….this is what tearing up your front yard will get ya!
I suppose this fellow got a little mad at us for hammering in on his outdoor habitat so he marched into ours to pay us back. He was found the other night crawling around in our foyer, just after dusk. We had been working out in the front yard all day, digging flower beds, painting, and building the arbor and had just come in to get out of the rain that was starting.
Thankfully I discovered him before he discovered Jack-Evan!
We snapped these photos last month at our favorite restaurant the Sunday before Jack’s 1st birthday.
Since we go there every week, all of the waitresses know us and are completely in love with Jack-Evan. Thankfully, they didn’t mind us letting Jack dig into the special dessert they brought him when they all sung Happy Birthday.
(Don’t worry….Kevin and I were good patrons in the end, and cleaned up after him in hopes that we would still be warmly welcomed there the next weekend!)
Ok, I don’t know what I feel most silly about – choosing to test out cloth diapers for the first time on a 13 month old, or standing above a set of baby underroos at midnight taking their photo.
You see, even though all the hype is raging amongst mothers to “go green”, the only thing that’s green in my house is the old romain lettuce in the fridge (and that probably isn’t green any longer). Granted, I do try to do my part every now and again to save the environment (such as that time 8 months ago I remembered to take my 2 cloth bags into Walmart with me). But typically, I’m too busy trying to stay sane with regular household duties to make myself remember all those new fangled “green” rules.
And diapering is no exception. I just love the ease of disposables, and the thought of dunking a poopie white towel in the toilet just didn’t appeal to me at all. After 13 months of using them though, I am now just as disgusted with disposables as the thought of cloth use to make me. They feel plastic, they leak during growth spurts, they’re expensive, they stink just as bad as cloth probably would, and our weekly trashbag consumption has tripled. Then there’s the not-so-subtle reminders from other “green” moms about how those nasty things don’t just disappear off the face of the earth when the garbage collector comes – instead they sit around somewhere else for all eternity, stewing in the poo’ey plasticy filth.
And they sit there stewing with all of their other millions of poo’ey friends that are “thrown away” daily.
So yeh, that thought started eating away at me the past month or so.
(That, and the thought of “Gee it would be nice to have a backup” that hit me in the face the other night at midnight when our disposables suddenly ran out).
With those thoughts doing a happy dance in my head, I forced myself started non-chalantly googling “cloth diapers”. There are so many sites out there who’s duty is doodie that it made research a breeze. Some blogs even make it their sole purpose in weblife to help clueless moms like me get their cloth diaper mojo on.
After a few hours of reading around (especially at the fabulous blog, All about Cloth Diapers), I had learned enough basics to get me started.
And you know what? There are so many different ways you can cloth diaper a tushy in today’s world there’s no reason not to give it a try at least once in life.
For one, there’s the old fashioned way. I remember as a little girl, I use to take rags, fold them in a triangle, and then pin them on my baby dolls as a diaper. (I tried that with Jack-Evan too, but discovered it doesn’t work). They have cloth diapers you can buy to use in such a manner today – they’re called “prefolds”. Now, why they’re called that, I’m not sure because they’re not pre-folded, in the way we would consider “prefolded”. You actually have to fold them yourself. Prefolds are nothing more than a large square full of layers of absorbant quilted up fabric – and it doesn’t even come quilted. You have to wash them in hot water and dry on high heat a few times to get them to quilt so they’ll reach full absorbancy.
This will be your main soiling area for your baby – the part that will catch all the yucky stuff. They can be folded many, many ways – from a square “tri-fold” to the “little girl putting a rag on her doll” kind of way. These come with no fasteners, so you’ll need to pin them, hook them with a plastic 3 pronged “snappi”, or put a cover over them to keep them from falling off. If you’re a folding-challenged mom, they also make “fitted” diapers, which (oddly enough) comes prefolded into a typically shaped diaper style.
Now….Those prefolded cloths are not spill proof and require some sort of waterproof lining if you’re out and about. Enter the “diaper cover”. The most popular kind are shaped like “disposables” complete with snaps or velcro, and are typically made of PUL or Wool, with wool being the more expensive option. You can get them in all sorts of hip modern designs and colors – or (if you’re a cheapskate like me) you can get them in plain white. Either way, I’m sure you’re baby won’t care.
Now, somewhere along the way, some brilliant genius (hopefully a mom) came up with the idea of combining the absorbant core (prefolds) with the protective outer liner and…
BAM!
An “All in One” diaper was born. Those are expensive though to start out with. After looking all over google & Etsy.com, I found the average price to be $20 for just ONE diaper. Organics, bamboo, and other exotic materials can jack up the cost another $10-20 bucks. But boy, oh boy, are they adorable!
There’s also something called a “pocket” diaper, which apparantly is an outer diaper cover that has – get this now – a pocket to stuff a liner in. This diaper doesn’t require a prefold.
If you have an extra heavy soaker in the family (Jack-Evan tends to be one), or you want to use cloth diapers for night time (which is what I plan on doing first), you’ll want to use what’s called a “doubler”. A doubler is nothing more than an extra piece of very absorbant material to put inside your prefold or All in One. Microfiber, hemp, bamboo and fleece seem to be pretty popular options for doublers. These too can be found in extremely cutesy wootsy fabrics.
And what do you do with these non-disposable diapers if you’re out in public? You put them in your ever trendy “wet” bag (a bag that is lined with waterproof PUL and can be dumped in the washing machine along with your soiled diapers).
So that’s what I learned.
I also learned that it can be super duper easy to get caught up in the eye catching fabrics and contermporary styles of cloth diapers and become far too addicted to how your baby’s bottom looks.
I’ll try not to let that happen to me….
(at least not until my next google adsense check comes in.)
(Voiced by 13 month old Jack-Evan, typed by Mommy)
After I helped Daddy finish painting the house…
I put him to work building something very special for Mommy.
You see, she’s always wanted a swing.
But unfortunately, our porch is far too small for one.
We built her a large 8x8x10′ arbor instead. It’s almost finished now!
The only thing we have left is adding the remaining banisters, and planting the grape vines.
Then we can show it to Mommy.
Hey…wait a minute…has anyone SEEN my mommy lately???
.
.
.
.
.
.
ZZZZzzzzzzzzzz…….
(Voiced by 13 month old Jack-Evan, and typed by Mommy)
Once upon a time we had an old shabby brown house.
It was quite boring until….
I told my daddy to paint it!
Because he loves me, he started right away.
And of course I sat nearby and supervised.
When Daddy got tired, I even stepped in to give him a hand.
Up we goooo…
Don’t worry Dad.
I’ve got it alllllll under control!
…..
TO BE CONTINUED…
Ever since I upgraded to WordPress 2.7 months ago, I have been encountering a dreaded Internal Server Error 500 page every time I would post something. At first I didn’t think my posts were getting published, but realized they were. However, due to this silly error popping up in various spots, I was unable to delete or do much work within wordpress. I wasn’t even able to install upgrades or plugins! So, thinking that it was some big huge problem, I avoided trying to fix it in the slight hopes that it would just go away.
Well, it didn’t go away.
(Consequently, I didn’t do much blogging over the past few months because of the annoyance factor.) I hit a breaking point though and it finally got so irritating that I decided to head over to google to find the solution.
And, lemme tell you…google is my friend. The first link I went to popped up this page. And guess what? The solution was so extrordinarily simple that I almost choked.
All I had to do was upload one little tiny text file (php.ini) with the words “memory=20mb” into my WP-Admin folder.
And bamboom. There it is. Fresh as a daisy! Now I can type away and blog my heart out whenever I want without becoming annoyed by that 500 Error every time I hit publish.
To whoever wrote that simple solution, I send you a great huge MUAH!
Phew.
We found this payphone while walking the main strip at the beach back in April. It’s the first one I’ve seen in ages too! With the popularity of cell phones, this poor little icon of the past has fallen to the wayside.
I almost felt sorry for the poor dear as we stood there watching everyone stroll past, not paying a bit of attention to it. The pay phone is a part of history and even Hollywood lore – even Superman couldn’t live without one. 
Yet here it sits. Broken, unused, and headed for demolishment.
And the world keepsa’ turnin’…..
We’re far from done as we still have the far back side of the house to paint, our back screened in patio (which is located at the rear of our property), tons of planting to do, and the entire arbor to build. We also plan on getting a cute little wooden house mailbox to replace our $10 beat up one that my dad ran over the other week! For over three years we’ve lived in this house without doing anything to the outside. Sad to say, but it’s usually been the last thing on our minds, and it’s gone neglected far too often. It’s about time we took care of it, personalized it, and added some much needed cute-as-a-button curb appeal to our poor little 80′s style ranch house.
It’s been a fun past week but we’re a little tired. In lieu of working tonight, I surprised Kevin by having dinner done early so we could head out to the opening season game of our city’s local summer baseball league team at 7:00 pm. We go multiple times every summer, but Kevin didn’t realize the season was starting so soon – he thought they didn’t start until next week. After all the work he’s done the past week, it was a nice surprise and refreshing break for him, and it ended up being a really fun family night as well.
Tomorrow, it’s back to work, work, work.
I have some great photos & video of the transformation we put our home through – even Jack-Evan got in on it and helped paint some. He’s had quite the blast during all of this work as he gets to play in his little toddler sprinkler pool the whole time. There’s nothing quite like the warm, homey feeling of hearing the laughter of your child in the background as you and your beloved husband work together to make something more beautiful.
I’ve talked before about how much I love reading, right?
(No no, don’t groan.)
So yeh, I love reading. Make that an absolutelyhavetoorIwilldie kinda love of reading.
Then it should come as no surprise to you that even though he’s only one year old, I already encourage literacy in Jack-Evan.
I’ve been reading daily to my son since he was born – or, at least trying to. Sometimes we miss a few days of reading, but more often or not, he encounters some form of literacy component in his daily life even if it’s just him watching me read silently. Our read-aloud materials run the gamut from Mother Goose Nursery Rhymes to Sondra Boynton to Dr. Suess to Classic Poetry to Pilgrims Progress to (more recently) Lord of the Rings. For at least an hour each day, usually around noon, I read aloud to Jack while he’s playing on the floor near me. We also have spontaneous reading sessions at the park, at bedtime, or just whenever the mood hits. Then, once a week (twice a week beginning in June) for 45 minutes we’re at the library story time for toddlers.
I also spell out things for him often, point out words, and do sign-language finger spelling of his name and other various words. We have sung the ABC song a couple times a week with him since birth too.
In addition to spelling, finger-spelling, and the daily reading, we also use the “Your Baby Can Read” DVD’s and Flashcards. They’re actually the only things that Jack-Evan watches, or even shows any interest in watching, on the TV (besides when he watches Scooby Doo with his PaPa!). Each DVD lesson on “Your Baby Can Read” (there are 6 lessons total, I believe) lasts around 30 minutes and builds upon each other. I played the starter lesson once or twice a week for a few months, but within the last 2 months, Jack has shown so much interest in the program that I’ve moved him up from the starter lesson to the 1st lesson. He’ll actually sit through the entire 30 minutes and interact with everything going on in the lesson, and he’s beginning to pick up words like crazy from it. Last week, they showed the written word Bubble in the lesson, then they said “Bubble” – and he repeated “Bubble” out loud, then laughed. He gets so exited when I tell him I’m putting his DVD on and he’ll stand up and starts dancing to the opening music. For the past month or so, the lesson has played twice a day with Jack-Evan focused completely on it and interacting with it to the exclusion of everything else.
Also, now that Jack is a year old (his birthday was May 4) I have added the other component of the “Your Baby Can Read” DVD learning system – the flashcards. These flashcards include 12 key words that match up to the words he is learning in the video lessons. There are 6 doublesided pastel colored cards with just plain comic-sans type black words printed on them. What’s cool though is it also has a slide out panel that features a picture of the word shown.
Now, let me be frank before I continue.
When I started all of this, I wasn’t sure what would work and what wouldn’t. There were times when I wasn’t sure if I was doing the right thing or not (I’m still not, and probably never will be). I never was a fan of flashcards for babies so every time I even looked at them before, I just rolled my eyes. I’m also not one of those moms believes in forcing a child to do formal learning. At the first sign that Jack-Evan is tired of something I move on to something else, immediately. But I do believe wholeheartedly in offering opportunities and new experiences each and every day. And I believe wholeheartedly in the power of literacy at an early age (I myself was reading at 2 years old without any formal prompting from my own mom). My husband was 5 years old before he ever had anything read aloud to him – and that has strongly affected his reading ability even to this day. The written word should be part of a child’s life from day one – I just wasn’t sure how to go about introducing it to Jack-Evan during his first year of life. Therefore, as any mom would do, I just did the best I could.
So anyway….
At first, I felt like everything I was doing – the reading aloud, storytime, and DVD lessons – made absolutely no impact whatsoever on Jack. For the first 10 months of his life, he showed absolutely no interest whatsoever in books, pictures, stories, rhymes, nor poetry. Zero. Zip. Nada. No interest whatsoeva. Yet I kept on plowing away with reading and showing him the starter video of “Your Baby Can Read” once a week or so. At times, I even felt foolish reading to him and as much as I hate to admit it, I hated reading aloud. (Or rather, I use to hate it, though not so much anymore). He just wasn’t responding to my efforts at all, and I began to feel disappointed. I mean, I had read so many testimonies of parents who’s 3 month old child would stare intently at a book during storytime, or who’s 6, 7, 8 month old child would sit raptured by the board book being read, or by the 9 month old who would hand her mom her favorite book to read. Then there were the local children -babies who were the same age as Jack- at our own library story time who would sit and show interest in the story, while Jack didn’t even have a clue that a story was being read.
I felt foolish, I felt it was pointless, I felt like he wasn’t ready, I felt like all of those testimonies were lies, I felt like I should just wait until he was 3 or 4 or 5 or 6….I just felt….like giving up.
But I didn’t. I just kept on with my plan of immersing him into daily literacy. I wanted those doors to be wide open for him whenever he was ready to blossom.
Then, slowly, in his 10th month, a miracle happened and he blossomed.
His first step towards acknowledging the world of books came 3 months ago when he suddenly picked up a book and, instead of trying to eat it, he opened it and began flipping through it. By the end of March, he began bouncing to the rhythm of the poems being read. By the beginning of April, he had formed his first attatchment to a book – “Brown Bear, Brown Bear” and would grab it when I would start reciting it from memory.
So now, back to the flashcards. Roughly 8 days ago, I pulled out the flashcards that go with the DVD reading lessons. We went through all 12 words slowly, and then I decided to concentrate mostly on two main words – “arms up” and “dog”. Dog is actually one of the first words that Jack said, and he adores dogs. Anywhere we go, if he spots a dog either in real life or in photos he lights up and yells “Hello dog! A dog, dog, dog!!! Hey there! Huh Dog!”. As for the other one, “Arms UP”, that’s just something that was fun to do.
Well, after only 3 shows of the “arms up” card, he had that one mastered (complete with him throwing his own arms up, along with mommy, and giggling). He also adored the “dog” one (of course).
Since then, we’ve used those cards no more than 4 sessions for about 3-4 minutes each session.
Friday, we were sitting on the couch playing with the cards, and I sat him down on the floor, tossed all 6 cards down randomly for him to rummage through, then settled back to read my Woman’s Day magazine (silently!), hoping for a few moments of peace whilst he played by himself.
Not surprisingly, I didn’t get much peace. Within less than a minute, Jack was standing up beside the couch, crying “Mummum, Mum mum!” and holding his one hand out for me to pick him up. It’s what was in his other hand that surprised me! During the few moments that I had been absorbed in my magazine, he had found and picked out both the “Dog” and the “Arms Up” card from amongst all 12 words.
I was in shock. Finally, progress. I AM doing something right. Something, s-o-m-e-t-h-i-n-g I’m doing is working, and is clicking in his little brain!
It was a nice reassurance.
He repeated the feat of picking out those two cards yesterday in front of his dad, which elicited the exact same shock. Last night, he also picked out the “Dog” card, turned it over, looked at it, then said aloud “Dog, Dog”.
More reassurance.
So my kid is like me afterall. He loves flashcards.
And a new door has opened very wide for him.
…your one year old hears The Lone Ranger and says “Hello?” instead of Hi-Ho Silver.
—-
So yeh. Jack-Evan is finding his voice really fast, and one of his favorite things to say at the moment is “Hello” when a phone rings. He also loves to put the phone to his ear and pretend like he’s talking. Sometimes he even asks me to call someone (PaPa, DaDa, or whoever).
Of course I’m proud of him! He does things every day that just amazes me. Just today, he was sitting near a low cabinet where I’ve recently started storing his living room books – and I told him to look in the cabinet and get a book. And he DID. Just like that. Poof. He immediately stopped what he was doing, turned around, opened the door wider, reached in the cabinet, and pulled out Curious George Goes Fishing.
I was in shock.
He’s also added some new words to his verbal vocabulary over the past week – Diaper, Bubble, and Straw. Before that he was already saying Mama, Dada, Papa, Lala (his name for my mom), Hey There, Hello, Dog, I Love You and PupPup. I think there are a few more but I can’t remember them at the moment. Sometimes he’ll say something for a day or so, then move on and not repeat it for a while. But so, I’m definitely happy with his verbal accomplishments and language development. Even the doctor was surprised at his 1 year check up at all his is doing through speech. I supposed it’s typical for people to assume language development is slower in boys. I’m glad he is progressing so well though. It’s exiting to wake up each day and watch him explore his world and make new connections with things. And it’s even more exiting now that he is entering the stage where we will be having actual conversation instead of me just talking to him with no verbal return. I can only imagine how fun the next few years are going to be!
Anyway, we’re about to head to Captain D’s (a seafood restaurant near us) to eat lunch, then we’ll probably hit the park. We go to the park a few times per week – much more than I went as a child. I love going to the park, and it makes me feel like a kid again. Plus, it’s great to have an excuse to act silly and play – you see, I’ve got a kid, tyvm. Ha!
© 2012. Little Jack's Corner.
