In Loving Memory of my Mamita

My Mamita

Just a few days ago I lost my Mamita, my only grandma, the only person in the world who ever spoiled me.   I knew no other love like it and now its gone.  It hurts and breaks my heart, but I know she is in a better place.

Mamita and me...six years ago.

She lived in Peru, while I lived in the States, so the last time I saw her was six years ago.  My mom, siblings and I had purchased our tickets to fly out and see her and celebrate her 90th birthday-my mom was going to throw her a big party.  Two weeks prior to our flight we received a call.  My Mamita was ill and it did not look like she would make it.  My brother and mom flew out immediately, I followed two days later.  We had arrived with saddened hearts knowing it was time to say our goodbyes, but Mamita surprised us and began to improve.  Everyone including the doctors where surprised at her recovery.We became hopeful that we would in fact be able to celebrate her birthday and many more days with her.  My Mamita is the most determined woman I know.  She fought hard and on September 12, 2012 we celebrated her 90th, not as planned since she was still in the hospital, but none the less we celebrated.

Her 90th invitation...never finished it.

While at the hospital, my mom, brother and I got to visit her everyday or every other day because of hospital regulations.  She could not talk because she had a tube in her mouth that helped her lungs function (artificial lung).  But her eyes were full of life and we communicated through them.  Every time I held her hands she would lift her eyebrows and say "your hands are cold".  I told her I would bundle up more.  My brother, who had a special relationship with my Mamita, would joke with her and she would laugh-like always.  She even danced a little salsa for us.  That is just who my Mamita was, that and so much more.

On our last weekend there we received another phone call. Mamita was not doing good.  We rushed to the hospital.  When we arrived the doctors said the words I dreaded hearing,  "I'm sorry..."  right than and there a little piece of me died too.  On Sunday September 23, 2012 at 11:23am Peru time, my Mamita passed away.  Since than I have had a mixed of emotions.  I miss her so much, but I know after a long month in the hospital it was time for her to move on.  I am so grateful I got to spend her last few days with her, even if they were on a hospital bed.  I'm glad for the times I was able to talk to her over the phone about life, babies, and parenthood.  She always had something witty to say.  I'm grateful for all the wonderful memories I will always have.

Now I imagine her with her brothers and sisters who have moved on before her, her baby boy she lost at four months, and my grandfather, Papapa, who waits for his true love.  All of them having a good time and watching over us.  I am happy for her, despite my pain.  I know she would want me to share all the beautiful and wise things she taught me as a child.  Some she said to me, others I learned through her example.  But all I have applied.  I will cherish them always.

Lessons taught by my Mamita:

1.  When you wash the dishes, make sure you wash the glasses first to allow for more space.

2.  Make sure you have your first baby before you are 25, after that it gets harder.

3.  As soon as your eyes open get out of bed and start your day.

4.  Let people come to you.

5.  Don't complicate life, just keep it simple.

6. Speak your mind because life's too short not to.

7.  Always have on your best clothes-even if you are changing diapers.

8.  Don't put up with bullshit - anybody's.

9.  Love God, first and foremost.

10.  Believe in miracles.

Mamita on her wedding day with Papapa

11. When you turn ten, your fingers are all taken up and you start a new stage in your life.  Its called a decade-make the most of it.

12. Passion-what's life without it?

13.Don't complain about your health, be grateful for the health you do have.

14.Go after your dreams, and if they change go after your new dreams!

Her hands always nice and warm.

Mom, Mamita, me, and sisters

Her Legacy

Cloth Diapering 101

After some research I decided for health, financial and earth loving reasons, cloth diapering made sense for our family.  This pass weekend we went ahead and started Mr. Little Man on cloth diapers.   We are transitioning slowly though to make sure the hubby and I can get acquainted with the ins and outs of cloth diapering.  We are still using disposable wipes and we have disposable diapers on us when we are out, plus we are still using nighttime disposable diapers.  Baby steps.

The first step in starting to cloth diaper is deciding what kind of cloth diapers you want.  There are so many out there and it can get overwhelming-at least for me it did.  Prefolds, pockets, all in one (AIO), all in two (AI2), and the list goes on.   Check out this Youtube's 'Different Types of Cloth Diapers' video.  It was the most straight forward video that helped introduce me to the heap of cloth diapers available.  I  choose to start with prefolds for a couple of reasons.  First, I didn't want to spend too much money incase it didn't work out for us.  And secondly from what I understood they are the easiest CD's to clean due to the fact that they are not sewn to anything, so you can take everything apart and wash separately.

I had four boiling in the big bot and two in the smaller one.

At this point I have only dealt with prefolds so if you are interested in how to start using prefolds, than read on.  Once you order your CD's you have to get them prepped before use.  Most blogs I've read said doing five cycles of wash and drying, but who has time for that!?  Than I found out you can actually boil them which is what I did.  I boiled them for 30 minutes and than I took them through a rinse cycle, dried them and than washed them on sanitize (whitest whites).  I dried them one more time and they were ready to go!  Here are the pictures:

I made sure they stayed under the boiling water.  I added more water if I thought it was necessary.

They will be HOT.  So I used thongs to remove them from the pot.

I put them in a big bowl until they were ready to go in the washer.

Can you see the difference!?  And I'm actually missing two on the left side!

They also shrink since they are cotton.

And now for the real test.

So far so good!

Here are the items I purchased to start cloth diapering.  Two Thirsties Covers, doublers to increase the absorption during nap times.  Disposable liners to catch poop and flush away, snappies to hold diaper in place and safety pins which I have yet to use and I probably won't because my baby is too wiggly.  I also purchased Bac-Out (not in the picture) to spray on poopie diapers for easy cleaning.  And of course you also need your prefolds.  I purchased them at Greenmountain.com.  Everywhere I looked they had great reviews.  Since I was already going to be saving money from cloth diapering I didn't want to be a cheapo with this part of my purchase and buy Gerber prefolds or something along those lines.   I really like these cloth-eez prefolds from Green Mountain because I don't have to fold them in-they are the perfect fit!   

Check out diaperpin.com it tells you what is on sell at different cloth diapering sites!  I was able to save a few bucks on my covers.  

sorry it's backwards

Well there you have it folks, I have taken the plunge into cloth diapering.  Hopefully this information will help someone looking into cloth diapering as much as it helped me!

Behavioral Chart for Kids

Having four kids and trying to give the three oldest ones a consequence for their bad behavior each and every time was wearing me out.  Eventually I kept giving them warnings...eg  "if you do that one more time....".  My husband and I would give different consequences for the same behavior which only confused everyone.  But kids are smart.  They caught on quickly and knew how far they could push the limits.

I decided it was time to get everyone on the same page and start enforcing our "if you do that one more time" philosophy.  We have had different methods in place at some time or another, but they never seemed to last long enough to be effective.  I searched online and couldn't find anything that we would really enforce in our busy lives.

Finally I took inspiration from pevious teachers' systems of the stop light and the Dugger's privilege chart I remembered watching a few years back.  The chart is set up as a street light.  Green, Yellow, Red and an additional Black.  Each color represents a certain behavior.  Green is wise behavior, yellow is foolish behavior, red is selfish behavior and black is rebellious behavior.  My husband helped me come up with those behavior titles, so props to him!  Each behavior has a consequence written right next to it.

Making the chart was pretty easy.  Sure I'd love to create a Martha Stewart looking behavior chart, but I needed something here and now.  I used 12 x 18 construction paper, clear Contact Paper, Velcro, a permanent marker and craft sticks.  First, I printed out the text and glued it to the corresponding color.  Next, I used the contact paper to laminate the chart.  Finally, I taped on velcro and made a stick for each child.  My youngest child is not of reading level so I added facial expressions to represent each behavior.   I love that it works for all my kids because its audio, kinesthetic, and visual!

Now whenever mom and dad need to give consequences it right there for everyone to see.  This simple thing has really cut down on a lot of frustration for the children and the parents I'm happy to report.  I don't have to say anything other than "move your name".  Music to my ears...sigh.   Does it work?  Yes!!  And its still going strong on year #2.  

One big strip of Velcro is added to the left so the kids can move their names up and down

I attached Velcro to the backs of the craft Sticks and added their names 

Behavior Title and consequences.  Three sections in each color allows the girls grace to change their behavior.

 If they get to this section they don't get too much grace!

Homemade Summer Camps

After our first year of homeschooling during the traditional school year I decided I could continue homeschooling during the summer if I choose.  Especially since we had skipped science.  However, my children who were use to their summer break and having a "finish" to their year were not too excited about the idea of sumer homeschooling, despite the fact that we have always done some type of work during the summer, they needed to feel "finished".

I stepped back and thought how I was going to get in some schooling during the summer months without forcing the kids.  You want them to work with you, not against you right?  So than it came to me, we'll do summer camps instead!  ;)  After the school year was "finished" I announced we would be having summer camps.  It wasn't received with too much excitement, but it was welcomed.

I let each child have their own camp.  My middle daughter had her camp first since she usually is second or third for choices.  We called it 'Summer Camp Little Miss Independent'.  Camps are scheduled one week and than we have another week off so we don't burn out!  Its amazing how much you can learn in one week.

With my guidance she got to choose the type of science we would learn, the activities we would do, and the meals we would eat.  She choice Earth Science, than since it was the fourth of July week, I included some history in there (this helped finish off her social studies part of the year).  We had a blast!  The only regret I have is that I did not take ANY pictures or our activities.  But I have a few links I'll post that were very helpful.

Here is what the schedule looks like:

We went from Sunday to Saturday to include daddy in a few of the camps.

Group Activities included tons of science projects to teach about the atmosphere, the water cycle, and wind.  We also had story time that included stories about George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Lewis and Clark and Sawagarea, and Susan B. Anthony.  To introduce the concept of history to my preschooler we did a timeline activity of each of the girls birthdays.  During exercise time we ran around the house two times and did some stretches.  We talked about being healthy and why we stretch.

By the middle of this camp week my other two daughters kept asking when they could plan theirs.  The lukewarm welcoming turned into a joyful desire for more!

If you have any questions or would like links to some of the science experiments let me know.  I would love to know what are some of the activites you all are doing with your children for the summer.  Homeschooling or not!

Sewing again...

A few nights ago, my husband asked if I could hem his pants-I'll be honest, I usually don't do this at all , but the poor guy needed his pants.   So I reluctantly took out my sewing machine and began getting it ready for its chore.  Meanwhile, one thing lead to another and before I knew it my love for sewing was once again ignited.  The juices began flowing and I knew I needed to do something about that!

The next day I headed over to Jo-Ann's fabric.  I decided for my first project I would make my friend's new baby a little gift.  So I picked up a baby bib pattern and the materials all for under $8 bucks!  I figured I should probably start small even though I wanted to sew a gazillion things.

I did the See and Sew pattern B5669 from Butterick.  I took some pictures for us visual people of the supplies you need to make this project and a few of the steps.

Supplies (see above link for specifics)

Place pattern on correct part of fabric.

Cut Fabric and pin right sides together.  Sew only the area around the neck.  Turn right side out.

  

Sew on the bias tape.

Sew on the rig rack. And you are done!

 

Another view of the finished product.  I'm very happy with it.

The back of the bib showed more bias and rig rack than I wanted to show, so for next time I will try and conceal that part in-between the fabrics.  

Overall though I really enjoyed making this.  I especially enjoyed being able to start and finish this in one evening without any interruptions.  I plan to make a few more and will post the pictures.  I'm very happy to get my sewing on! 

If you have never sewn or are still new at it and would like step by step instructions for this and definitions of some of the words used on the pattern instructions, feel free to let me know!  I would be happy to help.