A Ridiculously Great Loot Bag

The World Breastfeeding Week Picnic is now right around the corner (August 1 at Alta Laguna Park from 11 am- 2 pm) and next Tuesday we will be assembling our 100 gift bags.

These bags are the best FREE gift bags I have ever seen.

To begin with, each bag is a full-size reusable grocery bag donated from Whole Foods. Then we  have bottles of multi-vitamins from Mother’s Market (our local health food store chain); a 15-ounce glass bottle of oxygenated, ph-alkalized, revitalized, remineralized and energized water from The Water Brewery; two bags of Dr Sears’s Popumz (snacks); samples of Traditional Medicine’s Mother’s Milk tea, nursing and menstrual pads from Natracare; a copy of Mothering Magazine’s most recent edition, and most exciting for me, a full size bottle of Benev’s skin lightening cream!

There are also great coupons from Glamourmom, Gypsy Mama Wraps, Happy Baby, JuJuBe, overnightprints ($12 off a photobook or any product on their site!), and Storksak. Nova Naturals is providing a full color catalog for each gift bag with a fundraiser code – meaning that La Leche League gets 10% of all sales made using our code until the end of September 2009.

Of course we will also be dropping in business cards and flyers for many of the other businesses who are participating in our event.

This is a great bag of goodies. The skin cream alone is worth about $100 and it is safe for pregnant and nursing mamas. (For those who don’t know, Koreans and asian women in general are obsessed with clear, light skin. If you go into a department store, or even a drugstore in Thailand, Seoul, or Tokyo you will see rows and rows of skin-lightening creams… That said, if you don’t want your bottle of skin-lightening lotion, I’ll take it!)

While La Leche League does not officially endorse these businesses, all of these businesses have contributed a generous donation to our cause. Many are locally-owned, family-friendly businesses – many are owned by friends and families of ours!

When inviting a business to contribute to our annual World Breastfeeding Week Picnic, we try and target companies that are green and health-oriented, besides being supportive of nursing families.

If you decide to support one of these businesses, please let them know that you heard about them through their support of  La Leche League.

P.S. There are pretty amazing auctions items: $150 will package with an attorney, a couple of family portrait photography sessions over $200 value each, two tickets to the brunch at the Laguna Beach Ritz, overnight stays at the Hilton Hotel, yoga packages, and more! Ditto on the raffle prizes: Nova Naturals donated a wooden doll house!

P.P. S Here are the booths that will be there:

1.    registration/family gift bags
2.    hotdogs
3.    bake sale
4.    silent auction
5.    raffle
6.    bean bag craft
7    potty toss- and free water from The Water Brewery
8.     Steph Fowler Photography
9.    Handprint lady
10.    Discovery Toys
11.    Baby UR Precious- bamboo velour blankets, etc
12.    Earthroots Field School seed planting activity
13.    Envirobabystore.com
14.    Allbabyandmom.com
15.    Oasis Child
16.    Belly Sprout
17.    Arbonne

 

Gifties

I went to a lovely baby shower this weekend, and Chad got to spend his first solid two hours alone with the dude walking about old town San Juan Capistrano.

The shower was held at a tea house, called The Tea House on Los Rios. It was just my kind of baby shower, with just two games played (I won a teapot for one!) and good company – fueled of course by lots and lots of black tea and scones with homemade clotted cream and preserves. (Okay, the finger sandwiches weren’t as good as the tea at the Huntington Gardens, but the scones and desserts were great.)

My dilemma was that now that I’ve had a baby shower thrown for me, I’ve experienced first hand how generous people tend to be at these affairs, besides which, I really like the woman for whom the shower was being thrown and I was being fed a pretty nice lunch. I wanted to get her a thoughtful big-ish gift, but our gift budget is, well, pretty much nil at the moment.

So at the risk of appearing like a cheapskate, I made all my gifts by hand.

Luckily I had my s-i-l’s serger at my disposal. I made a receiving blanket (bamboo velour and flannel), two softies (bamboo velour and two kinds of flannel), two wash cloths (bamboo fleece and flannel), and then a knit horse (out of cotton yarn and stuffed with the scraps from the previously named gifts).

They were a hit! I felt especially good about how the horse came out. And Christian got so attached to that horse (in the short time he lived fully constructed in our home – 1/2 hour??), that I realized that I’m going to have to quickly get started on another one.

The directions for the horse came from Bonnie Gosse and Jill Allerton’s A First Book of Knitting for Children. I recommend you get the book – but I will post general directions for this horse shortly and then I’ll post a link to those directions here.

(If you want to get started, cast on 10 stitches and knit 28 rows. Cut the yarn, leaving a hands length. Leaving the first leg on the needle, repeat for the second leg – when you get to the 28 row, cast on 10 more and then knit across the first leg…)

I think Christian needs at least two.

 

No Plastic, Please

I find that even though we have weeded most of Christian’s plastic toys from our home, he gets plenty of exposure to mainstream toys: there are brightly colored plastic toys and noise-makers where ever we go. Still, my resolve remains firm to keep his toys simple, natural, and conducive to imaginative play – especially with his first birthday just two weeks away.

Family and friends have been asking what Christian wants or needs, and while he is perfectly happy with what he already has, from past experience I know that people tend to ignore “no presents necessary” clauses on birthday invitations (and then the people who listened to you and didn’t bring a gift feel like boobs) . So, I’ve created a wish list for Christian, in an attempt to productively channel our impulse to shower the dude with presents.

First and foremost, I would love to see Christian get handmade gifts or help towards making any of the Waldorf-type toys that I posted about here. Just the lumber for those two playstands will run at least $50 and will probably require a weekend of focused attention. Blocks made from tree trunk sections of varying widths and lengths would be wonderful and I think that a play kitchen would get years of good use. We already have a wicker laundry basket full of regular wooden blocks.

Since we are trying to set up child-centric spaces in our home, a small wooden table and chairs, like the kind you can find at Ikea would be useful. As would a wooden step stool for the bathroom sink. Hooks (rows of hooks – I saw some that looked likes branches) would be nice, for hanging capes and costumes. Of course, he’s not wearing capes yet, but many of the kids who come over to play are.

We don’t have any non-plastic toys for the tub. Christian loves bath time, so I’m on the lookout for simple wooden boats to float.

He’s at the age where he finds animals and fish fascinating, so a zoo pass to the Santa Ana or San Diego Zoo would be good. Ditto for the Long Beach Aquarium or the Scripps Aquarium at La Jolla. Heck, we would be totally psyched to get an annual pass to the local Laguna Niguel Regional Park (which could be used for all regional parks including the beaches).

In case none of these ideas appeal to you, I also set up a wish list at Nova Natural Toys + Crafts. Keep in mind that many of those pricier items I hope to make, not buy. Also, the list is just a general guide; when there is a car listed, I just picked one on the page when any of the cars or trucks would do. The list is under the name Christian Holden Murdy and his wish list ID is GG3ATN.

And in the end, the best gift would be time. Christian is a social guy and would love to spend a morning or afternoon with you outdoors at the beach or hiking in a local park. He’s happiest outdoors and with people who make him grin.

P.S. While I really wanted a walker for Christian, I think it’s too late; he’s already given up crawling and walking with any aid – he just wants toddle by himself now.

 

Parlor Tricks

A couple weeks ago, Christian discovered his tongue, and ever since, he’s been perfecting his baby sign for “dog.” The baby sign is (often) panting with your tongue hanging out, but Christian’s original version was just heavy breathing (only cute in males under one year of age!) with no tongue.

He’s so happy about it that you can see that once he starts signing “dog,” it’s hard to get him to do something else – but he does like mooing like a cow too. I like how he tries different sounds before he settles on the one he thinks sounds the most like me.

These vids are dedicated to Christian’s grandparents who decided not to visit this weekend after there was a confirmed case of swine flu in the town where my mother-in-law teaches second grade.

 

Crochet Your Own Woolen Soaker

I’m up late finishing an art capsule or two for my spending money this month and thinking about how I am going to get my house in order before a dozen moms with toddlers in tow show up tomorrow at 10 am.

Instead of a full cleaning, I’m thinking about just re-adjusting my attitude and being content with a less clean house.

I’m hosting a Crochet-Your-Own Woolen-Soaker playdate (although some are knitting stuffed animals and others are crocheting pants) and I’m hoping that it goes as well as last month when the moms and kids were all very focused.

The pattern I am using for the soaker is from a site called With a Tangled Skein. You can see the pattern here.

I doubt I’ll get going on another one today as I’ll be helping other moms get started, but I’m pleased with how the first one turned out. I used one of the last balls of wool from a 73-square blanket I made for my sister’s wedding gift.

 

The Great Outdoors

It appears that the boy loves to be outdoors. He absolutely cannot get enough.

Right now he is konked out, right beside me on the bed. And he well should be, after another day of nonstop new experiences and explores – most of them outdoors.

We’re in Joshua Tree at the moment and having a mini-vacation from Orange County life. I like that after fifteen years of wanting to leave this place (the high-desert, I mean), I can come back and enjoy it – the tremendous space, the quiet, and how far I can see by moonlight.

Whoo-ee, I don’t miss the endless dust or the incessant sun though. Night is better than day in the desert.

Highlights: a WILD tortoise walked through our lunch yesterday at my friend’s house (videos to follow – we fed it desert dandelions); and hearing the coyotes yammer their maniacal yelps at tonight’s twilight. If I had the right recording equipment, I would share the sound of coyotes with you. It is one of my favorite things to hear.

Now that Christian and I have worked out a routine for traveling (I drive, he naps) we may be heading out to the desert more. This trip: we’ve wandered in the desert looking for bleached cholla skeletons at sunset; and more mundane, but just as fun, we pulled weeds from the onion bed and planted tomatoes in a friend’s garden. Christian gaped (and pointed) at the flock of chickens he met today too. I got gifted a dozen eggs of varying sizes and colors. Yum.

Later this week, Chad and I will take Christian on his first backpack trip. We waited too long to make reservations and all the nicer car camping places were full – so we’re hiking three miles in to a primitive tent site near Crystal Cove. I can’t wait! Judging from how much Christian loves being outdoors here, I think he’s going to get a kick out of camping too. (Bella is choosing to skip the camping and planning to sleep over at a friends house.)

I think being outdoors is just plain good for kids. They need to spend time outdoors every day. Preferably wild outdoors. I want to aim for outdoors every day and wild outdoors at least once a week – but more if possible (ocean counts as wild, and so does Joshua Tree).

 

Textbook Case

Looks like the little guy had roseola last week – he had all the symptoms:

Christian had a fever for three days and then when the fever broke, a rash quickly developed over his torso, creeping up his neck and down into his crotch area. The rash did not appear to itch or bother him in any way. He also had mild diarrhea. Two days later the rash disappeared. Everything passed through without any medical treatment, but he was extremely fussy and didn’t sleep well, and he needed lots of comforting and nursing. He had no appetite for regular food.

All told, we were in the house for five days. And I have no idea where he got it, because the incubation period can be as long as ten days.

However, roseola is supposed to be very common, with most children contracting it before entering kindergarten. It generally affects children between the ages of 6 months and 2 years, with the average age being 9 months. It is considered a mild illness. The only real hazard is posed by high temperatures. We never actually took Christian’s temperature, but watched his behavior very closely. Meaning he was hot, but never so much that he became lethargic or strange. He was just his normal self, but a grumpy, cranky version of himself.

I would’ve taken a picture, but I didn’t realize that it might be helpful to see what his rash looked like at the time.

 

A Little Ditty I Wrote

To be sung to the tune of “If You’re Happy and You Know It” when your 9-month approaches the edge of the bed.

When you get to the edge , turn around.

Turn around, turn around, turn around!

When you get to the edge, you always turn around;

Turn around and slid on safely to the ground.