Valentine's Day

Here are the kids' Valentine for this year. They always have an exchange with the other kids at Martha's. Sorry if you feel jipped that you got it virtually. :)

And here is Grace's for her preschool class.

We had a lot of fun making them together!

Lydia at 4 months old

I am 3 weeks late writing this post but better late than never, right? Lydia is growing like a weed and was 12 1/2 pounds and 24 inches long at her 4 month check up. She is in the 50th percentile in height and head circumference and 25th percentile for weight (although you'd never believe it if you saw her thighs and rump!) :) She continues to be such a joy to all of us. The kids absolutely love her and want to help feed her, hold her, button her clothes, and take a bath with her. She is a happy little girl and will smile and giggle when I munch on her cheeks, neck, toes, hands, belly, and legs. She is not spitting up nearly as much and has had rice cereal a couple of times. I don't really push giving it that much. She just started taking a 6 ounce bottle at the sitter's every morning this past week. Besides that bottle I continue to be able to feed her before I leave in the morning, at noon and then again at 3 when I pick the kids up. It's so awesome to be able to do that! She loves her Bumbo, her bouncer, her play mat and continues to enjoy toys. She loves to be chatted with and will skillfully roll from her back to her belly almost immediately when laid on the floor. She is starting to enjoy games like peek-a-boo and pat-a-cake. Oh how we enjoy our sweet Lydi-Lou! :)

Tank

I had to run a few errands in Defiance today with Lydia and Samuel and decided to run through a drive-thru on the way home since it was getting to be lunch time. I got the combo meal that comes with 2 cheeseburgers thinking that I could give Steve the extra sandwich when we got home. I took the bag back to Samuel and unwrapped his sandwich and gave it to him. I left the bag beside him and told him that he could have a few fries too if he ate his sandwich all gone. By the time I got out of Defiance he was polishing his sandwich off. I then stopped paying attention (big mistake) and a few minutes later glanced in the rear view mirror and noticed that Samuel was over halfway done with the second sandwich! Within a couple minutes he had that one finished too. He then reached in and pulled out the fries. He shoveled a few of them in his mouth before finally saying he was full. Seriously?! I don't know where he puts it. Then tonight we went to Pizza Hut to celebrate dad's 60th birthday. I had to cut him off after he ate 3 large pieces of pizza (1 was cut in half in his defense.) On the way home Lydia was screaming so we pulled over at a McDonald's so I could feed her quick. Samuel's response? "I want nuggets!" No we didn't get him any. :)

My latest attempt

I've been tempted to make my own laundry detergent for awhile now. I finally bought the stuff I needed and did it. I have no idea why I waited so long. I needed exactly 3 ingredients to make it and it costs $0.74/2 gallons to make. Why, why, why did I ever wait so long to do this?! I have no idea how much money I've wasted on laundry detergent in the last 10 years and I refuse to sit down and attempt to figure it out because it would just be depressing. Instead of spending 15ish dollars or more every 6-8 weeks I'm spending 74 cents. How awesome is that?! It costs less than 1 cent/load. Here's the blog post I used:

How to Make your own Laundry Soap

I did a lot of research online to find as much information as I could about making my own laundry soap. What I found was that pretty much all the recipes are essentially the same, some people use more or less of each ingredient, and that bath soap does not clean as well as laundry soap. I also learned that this is great for High Efficiency washers because it makes little to no suds (FYI the suds in store bought laundry detergent are for looks only and don't actually have anything to do with cleaning.)

Here's what you need: (It cost $7.59 total for the three ingredients)

• Some kind of bucket to mix all your ingredients in. I used a 2 gallon paint bucket.
• 1/3 bar of Fels Naptha Laundry Soap (you can also use Zote, Octagon, or Ivory--amounts may vary)
• 1/2 cup Borax
• 1/2 cup Arm & Hammer Super Washing Soda (everything but the bucket can be found in the laundry aisle of Walmart)

Baking Soda and Washing Soda are different. See?

Step 1: Cut your bar of Fels Naptha Soap into thirds and finely grate one third of it.

Save the other two thirds because next time you make a batch of laundry soap it will feel like you are doing it for FREE!

Step 2: Put your grated soap in a pot with 6 cups of water and heat on low until the soap melts. Don't let the soap boil. Once all the soap is completely melted add the washing soda and the borax and stir until it is dissolved. Continue stirring until the mixture thickens (almost as thick as honey) Remove from heat.

Step 3: Pour 4 cups of hot tap water into your bucket. Add the soap mixture and stir it up. At this point you could add a few drops of essential oil like lavender or tea tree oil if you wanted your soap to have a fragrance. Add nothing and your clothes will simply smell clean.

Now add one gallon of hot tap water plus 6 more cups. I used my giant 8 cup Pyrex measuring cup but if I had had an old milk carton I would have just used that. As you can see my 2 gallon bucket barely fit it all. You might want to use a 5 gallon bucket to avoid unnecessary sloshing.

Give it another few minutes of stirring and then let it sit overnight.

Step: 4 In the morning your soap might look runny, or like gel, or separated with big clumps of slime on top and water on the bottom. This is all normal depending on the weather and the type of soap you used. At this point you can be done and simply keep your laundry soap in the bucket and just scoop out 1/2 cup per load. Or you can give it another good stir and funnel it into your old well rinsed laundry soap bottle. OR you can be a sucker for cute packaging like me and take it one step further.

Step 5: I wanted to use a Beverage Dispenser with a spigot but my soap came out all clumpy and I knew there was no way it would flow through. So I busted out my immersion blender and smoothed all the clumps layer by layer.

I funneled each layer into my container then went back and blended the next part. Blend, funnel, blend, funnel, blend, funnel...etc.

I found this cute plastic cup at a thrift store and it holds exactly 1/2 cup. Perfect!

An adhesive plastic hook gave me a cute litle laundy soap set-up.

If you have a Downy ball, you can put about 1/2 cup of Distilled White Vinegar in there and it makes a fantastic fabric softener. And no, your clothes do not come out smelling like vinegar. If you don't have a Downy ball just add your 1/2 cup of vinegar to the rinse cycle. I don't like babysitting my washing machine so I have a Downy ball.

Check me out! Cute! Frugal! Tree-hugging!

Grace

Grace mastered tying her shoes this weekend. She's so proud of herself and so are we!

Lydia is 3 months old!

I'll keep trying to get a picture of Lydia smiling. As soon as she sees the camera she gets really serious. :)

It is hard to believe that Lydia is already 3 months old. Where has the time gone? Lydia continues to be a very happy, relaxed and content little girl. She has been spitting up a ton but isn't acting like it's bothering her at all. I would be more concerned about it if she was being fussy but she is always smiling and cooing so I'm hopeful that it's just a phase. She is rolling from her back to her belly, giggling, "talking" and sleeping through the night for the most part. She usually goes to sleep between 7 and 8 and wakes up to eat around 4 and then sleeps until I wake her up at 6:15. I am thrilled to say that she is over her hatred of the car seat! She rarely complains in the van at all. If I hear anything from her it is a coo as she talks to her doll. She continues to like being swaddled to sleep and takes naps in her bouncer seat. She loves her baths and is all smiles while she's in the tub. She gets about a thousand kisses and hugs a day from her brother and sister and enjoys being entertained by them. She is very quick to smile and giggle at them. I'm not sure how long Lydia is right now but she seems to be getting so tall. A lot of her 3 month clothes are getting tight on her little toes. She has had a very smooth transition to the babysitters. I love Martha (our babysitter) because she is extremely organized and has the same child-rearing style that we do. She believes that children thrive on routine (as do we) and she has the same discipline style that we do. She also is very strict that no child is allowed to touch Lydia...it won't be such a big deal when she's older but when she's this little it makes me feel way more comfortable while I'm at school. If she wouldn't have that rule she'd have kids wanting to hold and kiss Lydia the entire day long and that would bug me quite frankly. :) Obviously it's very important to be on the same page as your childcare provider and I feel like we got lucky finding her! Plus she texts so she can give me updates as the day goes on. :) How fast the past 3 months have flown. Here's hoping that time slows down a little!

Back at it

I have been back to work for 2 weeks now. I would love to get to stay home with the kids for 6 months but I'm thankful I can take off more than 6 weeks. The mornings started out a bit rough for all of us because none of us were used to waking up super early. I feel like we have it down pretty well now and the kids are all back to their normal morning routine. Steve and I wake up between 5:30-5:45 so that we can have ourselves ready shortly after 6. Grace has to be up by 6:15 so she can be ready to go and eating breakfast by 6:30. While I get Grace's hair done and make sure she's dressed Steve gets Lydia dressed. At 6:25 I have to be sitting and feeding Lydia so she's done by 6:45. At 6:25 Steve wakes Samuel up and gets him dressed and he's sitting and eating breakfast by 6:35. We are getting coats on, getting Lydia in her car seat, grabbing book bags etc. and out the door by 6:50 so I can be out of the driveway by 6:55. I get to the sitters by 7:10 and am to school by 7:16 (it is so helpful having her 2 blocks from school.) That is how our mornings go and yes, we have it down to the minute. One thing that has made going back to school much easier is that I get to go nurse Lydia over my lunch break. I nurse her right before we leave in the morning so she's usually hungry and takes a bottle around 9-9:30 and then I get there at noon right when she's getting hungry again. I feed her and then get to put her down for her afternoon nap. It's awesome! She then sleeps most of the time until I pick them up at 3 and eats right when we get home. More on Lydia to come in her 3 month post...

I have to laugh when I hear moms (usually with boys) say that they have no clue what happens at school because when they ask them they always get 1 word answers. In my world I hear EVERYTHING that happens at school. Here is a conversation Grace and I had on the way home last week:

Me: How was preschool today Grace?

Grace: Good! We are sitting at different tables now. I sit at the yellow table with Nora, Hannah and Kirsten. Jack sits at the blue table with...(this continues through all of the tables in her class)...We were worried that Jack was going to be sick today but he was just running late. We did centers and Miss Vicki came from the library and read to our class and Mrs. Hotmire's class came down to listen too.

Me: That's nice. What centers did you do?

Grace: Housekeeping, rice table and play-doh. I played with....(she keeps going and going.)

Me: That sounds like fun. What else did you do?

Grace: We had gym and we got to run back and forth first. I was afraid I would trip on my jeans so I rolled them up so they wouldn't go under my shoes. Then we all got in a big circle in the gym and held on to a parachute and had balls in the middle and we all shook and the balls went flying everywhere!

These conversations can last the entire 15 minute trip home and then some. I think she seriously takes me through a step-by-step of the day. I know who says what and if anyone was being kind of naughty (her words, not mine.) Her teacher emailed me last night and it made me laugh out loud because it was "classic Grace." Here it is (side note: Grace had gotten a fairly nasty paper cut at school and it was bleeding bad enough that she needed a band-aid. No worries; Grace told me that she didn't have to go to the office by herself, Olivia went with her. :) Told you she's pretty detailed!):

Sarah, Just checking on Grace and her little finger. She didn't get upset when it started to bleed but she got pretty pale. After I got it cleaned and got a band aid, she sat on my lap for a bit and then seemed fine. She told me she would tell you all about it when you came to the sitters to feed Lydia. :-) She was so sweet today, she told me she was grumpy last night and I told her I couldn't imagine her being grumpy. She said, "yes and I was a little sassy this morning and my mom told me I better not be sassy at school!" She looked at me with those beautiful eyes and just smiled. Just so you know, I am so in love with her I can't stand it. She is the best! I hope you all have a nice weekend and thank you for blessing me with your daughter. Love, LuAnn

We love her teacher! :)

Samuel is transitioning to being back at Martha's very well too. He had a few tears a couple of days but typically runs off saying "Is Jacob here?" He has 2 other little boys there that are very close in age to him and he plays until exhaustion sets in. Martha always calls him her little piggy because he eats more than any other kid there, including the 4 and 5 year old kids! She's always amazed because not only does he eat more, he eats it faster than any other kid. If you know Samuel at all, this will not shock you. It makes me nervous because I honestly don't think he chews half the time. He also takes a nap right after lunch. Martha has 3 pack n plays set up in a bedroom in the basement. They are almost always asleep by the time I get there at noon but once in a while they will be messing around chatting with each other (not unexpected from two 2-year old kids and an 18 month old.) If they carry on for awhile Martha will go to the bathroom upstairs and open the laundry shoot which goes directly to the bedroom where they are and say "boys, it's time to quiet down and take your nap." It's hilarious because you can hear all of them immediately hit the deck and get totally silent. We laugh and call it "the voice of God" because the boys have no clue how she can know what they're doing down there. :) Samuel is also a constant talker. He is still not real plain but is getting better. He's obsessed with Steve's helicopter he got for Christmas and is always wanting to "pay with helicokter." That one always makes us laugh. :)

Overall I'd say it's been a pretty smooth transition from being at home to being back at work. It helps that I really enjoy my job and co-workers and that I get to feed Lydia at noon. More on Lydia to come...