Category Archives: Daily

Playing catch up

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I never made it on to the computer to write up my 20 Chore Tuesday post. Oops! But I did write up a list of chores Tuesday morning and I did as much as physically possible for me. I got about 75% of my list done, which is better than I ever expected to get done. My carpal tunnel in my left arm flared up INSANELY BAD by mid-afternoon and I had to stop doing everything. I was in horrible pain all day and all evening.

Wednesday we went out for lunch with a friend we hadn’t seen in forever. I got to hold a one month old baby! Oh man.. So tiny. Were my girls EVER that small??? We sat outside and had popcorn while we waited for Daddy to get home that evening.

Today, we hung around the house all day and it seemed like a pretty regular ol’ day until something huge happened: ZOEY POOPED ON THE POTTY. Oh my gosh, you guys! You have no idea what we have been going through with this. First of all, she has been day-time potty trained for about 6 months now. We first trained her using a little kiddie potty, the move to the toilet was NOT easy but she eventually caught on over the summer. Public toilets? WERE NOT HAPPENING. At all. My little girl was just too timid and too scared of real toilets.

So, to try to help with pottying while we were out of the house, I purchased the Kalencom 2-in-1 Potette Plus. You can use it as a stand alone potty with the absorbent inserts or you can use it as a small child sized insert on a regular toilet. Let me just say, this thing was a game changer for my kid who is scared of toilets. We already used a soft potty seat insert on our toilet at home, so when she saw the Kalencom opened up on the toilet, it looked familiar and she felt comfortable with it. After just a few months of using that, she now sits on regular toilets without anything, as long as I help hold her!

Pooping on the other hand, has been a BIG thing in our house. Zoey has been SO scared to even attempt it, that I just stopped forcing it for a while because it always ended up in tears. Even when I would just TALK ABOUT IT. Gah! Such a sensitive little girl. Wonder where she gets that from??? Ugh. So I decided to just let her do it in her own time. I mean, she can’t STILL be pooping in diapers come Pre-K or Kindergarten time, right???

Well, in a moment of BAD PARENTING, I kind of lost my mind on Wednesday. She pooped in her panties and I was so angry. She hasn’t done this in MONTHS, she’s been really good about asking for diapers when she needs to go. I took her into the kitchen and started taking her clothes off and she insisted on laying down. I let her do that and when I started to slowly take off her panties and clean up the mess, she flipped out and started moving and.. THE REST DOES NOT NEED AN EXPLANATION HERE. It was AWFUL. HORRIBLE. TERRIFYING. I actually started crying (HORMONES!). I got her, me, the floor and my emotions all cleaned up. I sat on the couch and sighed, trying to get my bearings. When the saddest and sweetest thing happened. Zoey comes up to me and says “Mommy, Did I make you sad? Mommy, please don’t cry! Smile, like this” and starts trying to smile really big for me. I felt HORRIBLE for reacting the way I did. I sat her on my lap and we had a little talk about how poop is supposed to go into the potty, not in panties. I asked her “Where do we go if we need to poop?” and she replied “in the potty” and we high fived. Didn’t really think much of it. Fast forward to today…

I’m sitting here and she runs into the bathroom. I hear the toilet flush and she comes out, she is smiling and saying “Mommy! I pooped on the potty!” and I know I looked shocked. REALLY? But, how can I see proof because she already flushed! Then I asked “Did you wipe?” and she said “Yup!” and I thought, there is NO way this child who, just supposedly pooped on the potty for the first time ever, wiped herself well enough. So I got a wipe and wiped her and there was evidence that she was not lying (not that she ever HAS, but you never know with kids!). I gave her two cookies, a million kisses, a 1800 year long hug and some ice water. OH HAPPY DAY!

So the lesson to be learned here is that if you ever need to scare your kid into pooping on the potty, apparently all it takes is a hormonal pregnant mommy meltdown! I kid, I kid. I don’t think I scared her, I think she just realized how important it was to not EVER live that poop scene ever again in our lives, EVER. EVER EVER. Zoey is such a SWEET girl. She has a very powerful tantrum that makes you want to rip your ears and brain out. BUT, she is just a sweet and caring child in general. Very loving. Always kissing booboos, always hugging me, always worried about people. Just a generally sweet kid.

So that’s where we’re at. I’m glad tomorrow is Friday. Ready to have my husband home for the weekend. He is such a great person. I love him. He is my husband but also my best friend. It is supposed to be a stormy weekend but we do plan to paint our pumpkins. I already have 4 big pumpkins but we are going to go buy a tiny pie pumpkin for our little dumpling. Speaking of, we have our first appointment November 8th. I’ll be a nervous wreck until then. Please send good thoughts or juju or prayers or whatever our way. Continue reading →

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Boys will be boys

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Last weekend we went to a family friend’s son’s third birthday party. They went all out and rented a bounce house, an inflatable water slide and a snocone machine. It was a lot of fun… but I think my husband and my sister’s boyfriend had the most fun while all of the kids were inside opening gifts and eating cake.

We finally got the girls to go up with Daddy and they had a lot of fun, even though they looked terrified at first.

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Making your own laundry soap

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There are blog posts and articles all over the Internet for making your own laundry soap. There are a million different recipes, some powder and some liquid. My advice is experiment with them and come up with a mixture that suits your laundry needs best. I started out with a very basic “1 C. Borax, 1 C. Washing Soda, 1 bar of soap grated” recipe and have added to it & changed it up since I first began using it.

I ran out of laundry detergent Tuesday afternoon with one load of laundry left to go, so I had to whip up a quick batch of the stuff and decided to take some pictures. This entire process normally would have taken me about 30 minutes total to make but today it took an hour, because my 3 year old had a lot of fun “helping” me. I made a quadruple batch this time so I would have enough for the next month or two. Divide by 4 if you want to make a small, single batch.

{ Ingredients }
4 C. Borax
4 C. Washing Soda
2 C. Purex powdered Color Safe Bleach
6 scoops (using the small scoop provided) Oxygen cleaner (about 1.5 Cups?)
4 bars of soap grated (I used Fels Naptha & Castile soap. I hear ivory is good. Or baby soap. Or Zote. Whatever you want to use! Fels Naptha is known for getting out stains and grease, so I like to always include at least SOME Fels Naptha in my recipe)

Start grating your bars of soap. I bought a grater from the dollar store that I use specifically for making my laundry soap.

My arm was killing me after grating 4 whole bars of soap. I think I need to work out. I think I am going to be in a lot of pain tomorrow morning. I kept grunting and Zoey said “I’m sorry Mommy, is it hard to do that? It’s ok Mommy. Be careful that’s dangerous!” and she would come around and kiss my arm. Sweetest girl. Oh and I had to remind her MANY times that this wasn’t CHEESE.

Get another bowl, a BIGGER one and we are going to measure and mix the powders. We’ll start with 4 cups of Borax and Washing Soda:

2 cups of Purex Color Safe Bleach and 6 small scoops (about 1.5 cups) of Oxygen Cleaner…

Use a big spoon and mix up the powder ingredients really well… Now you’ll slowly add the grated soap to the powder mixture and combine:

Pour into your container of choice and you’re done! I use these cheap plastic containers from walmart, they hold this big batch pretty well. I use about 4-5 TBSP per load, BUT I am notorious for washing large loads at a time. I only do laundry once a week, so it’s not a big deal. This actual recipe says to only use about 2 TBSP per load. Again, experiment and find what you like. And I wash all clothes with cold water and towels/linens with hot water. It works with both!

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“Popsapickles” in the tub

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I started the “Popsicles in the tub” thing weeks ago when it was too hot to go outside and enjoy them. I’m talking 112°. Hot enough that if the girls fell down on the pavement, they’d probably burn themselves! Ridiculous. So we began having popsicles in the tub.. because hey, they could get as messy as they wanted! All I had to do was fill the tub up when they were done and give them a bath, which cleaned the bath tub and the children, all in one swoop! If anything is winning, that right there is.

Finishing up the popsicles while I started filling the tub. Kiera always has to be doing whatever Zoey is doing, of course!

Kiera was a total ham, as usual. When you ask her to say “Cheese!” for pictures, she says it in a long, dramatic manner with an exaggerated squinty faced smile. When she smiles her eyes disappear and I want to grab her and squeeze her and give her lots of kisses. She’s so adorable. I always said I wanted an asian baby and, well, I think I got her.

The girls cannot be anymore opposite when it comes to water. Zoey has always enjoyed bath time or playing in the water, but has NEVER EVER EVER EVER liked having water in her face. There was a good year where she would cry every time we washed her hair because a drop of water MIGHT get on her face somewhere. She freaks out when she is splashed (but enjoys splashing others, of course), every time. Kiera, however, is not afraid. At all. The child is throwing herself into the water constantly. Her new favorite thing is to swim in the bath tub, which quite frankly freaks me out a little, though I do not discourage her. She’s my little water baby!

They were both swimming, though this didn’t last long for Zoey.

Kiera’s face kept going in and out of the water and she was laughing hysterically. Zoey stopped “swimming” after I got a picture of her doing it the first time because water was going everywhere.

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The Zoo

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We took the girls to the Zoo last weekend when we knew the high temperature for the day was UNDER 90. It was gorgeous and we had a blast! We didn’t get up until close to 11 AM, so we were late getting out the door, which means we stopped at good ol’ Mickey Ds on the way to grab a quick lunch. Here, Zoey proudly sports her plain cheeseburger. Nom nom.

For the first time ever, we made it just in time for the giraffe feeding. It’s $3 for 3 romaine lettuce leaves, which is TOTALLY worth the experience because oh my gosh, it was soooo cool!

Zoey waits with her lettuce. She fed the giraffe 2 and I fed the giraffe one. Kiera didn’t get to feed one and I felt really bad for not letting her do that, but Zoey was clinging to me, Gene was taking pictures and I couldn’t hold Kiera. I need more arms! Maybe next time she can. She is still young enough that she doesn’t seem to care.

Kiera had a lot of fun running around. She’s a silly girl. So mellow when we go out, just hangs out and goes with the flow. Never whines or needs anything.

and the girls had their very first cotton candy experience. They loved it. Kiera ESPECIALLY loved it. I had to cut the girl off!

We saw the giraffes, the rhinos, the tigers and that is about it. We were there for a few hours and we had a lot of fun but nap time was approaching and Kiera was fading fast. The nice thing about having a Zoo pass is that we don’t feel like we need to see EVERYTHING in one day to get our money’s worth. We can go back plenty of times!

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Zoey’s first painting experience

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I know, I know. My kid is 3 and just now painting for the first time. Oops! I should have done it earlier but the mess has always been on my mind. Not to mention, she sometimes gets bored with coloring pretty quickly, so I wasn’t sure how she would like painting. Well, SHE LOVED IT.

She was so cute in her little art smock, dipping her paintbrush in the paint.

She particularly liked to get HUGE clumps of paint on her paintbrush. I showed her how to drag the brush across the lip of the the little paint cup to wipe off the excess and she caught on to that process quickly.

Her favorite method of painting was to jam the paint brush down with all of her strength and paint with it. I tried SO hard to stress to her that she could gently paint the paper with the brush but she wasn’t having it. It was stressing me out but I had to just tell myself to let her do what she wants to do and explore.

Just like her father, she about had a fit when she got the first drop of paint on her finger. It was a TINY speck but she was begging for a wipe. Thankfully, this paint was SUPER washable and wiped off without any scrubbing.

And her last picture to paint was this.. She proudly exclaimed “Look mommy! I painted Zoey!”

How is my girl growing up so quickly? I feel like it was just yesterday that she was born. I can remember the details of those early days so clearly.

We’ll definitely be painting again. Next time we’ll do it when Kiera is awake so we can all enjoy in the fun (and mess).

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