Baby Toys

There are tons of icky plastic toys out there, but I don't like that sort of thing for babies. They chew on them like you wouldn't believe and I don't think phthalates and such are great for chewing. And how many toys do babies actually need? Not many! Just a few interesting things to look at and drool on. They are as happy with a washrag with frozen water on a corner to chew on as anything else when they are teething.

And so, in that vein, I'm going to post what I think are some of the best baby toys out there!



This is the Bonita by Haba. It's colorful and full of chewy fun! And it's awfully girly and cute, which totally gets me every time.







This is probably my favorite, cause it's a whole set for a really great price. Sassy has a really great line of wooden infant toys that I really like, and they are all very reasonably priced. I plan to get a few of these if nothing else.












I love this thing, too! It's another one by the German company Haba. Look at its bright simplicity, and how wonderful must that be to chew on while teething for a baby?







To be honest, I love nearly all of the toys put out by Haba, though they are kind of expensive.

Oh, and my love for Vulli natural rubber toys from France is pretty deep, too. I NEEEED this little thing:

This is one of the Chan Pie Gnon teethers from Vulli. Hehe! Chan Pie Gnon! Get it? This is Pink Pie. And I would really like one of these for Madeleine.
Sophie the Giraffe is Vulli's most famous toy apparently, but screw the giraffe, I want this one!











As I said before, babies don't need many toys. And I would rather put more money into something made with certified sustainable products, safe paints, are positively lead free and plastic free, so my own baby can chew and drool to her heart's delight and I can keep my peice of mind.

Where does the time go?

34 weeks & 2 days. Only 40 days to go, my counter says. Wow. All of a sudden this last bit is flying by!

Things to do:

• Clean the house - It's a never-ending thing! It's never perfect, which is what I want. And I achieved perfect while nesting with #2, seriously. I went all Fly Lady on that shit and I shined my sink 3x's a day the last week or so cause there wasn't anything else left I could possibly do. I had even painted the rooms in the house! Hurting and miserable this time doesn't allow for that.
  
• Make food for the freezer - lasagna, whatever else? Casseroles of various types. I REALLY WISH we could afford a small chest freezer. ARGH!
  
• Laundry- been pretty good about keeping up, but never have enough quarters on hand! Have many loads to do right now, all sorted already, but no quarters. Frustrating!
• The Back Bathroom of DOOM - We've pretty much abandoned it to the cats. We haven't even used the shower in there for months, we use the front bathroom. The litter box is HUGE, and takes up so much space. I hate walking around it to the bathtub/toilet part of the bathroom, so only the front part gets used at all. I will definitely want the shower and all available for labor and afterwards. Don't know where else we could put the litter box, though, and with only one box for 2 cats we can't really go smaller. Here is the monstrosity we have for them.
  
• Clean the hall closets? Haha. The front one is FILLED with crap that I want to get rid of but have not had the energy to deal with posting on Craigslist to sell or Freecycle to just make it go. So back into the closet it went. The front closet is quite bothersome. Then I opened the back hall closet and realized it's in about the same shape. Argh!
  
• Our closet - It' s becoming as filled with crap as before. Argh! Again!
  
• The kids' room - Oy. That's a project for them this weekend. They do ok cleaning it and it's really not that bad. I wish the rest of the house were as easy to clean. Everything has a place in their room. Makes me jealous. That's my goal with the rest of the house.
• Living room - bookshelves, books, there is still the giant pile of books next to the couch that needs to GO, etc.

Ok, I realize I should be cleaning instead of blogging, ha!

Hatred of the clutter! It doesn't matter if I can't see it, it's still there and I know it. Just as bothersome.

I will be doing some cleaning shortly, then try to go swim for a bit.

Things left to obtain:

• Birthing Ball - Need this! My bestest buddy during labor.
• Fish Scale - Wish I knew someone who fished often and had one I could just borrow

I know there's more, but mostly I have everything or it's being shipped to me today.

Update of Random

I haven't been posting regularly for a few reasons, #1 is I have been on the mothering boards a lot lately, and then trying to catch up with my rss feeds. (I sub to 126 blogs currently and some of the blogs, like BoingBoing, Consumerist and TreeHugger are pretty prolific in their posts).

Another reason is it's frustrating to post so often to next to no one.

And there's just so much I'd like to post, but I'm lazy sometimes.

So, where to start? The baby shifted so the SPD pain is significantly better the last few days, even though my back and stomach muscles hurt.

We spent the weekend being lazy and at the pool, which was very nice. But the house, oh I can't even deal with it. I plan to clean some in a little bit cause I feel a bit better today than I have been.

I ate too many carbs over the weekend and woke up feeling awful yesterday :( Concentrating on upping my protein intake and no more processed carbs like that. UGH.

I have wanted to post about thrift stores finds, but haven't yet. I also took some new pics yesterday of my pregnant self and want to put those up soon, but haven't cause both sets of batteries need to be recharged.

I don't want to talk about Mother's Day, other than to say I totally give up. It's been nothing but utter disappointment to me since my first Mother's Day while pregnant 9 years ago. I am hurt, depressed, angry, all of those things. I'm going to give up on this. My kids were awesome, at least. Made me GREAT cards and of course make me feel so loved every single day. SO loved.

We implemented pizza night on Friday and making a note here, Huge Success. I'll post specifics later on. I'll probably just copy and paste a post I made on Mothering earlier.

Been watching Season 2 of Dexter. LOVE it, just as good if not better than the first season. On the edge of my seat with it right now. Nail Biting nerves. Is it wrong to be rooting for the sociopathic serial killer?

I may get to work part time again doing the same thing that I was soon. That would ROCK hardcore! Money is tight and stressful right now, and it sucks.

What, what? In the butt. I said, What , what? In the butt!

Have found some cool things at thrift stores. That's why we purged our books, you know. To buy more. Ha. I've had to have bought at least a dozen since we purged. But I love books, reading, as do Chris and Max, and Miles is getting there with his reading, too.

Both kids are homeschooling and thrilled about it, as am I. VERY happy with it. Wish I had better communication with the ex and his spouse, but I am happy with the set up. They are not doing the homeschooling personally, they have someone hired full time with all 4 of the younger kids in their household. Each kid got to make their own decision on whether they wanted to. Max was the longest holdout and he's just been doing this for about 2 weeks.
I've wanted hsing for them from day 1. I am a big believer that homeschooling with a committed family is by far the best option for kids. However you do it, unschooling (my preference), curriculum based (VERY strongly pro-secular, though), co-op schooling with other like minded families. Homeschooling comes in all shapes and flavors, and peoples silly questions about it bother me. Had to field the mil on Mother's Day about socialization, etc. Argh.
I wish people who don't really want to be educated about a subject feels it's ok to give me the 3rd degree with no intention of really listening. There's a ton of different subjects this can apply to in my experience.

I really want to go see Iron Man this week when the check gets here.

I am going to the Kerrville Folk Festival with a friend this year. Yay! Primitive camping at 7 months! I just know what life will be like for a while after the baby, and getting to laze around, sleep during the hot day, go down to the river to swim and cool off, then stay up late around the fires listening to music and chilling out? I can do that for 3 days! Unfortunately I don't think Chris can come :(

We really need to plan a weekend thing for just us before the baby gets here. I was hoping hoping hoping to be able to afford to go to New Orleans for a long weekend and stay at the B&B where we spent our honeymoon, but financially that just won't happen. Sigh... Maybe just a trip to Austin to hang with friends, that would be nice, too.

We should plan that now. Maybe a midweek trip would be best. Who knows, I need to look at a calendar.

I also need to finish my list for the (bwahahahahaha!!!! I just realized, since i didn't want to call it a shower I was about to type "baby bbq"! Hahahaha!) Baby shower... (cause I guess there's not a better term offhand!) and get it to my best friend so she can get to work on invites. She's been on me, and I've worked on it, just need to finish it.

And really at this point I'm really hoping that no one else gets onesies! We have SO MANY :) I love thrift stores.
I am going ask people for things like frozen meals, dinner, laundry, dishes, those types of gifts :) Those are the best type! I do still have a registry for those who really want it, and there's some stuff I on there I wouldn't mind receiving at all but we can live without them. Well, except for diapers and more bottles! I'm so glad I was able to get the basics already, though.

What else? I'm sure there's more but this is turning into a long random post.

The Great Purge of 08 Redux

Wow. I am overwhelmed with it all.

I have been having crippling pain from SPD the last few nights, and I am very limited in my physical abilities. This is driving me nuts. I can be totally lazy sometimes, but when I am ready to clean, that means that it's going to be clean before I am done with it. And being so physically limited is really like torture to me. I just want to get down and dirty with a toothbrush and some grout!
But this is a post about progress, so I will stop lamenting and focus on what I am actually getting done, bit by bit.

Today we did get some things done, and that was to rearrange our room, and set up the crib and get the baby stuff somewhat organized and put away better so it isn't just a big scary pile like it was.
We decided to leave a side off of the crib and leave the plastic on the mattress. The cats will deem it absolutely necessary to explore this new and exciting thing. If it's like this they cannot scratch the wood trying to jump over and into it, and the mattress is covered so won't get dirty.

It's not the best thing, but it's a vast improvement. The white thing facing the wall is a small rolling cart I got for baby clothes and such. I have to leave it against the wall facing the wrong way with something on top of it to try to deter the cats. It's not made to hold very much, it's not very sturdy at all. I didn't expect it to be when I got it. It was cheap, light, and pretty much all I needed while the baby was in our room. I didn't think about the globulous lumps of curiosity that live with us, too. I'm glad those creatures don't have opposable thumbs or we would be doomed. It's bad enough when they deadbolt you out of your own home (yes, dear Midna, that would be you).

You may remember how it was before all of this:

And now:
From the front:


I also took many pictures of other problem areas in the house (read: the entire rest of the house), and will post those as I tackle them. I figure visuals with before and after will be good for my resolve. I may not be able to the whirlwind of cleaning activity that I am used to, but isn't "slow and steady wins the race" the way that one goes? At least I tell myself that, since this is so foreign to my normal MO. :)

I Can Live Without It, Too.

Rebecca over at Green Baby Guide has a post about Baby Gear I Lived Without. I was just going to leave her a comment telling her how much I agreed, but it was far too long, so I decided to go ahead and post about it over here.
I know I have mentioned before my dislike of baby "gear" and all, but I figure I'll make a post more focusing on what I DID use.
As many of you know, this is baby #3 for me, but with a 6 year gap in between my last this time it's starting all over with baby stuff collecting.

I've made some different decisions this time around but let me tell you, with my first, there were very few items I needed and I was one of those moms sucked in to having a registry based on the infamous checklist. (I've become a lot wiser in the nearly 9 years since I became a mother for the first time!)

The things that came in handy with my first:
bouncy seat to put him in when I needed to pee or eat (didn't have a moses basket)
a sling,
exersaucer once he was a bit older (I personally love these things)
a $20 umbrella stroller after he could hold his head up well.
I could have done without anything else! Seriously. Nothing else was EVER used, including the crib (well, it was used to hold unfolded clean laundry). I used cloth diapers and breastfed and co-slept, so that was pretty much it. Oh, a very small black Carter's diaper bag that looked like one of those square lunch bags. That was a great bag! Big enough for a few cloth diapers, some wipes and a dirty diaper sack and it doubled as a purse for me so I didn't have more than one bag to carry.

With my 2nd I did get a glider, because I didn't have anything that rocked and thought it would be really nice to have and it was. Some friends chipped in and got one for me, and it lasted for about a year then fell apart. I don't have anything that rocks now, either, so I am going to see if I can find one free from anyone I know or Freecycle. It can really be anything that rocks and is comfortable, not necessarily a glider (the gliders really are totally ugly, aren't they?)

With #2, I knew what I wanted to add to the mix and what I didn't, and I've figured out even more now with #3 on her way. All of my shopping has been at the thrift store, and the majority of everything else has come free from friends.

Which means overall I have a few additional things that I may or may not use already, but I didn't shell out for it, nor did anyone else, at least not recently for new prices. I plan to use the crib this time around, and I got one for free. I did shell out $50 for a new mattress but I was offered a few. I just felt better knowing it was new. I did get a monitor that I will be able to use this time, too. If I am outside then it will be nice to have.

So, basically these are all items that I have put thought into and didn't just follow those silly checklists that seem to be everywhere. Of course I've had babies, so have first hand knowledge, but I think any first time moms can benefit from knowing these things.

I frequent the motheringdotcommune boards and in my due date club we have an ongoing thread about this very thing. It's very nice to hear what other mothers are finding useful and what was a waste of money and resources, especially for those first time moms who can really use this information. And it's funny, because there is very little variation across the board on what was needed and what wasn't.

What items were your necessities with your child(ren)? What could you live without and what came in useful?

Wow, this ended up rambly (Baby stuff stuff)

So, this is baby #3 for me, but baby #1 for my husband, and there is a big gap in there between my youngest and this one. So this means that I no longer had any baby stuff left over. I really didn't think I would have any more and didn't want to hold on to all of that stuff even if I eventually did.

Starting out with absolutely nothing for a baby I have managed to amass a giant pile of stuff already (FREE! mostly). And I still need to pick up the crib and a few various other things people have for me. Another friend randomly texted me the other day saying she had a bunch of girl clothes for me, too.

I am planning on having at least one shower and one blessingway, based on friends who have asked to throw these. I don't mind at all, though I am trying to figure out the best way to make sure that anyone who will attend these events knows that "reduce, reuse, recycle" is really our thing. I don't anyone to feel obligated to bring a gift, though it's generally a given for showers, but I do want to let people know that if they would like to gift us with something what types of things would be really useful.

I registered at babiesrus.com and I think I can put a note on my registry. I'm not sure how long it can be, though, right now it just says "it's a girl"

I don't know, I always hate the idea of those cards you stick in invites letting people know where you are registered.

I was thinking of maybe having my hostess make cards to add into the invites that says something like "Gently used or thrifted clothing and blankets, chlorine free disposables and BPA free bottles, Similac Organic, or a yummy meal for the new parents freezer are all very welcome gifts. If you are stuck for ideas you can also visit the registry at babiesrus.com"

Ugh, I don't know. I don't want to sound pushy, either. But I really don't want to end up with things like bottles or diapers that are not the types I plan to exclusively use. I do feel strongly about only using certain types of items for health and environmental reasons.

My first choice is hand me downs, in order to make less of an impact in the use of materials and pollutants, the exceptions to this being bottles that are not BPA free and plastic toys, I really don't want plastic toys that will be chewed on, unless I know the grade and manufacturer. The things that can't be gotten used, like the diapers, I feel strongly about adding as little waste as I can (ha, of course, not doing cloth that I wash myself this time is kind of the antithesis of this, no?)

I don't know, I have this weird feeling about having a shower or 3 this time around (mom friends from my original AP playgroup that I've know since Max was born is doing the blessingway thing during a weekend getaway that us moms are having this summer with the kids) (a couple's thing with my friends from our day to day group of good friends that my goodest friend wants to throw) (possibly a separate for family, I generally think a family one is good separated, I would like to have a small traditional girl kind with Chris' step-mother and her mother, his step-sister, etc, and invite my mother to this one... ugh, that stresses me out to even think about, yeah, better separate)... But I've always been this way. AND heck, I had a wedding shower for my 2nd marriage (my first actual wedding, though)

But I think if I can get our message across on what we need and would like then I don't feel like anyone would be put out and it will give everyone a lot of flexibility in finding us something without feeling pressured to spend a lot of money.

I have a couple of things on the registry like the car seat and stroller that are a little more, but we have the initial stuff we need already so it's not a big deal if we don't have it when the baby is born. Those things are for the benefit of specific family members that I know all too well to have money they would like to spend on this baby and by all means if they're going to do it anyway I figured I would give them something to get :p

I know people will get what they get anyway, but I just want to gently nudge people in our preferred direction.

Thoughts? How would you do this?