Fun at the Fair!

Everything is more fun with kids.  Seriously.

I am a sucker for my kids.  The fair recently came to town and we took our girls.  3 or 4 times.  Isabel LOVED it.  Alison, not so much.

We had a blast eating all kinds of super unhealthy, super expensive food and checking out all the tractors...

Isabel loved looking at all the animals.  One lady was nice enough to let Isabel in with her calfs.  I'm constantly amazed by how daring my little lady is.  Isabel isn't afraid of anything.  Spiders, frogs, bugs, cows...

Isabel even got to ride the rides with Daddy and Grandpa Bonk.  Poor Alison got stuck with Mom and Grandma.

We sure had a blast and are really looking forward to next year.  One word of advice though, bring your cell phone.  We lost my Mom and spent 45 minutes looking for her.  I don't know how people got around 20 years ago!  Thanks T-Mobile!!

Holy Moly, that guy has no braces! And 4th of July Fun....

After four long years Dave has finally gotten his braces off!  He's pretty excited to make an appearance at the corn festival and eat all kinds of corn on the cob.  Look at those pearly whites!

I was pretty excited for the 4th this year because I couldn't wait to see Isabel with the fireworks.  It was worth the wait.  She was adorable and not afraid, at all!  We had lot's of fun and she only burned her hand slightly on one of her sparklers.  Mother of the year award goes to....well not me.  

This post is obviously late like all my other posts but I just wanted to take a minute and express my gratitude for the meaning behind the Fourth of July.  I'm so very grateful that I have been blessed to live in this country.  I'm incredibly grateful that I have the freedom to choose how I raise my children and how I live my life.  I read things about the terrible violence and hunger that abounds elsewhere in the world and it makes me realize just how blessed I am.

I don't have to worry about my child dying from malaria because I don't have access to a simple mosquito net.  Or contracting a waterborne illness because I can't provide clean water.  As I watch my children bathe in a tub full of clean water or refuse to eat delicious healthy food I'm forever grateful that they will never know the hardships that so many face.  I will strive to make sure that they are always aware of just how blessed we are to live in this beautiful country.

Happy Birthday, America!

Elimination Communication?

I've had quite a few people ask about this strange thing that I'm doing with Alison.  It's called Elimination Communication or EC.  You can learn a little more about it here.  Elimination Communication is the process by which a baby, apparently from birth, recognizes the urge to go potty and communicates that urge.  I had heard about this practice when I was pregnant with Isabel but thought that it was just a bunch of hippy mumbo jumbo so I elected to go with cloth diapers instead.

When Alison was born she used to cry for hours apparently for no good reason.  Then one day my Mom mentioned a guy that she works with at Intel whose wife practices EC and said that his babies were fully potty trained before age 1.  I was intrigued and thought I'd give it a try.  I was willing to do anything to make the crying stop.  It was pretty obvious to me when Alison needed to poop so the next time she gave the signal I took her to the potty and she went.  She was about 6 weeks when we started.  I began keeping her diaper off so that I could learn how often and when she went pee and start to train a potty cue.  I learned that she pee's immediately after waking, and in pretty regular intervals throughout her awake time.  She doesn't have a regular schedule for pooping but she will let you know if she has to go by kicking her legs frantically or crying, or if she's eating she will stop and give me a great big smile.  Magically as soon as the pottying in the toilet starting the crying ended.  It's understandable really, would you want to poop in a diaper?

So, she's 5 months now and she mostly goes in the potty.  She never has poopy diapers and only a few pee diapers during the day when I'm not paying enough attention to her.  She's transformed into a pretty easy going happy girl.  We are so relieved that we were able to figure out what was going on with her.  Yes, it's a lot of extra work to be really tuned in to her and she can't sit on the potty by herself so sometimes it's time consuming but it's pretty worth it I think.  Plus, we can skip over the whole spray solids out of the cloth diaper thing this time around which is a pretty big bonus if you ask me. :)

Please feel free to ask any questions, and feel free to call me a crazy hippy if you like.  Although I didn't vote for Barack the second time around so I'm pretty sure that has banned me from hippy status.

Isabel, the Photographer

Can I just say that motherhood really is like a mirror reflecting your every move back at you?  Isabel is constantly throwing out comments that are directly linked back to me.  Some of the many are:

"That's dish-gushting!"

"I got an i-deeya"

"She's pretty cute huh" When referring to Alison

and my personal favorite, "You're the cutest girl in the whole world!!"

Recently Isabel has been obsessed with my camera.  I gave in and let her take a picture of me with it.  Soon after she snapped the picture she looked at the view finder and said, "That's cute".  I do this.  Seriously, I snap the picture then pull the camera back to look at the shot and say, "That's cute".  Luckily Dave was there and he caught the whole thing on camera.  So cute.  Here are the shots that she thought were so cute.  She's pretty amazing with a camera. ;)