The Myth of the Magic Autonomous Age

Ever wonder when your child will be Old Enough or Mature Enough or Ready Enough to do something (anything?) - the answer is...over at NPN ;-)

Yes, that's a real knife. And yes, he's 2.5 And no, it's not his first time.

Did you know you could follow me on Instagram? Neither did I, until recently. I actually thought it was just my favorite way of dealing with the wonky light that happens with the phone pictures...but HERE I AM...followable. (I'm emmieb78 if you'd rather just do a search.)

Roller Skate Skinny

Over at the Natural Parents Network today.

Skinny kid...skinny kid...what are they feeding you?

Skinny kid...skinny kid...it's not your FAAAUUUUULLLLTTTTTT

;-)

{this moment}

From Soulemama.com:

{this moment} - A Friday ritual. A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember.

If you're inspired to do the same, leave a link to your 'moment' in the comments for all to find and see.

The Old Girl is Giving You Everything She's Got...

In May, we inherited a piano that has been in my stepfather's family since it was made in 1901 (1911?)

Baz was an instant fan:

 He did not care that it was out of tune.

 He played it and played it. Well, "played" it.

I finally managed to call a cleaner/repair/tuner man and he spent 3 hours on Tuesday cleaning, repairing, and tuning.

 Movement before. I wish I had gotten more pictures of the amount of dust inside (at least 50 years in some places) but I was trying not to hover and also to keep the curious toddler out of their hair.

Movement after: note the red bits on the hammers? (The tops aren't dusty, those are felt.) We are all breathing easier knowing where we stand with this particular heirloom.

He "tuned her to where she's at" - which is "about nine cents flat." (That thing up there being clamped is a sharp/flat key that need gluing. The handle thing is a tuning tool - he's using the ear of the computer to tune; it was an impressive piece of software.

I am not possessing of a trained ear, but even I can tell it sounds better. Heck, it sounded better after it had been seen to be a shop-vac. Husband says it's lost some of its Honky-Tonk, but still "has a little Honk" and is now "Good for Blues and Gospel." SO....I'm off to find a Johnny Cash songbook. And Bill Withers. And Nina Simone.

Unrelated to the piano, the two best Blues Dances of my LIFE were to these two songs:

and (this is an awesome video, btw. Totally worth watching.)

Re-doing the mantle...again

My mantle has gotten more over-hauls than I can count. I wish I could paint it, but that's out of the question for now, maybe in the spring I'll revisit painting the room...

Anyway, I saw a cute tutorial on Pinterest (of course) for these crazy rosette things. They were using them as party decor, but I thought they'd be a fun project and then they could go over the mantel.

So I got my sidekick and some paper and paint and went to town:

 Real Kipper wouldn't sit still and observe, so fake Kipper stood in. 

 Our art dries.

 I didn't take pictures of the process - you  can find the tutorial here. 

(For those who like to know these things, the painting is by Emily Seeman and this picture does not do it justice. Stupid brown wall.)

I may spread them out, or we may make more...I have mantel-decor ADD, obviously ;)

Baz loves that his art wound up over the mantel, and he can point to the ones he painted and the ones I painted -- part of the awesomeness of the Reggio approach is that you get to see your art transform -- it's not always as literal as this, but when you're part of the under-3 set, literal is sometimes the absolute best way to go.

We're getting down to the wire with baby prep - I'm working my way through a list that includes fun things like lanolizing wool and buying lunch boxes (preschool starts soon!) 

This was last night - 37 weeks. Full term, baby!

Making Popsicles...

That picture illustrates some basic problems when you've got a task *almost* set up for an over-zealous 2.5 year old (today!):

1) The cuisinart container, though perfect for pureeing in, is not so good for pouring.

2) Baz's pouring coordination is right on par with a 2.5 year old: messy.

3) You can never have too many kitchen towels. You can go through enough to justify doing a load of them in the space of twenty minutes, though.

So I cleaned that up and we started over:

You don't have an immersion blender? What's are you waiting for?

2.5 year olds are almost all motion blur, even in the best lighting conditions. Also, it took a lot of persuading for him to use his fingers. And then he needed to wash all the juice off his hands. He's the most fastidious 2.5 year old I've ever met.

These kind are awesome because of the straw.

"Recipe": watermelon puree, frozen blueberries, raspberries, and peaches. No measuring. 

We'll see how they turn out!

PS - I have a feeling these will be a welcome post-cycling-commute snack for a certain Daddy 'round these parts...

Super Undies: A Review

***The product in question was provided by the company for the purposes of review. The opinions are purely those of mine and my family.***

(Adding pictures to the bath/bed routine also added a dimension of chaos. 

This is our best picture of the undies.)

About a month or so ago, I heard through the blogger grapevine that Super Undies was looking for testers. Since we are THROUGH with diapers (I'm more through than Baz, but that's a whole other thing) I contacted them. 

Long story short: we ended up with a pair of Nightime Undies for testing. They arrived in the mail and I could tell from the bulk that they meant business. And let me tell you, folks, this kid's bladder has always been remarkable in its production. His kidneys work just fine, thankyouverymuch.

I ran them through a pre-wash (we wash everything before we wear it) and immediately realized they were going to take twice as long to dry as our previous nighttime solution (in diapers: he was wearing a fitted with a doubler and a wool cover. Lately, he's been in night time disposable pull ups.)

So the NEXT night, we put them to the test.

Here's what we thought:

*Baz enjoys them - he's not generally a fan of disposables for non-pooping purposes, and he liked being able to pull them on by himself. 

*They're bulky without being gigantic - so they fit under his regular pajamas

*The bulk means they take forever to dry, and due to our lack of a recent cloth diaper routine, I found myself wishing we had more than one pair so that I didn't have to wash every day/supplement with pull ups. (At roughly $30/pair, though, they're certainly an investment. The real test will be how they hold up for Rerun when he's at this stage in 2-3 years.)

*Some nights he wet right through them. But, considering he's still not waking at night to potty, and he's leaked through every night diaper "solution" out there - I'm not remotely surprised, nor do I blame the Super Undies. Most nights, he did not wet through them. (He's also been sick, so the most recent wet-through could be a fluke completely related to all the fluids we've been pushing.)

*They're cute without being babyish. Let me just say that when your kid decides to be a Big Kid and not a Baby anymore - everything needs to reflect that or you'll get a lot of push-back in the form of: "Don't like dat! Dat's for baby!" The simple color blocking is appealing. (Not that we'd turn down a digger or race car pattern - he is still a boy, after all.)

*If we were at the beginning of our Potty Training endeavor, I would also pick up some of the pull-on undies for long car rides and days when we're just out running errands all day. We're a cloth diaper family and the cloth trainer options are few and far between.

All in all, a strong thumbs up from everyone. 

Go check them out! 

(Their website has helpful videos and much more information than I gave here - but I only wanted to talk about our experience, obviously.)

See? They fit under plain-ol' firetruck jammies.