Allow me to show you our week in pictures:
Sedona has figured out how to use a sippy cup. She doesn't always remember she has to tilt it up, but if you hold it, she can drink from it. She has also learned to make "beautiful beautiful music" (or so she thinks) by banging it as hard as she can against her high chair tray. This has also led to the implementation of the "3 drop rule". We only pick things up twice, the third time you drop it, it's gone (because, yes, gravity works EVERY time. Newton proved it, no need for an 8 month old to question it). P.S. on the TV in the background (we ditched TV, not movies we rent from the library ;-) is Fraggle Rock!!! The only thing I remember about fraggle rock is getting in trouble for asking to watch it (long story that most of you already know), so I had to watch the movie
And oh to have the life of a baby. One of the books I read recently had a comment about how it must be wonderful to be a baby--to wake up one morning and realize you have body parts you didn't even know were there. Okay, when I say it, it sounds kinda creepy, but you get the point. Babies are absolutely amazed by TOES!! It's pretty fun to watch (not so fun to change her--she throws a complete hissy fit until you finish and let her have her toes back). Sidenote: she was sick this week, so she went to the doctor and her weight gain is actually doing better--she's up to 17 pounds now! We still have GI issues we're working on, she sees the GI doc on the 17th.
She's still trying to crawl and still not succeeding. A few times she has scooted both knees forward at the same time, but she's just not getting the concept of moving her hands. Have no fear, she practices constantly. 3am is one of her favorite practice times
Another Sedona/Sierra comparison pic. I think it's really easy to tell them apart now (I don't know how Sedona has managed to keep so much of her hair, most of Sierra's fell out and had to grow in again), so I won't bother labeling ;-)
My latest frugal living adventure---homemade laundry detergent! I think it's gone quite well. Price comparison--my "stock up" price (the price that's reliably cheap enough to justify buying 6 months worth) on laundry detergent (All or Purex free and clear liquid) is $3.00/100oz of non-concentrated stuff. According to the bottle, that's 32 loads worth. Making my own detergent, it only costs me $0.32 for 32 loads worth. It took me 15 minutes and I saved $6.53 (this recipe makes 78 loads worth). Directions:
Buy laundry soap bar (regular ol' ivory soap works too---one guy even uses Lever 2000--any bar soap), washing soda (not baking soda) and borax. This involves a *slight* investment (about the same as one bottle of ready made laundry detergent), but the ingredients last you a LONG time.
If you have laundry soap, use 1/3 of the bar. If you use regular soap, use the whole bar. Grate the soap (just use a regular cheese grater). I missed a pic of this part because the camera batteries were recharging. Mix soap with 4 cups of water over medium high heat until soap *completely* dissolves
Mix in 3/4 c. of Borax and 3/4 c. of washing soda. It gets kinda thick at this point. Stir to dissolve completely
Put 4 cups hot water (just the hottest from the tap) in an appropriate sized bucket. Stir in your detergent mixture, then add another 1.5 gallons (6 quarts) of hot water. Stir and let sit. You're done!
Use about 1/3-1/2c per load of clothes. It won't suds up as much as commercial detergent, but seems to clean just as well. Also, after it sets up, the consistency is kind of liquid with chunks of gel (actually, it's gel on top and liquid on bottom if you don't disturb it at all), I have mine in a scoopable container, but I suppose if you had it in an old detergent bottle you could just shake it up before measuring it out.
In garden news, Our potatoes have gone nuts. 51 of the seed potato pieces we planted ended up sprouting, some of them made 2 or 3 plants. If this hay bale thing works, we will have LOTS of potatoes
While adding hay, we found a very very large spider "friend" Not sure what type this is. We have seen garden spiders (the huge black and yellow ones) around here, but this one's new. I suppose it can eat really big bugs!!
We also started our "three sisters" planting today. We made rows (9 rows, 15 feet long) and planted corn today (every foot, so somewhere around 135 plants :-o There is a small section of baby corn, but most is sweet corn. Sierra of course immediately asked if the baby corn was for Sedona LOL
If you're looking to plant corn and want to save yourself the back breaking part of the work, I have an awesome 3 year old I can lend you....poke holes in the ground with a long stick and she happily does all the ground work of dropping a kernel in and covering it with dirt ;-) Just a reminder, the 3 sisters concept means planting corn, then after the corn sprouts, planting pole beans (that will climb the corn stalk) and any sort of squash/melon (the furry/prickly leaves grow all in between the corn/beans and keep critters away from the corn). The beans and corn compliment each other at a soil/root level as well.
The tomatoes are very happy to have moved out to the garden, they're getting huge already!
The strawberries are also happy--the bigger plants are already loaded with lots of berries, just waiting for them to grow/ripen!
And the chickens are HUGE! we have another month or so before they start laying eggs, but they look like chickens now! Sierra loves to feed them and have them "chase" her (she runs around the coop and they run after her). They come over to us whenever we walk up to the coop. Sheba met her demise (I'll spare you the story) and Sierra was pretty matter of fact about it. The worst part was we told her we killed it because it was hurt and she got all wide-eyed and concerned. Then it dawned on me....anytime she continues to do something after I told her not too, I tell her, "I don't want to hear you crying when you get hurt" (an extension of our "karma" lesson: as a toddler, we'd tell her to stop running, she wouldn't, she'd fall, and we'd say, "well, that's karma" as we picked her up. She got to the point where she'd fall and just hop right back up and say, "karma!" and keep going). Anyways, it occurred to me about 2 seconds too late that the poor kid would probably think we were gonna kill her if she got hurt. We had to back peddle and explain you can't take chickens to hospital when they're badly hurt. Once we got through that explanation, she was okay with the whole ordeal. Josh is dreaming of raising meat birds too, so might as well get this sort of thing out of the way now!
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