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.