My Life in 6 Paragraphs

My computer is insanely slow these days and uploading pictures is out of the question. So if you want to see Anastasia being cute, you will just have to come visit me! :)

We had a very nice, full weekend. Anastasia and I enjoyed our ritual of going to the farmer's market and Martin's on Saturday morning and were even invited to one of the farmer's farms. I think Anastasia will love it! As will Wendy and her kids when she comes to visit in September. Sunday we went to church, then to lunch with Andy and Heather and their kiddies and were invited over to Regina and Andrews for dinner later. Being as we gorged ourselves on Chinese, we skipped the food and just hung out and toured their amazing farm house. Regina let me borrow some of her Montessori items (like the ten-tower that I have been coveting) for Anastasia which was more than generous as I only have one kid and she has six! She also invited me over for play silk dyeing which I feel I should take advantage of as that is on my list for Anastasia's Christmas gifts and I have never dyed with anything but Rit and she is a pro.

Yesterday Anastasia and I went outside to play in the freshly mowed yard with Leia as the two of them were running back and forth across the house like crazies. I went to pick pears for us to eat today, and Leia ran across the street to our nicest neighbors (Eugene and Violet) who were enjoying time on their porch. Leia made herself at home on the porch so like responsible dog owners, we went over and spent time with them. We came home and did some leaf rubbings with crayons (okay I did the rubbings and A. stacked my flat muffin-tin crayons). We also painted a pot to but some dead branches in to make a little tree for decorating. Hopefully we can work on that today. I want to make some homemade water colors this morning but we will see how that pans out.

I put Anastasia in cloth diapers again (after a 6 month hiatus) since I will be using cloth with #2 and I might as well do both. I was also hoping it would aide in potty-training (as I have been told) and save us some money (especially if she potty-trains early. Lets be honest here and say it was a rough transition at first but I think we are finally getting back into the swing of it. The first night I tried it, Anastasia screamed when I put the diaper on her. I was really upset thinking I had just wasted $120 on toddler-sized prefolds and covers. The next day I tried again when she wasn't so tired, and I played with her to distract her for a while until she seemed not to notice... and we have been in cloth ever since. I don't care what ANYBODY says, scraping toddler poo into the toilet is DISGUSTING. My only consolation is that in reality, you are actually supposed to do the same with disposables but nobody (including me) actually does it. I guess human waste doesn't have a healthy place in landfills. Atleast my kitchen trash doesn't smell bad anymore. I also had to tweak my washing as my first load came out smelly. Overall though, I feel good about the transition as we have had some monster rashes this summer, and I finally found a combination that doesn't leak, wick or smell for night diapering. (She flooded her disposables even... all over MY bed!!!) Plus overall they smell less in the pail because I dump and rinse the poo off (which has actually gotten easier since the initial grossness). So that is the DL for those of you who are curious. No matter what anyone says, cloth is WAY cheaper than disposables... especially with the second child (all my diapers are still in perfect shape). Overall, I highly recommend them because once you get it down, its really not a big deal.

The other exciting thing for me is our new coffee-brewing caraffe called a Chemex. Our Mr. Coffee pot made our coffee taste awful, so Nick did the research and bought this bizarre coffee-making apparatus and I LOVE IT!!! It is the best coffee I have ever made at home or had at someone else's house. I love the simplicity of it, although I was skeptical at first because I don't like french-pressed coffee much. I will let Nick blog about it since it was his research and pure genius that landed us this gem at a fraction of the cost of a nice drip maker from the department store. OH AND I GOT A NEW VACUUM!!!! We went with a cheap Eureka since my not-so-cheap Hoover kirked out in less than 3 years of light activity (we have always had hardwood floors and we didn't even use it for the 9 months at my parents house.)

Anyhow, sorry about the lack of pictures. Hopefully we can finish up our "tree" activity today and get some pictures up depending on the temperment of my Verizon connection. :) Have a good week everybody!