Shhhhh....don't tell Lilli!

Lilli wanted a waldorf doll for Christmas, but to be honest, they are quite expensive. So, I decided to get a pattern and make one. I was unsure about it and scared, but WOW!!!! The fruits of my labor are awesome! She literally has my blood and sweat put into her (did you know you can put the eye of a needle through your thumb? lol) but I am really proud of how she came out. Her clothes are from Pottery Barn but I made the doll!!!

Visions of Sugarplums

For the Holiday Helper Mamas

This is the chaos that is my life. See what happens when you take 5 minutes to help others?


So come on friends and family out there...take a few minutes and help others in need. We are almost at our goal of fulfilling the needs of 200 families!!!!!

http://www.shesdreamingindigital.com/holidayhelper/index.php

Old gift cards you aren't using with money on them, blankets, clothes, toys, and coats, they need winter gear everyone with the storms coming!!!

Hand-made Toys to Become Illegal

Ah, they've done it again, those crazy lawmakers! They took an opportunity to do something good, and f*ed it all up!!! After all the toy craziness, the lead recalls, etc of all the stuff mostly made in China, the CPSC and Congress got together and made some new rules. Limits things like lead, pthalates, and other toxins in our children's toys, and requires testing of items that are to be sold in the US. Great idea, right? You'd think so given recent articles like this one: 1 in 3 Toys Toxic. Well, sadly, it's a horrible idea. Really bad. Really, really bad.

This new law requires toy makers to have their tested, on their own dollar. Still fine, you think? Sure, it's fine for huge corporations who save money by making their toys in China, and other giants with more money than time. This testing must be done at least once for EACH TOY a company manufactures, at a cost of $4000 per toy. Once again, probably not so bad for a company like Fisher Price or Mattel. However, imagine you are a small-time toymaker, a true craftsman (YES!!! They still exist!!!! Check out www.etsy.com...www.maplelandmark.com,www.whittle.com...toys are still made in the USA!!! And some even by hand!) and you are forced to test a sample of each item you make. It's impossible financially. And these rules are far sweeping to all infant and child products, including clothing, cloth diapers, hair bows, etc. I'm all for keeping things safe, I'm sure you all know how nutty I am about the things my kids use, but this is a bit much. For example, Holztiger is a larger small company that produces awesome wooden animals and figures. Even though they are all made from the same say 3 woods and the same paints, each figure needs to be tested...so...the big cow, the small cow, the brown one, the black one, the horse, the little horse, the horse sitting.....you get the idea. Selecta, a European company, has decided not to distribute to the US anymore. You see, in Europe they have much stricter toy safety standards anyway...one of the reasons I order a lot of European toys. So for them to have to test all their stuff again....it just doesn't pay off. Selecta pulls out of US market


What can we do?

Please write or call your senators, representatives, and the CPSC. There was supposed to be an emergency hearing today to address this, but it was canceled. If this is not addressed soon, we are going to lose our handcrafted products and high quality toys...and thousands will lose their livelihoods. Let's face it, this is not a good time to be putting people of jobs!

Here is a link from the Handmade Toy Alliance, with info on who to write to and what to say.
http://www.handmadetoyalliance.org/how-you-can-help

Also, here is there info page which helps describe the issue further.
http://www.handmadetoyalliance.org/Home

Hey Look, It's my Midwife!

Baby, You’re Home

Homebirth in the New York Times. :)

Free as a Bird

We ditched the training wheels, and Lillian took off...she is SO proud of herself! She was riding up and down the street screaming "Woo-hoo! Oh yeah! Woooo!!!!"

Best Dollhouse Ever!!!!

I saw these amazing dollhouses online, waldorf style, made my a German company called Kinderkram and a US one called Elves and Angels. While both equally magnificent, at $300 I just couldn't justify it since we had gotten a dollhouse last year from Plan Toys. I wasn't overly happy with it though, and just itching to replace. Lilli didn't even care that I wanted to replace it, so you know she didn't love it either LOL. So, I showed the pictures I linked to Stephen, and he built us one! FROM SCRATCH. As in, he took boards of wood, cut them, joined them, sanded them, etc. I helped design and sand, but he put in the 30+ hours of work. Now we know why they are so expensive!!!!! The final product, however, is simply breathtaking. I think we'll be enjoying it for generations. Remember, you can click on the photos to see them bigger. :)

Halloween

We went with a group of homeschoolers to a local "pumpkin patch" (not really any real patches around here LOL!!!) for story time and to get our pumpkins.

The Birthday Girl

Future babywearer :)


That night, we all went trick-or-treating.

Even Lucy seemed to enjoy her first Halloween. :) The big kids were loving it....Mickade kept saying "This is the greatest Halloween EVER!!!" He couldn't believe how much candy he was getting. He thought it was way better than NY. Which is funny, because he apparently doesn't remember that his bucket got so full there that we had to keep emptying it into the stroller!



The next day we had Lillian's 4th Birthday party at the field after the football game.

It's Not on the Test (or, one of the many reasons we homeschool)

Isn't No Child Left Behind great?

I'm Rocking My Baby

Ugh, if you came to my door right now, I'd probably invite you in, with about a thousand apologies, and asking you to please excuse the mess. Because, of course, if your house doesn't look like Martha Stewart's studio, that's what you do. (I went to a filming of her show once, by the way....her staff actually uses a dustbuster in the greenhouse before airing. I mean, in the greenhouse!!!! Where there's supposed to be dirt!)

Growing up, I think I had the cleanest house ever. My dad is very particular, and my mom, I think, was addicted to crack. I mean, the woman used to stay up vacuuming at 11 at night, or even 2 in the morning. I can barely wash a dish by 9:30pm. I guess I wasn't blessed with the gift of needing a small amount of sleep each night. I need my 8 hours (at least)!!! My father was so much worse. He was gone most of the week, and we would all run around like madmen picking up before his arrival Friday night, so we could pretend the house had looked this way all week, and no one left their shoes out by the front door or a dish in the sink. I feel like I spend all day stressing somewhere in my head that there is laundry to be done, floors to clean (again), dusting, picking up I can be doing...it's like an obsession I can't keep up with. So after spending 3 crazy weeks alone with the kids and trying to live up to some unattainable standards for an immaculate house and making myself crazy in the process...I found this:

Song for a Fifth Child
by Ruth Hulburt Hamilton

Mother, oh Mother, come shake out your cloth
empty the dustpan, poison the moth,
hang out the washing and butter the bread,
sew on a button and make up a bed.
Where is the mother whose house is so shocking?
She's up in the nursery, blissfully rocking.


Oh, I've grown shiftless as Little Boy Blue
(lullaby, rockaby, lullaby loo).
Dishes are waiting and bills are past due
(pat-a-cake, darling, and peek, peekaboo).
The shopping's not done and there's nothing for stew
and out in the yard there's a hullabaloo
but I'm playing Kanga and this is my Roo.
Look! Aren't her eyes the most wonderful hue?
(lullaby, rockaby, lullaby loo).

The cleaning and scrubbing will wait till tomorrow,
for children grow up, as I've learned to my sorrow.
So quiet down, cobwebs. Dust go to sleep.
I'm rocking my baby and babies don't keep.

Brought tears to my eyes. It's so true. How long will my baby be a baby? How long will they want to cuddle up and read a book with me? No one ever looks back on their life and says, "Boy! I sure wish I'd cleaned my house more often!" No one ever speaks a eulogy that includes "And we will always remember what a clean and tidy house this woman kept." No -- they talk about how she listened, spent time with her loved ones, made people laugh.

So...if you stop by my house, and it's cluttered, or toys are everywhere, or the couch has laundry I'm trying to fold....know it is that way because I am playing with my kids. We're busy making crafts, reading stories, going on walks, learning together, or just plain cuddling while we watch tv. I'm going to get over it and move on. I have 3 small children...keeping tidy will not always be this difficult, and they won't always be small. So when they are bigger in a few years and my house is nice and neat when you stop by, I'll be smiling and invite you in without apology...but inside I'll be mourning the loss of my babies and the chaos that came with them.

Serenity in the Midst of Chaos

7 MONTHS!!!

Can you believe it? Lucy turned 7 months today!!! It's amazing how it can seem both like she has been here forever and she was just born. She is 18lbs, about 27in, and crawling everywhere. She's quite serious and observant, saving her smiles and laughs for when she means it! She is determined to get around, pulling up all day long, standing on what she can, and shocked that when she tries to turn to me or let go with one hand that she falls down. Poor little girl has bruises on her head from her efforts (darn hard floors).


I wanted to give her some teething biscuits, but I was really leary of ingredients given her allergies. I was going to order some (because of course I can't find the right ones in this town) but I didn't want to pay $10 shipping on a $2 box of cookies! So...I made my own, and she liked them. :) I ground oatmeal, flax, and brown rice in our vitamix to make a flour, then mixed 1.5 cups of that with 1tsp baking powder, some vanilla, and real maple syrup, and a little water for the right consistency, shaped them, and baked them at 350 til golden. So easy!!! And no reaction!!!


PS Just in case you didn't know....you can click on any of the photos in my blog to see them full size! ;-)

Close Encounter with a Tornado

As we were leaving for swim practice today we saw THIS. We were not lucky enough to be as far away as the photographer of these shots was!

Adding in some new photos someone was kind enough to share (for reference, those flags in the pic are 1/2 mile from my house exactly)....








It was right in front of us, maybe a mile away. I don't remember the last time I was so physically scared. I didn't even know what I was seeing at first, I swear it looked like a jet had just flown through the clouds and separated them, like a cartoon; there was this clear path through the clouds. I followed the path, thinking wow what a weird jet line, noticing the path turned grayish below the cloud. Then I noticed the curvature of it...then I realized...holy shit...that's a tornado. One of my nightmares come true. Seriously, my nightmares are all tornadoes, alligators, and suddenly being back in school taking a test realizing I haven't come to class all year because well honestly I haven't been in school for years LOL. I told the kids what I saw, probably in some scary non-swear expletive form, u-turned, and sped back down the road. We were flying, like 50mph on our little 15mph street. Some lady gave me a dirty look. Obviously she hadn't looked down the road yet!! I had no idea what way it was going and I certainly didn't want to be in the car if it was headed at us! The kids were scared, they were asking if tornadoes pick things up and tear of roofs...I wasn't really sure how to answer, because I didn't want to scare them with the truth nor did I want to lie to them, either. I just told them when we got to the house to get out of the car as fast as they could. I had them close the bedroom doors while I grabbed the weather radio and a comfortor (I couldn't have fit the recommended mattress in the bathroom lol) and we huddled in the shower. We were really, really scared. We listened to the NOAA weather warnings about the water spout heading to land in Key West, and I was really wishing I had a map in the bathroom because Key West sits at a funny angle and I wasn't 100% sure where it was according to what they said. The said it was headed south, which I was fairly certain meant it was going away from us, thank G-d. Every thunder rumble made me nervous. I've always heard a tornado sounds like a train, but I wasn't really sure if that meant it was like thunder too LOL. After about 10 or 15 minutes they lifted the warning. The spout hit land at the Coast Guard station and dissipated as it crossed land, as you can see in the pictures.

I just ordered one of those weather radios with alarms. I used to have one when we lived in Vero, but it disappeared sometime in the past 3 years. I want to know an alarm will warn us if this ever happens again!!!! We obviously would have been fine this time even if we hadn't seen it, but if it had been going the opposite direction it would have come right through the base.

Weeeeeee!!

Singing in the Rain

Well, not exactly singing...but playing football and cheering! Today was the first day the girls FINALLY had full uniforms, and boy did they look cute! And Lilli finally remembered to look forward during cheers after critiquing herself in the videos I uploaded yesterday. :) The game started off great, Gators leading the Seminoles. It POURED for most of the game. Lots of wet children (and Mickade crying at one point). It was 22-16, then 30-16, with literally seconds to go. Awesome, a big win, finally!!! Wrong. That all changed in the last 60 seconds of the 4th quarter...it was tied 28...then we scored, missing the conversion, making it 34-28. The Noles (yes, the SEMINOLES, can you believe it? On my birthday???) tied it again, and with 9 seconds on the clock, got their 2 point conversion. The Gators gave it their all and managed 2 more plays those last 9 seconds, but gave the Seminoles their first win of the season, 34-36. :(



FYI for this and other videos on my blog: If you click on the actual picture when it starts, it will bring you to the regular YouTube site and you can then click to watch the video in high quality! :)

Then the UF Gators lost to Ole Miss. OLE MISS for crying out loud!!!! IN THE SWAMP!!!! What kind of birthday is this, anyway??????

Allergies :(

I've come to the suspicion that Lucy might have some food allergies. :( While we were in Disney, a couple different things happened. She played on one of those rubberized playground surfaces and while still playing there developed a dry, scaly rash on both of her knees. Also, she ate canteloupe for the first time and developed a similar rash on her bottom. Sadly, those play surfaces can contain latex, and canteloupe is actually a related allergy. I'm afraid she might have some kind of latex allergy, and an allergy to the related foods along with it. I was hoping I was wrong. Monday she ate some pear (not from me...her sister dropped it on the floor!). She seemed find at first, so I was hopeful. You see, pears are also part of the same family (raw potatoes, pears, apples, melon, canteloupe, pineapple, mango, kiwi, strawberries, papaya, peach, and mango) so I would not have given that to her on purpose. Wednesday she seemed ok, so I gave her a little bit more. That evening I noticed a horrible rash on her legs. :( She has not eaten any other foods, nor have I seen this on her body before. I'm still hopeful it's some kind of coincidence, but I just don't know. I've since given up the foods on the list above too since she is breastfeeding (and will be of course for another couple years). I had also noticed she was not sleeping well once we moved to our new house...which is when we got our fancy blender and started having smoothies daily....which would be when I started having bananas and strawberries daily. *sigh* My mom has always had problems with many of the fruits above, and I looked up her reactions, and they are anaphylactic...so we have a family history. I also learned recently I'm allergic to kiwis. My poor baby. What the heck is she going to eat?

Go Gators!!!

No, not UF. I mean, it's not like we don't still LOVE the Florida Gators but we have our own mini-Gators now! Mickade is playing flag football with the Key West Junior Football League, and Lilli is cheering...both for the Gators! They are both so cute. Mickade is #65 and plays the offensive line, and does a pretty good job knocking kids down. ;) He's learning a lot about the game and getting better and better. In fact, at practice one day they were doing some passing and he got quite a few "wow's" when they saw his arm! Lillian is the youngest on her team and pretty impressive if I can say so myself. :) But of course I'm her mom. Her biggest problem at games is that she wants to look at her favorite big girl cheerleaders in the back line on her team instead of the audience. She's such a little munchkin out there!





The cheer squad's dance routine, first time with poms.

First Tooth

Yep, Lucy got her first tooth (finally, it seems, after months of apparent teething) on Saturday the 13th.

I love it here

I mean, really. This is the view of the moon rising from our dock.....sheer perfection.

Children's Clothing &Chemical Burns

So have you heard the latest yet? Those tagless clothing we all thought was an awesome idea....wasn't. That plasticky ink contains chemicals, and is causing rashes, burns, oozing blisters...the works. Nice, eh? Makes an itchy tag sound like a walk in the park! The best is these things are happening on BABIES. The biggest culprit at the moment seems to be Carter's clothing, specifically their Fall 07 line with a larger label. If you call Carter's, they are actually sending parents prepaid boxes to ship the clothing back to them for a full refund. They are not, however, "officially" recalling yet. Gotta keep hush-hush on these things, you know? There are a number of blogs recording the data, and it isn't pretty. And it may not be just Carter's. Gap insists their labels are pthalate and pvc free, which is good. BTW, did you know many of those plasticky inks contain pthalates, which were just banned from childrens' toys by Congress? It's probably a good thing to have sitting their skin 24-7 then, huh? I hate fricking corporations. I liked Carter's clothes too, they are soft. But of course now that I look at the label, it says, naturally, MADE IN CHINA. Why is this not surprising? Maybe bc China has poisoned our pets, their own babies...it's sickening, really. Carter's Burns Info

So, last year I became a nut about the toys we bring into our home, purged anything questionable, and thought we were good. I'm very picky about any toys allowed into our home, especially for they baby. Nothing from China. Mostly wood. Now it seems I have to get crazy about our clothes. So please, no tagless labels here this holiday season. No plastic toys (except Legos, they are made in Canada and Europe and have been cleared by Mama). In fact, if you could get us organic or anything that is made anywhere but China, I'd be very appreciative. It's quite possible anything else will end up at goodwill.

Mickade tries tubing

Click to Play

Cinderella at work...no really Lilli wanted to wash dishes. Kept her busy for a good hour!!

A rare sight

Hugs for Bammie

Lilli all ready for her first day of dancing camp. She was so excited! She had a great day and was utterly exhuasted when she got home (it was 5 hours long!). It was her first time doing something away from home, without me there. She did great. She spent the afternoon resting and watching tv...her eyes were glassy with circles under them when she got home LOL. Sadly, though she had fun, she refused to go back. :( I even went and stayed with her the next morning for a half hour or so...as soon as I was going to leave she picked up her lunch bag and shoes and followed me. I guess she just wasn't ready yet! She told me all that dancing hurt.

Tubing!!!

We got a tube for the boat a few weeks, and the kids got to try it out. They loved it! They were so funny. Mickade liked it until any hint of speed (of course); Lilli was out there yelling "Faster! Faster!". Do these children come from the same house?

Fay Update

We're back home, after another obscenely long ride with an infant. Seriously, I don't think I'll be driving anywhere to visit anyone anytime soon. If you want to see us you are going to have to come here. :)

The storm was not bad down here at all, thank goodness. They did however evacuate the Navy base so I would have had to have left anyway, to their fun little evac shelter. So glad I went to my parents' LOL!

Tropical Storm Fay

Woohoo, our first evacuation!! We got an early jump and left Saturday ahead of any mandatory evacs. We are safe and sound (after a trip that should have been 4 hours took 8(!!) due to a baby who is not happy in the car) at my parents' in Coral Springs. It's just as well too, because even though there was no Key West resident mandatory evacuation, the Navy did mandatorily evacuate our part of the base. Which means we would have had to stay in some buildings they have on another base in Key West that are on higher ground...like 10 to a room. Um, no thanks. Really. I'm good.

Beautiful Face

I found my tongue! I stick it out now all the time...