Prefolds, Wool and OneSize, Oh My!

Wanna know about the diapers we use?  (We still use a few disposable diapers, mainly at night, but I'm sure you don't want to hear about anything quite so boring and yucky as those, right?) 
I have a few (6) small-sized prefold diapers that Aren is filling out quite well.  It will soon be time to bump him up to the bigger sized prefolds I have.  Many of those, though, are too "used" to use after they diapered both Ajay and Alex.  I do have 4-5 decent looking "blue-edge" prefolds I can still use.  Which will, I'm sure, be too big and I'll have to fold them down in the back as well as the front.  In the meantime, I'm enjoying the great fit we're getting with these small prefolds (that I dyed back when I was pregnant with Alex, I do believe).

By the way - if you're interested, I think this is called the newspaper fold.  I'm not sure.  It was something I learned back when diapering Baby Ajay and I forgot the name of it.  There are a lot of different folds to use.  I've even been known to use the "bikini twist" when the babies start to crawl as it allows more room for moving thighs.

While I was still pregnant with Aren I crocheted up a Tickle Turdle Wrap in size "small."  It is still too big so I've been folding the top down in front.  I think it has a great fit over the prefolds.  I'm going to make up another one (or two!) in some wool I've got in my yarn stash.  (Here is a wonderful article about why wool is so wonderful to use as a diaper cover.)

When I'm not using prefolds and wool (he hasn't grown into the medium Proraps, yet), we're using the bumGenius! OneSize diapers.

 I have one Baby Kanga that I love and a few other dipes that I use on him. 

Baby Kanga

I actually need to beef up my diaper stash.  I should be selling my newborn stash soon which will fund a few new mediums, right??  To be honest, I think I might get more of the Baby Kangas - the one I have still looks new even after diapering Alex through potty-training and it fits Aren at around 11 pounds.

Oh, and while we're here, I'll show you where I store the dirties until washtime:

We invested in a big trashcan with a flip-top lid.  Unfortunately, the spring inside doesn't work so I can't use the foot pedal to open it but it still does the job after 6 years of use and 3 babies.  That teal bag has an elastic opening and covered in PUL to keep the diaper bin dry.  It makes it easy to grab the diapers and carry them to the washing machine. 

Any questions?  Please ask - either leave a comment or e-mail me!   

Sleeping Children

There's something just so sweet and innocent about sleeping children.

Horses!!!

Wanna see something completely cute??

Ain't dat baby cute?!?

On the Sunday we were up visiting the family, we had lunch with a long-time friend, Lisa, and her hubby and two boys. Afterwards, we stopped by my grandpa's to check out his farm. My aunt, Theresa, took all of us out to see some mini-horses.

Darrin (in yellow), Rodney, Garrett (in red) and Ajay mingling with the minis.

Alex not quite ready to get in the mix.

Darrin and Ajay (born within a couple of weeks of each other) feeding the horses.

Aunt Theresa helping to ease Alex's fears.

Kyleigh with her mama, Shelly, petting the ponies.

Look at that!! Audrey, around 19 months, bigger than a baby horse!

Lisa cuddling a sleeping Aren in the shade.  (Whoo-whee it was hot that day!)

Aunt Tina had popsicles for everyone when we came inside.

Grandpa with some of his great-grandchildren (the best pic we could get with 5 children ages 6 and under).

After our visit with Grandpa and after Lisa and her crew left, we went down to Aunt Theresa's farm (adjacent to Grandpa's farm) and saw a few more minis and some regular sized horses!  The kids loved spraying one of the horses down with water.  Aunt Theresa says she (the horse) can't get enough.  A few of the other horses didn't mind it, really, but this one horse adores ice cold water from the hose. 

Alex was fine until Buddy, a golden retriever, came along!!  (Was I a mean mommy for snapping this picture before I went to comfort him??)

This horse, only a little okay with being sprayed with water, likes to roll in the dust after getting hosed.

Our bare-back rider

After more horses, more popsicles, of course!!

Girl-time

Continuing from my previous post.... I mentioned that I spent Saturday afternoon/evening with some girlfriends.  Janel had a jewelry party (can't wait for my new bracelet to arrive!) and served some delicious fruity cheesecake type dessert - must have that recipe!  We hung out a bit afterwards then decided to have dinner at Old Chicago.  Aren was a bit fussy while at Janel's but can you believe - he was completely chill the whole 2 hours while we were chatting over dinner!!  He wasn't sleeping, mind you, he was just hanging out in his car seat (which was placed in one of those cool sling type things restaurants have these days - awesome invention).  Occasionally we had to pop his binky in, but he just looked around the room drawing "awwws" from passers-by.  There was even an older gentleman who tickled his feet as he walked by. 
Here are pics of Aren with his aunties (Natalie; Morgan; Erin):

(Notice the change of clothes??  Aren's disposable diaper had a complete blowout all the way up the back.  YUCK!!)

Here is Janel with her nephew, Aaden, and Natalie with her little guy, Cooper.

A weekend visit

A couple of weekends ago I grabbed the boys, my sister, Shelly, and two of her daughters and we all headed up to visit the family.

We were able to squeeze Kyleigh, Ajay and Alex into the backseat while Aren and Audrey rode in the captain's chairs.  Paige was going to come, too, and put the 8th seat to good use but she decided to stay in town to attend her last day of swim lessons and go to a birthday party.  I don't even know how to put the 8th seat in but we would've figured it out if she had decided to go with us. 

We got to our parents on Friday afternoon and it was surprisingly decent - as in not 100+ degrees.  So there was some outdoor action.  Much needed.

Bubbles and Jump Rope!

Aunt Brandi got her baby fix in and all the kids wanted in on the action.  Everyone loves a baby!

On Saturday morning Papa earned the title "Best Papa in the Universe."  He took Ajay fishing. 

You can barely see them out there but in this shot, Dad was helping Ajay cast out.

Friday night two of our aunts came over for a visit (and returned on Saturday night for more visiting!).  I left the boys (Ajay and Alex) with the family on Saturday afternoon while I spent some much needed time with some girlfriends.  On Sunday we went to church and met their new priest who just so happens to be from the same city Biju is from in India.  Amazing, right?  After church we had lunch with a friend and her family, whom we haven't seen in years.  Then we all went over to visit some miniature horses.  (More on all of this w/ pics in the days to come)  We weren't in a rush over the weekend.  Very relaxing. 

Brothers

Juicing + Muffin Preparedness

Have you ever seen the documentary "Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead"?  Biju and I were flipping through our Netflix suggestions the other day and came across this title.  It sorta grabbed our attentions so we watched it.  We were really intrigued by it.  The man started out pretty overweight and had some sort of auto-immune disease.  (I think that what it was - he kept having rashes all over his body.)

Over the course of 60 days the only thing he "ate" was fruit/vegetable juice.  By the end of his 60 days he had lost a crazy amount of weight and he was almost completely off of his Prednesone medication.  Impressive!  Since I was going to be visiting my parents soon I called up my mom to ask if I could borrow the Jack LaLanne juicer.

It does take a lot of fruit/veggies to make a drink.  From the documentary we learned it takes $14 a day to fund your "meals." ($28 a day if you're going organic - which you should - but good golly that's quite the cha-ching!) 

Through our experiments we've discovered one carrot gives you about 1 ounce of juice.  I don't remember how many Red Delicious apples we used - probably 6? - but we got 4 cups of juice.  Two Gala apples gave us 8ounces, 3 Bartlet pears gave us a little over 8oz, I think (I didn't pay close enough attention to know).  Apple and Carrot go well together.  That's what Biju had as snack yesterday afternoon after work. 

Pear was good, too, though a bit gritty (no surprise, a pear is a pear, right??). Too bad Alex spilled half of it. He did like it enough, though, to try to slurp it off of the table. 

Unfortunately, there is a lot of waste.  I thought this brand of juicer was supposed to have considerably less waste but was not the case... 

8 carrots = a bit of juice and a lot of "waste"

And a lot of clean up!

Which leads me to the second part of this post. 

Back at the beginning of July a friend let me raid her garden while they were off on vacation.  We got some nice looking zucchini and crook-neck squash.   We sliced some up and dipped them in an olive oil/canola oil mixture and the sprinkled them with salt and pepper then tossed them onto the grill.   Y.U.M.!  (BTW - the oils really make a difference.  Twice we tried grilling them w/out the oil and they just didn't go over well w/ the picnic-ers!) 

We had picked up a couple of realllly big zucchinis so instead of grilling those I decided to shred them to put into muffins.  I ended up with 8 cups of shredded zucchini to put into the freezer! 

Food processor w/ grated zucchini; Fine mesh sieve over a bowl, using a cup to press out the liquid; a container to store all the juice (about 2 cups). 

The muffin recipe I plan on using also calls for shredded carrot.  Do you remember seeing all that "waste" from juicing the carrot?  I have frozen that (2 cups worth!!) so I can use it when I need it.  I do like that I can use all the juice for one purpose and all the rest for another!  The muffins will go well into Ajay's lunch box when school starts up next week.



Yummy juice to drink, and zucchini/carrot muffins just waiting to be made!