Mama Loves

As mama’s I know we each search the internet for things a lot.  On any given day (like maybe yesterday) my internet searches might be all of the following:

“How much language should a 2 year old have?”
“Newborn photography bed prop tutorial”
“Ana White Loft Bed plans”
“How to remove wood glue”
“Dry brushing furniture”
“Eggplant Parmesan”
“Bolster pillow tutorial”

I have a confession: I earn money just for searching the web.

How?  By using SwagBucks as my search engine.
Another secret: You can join me. Click the banner below and sign up.

Now I’m not compulsive about grabbing Swag.  There are tons of other ways to win besides just searching (surveys, videos, searching for the codes, going through SwagBucks to buy things at your favorite stores, etc).  I’m just a searcher and referrer to the program, but I promise that over the last two years I’ve earned the equivalent of about $250 worth of free stuff just for doing that little bit!

I redeem all of my SwagBucks for $5 Amazon gift cards and the occasional Restaurant.com gift card.  Since I started participating I’ve gotten the following with my loot:

• 3 $25 Restaurant.com gift cards (Hello, date night!)
• Spent a total of only $40 on my Instep Safari Double Jogging Stroller after selling 2 strollers that didn’t work for me and applying tons of Amazon gift cards.
• Completed a HUGE book order with Amazon Cards (including One Thousand Gifts, Building the Christian Family you Never Had, Sacred Sex, and Radical)
• Bought my pretty Owl Fabric, ZigZag Curtain Fabric, and Mamma Birds Fabric for the new one’s nursery.
• I’m sure I’m missing at least one Amazon purchase… because I don’t remember the early days with the girls much… and I know I found SwagBucks right around their birth 😉

In conclusion: if you’re a mama who uses a search engine, you should be using SwagBucks.  You’ll thank me when you buy something you totally wanted but couldn’t justify buying without spending anything at all. 😉

My sweet bloggy friend Julia is doing a Linky Party called Mama Loves.  She’s found that she’s learned so much from other Mama bloggers that she felt she wanted to create a place for us to all share the items that have helped us the most.  I think it’s a fantastic idea.

I’m a pretty independent person.  I do things my own way.  My mother loves to tell the story about my first day in Kindergarten where all these kiddos were clinging to their mommies crying and I looked her in the eye and said: “I can do it myself.” She went back to the car in tears.   My teenage years were probably worse from her perspective.  I often heard the ultimate mother-curse: “I hope you have one just like you.”

Well, fortunately for me, the egg split into identical twins and I have two… with portions of their personality just like mine.

Aeralind is the independent, do her own thing, I-don’t-want-your-snuggles-right-now-thank-you-very-much portion of my personality.  But she also hates discipline.  She’ll do just about anything not to receive a scolding or a spanking. Generally, she’s pretty compliant, though she has her moments.

Bronwyn received the full measure of her mother’s strong will (and I think some of her Aunt Kaykers’ strong will, too).  Bronwyn’s single goal in life is to discover where the boundaries are and then to push them just to make sure you’ll enforce them.  But she’s also the snugly please-spend-time-with-me baby.

In any case, we’re entering the 2’s and 3’s where some of their behavior and a lot of their boundary testing needs to be answered with a heaping portion of parental control and another heaping portion of parental love.  They need to know both that we mean business and that they’re never going to lose our affection.

Enter James Dobson’s The New Strong-Willed Child (as well as Dare to Discipline).  These books are helping me to both find and maintain that delicate balance so that I can help them learn that boundaries are for their good while also keeping from crushing their delicate spirits.  I can’t recommend these books enough… especially if you have a strong-willed child (and you know if you do… trust me :-p)

I have a confession.

I am an amphibian.

I’d rather be in a pool than almost anywhere else on earth.  It’s my favorite form of exercise and one of my favorite forms of relaxation.  I love the pool.

I also have two daughters under two years who inherited the amphibian gene.  They have no fear of the water. They love it!  They’ll jump off the edges, climb in and out the stairs or ladders, and chase balls across the pool.  Unfortunately, the baby boats they barely tolerated last year  (seriously, they’d try to jump over the edges of the boats!), are not being tolerated at all this year.

Not at all.

I thought my days of taking two babies to the pool alone were over.

Enter the Puddle Jumper.

It came in the mail last Tuesday to find two very crabby babies on the verge of becoming very sick little girls who were about to have the crayons taken away from them.  Normally crayons being taken away equals major meltdown anyhow… but this day it looked like it was going to end in tears for the rest of the morning.

I cautiously pulled out ‘Turtle’ and ‘Crab’ and introduced them to the girls who repeated their names over and over.  I took away the crayons.  I asked them if they wanted to wear them.  With no tears they stuck their arms in and ran around crazy for the rest of the morning.  They almost wouldn’t let me take them off.

So far so good.  At least they had a really fun little Turtle and Crab toy vest.

Daddy came home and we ventured to the pool.  Nothing could have prepared me for this sight.

Yes, my girls were not only staying afloat independently, but they were capable of kicking to propel themselves toward objects!  Woohoo!

And on top of that, they were independent enough that I feel comfortable going to the pool on my own.

In fact, we hung out today in the 12 foot section so mommy could tread water and get exercise while they played.  And I could stand on the edge and safely take these photos. I’m super stoked!

And the best part is that as long as they’re skinny little beanpoles that should be able to use them until 5-6 years old.

Puddle Jumpers are rated for 30-50 lbs, but my girls only weigh 25lbs soaking wet.  I really feel that chest circumference has more to do with fit than weight.  Basically the smallest chest circumference it can handle is 21″ (my girls are right there) and the widest is probably about 26-28″.  So if your kiddo is within those ranges and you’re dying to go to the pool with some independence for all parties: buy the Puddle Jumper!

You’ll thank me later.

This opinion is solely my own.  Coleman company, the owner of Stearn’s has no idea who I am.  Though I do hope they see this glowing review and heartfelt thanks from a mom now free to release her inner amphibian. 🙂

I cloth diaper the my sweet girls.  I know what you’re thinking… “She must be crazy!”  Maybe I am, but you probably already knew that. Of course, I’m not that crazy; we did not cloth diaper for about the first 6 weeks.  We used disposables that were given to us at baby shower in sizes preemie-size 1.  I actually still have one pack of Size 1’s, but my girls legs are so thin that I imagine a foul blowout every time I put on this particular brand (Nature’s Babycare).

I use BumGenius One Size 3.0s. I made this choice based on research and the fact that I could register for them on Target.com. Between Target gift cards and Visa gift cards that I spent at Cotton Babies (which has the best prices I found at them time), my cloth diaper expenses where a whopping 99 cents. 

I have 36 diapers and I wash everyday; the frequency of washing is due to my very small diaper pail, otherwise I could probably wash every other evening and hang to dry for the next morning.

Here’s a little Bum Genius One Size 3.0 Review for you:

Cons:

• Quite bulky in my diaper bag. Two diapers fit well, but if I want to be out for a long long time four would be pushing it while sharing space with multiple burp clothes and bibs (yay, reflux!) There will be more space when they outgrow reflux.
• They get a little smelly after a few washes, though it’s less smelly or not smelly at all if you’re able to sun dry them.
• They require a little more work in the middle of the night with rinsing and separating the parts to prepare to wash them.
• I’m never quite sure what to do with disposable wipes. At home I put the used ones in an old wipes container on the changing table and empty that when necessary.  In public, it gets a little weird.  I’ve made resuable wipes but I’m still using the gifted wipes.
• Some people I know are freaked out by washing away human refuse in the same machine that they clean their clothing.
• Diaper Rash ointment could stain them and make them less effective at absorbing.
• You have to remember to put the velcro tabs on the laundry tabs before washing otherwise the velcro will wear out faster and your diapers will be a huge mess when you pull them out of the washer.
• Re-stuffing the diapers is pretty time consuming, though I try to do it while feeding the girls to make up the time difference.
• More expensive up front. (use those gift cards to your advantage!)
• Your babies may outgrown clothing sizes at a quicker rate because of the added bulk.
• I had to wait until the girls reached 7lbs before I could use them so all those preemie/newborn diapers were a necessity!

Pros:

• Cheaper in the long term. The main reason I chose cloth was because it’s cheaper than the potential $1600+  a year to use disposables. The main reason I chose a One-Size diaper was because it’s even cheaper than buying multiple sizes as needed.
• They have a decent resale value either at Cotton Babies or through a MoM club or an online forum or even Craigslist. So if you paid nothing for them like me… you’ll actually get paid to get rid of them! Or you’ll make up about 1/2 of your initial investment.
• You can use them for multiple children (i.e. your second set of twins) or children wearing different sizes.
• BGs are so much like disposables that even church nursery workers who didn’t receive a tutorial (oops) figured then out easily. Dad doesn’t mind changing them either.
• The velcro makes changing quick!
• The fabric feels so soft against baby’s skin.
• Just like a disposable the baby doesn’t realize she’s wet as quickly.  I was given a couple of cotton cloth diapers and plastic covers, and my little Aeralind screamed to be changed as soon as she peed in them, but not with the BGs.
• Your baby’s bottom actually looks cute (and will be cuter when they can run around in a t-shirt and diaper during the summer).
• Unlike disposables there are some great colors to chose from! I really like Zinnia, Clementine, and Moonbeam.

You might still think I’m crazy, but I think cloth diapers were a great investment for our family!