Holiday Fun Weekend: Running Through the Sprinkler

These photos sum up our weekend. Hot holiday. Lots of naked sprinkler time (for SuperBoy, that is). Lots of lounging around for the rest of us. And just loving that it is cooler now. And then SuperBoy ran afterwards, like the dickens. Because that’s what you do on a hot July day, right? Happy belated 4th!    

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Our New Garden Part 2: Growing from Seed Can Work!

So I was the skeptic, I’ll admit it. Somehow I envisioned AA’s seed-started garden as a small assortment of very very small plants. Instead, we’re living in our own CSA. Check out the beginning photos of our new garden here {Our New Garden Part 1} and our grand plans for it here {Prepping for Your Garden: When Is It Too Early To Plan?}. Yeah, I’m always writing about compost and how great it is, so check these posts out too if you need a little inspiration on turning your kitchen scraps into your garden’s dream boat (what’s that phrase about one man’s trash being another’s treasure? Literally.) here {Our Compost Is Lovely} and here {Composting for Beginners}. A girlfriend asked about our garden yesterday, and…

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Celebrating 2 Years of SuperBoy and 10 Lessons

SuperBoy is 2 years old. I cannot imagine life without him. We celebrated with a small party of his three best friends and his little cousins–and a few of his big people friends. I made delicious agave sweetened dairy free cupcakes. Num! In celebration of his first birthday, I wrote this post {5 Changes in the Last Year}. I’ve learned even more about parenting, SuperBoy, and myself in the last year. They can be summed up in these 10 lessons: 1) I’ve learned that parenting is a continually changing experience. Some days you love it. Some days you hate it. Some days you want to move and leave no forwarding address. Most days your heart is full of love. And, once a parent, always a parent.…

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When Your Infant Screams and Screams and You Do Too (Inside)

Do you have a newish baby? Is this your first? Are you finding that after about 2 weeks, suddenly your little angel finds a screaming tone, a crying hue, a little bit of the ability to drive you to despair? I had forgotten this phase, but certainly remembered and rediscovered it with SweetPea. She’s a remarkably calm and easy going baby, way more so than SuperBoy at her age (and I thought he was easy). But every now and then she SCREAMS and it is terrifying. Run through the list: Hungry? (remember babies can cluster feed so if you feel like you just nursed or gave a bottle, she could be hungry again) Burp? (see here for my post on how to get those burps…

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Drawing and Imagination: Getting Toddlers Jumpstarted

It is amazing how providing SuperBoy with the tools and toys of drawing have ignited his imagination. He drew a circle for the first time the other week with a close family friend’s help. And then he did an oval on his own. It’s a pretty wild oval, but it’s still in the family of circle, right? Now he loves to draw circles all day long–on his easel, with sidewalk chalk, on the walls of the tub with his washable crayons! Between his easel and these baseball cards my mom got for him–he’s all set! He likes to separate them into matching piles, and call out which are which. He asks for his “baseball guys” all the time. He even wants to nap with them.…

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Getting to the Bottom of Your Child’s Food Sensitivities

SweetPea is almost 10 weeks old, and we’re finally getting to the bottom of her food sensitivities. I wrote about my elimination diet a few weeks back here {Elimination Diet: SweetPea Protests Something in My Breastmilk}, and have written on our son’s eczema here {Dry Winter Skin} and here {Infant Eczem: The Scourge of Winter} and about his allergies here {What Do You Do When You Find Out Your Toddler Has a Peanut Allergy}. SuperBoy is also allergic to eggs, but I’ll write about that separately. After following a strict elimination diet that meant I ate chicken, fruit, veggies, Udi’s gluten-free granola, and a variety of rice products, and then carefully and watchfully reintroducing foods one at a time, we know the culprit. Not to draw it out, but…

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