Friday, August 23, 2013

Your Approval Is Not Needed.

So this post is going to be a more serious one. There will be no pictures but I hope that won't stop you from sticking around.
 
Yesterday here in Las Vegas, a news story aired regarding three recent cases of infants dying in their sleep. This newscast literally bashed co-sleeping. There was no sugar coating as it went into the "ABC's of baby sleeping". I don't think I have been this appalled by something in a long time and as horrible as the newscast itself was, what unfolded after that was worse. Katie and I co-sleep with our youngest. We have since day 1. We are always careful and she wakes at the slightest stir or sound. I also know that when I have to move at night I physically wake up and roll myself over in one spot without moving side to side. We have a cal-king bed. This post is not a post of me defending ourselves though because I do not feel that I need to.
 
The reason that I felt the need to write this is because a person we considered to be a friend decided to spread the hate, so to speak. I KNOW THERE ARE TWO SIDES TO EVERY STORY AND THIS IS MINE. Take it how you will but I need to get this off my chest. After sharing the news story on her personal page with some ridiculous caption that honestly slips my mind now we left it alone for a short period of time but eventually Katie needed to say something.
 
Do not get me wrong, EVERYONE IS ENTITLED TO THEIR OPINIONS ON ANYTHING and we are never in a shortage of judgmental opinions about our household. We are a lesbian couple raising two beautiful boys. Our boys share the same father and know that he is their father. With our first I was unable to breastfeed and there is plenty of scrutiny thrown my way for that. With our second child we have decided to "go green", we cloth diaper, I am making homemade soaps and the like, we co-sleep, we are currently awaiting our amber necklace. All things we did not do the first time around. So as you can see, there are plenty of things to judge my household on.
 
 Moving on though, here is where the trouble began, this is EXACTLY what Katie said: 
If done right by a responsible adult cosleeping can be amazing, Kayson has slept in bed with Gail and I since the day we got home from the hospital. Its idiots who do it wrong that gives cosleeping a bad rep. Cosleeping also just about eliminates the risk if sids. I would not have it any other way and I know that the safest place for my son is right next to me. If one of the parents is on drugs or drinking of course precautions need to be made but the people that don't put their baby first put their baby at risk.
I do not personally see anything wrong or attacking in that response. Do you? From there this person decided it would be a good idea to ramble off a bunch of nonsense:
 I would rather play safe then sorry. i calue my childrens life. we used a bassinet next to our bed. 4 inches away can safe a life safesleep.tn.gov Babies should sleep ALONE, on their BACK and in a CRIB. (ABC's) High school child ed...Early ed in college. They also taught us this and every child hood class i took.
 
Now the way those things were posted seemed to me like an attack. Like this person honestly tried to say that we don't value the lives of our children. NOTHING could be farther from the truth! These things were literally sent in five different posts. I responded with:
Oh but we don't Value our childrens lives? Wonderful.
 
From there it turned into some back tracking about how every parent values their child differently. Personally, I think that's a joke. Then I was told that I don't think anyone is allowed an opinion. That's not true. And I always have to be mad blah blah blah. So before I could say anything else on the matter Katie and I were deleted. So I sent what I had been typing up to comment in a message. I was then called insane. Which has its own comical humor behind it, followed by being blocked. I was dumbfounded to say the least. Someone who claimed to love our family and claimed to be a friend honestly reacted this way.
 
So on to why I felt the need to post this here. This sat with me last night and then all day today. To be honest I am proud of how I handled the situation because I have a temper and yesterday I was not having the best day to begin with. I was ready for a fight. I did not fight and I did not call names either. I was calm and then blew it off. The fact that it has sat in my mind and in my heart for 24 hours now though has allowed me to reflect and sitting here doing that prior to writing this it popped into my head that no ones approval is needed. I do not need to please anyone or live up to some ridiculous guidelines. 
 
It all comes down to the fact that fear mongers are going to do whatever they can to spread fear. You can have an opinion on ANY topic either FOR or AGAINST and you will be able to find ample "scientific" evidence to back that up. In the end what matters are your instincts as a parent and doing what is best for you and your child. NO ONE ELSE'S APPROVAL IS NEEDED!
 
That "friendship" is one that will NEVER be rekindled and to be completely honest, I am not even remotely upset about that. My life up until our first was born revolved around pleasing others. I put others comfort and happiness before mine. After seeing Big Brothers smiling face and realizing that I had someone who depended on me, I knew that my happiness needed to be put first, or second to only his. I know that there is no handbook on parenting but our boys are beautiful, healthy and Big Brother is one smart cookie and he's only 3. These boys are my life, my love, my world and nothing will ever change that.
 
So I guess what all this boils down to is that I am so glad to be at a place in my life where I don't need any one's approval or opinion.
 

Thursday, August 15, 2013

Fun new match up and home made laundry soap!

Going green with baby is pairing up with Domestic Dingbat for an awesome dual family "granola" Facebook partnership!
 
You can find her adventures with Honey Badger Baby here:
 
and you can find us both sharing our adventures on a more regular basis here:
 
We aren't entirely sure on what direction we plan on taking our page but tune in for the adventures that will unfold!
 
 
Now, home made laundry soap!
 
I am sure we have all seen those fun little recipes being passed around on Facebook. I myself have shared quite a few of them. One I came across recently was for some home made laundry "sauce". I will link the recipe below for you to check out on your own.
 
What caught my attention right away was that the post boasts 128 loads of laundry for the cost of $1.76 once it is broken down. Who wouldn't want to try it at that cost?
 
 
 So these are the ingredients needed plus water. Amazing right? Four ingredients and not one of them is overly expensive! The Fels-Naptha was $0.79 and then the Washing Soda and Borax were roughly $4.00 each. Honestly not bad at all.

 I was highly skeptical as I was following the instructions and started realizing a few things. First this soap is literally the consistency of mayonnaise and two you place it directly in the drum of your washing machine, we have a front loader.
 
 
I put my skepticism aside, though and set to making it. I was worried about doing something wrong of course especially after reading about errors that the creator had come across. It could end up to gritty, it could be to runny, if stored improperly it could combust! So many could happens! Now I won't lie and tell you that the recipe was an easy one because it was definitely not, but so far we are liking the outcome.
 
For our first wash with the new soap we wanted to put it to the ultimate test. We took a bunch of towels that had been used to clean up various dog "messes" as well as a few others that Big Brother had left sitting around that had begun to smell. Placed the load in the drum and added the soap right on top of the clothes like directed and added an extra rinse cycle, just in case. (Big Brother and I have sensitive skin and he has been prone to breaking out with certain soaps.)
 
After the towels had finished washing and drying it was time to judge the result. Our towels no longer smelled like they had cleaned up dog messes. The didn't smell particularly like anything really. There was no perfume-y fragrance either they just smelled...clean. We have of course continued to use the soap on our laundry, excluding Baby K's of course. If you are looking to try to make a detergent of your own and don't mind the strange consistency of this one I'd say give it a try.

Keep an eye out for when we try out a recipe for DIY cloth diaper detergent!
 
As promised here is the link to the blog with the recipe:
 
Hope you found this useful and I hope you will follow us daily on our Facebook page. Also don't forget to check out Honey Badger Babies adventure over at Domestic Dingbat!
 
 

Saturday, August 3, 2013

Long time no post!

I have been seriously slacking on all of my blogs recently!
 
Adjusting to a new baby and the lack of sleep that can come with it has really dwindled my motivation! That coupled with the fact that I am trying to get my photography business up and running has made me feel like I am losing my mind to be honest.
 
Baby K has grown quite a bit in his short 11 week existence. He is now up to almost 14 lbs. and quite the squirmy thing. Since he has grown so much we had to move up in diaper sizes so we decided that since we know we are in love with CD (cloth diapering) we would invest in a set of our own this time on top of borrowing from our amazing, wonderful, sharing friend. Double the prefolds!
 
Buying our own prefolds meant that we had to prep them ourselves as well. I can honestly say that I was looking forward to our order arriving so I could do this. I boiled the prefolds with a touch of dawn dish soap before throwing them in the washer in order to boil away any materials that would cause them not to absorb waste. I also want to add that luckily Baby K is strictly breast fed which means his poopy is water soluble, this makes cleaning his diapers VERY easy! We just throw them in our washing machine and wash them first on a cold cycle and then on a hot cycle. No need to pre-treat.
 
 
On top of getting to buy our first set of prefolds, we are also getting to try out some new covers. My absolute FAVORITE cover of ever right now is the FLIP cover. It is honestly, in my opinion, the coolest most genius invention EVER! It is a one size diaper cover that has what seems like a million snaps so it grows with your little one. I am seriously in love with it.
 
We also bought a couple of one size pocket diapers to try out. While I genuinely love the idea of them, I am not as big of a fan of them in practice. The whole notion of having to pull the insert out before washing them as opposed to taking his cover off and removing his prefold seems so much more difficult. I am not sure why because in the steps are pretty much the same. Regardless I am not really a fan of them. I will stick to our flips and slip ons for now.
 
 
Enough about diapers for now! We are also lucky enough to be able to try out a few different baby carriers thanks to our amazing friend. She loaned us her woven wrap that is now to small for her to use. She also made us our very own ring sling.  I never thought I would say this but I love baby wearing also. It isn't a constant in our home because K does not always want to cooperate but I do it as much as he will allow. I am just starting to look into making our own woven wrap as well as one for the water because we take him in the shower with us and a wrap would make that experience much more enjoyable I think.
 
Momma "wearing" Baby K
Mommy "wearing" Baby K
 
Well I am sure you have read more than you really wanted to at this point so I will cut it off here! Thanks so much for reading!



 Oh! I almost forgot, Happy world breastfeeding week!