We love Ireland!

We just got back from a week-long vacation in Ireland. We had a wonderful time. The only thing we planned before we went was some key things we'd like to do, the first and last night hotel stay, and we booked a rental car. Other than that we thought we'd take it day by day to see how Caden would do as we traveled across the country. He did great!

Finding a B&B or Farmhouse was easy. Ireland has lots of them! We stayed two nights at a B&B, one night at a Farmhouse, and three nights in a hotel. We had a crib every place we stayed. We also enjoyed a nice Irish breakfast every morning.

Day 1 - Arrived in Dublin

Our plane landed really late in Dublin last Wednesday. Sadly our flight was delayed by 30 minutes and Caden fell asleep for the first 30 minutes on the plane until the guy made an announcement that it was time to take off. He immediately woke up and wouldn't fall asleep again until close to midnight when we were at the hotel. (Collin's note: The rental car company, County Car rentals, picked us up outside the terminal and took us to their office in a nearby hotel. It was nice to have a short and less hectic practice period for driving on the left to help orient me for the long drives ahead. )

Day 2 - The Rock of Cashel and the Blarney Castle

Day one we visited the The Rock of Cashel and saw Cormac's Chapel. (Collin's note: Cormac seems to be the English form of the Gaelic Cormaic. The Mc before many last names means "son of" or "family of". So, I've read that McCormack and McCormick derive from that root name. It was cool looking at all the names in Ireland. What will we find in Scotland?) After lunch we drove to Blarney Castle and saw the Blarney Stone - neither of us kissed it for sanitary reasons. Both castles were quite impressive. My favorite was the Blarney Castle. The grounds were beautiful too and there was a nice grassy area that we were able to let Caden play on.

The Rock of Cashel

Collin & Caden in Cormaic's Chapel

The Blarney Castle

Someone kissing the Blarney Stone - they have to lean upside down and hold onto poles 90 feet above the ground! It looked kind of scary.

Blarney Castle

We stayed the night at a B&B in Kinsale, a cute coastal town in southwest Ireland.

Day 3 - Ring of Kerry and Dingle

The next day we took a scenic drive and drove part of the Ring of Kerry. We ended up in Dingle and spent the night there after visiting the Gallarus Oratory (Collin: a stone church which some think was built between the 6th and 9th century.)

This is how Caden spent the scenic drive, sleeping, thankfully

Gallarus Oratory

Our B&B for the night in Dingle

Day 4 - Dingle Peninsula and Kildare

We drove the Dingle Peninsula (beautiful!) and stopped at the Beehive Huts. (Collin: fascinating to imagine people huddling together during a cold winter with their families.) After spending some time around there and admiring the beautiful coast we continued on. Caden fell asleep so we decided to drive until we woke up and make our way back toward the east coast. We ate lunch at a Pub and spent the night in Kildare at Castle View Farmhouse B&B.

Cliffs along the Dingle Peninsula

More of Ireland to come!

Stinky Towels

Diaper tip of the day: don't wash cloth diapers with towels.  I was washing a load of towels the other day and thought I would wash a few cloth diapers with them.  BIG mistake!  When I took them out of the dryer the towels had a funny smell.  I put my sweet husband to the test.  I gave him one of my "clean" towels after his shower.  I asked him if it smelt like urine.  At first he didn't notice it but as he was finishing drying off he could smell it.  So note to self, wash cloth diapers only with cloth diapers.  Needless to say I had to wash the towels again.  I did not, however, rewash the diapers.  They did not smell like urine but smelled clean.  Strange.  So much for trying to make life easier.

Caden is 11 Months Old!

Yesterday Caden turned 11 months old.  I still cannot believe how fast time is flying.  Everyday he is growing and learning more and more.  Here are some updates from this past month.

- Caden can walk!  Well, he takes 4-5 steps at a time by himself.  I know he could take more but he's very deliberate about his actions.  He doesn't like falling and when he was learning to crawl he made sure he had it down before going full force.  Same when he first started sitting up by himself.  It's only a matter of time before he's off walking and running on his own.  When he's walking better I'll let you know.  His favorite way to walk is holding our hands.  So precious!

- Caden still loves books. We read to him everyday for at least an hour sometimes two. He likes turning the pages and looking at the words and pictures.

- He knows a lot of words. We are pretty sure he knows the words for bird, ball, no, yes, mama (finally, but he doesn't say it that often), dadda, daddy, mommy, "go get ___", "where is ___?", granddad, stand-up, drink, water, book, read, and bed. He is getting really good at pointing at things, getting things, and doing actions that would make us thing the knows these words.

- He can say: hi, hey, dadda, baba, mama, ta, tey, ay, bee, cee, dee, ee, f, g, ba, and ah. He also has the best laughs.

- He loves singing, especially in the car.

- He participates in our conversations. The other night while we were eating dinner Collin and I started laughing about something and Caden joined in laughing.

- Caden loves to pick out his clothes for the day and food to eat.

- We have been giving him more foods that we eat. Some of his new favorite foods are: whole wheat bagels, whole wheat pancakes, whole wheat waffles (we just got a 220 waffle iron), any kind of whole wheat or whole grain bread, cheerios, cheese, apples, mangoes, green peas, carrots, mashed potatoes with mashed cauliflower, deli meat, blueberries, strawberries, spinach, sweet potatoes, ground beef, squash, yogurt, chicken, and peaches. I recently made a baby friendly shepherd's pie and he loved it! It had onions, garlic, carrots, potatoes, cauliflower, and lean ground beef. Collin liked it too even though it was pureed.

The baby friendly Shepherd's Pie

- Caden sleeps 11-12 hours at night and usually take one nap a day for 45 min to 2 hours.

- I nurse him four times a day, he eats three meals a day, and has one snack.

- He wears size 12 month clothes.

- We recently switched to cloth diapers and they seem to be working really well. We still use disposables when we go out sometimes.

- We have bought him a few pairs of shoes.  He's able to walk pretty well in shoes although he prefers holding onto one of our hands when we walk with him.

- Caden really likes animals, especially dogs. We don't have a dog but several of our friends do and there are a lot of dogs in Germany. We are really sad that my parents' dog, Fritz, passed away last week. Caden would have loved playing with him.

- Caden has now had 4 haircuts!  Two by Mom and Dad and two by a barber.

Yesterday before his haircut

The cutest sad face ever!  He did not like getting his haircut by the mean barber.

Now he's happy.  In the car with his monkey.

Last night we went to dinner in downtown Heidelberg. We hadn't been down there in a while. Caden was so excited to see a fountain that we let him "play" in it.

Collin and I love Caden so much and are so glad God chose us to be his parents.  He is such a sweet, cute, and wonderful boy.

Book Giveaway - Will the World End in 2012?

Recently I reviewed the book Will the World End in 2012? by Raymond C. Hundley, Ph.D. I am now giving this book away. If you would like to try and win this book, please visit my musings blog here. The contest is open to everyone and is not limited to residents of the US or Germany. Happy reading and good luck!

Cloth Diapers Day 1

Yay for cloth diapers!

Today was Caden's first day to wear cloth diapers.  He wore them all day except for two hours in the morning when we went to my ladies' Bible study.  Overall I really like them.  Getting them ready was overly time consuming as I had to pre-wash and dry the organics 5-7 times.  I washed the bumGenius Organics five times and the FuzziBunz only twice.  Today we received the Flips so I put them in the wash tonight and will probably wash them two more times.  I figure during the day I change Caden's diaper so frequently that I'll wash them all again soon enough.  You're supposed to wash and dry them so many times to "break in" the fabric so it's more absorbent. 

I'm not sure which diaper I'm going to like the most.  I will say that the FuzziBunz dry a whole lot faster than the bumGenius Organic all in ones.  The Flips look like they will dry really fast too.  The all in ones are very convenient and work similar to a disposable diaper.  All three types of diapers are pretty trim and seem to fit under Caden's clothes nicely.  They are all well made and are high quality.  So far we are pleased with our purchase. 

This is a white cloth diaper - Daddy told Mommy that I needed white ones

This was taken the night we received our first batch of bumGenius Organics.  It was late and Caden really didn't want his picture taken.

A "Greener" Yard

We are always looking for ways to take better care of the environment.  The most recent change, besides buying cloth diapers, is Collin's "new" lawn mower.  It's a manual old school mower that was given to us.  When we first moved into our house in Germany we bought an electric mower.  It turned out to be a piece of junk as one of the wheels came off the first time Collin used it.  Thankfully our yard is small and our new mower works great.  In fact, not only are we not polluting the air with stinky fumes but Caden can help out.

Happy Mother's Day!

This Mother's Day was especially special to me since it was my first.  Collin and Caden were so sweet.  They gave me beautiful flowers and a new wallet filled with money to use at the spa or however I want.  My old wallet was falling apart and I have had a difficult time finding a good wallet.  Collin did a great job picking one out, it even holds Euros which are much bigger than USD.

Last night was horrible.  I had a bad migraine that only got worse as the night went on.  Our neighbors had a party outside and were playing very loud techno music.  Our house was shaking and we have double pane windows and our walls are made of cement.  It was awful.  They were drunk and just being very loud in general.  In Germany there's a law we found out that you are allowed to have a party in your yard and play loud music until 10pm on the weekends.  Caden couldn't go to sleep because of the music and so he was up extra late.  At 10 the music was still playing and I was getting sicker.  By 11pm I was throwing up.  My poor sweet husband cleaned it up.  I barely made it to the bathroom and just leaned over our bathtub.  My head was throbbing.  I HATE migraines and when they don't get better I get really sick and throw up.  I had taken some medicine but I think I threw it up but was not sure so I wasn't able to take anything else.  Needless to say it was a rough night.

This morning I was feeling much better but was still really tired.  My headache was not gone but it was manageable.  Collin cooked me a wonderful breakfast.  He made buckwheat pancakes and whole wheat pancakes.  We did a taste test to see which we liked better.  We usually make one or the other but we have never made both at the same time.  We ended up not going to church because of the lack of sleep last night.  We were both sad about missing.  Thankfully one of our friends covered the youth class this morning since we were absent.

Collin was going to take me to the park for lunch and to a really cool restaurant at the park but it was raining so we decided not to go.  He grilled some yummy steaks instead.  Then for dinner tonight he grilled veggie burgers for us.  I love his cooking so it was a real treat to get three meals at home today made by my dear husband.

This afternoon we had our first big scare with Caden.  He took a pretty good fall and bumped his head on some wood.  We felt so bad for him.  I called the nurse advice line and the nurse suggested we take him to the ER.  We decided to just watch him since his head was not bleeding.  We went through the check list in one of our baby books and he responded fine to everything.  It said to keep a close watch on him for the next 6 hours.  He's in bed asleep now so we'll go in and check on him before we go to bed.  He has a pretty good size scrape and bump on his forehead.  Poor little guy.  I'm not going to mention who was kind enough to watch him when this happened...

...you guessed it.  He felt horrible about it, we both did.  =(

I feel so blessed to have such a wonderful son and husband.  Happy Mother's Day to all the other Moms out there.  One of life's greatest blessings is being a mom!