Crystal Madrilejos

I think we paid $1 for this cuteness. (The jacket, not the boy.)

Last weekend we attended the bi-annual Kids Garage Sale at our local rec center. Twice a year you can browse, garage-sale style, an ungodly amount of baby and kid stuff all under one roof. Most of the stuff is a really great deal, especially if you hit it up towards the end. People are practically giving the stuff away just to get it out of their house! Though I have to admit, it’s a bit overwhelming. If you go with a purpose, it’s a lot easier to manage. This was our second time going and I think we made out pretty well. We got a few great outfits for Q and I think we spent less than $10 total. How awesome is this?

There are other items, but I haven’t had a chance to photograph them. But I will at some point. The cuteness is extreme around here.

-c.

Image by Smabs Sputzer via Flickr

Does anyone else have only a shower stall in their house? Has anyone else wanted to pull their hair out trying to bathe a one-year-old in a shower stall? Am I alone in my frustration with bath time?

After Q grew out of his baby bath tub we tried a few different things that worked with varying levels of success. Mostly low levels of success. We’ve tried the kitchen sink, our modified galvanized tub bathroom sink, a blow up ducky bathtub, and our recent incarnation of a bathtub being a big plastic flex tub/bucket from Target. Here are my issues:

Kitchen Sink: Too much water everywhere! Dude likes to splash and trying to rinse his hair with minimal spraying outside the sink area is nearly impossible.

Bathroom Sink: We have an unusual bathroom sink. It’s pretty much a round galvanized tub that we converted into a sink so it’s deep enough for him to bathe in. The splashing is a factor again here too especially since there is an electrical outlet right below the sink (don’t ask). Spraying is not an issue, since there is no sprayer which sucks just as much.

Blow Up Ducky Tub: This worked okay for a little while and is great if you are traveling. We took it with us to NYC with us when Q was about 7 months old. But he’s grown too big for it.

Plastic Flex Tub: This is what we are currently using and Q seems to like sitting in the brightly colored tub. But there’s no drainage so it’s basically the worst thing ever when you want to empty the water before rinsing.

Another frustrating thing about bath time is that Q seems to have an aversion to standing while bathing so it’s hard to get him rinsed well. He’ll only stand during a bath if I’m holding him up even though he is fully capable of standing on his own. This is also another reason we haven’t yet tried to just bathe him directly in the shower stall. We try to clean our shower often, but we still don’t feel comfortable with him sitting directly on the shower floor. I know there is a simple solution to this problem but it’s evading me with all it’s might.

How do you get a one-year old to stand during bath time? Is a thorough rinse even that important? What if he peed in the water? Am I over-analyzing this?

Anyone have a solution to this nonsense?

-c.

Q’s first birthday party was almost a month ago and I’m finally getting around to posting pictures. Some of you may have read my inspiration post where I was debating on the details of the big day. Well, we went with the “lots of balloons and streamers” idea in the end. It just seemed right. I love me some themed parties with fun details and cute favors for all the kids but since we decided to go all out and invite all our friends and families it seemed like doing a theme might be too much.

We had the party at Andrew’s parent’s house because our house is teeny tiny. We decided to only decorate the dining room since that was where he would be blowing out his candle.

All in all, I think we hung up more than 1000 ft. of streamers and about 100 balloons. I really thought 100 balloons would cover more area, but I’m really bad at judging such things.

We used a combination of Q’s toys and old toys from Andrew’s childhood as a center piece for the dining room table and as ways to prop up the cake stands to different levels. My sister made all the cupcakes (except for Q’s cupcake, Andrew made that. Maybe he’ll write about it in a future post. At least, I’m hoping he will).

This guy is helping set up the decorations with his handy dandy lifter. This was Andrew’s little set up.

Overall, I deemed it a success!

-c.

Today Q bit me harder than he (well anyone for that matter) has ever bit me. We were playing outside, enjoying today’s nice weather. He was playing in gravel and like most little kids, he puts a handful of small stones in his mouth. As I’m trying to swipe them out, he bites down on my index finger really hard, increasing pressure slightly with every second! He was unrelenting and I was actually sort of yelling to stop while Andrew, my sister, my brother and brother-in-law stood there in disbelief. I started to squeeze his cheeks hoping that it would distract him to stop, but he just kept biting harder. For a second, I was scared he was going to break the skin. Luckily, he let go and ended up leaving bruises and tiny, deep teeth indents. He’s been in this phase lately of biting and I know it’s normal at this age. But I can’t deny that it’s annoying as hell! And sort of scary at times.

We’ve been making Q’s food at home because:
1.) We can rest assured knowing exactly goes into his food and
2.) It’s cheaper. One jar of baby food can cost upwards of $1.00 for one serving jar. You can get a week’s worth of sweet potatoes for the same amount if you make it yourself (or even less if you grow it yourself).

We were lucky to have gotten the Beaba BabyCook and a Beaba portion freezing container as gifts for our baby shower. It makes cooking convenient, but I can imagine that it would be just as easy to do without the fancy gear. All you would need is a steaming basket, a hand blender, and ice cube trays. It also makes feeding time prep easy since you can just heat up a couple cubes as you need them.

Here are green beans from the garden for Q.

Yum!
-c.

Remember this sweater I made when I was pregnant? Quil wore it on his first outing to his Lolo and Lola’s for his Cousin Layla’s 1st birthday party.

He was so tiny!

-c.

Quil is approaching 8 months-old! I can’t believe how fast these past months have gone. I looked back at the pictures we’ve taken of him and realize there are so many baby projects that we never revisited after Q was born.

The co-sleeper is still attached to our bed and now that Q is sleeping in his crib (another project we never posted about!) I’ve gone back to using the co-sleeper as my nightstand. He slept in the co-sleeper for about two months before he grew out of it. One thing we learned—the wool side extenders weren’t necessary. They looked nice, but we ended up taking them out. He moved so little at that age and the co-sleeper was so close to the wall, there really wasn’t any possibility of him rolling out.

Here he is being cute! He slept on a Sassy Vented Sleeper Wedge (which I hear now is a no-no!) because he had reflux and having him on a incline helped.

–c.

After I made the first Q video, I decided that I’m going to try to make a video every three months. Here’s number two in the series. Enjoy!

*Update: Forgot to mention, the song is “The People Who Raised Me” by Gregory and the Hawk

–c.

I am proud to say that we have some crazy talented friends. Our great friends Toby and Angela came to visit from NYC a couple months ago and one day we sat around and made Onesies for Q. I’m pretty sure he has already outgrown them by now (he could probably squeeze into one with a paper diaper but not his bulky cloth ones), but these will definitely be going into the memory box! We used plain white Gerber Onesies and TeeJuice fabric pens.

Drawing by Toby Goodshank

Drawing by Angela Carlucci (the same lovely lady who made our wedding papercut!)

Thanks yous twos!
-c.

P.S. Andrew, my brother and I all made a Onesie, but I haven’t gotten good pictures of those yet. Will post one day…

Remember this guy?

In the months before Q was born, both Andrew and I had a surge of productivity. I think it was our collective subconscious preparing us for a drought. We’ve been fortunate that Q is a good sleeper now. After his bedtime and before he wakes is our free time and both Andrew and I have been able to work on some new projects.

I figured an update is in order for the projects that we worked on before Q arrived.

I should preface this update with the fact that the majority of the time Q wears Fuzzi Bunz cloth pocket diapers. We were lucky enough to have generous family and friends who bought us these fancy pants (since they can be on the pricey side).

In making the wool diaper covers I was preparing for the possibility that we might not be gifted any fancy diapers. In that case we would have to use the more cost friendly pre-fold cloth diapers that require a water resistant covering. There have been times when we ran out of the pocket diapers and had to use the pre-folds as a back up. Despite my initial skepticism, the wool covers work unbelievably well. The amazing thing about wool is that it repels water and absorbs moisture at the same time! If you want to read more about the wonders of wool, you can read more here.

Here is Q sporting a pair of diaper covers made from a repurposed wool sweater that I felted in the washing machine:

The crocheted cover and the knitted cover were also a success! The crocheted ones are still a bit large, but he’s already outgrown the Vanilla cover, so I’m in the process of knitting a larger size.

-c.