T-shirts for Tucker

Today my amazing sister-in-law (Lena's twin sister), Addie, gave birth to her first baby. Lena was there, along with Addie's husband, Max, to welcome Tucker to this world. He weighed 6 lbs., 12 oz, and, according to Lena is both perfect and incredibly cute. I can't wait to meet him and see Addie in her blissed out new mama state.

To busy myself in Lena's absence last night, I started working on decorating some of the baby t-shirts from my dyeing day earlier this week. It felt like the only way I could participate in the birth from 100 miles away. While I cut fabric and stitched it on to the tiny T's for Tucker, I imagined him moving easily through Addie's pelvis and out onto his mama's chest.

As tiny as these t-shirts are, they likely will fit the little one more like a dress at this point. But I think they'll fit perfectly right around the time when it gets hot enough for him to wear them.




This morning, when I was showing the shirts to the boys, my little bird-obsessed toddler got insanely jealous about the bird t-shirt. So I made one for him today while he napped. He loves it.I will definitely be making more of these. It was incredibly satisfying work. Kind of like having babies.

Congratulations to Addie and Max! Welcome Tucker!

One Year Later

Today, just like in the brilliant story book, Once Upon A Potty, Zeben received a package in the mail. And in this package was something strange and new. It was neither a hat nor a frisbee nor a basketball hoop. It was a Baby Bjorn Toilet Trainer. Though its name might lead you to believe otherwise, this product does not actually toilet train your child. It's actually an insert that you put into the big toilet to make the hole a more appropriate size for a tiny bum. Zeben was not especially impressed at first. But once he got around to trying it out, he was quite pleased indeed.


After documenting this special milestone, as any proud mother would, I decided to look back through photos of Zeben's earlier potty days. Because while this was Zeben's first time trying out a toilet insert, he is not exactly a novice in the potty department.
Soon after Zeben was born, we began holding him over sinks and letting him pee there, rather than in a diaper. He also grew accustomed to using a little potty, and even preferred it to using diapers (wouldn't we all). I wasn't exactly a pro at elimination communication, as it's called, but I did feel like I learned how to communicate with Zeb about his elimination needs, and we were rather successful for a few months. However, once Zeben started crawling, he wanted nothing to do with sitting on the potty. By 8 months, he was back to using diapers full-time. It wasn't until recently that he began to show renewed interest in his elimination and he seemed willing to try the potty again. Anyway, I found this picture of Zeben's first time sitting unassisted on his Baby Bjorn Little Potty. He was exactly 4 months old.

And purely by coincidence (I swear!), he was wearing the same exact t-shirt then that he wore today when trying out the big toilet for the first time. How crazy is that? Clearly, in some ways, we're in the same place now as we were a year ago. Zeben, sitting on yellow Baby Bjorn potties wearing his red dragon shirt. But when I look at the picture of that chubby little baby, it is hard to believe it's the same Zeben. What a difference a year makes.

Teething Update

Zeb has 8 teeth now. He's still drooling up a storm, so there could be more to come in the next week or so. But he's been sleeping better and nursing less and I think we may have survived this round of teething insanity. 12 more to go.

The First Time

Today was the first time, in a loooong time, that it was warm enough to be outside in just a t-shirt. It was the first time since the fall that we left the heat turned off in our house all day (even though it still never got warmer than 62° inside). I guess spring always feels like a lot of newness, what with birth happening all around you. But I think it feels especially new when you've got little ones to experience everything with.

Today was the first time Zeben ever wore jeans.
He looked like such a big kid.

I also bought him his first pair of crocs today. Too cute.

Lukas started riding a two-wheeler bike for the first time this past week. After spending hours upon hours glued to his pedal-less run bike, he's long had the balance part of riding a bicycle totally mastered. When Jaz started riding a regular two-wheeler last summer, Luke cheered him on with such excitement. But he didn't even want to try riding one himself. Until now. And, as is the norm for kids who have been riding balance bikes, the first ride on the two-wheeler was really not that big of a deal. He got on the bike, and rode it. But he was still quite proud of himself.
And, of course, we are proud of him too.

Note the look of peaceful satisfaction on his face. I Love It.

Jasper handed down his two-wheeler from last summer to Lukas (who is really too big for it, but he feels more comfortable on the smaller frame), and has just started riding his BIG bike (that he was too scared to try last summer) for the first time this week. He can go really fast on it.

Today was also the first time this season for eating strawberry pops on the front porch.

And, of course, it provided the perfect opportunity for the first 3-boys-together photos of the spring.

Add Some Color

The flowers in our yard are really blooming now, adding some much needed color to this grayish brown time of year. This true sign of spring has definitely boosted my mood and energy levels and given me new inspiration. After weeks of telling Lena, "I think I'll dye today" (which always drove her crazy, since she heard it as "I think I'll die today"), yesterday I finally did it. I dyed. This is the pile of clothes and diapers that needed some help in the color department:

I have dyed things (clothes, cloth bags, fabric) several times now, but not enough that I feel like I really know what I'm doing. There is always a frantic and disorganized search for directions, bins to do the dyeing in, or some forgotten ingredient. This time around, I thought I'd be well prepared, and I started getting things ready two weeks before I actually ended up doing the dyeing. But still, there was a last-minute bike ride to the grocery store for huge quantities of salt because I'd forgotten just how much was required.

Ingredients for dyeing:
- Dye (2 TBS of each color)
- Water (6 gallons per container of dye)
- Salt (1 cup per gallon of water)
- Soda Ash (the fixer, 1/3 cup per 3 gallons of water)
- Synthrapol (special detergent that makes the dye not bleed)
- Platic bins (at least 10 gallon capacity each)
- Apron
- Rubber Gloves
- Dust Mask
- Bowls/buckets for mixing
- Plastic/metal utensils for stirring the dye
- A well-ventilated space
- A sleeping baby
<-- Here I am, all decked out and ready to dye!

My least favorite part of the dyeing process is mixing the powdered dye with water. This is because my mother (a textile artist) has scared me about the toxicity of the dye in its powdered form. The dye is sold as "safe and easy," but on the container it does say that one of the ingredients has been proven to cause cancer. Once it is in liquid form, it is not so much of an issue because you can't really inhale it anymore. But when the dye is still powder, I wear a dust mask and try not to breathe.

The other challenge I was faced with this time, since it was my first time dyeing outside, was getting the warm water from the kitchen to the bins. I had a two-gallon bucket, so each bin of dye required 3 trips inside for water. Here's the dye set-up:

Adding the clothes to the dye is the most fun part, though it always feels a bit crazy and haphazard. I was also dyeing some clothing items for a few friends, and I was trying to remember which colors they wanted things as I tossed them into the various buckets. The colors I used were: sunrise red, tangerine, deep yellow, brilliant blue, and plum.

After I got everything well saturated in dye, I spent about 20 minutes going from bin to bin, stirring things up. Ideally, you would stir the dye continuously, but I just don't see how that's possible (unless you're only doing one color at a time or have more than one person doing the dyeing). Letting it sit can cause the dye to color the fabric unevenly.

The next stage involves mixing the soda ash with water and adding it to the dye baths. You are supposed to add it in three separate doses over 15 minutes, but I couldn't manage to do the math for that (2/3 cup divided by 3? I do love calculus, but I never really mastered fractions), so I decided to just add it in two doses. Soda Ash is a chemical, so I donned the mask yet again and also tried to make sure that I was upwind of the powder (which can be an eye irritant). After I got all the soda ash added, Zeben woke up. Thank goodness he didn't wake up any earlier! After a banana and some nursing, he was happy to play in the sandbox while I worked at emptying the dye bins and rinsing the dye out of the fabric.

It took a couple of hours to get everything cleaned up and in the washing machine, but there were no major spills, and I didn't even get any dye on my hands. Here is the pile of transformed items:

So much more colorful! These Hanna Andersson suits turned out great:
The one on the right was pink and white to begin with, and the one on the left was pink, white and lime. They were fine before, but I LOVE them now! And the stains are much less noticeable. I also love the way these swaddlebees pocket fitted diapers turned out:

They were all periwinkle on the outside, and natural on the inside before the dyeing. I love how a few of them ended up two-toned, and I love the way the periwinkle mixed with the dye. These Little Beetle Hemp fitted diapers also turned out really well:

They were all natural colored before, and now they're so much more fun! The dye did an excellent job covering up all the stains as well.

It was so great to go to bed last night feeling so accomplished. I think there will be more dyeing to come in the next few weeks. I have some more ideas up my sleeve, and I want to try some other colors (the only bummer this time around was that the tangerine and the sunrise red ended up being nearly identical, and the deep yellow turned out looking a bit like neon orange. It's pretty intense).

I'm also looking forward to more color outside in the weeks to come as the flowering trees and bushes get ready to bloom! This is my most favorite time of year.

7 down, 13 to go

My finger, feeling for new teeth

For the past two weeks, Zeben has been teething. Actually, I suppose he's probably technically been teething for his whole life, for the past 16 months, 3 weeks, and 1 day. But it wasn't really until a couple of weeks ago that the teething really took over our experience of life with this otherwise bouncy and chipper little guy.

There are extra tears, and extra melt-downs, and extra high-pitched screaming episodes. But the main symptom of Zeben's erupting teeth is lots and lots and lots of extra nursing. He is nursing pretty much all night long, and at least 30 times a day--no exaggeration! Aside from the occasional banana binge, Zeb is still nearly exclusively breastfed, so some part of this huge amount of time spent at the breast is certainly due to nutrition. But I never could have imagined that he could nurse as often and for as long as he has been lately. Some days he pretty much just nurses all day long. He is happy when he's nursing, and for the time being my nipples are mostly up to the task, so I guess I should just feel grateful that I have this perfect solution literally built-in to my body. But while I do feel a huge amount of appreciation for my breasts these days, there are also times when I feel a bit exasperated and fantasize about being able to temporarily remove them and leave Zeben blissfully nursing without having to hold him in my lap.

One new tooth has appeared so far, bringing the total tooth count up to 7. There are 13 more to come. Hopefully, at least a few more of them will appear within the next week or so since it's hard to fathom that all this fuss and neediness has been due to one measly little tooth.

Along with his newfound love of breastfeeding, Zeben has developed a new appreciation for his amber teething necklace. The thought behind the teething necklace is that the baltic amber is said to act as a natural anti-inflammatory and provide pain relief within the vicinity of the necklace. So, a baby wearing amber around his neck should feel some reduction in the pain associated with teething. The necklace is not meant to act as a teether itself. But Zeben doesn't know that.


I'm sure letting him gnaw on his necklace is both dangerous and likely to lead to the necklace breaking apart, but it's hard to stop him from doing anything that makes him smile these days, especially when it has nothing to do with my breasts!

Better Late Than Never?

Because we were in an airplane all day on March 20th, we missed out on our usual celebration of the Spring Equinox (the Pagan holiday, "Oestar"). This didn't come as a huge loss to me (usually we celebrate by eating an egg-rich brunch, doing an egg hunt, and by blowing out chicken eggs and filling them with birdseed (and then throwing them at trees and making a wish for spring)), and we likely would have just gone along without taking much notice if it weren't for the boys finding an abandoned plastic easter egg at the park. Clearly, this was evidence that they had missed out on one of their favorite activities. I explained that we had be in New Mexico, and we had missed the Spring Equinox this year.

"But we can still do an egg hunt, mom! Better late than never!"

I guess so.

So, on Tuesday of last week, Jasper and Zeben and I walked into town to hunt for chocolate eggs. Most of the stores had packed them away or sold out, but we managed to find a couple of bags, 50% off at our favorite chocolate store (of all places!).

It was odd to be in town with just Jasper and Zeben, pushing them in the twin stroller. I'm so used to looking down and seeing two same-sized legs and same-sized feet, and it was fun to instead see two kids of such different sizes. Zeben loved getting to sit next to his big brother. This was probably one of the last trips to town with the double stroller, though, since Jasper is definitely just about bursting out of it at this point (well, he is five afterall!).



When we got home, we quickly got to work hiding the eggs for Lukas to find when he got home from school. The rules were that the eggs had to be hidden in such a way that you could still see them without having to move anything (other than your own body).




Lukas was thrilled (to put it mildly) to get home to such a surprise. He took his job as egg hunter very seriously. Jaz stood by excitedly while Luke found all the eggs.



If the story ended now, it would have been a lovely story. Instead, as soon as Lukas had found all his eggs, Jasper decided it was his turn to be the hunter. Jaz covered his eyes in the living room while Luke got to work hiding eggs in the playroom. There was calm for all of about 20 seconds, until Jasper burst into tears because, as he said, "I can hear where you're hiding them Lukas!" Music helped to drown out the tell-tale signs of which hiding spots Luke was choosing, but Jasper's raw state didn't really improve. As he was hunting, he kept insisting that Lukas was giving him too many hints (which, honestly, is kind of true), and there were so many tears and much yelling on behalf of all three kids (Zeben got upset because he wasn't allowed to find the eggs). It was pretty miserable.

When all was said and done, we were left with a bowl full of chocolate eggs. So now I can be the mean mom who says, "no, you cannot have a chocolate egg for breakfast," and the apathetic mom who says, "sure, fine, go ahead and have your 5th chocolate egg of the day. We're not having dinner for another two minutes anyway." And of course, by the end of the week, my thoughts on egg hunts had changed from "better late than never" to something more along the lines of "we're never doing this again!"