Comfort Food

Tonight I made one of my favorite meals.  It’s comfort food at it’s finest!  I haven’t made either of these things in a while, I think it’s because I haven’t been buying too much in the way of packaged food like Ritz.  I could try to tweak these things to not include Ritz, but then they wouldn’t be comfort food for me, you know?  And I figure they’re still a lot healthier than some other things I feed my family!

Stuffed squash: I use cheese and Ritz crackers.  Yummo.

Salmon patties: just canned salmon, egg, and Ritz!

I couldn’t believe it, but Joanna ate one and half salmon patties (dipped in ketchup, of course) and a quarter of a stuffed squash (or half of one in the above picture).  For Joanna, that’s pretty impressive!  Natalie picked at both but I think mostly just ate ketchup.  Hee hee, just kidding.  She didn’t eat much though.  Oh well.  There’s always breakfast tomorrow!

Oh a totally unrelated note: Natalie has now worn each of the cloth diapers overnight with no leaks!  She even woke up dirty in one of them.  I’ve also washed them twice and so far am just loving the whole process.  She hasn’t had a real grody BM in one yet, so we’ll see how that goes!  They’re both drying tonight so I’ll plan to use them tomorrow!

House Clean

I received a truly wonderful birthday gift from a very good friend today: house cleaning from a professional.  This may just be the best birthday gift ever.

“The Cleaner Lady,” as Joanna called her, spent hours here and got my house so much cleaner that it’s most likely ever been.  I just took a few pics of some highlights.  :)

I found my vases were sparkling in the window sill!

Even my tea kettle was shiny!

The girls’ basket of blankets and babies was organized and looked so cute!

And this little place in the dish washer that I never use was clean.  Sorry if this is TMI, but mine’s always grungy.  (And I know what’s it’s for, I just don’t use it.)

When I got home today, the house smelled so clean and everything was dusted and looked so nice.

If you’ve been thinking about stopping by, do it now!

Tennis Pro!

Isn't she just about the cutest thing you've ever seen in your whole life? There's a tennis camp at the church this week for Joanna's age. I was so excited about this; there's very little programming for this age, especially where you can leave the kiddos! I wasn't necessarily thinking that she's got some crazy aptitude for tennis, but they're doing other things as well (Bible stories, crafts), and I figured it would be a good intro to sports! Yesterday when I was talking to Joanna about the tennis camp, she got very excited and told me, "Yeah, I get to kick a baseball!" So she sort of got it, right?

I had a meeting at the same time as the camp today, so I took Natalie over to Lisa's house and swapped her for Anna. I brought both big girls to camp. Tomorrow I get to watch the little ones while Lisa takes the big girls to camp!

After my meeting, I snuck over to the old Youth Lounge which is off the gym to spy on the class without Joanna seeing me. I took a little video. Right before this, they'd been using balloons to toss for the kids to hit over the net. Before Joanna got a turn with the balloon they switched to balls, which you can see she wasn't quite ready for (they fall too fast!), but I just love her "form." She's so cute!

...okay, it looks like the video isn't happening right now. If I feel like it, I'll try again another time. For now, I'm off to bed...

I also got to watch her wander around and practice her "selective deafness" on her teachers. I wondered if she only did that for me. Little toot. :)

Joanna had a pretty long day today and was tuckered out this evening. We were all going to go to Home Group together, especially since it was close by, but both girls were just falling apart that I wanted them to go to bed!

21 Weeks

21 weeks

How Your Baby’s Growing (from Babycenter.com):

Your baby now weighs about three-quarters of a pound and is approximately 10 1/2 inches long — the length of a carrot. You may soon feel like she's practicing martial arts as her initial fluttering movements turn into full-fledged kicks and nudges. You may also discover a pattern to her activity as you get to know her better. In other developments, your baby's eyebrows and lids are present now, and if you're having a girl, her vagina has begun to form as well.

How far along: 21 weeks

Pregnancy symptoms: back, knee, ankle pain, complexion problems

Food Cravings: french fries, pineapple

Sleep: good – I’m still sleeping like a rock, thank goodness

Measurement: inches

Movement: Lots!  Matt has been able to feel him move, too.

Labor signs: none 

What I miss: not thinking of anything right now

What I’m looking forward to: really working on names

Milestone: A perfect stranger commented on my pregnant-ness.  I hadn’t really felt like I looked pregnant to strangers, but it seems I’m getting that way, at least in certain clothes

Thoughts from the Girls: Lately Joanna thinks the baby brother’s name should be George.  I’m not sure where it came from, but I think it’s cute she’s thinking about it.

Doctor’s visit: not this week

If I worked this hard all the time I could do it myself.

But I don't. And I can't. So there. :)
I've been very busy this weekend getting my house picked up and organized because...
DRUM ROLL...
My house is getting cleaned tomorrow, and I'm not doing it.
Ah.
So amazingly...
-All the laundry everywhere except what's dirty is folded or hung up and put away. That never happens.
-My giant stack of magazines that I've read has been gone through for recipes, etc. and recycled.
-The winter comforters have finally been vacuum sealed and stored.
-The toys are all put away in the playroom.
-Everything I can put away in the kitchen is put away.
-My ankles are swollen.

And for my reward, I will come home tomorrow from a hard day at work (Ha!) to a clean house. Do you hear the angels singing?
I do.

Folding, swimming, and funny faces

I was so impressed with Joanna yesterday – she folded all these dish towels, napkins, and placemats!

We played outside yesterday with Daddy.  In the background of these pictures, you can see the new diapers hanging to dry on the clothesline!

The girls LOVE playing in the little pool.

LOVE it.

The girls practiced blowing bubbles.  Joanna mostly blew too hard.

Natalie was amazingly good at it!

For awhile Natalie mostly stood up in the water and played.

Then she got comfy and sat down to play.  She’s so cute!

This morning at church.  Joanna always wants to stop at the stairs and take pictures because we did it once like a year ago.  :)

I love her face here.

And I love Natalie’s face here.  A lot.

Love my cutie-pie girls!

It’s not that easy being green…

But it sure is fun to try!

I took a little plunge into cloth diapering this week.  A pretty good deal at diapers.com combined with a little wiggle room in the grocery budget allowed me to purchase two pocket diapers.

They came yesterday and I was so excited!  I ordered one Fuzzi Bunz and one Bum Genius in neutralish colors.  The bumgenius is a one size, meaning it could actually fit an 8 pound newborn and a 35 pound potty trainer.  I may just have to see that to believe it.  :)  The Fuzzi Bunz is a medium, which fits about 15-30lbs I think (although the company does make a one-size).  These brands both get excellent reviews by the cloth diapering community, although people often prefer one or the other (or a different brand).  But all pocket diapers are pretty similar, I think.  I ordered one of each of these brands to see if I preferred one over the other before I made a huge investment in a stash of diapers.  These are not cheap.  At Amazon (often the best price around) they run $18 or $19… each.  So it will take a while before they start to save us money.

I forgot to take pictures of what they look like inside, and now they’re dirty so I’m not going to.  :)  They’re called pocket diapers because they have a pocket that you slip an absorbent liner into.  The outside of the diaper is water proof so even if something gets past the liner it won’t end up on the couch.

I’ve only used them one day but I’m in love.  :)  Natalie doesn’t seem to have any issues with them.  They’re so cute and soft!  They are more bulky than disposables, but since she’s always in a dress, that’s not really an issue right now.  If I can manage to build up a nice stash, I really see myself using them.  We’ll still use disposables at church and we’ll see about days that we’re running around.  I haven’t really tackled the laundry yet, but it doesn’t seem too daunting. 

Now, I’m a little embarrassed to say it, but I only changed Natalie’s diaper twice today.  So these two cloth diapers are all she wore.  No leaks.  These are way better than the gdiapers I’ve used before.  I think I’ll still use some of those, but more as backups for these (like when I’m behind on laundry) and with a washable liner versus the flushable ones.  I think I can even use a prefold in it (read: your momma’s cloth diaper).  I’m going to try anyway.  So I put the BumGenius on Natalie when she woke up this morning, and she wore it until after lunch.  She had poop, which fortunately went easily into the toilet, and it was very full, but there was no wetness on her or her clothes.  I then put her in the FuzziBunz (which I didn’t get pictures of), and she had a nap and wore it through dinner.  Again, pretty full but no leaks. 

My other recent green adventure (which is sort of related to the cloth diapering) is homemade laundry soap.  I, like my friend Shaun, used the recipe from the Duggars website.

Here are the ingredients, plus water.  They’re all available at Alspaugh’s, FYI, which is nice, and local.

First you grate the Fels-Naptha bar of soap.  Most recipes call for this, although I’ve seen that you can use ivory or kirk’s castille soap.  I’ve actually got a bar of the kirk’s, but I opted for the Fels-Naptha.  I think the kirk’s may be more friendly for sensitive skin (or I could be making that up), but we don’t have too much of that around here.

Anyway, I grated about 2/3s of the bar then turned it over to my husband.  I’m a weenie! 

 

Looks like cheese, doesn’t it?

Then you add it to hot water and stir until melted.  This took longer than I thought.  I was a little bored.  I ate M&Ms.

Then you fill a 5 gallon bucket halfway with hot water.

And you add the melted fels naptha, 1 cup of Arm and Hammer super washing soda and 1/2 cup of Borax.  I had the Borax, but I had to go buy the washing soda.  Turns out I also had the bucket, but I needed a lid.  So it was nice not to have to invest in all these things at once.  Although they’re weren’t pricey.

Stir until everything is dissolved.

 

Then fill it the rest of the way with hot water.

Now I just have to wait overnight for it to thicken.  I think I’ll sleep while I wait.

I’ve been thinking about making the laundry soap for a while.  The reason I went ahead and did it is for the cloth diapers.  I think this is going to be good stuff to wash them in.  You’re supposed to be careful not to use detergents with additives or brighteners in them.  Like I can even read the language printed on the back of detergent bottles!  Actually I use a “free and clear” detergent that would probably be fine.

This was fun though.  :)  And as you can see by the pink dress in most of the pictures, I had help.

And if my kitchen looks dirty in any of these pictures, I have no idea what you’re talking about and I blame my camera.

And on an unrelated note, I’m really feeling Baby Brother bounce around right now!