Graedon's world...

Lauren: "Grae, do you want a grilled cheese sandwich for lunch?"

Grae: "No, I want a boy-ed cheese sandwich." He pronounces "girl", "grill."

later on...

Grae: "Oh look, it's boy-ing!" (instead of grilling).

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One of our Westminster Shorter catechism question/answers is "Who wrote the Bible?". The correct answer is "Chosen men who wrote by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit."

Graedon knows this but the "chosen men" part is abstract for him. Who are they? Sometimes they are bad guys, as in, the "chosen men" did it. The other day they were the Presidents of the United States. Grae got out our children's encyclopedia and saw a couple of pages that listed portraits of all the Presidents. He told Maddie, "look chosen men." Well I guess they are. We believe God chooses Presidents so in a way they are chosen. Just not the chosen men who wrote the Bible!

Cloth Diapering 101 - Pocket Diapers

The next type of diaper I'm going to share with you are pocket diapers, so named because they have a pocket on the inside.

Why choose a pocket diaper? Pocket diapers have PUL on the outside so they are waterproof and don't require a cover. You can stuff different inserts/doublers in the pocket depending on how much absorbancy you need. They dry fast because they don't have any layers sewn into the body of the diaper.

Like the rest of the diapers I've shown you, there are many, many kinds of pocket diapers. I have a Fuzzi Bunz , which is one of the more popular and easy to get diapers.


Here it is.


Here is the pocket in the back of the diaper.


Open the pocket and stuff the insert (doubler that comes with it) inside. Slide it around until it lays flat.


And that is all. When you need to change the wet diaper, simply remove it from child and shake the insert out and into your diaper pail. Pretty easy. A lot of the pocket diapers are lined in a micro-fleece which helps your child feel dry. The micro-fleece pulls the moisture to the insert quickly.

Next up AIO's (all in ones). These are the most like disposables.

Molly again

Molly is 9 months old and finally getting fun. She's getting past the helpless-carry-me-around-all -day stage. She's an explorer and figured out she can climb the stairs. Her leg is always kicking up to climb anything.

She's still nursing full time and isn't that interested in food. She'll eat crackers or whatever her sisters are having but then wants down to crawl.

Molly loves sleeping with us at night. She goes to bed in her crib (which is at the foot of our bed) around 8:00 pm. We sneak in there, walking in slow motion around 10:30 pm. Oh so quietly do we pull the covers back and slowly slide into bed. Up pops Molly's head. She looks at us like "excuse me, didn't you forget something?" I'll nurse her and slide her up between us. She turns and grabs my pillowcase and swings her arm behind her to touch her Dad's arm and falls asleep. It's really cute but slightly annoying. At least she's not a bed hog and pretty much stays where she's at.


Here she is giving the impish look that we love.


Trying to get up on the chair.

It's my birthday...

Today I am 34 and proud of it. I love being in my 30's. To celebrate, Brian and I went to the DMV to renew our driver's licenses. Oh what fun, oh what joy. We waited in line 10 minutes. I was called first and told the guy, "I need to renew my license."

"Okay," he said and looked at me expectantly. I looked back at him expectantly. *Blink, blink* Silence.

Finally I broke the ice. "What do you need from me?"

"Your license," he replied. Duh. I handed it over and answered all the questions. Because of 9-11, they are supposed to confirm your social security number before you can renew. He didn't ask me anything. Instead he pushed the computer screen in my direction and asked me to verify everything.

I did notice that they had my old pre-Ellie weight. Should I correct it? "Is everything correct?" he asked.

"Uh-huh" I replied. I'll get down to that weight again I figured. No need to correct it now.

"Okay," he said and gave me a knowing smile. Or more like a "yeah right" smile.

I proceeded to write the check for my renewal and put March 25, 1974, my birth date on it. Why, I don't know. I had to cross it out and write the correct date. He must have thought I was crazy.

Then I got my picture taken and waited for Brian to finish up. Like I said, fun times.

Later I gave Brian a coupon to go have the oil changed in his van. He pulled up and handed them the coupon. They looked at it and *blink, blink*.

"Am I at the right place?" Brian asked. Nope he wasn't. He pulled up to their rival. Ever the frugal guy, he asked if they would accept it anyway. Oh sure they could.

Brian relayed the story to me and I simply said "Dork."

"Well at least I knew what to do at the DMV." he replied. Touche... ;)

I don't know what to title this...

So we had our gas hot water heater installed last week, a Rheem 50 gallon. Beauty isn't it. The guy that came out to install it asked if we bought the house 2 years ago in January. Uh - yes we did, why? He told me that he and his wife looked at our house and make an offer but the offer right before theirs was accepted. Oh that would be us! Gulp - was he bitter? Is he going to rig the water heater to let noxious and deadly gas permeate the house and kill us? Nope - he was great and spent 6 hours installing it. Works perfectly and we aren't dead. Yay! No more electric water heater and no more paying PGE (our energy company known by me as Pretty Greedy Energy) to suck our checking account dry heating water.


The one thing I can't resist. I really don't like ice cream but when we have this in the house, I don't stop until I feel so sick. Why do we have it in our house? Ava and I went grocery shopping and we were coming close to the ice cream aisle. I jokingly told Ava that we could get some ice cream as long as they had Tillamook Mudslide and only if it was on sale. The particular grocery store doesn't carry mudslide all the time so I thought I was safe. Uh-no. Not only did they have it but it was on sale for under $3.00. So I put it in the cart, got home and ate way to much.


Ellie is our genius. She's 4 and already reading and writing. I teach her the phonograms and help her to write the letters correctly and the girls quiz her and write words for her to read. She loves it and I love the help. Now we find little notes all over the house from her. Some make sense and some don't but it's cute.


Maddie giving me a taste of my own medicine. I made her delete the pics she took ;)

Graedon loves to talk about anatomy. He talks in a matter of fact way as Brian and I are trying not to laugh. The other day I was teaching school when Ellie ran in to the school room and yelled "Graedon's going potty standing up, he's spraying everywhere!" Maddie got there first and grabbed a towel, while I firmly told Grae that he will not stand up to go potty again. He kept saying "I'm just like Daddy, right?" So that explains why he said to me the other day "I stand up and hold my *blank* (edited so people searching for the word don't come here, but you get the drift) and go potty just like Daddy does." Spraying down the toilet isn't the worst he's done lately. He tried to go poop standing up as well. I'll spare you the picture of little nuggets flying everywhere.

Tonight he tried to convince me that God will give him "breastfeeders" when he gets older. I repeatedly told him no, only moms have them. He didn't buy it and gently patted me on the shoulder like he was sorry I wasn't as wise as he.

Randomness

Lauren was up sick last night so she, Molly and I stayed home from church. It was a relaxing & quiet day. We watched the first Lord of the Rings movie and I did some wool interlock dyeing (oh and some low water immersion bamboo velour dyeing).

When Molly went down for her afternoon nap we popped in Gone with the Wind. (I know, I know but we don't have a lot of movies to choose from and we watched Pride and Prejudice the last time we stayed home.) Lauren had never seen it nor read the book. When I was 13, I spent the summer reading Gone with the Wind. I read it 11 times and it's a long book! It isn't a particularly wholesome book but Scarlet does provide a good example of the kind of women not to be. By contrast Melanie is the "good" one. She's a little too trusting but is full of love. Anyway, we didn't finish it before the my little troops stormed into the house from church and demanded my attention.

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Tomorrow is an exciting and expensive day for us. We're getting a new gas hot water heater installed. The one we have now is electric and about 15 years old. I would estimate it costs us over $70 a month to use based on our current electric bill. The new one is supposed to only run about $20. Hope so! I've been doing laundry like a mad women so our mud room looks okay and the guy can actually move around without stepping on someones dirty underwear.

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My 34th birthday is at the end of this month and the only thing I asked for is a day without kids. ;) My backup idea was to not have to cook dinner or make my own cake. The girls agreed and I can't wait!

Graedon asked me what I wanted for my "birfday" and I told him taco salad.

He said, "No, what do you want?". I said I wanted cheesecake.

Apparently that didn't please him because he asked again. This time I told him a purple shirt.

"Oh okay," he said. "You want a purple pirate shirt?" I thought it was a question but I was mistaken.

"No, just a purple shirt," I said.

"No, you want a purple pirate maid shirt. You do."

"Okay." I agreed.

"Yes, okay." he said. I'm glad I finally got it.

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Brian's 40th birthday is coming up in April and we're having a party for him. I think since we want to invite so many people, that we'll have an open house style party. That way our friends can show up when they want. I'll just have food out all day to snack on. That reminds me, I had better start sending out invites. Maddie thought of a good idea for some presents for him but I can't share as he reads the blog.

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Well off to take another load of laundry out of the dryer. I'm secretly hoping that our washer and dryer break so we'll be forced to get some new ones. We actually have a tax refund coming for the first time in 4 years but we've already spent it (in our heads) about 3 times over. In reality it will go into savings to pay for exterior paint for our house, oh and a new porch, and a new front door, and....

Learning a foreign language....

Brian decided that the girls needed to learn a foreign language. Neither of us know any (unless you count abbreviations on forums). I took 3 years of Spanish but still only remember my numbers, the alphabet and a few misc. words.

However, just because we don't know something doesn't stop us from trying, faking or making something up.

Brian: "I'm going to teach you some phrases in another language."

Girls: "Okay." Why they didn't ask which language, I don't know.

Brian: "Repeat after me....Owha tador kiam..."

Girls: "Owha tador kiam."

Brian: "Good, now faster."

Girls: "Ohwa tador kiam...Daddy!" said with much rolling of the eyes.

Well, we tried.

Back from the dead..

Well, it looks like we'll live. I wasn't so sure a few days ago. This virus is nasty and we're still pretty tired from it. In fact, around lunch time I gave Molly to Lauren because my eyes were burning. I laid on the couch and 20 minutes later woke up. Oops! I actually got the sewing machine out and worked on making diapers while the girls watched Pirates of Penzance. Have you seen that movie? Totally cheesy but enjoyable.


A sign we need to go to Disneyland? Is God using chocolate chips to tell us something? The only way we would get to Disneyland is if someone gave us some money as all of ours is currently spoken for.

The weather is starting to warm up and sometimes we see sun. With the nicer weather comes the familiar pull of home renovation. Currently I'm working on painting our tv stand, recovering some lamp shades, making school room curtains, recovering the school room chairs & peg boards and trying to save some money for a new school room rug. We're going to go with the Flor system as you can wash each square fabric tile and put it back down.


I'm also working on expanding my diaper sewing business. I've had 3 offers from stores that want to carry my products and everytime I list some on Hyena Cart, they sell out in less than a minute. My friend Bev is sewing some diapers for me and I asked another lady from my church to help out as well. Then I got sick and everything came to a halt. But since I care about life again, back to work, lol. Brian has all these crazy ideas about what I need to do, but he always does, and I largely ignore them. Not being disrespectful here, I promise. It's just when you live with an idea guy, you can't possibly implement them all. I take the good ones and just nod politely to the rest.

Anyway, Molly is trying her best to eat every single thing off the floor so I better go vacuum her mouth out. I'm kidding. Well sort of, I should probably see what's in there though.