#3

Painting #2:

Best part?!  I SOLD IT. 

For a cup of coffee. 

Perfect.

In high school I wanted to be an artist.  In reality, I was terrible at it, and even more awful at meeting deadlines and I loathed having things graded.  I constantly compared my work to others and knew they were better.  I somehow weaseled my way into AP2 art, skipping AP1 just so I could get last period off at school.  It was horrible.

Recently I inherited some lovely watercolors and all of the sudden, I'm enjoying painting.  I'm not being graded, there's no one to tell me what to paint or when to finish it or what medium to use.  All of the sudden, it's fun.

This is my first painting with my new paints - in honor of my mother-in-law:

I think she would have given me an "A."  For effort, if nothing else.

Sometimes Pinterest leads me to brilliant ideas.

Sometimes it leads me to things like "cloud dough."

Never again, Pinterest.  Never again.

When you move often (or REALLY often, if you are us), it can be a little confusing for kiddos.  My minis don't have much of a concept of time or distance.  Really, I don't have much of a concept of it, either.  In an attempt to a) fill some blank space on our stair platform and b) try to demonstrate difference between a country/state/city and show highways, we put together this little display last week:

This incredibly blurry image reads "Home is where the <3 is... (and where the Air Force sends us!)"

We put star on places we've been stationed on the map, dots where aunties and uncles live and a big ol' heart on Colorado because it's clearly better than all the other states.  Well, and because it's our "home" despite where we move.  It's home because we love the Rocky Mountains.  It's home because we grew up here.  It's home because we own a condo here.  It's home because our families are here.

The minis dig the map and photos (note the photos are put up out of tiny fingerprint reach).  They like to point out where they were born and ask where states are.  I dig it because I get compliments on it and my ego likes to be stroked.

How do you define "home?"

Cloth diapers

Ew. Why do you cloth diaper? Don't you get grossed out? I couldn't do it. I hate laundry.

Yeah, well, I'm super cheap and hate spending money on diapers. And making my kid wear plastic. And then there's that whole 500 years to biodegrade in a landfill thing.

Here are the top ten reasons we used cloth:

10. No late night jaunts to the store for dipes. If only I had a cow and an almond tree farm to prevent trips for milk. But that's entirely different.
9. Wrapping a baby's tiny bum in plastic just doesn't feel right.
8. It's starting to be what people do now.  We saw them, it interested us, and we jumped right on the bandwagon and did not look back.
7. All that hard earned money can be wasted invested some other way (I swear to you, my Girl-Mini NEEDED yet another pair of shoes).
6. Have you ever put a diaper on a kid only to have them immediately drop a deuce? Almost feels like a waste (pun!) of a diaper when you have to toss it right away? Guilt free with cloth.
5. You are forced to change your kid a little more often than in disposables. Wait. What? Seriously, this is a good thing. Think of all those kids in sposies whose mommas are making them sit in their own waste just so they can get a little more BANG! for their buck out of one dipe. Gross. Which brings me to...
4. No diaper rash! Hallelujah to ALL involved! Tiny baby bottoms rejoice!
3. Average age of potty training in the 40's (when cloth was the norm): 18 months. Average now? 36 months. Pull-ups be damned. Girl-Mini started using the potty on her own before she turned two.  Boy-Mini needed a little more encouragement, but was going full time at 2.5 with NO accidents. (That said, kids are ready when THEY are ready.)
2. (It has to be said.) The environment doesn't like disposable diapers. It just doesn't.
1. Cloth is cuter than disposables. Infinitely cuter. That's what's clearly important here, right?

Okay. I kid. (Sort of.) Before Mother Nature bitch slaps me with extreme weather or something else awful for placing her in the number two spot, I'll admit, I do it for the earth. Landfills are icky. I started off with disposables on boy-Mini and I had this awful guilt ridden feeling every time I threw one in the trash. I can't imagine how much waste/pollution/etc. is produced in the factories that make them, too. A dear friend suggested cloth and I initially scoffed at it (pins near a wiggly baby seem like the worst idea ever) but then discovered via the internets how far cloth has come. Bright colors instead of boring white, snaps instead of pins. And no plastic pants!

Even though my two minis are long potty-trained, I've become the resident expert among my friends in regards to cloth. This makes me feel like some sort of amazing earth-mother-goddess instead of the slacker-facebooker that I really am. My Southern friends can't quite get behind cloth (this is unsurprising). West Coast, however, is all.over.it. These girls want to know all the deets, from what brand to how many to buy to washing.  Sometimes there is SO much info out there about cloth, it can be overwhelming.  I'm sorry to add to the onslaught.  However, here's the lowdown for our personal experience:

We used Coolababy pocket diapers. I'm about to come out of the cloth closet and admit, this is shady and very un-crunchy in terms of cloth diapering. They ship from China (uhhhh), have PUL and fleece covers, and microfiber inserts (as opposed to something organic like bamboo or hemp). But guess what. They work. Well. They are incredibly similar to some very pricey, top of the line diapers for a fraction of the price. For someone like me, who was a little unsure of taking the cloth leap, they were perfect for my first Mini, and I loved them so much, the second one got them too. They come with snaps or velcro, but every time I was something or another with velcro, I end up with one big ball of clothes in the wash. So, snaps it is. They are one-size-fits-all. All EXCEPT newborns, despite what they say. So, teeny tiny babes need prefolds or flats and covers. Or newborn sized pocket diapers. That's that.

Anyway... washing... this seems to be what stresses cloth-virgin-moms out the most.

I whip one of those stinkers off the baby, dump anything gross in the toilet (and if it's not dumpable, it's gotta get scraped off - diaper sprayers work too), and stick that bad boy in a tupperware-type storage container on top of the washer. Then, every couple of days, the inserts come out and the whole lots gets tossed into the washer. One quick wash, and then one serious wash with an extra rinse. No fabric softener (repels water) and no diaper rash cream (also repels, but this is pointless to mention, because cloth babies are much less likely to have diaper rash). Because of the fabric on the outter layer (PUL), hot water and the dryer are both no-no's. So, warm water, and just the inserts go in the dryer. Ta-dah! Done.

We have 18 diapers in regular rotation and do laundry every 2-3 days. Really, much longer than that, and those diapers in the pail would have some SERIOUS stank issues. And that's when cloth diapering gets skeevy. So, I tell everyone, about 16-24 for a baby, and about 12 prefolds for a newborn (With the notion of doing laundry a little bit more. I know. I just said you should do even more laundry with a newborn. Points for honesty?)

There are plenty of cloth diapering mommas I know who use disposables at night or when traveling.  We did both at first with my first Mini, but not at all for the second.  I felt comfortable with cloth by then.  But if you feel like you need to do a few supplemental sposies with cloth, so be it.  If you are using cloth even part time, you are helping the environment just a little bit more than not.  And I'm sure Mother Nature thanks you for it.

Boy-Mini is five.  By the end of this year, he will have lived in five states in the few short years he's been on this earth. 

Girl-Mini is two. By the time she's three in just a few months, she will have lived in three states.

Such is the life for a couple of military brats. 

As a stay-at-home momma, my Minis consume my life.  I would love to spend my days sewing, painting, reading and writing.  In reality, I'm forever cooking, cleaning, dressing, bathing, wiping, driving, praising, reprimanding, teaching, hugging, kissing, snuggling, singing, and really? I wouldn't have it any other way.  For an entire year, I've done this without assistance from Hubs, as he's spent and entire year either deployed or TDY.  Other mommas tell me they couldn't do it.  But we do.  And really, we love it.  Time apart is shit.  But webcam sessions, phone calls and wonderful reunions are THE SHIT.  You know what I mean.

This is our life.