Mommy and Sweet Pea

I started this post back on June 30. This is what I wrote then: We have been putting Sweet Pea to bed in her crib for naps and night-time for about eight months now. She spent the first nine to ten months of her life sleeping in our room, either in our bed or in the sidecar co-sleeper, then we slowly moved to putting her down in her crib in her own room. Right now, she starts out the night in there, then comes to bed with us (sometime between 1:00 and 5:00 AM) and nurses occasionally through the rest of the night. We aim for bedtime by 10:00 PM, and hang out in the living room with her, nursing, rocking, and listening to her bedtime mix CD, until she falls asleep. Lately, Average has been able to get her to sleep by simply laying down on the couch with and holding her. Sometimes he falls asleep this way too, which pushes back our bedtime to later than we'd prefer. I feel like we could have an easier bedtime routine if we had an actual bed for her to sleep in in her own room. Tha...

One day of the class I took this summer (required to maintain my teaching license) was a day of field trips. Some people went rafting, some toured a farm, some visited a lumber company. I signed up to visit a water treatment plant, a hydroelectric dam, my local dump, and a home goods and construction recycling construction center. I learned a lot from each place, but the thing that probably left the biggest impression on me was visiting the dump and watching people pitch perfectly good, or at least recycle-able, items into the pit. Spy Hill Landfill - 4 by D'Arcy Norman We have made many trips to the dump, with broken items and true garbage. But in the few minutes I stood looking into the pit, I saw someone toss in a wheelbarrow, a massive pile of wood, soil, and empty boxes. The wheelbarrow did have a small hole in the bottom, but appeared to be functional other than that. I know it wheeled just fine because it fell off the top of the person's pickup truck when they mad...

When we spent a few days at a cabin last month we used a disposable diaper product on Sweet Pea for the first time. We knew we were going to spend more than a day driving, and then several days at a cabin with no washing machine, so we thought this would be one time when using purely cloth diapers might be just too much for us. Maybe we are just wimps because Average's aunt had a great story for us about backpacking with a baby in diapers and washing them in a plastic bag in a hole she would dig in the ground. Now that's commitment! Back to our story though. We decided to go with a hybrid system: a disposable absorbent liner with a reusable cover. gDiapers are available at grocery stores in our city, so we thought that would be an easy option, and actually the only option since we didn't leave ourselves delivery time for ordering anything online. I had also read good reviews of the gDiaper inserts. We put the first one on Sweet Pea just before we left our house in the a...

A week passed and no one has entered. So, once I get 10 entries, I will draw for a winner. Anyone want a free book? I have always enjoyed participating in and even winning a couple of giveaways from my fellow bloggers, and have had in the back of my mind that I'd like to offer more giveaways to my readers. I have an item that I think some of you might be interested in, here, that a friend recently passed on to me. I already had one so I thought I would share it. It is one of my favorite books and pregnancy and birth: The Complete Book of Pregnancy and Childbirth by Sheila Kitzinger.   This book covers the week-by-week changes of the pregnant body, and includes beautiful photos of home and hospital births. As the name suggests, it is a pretty complete guide to most of the questions that expectant parents encounter, and it couches its answers in non-scary, but accurate, terms. The giveaway will run for a week, so I will randomly pick a number for a winner next Sunday night...

A couple of weeks ago we went blueberry picking. Sweet Pea ate every single berry she picked.

Last year I battled with the slugs by putting out beer traps for them. This year, we are trying the copper barrier method. We bought many rolls of Corry's Slug & Snail Copper Tape and have put them down around the tops of several of our raised beds. The idea is that crossing the copper gives the little varmints a small shock, so they avoid it. So far, it seems to be working. I think this product is best suited for container gardens because it takes a lot of copper tape to wrap an entire raised bed! I also read a review that said that after a year the adhesive didn't work any more on the wooden beds, which makes sense as water will seep into the wood. We are thinking in another year or two we will put copper pipes around the top of each bed -- a more permanent and attractive solution, but also more expensive. Just yesterday I was talking with my neighbor, and she told me a horribly sad story that reinforced my commitment to avoiding poisons in our yard. A few years ago, ...

Sweet Pea has been adding new vocabulary on a daily basis. She can say: jump Nana step boat bike nose eye cheeks knees toes And many others. In the last few days she has started repeating things all the time. This is the point at which we realize "we REALLY need to watch what we say!" I have never been one to throw curse words around, and while Average used to, he doesn't much anymore, at home at least. This new stage of mimicry has just reinforced to me that I need to be mindful of what I say and how I say things to her and to everyone around me. Our children really do learn most from observing us. I am proud that Sweet Pea says "no" sweetly instead of angrily, and enjoys giving hugs and kisses. I think her dad and I can attribute those things at least partly to a positive example, but I cringe when I hear her pretending to talk on the phone with her sharp and to the point "uh, yeah, no, uh" noises. That is pretty much how Average and I so...

We are in the middle of World Breastfeeding Week, if you didn't already know. According to the WHO, August 1-7 is celebrated each year " in more than 120 countries to encourage breastfeeding and improve the health of babies around the world."   Breastfeeding is the best way to provide newborns with the nutrients they need. WHO recommends exclusive breastfeeding until a baby is six months old, and continued breastfeeding with the addition of nutritious complementary foods for up to two years or beyond.    -- WHO As a nursing mother, I have seen the benefits of breastfeeding to myself and my daughter continue into toddlerhood. At seventeen months old, Sweet Pea typically only nurses a few times a day, especially when we are busy and out and about. Those few minutes of nursing are a nice time to come back together, cuddle, and relax. The last couple of days, however, she and I have both been under the weather and nursing much more often. During these rough nights...

Summer 2010 gardening got off to a late start, due to cold weather here well into June, and late planting from us since it took so much work just to get the beds prepared . We are getting close to having an abundance of food from our garden, just now at the first of August. So far, we have eaten strawberries and raspberries (mostly Sweet Pea ate those because she picked them nearly every time we went outside), some snap peas, zucchini, a head of broccoli, and some herbs. About to ripen are tomatoes, cabbage, beans, a second round of berries, and within the next month we will have apples, plums, corn, carrots, and potatoes. This is what the garden looked like June 11: Here is July 11: Then in two weeks, things grew like mad (July 25): And by yesterday, one week later, you can see that I planted too close together once again: It is so gratifying to see the fruits (and vegetables, haha) of our labor. Every year and every planting is a learning process. This year I might try for...