I mentioned that Ava has been sick this last week.  She had a nasty bout of diarrhea and I’m not sure if it was food poisoning or something else.  But luckily she’s feeling better now!

The other day, she must have overheard something I said to Chad because she came out of the bathroom and told us, “My butt just exploded in the potty!”  I almost died laughing at that one.

She was also very concerned about the combination of her current bathroom needs and our travel schedule.  From the potty, she yelled to me, “Mama?  My Mema’s have potties?” (Mema is her name for Grandma)  She was very relieved to hear that they do.  LOL

This girl is such a drama queen already…we’re going to be in big trouble when she reaches the age that she’s going to need pronexin (acne medication)!!

Call me crazy, but I’ve decided that I don’t want to use disposable diapers at all anymore….even while traveling.  I might change my mind after our trip this weekend, though!

Here’s my plan…

Flip diapers are my favorites for a variety of reasons:

1. They’re hybrid diapers, meaning they have a disposable insert option (which is completely dye-free and chemical-free).
2. They take up very little room, which is a big concern this trip since we are bringing my car and not our van.
3. I love the fit.

So the plan is to bring all our Flip covers (10), 2 packs of disposable inserts, fleece liners to go on top of them (they’re not stay-dry), and all our wipes and wipes solution.  I’m also bringing accessories like diaper rash cream and changing pads (luckily no hemorrhoid treatment). I don’t plan to be able to wash diapers while we’re up there, so this will all be for the first 2 days of the our trip.

For the last two days, I brought 21 stay-dry cloth inserts (half are Flip, half are me-made) and some doublers for night time.

I’m also bringing all our wet bags, some baking soda to sprinkle in them to control odor and some tea tree oil.  If the smell become uncontrollable for some reason, I can banish a wet bag to the car and have a different one for inside.

Hopefully I’ve thought of everything and will go really smoothly!  I’ll be sure to update when we get home!

I feel like such a blogging-dropout these last few weeks.  After Kelvin’s sickness, Ava got sick and then Kelvin started teething, so that hasn’t left much time for blogging.  And now that I finally have a few minutes to myself, we’re leaving for vacation in a few hours and I can guarantee you I won’t be updating then.  In fact, I don’t even know if we’ll have room for the laptop.  We decided to take my car instead of the van and it is packed to the gills!  We won’t even have room to bring back the patio furniture my grandparents bought for the kids!

But I have a couple post ideas to put up right now and then I hope to be back to regular blogging sometime next week after we get home!

For the last five days, I’ve had a pretty sick kiddo.  Amid nearly-non-stop diaper changes, changing puke-y pajamas and bedding, mountains of laundry, an ER visit, doctor appointments, and now another kiddo that seems like she might be getting sick, I’m barely keeping my head above water here.  Definitely no time for browsing sites like carinsurancelist.com! This morning, I looked around the house and saw things that needed to be picked up, put away, cleaned, or otherwise taken care of in every single room.  Even with Kelvin in the Moby Wrap, it’s still hard to do clutter control since it’s harder to bend down and get back up.  What to do?!

I remembered something I’d heard awhile ago.  I don’t remember if I read it on a blog, or if someone told me this, but it’s become very valuable right now.  They said that in times of stress like this, just focus on the three D’s: Dinner, Dishes, and Duds.  I would probably make that 4 D’s for our family, since we have Diapers, too.

Focusing on the three D’s isn’t something that you can do all the time….during normal times, the bathrooms still need to be cleaned, floors need to be mopped and clutter needs to be controlled.  But during a time when you’re barely keeping your head above water, these things will keep your home running smoothly until you’re able to get back into a normal routine.

**WARNING** Lots of whining ahead.  You’ve been warned.

I just need to whine for a few minutes.  Just get it out of my system.  I’m all for getting it out there to avoid a future need for wrinkle remover.  LOL

I don’t think I have ever been so exhausted in my life.  Chad has been working really hard to finish off our porch to turn it into a playroom for the kids and it’s been taking up all of his free time.  He’s either working or he’s out on the porch.  I really can’t complain, since he’s doing it for us (it’s not like he’s goofing around on his video game or something), but it’s exhausting taking care of the kids by myself for two weeks straight.  At least it’s almost done though!

Last night, I was supposed to have my monthly Moms Night Out and he ended up having to work out of town until midnight.  I feel bad whining about this, since he was the one working so late, but it wasn’t easy being home with grumpy, nap-less kids, either.  It wouldn’t have been so bad if Kelvin hadn’t woken up every few minutes all night long.  I think he was overtired because he didn’t have a nap because the kids had dentist appointments right in the middle of naptime.  But whatever it was, he was basically up until midnight.  He would fall asleep for like 3 minutes and then be awake again screaming.  I was ready to pull my hair out by the end of the night.  And also when Ava decided to get up at 5:45 am.  That was just fabulous.

Today I put the kids down for early naps so we can make it to Snack n Chat with our MOMS Club friends this afternoon.  I absolutely must be there…..my sanity depends on it!!  LOL  Speaking of which, I need to go start getting them up.

I’m very excited to report that our container garden has been started!

A little over a week ago, the kids and I spent nearly an entire afternoon planting 6 cherry tomato plants and 20 bush bean plants.  You might wonder why it took so long to plant those simple little plants.  I blame the dirt.

I bought two 1.5 cubic foot bags of soil and thought it would be enough, but it totally wasn’t.  I got 8 bean plants and 3 tomato plants in and ran out.  Off we went to Home Depot in search of more soil.  The customer service was not terrific, so it took us a long time, but we finally came home with a 2.5 cubic foot bag of soil and 2 more containers for the beans (each would hold 6 plants).  It ended up still not being enough, but Chad was nice enough to get us another small bag on his way home.  After all that running around, I definitely didn’t want to load everyone up and go back to Home Depot again (after all that activity, I definitely didn’t need to read fat burner reviews).

So now I have all the containers on the side of the house where they get lots of sun.  I considered putting them in the backyard, but all it took was Kelvin ripping a tomato seedling out of the container one time for me to realize that would not work.

I’m looking forward to the possibility of the beans coming up next week.  I think that is going to thrill the kids since they helped so much with the planting.

I used to be an early bird…..way back before I had kids.  I was most productive in the morning and couldn’t wait to get out of bed and get going.  In fact, when Chad was working for his dad and would leave for work at 4 am, I would often get up then and clean the house or do homework for school.

I would love to continue being an early riser now…I think it would be awesome to be able to exercise (no apidexin for me!) and get my day going without the company of small people first thing in the morning.  But as soon as they hear me up, both of them wake up so I don’t think that’s going to happen any time soon.

So instead I’m stuck staying up until midnight or later trying to get work done.  I’m definitely not at my best, but it’s the only time I don’t have constant interruptions.  At least the kids sleep in until 8 so I can still get some sleep…..

….until lately.

Lately, they’ve been getting up before 7, which is oh so rude when I stayed up past midnight.  Something is going to have to give.  If they’re going to keep getting up so early, I’m going to have to come up with another solution to get stuff done and not stay up so late.  I have no earthly idea what that would be, but I can’t keep drinking my weight in coffee everyday!

Any suggestions….either for rearranging my schedule or for getting the kids to sleep later?

As an avid reader, I’m always on the lookout for interesting books at great prices.  I use the library quite a bit, but there are some books that I just have to own.  Browsing through used book stores is a thing of the past now that I have small children, so I was so excited to find McKenzie Books!

McKenzie Books is an online used book store with a wide selection of categories to choose from.  The prices are very reasonable and they offer free shipping for orders over $25!  After spending just a few minutes at their site, it was pretty obvious that it would be very, very easy to get an order that qualified for free shipping….and not because of high prices.  They have so many books that I’d like to read!

One thing that sets them apart from any other used book store I’ve ever seen is their BRAIN (Books Recently Added Inventory Notice).  Basically, you can create a books wanted list and they will email you as soon as a book comes in that matches one on your list.  You can have it search for books by title, author, ISBN or even keyword!

I think this is a very valuable feature given the nature of used book stores.  It’s impossible to predict when a certain book will be available and we get busy and forget to check back in.  This does all the work for you!  Now that’s my kind of used book shopping!

Disclosure: This review was sponsored by McKenzie Books.  However, all opinions in this post are 100% mine and it was not edited by the sponsor.

Yes, this is late.  It’s barely even Mother’s Day anymore, but I couldn’t let the day pass by without acknowledging all the awesome mama’s  who read my blog!

My Mother’s Day was spent helping Chad with the big project of finishing off our porch.  We’re turning it into a playroom for our kids and it’s been fun picking out flooring, paint and preschool furniture.  It wasn’t exactly what I had in mind for Mother’s Day, but we don’t have many weekends left before our trip to Wisconsin, so Chad really wanted to push through and get lots done on it.

By the time I got the kids in bed, I was absolutely exhausted.  In addition to handing Chad screws and manning the staple gun, I’d played with the kids, taken them grocery shopping, washed diapers, cleaned the bathroom, and done the normal daily must-do’s like making meals and giving baths.  And I still had to do all the dishes and pick up all the toys.

I was wiped and feeling like I was going to have a breakdown at any moment.  I turned on my Mark Schultz station on Pandora and started loading the dishwasher.  The second song to come on was the “One Little Heartbeat At A Time” by Steven Curtis Chapman.  I hadn’t ever heard it before, but it was exactly what I needed to hear at the end of such a long day.

I wanted to post it here for all of you to hear too.  It’s such a touching reminder that what we’re doing is valuable and meaningful…..even when we don’t feel like it is.  I hope this song encourages you as much as it has me!

For the last few months, nap time has been a struggle in our house.  Ava loathes naps and does a considerable amount of fussing, which keeps Kelvin awake.  Sometimes I wonder if it’s all even worth it, since I don’t get much of a break in between laying them down again every few minutes (and the tiny break I do get I use for paying credit cards bills and stuff).  I wonder that until I let them skip naps for a day and by dinnertime, I have two psychotic midgets!

But I have had a breakthrough!  Yesterday, I was tired (when am I not tired?) and didn’t feel like fighting with her, so I told her she didn’t have to nap, she just had to rest.  I put Kelvin down and for once, there was complete silence!  I tiptoed in to check on Ava and she was fast asleep!  They both slept for three whole hours and it was amazing!

I’m definitely keeping that little trick handy!