Night Terrors

It's between 12 and 3 am. You're in full fledged dream mode or in so deep your mind is encased in oblivion. Suddenly, your body is jerked awake by the soul-piercing screams from one of your kids. You rush to console, ease, comfort but are met with thrashing limbs and still more screaming. Speaking worsens, touching heightens. Nothing you do is helping.

Your child is having a night terror.

We discovered these when Alex was about 10 months old. They're scary and can be harmful when your on the recieving end of one of these nocturnal disorders. From what I gather, the child isn't daytime affected, nor has a poor relationship with sleep because of them. Alex's night terrors were intense bouts of thrashing, screaming and fighting. All on his side.

The scariest part is that the child can look awake; eyes open, talking, even eating all in the throws of the worst tantrum you could imagine. The hardest part was when he screamed for me, his cries sounding desperate and afraid, only to then punch or head butt me when I tried to soothe him. He didn't know who I was. His eyes were open but he was still asleep.

I ended up with split lips, bites and bruises from his full body assault. Fear that I was doing something wrong as a mother. Fear that they'd never end. They lasted over a year and occoured anywhere from 2 to 5 times a week, each lasting as long as 20-40 minutes. Eventually, they subsided and stopped all together. But they can last a lifetime.

Two nights ago, Max woke up in a night terror daze. He had another last night. There is no real explaination for why night terrors occour, though there are a lot of speculations and theories. They are heriditary,which is interesting since Rob had them and now only our boys have experienced them. The other part that is hard to determine is what actually happens through one since our boys aren't old enough to tell us what they think or feel. They go about their days, after getting back to sleep, without any recollection of having it.

After one occours, Max has been taking residence up in our bed. Which is how we finally were able to get Alex's to stop at two and a half. We brought him back to co-sleep full time. Having the close human contact right when it's needed reduced the strength and duration and after a few weeks stopped them all together. Then we slowly moved him out of our bed and back into his without a bout since.

So, a new chapter has started in our lives though it's one we've read before. Bedtime will have us on edge, wondering if tonight will be night terror filled again. We'll just take each as it comes and hope to get through them painlessly and quickly. With added hope that Max will grow out of them, too.

Happy Happy Birthday Baby

For all my issues with Christmas, the one back in 2008 gave me the best present ever. A baby. Not just any baby either, no I got a happy, healthy boy baby. After a string of girls that has my brain exploding in glittery princessery every other day, I relish cowboys, trucks and dinosaurs (sometimes all at the same time!).  You can read a bit about it here it was also the same time Alex lost those first teeth I talked about in the tooth fairy pillow post. Wow, has it really been a year?

 2009's gift was right up there though when that wee bairn turned one. The poor lad is going to have it tough getting people to separate his birthday with a more famous persons alleged birth but if that's all he has to contend with in life, I'll be happy for his strife.

Our boy Maximilian Robert is now a walking fool. Has 6 extremely sharp chompers which he likes to remind you of on those delicate pieces of flesh left in his reach. Throughly enjoys blowing raspberries. Loves to watch Signing Time. Tries his darndest to keep up with the big kids and thinks it's funny to splash you in the tub. I can already tell he's a smart one. All in all he's a delightful baby, rarely cries even now, when he's battling a bit of a sinus/chest cold. He's got a great smile and is the best present ever. I hope all of you that decide to breed get one just like him.

Happy Birthday, my boy.

Cloth Diaper Experiment

I posted before about how I've gone back and forth about cloth diapering and how we've reintroduced CD's back into the household. I was basically just trying to let everyone know that it's not an all or nothing thing.

To elaborate on that post I've decided to do a thirty day experiment. I JUST opened a new small package of diapers for both Emmy and Max. Both packs cost approx. $6 each though Max's are Pampers and Emmy's are Target brand, I'm not sure if that matters but if it seems one is using more or having more issues, we might do a second experiment in more controlled conditions. I'm not a scientist, I'm just playing one on this blog.

We already have cloth diapers on hand but I'll try and break out the cost of what someone would have spent on the same set up. I use prefold diapers, snappi closures and a variety of waterproof covers. I bought everything except the Snappi's from www.cottonbabies.com. I got the Snappi's through Ebay and I think it was like 3 for $7 or $8. I did get some with the beginner pack from Cotton Babies too though. I just put a new order in today but that was for fun stuff and the very much needed diaper wet bag that'll hang on the door to the laundry room. I needed one before anyway.

I'm approximating the diaper covers since I have some fancy ones and some very plain, less expensive ones. They all seem to work exactly the same so far, though i personally prefer the ones with extra gussets around the thighs. Some were $8 and some were as much as $13 so I'll put $11 as the middle range and we'll leave it at that.

Premium sized unbleached Indian prefolds  $2.00 ea. x  22  = $44
Snappi diaper closures $3.95 ea. x 8 = $31.60
Waterproof Diaper Covers $11 ea. x 11 = $121

Remember, I'm diapering a 9 month old and a 2 year old with these figures. If it sounds scary and you have one kid; divide. I do not buy special detergents, washers, sprays etc. I make my own laundry soap which I'll post about later. I also stay away from the all-in-ones which can run up to $25 a piece, four changes a day and you're looking at a richer investment.

So basically, for one month I've spent $12 on disposable diapers and $196.60. What I usually spend in a month on disposables? About $72 on 4 cases of diapers (rounding to $18 a case, 2 cases per mo. per child using coupons, sales or store brands). Plus the odd $10-12 pack of pull ups since Emmy is trying hard to train, and $6 for 2 bags of disposable doublers to get me through nights.

First month disposable/cloth hybrid = $208.60
One month disposables = $90

Remember this is for TWO children. I'll be posting more about wipes, cleaning costs, storage and useage, links for folding and more.

So breakdown: We're taking a thirty day challenge to introduce cloth diapers more than half time and see if we can get buy using only ONE SMALL package of disposables. If this works I should be able to reduce our diaper use the following month by at least $75 a month, reclaiming our investment price within three months of use.

Stay tuned and sign up to follow our Diaper Experiment.

Butternut Squash baby food at home

It's really a lot easier than it seems to make your own baby food at home. Here I've made some yummy butternut squash for little Max, who will be starting solids in a few weeks!

2 medium sized fresh butternut squash (I picked mine up at the local farmer's market, while not certified organic, this squash was grown locally without pesticides or herbicides and in organic soil)

I like to bake mine cut in half with the seeds scooped out (I also washed and dried the seeds to grow my own squash!) But you could also chop it up and steam it. It helps to cook it to soften it up for the blending process.

After the squash is lightly cooked and cooled scoop out the meat and discarded the skin. When baby is better able to chew you could opt to leave the skin on and not blend it as much. I add this to the food processor.

I use my Hamilton Beach food processor for this job. I picked it up on clearance at Target for about $20, originally I think it was $60 though). You could also use a high powered blender in small batches or a hand blender. Start to puree the squash and slowly add water in small batches to get the desired consistency.

There you go, you have baby Butternut Squash puree! To make small frozen portions I like to use a mini muffin pan and a cookie scoop. This gives me estimated single portions and is easy to freeze up to 24 pucks at a time. 2 medium squash yields approx 24 pucks.

If you end up with extra pucks save them for later! Add them to soups, stews, sauces, casseroles or other baby food combinations like turkey, chicken, potatoes or a vegetable medly.

Here are the pucks next to a bag of homemade chocolate chip waffles, recipe coming soon!!!

Getting Green

My middle child, Cordi, has terrible eczema issues. Lately, she's broken out all over and I have had to rethink my routine of washing everyone else with regular soaps and her with special ones. I tend to do well when she has a break out but after it gets better I get more lax regarding her and avoiding soaps. I have finally decided to just get rid of everything that is harmful to her (and probably to us too) and that way even if I do fall off the wagon it won't matter because there will be nothing in the house that will bother her.

So, based on this and my renewed interest in saving money and maintaining a more natural state for my wee ones to thrive in, I'll be blogging about our trip to getting ourselves green.

I have a whole bunch of posts lined up over the next few weeks focusing on recycling, natural cleaners, sustainability, organic gardening, making baby food and more. Lots of tutorials and reviews, so sit back and bookmark us 'cause I'll make it easy to be green. If you want to green along side us I'd love to hear any feedback or ideas you may have!

Green Green Beans

I picked up some locally grown green beans for .99 a lb. While these aren't certified organic they are grown without pesticides or herbicides and in Organic soils. It helps to get friendly with your neighborhood farmers market as these details sometimes aren't advertised. I ended up with about 4lbs of beans. I followed these directions for freezing green beans


http://www.ehow.com/how_2326482_freeze-fresh-green-beans.html

I did about half the beans to start and froze them whole in 1qt freezer bags after snapping off the ends. This will be either additions to soups or sides for meals for all of us. The other half I blanched and pureed up for baby food for my munchkin. Even if I over do the quantity on these (I'm sure I'll end up with A LOT of puree!) I can add them to other pureed foods like chicken and potatoes or even pasta sauces and casseroles.


After blanching I added these to my food processor and pureed the heck out of them. Green Beans are stringier and coarser than the squash we blended up in the other post. I still added water in small increments to the beans as they pureed but blended them for about double the time. They are still more coarse but will be palatable for my wee one.

I used a mini muffin pan and a cookie scooper to dole out approximate portions. I stuck this in the freezer for about half an hour then added them to a plastic zippy freezer bag that I labeled with the contents and dated.

Here are the green bean pucks

It helps if you have small helpers snapping the ends off the beans. After they sifted through the discards for bean seeds which we'll try and sprout to grow our own.

The Many Adventures of Emmy and Poo

Little, sweet, adorable, curly-headed Amelia (Emmy for short). Ah, what a lovely little baby girl. Quickly approaching the two year mark in May. My Emmy was a model baby. Slept alone, all night with nothing special needed from about 6 months old. Even tempered, easy to get along with, perfectly happy. Until recently.

What has happened to my little cuddly munchkin?? She's turning into a very demanding, opinionated, obsessive and bossy toddler. And she's turning two. I love her to pieces. I love that her personality is coming to the surface and she's becoming a "real" girl. But a mom can only take so much.

Lets start way back at the begining on...Monday. 5 short little week days streched to feel like months of work. Emmy has added some wonderful words to her vocabulary recently. Such as, "pa-hee" (potty), "uck" (yuck), "die-he"(diapie), "bum", "pee-hee" (pee-pee), "y" (wipe) and "NO!". As excited as I was hearing them for the first time, she has now entered them into a different context that is making my life somewhat miserable, at least so much as keeping a diaper on her.

At the begining of the week she decided she would like to sit on the "pa-hee". Wonderful! my almost two year old is trying to potty train herself! Yippee! Although, the whole "pa-hee" experience ends up being her stripping wherever she happens to be, me egging her on quite quickly to the bathroom and her sitting on the potty for all of 3 seconds by which time she gets completely freaked out that she's going to fall in even with me holding her. Followed by her necessity of getting a "y", actually wiping herself and closing and flushing the non-existent elimation with the perfectly clean toilet paper. This is all well and fine and dandy. Wonderful. I'm ecstatic she's wanting to learn and is taking some of the grunt work off me. My last two wouldn't potty train until 3.5-4 years which was quite a debacle.

By the middle of the week she learned that when she's got a "uck die-hee" that she can take it off and leave it anywhere she happens to be and that by saying "mommy uh-oh" or "mommy uck" that I will be ok with it. More than not she's in bed supposed to be sleeping either at night or at nap. This makes it more challenging and more laundry. I actually have an entire laundry basket filled with her wet/poopie bed linens and clothes going through the cycles.

This little gem has learned how to take off a zippered footie pajama. The following night I tried pants and a shirt and by morning she was nude with poo in the bed. I tried a zippered footie pj with a snap closure at the top and she was nude and peed within the hour.

I've been throwing around ideas on how to keep her in her jammies. Possibly turn the zippered jammies around? I'm worried about choking her.

Add snaps to her shirt/pant sets all the way around so she can't take the pants off? I'm not sure about adding snaps on knits.

Go shopping for special escape-free jammies? Not until we get paid next week.

So for the interim (or at least for tonight) I've taped her in her diaper with packing tape. Let's see her get out of this one.

It's been a busy two months

Well, first off I was hugely pregnant all of December which didn't add to my desire to be creative (including blogging anything worthwile). Then with the winter holidays going on it got a little crazy here. Christmas day came and with it a lovely baby boy! Maximilian Robert was born December 25th at 2:50 in the afternoon.









We've been adjusting nicely to having the new addition. Then with the CPSC stuff going on regarding selling handmade baby items I've been trying to redefine my sale items or scrapping them all together until things change. I dont' make a whole lot, and really everything I do make goes right back to buying more materials, but it's a fun outlet and people that do buy my items seem to enjoy them.


We also had another first in the house, with Alex and a loose tooth. We had out first missing tooth in our household the night before the inauguration.

All in all, it's been a busy couple of months. This year I plan to blog some free tutes, pattern reviews (and other reviews), home school stuff and some more just of life as a mom of five. I hope you'll stick with me and check out my blog occasionally.

It's just like the first time all over again.

Yesterday Rob and I went to the OB's office for my 20 week appointment. Let me just say, 20 weeks goes by WAY fast, even on a 5th pregnancy. He usually doesn't go with me but with him leaving in a few weeks and not being here for the birth, I wanted him to attend as many ultrasounds as he could especially this one.

Why is this one so important? For those of you, yet to experience pregnancy either yourself or with a significant other, 20 weeks is the time when the gender can be determined, pretty much 100% granted the baby cooperates and the ultrasound tech is patient.

I sat on the table with my pretty big belly sticking out and could remember when I was getting my very first gender-telling ultrasound with my very first baby. I was totally hysterical. I couldn't even look at the ultrasound image as she was taking measurements. I was laughing with anticipation, happiness, and just plain overwhelmed with the whole thing. Which in turn, made my belly jiggle and the US lady really annoyed because she couldn't get her photos. I was resigned to stare at the ceiling and not look while Rob was able to view the whole thing pretty much as calm as a cucumber.

I remember after that first ultrasound feeling just immortally happy and finding out this was indeed a BOY! Pregnancies 2, 3, and 4 went pretty much the same way. Though some Rob was there, others he wasn't and some him and a couple of kids were watching. Each time it was like I had never seen a baby in me before. I was just as giddy and excited as when one turned into two and two to three and three to four.

Laying on the table yesterday was no exception. Though I was a little more self composed than the first time I still had to consciously remind myself not to laugh and had to look away a few times to regain composure. Rob was right next to me holding my hand and commenting on the little person we had made. Finally, towards the end the tech asked us if we wanted to know and if we already knew. We had a suspicion on the gender before hand just because this pregnancy has been dramatically different than the last three. But, it was no less exciting and we're no less in love with our newest baby which is a BOY!

Some people can't understand what it's like to have a large family. Rob and I have a hard time even considering ourselves "large" yet. Though our car 8 passenger van is getting mighty cramped. Each time our numbers grow, a "large family" seems so much bigger than the one we have, or will have. We still haven't decided on a number of kids to stop at, though everyone else has been confident this is "it" for us, especially since we started with a boy, now we can end with a boy. But I'm still not so sure.