Following the Toddler

Good Morning!

Today I wanted to share how I have changed up Liza's sensory table. She was losing interest in her Valentine's set up and I was growing tired of having pink rice throughout the house. It's still a little too early for me to create a St. Patrick's day table, so I decided to throw some cotton balls and a few Arctic animals and trucks in to hold us over a few days.

She's had some fun with it and we've had a few snowball fights, but the other day while shopping, Liza spotted some plastic Easter Eggs and really, really wanted me to buy her the "circles." I bought them and figured she would soon forget about them and they could sit in my closet until closer to Easter. Well, she found them and insisted that we open them. She is just too cute sometimes. We dumped them into the sensory table and added a mini muffin pan.

She's been busy ever since. Just goes to show how important it is for us as moms to give up control sometimes and follow the lead of our kiddos interests.

It makes me super excited to see her start sorting, counting, and talking about colors. I am so surprised that she is into it right now. I didn't expect it for a while. I'll be honest, it makes my teacher self a little giddy. 

I think in a few days I will add some colors to the bottom of the muffin tin and see what she does with it. Maybe she'll match up the eggs to the colors, maybe she won't. I'm just curious to see what happens. I'll probably add some little pom poms to the table so she can put them inside the eggs.

We have also done some stamping and painting with shaving cream in the past few days. If you have a kiddo that likes to eat the paint, you coud use whipped cream or pudding! Add food coloring or glitter for even more fun!

It's school vacation week, which means I have a house full of Liza's cousins. We should have an exciting day!

Have you done anything with your kiddos? I'd love to hear about it and maybe steal your ideas :)

XOXO Sarah

4 Random Thoughts About Cloth Diapering

Hi friends! It's Cloth Diaper Wednesday!

We are so excited to have Melissa Durango as a guest blogger today.  She knows a lot about cloth diapering! She is a mother of two cute little boys ages 2 1/2 and 9 months, and is Katey's little sis! Not to mention Sarah has known her since she was a little girl in elementary school. Today Melissa is going to share tidbits of information that she has found useful in her cloth diapering journey! Enjoy!!!

Lissy's Two Cents!

A lot of time is invested when shopping for diapers.

Even after months of cloth diapering religiously, it still took me days and days to decide on which diapers I would like to purchase and where to purchase them from. I thought that maybe it was just this way in the beginning when deciding on which type of diaper was the biggest decision, but I have been proven wrong. It doesn’t help that whenever I have money to spend on new diapers I have to make sure I get the BEST deal for the most diapers. It is actually rather pathetic. I hear a voice telling me JUST BUY IT but I can’t! What if there is a better deal somewhere else?! What if they are not what I expect?! I admit that I have never in my life spent the amount of time shopping for items like I do for cloth diapers or any related must have (like BabyLegs!).

Not everyone accepts your decision.

More often than not most people are respectful when they become aware of your decision to use cloth diapers. I usually get a “good for you!” or “that’s great!” But this is not always the case. I have run into a fair share of people who are downright disgusted, and they even have the guts tell me this to my face like I am some sort of nutcase. This is usually because they are close-minded and clueless to how clean and easy it is to use cloth diapers.  Given at how rude they are, I secretly wish to start a fight about it, but I refrain from a public outburst that might land me in big trouble. You do your thing, I will do mine. Thank you very much.

You will know when you need to strip diapers.

If you cloth diaper or have been contemplating using cloth diapers, then you probably have come across the process known as stripping. This is done once in a while (every few months for me) usually to rid the diapers of detergent build up. When I first began, I kept wondering if it was time to strip and I learned that I was not alone. I read various forums and articles online and found out that others were often worried about the same thing. With my oldest I began to notice a funny smell when he wet his diaper, then one day I was changing him and it was like a bomb of lethal substances was thrown right in my face. Ammonia = uncontrollable tears...worse than the onion slicing ones.  From then on I never worried about it…if I notice that same odor then I knew it was time.

Diaper sprayers are a convenient mess.

Before I had a diaper sprayer I got rid of the poop on the diapers the gross way, scraping, dunking, whatever I could do to get it semi clean. Diaper sprayers are known to be one of the best cloth diapering accessories I was tired of dealing with mush poop and decided to get one. Although I am grateful (soooo grateful!) at how much easier dealing with yucky diapers, it still is messy. When you spray the diaper, the water ricochets off of it on to the toilet and anything close by. No one told me this. Lowering the water pressure helps, but doesn’t do anything to get the yuckies off. Needless to say, each time I spray a diaper the potty gets cleaned.

That pretty much sums it up. For the moment anyway, since there is so much that can be said (thought too) about the loveliness that is cloth diapers!

Love, Melissa

Oh! and pretty please don't forget to follow me and my two cents!