I've failed before I've begun!

Haha! I started out wanting to blog a few times a week, and now I've gone weeks between blogging.
It's been an interesting week for the Ferguson girls. Nathan went TDY Sunday and within six hours, Anna was eating dog food. A couple hours after that, she licked a bar of soap. I'd like to think those cancel each other out in the grossness factor. I proceeded to brush the heck outta her teeth and mouth that night. So we went a few days with nothing weird entering her mouth, and then she woke up with a black eye Thursday. My only conclusion is that all of her practice walking (and perfecting falling) landed her a black eye. I'm kinda scared for her when Nathan deploys for nearly eight months...I mean, what the heck is gonna happen to her then?!
In other news, Ava is doing great in kindergarten. This week she was moved to a new classroom with a new teacher and new kids. Her school started out with four kindergartens, but each class had 24 students and Florida mandates no more than 18 students per class. I was initially nervous about her moving, because she doesn't always adapt to change well, and on top of her dad being gone this week and next. But she surprised and amazed me by doing fabulous this week! Well, unless she comes home today with a bad day...it's possible, definitely possible!
Ava finally asked me one of the (many) dreaded questions I feared when I found out I'd be the mom to two girls..."who's cuter, Mommy, me or Anna?" Sigh, that's a no-win question, right?! I told her she was the cutest Ava in the whole world and Anna was the cutest Anna in the whole world. But was that good enough for my stinker...NO! She kept pressing me, and I finally told her I'm not answering questions like that and to go play with her toys. I'm not even asking myself which dreaded question will come up next!
I've decided that I'm tired of trying to clean with my little shadow (aka, Anna) following me everywhere, so I'm having a babysitter come hang out with the girls Saturday afternoon for four hours, so I can scrub the toilets without worrying Anna's gonna try to take a swim in them. She loves trying to stick her hands in the toilet when I'm spraying out her diapers - EEEWWWW. She loves water, period. Whether it's the dog bowl, the toilet, the pool, the tub...where there's water, there's Anna.
Oh and 14 days until the hubs and I are cruising the Caribbean, relaxing, hanging out...with no children screaming our names or demanding attention, and I'll miss them like crazy. I'll probably freak out thinking I've left them somewhere on the boat. I don't know how I'll function without a baby on my hip and a 6-year-old by my side! :)

This and that...

We've now made it through two whole weeks of kindergarten, and two weeks of getting into a brand new routine. There were some ups (her bear paw stayed on green every day!) and downs (one serious down in the form of a bad tantrum!), but we made it through. Ava also TWO loose tooth - her top front teeth, which should make for some awesome family pictures in October! I can't wait - I love that gapped-tooth look. I love almost every look on my kids, though, ya know...except the "I'm throwing a tantrum" look! Ava also figured out bike riding sans training wheels...so proud of her! This might be one of my favorite milestones so far. I told her it's easier to balance the faster she goes. It's hilarious watching her legs pump up and down like mad as she weaves all over the sidewalk trying to maintain her balance. Watching her little bum moving all over to keep balanced is toooooo funny! She needs to get a lot better before we can bike to school without her training wheels, though. I should figure out how to post a video here, because I did get some footage of her biking like a mad woman last weekend. I'll work on figuring that out...

Anna's doing great, too. She's crawling all over the place and getting. into. every. thing. I don't remember Ava getting into stuff like Anna does. Anna found the ONLY electrical socket that isn't covered and was totally playing with it. She wasn't sticking anything in it, just touching it and feeling it, but still. Ava never even gave the sockets a second look and certainly didn't bother playing with them. Anna seems to delight in sockets, toilet paper, shredding all paper, dog bowls, any object that she thinks she shouldn't play with immediately gets played with by Anna. She's getting better and better at cruising, too, which is walking while holding onto things for all you non-baby speaking folks. I think she'll walk before too long, but we'll see. I'm pretty sure she's getting her top teeth in (one's losing them as the other gains!), because she has big lumps on her gums, plus we haven't had a decent night's sleep in days, no matter how much Motrin and Tylenol we dope her up with. It's about time for her to have some teeth, though, because at nearly 10 months, she only has two bottom teeth that are maybe halfway in.

All right, I've babbled about the kids long enough, for this post. We're having friends over this evening, and I'm smelling the buffalo wing dip in the oven. Off to go eat some! YUM!

Am I Cheating?!

So, Ava started kindergarten Monday. It was an incredibly busy day between getting her to school, sweeping, mopping, dishes, grocery shopping, picking her up, taking her for First Day of School Ice Cream, cooking dinner, doing dishes, putting the kids in bed...I never sat down all day.

Today...we rode our bikes (Anna in the bike trailer and Ava on her bike) to school. I came home, washed a load of diapers, and I'm hanging out in a quiet house while Anna sleeps. It feels kinda like cheating to not have someone attached to my hip at every second. Now mind you, I COULD be dusting or hanging up clean clothes, but I'm sitting at my computer reading my favorite blogs, Facebooking, blogging a little myself and eating lunch. It's pretty nice to just sit and breathe for a minute.

Minute is UP! Doorbell rang...someone selling junk...dog barked, baby woke up. Sigh. On a high note, that baby is super cute and so happy, so I'll forgive her for cutting her nap a little short. :)

Cloth Diapers

Yes, I do! No really, it's not as bad as you think, I promise!

I know, I know...I never in a million years pictured myself cloth diapering, but I have two very good friends - Kim and Kelli - to thank for turning me into a cloth diapering mama. I love it so much that it pained me to not take them on vacation with us to Maine this summer. I didn't take them, because for part of our trip the laundry situation was an unknown, and I just absolutely refuse to handwash anything. I rediscovered how much I dislike disposables, and how much I appreciate reusing Anna's cloth diapers. I also love how much money we've saved by using them.

The stats, paraphrased of course:

$2500-$3000 ~ the average amount spent on disposable diapers from birth to potty trained

$400 ~ the amount I've spent on all the diapers/inserts Anna will ever need

$360 ~ the amount that we will spend on our water bill over 3 years from washing diapers

$129 ~ the amount I've spent on cloth diaper-safe laundry soap that will wash 1,000 loads

I didn't start using cloth diapers until Anna was about 5 weeks old. I have to admit, I was really intimidated. It turned out to be so much easier than I ever thought, though. The diaper sprayer, basically a kitchen sink sprayer that hooks up to the water line in your toilet, is a fabulous invention that I couldn't do without. I'm not into dunking my hand into a toilet to get rid of "solid" waste (though I've done it), even in my own toilet that I keep clean. I love not running out of diapers and having to make a late-night run to the store. The cute colors and prints make cloth diapering way more fun than ugly disposable diapering. I admit that I mainly did it for the money-saving benefits, but it's nice to know that Anna has fewer chemicals against her bum and our landfills have a thousand (or so) less diapers in them. By the way, did you know it takes a disposable diaper 500 YEARS to decompose? That's a seriously long time for your kids poo to hang around, right?!

Oh and if your excuse for not wanting to cloth diaper is that you can't handle dealing with poop, SURPRISE! as a parent, you will be dealing with poop A LOT! Poop on your clothes, skin, under your fingernails, on your floors (especially when your baby poops and squirms around on his/her bottom on your carpet)...all things I had happen to me with Ava's disposable diapers. Just sayin'... Another common excuse I've heard is "I don't have the time." Well, I can't deny this one - cloth diapering, the laundering process, and re-stuffing the diapers if you use pocket diapers does take more time than buying a pack of Pampers. But for my family and me, the cost savings benefit outweighs the time disadvantages. My favorite excuse so far that I've had thrown at me from a family member was...we have a lot of land in the United States, plenty of places for landfills and diapers. Ummmmmm, OK??

Anyway, if you're interested in cloth diapering, check out these sites:

http://www.kellyscloset.com/
http://www.gogreenpocketdiapers.com/ (my favorite diapers are GoGreens)
http://www.bulkclothdiaper.com/
http://diapershops.com/
http://www.cottonbabies.com/
A great blog to check out for tons of information about cloth diapering is http://www.theclothdiaperwhisperer.com/

Summer trip to New England

A few highlights from our trip to Maine and Massachusetts this summer.

Been meaning to...

I've been meaning to start a blog for a really long time. Sometimes I have so much to say, but never the time to sit down to write it out. By the time I do sit down, I've forgotten what was so important. At any rate, I figured now is as good of a time as any. Ava's starting kindergarten in 13 days...but who's counting...and I should have a little bit more free time during the day to write or post pictures.

We just spent several days in New England visiting Nathan's family and attending a memorial service for his grandmother, who died last year. It was a great time in Maine - raspberry picking, canoeing, a couple morning runs with temps hovering around 60, some really awesome Maine lobster, a couple extra sets of hands (grandparent hands, and aren't those the best?!) to hold Anna, picking salad fixings from my in-law's awesome garden, Ava staying overnight at Aunt Kim's house a couple times - a really great time. Then we drove down to Massachusetts to see more family and attend the memorial service. Another great time seeing the rest of the Ferguson/Moreshead/Post/Annon/Wuyscik clan. Anna and I then had a quick plane ride home, while Nathan and Ava are making the long trek by car and should be home this evening. I think sometimes the hazard of being a military family - or just a family who lives away from parents and grandparents - is that "vacations" tend to be about visiting extended family and not about going to places that we want to go and spending time together as a core family unit. Nathan and I have vowed our next vacation will not be to visit extended family, but to do something we want to do...starting with a very long overdue honeymoon this October. As in 7.5 years overdue! We're going on a cruise, or should I say we're planning to go on a cruise? Hopefully the Air Force doesn't change that for us.

I hope you all enjoy reading my blog. My goal is to post a few times a week, so we'll see how that goes.

Oh and P.S. I have many opinions and beliefs, and I intend to write about them on my blog. You are free to agree or disagree, but please be nice when stating your opinions. I promise to delete mean posts, but not posts that disagree with me and are stated nicely. :)