Week 20 of Pre-K!

We just finished our 20th week of My Father's World Kindergarten. These past few weeks we've been going through Unit 16: Penguin. This has been a very fun unit. Caden LOVES eggs. I mean he truly loves them! Most animals that sit on eggs are females, except for the Emperor penguin. The Emperor penguin is around Caden's height, Caden is 3 inches taller than an average Emperor male penguin, which is 45 inches. The males sit on the eggs and guard them for two months before they hatch! Caden loved hearing about this.  He had fun pretending to be a penguin and walk with eggs on his feet. He tried sitting on them for a little while but got tired of sitting there after a minute or two. We did a lot of fun activities including measuring and weighing ourselves, making icebergs for the bath tub, to ending our week by making a yummy whole wheat dark chocolate chip cookie cake. I drew a penguin with icing on top of it and Caden loved it!

 

Our verse of the week: Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. - 1 John 4:7 NIV

 

Theme: I show love to everyone, especially my family.

 

We've stayed busy these past few weeks. In addition to doing school work and him going to his twice a week preschool, we've had fun with our friends and doing other activities as well. Our church had a neighborhood block party with a climbing wall and some bounce houses. Caden loved playing with his church friends and enjoying climbing the huge wall. He's made some impressive obstacle courses in our living room when it's been too cold to play outside. He's enjoyed playing with his sister. He made a kite on his own and we made a car wash out of a shoebox together. He's helped me cook by chopping different things for me and is getting really good and helping me in the kitchen. He's played with ducks and has held a lamb. He colored eggs and we've played at the park. We even found out that a beaver lives near us!

 

Working on school work

Climbing the wall

My sweet kids!

Playing with the car wash

Coloring eggs

Flying his homemade kite

Ducks!

 

Beaver that lives near us. It's so sad to see so much trash!

Keeping the eggs on his feet was impossible!

Pretending to be a daddy penguin

At the park with a few friends

Playing his new game Thin Ice

He drew things that started with "p"
1. Pineapple, 2. Pool with a boy swimming, 3. someone paying,
and 4. Pumpkin

Playing with sister

Our penguin cake

Gracie is 3 Months!

Dear Gracie,

 

Today you are 3 months old. You are so precious and we are forever in love with you! Everyday you're exploring new things. You're getting better at holding objects in your hands such as a rattle and rings. You also like holding our hands by grasping a finger. Your head control is getting better and you can sit up if you're propped up against something and not too tired. You are such a happy and content baby. You are so pretty and love to laugh and smile when people talk to you. In fact, you love to talk with people in your own sweet language. Sometimes when you're talking and copying our sounds it sounds like you're saying a real word. You are a delight in our lives. This past month, your dad got to hear your first laugh!

 

You are now wearing 3 to 6 month clothing. On average you sleep 6 to 7 hours before the first feedings at night and sleep about 12 hours at night, unless we need to go somewhere in the morning or Caden wakes you up. When I put you down, unless it's in your swing, you usually wake right up. If I hold you, in the afternoon you'll sleep for 1 to 2 hours! In the morning, you usually just nap for about 20 to 30 minutes at a time. Although this morning at church you fell asleep on the way and you slept about 45 minutes. Your hair is getting longer and is still dark brown. Your eyes are still blue. You love being held and rocked. You enjoy watching me cook or being carried while I do housework. You also like watching your brother and singing along with him. 

 

We love you and God has blessed us by placing you in our family.

 

Love,

Mom

 

We took these pictures right before you went down for a nap. I'm glad we got a few smiles. :)

 

You still have your hair and it's getting longer!

You'll be as long as your dog before too long!

Watching Daddy hold up the blanket

Beautiful girl!

This didn't go too well.

My tired baby.

 

Sweet sleep!

 

Newborn babies and cloth diapers

Gracie wasn't even a week old when we decided we wanted to use cloth diapers on her. Even with very frequent diaper changes, her bottom was starting to get red. We bought 8 GroVia Newborn all-in-ones and I went through Caden's stash of cloth diapers and we had a decent amount to start with. Sadly, the newborn diapers only lasted about 9 weeks and I didn't have that many adjustable diapers that fit smaller babies. So I just bought some more and am really loving them! I want to cloth diaper about 90% of the time. We were just cloth diapering at night and when we were away from the house. Now I have everything I need to cloth diaper just about 24/7.  We haven't tried at night yet because I want to make sure my nighttime diapers are fully prepped (meaning washed and dried enough times) for maximum absorbency. Cloth diapers are great and not to mention super cute! Although cuteness shouldn't be a factor, according to Collin. :)

Here are my favorites. For a newborn, I do recommend newborn all-in-ones (AIO). I really love the convenience of all-in-ones, even though they quickly outgrow them. I bought ours at Babies R Us. However, you could probably get a really good deal on used ones from eBay. I'm amazed how many people will use cloth diapers and resale them. This makes cloth diapering even cheaper!

 

My other favorite newborn/less than 3 month old diapers are GroVia regular size with a stay-dry liner. I had a few GroBaby diapers (which is now called GroVia) from when Caden was a baby. These are hybrid diapers. You can reuse the shell and just change out the inner part, unless the shell is dirty. These I will most likely start using only when I leave the house as they take up less space in the diaper bag. The stay-dry liners are new. From Caden I had organic cotton liners which work nice too.

Almost 2 months old in a GroVia diaper

I also still love BumGenius pockets and AIOs. My favorite are the all-in-ones for the pure convenience but the pockets are great too. I have a few BumGenius one size diapers, meaning I can adjust the size, from Caden. All of my AIOs are for a bigger baby. Name brand cloth diapers are expensive. Bumgenius diapers cost anywhere from $18 each to $35 each. Of course if you use them daily, you'll still come out cheaper than disposables in the end, it's just a lot of money up front. Since I was trying to save money, I found some cute pocket diapers that are like BumGenius on etsy.com. The only downside is they do not include an insert. Since I have a good stash, including extra inserts from when I tried cloth diapering Caden at night, I can stuff them with what I have. Otherwise you'll have to add inserts to your cost if you buy cloth diapers without inserts. If you can sew, you can make inserts for very cheap. I also like Velcro more than snaps. The diapers from etsy are considered a perfect fit, meaning they will only last for a certain amount of time. I have Fuzzibunz that are perfect fits and will fit her when she's closer to a year. The BumGenius is considered a one size. Meaning it will last from when a baby is 12 lbs to 30 lbs.

BumGenius 4.0

Pocket diapers from etsy.com

Pocket diaper from etsy

At night I'm going to try a wool cover over a one size cotton diaper. I bought organic cotton cloth-eez workhorse diapers from greenmountaindiapers.com as well as their organic cotton cloth-eez prefolds. I never used prefolds with Caden and if you want to cloth diaper for cheap, that's the way to go! The prefolds are $2-$4 each. The ones with snaps are $5 to $11 depending on the size you get. For prefolds I'm going to use a Snappi rather than saftey pins. For the perfect fit, it has snaps, so all I'll need is a cover, which for daytime use, I can use the GroVia and at night, I'll use the wool cover. I'm hoping this will work. On the left are the prefolds under the wool cover. The long strips in the middle are felt inserts that will keep her bottom dry. On the right are the one size with snaps and the one with the purple snappi is a prefold that I folded. Honestly, prefolds are very easy to use. I wish I had bought these when she was a newborn. It's so easy and they are cheap.

Nighttime cloth diapers with wool cover

My first attempt at a prefold.



With diaper cover
 

Cotton cover with snaps

Diaper cover with cotton diaper underneath

Once I use my wool cover, I will post pictures with it and give an update on how it works. If you've ever thought about cloth diapering, I say go for it. Expect to spend anywhere from $100 to $500+. But considering in one month's time we spend over $100 on Pampers, in the end cloth diapering is really the less expensive way to go. It's also better for the environment and for their bottoms.  Here's to happy cloth diapering your baby!

Simple Baby Bow Holder

I've been looking for a good storage solution to store all of my daughter's headband bows.  I went to Hobby Lobby and didn't find what I was looking for. After feeding the ducks yesterday, I came home and looked at my oatmeal container. That would be perfect! I went to Target today, grabbed some wrapping paper that was on sale for $.50 and four paper bows for $.50, then came home and made a beautiful and inexpensive baby bow holder that cost less than $.50 total since I have more than half of the wrapping paper left as well as 3 more bows to use. As I eat more oatmeal, I'll use the containers and make more. I can probably make 3-4 of these with the $1 supplies I bought today. Since my family will eat the oatmeal, I'm not including that in my cost. For an infant the smaller oatmeal containers work best. When she's a toddler you could make one using the larger containers. This is a great way to up-cycle something you were going to throw away anyway.

How to make a cute bow holder

Supplies

- Empty Oatmeal Container
- Wrapping Paper or construction paper
- Paper Bow, optional
- Tape

Directions

Wipe out the oatmeal container with a damp paper towel. Then cut some wrapping and tape it to the oatmeal container. Tape a pretty paper bow on top. Add your headband bows and you're done. Cheap, simple, fast, and practical! I made this in less than 5 minutes while my baby lay next to me on the floor.

Ice Snowman

"Do you want to build a snowman?" Yes, we saw the movie, Frozen, and decided to build our own snowman. Anything that has to do with balloons, Caden loves! Make it a water balloon and he has a hard time sleeping at night, seriously. He was so excited about making this. This was super easy to do. Here's what you need.

 

How to Make an Ice Snowman

 

- 3 balloons, filled with water

- magic dust (salt)

 

We made three water balloons, one a little larger than the others for the base. Then we froze them overnight. The next day we cut the balloons off of the ice balls, I brought out some magic dust (I didn't want Caden eating the salt, which is why I called it this), and put some on the tray to stick the first ball of ice. Then put salt on top of that one, add another ice ball, and repeat. This was a fun and easy project. Then we put the little ice snowman outside and watched as he melted away over several hours.