 10x10 foot storage unit that is currently housing every part of our life that is not a 100% daily necessity, and you have painted a picture of our life.


I like that my house is uncluttered. It certainly makes it easy to clean- a mere clean sweep to put items back in their places (because now everything left in our house actually has a place), followed by a quick dusting and vacuuming- maybe a mopping here and there, and viola- a pristine house. It sucks, however, that if I feel the desire to say, paint my toenails (which only happens maybe twice a year) that means I have to drive to the storage unit to pick up one bottle of pearl white polish. Or, heaven forbid I might actually want to sew something, then I have to go to the storage unit to get the fabric, bring it home and pray I didn't forget the interfacing, or the right size needle, lug out the sewing machine, find a flat surface to plug it in, finish the project in it's entirety or find the need to creatively pack up a half- sewn blanket, and find a tactful place to "hide" it until my next sewing opportunity. It is tricky.

Tricky tricky.

Today, however, the creative bug took hold and I had to give in. I couldn't take it anymore. I have not had 100% access to my sewing machine or crazy craft room since March and I was going a little nutso. So, I whipped out the sewing machine and got to work on some cloth pantyliners and a woven basket made lovingly from strips of the latest copy of Sunset Magazine!

I love these pantyliners! They are super comfy to wear and pretty darn cute too! They are made from some leftover fabric from my gDiaper cloth Insert project, along with an old t-shirt. You might be wondering why I would be making pantyliners since I am pregnant, and not getting a period- well, if you have ever been pregnant, you probably know the answer to that, and if you haven't, well, too bad.

Next up is my woven magazine basket. I made this little basket to catch all the "AA" batteries that have mysteriously multiplied in my kitchen cabinet. I was tired of them rolling around and falling out, so I decided to corral them. I made this basket pretty quickly during Harris' nap, so I didn't do the best job, but it does the trick and I think that it is pretty cute. I think that I might try making a bigger, sturdier one out of newspaper in the future.










Oh, and here is a gratuitous picture of my cutie pie :)

Scratch Patch

Mindi, Harris and I have all been taking great advantage of the beautiful weather we have been having around here lately. Yesterday, I took Harris to a free little splash park at the local community center and he LOVED it! Today, Mindi and I took Harris to a really neat place called a "Scratch Patch". Click on the link to get the full dish on this place, but basically, it is a store that sells tumbled gemstones. The neat part about it though, is that it is not just a retail store, it is a learning experience and a neat tactile experience too. When you go in, they give you a mineral/gemstone identification chart, and you are free to wade through 2 tons of beautiful stones, for as long as you want, exploring, touching, identifying and picking stones to purchase if you wish. You don't have to buy any stones, but if you choose to, they are sold by the bag. Harris loved it and I was completely entranced- I think that Mindi had the most fun watching Harris.

I would definitely love to go back again and again!

Life is Good

My mom likes to hold onto things- namely, well, everything. It was no surprise to me, knowing this about my mother, that she expressed her desire to ship some old clothes of my brother's and mine to us for Harris. The thought is very endearing, but when you pound out the numbers, most of these clothing items are at least 32 years old (my brother's age). Therefor, they are made of nasty material, and of course, they smell like moth balls... I graciously accepted her offer, however, knowing that she would chose some cute stuff as well as some doozies. I have to admit, I too can be quite sentimental. We received the box a few days ago. After opening the box, and sorting the ugly from the hideous, and the scratchy from the cute, I washed the outfits (twice) and then hung them in the sun for 2 days to dry and get the mothball smell out.

(*Side note, for those of you that ever need to rid a clothing item of the mothball smell, the combination of heat and ventilation is the key. The absolute best thing to do is to hang the item outside, in the sun on a nice HOT day, when there is a cool breeze. It really did the trick. It works far better than repeated washings...)

Most of the clothes that I chose to keep fit him nicely right now. This one is a little too small for him to wear again, but I had to take a picture of him because of his uncanny resemblance to the well known Power Rangers...

Go Go Power Rangers!

Today, we all went to the zoo to celebrate Mindi's 32nd birthday. We all had a great time being together. I got to try out our new Moby Wrap tie- the Rucksack Carry and Harris got to try his "own" (read shared with Mommy) ice cream cone! All caught on tape, of course...

Busy Bee

Mindi and I have been pretty busy still trying to sell this house. Mindi has been working like a mad woman lately, and Harris is growing by leaps and bounds every day and his little vocabulary gets bigger by the day.

He currently signs/points these words:

eye

ear

teeth

tongue

shoulder

foot

shoes

pants

shirt

cracker

milk

apple

kiss

hair

head

He currently speaks these words:

"I love you"

"thank you"

"welcome"

"bye bye"

"Mama"

"Ima"

"nose"

"mouth"

"putt putt" (yes, THAT kind)

"uh oh"

"diaper"

"toe"

"up

"down"

"click" (as in- 'Harris, lets turn out the light!- "CLICK!")

"doo doo"

"please"

"knee"

I am sure that there are more that I am not recalling at this moment. We are currently waiting for 3 babies to wake up. Yes, 3. Our own, plus 2 16 month old twins that we are watching. Our good friend was in a bad car accident about 2 weeks ago. She was hit by a 26 year old guy that swerved across 4 lanes, hit her car on the driver's side door, and proceeded to T-Bone into a light pole, killing him. Our friend came away from the accident with a double fracture in her neck, a badly broken left leg that just underwent it's second surgery yesterday, and a badly sprained right ankle. Unfortunately, she also had her twin boys with her in the car. One came away from the accident virtually unscathed, while the other has a broken femur and is in a double- legged, and lower body cast. I feel so bad for him because he wants to get up so bad, but obviously can't. We have been visiting our friend in the hospital since we found out about the accident. The worst part about the whole situation is that she is the kind of person that no one could ever wish harm upon. She totally does not deserve this. Also, she is a single mom, works hard with jobs around taking care of her twins, has no car or health insurance, and lives on food stamps. I was happy to watch the boys today. This is going to be such a long, hard journey, but we will be there for her as much as we can!

Doppler

Mindi and I have a Hi-Bebe fetal heartbeat monitor. We purchased it back when we were pregnant with Harris. There are many options for dopplers out there, but we purchased this one because it seemed to be the most reasonably priced. I don't really remember when we bought it, but we started using it about 17 weeks(????) If I am not mistaken, you can typically hear your baby's heartbeat around 12 weeks or so. I decided to pull it out last week (at 9 weeks) just for shits and giggles. Much to our non-surprise, we couldn't get a heartbeat, but when I pulled it out this evening, sure enough, there was the sprinkle's heartbeat, beat beat beating away at a quick 170 beats per minute! I managed to find the baby a lot higher than I thought it would be. I was under the impression that the baby was still nestled in the confines of my pelvis, but in reality, s/he is sitting right above my pubes! I was really surprised! I guess it really is true that you get bigger faster with the second kid!

For the lassies out there that have 2 or more, can you tell me some differences that you noticed between your first, and subsequent pregnancies???