KSU HOMECOMING PARADE!!! OCT 09

Yay! We got SOOO much candy! Thanks to all the frat boys and sorority gals who caught candy and gave it to Brandon! LOL This is a picture of him checking out all the candy on his blanket on the curb. It was a chilly morning, but I didn't want to miss a parade, so I popped him in the carrier and took a walk downtown with him trying to find a good spot to sit where we wouldn't have to fight other kiddos for candy. We ended up right at the top of the hill by the frat houses and it couldn't have worked out better! One guy had an adorable little puppy that he let Brandon pet, too. It was great to just unfold the carrier into a blanket and sit on the curb on a blanket instead of the cold, hard cement.

Too bad Brandon will probably have nightmares of giant squirrels for weeks to come. Poor kid! There were so many people dressed up in black squirrel costumes, and one of them tried to shake Brandon's hand and Brandon FREAKED. He just backed up and started screaming and the poor guy in the squirrel suit just ran away! LOL Luckily, a nice guy (I think his name was Matt) kept egging him on to get more and more candy from all the pretty girls in the parade. Brandon even shared his Lightning McQueen hat with him. It was cute! But now we have so much candy that I think we are ALL gonna need a dentist real soon! :-)

New Carrier!!!!

WOO HOO! New Carrier!!!!
Ok, so I keep getting these comments from people saying "But don't the kids sweat like crazy in that thing? My kid is a sweat-er... it's too hot where I live... I can't stand being too hot...."

So, my first reaction was... then don't carry your kid around! LOL I sweat like a pig when I have to carry my kid on my hip in the middle of the hot summer, carrier or not! Luckily, this style of carrier still allows for air flow on the sides of the baby, just not a lot in-between airflow, which you don't get much airflow in-between without a carrier either. (Not to mention my body works a lot less when I can carry him hands free.) But I began to think about how to make my carriers less condusive to heat, and what kind of needs someone might have in Texas or Florida that would be different from Ohio. Things like protecting their precious little skins, and carrying water around with you, and do you still need a blanket? So here is what I came up with:

1) Yes, you still need a blanket, but not always for covering up or keeping warm, but more for laying them down to change a diaper or for having a picnic, or even laying across a chair that is too hot from the sunshine.
2) If you have a water bottle clip, you should still be able to carry water with you by clipping it to the carrier. Sippies are also easily carried by sticking in the bow around your waist and tightening the strap around it. (I'll have to take a picture of that later!)
3) Protecting their skin would require covering them up, but hopefully not with material that doesn't breathe. You want them to stay cool and shaded, but not smothered.
So here was my solution... a combination of Solarveil material and light cotton with tapered straps and light colors. The blanket is half Solarveil and half cotton. The Solarveil half is the part that can be pulled out of the carrier while you are carrying your little monkey, that way you can use it to cover their head in direct sun. I'm still debating adding a pull string onto it to make it more like a 'hood' when it is pulled out.

Misty the mule!

Well - I finally got pictures from Brandy of me carrying Samantha back to the cabin from the woods. She's my little guinea pig! I wasn't sure how hard it would be, but it was surprisingly easier than I thought!!! I'm glad I was able to help out Samantha's poor little feet... and amazed that I can now say my carriers have a weight limit of 60 pounds!!! I didn't find one stitch broken after carrying her all that way. Thanks Sam!

Little Miss Sarah and her beautiful Mommy Brandy:

Oh my gosh she was SO passed out!!! We started laughing at one point cause we could hear her snoring! LMAO!!!

This picture was taken while we were taking a hike through the woods down at my sister's cabin. Along the way we saw some cool spiders, HUGE spider webs, deer tracks, racoon tracks, water spiders and we THINK we saw some tadpols, too. There were pretty flowers that were SO bright red it was crazy! And Christopher was nice enough to be the 'dispenser' for the Ice Breakers candy that Samantha, Sarah and Brandon (and Brandy and I!) kept eating along the way. Thanks Chris! Samantha found a pretty rock that looked like a bird. We brought it back with us and she was going to paint it to look like a bird, but I think we forgot it down at the cabin. Sorry Sam!

On the way back from our walk, Sarah woke up and wanted to walk on her own, so of course Brandon wanted to copy Sarah. So we put both of the little ones down off our backs and let them walk... at which point Samantha's feet hurt so bad she looked like she was gonna cry! So I decided I wanted a challenge and I told Samantha to jump on my back. I tied her up in my carrier and asked her if it was ok. She said "It's really tight, but I like it! It doesn't hurt or anything!" She seemed happy enough so I carried her on my back the rest of the way and with her weight on my hips and the carrier supporting her close to me, it didn't feel much different than carrying Brandon! How crazy is that?! I mean, Samantha is SEVEN YEARS OLD! Brandy took a picture of that, too. LOL I'll have to share it when she uploads her pictures to her computer.

Overall, it really was a nice trip to the cabin, and we got to really take some time to relax and enjoy nature. We even saw some deer in the back yard! Not to mention, every time we drove anywhere, we saw a bunch of deer along the road, too. But that didn't impress Chris, who informed me that "I saw LOTS of deer down in West Virginia. I saw them a lot closer, too! Right now I'm just HUNGRY!" LOL At that point, getting to dinner was a lot more important than seeing some silly deer. :-)

Malafa/Baby wrap

My first wrap carry! My niece brought me back a malafa (melafa?) from Africa and I used it for a wrap... what do you think? It's a real pretty purple, black and orange malafa. Malafa's are what the women traditionally wear in Nouackchott. It's a kind of wrap/cover. Sometimes they wear two at a time, but my niece said she's also seen women use them to carry their babies around. It's my first time trying to use a wrap-style of carry for Brandon so I'm not sure if I did it right. I'm researching more wrap carry positions now, so if I come up with something better for this size of material, I'm sure I'll try it later and take more pics. LOL

This is what it looks like stretched out:

Randolph County Fair

This is on the way out to the car after the fair... The majority of the time we were there, all he wanted to do was jump around in the middle of the road and bat around his balloon... I am SOOO glad I brought the carrier this time! I almost didn't, but of course I DID forget to put an extra diaper inside it and what happened? He peed a waterfall and the poor kid was so soaked he was 'mushy'. Ewwwww. So we decided to hike it ALLLL the way back out to our horrible parking spot and change him then hike back in... but not until after we reparked the car in a closer spot. HA! Anyhow, we ended up tying the baloon to the carrier because it was just too hard tying it to his wrist and I didn't want to worry about it flying off and being stuck with a poor, depressed, tear soaked little guy in the middle of the fair. So who got to get bumped in the head with the balloon for half a day? Yup, me. Well... and half of the people we passed by! LOL He was soooo exhausted after riding all the rides. All three of them. He went on the slide first. LOVED that. Then the kiddie ferris wheel which no adults were allowed on... he started out liking it cause he got to sit next to a cute little girl... but then the ride started going around and around continuously and by the second pass his face started to look worried... by the 4th pass around he looked like he was gonna puke and by the 5th pass he had his face hidden in his hands on the railing. He didn't look back up until it stopped, poor kid. Daddy tried taking him in the Haunted House ride... yeah. Not the best idea. He came out crying. lol I know, it's horrible, I shouldn't laugh, but he looked so excited to go inside it at the beginning and that's why we let him go. Guess he learned his lesson! After that, the only ride we could convince him to go on was the motorcycle ride and he LOVED that. But I think he's done with spinning for a while. He shook his head 'no' to just about everything else after that. I don't think he was ready for any more surprises after that.

(See the pic of him on the motorcycle ride in the previous post below....)

Randolph fair motorcycle ride

Ta Da! My first post to this blog from my cell phone! :-)

I figured this was the perfect introduction to my blog. I know some of us are addicted to our kids, but it's just VERY possible that sometimes our kids are addicted to us, too! Either way, we're happily addicted! I thought as my son got older (He's now officially OVER 2 years old!) he would get tired of hanging out on my back while I was doing chores around the house. Guess not. :-S The other day I just couldn't get anything done, and there was a LOT that needed done! Too many things at once and Daddy was dealing with big brother elsewhere so no help for Mom! No matter what room I was in or what I did, Brandon followed me everywhere, hitting me in the butt (a favorite pasttime), holding his arms up for me to pick him up so he could see, trying to drag chairs up to counters and "help" (his version of help... not my version). Finally he started making these gestures and I was trying to figure out what he wanted... "You hungry??? Thirsty? Want a drink? Chips? Chocolate? Gotta poop? Want a movie? Anything besides ME?!" Nope to all of it. Finally he walks around me and points at my back and grunts, then walks in front of me and backs up to me... the way he has to stand if I'm going to throw him over my shoulder in a piggy-back. "You want a piggy-back???? NOW??" You gotta be kidding. His answer. "UH HUH!!!" He was so proud that he conveyed what he wanted. Me, on the other hand... ugh. I gotta carry you around while I'm doing laundry and dishes and you really think you're gonna STAY there? Whatever. So I got out the carrier, half-doubting it would work at this point... sounds horrible doesn't it? Doubting my own carrier? LOL Well, as you can see from the picture, he was happily playing with one of his cars that I picked up while cleaning the living room, and driving it through my hair while I did the dishes. He stayed like that for a good half hour I'd say before he finally decided that Mommy's cleaning wasn't as fun as "Madagascar" on TV anymore. So at that point he pointed to the TV and I was only too happy to let him have 'movie time' for a while until the laundry was folded. LOL It was only a half hour out of the day, but I'll take a fuss-free half hour of cleaning to 2 hours of fussy cleaning ANY day. But beware... toy cars LOVE driving in hair. :-)

~Misty