Addy is 10 months old and still breastfeeding. She’s big enough now that we’re starting to get the dirty looks if I breastfeed her in public. (And we live in Portland, Oregon which is supposed to be a bastion of progressive thinkers) Even when we are being super descrete we will get the “look”. My own children have picked up on it and one of them even said “do you have to do that here?” the other day. I was absolutely horrified! How could my own child have that attitude? A couple days later an acquaintance who espouses healthy living asked me how long I planned on breastfeeding. And she didn’t ask because she was being supportive, it was more a how long are you going to let that go on for, question. All I could think was so you eat organic, you find processed sugar repugnant, you won’t touch coffee or soda or fast food, but you think there is something wrong with breastfeeding a 10 month old?

After pondering it for a couple days, I think the answer is this. We all know the benefits of breastfeeding a baby if you don’t google “benefits of breast feeding” and you will find an arsenal of medical research on the subject. And many new mothers give it a go. Often new mothers even have some good resources available to them to help them through problems. But somewhere along the line they give up. They decide the bottle is easier. They decide that their baby will do better on baby formula. If you watch TV aimed at the demographic that comprises young monthers you see lots of commercials for baby products, baby food, diapers, forumla, toys etc. But you never see anything promoting breast feeding. The are no PSA’s for breast feeding.

On TV shows you never see mothers breastfeeding. And we never see older babies nursing. So eventhough everything we know about what is best for baby says that you should breastfeed until baby is at least a year. Our popular culture doesn’t in any way support that with the messages we send to people. Michelle Obama, you have taken on childhood obesity as your cause. Make a PSA about breastfeeding, breatfed children have a lower rate of obesity (read here.) Daytime soaps the storyline about the new mother with PPD is old news, do one about a mom who wants to breastfeed. Other media outlets, instead of using a bottle as a prop for shows/movies with babies consider showing breastfeeding. Celebrities out there, those of you that are breastfeeding show that you do it! Help break down the walls of our society so we embrace it as a norm and look at the bottle as the less desireable choice. As I was looking up some links for this post I noticed that the Advertising for the AAP website sections on breastfeeding was for formula. Maybe we need to get out there and promote breastfeeding the way we promote anti smoking and anti drug propaganda.

And you there, reading this post. Ask yourself how you reacted last time you saw an older baby nursing. Did you think to yourself that baby’s too old? The American Association of Pediatrics recommends exclusive breastfeeding for the first six months and continued breastfeeding beyond that noting that “There is no upper limit to the duration of breastfeeding and no evidence of psychologic or developmental harm from breastfeeding into the third year of life or longer.” As a society we see nothing wrong with a toddler toting around a bottle but we frown on a toddler that is still nursing. This attitude needs to change. We need some PSA’s about breastfeeding.

Make sure you are supporting any breastfeeding mothers you might know. A small word of encouragement can help offset the negativity of our society.

Me and Addy when she was a newborn. Picture by the fabulous Shiela Nielsen. And yes I have now posted pictures of my own boob on the internet. Do you suppose I can now say I have naked pictures of myself on the internet?

When you have children a time comes when shelf space becomes prime realestate. My boys are lego builders, and lego structures take up a lot of shelf space. Add to that various trinkets, and trophies, and special projects from school and pretty soon your shelf space is cluttered and very full. I have been wanting to install a high display shelf for some time. I never did it in our old house because I knew we were moving and I didn’t want to muck up the walls. So when we moved into our new house one of my first projects has been to get a display shelf insalled in the boys’ room. I saw the plans for the ten dollar ledges on the Ana-White website and this looked like a very manageable first project. Of course it only took me 6 weeks to finish… The building was easy but the finishing a lot more work!

I built these with the assistance of my oldest son Kyle who is 9. We changed up Ana’s plan a little. First I chose to use moulding on the front to create the ledge. Our house has quite a few built ins and I wanted to keep the look of the existing built ins, which all used this moulding. I just aligned the bottom edge of the moulding with the bottom of the shelf, it created a little lip, and had the same effect as using the 1×2 Ana recommends. I also made the shelf much longer than 8 feet. We measured each wall and then pieced our lumber together (using pocket holes) to make a piece long enough to fit each wall. I may have been able to get a single piece that long, but my car wasn’t going to hold that much long lumber. For the “lego” shelf we followed the same plan but used a piece of 1×12 that the lumberyard ripped for me to make narrower to 9 1/2″. I watched a bunch of videos on Youtube and figured out how to use my husband’s circular saw, and was able to get the shelves put together pretty easily. I definately had a learning curve on finishing. I found there is a big difference in wood putty brands and how it dries and sands. I also got stymied by some really cold weather that made the wood putty slow to dry. Sanding proved to be a challenge mess wise. I finally decided the only place to sand was outside because it just created way too much mess in our garage. Then finally it came time to paint. We did two coats of Kilz2 primer and two coats of Rhodda Latex Enamel. I painted the shelves to match the rest of the wood trim in the house.

With a little jimmy rigging I managed to install them by myself. The one above of the bunkbed was easy because Kyle could sit up on the bunkbed and hold it up, but we had to get creative with the heavier wider shelf.

Wider shelf for Lego display (excuse our hanging solar system I couldn’t seem to get an angle without them):

Narrower ledge for trophies and pictures:

Since these shelves are custom fit to the wall I don’t have plans to ever take them out! I screwed them into studs, then puttied over the screws and touch up painted. I debated whether to put brackets on the wider shelf. Once I got it installed it felt pretty solid. Since it won’t be bearing a lot of weight (lego structures don’t weigh much) I think for now I won’t put in an brackets. I will definately keep an eye on it to see if it starts to sag and add if needed. The finishing didn’t come out as professional as I would have liked, but I learned from my mistakes and the next time we build hopefully the finishing will be better. When you look at it from a distance you don’t notice the small flaws in the paint. As you can see our lego shelf is quite empty, the boys have been busy working to fill it. All their structures but a treasured few got broken down to move. I am so happy to finally have a safe place to put delicate structures, there is nothing worse than having someone handle and break a lego structure you have spent countless hours working on.

Next up I want to build in some shelves for toy storage in the closet. Then I want to build a book case to custom fit an odd space by the windows. But I think we will wait till the weather gets a little nicer before we venture on any more wood building endeavors.

We were at the library the other night when Amy spied a copy of Family Fun magazine. It had a cute Valentine themed cover and touted directions to make your own Valentine. She fell in love with the idea of making her Valentines, ever my crafty girl she was determined to make these for school. The kids had the day off on Friday so I figured what better way to spend the afternoon. I raided my scrapbook supplies and we had all the paper we needed. A quick trip to the store for candy and we were set to go. Amy made the Friendship Blossoms. The boys made the Rocket Ships. We used Twix for the boy’s rockets because we couldn’t find a good buy on lifesavers, plus we all agreed Twix are much tastier!

Overall I thought these were very easy to make. I did have to make a template for all the parts for Amy’s flowers and for the rocket ship flame. I ended up helping with the cutting because I could cut out a couple sheets of paper at once making it much faster for me. But it didn’t seem like it took too long to cut any of it out. For the flower centers I cut out a circle first, then cut away little triangle to make petals. For the rocket ship flame I did something similar cutting out a filled in U first, then cutting away to make the flame. Best part of it all is we got to use up some of the oversupply of scrapbook paper in my stash!

Phew a week with sick kiddos and all ambition flew out the door… or at least big projects. When I look back at the last week I actually managed to accomplish a lot of small tasks, it just seems like they don’t amount to much when you take each individually. As a whole though I did get a lot done. We had company over for the Super Bowl and it didn’t feel like a monumental hurdle to get the house tidy for company, so I guess I’m making progress on the moving in!

A few weeks ago as one of my first organizing projects in the new house I had cleaned off and organized the side counter in my kitchen. I have already identified that this will be a hot spot for clutter. So attempt one at organzing it I cleaned out and emptied all the drawers and cabinets, sorted, purged, moved, containerized and *thought* I had it controlled. Well it has quickly gotten out of control and it’s only been 3 weeks! AK! Clearly I need to re-evaluate my methods for this place. I am determined to keep it clutter free. I think I have not contained and labeled enough areas for different kinds of clutter/junk/pens/pencils/papers/etc… So this week I think we will try to sneak in a trip to the Container Store. I signed up for their email newsletter and the first thing they sent me was a 10% off coupon, gotta put that to use before it expires!

I shared last week that I was working on getting Amy’s room unpacked and organized. We did get it finished but I haven’t had a chance to share pictures. I want to start by showing what the room looked like when we bought the house. It was painted a horrid blue jean blue semigloss. All walls AND the ceiling. The room was like a dark, dungeony, cave. The dark blue absolutely had to go. Three coats of primer and two coats of paint later the ceiling was a nice bright “ceiling white”, and the walls were a seafoamy blue. We chose Benjamin Moore Blue Seamfoam 2056-60 to coordinate with a Pottery Barn Teen duvet cover we had picked out. I am absolutely in love with this room, it is so light and airy now.

BEFORE ugly blue jean blue, what were they thinking when they painted this? BLECH!

AFTER:

When we chose the PB Teen duvet my hope was that it would last her stylewise for quite a few years. We loved some of the looks in the PB Kids catalog, but they all seemed so little girl I was afraid that in 2-3 years Amy would be begging for something more mature. You may notice we are lacking in furniture. When I saw this bed from PB teen I was in love and thought it would be the perfect solution to store all that girly clutter like figurines and stuffled animals, not to mention trophies and rock collections:

As much as I loved this bed the price was out of our budget so I started looking for a more reasonably priced solution. I found theBrimnes bed at Ikea and actually drove all the way over to get it, only to realize that with all 4 kids in tow I could not fit the box in my car. I had every intention of going back for it without kids when I stumbled upon the Ana-White website and saw her plans for the Storage Bed Collection.

Now I’m holding out thinking there has to be a way I can get the skills to build this! So either I will get fed up drive back to Ikea and buy the Brimnes bed and headboard, or get ambitious and attempt to build the Ana-White bed. In the mean time Amy seems perfectly content with her matress on the floor. I have an old circa 1976 oak dresser that is screaming “make me pretty” that I want to refinish this summer. But for now her mess is contained and she has enough storage to make due. We found both the window sheers and the toss pillows at Fred Meyer. If you live in the Pacific Northwest I have found Fred Meyer is a great place to find some smokin hot deals on home decor. I got each of these toss pillows for $6.00. I had eyed a similar ruffled pillow at a furniture store for $55. For $6 I wasn’t too annoyed when it was being used in a pillow fight!

I have more plans for Amy’s room, but am happy that it is liveable, organized, and she is happy with it. My next goal is to finish the boy’s room and control the mess in Addy’s room.

I saw on an Organization blog right before Christmas and it was just such a good idea, I couldn’t believe I had never thought of it before. That perpetual pile of papers on my kitchen counter, the stack I’m always digging through looking for something.There was a solution for it. The Home Management Binder. One place to have all the kid’s schedules, meal planning, important phone numbers, everything organized! I immediately went out and bought a binder and page protectors and started to get my Binder organized. But I haven’t really had time to finish it. So this is the perfect challenge for me! If you think you’d like to do it Toni over at Bowl Full of Lemons is the leader, all you have to do is check in and do what she tells you. It’s pretty simple! Kinda like homework… but more fun! I’ve got my materials ready and will keep you posted on my progress.

Whew Amy and I had a busy day today. In between basketball pictures and Kyle’s basketball game we finally got her room put together. It is all done (for now). The boxes are all unpacked. Her book case is bolted to the wall and her books and stuff organized in it. Everything in her room has a “home” that is for the most part labeled! She is just thrilled with the results, and I am too. Amy has so much misc junk (despite purging when we packed it up) there were a few times I was ready to throw in the towel, cram some stuff back in a box and call it good, but I persevered. We purged several boxes of toys today. It took quite a bit of negotiating to get her to part with anything, eventhough some toys haven’t been touched in a year. I could have purged when Amy was at school, but I’m hoping by having her work through the process with me she will learn to organize and purge on her own. One item that has been the bane of my existance is Barbie. Amy has never, ever, ever, ever played with any Barbie for more than about twenty minutes. Ocassionally a friend will come over and Barbie will get dug out. There will be much fussing that only one shoe can be found or a certain pair of pants are missing. Barbie will get stripped and her outfit changed. Maybe she’ll get her hair bushed. Then she will get tossed on the floor and there she will sit for days. Her clothes will get dispersed to the far corners of the house and cause a huge amount of nagging to get picked up. And that’ll be the end of it, apparently Barbie is only good for a quickie. Getting Barbie, and Polly Pocket, and My Little Pony out of the room should really help to control the toy chaos! I feel like I just won a major coup!

We got quite a few things mounted on Amy’s walls tonight, we have some more to do. I’m partially hesitating because we are going to be getting some new furniture in there and I don’t want to punch needless holes in my newly painted walls. We finished much too late to do any after pictures. But here is the hot mess it was before we got started. I will share more tomorrow!

While spending my exciting Saturday night surfing on the web I found a few things I just love. You know you’re old with kids when a night window shopping online makes you happy!

I’m drooling over this ruffled set for summer. Addy would just look adorable in it.

Bridget and Co is one of my favorite custom clothing sellers on etsy:

I have always thought DressMe was brilliant. I have ordered a few items from her and they are TDF. One of my biggest regrets is that I passed them on when the kid’s outgrew them not anticipating Miss Addy coming along!

I simply adore this dress from LittleGirlPearl. Purple is a good color on my red headed Addy.

All this window shopping on etsy helps encourage me to get my craft room unpacked and organized so I can get some stuff listed on etsy and have some money to go shopping with. I’m hoping I can get back to listing some ready to ship things there soon.

We moved into a new house at the beginning of January. We are pretty moved in, most of the boxes are unpacked and the house is starting to feel more like home. But now comes the hard task of getting organized, and finding a home for everything, and getting pictures on the wall, and getting things arranged the way you really want them. UGH. In my last house I think it took me three years to get that settled. I want things to move more quickly this time. That means I have to be agressively attacking sections of the house a week at a time, making it a prioirty. All week I have had laundry room on my to do list, and every day until today it got bumped. I took the bull by the horns today and tackled the laundry room. I am still unpacking some things, so one rule I’ve made for myself is I will not go buy any storage containers unless I absoultely find the perfect thing to fit somewhere and I know I have nothing like it anywhere else. I gotta tackle some major areas before I start shelling out money for containerizing. I love that word, I didn’t even know it was a word until I started reading the Org Junkie blog. She has a great article on containerizing here, “containers establish boundries and limits!” yes this is what I need because stuff seems to take over quickly in my house.

Here is the before. I am just thrilled to have a laundry room upstairs in this house! Brilliant! No more slugging baskets of laundry up and down the stairs. And my new laundry room has a utility sink. And all those counters for folding laundry. And my new laundry room is brown, drab, dull, boring, brown (just like the rest of the house). But today my job was not to decorate the laundry room, it was to get it organized. We did some painting projects before we moved in and the utility sink was perfect for paint clean up and storing cans. I had never really gotten the mess contained or cleaned up from our pre move in projects. And then the counter tops were covered in other misc. junk that had no home, so had found a home there.

I followed the organizing method I’ve read about on so many blogs this new year:

1. I moved absolutely everything out into the hall.
2. I cleaned the whole room (which had never been cleaned prior to our move in and desparately needed it.)
3. I sorted and tossed and grouped and replaced everything that belonged in the laundry room. And all the other misc junk went either out to the garage to be dealt with later or went to the proper home.

I did pack some of the painting stuff in a box and put it back behind the counter, because I have the best intentions to paint the hall bathroom in the next 3-4 weeks, and I don’t want to lug all that stuff down to the garage and then right back upstairs. So you’ll have to forgive me on that one. I was being lazy!

Cupboard above washer. Notice I repurposed a large candle coaster as a soap cup holder. I hate how big a drippy mess those large bottles from Costco make.

I had some closetmaid cubes from the other house that haven’t found a home yet so I am trying out having a cubby for each kid. My thought is I fold it and if they aren’t home to put the laundry away immediately, I can put it down there and send them in to get it later. I have baskets to fit in those cubbies somwhere, just have to find them. Not sure if this will work or not, but I figured I’d try it out and see how it works. Anything is better than my method in the previous house which was throw it all on my bed, and if I didn’t get to it scoop it back up and put it back in a basket, then repeat the next day.

Dirty laundry area also needs work. I’ve been drooling over the laundry basket rack over at ana-white. I have a hamper for this room somewhere but have yet to unearth it. But for now a basket will do. I’m training the kids put their laundry in there, I’m thinking of eliminating the hampers in their rooms. They can walk across the hall to the laundry just as easily as I can!.

And here is the complete after:

I have an ironing board holder in the old house that hasn’t made the move yet. I haven’t found my iron yet anyways, the movers packed that, I’m beginning to really wonder what they did with it.

My laundry room isn’t pretty, it is far from what I dream of it being. But for now the laundry room is organized and functional. It’s an interesting paradigm when you’re both a perfectionist and a procrastinator, but I am that. If I can’t get it perfect in my mind, I tend to procrastinate. I’m trying to turn over a new leaf and work on getting done what I can, and working on the rest later. You can only take life one day at a time! I think I’d like that in big vinyl letters somewhere in my laundry room, when I get to it, on another day!

Evan started Kindergarten this year and it always seems like a natural time to progress from picture books to chapter books. He is old enough now to follow a story from night to night, and he’s got a long enough attention span he can listen and enjoy even when there aren’t pictures (or not as many anyways.) I’ve enjoyed reading to him and it’s sweet to have the older two come creeping in because they want to listen too. I found with my oldest that transitioning into chapter books read alouds really helps foster a love of the story and encourages them to read more complicated stories on their own as they become more proficient readers.

The first chapter book we read was My Father’s Dragon By Ruth Stiles Gannett. This was a book I hadn’t read previously. Amy’s first grade teacher had read it to her and we’d bought it from the book order for 99 cents. It is a flat out hoot of a book! The chapters are the perfect length to read one (or two) before bed and the story is so enganging you can’t help but love it. I don’t know how I made it this far in life without reading the book. I think it is a must read (hear) for five and six year olds. Evan was actually mad when the book was finished because he didn’t want it to end.

Next we read Fantastic Mr. Fox by Roald Dahl. I remember my mom reading me the book as a child and both Kyle and Amy enjoyed it when I read it aloud a couple years ago. I do have a couple comments to make on it though…. #1 the movie is dreadful and weird and does no justice to the book (isn’t that always the case?) so don’t skip the book because you hated the movie. #2 Go to your library and find an older publication of the book (pictured below) because the pictures in the original are quite sweet. Personally I can’t stand the illustrations by Quentin Blake that they are putting in the new editions of the Roald Dahl books. So if you forget you saw the dreadful movie, and you get a copy with nice pictures, not fugly ones… you will find a delightful story about a quick witted clever fantastic fox, and three dreadful farmers. And your children are sure to love listening to the story!

Evan and I are currently working on Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Evan isn’t one for movies, so he’s never sat through either of the film versions. He’s absolutely enthralled with the book. I can never get him to bed without reading at least 2 chapters of the book. I have to say I’m enjoying it immensely myself. Now that I’m re reading the Roald Dahl classics as an adult I’ve noticed a lot of his style in the writings of JK Rowling. I’m sure that she read his books multiple times and some of his nuance for whimsy and his outrageous flaunting of character imperfections can be seen in the Harry Potter books. Even as adults we can learn and appreciate things in childrens books, some of the best books I’ve read are children’s books.

Next we will read either The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane or James and the Giant Peach (another dreadful movie does in a great book.) The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane is one of the sweetest and saddest children’s books I’ve ever read. In a similar vein to the Velveteen Rabbit, but a more involved plot. It reduced me too tears, while reading aloud to Kyle and Amy. And while that may seem extreme, it will give you pause to have a very nice talk with your children about faith and life and love.

I also want to try reading The Hobbit with all the kids. I think they would all enjoy it, as would I! Which makes me think a library trip is probalby in order soon.

Addy will be 9 months old this week. She can sit up very well, and her reach is amazing. I found out the other day when she emptied a file cabinet drawer for me… I needed to clean out those files away at least that’s what I told myself as I sorted it all back into place. But she is no where near crawling. Most of the day she looks like this:

But if you put her on her tummy this is what you will get:

She won’t can’t roll over, she just fusses, and fusses and fusses. She has us all very well trained to be at her beck and call. I finally had to put my foot down with the older kids to stop giving her toys that are just out of reach and stop rolling her over when she’s on her tummy. They adore her so much they don’t like to hear her fuss, even for a minute.

We are now on a new regimine. Three times a day of tummy time for as long as she will tolerate it. I find if we get down with her at face level it helps. Apparently mugging for the camera also makes it tolerable.

I’m hoping some consistency and working with her on rolling over will get her moving. I will rue the day, we have a lot of little legos around this house, and stairs, and polly pocket shoes, and home improvement tools, and it’s going to be a big headache keep mama on her toes to have a baby crawling again. But sometimes we have to buckle down and really work on helping our child master a skill and for Miss Addy, it’s time to get moving.

I don’t think she’s bought into the plan yet though.

UFOs the bane of the crafter’s existance… UnFinished Objects. Started with the best of intentions the UFO has been abandoned for a myriad of reasons. A mistake too daunting to undo, creative vision that took a wrong turn, poor time management on a gift that didn’t get finished, material shortage, crafter’s block… You name it I have a UFO that fits the bill. I have lots of them. I started them all with the best of intentions. For instance when Amy was 2 I went into a yarn store and saw the cutest sweater, bought the yarn and pattern. Decided to do a size 4T because surely I’d get it done before she outgrew that size right? Now I’m hoping I can get it finished for Addy, who was my surprise baby.

There is nothing like moving to make you realize that you have ratholed away way too many UFOs. I have a designated space for UFOs (notice the volume is near capacity.) Of course these are only my SEWING UFOs, I have other ones too…

Notice how nicely organized they are in zip lock bags…

I made a resolution for 2011. It is a two part resolution.
#1. Create an inpiring craft space for myself (more on that another day.)
#2. Clean out and finish my UFOs. If it’s not done by 2012 it is going in the garbage, the scrap bag, or the donate bag.

I started working on one project when we were on vacation last week. When Kyle had his first Christmas I made matching stockings for him and Pat. Then a few years later I finally got Amy’s done. I have the patterns and the makings for my stocking and Evan’s. Just need to put the time into getting them done. And of course now I baby Addy needs one too… but for this year I will be happy to get two of them done. I figure for all the time I spend sitting at sports practices and dance lessons, etc… I should be able to make headway no problem! Just have to be disciplined.

What are your craft goals for 2011? Are you also haunted by UFOs? I would love to hear your plans and stories!