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We got BOO’ed…

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Last evening when the girls and I returned home from Macey’s ballet class and a trip by the library, we spied an orange plastic pumpkin by our front door. Macey was quick to retrieve it as she was just sure there were goodies there for her.  The pumpkin had two Halloween baggies of treats in there – enough goodies for both girls including a stamper, erasers, stickers, candy and more. They were thrilled and we thought that was one cool surprise! Turns out, we had gotten a BOO surprise! This is a really cool neighborhood idea where treats are secretly left amongst neighbors and are passed along. We got ours yesterday and had instructions to pass along BOO treats to two other neighbors within 24 hours. Today, I made a trip by Target (love that place) to assemble our neighborhood Boo treats. Macey and I delivered two of them today after school when the recipients weren’t home. She was so excited to do that and it was fun to leave surprises for two of our neighbors. This is a FUN neighborhood activity and it’ll be really cool to see how quickly it spreads around our subdivision. If it hasn’t started in your area yet, get it started – you’ll be glad you did!!

Emerging Butterflies…

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This morning, our family has had the blessing of watching butterflies emerge from their cocoons. What an awesome experience and opportunity to remind ourselves and our girls about God’s wonders. It’s so cool!

We ordered this Live Butterfly Garden from Amazon for Macey’s birthday. We received the kit and sent away for the caterpillars. Within a couple of weeks, we got five caterpillars in a habitat with their food. When they first arrived, they were tiny little squigglers, but they soon grew. We went to the beach for a long weekend and when we got back, we had five cocoons in the habitat. Yesterday we finally moved the cocoons over to the mesh habitat so that the butterflies could fly about when they hatched. This morning at breakfast I looked up and noticed one of the cocoons moving. Sure enough, the first of the butterflies was emerging. And, we got to witness it!! How awesome!! Mickey took the habitat down from it’s hook and we put papertowels soaked with sugar water into the habitat so that the butterflies would have their food. About half an hour later, Macey and I got to watch the second butterfly emerge. She was in awe as much as I was at that point. We keep checking back to see if any of the remaining three butterflies have begun to emerge. Once they are all safely out of their cocoons, we will release them into our backyard.

This has been a terrific experience for all of us. I am so glad we found this gift for Macey’s birthday. Even Mariana enjoyed watching the caterpillars and is now enthralled with the butterflies. Mariana pointed to the mesh habitat with the cocoons yesterday and told me that the baby butterflies lived there. How cute! So, it really has been fun and exciting for the whole family.

Watching this process has been so inspiring. These caterpillars weren’t much larger than eyelashes when they first arrived at our home. And now they are beautiful painted lady butterflies. Isn’t it just incredible to watch God’s work unfold? God takes the “ugly” and transforms it into beauty. Not just with caterpillars, but with our human hearts as well. What a miracle!! Praise God for His wonders!!

My frame was not hidden from you
when I was made in the secret place.
When I was woven together in the depths of the earth,
your eyes saw my unformed body.

All the days ordained for me
were written in your book
before one of them came to be.

How precious to me are your thoughts, O God!
How vast is the sum of them!
Psalm 139:15-17

Cloth Diapering…

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When I say that I have gotten into CDs again, I don’t mean music. This time I mean cloth diapers. I started using cloth diapers for Mariana last summer and really liked it. Somehow I got away from it and started using disposables through the fall and winter. Well, I hate buying disposable diapers for a number of reasons and I had a whole stash of cloth diapers here at home, so I decided to get back to cloth diapering and it’s been great again!

I’m willing to bet that some of you reading this are wrinkling your nose and thinking “cloth diapers…ewww”, but it’s really not nasty at all. Long gone are the days when all there was to cloth diapering were white cotton diapers and safety pins. Well, it’s not actually long gone, you can still do that if you like, I suppose, because the option does exist, but there are other solutions. My favorite diapers are called Fuzzi Bunz and they are pocket diapers. What that means is that the diaper has a “pocket” in which to insert a liner for wetness protection. Fuzzi Bunz come in several sizes and colors. They fasten and are adjustable with snaps. Easy and cute. What more could you want in a diaper? The others I often use are called Bum Genius and I have version 2.0 which is last year’s version. This is a one size diaper and also has a pocket for a liner. I don’t like them quite as much as I like Fuzzi Bunz, but they pull up a close second. I’m also looking into other brands and kinds of diapers. A boutique near us just started carrying cloth and I got an email with a $5 off coupon, so I’ll be taking that in soon to see what they have. We have several diapers in Mariana’s “stash” right now – enough to keep her in two days worth of diapers between washes if need be, so that’s nice too. I’d love to have more, so I’m always looking around. It’s hard to believe that diapering can be fun, but with all the options available out there, it really IS a lot of fun. No, really…it is!

There are many benefits to cloth diapering and these are the things that I appreciate most about doing it.

  • It’s environmentally friendly. We only use a disposable on Mariana at night right now, so that is far less junk that we are contributing to the landfills.
  • Less diaper rash. Cloth is friendlier to little bottoms than plastic and chemicals.
  • More cost efficient. Sure, there are start-up costs to getting a cloth diaper supply established, but they are washable and can be used for such a long time. No running to the store every week for a pack of diapers. It’s great!
  • They’re cuter than ‘sposies. There is nothing cuter than cloth diapers on a little one’s bum. Seriously.

Another reason we decided to go back to cloth is to hopefully help with Mariana’s potty-training. We discovered back when Macey was this age that disposables aren’t the greatest for potty-training at all.  Toddlers can’t feel wetness in the disposables, so it’s hard to teach them about not wetting. With cloth, they can feel the wetness so that can help alert them better to when they need to go. While cloth does wick away the moisture, it’s not the same as disposables. No chemicals to harbor all the wetness. Mariana has shown some potty interest, so maybe (JUST MAYBE) cloth diapering will help guide us in that direction.

So, yea…I’m excited about our re-entry into cloth diapering. If anyone has any diaper recommendations, please let me know. I’d love to know more. And, if anyone has any questions about cloth diapering, please let me know that too. I didn’t go into specifics about diapering, but I’d be happy to share if anyone is interested.

Backyard Discoveries

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In cleaning up our backyard this weekend we found some pretty interesting creatures. We raked, piled and moved our leaves to the very back of our property. (About half an acre) In the raking process, we discovered lots of earth worms, grubs, sow bugs (aka – rollie polies), crickets, spiders and lots of little crawlies. Our most interesting discoveries were a baby snake that I uncovered yesterday and a salamander that we uncovered today.

We’ve been in our house for almost a year and a half now and we have had nothing but the best of intentions of cleaning up the backyard properly for ages now. The terrain back there has a ton of potential, but has some rough areas and the leaves haven’t been properly raked in ages. So, we took on the task this weekend. That’s how we discovered our little animal “friends” (I had to use the quotes because I simply cannot refer to even a non-poisonous snake as a friend) in our backyard. I wish I had gotten a photo of the snake so that I could identify him. I feel pretty confident in assuming he was non-poisonous, so that’s good. He was maybe 6-8″ long, tan in color on top and a grayish looking color underneath. And, he was fast. I didn’t take a picture of the salamander either, but I was able to identify it via National Geographic‘s website. It appears that we have spotted salamander living in our yard. Here’s a stock photo that looks pretty similar to the one we saw:

That’s a pretty cool looking critter, huh? All I saw at first was the tail as it skittered beneath our pile of leaves we were moving onto the tarp. I wanted to be sure it wasn’t another snake, so I moved the leaf pile and discovered it was a salamander. He was a pretty nice size and plump too! We got him to move away from where we were working and he burrowed into some brush near the fence.

I have to admit that it was pretty interesting and exciting making these discoveries right in our own backyard. And, yea, it was a little scary too. I have a phobia of snakes and finding that little fella as I was raking DID unnerve me, if I’m being honest, but I didn’t want to harm him at all. It’s really great living in an area that has remained pretty well wooded so that we get to see these kinds of wildlife. Our neighborhood has a great variety of wild animals including hawks, squirrels, rabbits and all sorts of birds. So, it’s great to see all of those plus make discoveries here at home!