An Open Letter to the Spammers of the World
categories: free printables
Author: Becca Eby
Call Me
categories: Uncategorized
The Bear is showing off one of my favorite Christmas gifts. Jed bought me this awesome Moshi phone attachment off Amazon and I’m obsessed. I just bought my Dad one for his birthday. It is an old school phone receiver that attaches to your cell phone. It is one million times easier to balance on my shoulder while baby wrangling, and I hear so much better through it. My iPhone is carefully wrapped in an Otterbox case because I am oh so slightly accident prone. Seriously, my nickname is the “Spill Queen”. The case makes my phone almost bulletproof (or drop proof), but it also makes it a little hard to hear the conversation. I know, I’m weird, I actually like to talk to people instead of text. I’m old fashioned like that.
PS- I’m not affiliated with Amazon or Native Union (the manufacturer). I’m just obsessed.
Out the Door
The Bear is constantly on the move, crawling and pulling up wherever he can. I know he will be walking in the blink of an eye. How is my baby already 10 months old and so big? I love every stage, but each assertion of independence is a little bit hard on my mommy heart. He is already starting to fight his way out of my arms to get down and play. Thankfully he still loves snuggling up to nurse and needs lots of sweet hugs throughout the day. I just want to soak up every second because he will be grown and out the door long before I’m ready.
What moments are you savoring this week?
Music Lesson
The Bear loves listening to Daddy play the guitar, and I love watching them together. So sweet.
Of Spring and New Life
You Have Redeemed My Soul
by Don Chaffer of Waterdeep/Enter the Worship Circle
You have redeemed my soul
from the pit of emptiness
You have redeemed my soul
from death
I was a hungry child
A dried up river
I was a dried up forest
and no one could do anything for me
You put food in my body
water in my dry bed
and to my blackened branches
You brought the springtime rain
of new life
nothing is impossible for You
The Great Cloth Diaper Trials – 11 Brands Tried and Tested
When we made the decision to use cloth diapers, I had no idea where to start. I started reading every blog and website I could find that had information to help me. I entered lots of diaper giveaways and won a few. I asked the few friends I knew who had tried cloth. There are so many options out there, and it was hard to know where to start.
Here the Bear is modeling his SoftBums Hot Diggity Dog Diaper. Does it have wiener dogs on it? Why yes, yes it does.
Frugal Friday: Choosing Cloth Diapers
If you had asked me 5 years ago if I would ever use cloth diapers, I would have looked at you like you were crazy and said “Not possible.” Now we are 9 months in and loving our choice. If you are an expectant mama or want to have kids (or more kids) someday, I hope you will read on and consider cloth diapers. Why did we choose cloth diapers? There are so many reasons.
1) Cost
Here’s a calculator that will show you exactly how much you can save using cloth diapers, including cost of water, detergent, etc. We broke even after about 4 months and will save well over $1000 after 18 months. If we continue to use our cloth diapers with future children, the savings increase exponentially. The average savings per child are between $1500-2000. Nice. Hello, starter college fund. We went with one size diapers, and love some of the more expensive brands. We could have saved even more using prefolds, but we couldn’t get on board with them. We love the ease of use of our one size diapers and were willing to pay a little more initially. Our favorite brands are Soft Bums, Apple Cheeks, and BumGenius. I will explain our cloth diaper trials in a post coming next week.
2) Environmental Impact
Did you know that each baby using disposable diapers creates about a ton of landfill diaper trash during their diaper years? It’s true. Disposable diapers create over 3.6 MILLION TONS of landfill trash per year. HOLY CRAP. Literally. Some folks argue that the additional energy used to launder cloth diapers negate the environmental positives. Not true. We do maybe 3 more loads of laundry per week than we used to do. We line dry our diapers whenever possible, so that saves on some energy usage.
3) Safer for Baby
Disposable diapers contain so many chemicals, synthetics, and toxins (like dioxin) that I would rather avoid putting next to my Little Bear’s skin. We have to use disposables occasionally (for Mother’s Day Out, church nursery, MOPS, etc) and know that when we do he is prone to get diaper rash. He never gets it from his cloth diapers.
4) Functionality
Cloth diapers work better than disposable. Really. We have had very few leaks or blowouts with our cloth diapers, really almost none. Disposables are a whole other messy story.
5) Cuteness
Cloth diapers are just so cute. Seriously. They come in a million fun patterns and colors and you can match every outfit. So fun.
I plan to most more about our cloth diaper
decisions and routine soon.
Do you use cloth diapers?
Why or why not?
Would you ever use them?
Do you think we are crazy?
Lunch Date
categories: Uncategorized
My lunch date is the cutest.
The Battle of the Baby Weight
categories: baby
I have always struggled with my weight. I remember my pediatrician telling my mom to make me drink 2% milk in elementary school to curb my weight gain. I remember feeling fat in the 5th grade. There have been periods of dramatic weight loss in 9th grade, summer after freshmen year in college, and when I moved to Asheville. There have also been periods of dramatic weight gain 5-6th grade, freshmen year in college, junior year in college, post breakups, after moving to Dallas, and most recently during my 1st pregnancy. I was about 20 pounds over my happy weight when I got pregnant. Then I proceeded to gain 42 pounds during the 40 weeks of pregnancy. Yikes. Did I mention I’m 5’3″? Yes, that does mean I was about as wide as I am tall. The pic below was at 37 weeks. It only got worse, promise.
Dear First Time Mamas,
Congratulations on your first pregnancy! If you have struggled with your weight in the past you are now feeling the freedom of being able to eat whatever you want and blame it on the baby. Enjoy this to an extent, but consider yourself warned. When that sweet bundle of joy arrives, the weight will not magically go with it. You might lose 12 pounds instantly with a big baby plus water, etc, but the rest will stay and you will have to fight tooth and nail for every. single. pound. So, eat that ice cream for sure, but maybe not every night. Trust me, I learned the hard way.
Love, Becca
Here I am at 38 weeks with my sweet and skinny friend, Whitney. I in no way realized exactly how big I had become until I saw these pictures. I was hoping it would magically disappear after the birth. Not so much.
I started off strong dropping 12 right after birth (just baby/water/etc), then another 10 from breastfeeding in the first few months. Then it stalled out. The Bear was born on May 31, and by October I still looked like this (below).
I gave up sweets in the month of November, joined a gym and Weight Watchers, and started the Couch to 5K program. I lost about a pound a week taking me to Christmas when I looked like this (below). I gained a few pounds back over the holiday which was so frustrating. Jed and I looked at this picture and decided we didn’t want to be the fat family any more. We want to be fit and fun for our kids and our quality of life. The day after Christmas we downloaded My Fitness Pal free app on our phones and I dropped Weight Watchers. My Fitness Pal is basically the same as the WW app, but FREE! So great.
Since Christmas I have lost 14 pounds (for a total of 38) and Jed has lost 20. This is the one downfall to losing weight with your man. They will always lose it faster. Jerks. But seriously, I am so proud of Jed. He has worked so hard to get healthy, and it has been fun to partner with him. We still have a long way to go, but we are on our way. I have 4 more pounds of baby weight and then 20 more pounds of pre-baby weight to lose before I reach my goal. I hope to hit my goal of 62 pounds lost by the end of July. That is slow and steady, a pound a week. Jed only has 15 pounds to go, so he should be there by June.
Hopefully next pregnancy I can gain weight at a healthy pace and not put myself in such a tough position. Our hope is to stay active as a family so that Bear grows up with parents who are fun and love to play and teach him the value of a healthy lifestyle. Our goals this year are to lose weight, but to do that by changing our eating habits and portion sizes, and increasing our fitness level. We set a goal of 210 minutes of exercise each week, which is 30 minutes a day. We hope that Bear will grow up without having to struggle with his weight because he has been taught a healthy lifestyle.
What are your weight loss, fitness, or healthy lifestyle goals this year? How are you doing with them so far?
Let’s Make an Easter Wreath
Easter is my favorite holiday.
Spring is my favorite season.
I really love the joy of Jesus risen and all of the bloom of new life.
I searched Pinterest for spring and Easter decorating inspiration and found this and this and decided to combine them using my interchangeable burlap wreath that I made here.
Here’s how it came about:
I stripped the Valentine’s Day stuff off the burlap wreath and wrapped the bottom of it in haute fur yarn, pinning the ends of it into the wreath with straight pins. Then I cut individual daisies off the daisy chain ribbon and pinned them into the “grass” using coordinating straight pins. I arranged a few plastic Easter eggs in the grass using the straight pins and moved them until I was happy with their placement.
I created the words using dollar store pipe cleaners and ribbon leftover from the nursery decorating.
You can find the pipecleaner letter directions found here.
I couldn’t decide where to put my lil birdie. I moved him around and took him off and put him back on. He sticks in with yet another straight pin, so it was super easy to move him. What do you think- bird or no bird?
He ended up here.
I’m super happy with the way it turned out.
The letters were WAY more difficult than I thought they would be.
Pipecleaner molding is not my best skill, apparently.
I also had a bit of a fiasco with the ribbon. I ran out on the happy and had to go back and make it super tight so it would cover the whole thing. In between I went to Hobby Lobby to find another spool of ribbon. They were out. They had just received a huge shipment of literally every other type of ribbon except the one I needed. A craftastrophe! Oh well. It all worked out in the end.
Does the Easter Bunny visit your house?