Sunshine and Summertime

Hello all!

I know I've been absent for going on 5 months now. Well, I just stopped putting the effort into blogging as I started prioritizing tasks to do while C takes his nap(s). But maybe it's the (finally) fresh air blowing through the neighborhood, the sunshine, and seeking plants in my garden peek and shove their way to the surface to meet that sun that is giving me the itch for new beginnings. Maybe it's an after-effect of Easter and the resurrection of Christ and the new life and beginnings he offered to us all by His death.

I have been on a find different types of cloth diapers to try out kick these past few months. I'm so loyal to Mother-Ease and yet with the onset of C's terrible diaper rashes that we endured for 4 months until we figured out the problem and could therefore find a solution (hundreds of dollars later...after seeing the only pediatric dermatologist near us...an hour one way)....I started searching for softer options. Now that it's warm again, it's time for my diapers, covers, and wipes to dry on the line with the rest of the laundry. And my Mother-Ease get so crunchy and hard, even when I pull them off the line damp and throw them through the dryer for 10 minutes. One solution to that was buying Cotton Babies Stay Dry Liners, which are microfleece and also help wick moisture away from C's skin...always helpful in preventing diaper rashes. Those have been amazing, but CDing obsessed mama that I am, I bought some other kinds:

I got a new and improved Best Bottoms cover - it now has elastic in the front, preventing my tummy sleeper from getting a leaky diaper while napping and sleeping at night.

I tried SoftBums - these diapers have the softest covers ever, and the softest pod inserts ever as well!!!! R was even rubbing the cover on his face one day because they are so soft. Although they are velcro (Aplix) - and I'm usually opposed to velcro because it seems the velcro goes bad so quickly compared to snaps, and doesn't seem to fit as well - they haven't leaked yet and we haven't had any issues with rashes. The company is also a Minnesota company, so I am proud, and love, supporting a local business to where we live. Check them out!

I am also obviously getting into gardening, that's what our huge backyard is for (asides from the 20 trees we also just planted around the property). I am planting close to 28 tomato plants. Because I am CRAZY!!! And I want to get into canning, and save the ~$3 I spend on a 28 oz. can of Muir Glen diced tomatoes (Muir Glen is the best tasting canned tomatoes I have yet encountered, they are also gluten free, and organic). Next year's ambitions include an even larger garden (double it maybe...it's only 25'x15' currently) and try my hand at growing corn because grocery store corn is so blah, and bad for you because Monsanto is seriously the devil and flagship company that started work on GMO's - I'd know, my sister worked in the department that worked on GM corn.

Garage sale season is here, and it could not have come at a better time! C is quickly passing through all the clothing we had to barely last us through the winter. The first year seems to pass by in the slow (read: exhausted) blink of an eye. I wish that there was a pre-parenting course to help parents-to-be learn how to nourish their marriage relationship with a little one in the house, how to night wean your baby, how to deal best with total and utter exhaustion, and how to best expel your anger, frustration, and worries over every.little.thing (such as: falling head first down the stairs, refusing to eat anything unless it's what mama and daddy eat, not sleeping through the night, waking up too early, not napping, getting into everything, temper tantrums, I think you get the picture ;) .

Parenting is no easy task. And I get a little frustrated by the parents who like to make it seem as if it is by the Face.book statuses, and the "perfect" photos that they post online, etc. Where are the "I just lost my temper with the child and screamed at him and then he cried" statuses, or the "Why does my child always throw his/her food all over the kitchen, and then it gets on my clothes and ruins it?" or even better "My nipples are literally bleeding because my baby keeps biting while nursing"...where are these statuses....why do we live in a world where we have to put on a mask continually, and pretend that all is perfect?? My life is NOT perfect. I do not have the perfect marriage, I am not a perfect mother/daughter/sister/friend/wife/neighbor. I sure wish I could be, but that's downright impossible.

We just night weaned C this past weekend; R got up with him when he would wake up, and put him back to sleep, for 5 nights and he is now sleeping through the night!!!! Only tiny downside is he now gets up at 5:30 every morning, hopefully this is just a phase. But he now gets a solid 10 hours of sleep, and I get a solid 7 1/2!! The positive outcomes of this for the both of us have been amazing: I have more attention to give each day, my patience fuse has more of a break and more time to recharge every night, and C seems happier overall! I wish we had done this months ago; once we decided to go ahead with this plan 3 months ago, we had to wait for a good weekend to do it (i.e. a weekend where neither R or I had anything going on, so I could play with C all day while R caught up on sleep).

I am also becoming a quiltaholic. I made one for C for Christmas, his birthday (it's currently still at the longarm quilter), and am making one for his wall that has each letter of the alphabet and an animal or insect that corresponds to each letter on a block. I am so excited to be able to give my son, and potential future children as well, quilts lovingly made by his mama that he can keep for the rest of his life, and possibly pass on to his children as well. I love the precision and accuracy that goes into quilting, although I get a little too caught up in those aspects sometimes - I think I can't completely escape the chemist-that-I-used-to-be in me ;)

I know there's a million other things I could ramble on about now, but I'm going to go have some quiet, reflective time before C wakes up and we go back into being loud, throwing things, pointing out everything we know, crawling on the cats, and everything that encompasses life at home with a toddler :)