Saddle up those horses

My family is preparing to high tail it outta town and leave me alone for 5 days!! Dan is taking the girls up to Pennsylvania to go camping with his family and they leave on Wednesday. Five whole days with no husband, no children and no dogs! Why you ask am I not going with them......well, I feel like almost 8 months pregnant women should have the option of opting out of 12 hour (each way) car rides and sleeping in tents, so I have opted out! Of course I will miss them (at least a little bit lol) but I am SO looking forward to the peace and quiet. I plan on washing baby clothes and getting the baby's dresser and diaper station ready. I am hoping to get some sewing done, clean out our master bedroom closet and hang up and put away all of the girls fall/winter clothes. What I am not hoping to get done is any cleaning or house work! I spent the past weekend organizing and cleaning and doing laundry in the hopes that while my family is away I won't feel like I need to clean anything.....I may do some cleaning, but I mostly just want to relax and do fun things that I will enjoy......and cleaning isn't on that list. I feel like once my family returns home life is going to fly by at warp speed what with both girls starting preschool and Maddie's birthday and before I know it I will have a new baby in the house. It will be nice to take this time to mellow out before the storm and really prepare mentally and house-wise for our new baby. If you try and get in contact with me from Wednesday-Sunday and I don't answer my phone or email you back, don't take it personally.....I just don't want to talk to you. Haha. :o) Wish me luck while my family is traveling out yonder!

My Charlotte is so stinkin' cute!
I think that she should be cloned so that everyone
could have a Charlotte of their very own!

Heaven help me!

Nearly four

It is really hard to wrap my head around the fact that in less than a month my Maddie will be four! Wasn't she just a little baby not that long ago? I feel like 4 is a really significant age because it definitely puts her out of toddlerhood and into childhood. Not that she resembles a toddler in any form.....the child is huge and has been mistaken as a 5 year old since she turned 3. This birthday is also significant in a very personal way for me. At the age of four I was adopted by my parents. This age signifies the end of foster homes and the beginning of stability in my life, and it also was the end of any relationship I had with my biological mother. I don't remember much from that time, maybe that's normal for kiddos, or maybe I never wanted to remember that part of my life. I do remember being taken to Knotts Berry Farm after my adoption was finalized and I remember having new siblings and being loved.

I feel as though this birthday for my first born is monumental in some way.....I feel like shouting from the rooftops "My baby is four and I love her and she's mine and I'm never, ever giving her away!" I know it's irrational but I feel a sense of accomplishment in some weird way that I'm about to pass a huge step in my biological mothers' life and that I've done better than her. I felt this way too when I passed the ripe old age of 15 and wasn't giving birth to a child. I don't know if this post makes any sense at all but these feelings have been jumbled up inside me for a while now thinking about Maddie's 4th birthday. I feel like I really want to get her something significant for her birthday to show her how much I love her, to show her that my love for her is constant and my presence in her life is unending, (well, you know....until it ends, but that's a loooong time off) but she has no idea what the emotional implications of this age mean to me, she has no idea that there is anything other than her mama being there for her every day, she has no idea that some parents give their children away. I want to give her diamonds and gold and frankincense and fireworks and unending joy! But since I can't afford any of those things (well maybe I can afford frankincense) a scooter and some littlest pet shop toys will have to suffice. Oh, and my love and commitment and my trying my best to give her unending joy.

My baby is going to be four! *Sigh*

Live and let dye

I am officially done with fabric dyeing.....at least for a little while! I have to say that it bums me out because I really enjoy doing it! I find that dyeing is a cheap and easy creative outlet for me and I don't really make too big of a mess, unlike some of my previous projects! I have newborn and small prefold diapers (for those of you who don't know, a prefold is an old school cloth diaper that's basically many layers of very absorbent cotton/bamboo/hemp etc. and you either pin them on or snappi them on baby and put a waterproof cover over) that were all natural and white and I decided that instead of keeping them plain I would try my hand at dyeing them!

I really really like how they turned out. Granted, some of them are little more girly than I was planning.....apparently I am not so well versed in color mixing, my red ended up a tad bit more pink than I thought it would, and I've learned that when mixing red (pink) with yellow it doesn't make orange like I had intended....however it does make a rather awesome hot pink!! lol Eh, you live and you learn! I still feel like all of these diapers would be fine on either a boy or a girl.....hippie boys can totally rock pink tie dye! I can't wait to start setting up dresser space for baby #3 and I really can't wait to start using all of my yummy newborn cloth diaper goodness. One day in the near future I'll have my newborn stash all organized and put away and then I'll take pictures and post them so everyone can see how delicious it is!! Till then.....live and let dye!

I dyed about half of my prefolds solid colors
which I love just as much as my tie dyed ones!

Eye candy.....because she's SO darn cute!

Sometimes there are just no words to describe my Charlotte. Laughter follows this child wherever she goes and more often than not the laughter is coming from me. She cracks me up!

Really, all a girl needs to survive life
is a good pair of sunglasses and a calculator!

And this ladies and gentleman is how my child accessorizes.
Daily.
She is a nut for some accessories.
(I don't actually take her out of the house looking like this,
but she would totally want to!)

From spit up stains to groovy

Most of the baby clothes that I own have been through 2 kids.....and in many cases 3 kids because my sister in law borrowed stuff for my niece. After the love of 3 children there were many items that were sad looking and stained, mostly right in the front from spit up. Typically the yucky throw up look would render these items unusable, at least in my book, but I decided to try and breathe new life back into them with some groovy tie dyeing! And it totally worked out beautifully! You can't see any discoloration anymore, and the baby clothes are colorful, fun and funky! I really like how they all turned out.

I find it really amusing how things change from the first child to the second child. With Maddie I had all of these cute matching outfits, little baby jeans, multi-piece ensembles.....most things pretty uncomfortable if you really think about it. Once Charlotte came along and life got more complicated with another being in our home, I dumped the trendy outfits and she wore comfy one and two piece outfits and stayed in jammies most of the time. I imagine with a third child he/she will be lucky to get dressed at all! lol So these tie dyed onesies and shirts will come in really handy! A shirt, a cloth diaper and a pair of babylegs.....who needs anything else? :o)

While I was dyeing baby clothing I went ahead and dyed some of my cotton terry fitted diapers. They were a creamy white (boring) before I got my hands on them, and now they are cheerful and rainbowy and they make me happy. It's so much more fun using fun colorful diapers than boring ol' plain white ones. And before anyone gets concerned about the health of a baby bum in a dyed diaper, I used professional dyes that fuse to the fibers in the material and it does not bleed. I didn't use gloves while I was dyeing and I didn't get one bit of dye on my hands, and there was no bleeding when the diapers or clothes were rinsed or washed......and I've washed everything 4 or 5 times because I was paranoid, and the water was never even tinted! It is safe for the bum!

So, instead of throwing out old baby clothes that are stained, buy some dye and get your creative on! It's much more cost effective and it's FUN! :o)

Some things turned out pretty pink looking and some purple too.
Those ones will be good for a girl, and I'll just pack them away if we have a boy!

A rainbow of diapers

Doesn't this make you happy?
It almost makes me look forward to changing dirty diapers!