Random Avery Stuff!

Avery and Daisy have a love-hate relationship. Avery loves to get close to Daisy, and Daisy hates it when that happens! Well, unless Avery has drool all over her face, and then I have to keep Daisy from trying to "clean her." If Avery ever learns to crawl, Daisy better find a good hiding spot!
Avery thinks she looks good in sunglasses. She cried when I took them off of her!

She rode in the shopping cart seat for the first time last week. She liked it for about 5 minutes, and then she became her usual fussy self.

She is learning to use, well chew, on the phone. She has two, and she also likes to throw them in the floor, look at me and smile, and then cry until I give them back to her.

Bridging

My Daisy Girl Scouts are no longer Daisies. We had our bridging ceremony last night, so they are all officially Brownies now!That would be my child on the end holding up the Girl Scout sign with the wrong hand!

A Leader's Poem

- Author Unknown

Sometimes I get discouraged. My time is not my own.

If I'm not somewhere, I'm always on the phone,

Reminding someone's mother of a stray permission slip.

Whose loss would cause disaster to our upcoming field trip.

I'm dashing out to get supplies (I think I'm going daft!)

Who's idea was this? Can we really do this craft?

And then there are the cookies-on the chairs & on the floor.

My house has twice as many as the local grocery store.

Even when I'm sitting still, my brain is overheating

Searching for a game or song to liven up the meeting.

Just when I'm exhausted, too tired to move again,

A small eruption at the door and the girls are coming in!

I draw a breath in wonder, & ask myself, "Oh Why?"

Then I'm almost toppled by a bear hug, just knee-high.

The room is full of laughter and suddenly I see

That I really cannot think of a better place to be.

Yes, I'm a Girl Scout leader & I guess that's no surprise,

And everything I do is worth the smile in one girl's eyes.

Laundry Soap

I've been reading a lot about homemade things. I decided to try making my own laundry soap for no other reasons than 1) because it's cheap, and I love to save money and 2) so I could say that I tried it!

There are several different "recipes" available online, but I decided to use the Duggar Family recipe for liquid laundry detergent. I figured with all the clothes they have to wash, surely their recipe would be pretty good.

Here's their recipe:

4 cups hot tap water
1 Fels-Naptha soap bar
1 cup Arm & Hammer Super Washing Soda
1/2 cup Borax

Grate bar of soap and add to saucepan with water. Stir continuously over medium-low heat until soap dissolves and is melted. Fill a 5 gallon bucket half full of hot tap water. Add melted soap, washing soda, and Borax. Stir well until all powder is dissolved. Fill bucket to top with more hot water. Stir, cover, and let sit overnight to thicken.

Stir stored detergent. Fill a used, clean, laundry soap dispenser half full will soap, and then fill the rest of the way with water. Shake before each use (will gel).

Optional: You can add 10-15 drops of essential oil per 2 gallons. Add once soap has cooled. Ideas: Rosemary, lavender, tea tree oil.

Yield: Makes 10 gallons

Top load machine: 5/8 cup per load (Approx. 180 loads)

Front load machine: 1/4 cup per load (Approx. 640 loads)



THE REVIEW:

Okay, so first let's talk about cost. I found all the ingredients in the laundry aisle at our Publix grocery store. That's the only place that had all the ingredients. (If you can't find Fels Naptha, search for variations of the recipe online. Some use Ivory soap or Zote.) The cost of the ingredients were as follows: Fels Naptha Soap $0.99, Borax $3.99, and Arm & Hammer Washing Soda $2.29. The Borax and washing soda can both be used for multiple recipes of the laundry soap. That taken into account, the amount used for each load of laundry costs around $0.01!! You can't get much better than that!

Now for ease of making the recipe... The whole process took less than 30 minutes, so I figure if it works well, it will be well worth my time. The majority of the time I spent was grating the soap.



The soap bar kind of smelled like original Dial soap and made the kitchen smell nice and clean!

The biggest "con" for me is the storage. A five gallon bucket in some laundry rooms just won't work. Luckily, I have a decent sized laundry room with storage space to spare!



It was also a little messy transferring the soap into the dispenser. I recommend a funnel. Wish I'd had one! The soap is not a gel like store bought detergent. It is more of a liquid with gel throughout. It is kind of the consistency of egg drop soup. This is why it is important to shake before each use.

Mine turned out yellow because that's the color of the Fels Naptha soap bar.



How did it work? Well, I tried it out on a load of colored clothes, including Stephen's sweaty softball uniform. The soap does not produce suds. I'd read that it didn't, so I wasn't alarmed. The amount of suds has nothing to do with the cleansing ability.(I read somewhere that Americans have been "brainwashed" into believing that suds = cleanliness. We are obsessed with the amount of lather our bath soap creates and even the "foaminess" of our toothpaste. In many other countries, toothpaste does not foam. It has nothing to do with cleaning your teeth. American manufacturers add detergent to toothpaste so we'll feel like it is working better!)

All the clothes came out looking clean. They did not come out smelling bad, but they really did not have a smell. It was more like when Avery was first born, and I was using the Tide Free & Clear that didn't have any dyes or perfumes. If you enjoy that "fresh laundry" scent, I would recommend adding the essential oils to obtain that fragrance you desire.

All in all, I liked it. I'll have to see how it works on whites and update on that in another post. I go through a ton of pretreater with all the stains Avery and Sydney create. So, I'll have to see how it works along with that!

So, next up on the homemade homefront is baby food purees and (hopefully) a blackberry cobbler. The blackberries are getting ripe, and I'm so excited. I've already made some apple-carrot puree for Avery, and she loves it, so I bought more fruits and veggies to try!

A Little Bit of Sweetness

This is really just a shameless post to show off some pictures of Avery and her sweetness! She loves the bath, and I finally took some pics of her. We are going to have to get Sydney's old bath seat out of storage soon, though. She does "baby crunches" the whole time trying to get up and look around! She spends a lot of time sucking the water off of her hands! Can you tell her favorite food is still carrots, hence the forever orange nose!



I also finally got a shot of her in this funny onesie I picked up at Dollar General. They have the funniest onesies there. iPeed, LOL!!!



Another note on Avery... She still will not pick up any finger foods and try to eat them herself, but she loves to sit in my lap when I am eating. She can, and will, grab whatever you are eating and have a little taste. This week, she had a little Rotel Chicken Spaghetti and some ice cream.

Here's a little recipe for some sweetness I'll share with you. These are really good and super easy and quick to make- a good one to do with kids who like to help out in the kitchen...

CHOCOLATE CHIP BARS

1 box yellow cake mix
2 eggs
1/2 cup oil
1 pkg MILK chocolate chips

Mix all ingredients together by hand. Press evenly in a 9x13 dish and bake @ 350 degrees.

Glass- 20 min
Dark- 15 min

ENJOY!

Fireflies

If anyone needs a fun, easy craft, I've got one for you! My Daisy troop had so much fun making and playing with these at our meeting last week.

We made "fireflies" (or "lightening bugs" for those delta girls, like me!) out of empty water bottles. What kid doesn't love fireflies?!!



All you need is a clean, empty water (or soda) bottle, a pipe cleaner, paper for wings, markers for decorating, a glow stick or necklace, and a glue stick or double stick tape. "Googly" eyes are optional, but very cute!

Take the label off of the bottle. Cut wings out of the paper and decorate. Use a glue stick or tape to attach the wings to the bottle. Twist the pipe cleaner around the neck of the bottle and curl to form antennae. Glue or draw eyes. Uncap the bottle and insert an "activated," inexpensive glow stick or glow bracelet/necklace into the bottle. Turn the lights off, and voila- your very own firefly!

Mother's Day

Happy Mother's Day (a little late) to all my blog friends and followers! I had a good day. I got to sleep in until 9AM. Thank you Avery! Then, I opened gifts. It is always fun to see what gets picked out for me. I love my husband, but he is not a good gift-picker-outer!

Stephen likes to give a little something from everyone. So, my first bag and card was from him. A phone charger for my car. No, I'm not kidding. That really is what he gave the woman who has given birth to his two beautiful children. I told you he doesn't do well with gifts! I really did need it though.



The second bag was from Sydney. I got a flower pot card and keychain she made at school, a card she picked out at the mall, and a peacock feather bracelet and some earrings and a necklace to match.



Now, that's my little shopper! She knows how much I love peacocks. She told her daddy that they had to go to JC Penny's and get the bracelet because I would just die without it! Spoken like a true drama queen!



She also made me a card at home with lots of sequins on it. She wrote me a poem all by herself: "Roses are red, violets are blue, I love my mama too!" Too cute. She said the card was really thick, so she had to use some stickers from the office to help her close the envelope!



We had a little talk later about not using my office supplies!

Then, it was time for Avery's gift. "Avery" got me something I had hinted about. Well, actually it was less hinting and more "Hey, Stephen, there's this rolling organizer in the scrapbook section at Michael's and it would be perfect to put all my Girl Scout stuff in. It is brown and pink and looks like one of those suitcases on wheels. AND here's a 40% off coupon!" Sometimes, you just have to be direct!



So, when Stephen said that it was from Avery, Sydney piped up and said that it was from her, too. So I said that the bracelet, necklace and earrings must have been from her AND Avery. She said, "No, that was just from me. Avery didn't get you anything just from her." LOL! Jealous much?

So, after showers, Sydney, Avery, and I headed off to eat lunch at CiCi's Pizza. That's my and Sydney's "special" place, so we chose that for lunch. We did some shopping at the mall. Sydney conned me into buying her some "trendy" shoes.



She always cons me into buying something that she desperately needs because someone else in her class has it. After we got tired out at the mall, we made the weekly grocery run, and then headed home.

I made a "fun" supper for us with inspiration from the Nickelodeon tv show, iCarly. What else but Spencer's famous spaghetti tacos! They were actually good. I was going to take a picture of them, but Avery didn't want me to. She was ready to be put to bed.

My mama also sent me a gift for Mother's Day. A Cookbook!!! She knows I love cookbooks. I've been able to flip through some of it. The recipes look good- and easy! I'm going to have to try them out soon.



So, that was my day. I had a happy Mother's Day with my girls! What more could I ask for. I am blessed to be their mama!

Get Your Feet Wet

We decided last Saturday to get our feet wet. We headed out for a little family time at the beach at St. Andrews State Park. The Tranum family went too, so all the kids got to play together. It was Avery's first trip to the beach!



The St. Andrews beach area is great for the kids. It has a rock wall that "breaks" the waves. You don't have to worry so much about the kids getting knocked down or carried away by the waves. There are also bathrooms and a snack bar- that ALWAYS helps when you have kids.














Sydney and Cole had fun snorkeling. And Anslee had fun making sure they knew what they were doing. She may only be four, but she's the BOSS!



Stephen, Avery, and I stayed pretty much in the sand. Stephen is NOT a fan of the beach!



Avery and I did venture out a few times and get our toes wet. She really enjoyed the water. Her big sister ALWAYS enjoys it. She is a beach bum for sure!



It was a good day!

Date Night

Stephen and I had our first date night in a REALLY long time (like since BEFORE I was even pregnant) last Friday night. We went to Uncle Ernie's and had some delicious food! The bread and salad were sooooo good. And we ordered fried portabello mushrooms for an appetizer. I was full before our main course ever got to the table. I ordered fried oysters, and Stephen had fried shrimp. Yum.



I love my kiddos, but it was so nice to go out and spend time together without having to play the games on the kid's menu or hold a fussy baby who is grabbing at your plate while you are trying to eat! It was a nice, quiet evening that was much needed.

Our friends Kevin & Erin were kind enough to babysit for us. Stephen says "them are some good people!" Sydney even ended up spending the night with them. She always has a good time playing with their kids. They said Avery did really well. Thank goodness! Maybe that means they'll do it again some time!

O Self, Where Art Thou?

Most days I feel like I'm lost. Where did the old me go? Probably lost somewhere between the nights that I used to be able to sleep and the days that I didn't wake up feeling nauseated. Sleep deprivation does some terrible things to your body. Avery is getting better though. Sometimes she sleeps through the night, and most other nights she only wakes up once. We still have the occasional night like this past Sunday night where I can't get her to sleep until 11PM, and then she's up at 1AM, 2:15AM, 4AM, and 6AM. I'm still trying to recover from that one. I am hoping that soon she will sleep regularly through the night, so my body will fully recover. My doctor diagnosed me with postpartum depression when Avery was 3 months old. He said that until I was able to get plenty of rest, my body would probably not be able to regulate itself properly. Stupid, stupid hormones! I can really tell a difference after a few nights of good rest. I am ready to be back to the old me that feels well enough to put on makeup every morning and not drag around all day. And, I'm ready to feel rested enough to exercise. I am so ready to be back into my old clothes. I've got a long way to go. I just cant bring my exhausted self to get on that machine though. Soon enough, soon enough! I feel like I haven't blogged in forever. We've just been busy. Sydney enjoyed going to her friend Anslee's birthday party recently. It was a princess party, so all the girls dressed as princesses. They got their faces painted. Right after the party, we had to go to a Daisy Daze program so she could fulfill the requirements to bridge up to Brownie Girl Scouts next year. She insisted on leaving the face paint on! Avery still does not have any teeth. She is working on it though. She chews everything, and tries her best to get both fists in her mouth at the same time! I took Avery for her 6 month check up last Friday. It wasn't as good of a report as I would have liked. She weighed 12lbs 10oz and was 20.5 inches long. The doctor is a little concerned about her weight. She's always been on the same growth curve since birth (between the 5th and 10th percentile). Well, she has fallen off now. So, we are increasing solids to three times a day. I am still nursing about 7 times a day, and I am offering a few ounces of formula after she nurses. Sometimes she'll take it, sometimes she won't. Anyway, we're trying everything short of spoon feeding lard to the child to fatten her up! Here's a video of her "hanging out" in her Jenny Jump Up. She doesn't jump in it. She just holds her legs up and hangs!