Abe at Seven Months (plus Gus' August pics)

Seven months! I think I've officially abandoned his white t-shirt AND using his nursery as the default photo shoot location. It was cloudy again, and it's much easier to get decent light in the sunroom.

His six month check-up happened after I did his six month post, so his stats from that, for posterity (because this is the closet thing the poor kid has to a baby book) are that he weighed 17 pounds, 14 ounces and was 26 inches long. This puts him in the 25th percentile for height and around 50th for weight, and makes him my only baby who's been under 20 pounds at 6 months (Milo hit 20 pounds before 4 months). My fat little peanut. He can still squeeze into 3-6 month clothes, but the next size up fits him better now.

Apparently they changed all the rules since last time I had a baby, and now 6 month old babies can already eat practically everything! So he's already tried stuff like yogurt and eggs. He won't eat much of anything if I try to feed him, but does pretty well for Dave.

Trying to crawl is definitely the biggest thing in Abe's life right now. He'll flip over onto his hands and knees any time he's sitting down, try to move forward, get frustrated when he can't (or can't very far or without enormous effort anyway), and then collapses onto his stomach in angry tears. Repeat endlessly. He's getting good at pulling up on things, too. Our days of peace and immobility are very limited.

We've got separation anxiety and fear of strangers setting in now, too. He wants me or some other
immediate family member all the time.

But he's also mostly a very happy baby, babbles adorably, and has a deep baby belly laugh that's utterly charming. He's starting Music Together classes next week, which should go well with his lifelong love of music.

Apparently I'm pretty into black and white lately. Which is sort of a return to my roots.

I finally got nice, toothy grins this month!

So good at standing on his big chunky legs!

I like this one because it shows how he's really playing these days. Putting things into the barn, taking them out. When he's not grumpy, he can play by himself for a decent amount of time.

And it was Gus' month for big kid photos. He got a haircut later that same day :)

The World is Too Full of Rugs

I feel like I'm referencing a poem with that title, but, if I am, I don't know which one it is.

(a ha! I googled. I knew it sounded familiar! Wordsworth:

THE world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers:
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!

Yeah, buying a rug is not really much like that. Well, maybe. I feel like I have laid waste my powers with online rug shopping. A little. I still have some powers. And I haven't given my heart away to any particular rug yet. That's what this post is for!)

Where was I?

Ah yes.

Last time I bought a rug, I bought it out of weariness and desperation. It worked out okay; I still like my weariness and desperation rug:

But, as I mentioned the other day, I've been thinking my foyer is looking a little rugless....and this time I thought it might be better to approach rug buying with a bit more intentionality than last time.

To that end, I have taken the extraordinary steps of thinking about what kind of rug I might want and spending some time narrowing down my options. It's been sort of a revolutionary day for me.

And, it turns out, this is a fun thing to do! Particularly when you're not in a rush to buy a rug before your baby learns to crawl. So excited am I by my potential foyer rugs that I've decided to share them right here on my blog and solicit opinions.

This is the what the foyer looks like with a naked floor:

I measured that space between the door and the wall and then over to where the stairs start, and it's around 6 by 7 feet. So I've been looking at 4x6 and 3x5 rugs, mostly.

I didn't really have much sense of what kind of rug I wanted going in to my search. Something fairly flat since the door will have to open over it. But I was pretty open as far as style, color, etc. I just kind of went through different sites and bookmarked things that appealed to me that I thought might work well in the space.

I bookmarked one million rugs, then showed them all to Dave when he got home, and we narrowed it down a bit. I present, in no particular order, the frontrunners!

Urban Bungalow: Rugs USA

I was a little surprised to find myself gravitating toward black and white rugs. This is a wool flatweave rug, 3'6" by 5'6". After the 50% discount code, it would be $103.50. 

Hand woven Moroccan Dhurrie: Overstock.com

This one's a bit of an outlier because it's green! Also might be too similar to the rug in the sunroom, pattern wise. It's another wool flatweave (I think they're all flatweave). $65.99, 3x5.

Amethyst Avira: World Market

I kind of thought I'd wind up going purple when I first started looking. Another 3x5 wool flatweave. I just realized this one is $149, though, which makes it considerably pricier than any other option. But World Market has a lot of sales.

Plum&Bow Amelia: Urban Outfitters

This is one that I like, but no one else in my house does. Because they're all BOYS! Anyway. Only $44. This one's cotton.

Zig Cotton Dhurrie: Serena and Lily

Also cotton. It's clearance priced right now at $78.99.

I won't reveal my favorite. Or my current favorite, anyway. I go back and forth. Which would you pick?

Linking with:

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A More or Less Free Mirror for the Foyer

We're still kind of finding our groove with getting projects done now that Dave is back at work, so I just have a tiny one for you today. But free! Or, well, upcycled? That's what you say, right? I did not leave my house for any of the materials used in this project, is what I'm getting at.

Background: after I Sharpied squirrels all over my foyer, I hung up some thrift store pictures I had, but I was never really happy with them:

Those are Joan Walsh Anglund prints that remind me of my childhood, but still don't look good with silver squirrels, no matter how much nostalgia they evoke (I used to draw mouths on all the people in my Joan Walsh Anglund books with crayon when I was a kid. Because Joan Walsh Anglund doesn't believe in mouths, and apparently I thought this was a little creepy. And maybe I still do. No mouths?! Why?! The stuff of horror movies.)

I wanted a mirror there. And at one point I bought one that I was going to paint and hang up there, only I wound up hanging it up in my bedroom, over The Most Beautiful Chair in the World Instead:

But! Back when we redid Ari's desk, we saved the mirror that we took off it and stuffed it in our laundry room closet:

So, when I was looking for a quick, cheap project the other day, I whipped the mirror back out to make over for the foyer.

First I leaned it up against the foyer dresser so Abe could look at himself in it:

Then I took off those little knob things that used to connect it to the desk (although they're sort of cool; I like the shape. I wish I could think of something to do with them. To make my upcycling even more complete!)

Then I taped up the glass while Abe played with my frog tape:

A coat of primer:

For some reason, I decided that the perfect place for this project was right in the middle of the kitchen floor, blocking the doorway to the dining room.

I'm all about finding places to use up paint samples, so I whipped out the Gray Owl that we rejected for the kitchen (and seeing how very close to white it looks on the mirror very much reassured me that we'd made the right choice. It would not have worked in the kitchen at all, I don't think).

A coat of Gray Owl:

...and then I put a layer of finishing wax on it (also already in my house!)

It didn't have a hanger on the back, of course, since it had been attached to the desk, so Dave broke out our seemingly bottomless picture hanging kit (seriously; we've had that thing for a decade now, I think, and it's never run low), and strung a wire across the back:

And then we hung it up!

It makes the foyer look very bright. Of course, the foyer IS very bright.

I got so into taking the pictures that I had to open the front door and go outside to take some so that I could get the whole dreser in there. The resulting pictures really make it clear how much we need to paint that hallway back there. And also I think the foyer needs a rug.

Linking with:
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The Lazy Parent's Guide to Cloth Diapering

Back before my now 12 year old, Ari, was born, I would tell people we were planning to use cloth diapers and encounter skepticism. "That won't last!" older, more experienced parents would tell me. Naturally, I took this as a challenge.

So, from the beginning, failure wasn't an option. Admitting defeat is not something I'm good at.

In light of this, it was a relief to discover that....cloth diapering really isn't that big of a deal.

I mean, I never knew any different. We put Ari in cloth as soon as he came home from the hospital, and never looked back. When Abe came along, he spent a couple of weeks mostly in disposable diapers because he was so relatively tiny that he seemed to be drowning in all the cloth diapers I had. I was utterly horrified by how much we spent on disposable diapers and how much trash we generated during those couple of weeks.

Plus cloth diapers are cuter.

There is a LOT of information out there in internet land about cloth diapering. One could get overwhelmed.

My way is not overwhelming. This is not to say that it is the only way or the best way, of course....but I've put diapers on four baby bums at this point, and they all still seem okay, so....this is the non-overwhelming, uncomplicated, lazy "system" that works for us.

Advance warning: There will not be a bunch of pretty pictures of neat stacks of beautiful diapers, because my method involves messy piles tossed in a drawer. This is too bad, because I really like neat stacks of beautiful diapers. But they tend to make me want to buy more diapers, so it's just as well.

Okay, without further preamble, here's how we do diapers around here:

1. All pocket diapers, all the time: I've messed around with other options, but I always come back to pocket diapers. I was fortunate enough to have my first baby right around the same time pocket diapers were hitting it big, so I've always been able to rely on them. The idea is you have a waterproof outer layer and a fleece inner layer, and then a pocket in between into which you stuff an insert. The fleece wicks the moisture away from the baby into the soaker in the middle. When you change the baby, you pull the insert out and then toss both parts in your diaper pail.

I like pocket diapers because they keep babies dry. A wet baby is a sad baby, in my experience. Now you might say, "oh, but I will change the baby the second the pee touches him, so it doesn't matter what kind of diaper I use!" But sometimes babies pee when they sleep. And, if they are like my babies, this can wake them up if they're not wearing a diaper that magically wicks the pee away from their skin. And things that wake up sleeping babies are BAD things. Evil things. So we can see, through basic logic, that non-pocket diapers are evil. Or, well, anyway, I like pocket diapers best.

I've used Fuzzibunz with all 4 of my kids, and I still love them lots. But there are plenty of other brands these days, too, and most of them are fine. I was very, very lucky to get almost all of Abe's diapers as hand me downs from friends this time around (I even have some that I used for a couple of my kids, passed on to friends, and have now gotten back for Abe), so I've bought very few new diapers for him. Some of the brands I have in rotation at the moment are Fuzzibunz, Green Acres Designs, Blueberry, and Swaddlebees. You can get sized diapers or one-size diapers that adjust with an elaborate system of snaps to fit newborns through toddlers. I like sized diapers because they're generally trimmer fitting, but you save money by getting the one size and not having to buy new diapers as the baby grows.

2. One diaper pail, two waterproof liners: I have a metal step trashcan that I bought at Target as my diaper pail. I have two waterproof bags that I use in it. One of them I've had since one of the other kids was in diapers; the other is this Planet Wise Diaper Pail Liner. When the pail's full (every 2-3 days, usually) I dump the diapers and the bag in the washer and put the other bag in the pail.

3.  Wash them pretty much like regular clothes, only hotter: I'm going to talk about poop for a minute here. Right now Abe's still eating almost no solid food to speak of, so his poop is not very solid. Once it is, I'll dump anything dumpable out in the toilet before I put the diaper in the diaper pail. Here's how I wash diapers:

(that tile? In my laundry room? We did not pick that out. It came with the house. Complete with broken parts and sparkly star stickers.)

The only thing I do differently from any other load of laundry is a pre soak and washing on hot. I use regular detergent. If I notice things getting stinky, I toss some vinegar in the next time I wash diapers. The end.

Then--and here's something I do differently (and more lazily) now than with my first couple of babies--I put them all in the dryer. I used to hang my diapers to dry. But then I noticed that the care instructions for Fuzzibunz actually tell you to put them in the dryer. So I tried it. And it was all fine. So I kept doing it. And, as I've mentioned, some of those diapers have made it through four or five kids in two different families now and are still hanging in there.

4. Sort them and toss them in a drawer: Sometimes, if I'm feeling really ambitious, I put the inserts in the diapers when they come out of the dryer, before putting them away. Lots of times I don't. Our nursery dresser/changing table has a big drawer in the middle divided into three sections. One section gets diapers, one gets stuffers, one gets wipes, the extra diaper pail bag, whatever I can't fit in the other two sections. It looks like this:

See? Nary a neat stack of diapers to be seen. But it works! It takes me less than five minutes to sort through the laundry basket and put them all away. I've actually timed it.

I have a little basket that I put a few diapers and wipes in to keep in the downstairs bathroom. I have a smaller waterproof bag for down there that I put the dirty diapers in and then bring up when it's full:

(I have a cover for that changing pad, but it was in the laundry)

5. Baby wash cloths from Target: you can buy really adorable cloth wipes on Etsy or wherever. Or you can make your own. Or you can buy a few packs of baby wash cloths on clearance at Target and call it a day:

(I have a cover for that changing pad, too. It's kind of nice, even. Minky. Too bad you can't see it).

I wet these with....umm, water. And that's that.

So there you have it. My secret to amazing my extended family with my cloth diapering longevity despite not having much of a work ethic when it comes to laundry! And I did some very official figuring, and concluded that we've spent one billion dollars less than we would have with disposables and single handedly saved the world by using cloth. You're welcome. (I am kidding, by the way. Everyone knows the cloth diapers have to be made from 100% organic hemp to really save the world. Also not using the dryer helps).

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Foster Dog of the Week: Pumpkin

I don't really expect my new foster almost every week streak to keep up, but so far they've all been in and out of here super fast. Which is great, since the sooner one foster gets adopted, the sooner I can get to work finding a home for the next one (and the lower the chances I'll get so attached I won't be able to let them leave!)

So, in the interest of maximum publicity for my newest foster, I present, in a rare weekend blog post, Pumpkin!

Gus named this one :). He's a poodle or a poodle mix, about 10 pounds, and, according to the shelter he came from, around 2 years old. He's very sweet, cuddly, and playful. Loves all dogs--tries desperately to play with both my 19 pound beagle and my 55 pound sheepdog (the latter with hilarious results). He annoys the cats very noisily (he has quite a bark for such a tiny guy), but we're working on that. I'm not sure he'd ever met cats before. And this one's actually still available! I haven't put him up on Petfinder yet; I'm guessing he'll go fast once I do. So if you're in Georgia and you're looking for an itty bitty dog (or you know someone who is), let me know!

More pictures:

And since bloggers love a good before and after, here's what he looked like fresh from shelter, before he went to the groomer:

This and That.....

Dave is still working on his massively detailed post on how to build a farmhouse table. And I have a small project to write about, but the weather is not cooperating for taking pictures. So here's a catch up post with a bunch of little things that don't need their own posts but that I want to tell everyone about anyway.

House things:

1. If you were this ceramic hen/rooster pair, what color would you want to be, and where (in my house) would you want to live?

2. I have finished assembling my collection of mismatched kitchen chairs! All of them are from thrift stores except for the one metal chair from Overstock.com (I bought a set of four of these, and had been planning to use them all in the kitchen. Until I changed my mind. Now 2 of them are in the sunroom, one is Ari's desk chair, leaving one left for the kitchen). Most of them were eight or nine dollars. The most expensive one was that shiny one on the far end; I paid a whole fifteen dollars for it.

Now I have to decide how to paint them. I was originally thinking of a mint or light aqua, but I don't think that's quite right for the space. Then I was thinking of different kind of green, like maybe Benjamin Moore's Guilford Green.

But THEN I started thinking that I want to be able to move the table and chairs out to the sun room whenever the big kitchen redo happens (part of that plan is a big island with stools to replace the kitchen table), and I want to be able to do that without repainting them all. Because I suspect painting six chairs will be a little tortuous. So now I'm thinking a nice turquoise might work well in both rooms. Thoughts? What's your favorite turquoise?

I also need to reupholster three of them. I didn't really want to buy chairs with fabric, but it turns out that finding six random chairs (that AREN'T windsor chairs, because I already have ten of those for the dining room. Only one of them actually is a windsor chair after all. But a little different) is a more difficult task than I thought....beggars can't be choosers and all. And now! Excuse to buy awesome fabric!

Life things:

1. Dave is back to work, so we're back to doing school. Sigh. I already miss summer.

2. The church behind our house seems to have gotten (repaired?) a new bell. It chimes every hour, and it's lovely.

3. Gus auditioned for Willy Wonka at the children's theater place down the street and was cast as Augustus Gloop, even though he does not look like this:

4. Foster dog #2 has already come and gone (though there is a chance he could come back; the woman who adopted him has allergic reactions to some dogs. No word  yet. fingers crossed)! Those scruffy little terriers are in high demand. Here is Rooster:

5. This week is our easing back into the fall routine week. Next week everything gets crazy. More about that in separate posts, I think. We'll be very busy. Which is generally a good thing. Lazy summers make us appreciate crazy busy school years and vice versa.

Rainy Chattanooga Trip

I know we're probably all pretty nostalgic for my summer Disney series that I finished last week ;), so I thought I'd ease you back into the whole boring fall routine (I know it's still firmly summer for a lot of you, but Dave went back to work last week, so it's fall to us) with one more summer travel post. I'm very considerate that way. Also, I've been meaning to post these ever since we went to Chattanooga, which was over a month ago now.

Dave's mom (henceforth known as Nana) came to visit last month, and we decided to mix things up a little and spend a couple of nights in Chattanooga while she was here. Nana had never been to Chattanooga! (trip courtesy of Nana--thank you, Nana!)

We stayed at the Residence Inn downtown. We'd stayed there a couple of times before, but not for years. The location is amazing: very close to the aquarium, the children's museum, the baseball stadium, the river, tons of restaurants, etc.

We left the morning of July 2 and got to Chattnooga around lunch time (it's a 2 hour drive for us, so perfect for weekend trips). We ate at the Terminal Brewhouse, a relatively new restaurant/brewpub in a cool old building right next door to the Chattanooga Choo Choo:

After lunch, we spent some time walking around the Choo Choo grounds (this is an old train station converted into a hotel. You can stay in actual train cars or....really dated 70's hotel buildings that have been added. We've tried both). Ice cream was involved.

In a room off the lobby, there's some paisley wallpaper. Dave loves paisley, so I took a picture:

I spent much of the trip forcing everyone to pose for pictures. Like in the lobby of the Chattnooga Choo Choo:

These are new! Bike rentals everywhere downtown:

Next stop was Ruby Falls, a few miles away from downtown, on Lookout Mountain. It's really, really scary to go there, because you have to drive part way up a MOUNTAIN. Umm, for me it is really, really scary, at least.

Then you go way down underground in an elevator and walk around in a cave, looking at cave stuff, until you get to "the tallest commercial underground waterfall in the United States." Which does not actually sound that impressive to me, but I guess they're pretty proud of it because they tell you that. Anyway, the first few minutes underground are also really scary because maybe you're afraid the whole mountain is going to collapse on your head. But then you get used to it and stop panicking quite so constantly.

Baby underground:

So you get to the waterfall, and they do a big dramatic thing where the lights are off, and then they turn them on, and it's SO TALL and amazing. Like this. With colored lights:

But if you try to take a picture of your kids in front of the waterfall, this happens:

(I don't think Milo actually was as angry as he looks here)

The part that blew my mind is when our guide told us that they have no idea where the water comes from. They've tried to figure it out by putting dye in the water of various streams above ground and stuff, but, yeah...no luck. This made me start thinking again about how maybe the mountain was going to collapse on our heads, because if they don't even know where that water comes from how do they know it's not slowly destabilizing the whole place?!

But we made it back out right before it collapsed (just kidding. As far as I know that STILL hasn't happened) and survived to check out the TERRIFYING look out tower:

And on the way out, this sign was really crying out for a forced group picture:

The next day we were supposed to go to the aquarium and then go see the fireworks over the river. Only the fireworks were rained out, so we only did the first thing.

I already talked a lot about the Tennessee Aquarium here, so I won't rehash the whole thing. We had fun. We posed for group pictures (well, I didn't. I took them instead):

And we watched a diver get eaten by a shark.

I'm just kidding again. She didn't get eaten. They have another diver stand next to her with this stick to make the sharks go around her instead of eating her:

So there you have it. Our summer travel: completed!