Things I Don't Want to Forget

Noah just sprayed Pledge directly onto his face, and then stood there licking his lips. It appears he thought it tasted interesting.

It was all over his chin. Thank goodness it didn't go into his eyes.

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Today Noah was on my bed while I was sitting on the floor leaning against the bed.  Noah came over, hugged my head and said "Love you!!" (which comes out "Wuff yooouuu!"). That's the first time he told me he loved me without me saying it to him first :)

I love that kid.

Cloth Diapering!

Thank you all for your responses to my post a few days ago!  They were definitely helpful and thought provoking.

The next day I went ahead and bought 4 brand new cloth diapers from someone who was selling them out of her house.  They were $5 each, so no big deal if I didn't like cloth diapering.

Except that I DID like it.  Don't ask me why.  Logically, it makes little sense.  The idea of having to pull out pee soaked inserts, wash your diapers, and generally having to change Noah's bum more often... why would I like that?  I think only CDing Mamas would understand.  There's something about it that's just addicting and fulfilling.

So after I used, like, 2 cloth diapers, I decided I loved it and ordered all those diapers and paraphernalia.  I should get it all by the middle of next week, and I am EXCITED!

There were a few points brought up in the comments of my last post that were very valid, and I wanted to address them.  So, in no particular order (and the actual comments are going to be paraphrased):


1. I'd buy just a few to start out with to see if you like it and if you do then go for the full stash. I hear SO many stories of mommas buying full stashes and then that particular diaper doesn't work.

This is a fantastic idea, and I thought about doing it, but the deal I was going to be getting was time sensitive. And within the 30 diapers I am buying, there are 6 different styles. Not 6 different prints/colours, but actual styles. 6 different kinds of diapers (but all by the same brand). I figure that is diverse enough. Plus I had bought those other 4 diapers to test out. Those diapers were very basic. I liked them, but there were things I didn't really love about them. For instance, they wouldn't fit Noah right through until he's potty trained, just because he's so tall. But the diapers I'm buying have a larger rise when totally unsnapped, so that's good. Also, I wasn't a huge fan of the suede cloth (why is it nothing like suede?), because I didn't find it kept his bum all that dry. But most of the diapers I'm getting have fleece lining. Some are bamboo. It's diverse enough of a sample, and the cost is cheap enough per diaper, that if there were a particular style of diaper I didn't like, it's not that big of a deal. However, this is still excellent advice. I would never ever spend $15-$25 per diaper on a whole stash without trying a whole bunch of different kinds out first.

2.  We used cloth diapers for one day, and the entire lower level of my house smelled like urine. And on top of that all the cute clothes I had for the baby didn't fit anymore because of the bulk.

This one definitely concerned me.  But I tested it out, and felt relieved to have a different experience.  I didn't have a wet bag at all, so I just left the wet diapers sitting out.  I even put them on my kitchen table for the whole night, and there was no smell whatsoever.  You had to put your nose right up to the diaper in order to smell any pee, and even then it was a very very mild smell, and not that unpleasant (maybe Noah just  has mild pee??  lol).  Also, we don't have a diaper pail of any kind.  We have always just thrown our pee diapers into the garbage can in our bathroom (which doesn't have a lid) and the poop diapers right into the garbage in the garage.  And we've never had any issues with smell (unless the garbage took a long time to fill for some reason, and the diapers were in there for a week.  Then you'd smell a little funk).  

I was worried that Noah would smell like pee when he peed, but he doesn't.  

The clothes thing - I was worried about this.  But the diapers really aren't that bulky.  And Noah is a skinny kid, so the things that fit him length wise have always been way too big around his waist.  So I don't think this will be an issue.  I thought it might be with onesies (the Carter's 5 pack onesies are really long, so he can still wear the 24 month ones), but it's not.  Besides, with disposables the diaper bulks up like crazy when it gets wet, and gets so its sagging down in between his legs.  This doesn't happen to us with the cloth diapers because the inserts don't expand when they get wet.  They just stay the same size all the time.

3.  From an environmental point of view, cloth isn't always better than disposable. We have severe water shortages where I live and tons of landfill space.

That's an interesting point. We have the opposite situation. We live right on an enormous lake, connected to 4 other enormous lakes (The Great Lakes!!) so we have an abundance of water. However, landfill space is limited, and our garbage all gets trucked hours away. Also, the way I see it is that water is a renewable resource, but land space is not. At least not when it comes to most landfill sites. In Canada alone, 4 million disposable diapers are added to landfills each day. And the fact that it takes 500 years for a disposable diaper to decompose (if it even does), assuming they are breaking down in optimal conditions with contact to sun, soil, and rain.... that's pretty icky to me.

Even when using disposable diapers, it is recommended that the poop be emptied into the toilet so that it can be properly treated by water treatment facilities. This rarely or never happens. Bacteria and viruses, such as Hepatitis B and Polio, are found in the solid waste of babies who are given routine vaccines in their first year. The landfills become breeding grounds for these types of viruses and bacteria and there is potential for them to become air-borne and/or leach into our ground-water.

4. There is the water usage, heating of the water, soap, etc to take into account.

We can pretty much make any argument to support the choices that we make. And I don't think disposable diapers are the devil. Definitely not. They are super-duper convenient. But the disposable diapers are made from materials and through processes that use up non-renewable resources. The environmental effects of manufacturing disposable diapers which use chemicals, plastics and heavy metals are greater than the effects of growing and processing the cotton and hemp for cloth diapers. Plus, you need a lot fewer cloth diapers to make it through a kid's life, so you are using less of those resources.

But yes, you have the water usage, heating of water, buying detergents (which don't have to be expensive).  However, the average cost for a family to use disposables for one baby from birth to potty-training is between $2500 - $3000. A full supply of cloth diapers, on the other hand, can cost as little as $200, depending on the type of diaper chosen.  For further cost savings, cloth diapers can be re-used with future children or sold to other families (they retain their value really really well!). The cost of using energy, detergent and water when washing the diapers depends on the efficiency of the machines being used, but is equal to approximately a penny per diaper.  Peanuts.

Don't get me wrong.  I am slightly ashamed to admit that I am not obsessed with saving the environment, so those aren't really my reasons for cloth diapering.  Pretty much everything we do in life is going to some sort of environmental impact.  I do believe (and have always believed, even before I ever thought I would try CDing) that cloth diapering leaves less of an environmental footprint than disposable diapering.  But, again, that's not really my reasoning for cloth diapering.  It's just an added benefit.

Maybe it's because I am not a 'Green' nut that I don't really care whether other people CD or not.  I'm not out to convert the world.  And hello, I used disposables for the first 20 months of Noah's life, and it's not like I'll never use a disposable again.  I'm quite certain that I will.

These are my main reasons for Cloth Diapering:

1. It will save me mucho moola.  Diapers are expensive, man.  I have never ever bought diapers that weren't steeply discounted, often with coupons taken off of the sale price, which is why we still have over 1000 Pampers sitting downstairs waiting to be used (they were bought at least a year ago, on sale). But I still have spent a ton of money on diapers. All for Noah to pee and/or poop in them, and throw them away. I hate spending money on something that just gets thrown away. Seriously, I never buy garbage bags. I just use store bags. I cannot handle buying something that I'm going to throw into the trash right away. I am way too Dutch for that.

I definitely don't think that I could spend more money on detergents and water than it costs to diaper a baby for 2.5-3 years.  It might be too late to save much money on diapers with Noah, but I hope to have another bambino or two (preferably not at the same time), so I will save the mucho moola on those little rugrats.

2. Cloth diapers are CUTE.  I've always loved a little kid running around in a diaper.  But disposable diapers... meh, not that cute.  Especially Huggies.  Somebody needs to redesign those bad boys.

Noah's rump in a colourful cloth diaper?  Adorable (say it in french).

3. Cloth diapers feel nicer.  I never really thought about this too much before.  But after I got the cloth diapers, I realized that the inside (and outside) of a disposable just does not feel as nice as a cloth diaper.  So now I kind of view it as pampering Noah, wrapping him in a soft, fluffy diaper, instead of a paper, possibly scratchy and itchy diaper.  I know I'd rather wear cotton underwear than paper underwear!

4.  I like doing Mommy Chores.  Maybe this reason is weird, but seeing as I'm a stay-at-home Mom, I have ample time to spend with my child, so chores are probably not the same nemesis to me that they are to a working mom, who has more limited time to spend with her child.  And doing Mommy chores has always been enjoyable to me.  Maybe that's the infertility in me?  I was thrilled to finally be able to fold his little clothes, change his crib sheets, refill wipes, and stock his change table with diapers.  And so far, I am loving washing, stuffing, and stacking his little supply of cloth diapers.  It's just one more Mommy activity I am thankful to be able to do.  Plus the cute array of colours in the stack of cloth diapers is nice to look at.

5. I don't have to be a flyer whore.  Oh, the time I would spend scouring flyers to find a good deal on Pampers (the only brand of disposables that I like). And they are always advertising different prices for different size boxes, so a calculator would have to be involved. Then I'd drive 25 minutes to town to go try to buy the stinkin' diapers, and they'd be sold out. And so I'd recruit other family members to try and pick them up for me later in the week. So. Annoying. Plus, there hasn't been an awesome sale on diapers in over a year. Uncool. I was actually getting concerned about having to spend all that money on diapers for the next kid, and spend all that time trying to find good deals so I could stock up.

6. All that other gooble-de-gook is just icing on the cake.  It does make me feel better that Noah will no longer have chemically treated diapers up against his little boy bits.  He doesn't have any bad skin reactions to disposable diapers, but I'm still glad that he's no longer going to be exposed to all the crap in them anymore.  And I feel a little bit proud that I am making a more environmentally conscious choice, seeing as I make many other choices that are not as environmentally conscious.

I think that's it.  But let me close by reiterating that I do not think cloth diapering moms are better than disposable diaper moms.  There are very few things in parenting that I feel are black and white issues, and CDing is definitely not one of them.  I do think that too many people have the wrong ideas about cloth diapers and the amount of work involved in them.  I was one of those people, so I know that side of it. I always thought "Why in the world would you spend all that money on a diaper system that causes you to touch and wash dirty diapers instead of throwing them away?  Way too much hassle!!"  But that was also back when I thought all diapers were $15-$25 a diaper.  

I think that if everyone could try CDing for a week or two, risk free, I bet at least 75% of those people would say "Yeah, it's really not that much work!  And I actually kind of like it!" (or love it, or are addicted to it, or whatever).  But like I said, I'm not out to convince the entire world to cloth diaper.  I'm just excited for my little family, and my future bambinos.

Hubby is theoretically on board.  He hasn't actually changed a cloth diaper yet, though, so I can imagine his reaction the first time he does.  "What the heck am I supposed to do with all these snaps?!?!?"

So What Wednesday

So what if I change Noah's morning (and usually poopy) diaper on my bed in front of Sesame Street every day.  If I change it on his change table, 4 times out of 5 he is crying and wiggling and trying to turn over.  Because really, diaper changes suck.

That is a king sized bed, by the way.  My kid is TALL.

And after the bum change is over...

Toddler zoned out in front of Sesame Street.  Freaky.  But he seriously loves that show.

Cloth Diapering?

So I'm seriously thinking about cloth diapering.  Until Friday, for $169.99, I can get a stash of 30 brand new pocket diapers in various styles, each with 2 microfiber inserts.  Except 10 of them are bamboo minkys, so those have bamboo inserts.  That is an amazing price!  And the diapers have really good reviews.

My main reason for not trying cloth diapering up until now is that I refuse to shell out $15-$25 for one diaper.  But at that price, I am paying about $5 a diaper.  But then I also have to buy wet bags and detergent and different diaper cream and a sprayer and spray deodorizer and and and...

So really I'd spend like $450.  Which is a decent price if you're using cloth diapers for your kid's whole diaper experience.  But Noah is 20 months old.  It seems kind of late?   We have about 1000 disposable diapers stored in our house right now for Noah to use in the upcoming months (more than that if you count the boxes of diapers we have that he grew out of before he ended up using).  So that's a 5-6 month supply, at the rate we're using diapers now.  I am sure he'll be in diapers longer than 6 months from now, so we will have to buy more disposables.  And we would like to have another child or two (but who knows when that will finally happen).  So my thinking was that maybe we should invest in cloth diapers now instead of buying more disposables.

But, like I said, what if I don't like cloth diapering?  For the most part I've had a really good vibe from the whole thing, but then I'll run across a few blogs that give a not-so-good vibe about cloth diapering.  I've spent days researching this, and was about to finalize my two orders (one for the diapers and one for the paraphernalia), but something stopped me.  I think I'm just afraid.

Disposables are SO easy.  I never have to worry about leaks, except the occasional overnight leak.  Noah can go for forever during the day with no leaks, if we happen to have overlooked a diaper change.  I think he's probably gone 6-7 hours in one diaper during the day on rare occasions just because we were so busy and he was so active that a diaper change would have been more of a fight than it was worth.

I know cloth is better for so many reasons, but it IS more work.  And they're bulkier.  That kind of irks me.  I don't have to think about disposables.  They don't leak.  Noah has no bad reactions to them.  They fit him well.  They fit under his clothes well.

I know so many people say that they don't even notice the extra work, that it's not a big deal.  But I did run into a blog that said they used disposables for a longer trip, and they had a really hard time getting back into cloth diapering again afterward.  And I've heard of a bunch of people who cloth diapered for a year or more and then switched to disposables because the extra work just got on their nerves.

So, I don't know... I know all the reasons to cloth diaper, and I know that the majority of cloth diaperers love  it.  And I want to do it.  I'm just afraid of messing with a good thing (disposables) and not liking it.  So... I don't know what I want from you cloth diapering Mamas... tell me I'll like it??

20 Months Old

At 20 months, here is where Noah is at:

-I haven't weighed or measured Noah this month, but I assume he is just slightly heavier and taller than he was at 18 months, when he was 27lbs and 35 inches.

-He is in size 4 diapers during the day and night.

-He wears size 2T and 3T clothing. Most 2T clothing is too short, though.

-He wears size 6 shoes.

-He nurses on demand, 4-8 times a day.

-He exclusively feeds himself his solids, either with his hands or with a spoon and fork. If he is given a utensil, he will always use it. He also drinks out of a regular cup quite well, although we try to use a sippy cup as often as he will let us since we run less risk of him purposefully pouring out his water.

-He has 16 full teeth. The only ones left are his 2 year molars.

-His broken leg is pretty much completely healed.

-He sleeps straight through the night now, between 9.5 and 11 hours total.  11 hours is rare.  He gets less total sleep now that he's not nursing overnight, which isn't great, but I am loving not getting up in the middle of the night with him.  Bedtime is still about 8:30pm.

-He naps for one hour, and we are finally at the point that I just plop him in his crib wide awake.

-At 15 months Noah was saying 18 words. At 16 months he was saying 42 words. At 17 months he was saying 79 words. At 18 months he was saying 137 words.  At 19 months Noah was saying over 300 words, although I had only recorded 281.

-At 20 months Noah is saying over 424 words (I have 424 recorded, but I know I'm missing some - I finally alphabetized them in an Excel document!  I know, so overboard.)

Sorry, here's where I record these words in case my computer crashes...

His old words that he's still saying are: Mama, Dada, uh oh, more, this, that, cat, night night, hot, up, yes, woof woof ("what does a dog say?"), baa ("what does a sheep/goat say?"), moo ("what does a cow say?"), car, ball, shoes, cracker, Noah, water, orange, clock, blech, hi, done, dirt, Bert, puff, swish, fluff, book, buzz, Papa, Nana, boo, fish, phone, again, home, sunglasses, Gramper, sit, stretch, glasses, food, laptop, love, hair, quack, bye, tshirt, shirt, aunt, poop, slide, cheese, Colton, danger, banana, feet, please, clock, cold, toes, ooo-ooo-ahh-ahh (monkey sound), bad, burger, boo-boo (as in, an owie), nurse, block, fly, stuck, chalk, out, fit, hat, bye-bye, and shit (yeah, I'm not proud of that), pool, eyes, nose, rice, pour, no, apple, bath, heck, help, eat, T.V., pup, corn, cook, moon, sun, on, off, mouse, brush, ice, neigh, push, yay, peach, buddy, you, hi, mess, flip, hose, toast, home, see you, pieces, pear, foot, me, tape, open, meat, ok, out, street, outside, keys, bits, pee, flies, away, whoa, cheerios, cut, gas, wet, hey, bless, plate, baby, kick, acorn, grass, light, dark, medicine, horse, cake, after, bar, house, two, three, go, doctor, windy, lid, hide, Elmo, get, it, fix, button, thank, beep, one, cookie, high, chair, highchair, whack, walk, tower, cute, breakfast, bawk (chicken), back, moose, lion, tiger, dinner, pocket, Ernie, draw, wall, welcome, Granny, Matt, Lynsey, aunt, Giliane, Nick, Hilary, cuddle, boat, pen, puck, ready, picture, coming, dude, cool, clothes, soother, green, purple, blue, both, you, I, love, fries, toys, red, playdoh, stick, hockey, hit, ribbit, frog (which comes out as f#ck), colour, found, plug, pizza, coffee, cricket, broke, ring, hug, rice, watch, arm, leg, ear, closet, open, dukie (dutch slang for washcloth), chicken, Abby, sweep, music, Emmie, Lexie, other, room, welcome, rain, clap, table, yellow, crayon, crib, music, lotion, cube, self, ice cube, new, giraffe, bite, blanky, dance, meow, cow, dog, rabbit, tomato, tree, bathroom, cup, window, honk, pretty, grape, fork, spoon, knife, goose, bang, Scout, peek-a-boo.

His new words are (and I don't actually expect anyone to read through this list):  

Sun, Whistle, Groceries, Bat, Head, Sweetpea, Soap, Squeeze, Knock, Bib, Beef, Fishies, Hand, Yum, Yummy, Mustard, Tag, Bubbles, Jeans, Kids, Sock, Nipple, Hammer, Dinner, Supper, Piano, Bear, Bed, Room, Bedroom, James, Pasta, Diaper, Zoe, Pushing, Computer, Sick, Basket, Egg, Working, Sleeping, Sleepy, Walking, Bumbo, Noise, What, Wipe, Empty, Big, Fast, Heavy, Football, Tape, Scissors, Getting, Buckle, Seatbelt, Potty, Swirl, Smock, Tray, Header, Baseball, Pass, Penguin, Pumpkin, Shower, Mommy, Daddy, Mom, Right, Flower, Bathtime, Wall, Spin, Heat, Wow, Neat, Clean, Here, Good, Fishies, Sitting, Tub, Bum, Berries, Wash, Washing, Nursing, Helping, Brushing, Puppy, Super, Grover, Drink, Drinking, Eating, Hitting, Warm, Bucky, Gross, Careful, Sleep, Yuck, Yucky, Take, Tickle, Bike, Ride, Riding, Funny, Cord, Cereal, Smell, peel, nothing, teacher, elastic, cushion, nope, yup, Dad, Blow, Goldfish, Throw, There, Is, Sheep, Pink, White, Where, Hiding, Nap, Camera, Pancake, Boots, Sandals, Stinky, Stroller, Squish, Squishy, excuse, fun, happy, me, under, over

-This month, in about 3 days time, Noah went from calling us Mama, Dada, and Wawa (how he pronounced Noah), to Mommy, Daddy, and Noah.  It made me a little bit sad.

-He is putting many two word and some three word phrases together. For example: thank you, bless you, get it, get you, got you, hang on, excuse me, there it is, etc.

-He still loves to play with the vacuum cleaner, hair dryer, any cleaning implement, or anything electronic that isn't meant to be played with.

-As for actual toys, his favourites are our Clifford Stacking Blocks, his Cozy Coupe car, his tricycle, any type of ball, his mini sticks, and mega blocks.

-He knows all 10 of the main colours: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, pink, black, brown, white.

-He knows the shapes circle, star, and square.  We don't really work any discussion of shapes into our play, so far.  He just picked those up because his magnetic doodle pad has circle, star, and square magnets.

-He'll count "one, two, three..." but most of the time when he's counting he still says "Two, two, two, two..." as he points to different objects. It is so cute.

-He loves to colour, play with play-doh, blow bubbles, build towers, play in the corn table, play in the bubble table, play outside, kick balls... I could go on.

-He still loves Sesame Street, and the show Super Why.  I'm impressed with how much he will pay attention to Super Why, considering it's a full half hour show about reading, letters, and writing.

-Noah has been sick twice in the last month. The count is at 15.

-He is getting much less shy, but he still has separation anxiety from me.  The only people who can babysit him are my Mom and Dad (together - my Mom HAS to be there).  They've done this twice in the past couple of weeks so Justin and I could go out on an early dinner date - home in time for bath and bed!

19-20 months was a really nice month for us.  Noah was really fun, agreeable, and obedient.  There were no sleep struggles, which was awesome.  I guess it did suck that he was sick twice, but if he's happy and pleasant (which he's not with this latest cold), I don't mind him being sick as much.

Bubble Table!

Noah is pretty sick with a bad cold.  He is quite miserable, and is really hard to please right now.  I have been doing all his favourite things, like blowing bubbles in the basement (this kid is obsessed with blowing bubbles), playing with toys we don't play with very often, and even going to the park.  But he is not himself, and while he will be happy and distracted while we're in the midst of a fun activity, he very quickly goes downhill once he's lost interest.  I'm using all my best tricks, including some new ones, to keep him entertained.

What do you do with an incredibly sick and cranky 20 month old who wants everything and nothing at the same time, after you've already exhausted every other activity he enjoys?

Bubble table!!!
(Here's where we found another great use for our water table)

Like I said, he wants everything, but he wants nothing.  So he'll point to something and ask for it, whining, but when you offer it to him he starts crying and saying no.

He was crying and saying "Noo!  Noooo!  No!!!!" while I was making the bubbles in the tub, but I ignored him and kept going and suddenly he just stopped crying and started playing.

I wonder if he thought I was going to try and bath him in the bowl.

It was almost an hour of entertainment.  Sure, he spilled water while transferring it from the tub to the water table, but we were in the bathroom, so who cares.

So, to create the wonder that was the Bubble Table, I just poured baby soap into a big bowl and filled the bowl with water.

That made some bubbles, but there wasn't enough room in the bowl or extreme enough water pressure to make a ton of bubbles.  So in order to make lots of bubbles, I agitated the water by swishing my hand back and forth.  A lot.  This made mountains of bubbles over and over again.  I just transferred them by hand into the water table.

Noah dragged his potty over so he could sit on it and play with the bubbles at the same time.

Relaxing on the potty, playing with bubbles.

Noah saw the "soap!" and had to play with it.

My bathroom floor is now clean enough to eat off of.  And it smells wonderful.

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Linking up to Mama Loves!

Seriously, People!

I really, REALLY wish that people with sick children would NOT bring them places like the church nursery, Mommy and Me, or parent-child drop in, where they can spread their germs to every other child present.

And a special thanks to the parents who brought their runny-nosed children to the church nursery this past Sunday. We are pleased that Noah now has his 15th illness.

(This isn't Noah currently.  This was when he turned one.  It was about his 10th illness, and was the sickest he'd ever been.  Again from a mother who brought her sick twins to a playdate.  Poor little Noah.)

Tomato, Apple, What's the Difference?

Today after I thought Noah was done lunch, I had cleaned him up and walked out of the kitchen for some reason.  When I got back about 30 seconds later, Noah was doing this:

He had somehow reached onto the table, grabbed the tomato, and started eating it like an apple.

I almost stopped him, but then I realized there was really no reason he couldn't do this.

Why not, right?

He literally ate 90 percent of the tomato. 

When he was done, he chucked it on the floor.

My kid totally cracks me up.

Favourite Things at 20 Months - Colouring

Noah and I colour almost everyday.  He asks for it by saying "Colour?" or "Crayons!?"

His favourite colour continues to be orange.  But he loves to name all the colours as we colour with them.

His favourite thing to draw (and to have us draw) is the sun.  If he isn't satisfied with his own version, he'll hand us the yellow and say "Sun!  Yellow."

Concentrating...

“This is broken.  Don’t think I don’t notice.”

Yes, we have several broken crayons.  And Noah informs us that they are broken pretty much every time we colour.

Did you know that Crayola makes Dry Erase Crayons?  They're washable, and you can even buy them along with a little hand held double-sided dry erase board.  One side is white, one side is black.  I ran into them at Toys R Us about a month ago, and of course had to get them (along with the dry erase board).  One of Noah's Christmas presents is a double sided easel that has a white board, but I'm not too keen on him using markers at this point, so I was pretty excited about the Dry Erase Crayons!!

Another thing we use for colouring around here is AquaDoodle!

You just fill the little pens with water, and when you draw on the mat, colour shows up.  When it dries, the colour disappears.

The mat costs close to $30 regular price (we got it $10 off), and there's an accessories pack you might want to get so you have more than one pen - Noah loves the "paint brush."  But it is totally worth the cost, since it never "runs out."  And it's totally mess free!  We have the travel version as well, which is approaching $15 in cost.

If you have any other cool and fun colouring options, let me know!!  We love colouring in this house.

Favourite Things at 20 Months - Stacking Blocks

Noah is just about to turn 20 months old.

Gasp.  Where is time going?  In 4 short months I will have a 2 year old.

I thought I would post about some of his favourite activities and toys at this age.  I was going to put them all in one post, but that would take way too long.  So I'll be splitting them up.

Today's post is about:

Scholastic's Clifford the Big Red Dog Counting and Alphabet Stacking and Nesting Blocks

These are so simple, and frankly, when we received them as a gift when Noah was about 8 months old, I inwardly groaned.  They are made of sturdy cardboard, not plastic, and Noah was still putting everything in his mouth.  I actually had these blocks put away for a long time, because Noah was a very orally fixated baby.  He wasn't like his friends, who would inspect a toy for awhile before finally putting it in their mouths.  Noah immediately put everything in his mouth.  It was the first thing he did with any toy.  So he would have destroyed these cardboard blocks with his saliva.

I don't know when exactly, but sometime after he turned 1 (maybe around 13 or 14 months), Noah stopped putting things in his mouth.  So the blocks came out to stay.  And Noah loves them.  They are definitely one of his favourite toys, and he plays with them every single day.  

He loves to stack all the blocks up into a tower (like in the picture) and then knock the tower over using various parts of his body, my body, or one of his stuffed animal's bodies.  He always names the body part or action while he does it.  "Head!"  "Kick!"  "Feet!"  "Hit!" 

He'll stack them up, come up behind me, and push me forward so that my head knocks them over.  He thinks this is hilarious.  The other day he took Scout, his stuffed puppy we made at Build-A-Bear, and was knocking over the blocks with Scout's feet ("Foot!  Kick!"), Scout's head, and Scout's paws ("Hand!").  The funniest part was when he took Scout's floppy ear, said "Ear!" and then pushed the blocks over using Scout's ear, with a huge smile on his face.

I've been watching Dancing With the Stars while typing this, and I'm pretty excited that Rob Kardashian won the relay Cha-Cha, so I completely lost my writing train of thought.  It'd take too much effort to end this post "gracefully."  So...

The End.

One Year Ago Today

Second post tonight, but since I was digging through old pictures, I couldn't help myself.

This was Noah, exactly one year ago today, November 12, 2010:

I'm actually surprised how similar he looks to his current almost 20 month old self.

Or maybe it's because he's been sleeping for the past hour and a half, so I've forgotten what he looks like.

Expanding the Living Room

Changing light fixtures is hazardous to your marriage.

Seriously, my marriage does not do well during stressful DIY projects that aren't going well.  It all started when our marriage was about 3 or 4 days old (and we had been living together the same amount of time - 3 or 4 days).  We bought a nice entertainment unit to hold the 50 inch TV we got as a wedding present.  It was frustrating.  The instructions were only so helpful, and a lot of things were put together incorrectly, but not for lack of following directions.

I am Type A.  Thankfully, the husband is Type B, or we might actually be divorced by now.  I don't believe in divorce, though, so instead I would be stuck in the world's most unhappy marriage (which my marriage definitely is not).  I get so frustrated at him that he cannot read my mind.  Especially in stressful situations. I will snap so quickly.

Anyway, my new "home improvement" project is to get rid of our stupid dining room, and make the living room larger.  For some perspective, this is a view into the living room/dining room from the kitchen.  The shadowy figure is our crazy realtor, who we nicknamed Conan (since he looks just like Conan O'Brien, and is equally funny), talking on his cell phone:

Obviously these pictures were taken before we moved in.  Here is a view from the front windows, facing the kitchen:

It's bigger than it looks in these pictures.

Anyway, this was the layout we had going on ever since we have lived here:

The room was intended to be half living room, half dining room.  Except, you may have noticed from the second picture that the kitchen has a dining nook (in front of the sliding doors), which is the only place we ever eat.  Therefore, we had two dining tables about 15-20 feet from each other.  And we never ever ate in the 'dining room.'

Did you see how beautifully bare the table is in that picture?  IT NEVER LOOKS LIKE THAT.  I took this picture last winter when we were thinking about listing our house.  Usually the table serves to collect clutter.  Bring something into the house that you don't want to put away?  Put it on the dining room table!  Something you want out of reach from Noah?  Put it on the dining room table!

That dining room table was the bane of my existence.

I'd be thinking for awhile that I would love to be rid of that table.  It was never functional, except as a junk collector.  And it was taking up so much valuable space that we could be using to play!

The problem is that I did like the look of the table when it was bare.  So I didn't want to get rid of it completely.  Not yet, anyway.  Not until I was absolutely sure I'd never want to put it back there.  But we have very little storage space in this house - definitely not any space to store a table and 4 chairs.  So what would I do with it?

Plus, take another look at the lovely chandelier that hangs over top of the dining area:

It hangs too low for my 5'9" self to walk under, never mind my 6'5" husband.  When Noah was 7 months old and pulling up on everything, we shoved the table into the corner for about a month so he would be less likely to pull himself up on the pub height chairs.  He was inclined to do that, but the chairs were the same height as the top of his head at this point, so he'd somehow get standing up with his arms stretched above his head, holding onto the seat of the chair, and he'd start freaking out: "Holy crap, I don't even know how I did this, and I don't know how to get down again!  SOMEBODY HELP ME!!!"

This is Noah at exactly 7 months old.  I'm dying right now.  I forgot how CUTE he was!

At barely 7 months old, this child was not ready for the responsibility of pulling up to stand.  But he did it anyway.

It took him about a week to figure out how to sit back down on his own, but the pub height chairs were still risky because they were just way too tall for his admittedly tall-for-seven-months frame.

I digress.

While the table was pushed in the corner, we had to put the jolly jumper under the lovely chandelier, because we both smacked our heads on it several times.  Ouch.

I need to stop rambling.

This week I decided I was DEFINITELY getting rid of the 'dining room.'  On Friday I moved the dining table and chairs out of the dining room and put a coffee table under the chandelier so we wouldn't smack ourselves on it.  We needed a new light for the old dining room in order to allow us to walk freely through the enlarged living room.

I can't find a light that matched the ceiling light by the closet:

So I bought a different one on sale.  It's almost the exact same as the ones we have in the upstairs hallway, which is off to the right in the above picture (right by my bag on the ground).

I liked the dining room chandelier, so I wanted to put it in the dining nook and get rid of the less attractive light that was already hanging there.  There was nothing wrong with the dining nook light, it just wasn't as pretty as the chandelier.

We took the chandelier down.  Justin was all "Are you sure you know what you're doing?"  I was all "Pfft!  Are you kidding me?  I am my father's daughter.  I can change a tire.  I can change oil.  I'm the one who taught you how the fuse box works and how to refill the washer fluid in your car.  I can take down and hang up a dang light fixture!"

Which I could have.  If the screws were long enough.

Oh heavens, on a scale of 1 to 10, my frustration level was a 13.  We worked on that new stupid fixture for like 45 minutes before we got to the step that revealed that THE SCREWS WEREN'T LONG ENOUGH.  The outlet box in the ceiling is just a little bit too high up.  We needed it to be half a centimeter lower, and we would have been fine.  Stupid house builders.

So now we have a hole in the ceiling, with wires dangling out of it (don't worry, I capped them).

Well, at least we can move the pretty chandelier into the kitchen.  That should be much easier.  I mean, we know it'll fit.  And I just took it down, so I know how to put it back up.

Yeah, not as simple as that.  It took another 45 minutes.  45 minutes where Justin was not reading my mind, and Noah was whining like crazy from his high chair where we had trapped him.  Holy Hannah, my blood pressure is rising just thinking about it.

At least we got that one installed.

10 minutes after all was said and done, Justin left me alone with a cranky 19 month old to go to the stupid girls high school basketball finals.  It was only 5, and Noah goes to bed at like 9, so I was not happy about Justin abandoning us for such a stupid reason.  And of course, he went anyway.

I was seriously at the end of my rope and pretty much wanted to kill Justin.  And I had no patience with cranky Noah, who I'm pretty sure was feeding off of my bad mood.

Thankfully my Mom called, and I complained to her about everything while playing with Noah on the floor (of my newly enlarged living room!), and got off the phone an hour later feeling much better.  And Noah was over his crankies.

That is the end of my story for now.  I bought a new couch for the enlarged living area, but it won't be delivered for awhile.  I'm excited, though.

Now I need to go to bed.  This took way too long to write.

Bubbles, Circles, Colours and Snow

Yesterday it was freezing out, but Noah and I went outside to play, anyway.  It was 4pm and I was trying to kill time until Justin got home at 5:15.

It was sunny right when we went out, so I opened the van door to get my sunglasses out.  Immediately Noah started saying "Bubbles!  Bubbles.  Bubbles.  Bubbles."  Oh crap, I forgot.  Whenever he sees me open that door, he sees the bubbles that have been sitting in the lower water bottle holder since July.  And even though we haven't actually blown bubbles since July, he knows exactly what they are, and always wants to play with them.

I don't know if it's because he actually remembers when we blew bubbles in July, or if he knows what bubbles are from that episode of Sesame Street, and because he is obviously a genius, he somehow knows that that green bottle in the van door is a bottle of bubbles.

Regardless, I decided to stop being a mean Mommy (Don't judge me. The bubble wand drips on your clothes, and your hands get sticky from the bubble solution.) and actually let him play with the bubbles.

To my surprise, it didn't take him long to perfect his bubble blowing technique and actually blow proper bubbles!  I was very impressed.

After playing with bubbles for about 45 minutes, we went on a wagon ride, during which it started to snow.  Gross.  I feel like my whole fall was wasted with being so sick with my colitis flare up, and then Noah breaking his leg and not being allowed to run around.  Then when his leg was better, we got sick again.  And then we got better.  So now we can go outside to play.  You know, now that its 3 degrees outside.

Continuing with the randomness:

Noah is not a big fan of vegetables.  Last night at dinner he put a piece of broccoli in his mouth, said, "Gross," and pulled it back out and put it back on his plate.  I tried suggesting he eat carrots instead.  I had cut his round carrot pieces in half, so they were semi circles.  I put one in his mouth, and he was not thrilled.  I said, "Yummy!  Look, Mommy is eating carrots, too!"  My carrots were not cut up, so they were circular.

After Noah saw me eat the carrot in the shape of a circle, he said "Orange circle," pointing to the carrots on my plate.  And after that he ate tons of carrots, as long as they were in the shape of a circle.  It's not as if he can't say "carrot," but every time he wanted another one from my plate, he pointed to them and said, "Circle."

I am impressed that he knows several shapes in many different contexts without being prompted or reminded.  He is 19 months old and knows all his colours and some of his shapes.  He even can identify colours properly when they're not in the deep bold hues.  The difference between dark purple and pastel purple is pretty huge, but the other day I was wearing a pastel purple shirt (and Noah usually plays with dark purple blocks or crayons, so that's what he learned purple was) and I said "Noah, what colour is my shirt?"  He gazed at it for about 3 seconds, then looked at me and said "Purple?"

Again, I was impressed.

Ok, enough bragging.

Time Change is a Pain

Seriously, I am so on board with the whole "move the time by half an hour and then keep it there" idea.  Changing the time by a whole hour twice a year is brutal for small children everywhere.

I wasn't too stressed about the time changing.  I mean, Noah is 19 months old, and this would be our fourth time change experience, and our second "fall back" time change.  Yes, the fall back time change has the potential to really suck, because it means their normal wake up time becomes a whole hour earlier than normal.  But I had Noah on a pretty late schedule to begin with.  Late to bed, late to wake up.  So I wasn't too worried about him waking up too too early.

However, shortly before the time change he started sleeping straight through the night and waking up around 7:30, instead of sometime after 8.  Ok, not a big deal.  With the time change that would mean he'd get up around 6:30.  He has never been a kid who always woke up at the same time every morning.  He might do that for a few days and then something would change, so his normal wake up time was always fluid.  I planned that I'd put him to bed at his normal time with the time change (around 8:30pm, which would be 9:30pm on the old clock), and within no time at all he would be on the new schedule.  No worries.

Well, isn't this always the way it goes?  If you stress about something, it turns out to be nothing.  And if you think something will be simple, nothing goes right, or the way you thought it would go.

Noah is now going to bed at about 8:45pm, and waking up at 6am.  WHAT?  I'm not getting how this makes any sense, even when I take into account the time change.

So he's getting just a little over 9 hours of sleep at night, and still just a normal 1 hour nap.

I'm a little frustrated, but I'm not going to stress out.  I'm confident it will work itself out.

Actually, maybe I should stress out, considering what I previously stated about "the way it always goes."

I leave you with a picture of my adorable, messy child, who just doesn't seem to need the same kind of sleep as everybody else:

They're Not Just for Water!

Since we got sick last week we have been staying in most days.  I admit, after a brutal year of constantly getting sick, and then the niceness of only getting sick once or twice over the summer, I am now paranoid of taking Noah to play with groups of children in an uncontrolled setting - I dread another winter like we had last year!

I am always on the lookout for fun new activities to do with Noah, but even more so when we're not going out as often.  So here is how we spent a good hour this past week:

This is Noah's water table, which I brought inside and washed up in the tub.  Every time Noah saw it in the house, he kept saying "Water!!  Water??  Please?"  That was not in my plan.

I went to Bulk Barn to buy popcorn kernels.  This is about $10 worth of kernels (I spent $20 total on two different colours of kernels).  Unfortunately, I didn't realize until afterward that I could have gone to one of the many agricultural/feed supply stores around here and bought a 50lb bag of corn feed for about $9.  That would be a much more cost efficient way of doing this!

Along with our bare hands, we also used kitchen spoons and different sizes of measuring cups to play in the corn.  Noah was very careful.  Every time a kernel ended up on the floor we would say "Oh no!"  He would pick it up and say "Got it!" and put it back in the table.  "There!"

After about an hour Noah got a little more rowdy.  After he accidentally-on-purpose poured a scoop of kernels into my lap, we packed the corn away.  An hour of fun was totally worth the money and effort, and we will definitely be repeating this activity many times throughout the winter (using the same corn, of course)!

The empty water table is still sitting in our living room, and Noah keeps walking up to it and saying "Corn!  Corn!!"  instead of  "Water!!"

Halloween 2011

I am not a fan of Halloween.  This seems opposite to every other blog I follow, but I just don't like it.  I just hate the ghosts and goblins and witches and skulls and everything 'scary' about it.  It's too 'dark' for my tastes.

Last year our nephew Josiah was being baptized out of town on Halloween day, and we didn't get home until like 8pm, so Halloween was a non-issue for us.  Noah didn't have a costume, and I didn't care.

This year Noah didn't have a costume again, and again, I didn't care.  I didn't want to go out and spend money on one for him (since I don't even like Halloween in the first place), and no one was donating anything to us.  Plus, I think it is awkward to take young toddlers trick or treating.  I mean, they are super cute in their costumes, and if they say trick or treat themselves and hold out their bags for candy, that is also adorable.  And I have nothing against you if you choose to do it.  I would just feel so awkward taking my 19 month old from door to door asking for candy.  I mean, I won't allow him to eat all that junk at this young age.  So it would just be collecting candy for Justin and I.  And I'm not comfortable with using my kid to score free candy.  A personal hang up.

Basically, I wouldn't even have a Halloween post at all, except that Noah was the cutest little candy-hander-outer I've ever seen!!  He was so proud of himself and his little job.  He sat on the stairs in front of the door, holding the big bowl of candy:

He kept saying “Candy!  Treats!  Prizes!  Kids!  Mama, look!  Prizes!!”  

He absolutely loved handing out candy.  At the beginning he was a little over generous, wanting to hand out multiple pieces to each kid, but then he calmed it down and just handed out two pieces to the pretty little girls (lol).  Everyone else got one piece.

"Here you go, buddy."

I was surprised that the terrifying costumes, like the one he's handing candy to in these two pictures, didn’t even freak him out.  I seriously despise scary costumes.  I would like to put up a sign that this house doesn’t hand out candy to scary costumes.

So, that was our Halloween excitement.  Yes, all of the dressed up toddlers looked far spiffier than Noah (I don't even like that onesie, I don't know why I put it on him that day).  But he was such a little grown up handing out candy.  I just want to squish him!