Transplanting Iris

I have two flower beds full of iris--no idea what colors/kinds because we bought our home after all the blooms had died this summer. I also have a couple empty (except weeds, they don't count) flower beds around my house. So, I figured I should spread the iris around, and since they multiply on their own this needs to be done every few years anyway.

So we got out the gardening tools and got to work. I started with clearing the weeds from an empty section of flower bed. Then I dug up and separated about a square foot of iris. That one square foot yielded about twenty iris bulbs. I was not expecting that many. I now realize that I have my work cut out for me with spreading out my iris, and I'm trying to think of other places I can put it. Also, should anyone in the area want iris of unknown color, let me know--I will happily share!

Throughout the process, Emmett was my "helper." (We tackled this while Charlie was at school.) He really liked the hand held rake and trowel. He didn't really do what I asked most of the time, but he didn't really get in the way either, so I'm considering this a success.

The one the he did do well was planting the bulbs. The holes were dug, and I told him to put the bulbs in with the roots down and cover them with dirt. It was fun seeing him focus on this new task and his excitement when it was done. (I gave up after the first twenty bulbs; it was getting hot, and I'm lazy.)

Assuming we didn't kill them all when we moved them, it will be fun anticipating their blooms in the spring.

I'm planning on starting a vegetable garden next year, and this was a good start for us in getting in the habit of gardening. We'll see how we keep it up.

When Mom Feels Sick . . .

I don't know how it works at your house, but at my house when mom feels sick the rules kind of go out the window. Not totally. It's not like I'll let my kids get away with murder, but a slight maiming? Yeah, I'm not going to stop that.

This week I had this weird 24-hour bug. It crept up on me one night before bed when I started feeling achy with some chills. The next day I felt pretty awful. After downing some meds, I managed to get myself to work where I spent the next five hours debating whether or not I should go home. When I got home, I crashed. I got some lunch in my belly, took more meds, then laid on the couch watching TV.

We did that most of the day. Hence the following photos:

When mom feels sick, we eat lots of snacks in front of the TV.
(We had Fruit Loops and Goldfish before the applesauce.)

When mom feels sick, we find potatoes in the kitchen,
bring them into the front room, and take a bite.

When mom feels sick, we peel labels
off canned goods and rearrange the pantry.

The potato thing was pretty hilarious. Emmett just plopped down next to me on the couch with a potato like it was an everyday occurrence and took a bite. He wasn't too impressed with it, so he took it back to the kitchen and came back with a different potato. He just held it. Watched TV and held a potato. Weird kid. And now I have a random potato hidden in my sack of potatoes with little tiny teeth marks.

I don't have regrets. I'll deal with the tooth potato when I find it. And one day when I feel like opening the naked can, I will have an adventure. Parenting and being sick is the worst, and I think I did a pretty good job supervising despite it (I even have photographic proof of said supervision). But then I'm not one of those moms who feels guilty for the occasional super lazy day. Balance. Some days are super fun. Some days are super lazy. Most days are in the middle. :)

Emmett's First Haircut

For those of you who may not know, getting myself ready for my boys to have their first haircut has been . . . for lack of a better way to say it . . . an emotional experience for me. And yes—the first haircut is all about me.

It begins with my mother and father making comments about how my kid looks like a girl. I find this extremely irritating. And the more they say it, the less I am inclined to leave my child alone with them, because I start to worry that one day, I'll come back to pick my kid up and all his beautiful baby hair will be gone. Tears. And then I will hate my parents. Really. Forgiveness would be a far off hope. And I don't want to hate my parents.

Then after I've been getting this treatment for a while my husband (who has probably been thinking the same thing for a while if not as long as my parents, but who knows me and is patient with me) starts agreeing with them. For a few more months—ok maybe SEVERAL months—I will stay strong in thinking that no, he doesn't need a haircut. But eventually I give out, and about a month or more after I've silently started agreeing with them all, the haircut finally happens.

So, after a very long time of getting myself ready for it, Emmett finally got his first haircut.

Before:

See the beautiful, soft waves? And this picture doesn't' show it, but in some of the longer waves you could still see the dark tips from when he was a newborn with dark brown hair. Beautiful.

It's also lots of fun to do stuff like this, too:

Good times. But not long after this moment, the crying started. If you're an avid reader of this sporadic blog, you may recall that Charlie's first haircut did not go so well. Emmett's went a lot better. but there was still a lot of this:

See the big tear? What a sad adorable boy. But don't worry. It got better:

Snacks. The ultimate distraction. As long as I kept giving him these, he did great. So, a big shout out to my brother-in-law for leaving a giant bag of Honeycomb in the pantry when he moved out. Oh wait. Do you want those? Well, then hurry over to get what's left (hopefully you're reading this because if not, I will not remember to tell you—sorry).

We are very fortunate that my mom has a friend who cuts hair. My mom and her friend swap their skills: my mom will do sewing projects for her, and then she will do my mom's hair. For the last sewing project, my mom and BOTH my boys got haircuts. So instead of being butchered by me, Emmett's hair came out looking great! Charlie, who is used to my butchering haircuts, also looks wonderful.

I certainly have attractive kids! But then that's no surprise.          ;)

Training Underpants

I am preparing to really potty train Charlie. I say "really" because while I've been encouraging Charlie to various degrees over the last year or so to use the toilet, we haven't really done anything about it. And I'm tired of buying diapers for two children. And I'm tired of wiping sh!t off two bums (well three if you include mine, but it's not like I want anyone else doing that for me)--granted, the sh!t wiping will continue into the potting training for a bit, but once it all gets started there is hope in sight!

Four or five months ago, we had a "potty training day," and yes it only lasted one day. I did the whole give-the-kid-as-much-to-drink-as-they'll-take thing, and in doing that, everyone I talked to said you're then supposed to put the kid on the toilet every 10 minutes. That seemed excessive to me. I was wrong. I was going for every 15, but I checked the time with each accident and it was really close to every 10.

To make it all worse, all three of Charlie's accidents happened while I was attempting to nurse Emmett. I learned that de-latching a suckling infant, putting them in a safe place while they scream at you for de-latching them, covering yourself up in an attempt at modesty in front of your toddler, and running to said toddler's aid to prevent them from peeing all over the place just takes too long. This potty training day made me immediately regret not trying to potty train Charlie before Emmett was born.

Honestly, I'm not convinced that if I had tried to potty train Charlie before Emmett's birth that it would have been successful. But I wish I would have at least tried.

Also, holy cow my kid can pee a lot! I learned that I do not have enough spare towels to handle the massive quantities of pee that can leak from my kid's body every 10 minutes.

So, now that I've stopped nursing Emmett, I am ready to potty train Charlie in force.

And in order to save my few towels from repeated urine soakings, I have made Charlie some extra-absorbent training underpants. In my mind, these are the cloth diaper take on pull-ups--which I am not willing to pay for.

I got the idea off Pinterest, and you can see the original blog tutorial here. I followed that tutorial with only one deviation: I lengthened both my flannel and PUL layers so both went from waistband to waistband.

Before I got started, I washed the flannel, PUL, and Gerber training pants. This ended up being pretty important because my flannel actual shrank quite a bit even though I followed the washing instructions carefully. Then I began the project by tracing the area of the training pants that I wanted to be reinforced. I used a marker and wax paper.

Then I cut four layers of flannel for every one layer of PUL. I pinned the flannel to the inside and sewed using a zig-zag stitch.

I pinned the PUL to the outside and sewed using a zig-zag stitch.

And done! It's really quite easy, and I think any beginner sewer could make these successfully. I find it to be a bit time consuming, though. My first one took me about two hours--I am a perfectionist so I go slow anyway, but I am getting quicker.

My plan is to make a total of six of these for Charlie, and so far four are complete.

I was able to get all the fabric at a discount: I got the flannel on sale for 60% off and I used a 50% off coupon for the PUL--which is a good thing since it's $15 per yard! Including the cost of the Gerber training pants I used, I made these underpants for about $4 each. I'm not going to any lengths to be exact because I will have a lot of both fabric left over, but I'm confident that $4 each is a good approximation. (The blogger from the tutorial I mentioned above sells reinforced PUL training pants on her Etsy shop for $35 for a set of three.)

Charlie has already had some accidents in these. The first accident was lots of pee. Lots. The underpants were thoroughly soaked. BUT . . . no puddle on the floor. Huzzah! AND . . . only a little leaked through to his shorts. Huzzah again!

I'm excited. :)

With these in hand, I'm more optimistic about potty training. I feel like I'll have a lot less mess to clean up when Charlie does have accidents. And maybe with less mess to clean up, I'll be able to be more patient with him throughout the whole process. After all, I'd like potty training to be as pleasant an experience as possible for everyone.

Homemade Baby Food Revisited

In May 2011, I posted about making homemade baby food. I did it consistently with Charlie, and I've started it up again with Emmett. My main resource was, and is, Cooking Light First Foods (CLFF). I love it!

As I've started making food for Emmett, I decided to post some things I've learned. I still have not tried making all the foods in CLFF, but I have made quite a few. While most have been very easy, here are three I've had some difficulties with:

Green Peas
CLFF says to steam fresh or thawed peas for 6 min. or until very tender then process until smooth. I had a hard time getting mine smooth--and Charlie did not like the consistency.
I'd suggest steaming them longer, 8-10 min.

Plums
CLFF says to peel the plums. I dislike using potato peelers, so I looked online and discovered that plums can be easily peeled if they are blanched for 30 seconds. So I gave it a try, and 3 out of 14 of my plums had their peels easily rub off--it was fantastic. The others . . . not so much; I ended up using my potato peeler anyway. I think the 3 that worked were the most ripe. However, even though they peeled easy, halving and pitting them was a giant mess after they were blanched.
In the future, I will get the most ripe/over-ripe plums I can find, and halve and pit them prior to blanching. Then proceed with steaming and processing.

Dried Prunes
CLFF says to strain the mixture through a sieve after boiling and processing the dried prunes. This was time consuming! And frustrating!
I discovered that adding more of the cooking liquid to the mixture before straining made it a lot easier--go for thinner rather than thicker. But I also question how important it is to discard the solids. Would it be bad for the baby if I left them in? I don't know.

Mother of Two

Emmett is five months old, and I'm finding that it's hard to remember what life was like with only one child. In a lot of ways, going from one kid to two wasn't nearly as big a deal as going from zero kids to one. After all, I was already in mom mode.

When I was pregnant, I would get Charlie up in the morning and have him tell baby brother (my belly) good morning and give him hugs and kisses. I tried to talk about baby brother often throughout the day to try to get Charlie used to the idea.

I guess it worked. The transition was pretty seamless for Charlie, and it was precious when he visited Emmett and me at the hospital and said, "Hello Doctor Emmett Brown!"

Charlie was so enthusiastic about holding Emmett that he even tried (and almost succeeded) to pull Emmett off my mom's lap!

Charlie's been a good big brother from the start. Some days he was really interested in holding Emmett and giving him attention.

Other days he seemed completely unconcerned with Emmett's existence.

(Granted, this picture is Easter morning. Who cares about their baby brother when there are eggs to be found!)

But it sure is fun to watch my two boys play with each other.

Especially as Emmett is getting more and more mobile. They'll both be running around like crazy soon enough!

It also warms my heart when Charlie, unprompted, tells Emmett he loves him, or when Charlie holds Emmett's hand when Emmett is sad. Charlie does genuinely enjoy his baby brother and Emmett seems to like his big brother.

My boys sure are beautiful! I feel very blessed to have the opportunity of being their mom and hope I can live up to the challenge.

Charlie's First Haircut

We finally did it: we cut Charlie’s hair! Despite his having a mullet for the past few months—eww, mullet, gross—I’ve put this task off. Why? Because I loved his beautiful baby hair, and for a long time I couldn’t think about cutting his hair without getting close to crying. Yeah, I don’t want to talk about it.

So here Charlie is before the haircut:

Immediately before I cut Charlie’s hair, I cut Chad’s and let Charlie watch. I had hoped that watching his dad get a haircut would help Charlie see it was ok. Not so much.

I started Charlie’s haircut using scissors to remove the mullet—which is the majority of the hair I saved—and the hair at the top of his head. He did not like it. I think I may have tried to cut too much at once causing the scissors to pull his hair a bit. I’m not sure (I am not a trained beautician), but he did fine for the first snip and freaked out more with each subsequent snip.

We had a brief interlude while Chad introduced the electric clipper to Charlie. Charlie was interested but ill at ease.

Then came the tears. Oh so many tears. Charlie did not like the electric clipper. When he spoke, between sobs, he’d try to point to the clipper and say, “vacuum,” or “big noise.” But for the majority of the haircut, Charlie pressed his face into Chad’s chest while he wept and screamed—which is not a position I’d recommend for giving a kid a haircut, but you’ve got to do what you’ve got to do. I was not going to leave Charlie’s hair half cut; I’d prefer the mullet and that’s saying something.

Anywho, Charlie’s new haircut didn’t turn out awesome, but it’ll do. We’ll end with some side-by-side comparisons:

Unfortunately, you can also see that he was happy before and not so much after.

Homemade Baby Food

Since Charlie's been tolerating his oatmeal and rice cereals well over the past several weeks, I've decided to get him started on veggies and fruits. And in an effort to avoid buying expensive baby foods and to satisfy my control freak tendencies, I've started by making my own baby food with the help of a fantastic book my sister gave me, Cooking Light First Foods.

There are two specific things I really love about this book. First, it shows that you don't have to buy any expensive equipment. When discussing the tools needed to make baby food, the book gives a list of items ranging in price from as little as $2 to as much as $150. And thus far, none of the recipes I've looked at require the expensive baby food makers. Second, it offers lists of food choices beyond what I would have thought to feed my baby. After all, my thinking is just because I don't like a food doesn't mean I shouldn't expose Charlie to it; he may love foods I don't usually eat or enjoy. There are two lists I like to peruse, one that breaks fruits and veggies into color groups and another that groups fruits and veggies by seasons.

So, with my handy-dandy baby food cookbook, I got started by making Charlie some carrots. Now the recipe given is super simple and also kind of obvious—you may be thinking, "she needed a cookbook to figure THAT out!?" But I do find the book helpful. So here's the recipe:

1. Steam 1 pound carrots for 20 minutes or until very tender. 2. Blend, process, or mash until smooth, adding cooking liquid to reach desired consistency.

Since I already had a really awesome blender, I used that, and it worked great. Now obviously a baby isn't going to eat a pound of carrots in one sitting, so I spooned my carrot puree into an ice cube tray and put it in the freezer; when the puree was frozen I took the cubes out of the tray and am storing them in baggies in the freezer. One serving for Charlie is about two cubes.

All in all, the experience of making baby food was a success. I found it to be quick and easy. Plus, now I feel all thrifty and domestic—hooray for esteem boosters!