Before the days of babies and backyard chickens I couldn’t fathom explaining things like where babies come from or that we eat animals for dinner. These discussions must be horribly crushing for children, right?

“Yes, Sally. Our yummy bacon did come from Babe, so to speak. We eat pigs, cows, chickens, etc…”

I think, for most of society, being so far removed from the “unpleasantness of life” makes it more difficult. I mean as an adult, if you haven’t come eye to eye with these things it is understandable that some level of anxiety would accompany trying to explain them to others.

Furthermore, when children only see foods already cut up packaged all their lives it is quite shocking to later learn about the animals those things came from.

The quest for ultimate convenience has stripped us of the life lessons and the appreciation that often comes with self sufficiency.

Take for example, the eggs Everly just asked me to make her. After watching her collect two from the chicken hutch, I felt an enormous swell of pride when she immediately asked me to cook them up for her, fresh from the hens butt.

Maybe the pride is because my girl knows where her food comes from, which hen laid them and what that hen was munching (gasp, mom’s precious echinacia again?) in the days before she produced the egg. Maybe it is because we worked damn hard to make this “yard to table” concept a reality for our kids and now we are getting to enjoy the fruits of our labor.

Another good example is, one day the backyard chickens will end up on our dinner table. However, I am not suggesting you take your kid and slaughter an animal in front of them, that isn’t the point. Heck, I’ll probably have N take care of the slaughter without me all together when it is time. The point is, it is the presented concept of a food animal that is important.

These chickens are our food, they are cute, cuddly and we love them but we have them to feed our family.

I am seriously happy to see Everly collecting eggs, asking to eat them and knowing that she’ll come away from her childhood with a better grasp of how food gets to the table, more-so than I did as a child.

“Mommy, where did this come from?” she asks pointing a the carrot on her plate. “Picked in the garden?” Why, yes. Yes, it was picked in the garden.

“Mommy, where did this come from?” she asks pointing to a piece of chicken. From an amazing chicken, sweetpea.

The lifestyle and subsequent choices we make as parents will teach our kids far more than we can imagine. That alone is enough to drive me to live more self sufficiently because I want my girls to know where food comes from and how to feed themselves, without relying on a grocery store. Someday these skills might save their lives or shape the world.

“Mama, where are the baby chicks in these eggs?”

Plus, bringing up my girls in this way indirectly teaches them about life, death and birth as they observe our day to day lifestyle.

Self sufficiency is the skill I hope to impart on my girls. What is yours?

I look at you and see this amazing little person. You are not a baby anymore, not physically and not mentally. Your intuition is something else and I hope you never lose your drive to press ahead and to forge your own path.

You’ve always seemed to have your own pace and time table for stuff, your own little internal compass and time table.

At about 7 months old, even though we weren’t rushing to start solids, you began stealing my food from me. I remember the first time clearly. It was on a trip, for Mama’s birthday. We were eating takeout as a special treat. PF Changs, and you just reached out and stole some food off a fork for yourself. A noodle. From there your relationship with food began.

Once solid food became a regular thing, you gradually decreased your daytime breastfeeding sessions. Just before your first birthday you settled at only nursing before naps and before bed.

Then at 16 months you weaned yourself from breastfeeding completely! Mommy’s pregnancy probably had something to do with it but we were in no hurry to end that relationship prematurely… But when you felt ready you just tapered off and eventually stopped wanting to nurse. And you haven’t looked back, even now, with your baby sister nursing in front of you.

Shortly after self weaning you also took the plunge, literally, and began rejecting your crib. This set the stage for transitions to your toddler bed which you now rock like a grownup. We hardly ever have issues with you trying to come out of your room when it is sleeping time. It is crazy!

We are also still in utter amazement over your self-led potty training. You started out loving your nakedness and that in turn taught you about your bodily functions.

Before we knew it you were succeeding at using your potty chair during your awake-naked times. Then one day you just asked to sleep diaper free and that was that. You are even having public-outing-potty-success which seems crazy to me. There have been a few accidents along the way but your maturity and your understanding of things has made you this amazing little person, way earlier than we expected.

I feel like I got pregnant with your sister, I blinked and you just transformed from a baby to a little person. I missed the exact moment of transition and am still in awe when I look at you or when I see photos/ video of you as a baby. You are such a big, little girl now. So much growth, learning and maturing has taken place in such a short time.

Nope, I am not joking. See what I mean->

Yuck!

I got off easy based on some of the poop mess stories my mother told about me.

Still, Everly sure has a knack for pooping at nap time, and when she wants to read books while she sits on the pot she opts for her in-room potty chair instead of the potty seat that you see in this photo.

She’s also and observant one that strives to do all the things we also do, so when she see us dump her potty chair deposits in the toilet she catalogs that for future mayhem…

Funny that I was just remarking on facebook about how long she typically naps and how odd it seemed. Hope I didn’t jinx nap time for good.

Then, like she did today, during a fit of nap refusal she decides to have a nice messy poop in her potty chair.

Then she puts her clothes back on and takes her potty chair bowl to the toilet where she accidentally pours the poop on her potty seat, then she procedes to try washing the potty bowl in the sink.

The running water in the bathroom is what tipped me off. Did I mention she also wiped her bottom and tried wiping the potty seat mess? So many wipes were used that upon flushing the toilet- it backed up.

Now that the poop is all cleaned up I can laugh about it with all of you – but I can’t get the poop smell out of my nose

I’ll admit it, as a family of four I am now getting my butt kicked with the laundry.

It is not so much the cloth diaper laundry that is killer but just the shear volume of stuff to wash in a week. Sure the spit up outfits and bedding is a temporary contributing factor as is my inability to focus more than say five minutes on any one task before I am needed elsewhere… but I am honestly floundering in the piles of clothes guys.

Thankfully, piles of dirty clothes aren’t hanging around but I have a serious problem getting the clean ones put away. You see, right now there is this giant pile of stuff in the bedroom chair that I fold and mess with on occasion but basically we just rifle through the giant pile to get the wrinkled, clean but cat hair covered clothing item that we want to wear.

Dressers and folding clothes is kind of overrated when you have newborn in the house!

Luckily, this weekend my husband and I were able to knock out the laundry together because we stayed home. Actually, he knocked it all out as a treat to me.

Some ways we’ve found laundry success:

Be strategic about the laundry.
In our house, the key is folding the laundry and putting it away during Everly’s (our toddler) nap time. Folding and putting things away while she is awake means things immediately get unfolded and thrown about the house.

I wash, dry and pile the clothes in a room where Everly jumps in the clean pile and throws clothes around but when she passes out for nap time, if I have the energy and determination, I bust out folding and putting things away.

Also, USE THE BUZZER on your washer and dryer! It is a great way to remind you of when laundry cycles end and prevent the dreaded mildew smelling laundry that sat in the washer, all wet for several hours or days.

I also tend to wash clothes by laundry basket instead of mixing them all together and then separating colors out. In doing this I can avoid the sorting and carting of laundry all around the house.

On my motivated days Everly’s laundry basket down stairs gets divided by light & dark, then washed and dried separately. Then her dry clothes go right in to her room where they are folded and put away immediately, or jumped on and thrown around. Nothing wrong with letting the kid have fun right?

Our upstairs clothes get laundered together and then I know I can just cart them all back up stairs for folding and putting away.

Also, if you wash clothes predominately in warm/ cold water (like we do) and don’t have any brand new, potentially bleeding fabric colors in your load you don’t even need to divide colors. I only divide loads when I am washing new stuff, have major stains to treat or are laundering something new.

You don’t need all the fancy laundry products to get clean clothes!
We don’t use bleach in our house and I make my own laundry detergent for washing clothes, bedding, etc. I do buy special cloth diapering laundry detergent though.

Adding borax to a load of dingy whites will brighten them right up. Also, stains can be bleached out with the sun if you just hang them to dry outside. All my cloth diapers with poop stains get sun bleached as well as my cloth menstrual pads.

Any blood on clothes can be stain treated with some peroxide and then laundered in cold. Cold water rinses the stains out then you can launder with hot water to disinfect if you’d like. Don’t launder your stained stuff in hot water without doing a cold rinse first. The hot water sets the stains in.

Want soft clothes without the perfume and additives of fabric softener? We do! We use distilled white vinegar to soften and also freshen the laundry. Vinegar is great for removing stink from clothes too, like when our cat pees on a bath mat or when our cloth diapers start smelling like ammonia.

Doing laundry doesn’t have to be a huge ordeal and it doesn’t have to cost you a fortune. If you just plan your strategy and arm yourself with simple laundry helping products you an dominate the piles easily and cheaply.

For more laundry tips and posts visit: http://www.blogher.com/fluff-and-fold-family or enter the $250 Sweepstakes at http://www.blogher.com/life-well-lived-moments-sweepstakes-3-share-moment-and-enter-win-250

It’s taken five weeks thanks to the crappy video editing program and the general demands of parenting a newborn but I am relived to say…

The Live Streamed Birth Video Archive is Live

You can view it here, in three parts… Initially I had just hoped to have the archived live stream footage saved immediately after the broadcast ended (in two parts) but the actual birth portion of the video wasn’t saved properly.

Luckily we also were recording via camcorder for our own records. I’ve spliced the two videos together and finally managed to get them saved and uploaded for online viewing like I promised. Yay!

Adalyn is now five weeks old and she’s finally getting those chunky baby thighs and fitting in to our cloth diapers. She’s just sleeping and eating, you know newborn stuff. We are working through some gas and poop issues that make her unpleasant but she’s gaining good weight so she’s doing okay.

Everly is bored but being the best big sister, even with the attention shift of having a new baby in the home. On more than one occasion I’ve been told to lay baby sister down so we can play. Juggling Everly’s needs with Adalyn’s has been hard to do.

Everly has not lost a wink of sleep despite the very noisy, sometimes constant crying of Adalyn. She even tries to comfort her sister with a pacifier (that she now rejects) or a blanket. Just this morning she told me her sister needed more “nay-nays” (aka boobie) when she started crying.

I am all healed up and trying to get a handle on all my responsibilities around the house and with the girls. We are flying by the seat of our pants and hope to settle in to a routine soon, though we know that it isn’t likely for another month or two.

Baby Adalyn is finally here. Some of you may have witnessed her birth live here in the blog August 29th-30th. If you missed it recorded video of the birth is still to come (at the above link) as it requires some uploading effort and brain power that we’ve not mustered the energy for yet.

We’ve hardly come up for air since the birth and lots has been going on that has required energy & attention like the fact that all you lovely people overloaded my site and actually crashed the server my site was on, thus breaking the sites of other unsuspecting site owners.

*smile* & *giggle*

This makes a site owner quite happy and is a huge compliment but it does also require some work to get things back up and running. Sorry the site has been offline for so long.

The birth details: Miss Adalyn Elizabeth was born early 8/30. She weighed 7lbs. 14.5oz and was 20 inches long. She’s got thick black hair and some very dark blueish eyes. She’s a champion nurser already with her first latch just moments after her short cord was cut and she could reach the breast.

I’m ordered to 10 days of bedrest & recovery and can’t wait to enjoy my first post birth bath to relax… I have to wait another day for that though. Will share more about that later.

We are all doing well and enjoying getting to know Miss Adalyn. Everly is elated and speaks of her sister often. Shes also recounting the tale of the birth complete with reenactment sounds and positions. She’s a good big sister and can’t wait to start playing with her sister.

All really went well and continues to be on track so we are one happy, sleep deprived family right now. Stay tuned for more details, stories, videos, photos and more to come. Also, thank you for all the well wishes kind words and encouragement. They mean more than you know.

Here are the fun announcement cards we made up for the birth announcement:

All Around Girl Birth Announcement

Create photo birth announcements by Shutterfly.

View the entire collection of cards.

Just a quick update for those that want to hear it straight from the “horse’s mouth”…  Actually, I pre wrote most of this so I wouldn’t need much brain power when the time came.

Anyway, it seems the birthing time has come and we are so excited to meet our baby girl!

I am in labor finally!!! Yippie.

Here are the details:

I am 40 weeks pregnant, it is hard to say when labor started at exactly. We thought I had a slow amniotic fluid leak but it wasn’t enough to get realy excited about. Yesterday was filled with contraction timing. the day ended with surges going from 6-12 min apart. Nothing terribly regular or promising.

After an early bedtime last night I was woken up to some intense sweating and some more intense surges/ contractions. I timed the ones I wasn’t sleeping through and they were about 10 min apart but not keeping me from sleeping or anything. The insane heartburn did choke me and force me to sit up for a bit though.

This morning I am having surges under 10 min apart and expect them to continue to intensify and quicken. We are having a baby today! After a check from the midwife this morning we’ll likely begin the live streaming fun, pending my cervical dilation progress.

Exciting news: 

What? A laboring woman can’t be expected to labor with her laptop! Geeze.

While pregnant with Everly I didn’t really have the luxury of time and energy to decorate the nursery like most pregnant women do. Being so fatigued and being that we were still unpacking from doing a new home purchase at 7 months pregnant the nursery was just thrown together.

In all reality, newborns really shouldn’t be sleeping alone in a room of their own right after birth (at least not ours anyway) so it seemed silly to get so worked up about the nursery while pregnant with Everly.

Exciting news: 

I was stoked to find Dali Wall Decals because who wants to stress and toxicity of painting a room while pregnant? I wanted to add splashes of color to the nursery without creating more work if we ever choose to sell the house and without a ton of hassle. Wall decals are a great alternative to room painting.

I had so much fun picking out some flower decals for the girl’s room. I got some sunflowers to place around the room (our color selection was Matte: Ice Blue) and they look so great.

They were super easy to apply to the walls, even with a 2 year old pulling on you and trying to get in the way the entire time!

They come on one big sheet and you just cut out the individual decals to apply them. Your wall needs to be recently cleaned and dry before applying (we used plain ol rubbing alcohol to do the trick). Then you just position the decal sheet, mark the decal’s position on the wall with painters tape then peel the decal backing away so you can apply.

The peeling is to tricky part but isn’t all that difficult. You just have to take great care to not tear the decal which we were able to do despite the cracked out toddler.

Did I mention it was just me and the toddler while I applied these? That should speak to the level of ease I think. Oh and they ARE removable but not reusable. So if you need to undecorate for any reason taking these bad boys off isn’t an issue.

We got the 7 decals and thought we might need more, to my surprise they were much bigger than they appear in the Dali Decal site photos and seven was more than enough to scatter around between our existing furniture and stuff.

They will also work with you for custom decal needs if you find a certain size or quantity doesn’t fit your needs.

The next thing we just ordered is two nice name decals for above each of the girl’s beds. I am eying this particular name decal right now because it is modern and seems to fit the nursery vibe well.

Oh, I almost forgot! Blog readers can enjoy a 5% off their total order (with no minimum purchase necessary) by using the code: harvest5off

Enough of my bragging about the decals I love. Now it is time for free stuff for you!

Dali Decals has generously offered to give decals away to one of my lucky readers:

One person will win a $25 gift certificate* to Dali Wall Decals for their own decorating pleasure!

*Dali Wall Decals will email the gift certificate directly to our winner through their website. Please note: all readers and/or contest entries are only eligible to win once per 12 months.
To enter the giveaway simply:

1. Visit Dali Wall Decals and pick out what you would order if you won.
2. Come back here and tell us what you would choose in the comments below (mandatory 1st entry & please leave a valid email address!).

For extra optional entries (leave 1 comment per extra entry):

1. Follow Harvest of Daily Life on Facebook (find the “like” widget to the right also)
2. Follow me on Twitter (@TalinaN)
3. Follow Dali Wall Decals on Twitter (@dalidecals)
4. Follow Dali Wall Decals on Facebook
5. Tweet the following message: “I entered to win $25 in free @dalidecals at http://www.harvestofdailylife.com & you can too! Enter here: http://bit.ly/vlhWa9 #giveaway #win”  (you can tweet once per day, per twitter handle for multiple entries). In the comments section share the permalink to your tweet in the comments section.
   
6. Share this post on your facebook, Google+ or other social network stream publicly. Leave the link to your post in the comments section (you can share once per day, per social network handle for multiple entries).
7. Leave a relevant (non spammy/ half-hearted) comment on any of my other posts for unlimited entries (one entry per post commented on). Come back here to say which post you commented on, remember to leave separate comments for separate entries so they all count.

Rules and Details: Contest closes 11/11/11, winner will be drawn using random.org. Please leave a valid email address in each comment and I’ll be able too email you if you win. Be sure to do the mandatory entry before the optional ones or you will be disqualified. Leave a separate comment per entry. I’ll also mark this post as closed and announce the winner here so consider subscribing to the blog so you don’t miss the announcement! Dali Decals specifies that contest entrants are only eligible to win once per 12 months, so if you’ve won from them this year don’t enter again please.

I went to the chiropractor with Everly in tow this morning. I’ve been lucky to not be in dire need of frequent chiropractic adjustments over the course of this pregnancy like I did with Everly.

I managed to go a whole additional trimester without chiropractic help this time around but as soon as the 3rd trimester hit so did the hip and tailbone pain so I sucked it up and made the appointment to be snap-crackle-popped and put back together, for the sake of my toddler and myself.

I’ll admit the idea of attending appointments with Everly along (and without an extra set of hands) is daunting. Luckily she’s a good girl. The most exciting part of the trip was her remarking “oh no, ouchie” as I was adjusted and of course the story I am about to tell you.

So, just after I was all adjusted and heading out of the chiropractor’s office he looked down and the floor near our feet and told me we were leaking.

“Um, you are leaking there”, he said as he pointed to the floor near my feet.

My first thought was “oh crap, Everly’s diaper is leaking on his floor?” then I quickly thought, “Damn, I better not be the one leaking” as I looked down between my legs. Meaning my water just broke OR I just wet myself. Both are quite likely in this point of pregnancy and would royally suck.

We all had a nice chuckle about his vague leakage statement and I remarked that I better not be leaking since I’ve got about 10 weeks of pregnancy to go while this little one finishes growing and preparing for the outside world.

I was joking with Nathan last night about how it would figure if I had some issue at today’s visit and he wasn’t there to help out. He would have to drive a whole hour from work just to get to us if need be…

Turns out Everly’s sippy cup inside her Elmo lunch box was leaking water. It was not pregnancy leakage or cloth diaper blowout, thankfully.

I am certain today’s phrase can be safely filed under the things a 30 week pregnant lady never wants to hear. Don’t tell a preggo she is leaking if you don’t want to give her a heart attack. Thanks Dr. Lamb for the chuckle and for the blog post material!

From non-hand-washing-penis-touching-guys to crazy monkey meltdowns and breaking & entering, yesterday was an interesting day.

We set out to make our prenatal visit at The Farm and planned on making it a day long, turn around trip so we wouldn’t need to pay for lodging.

The morning started out okay until we were almost out the door and realized we could not find Everly’s other shoe anywhere. We, searched the house high and low and eventually had to just bring a change of clothes and another pair of shoes (her sneakers).

Of course, since we didn’t eat before leaving we were a grumpy bunch driving to a fast food joint for some breakfast. Whenever you need to be somewhere quickly the awesome drivers around here know it and they poke along making you want to road rage their asses. We had about 45 min of this before we got somewhere to get some food.

Each time we trek to Tennessee for a prenatal visit we make a point to stop at Whole Foods to stock up on bulk items like granola and cooking staples. It was heaven in Whole Foods. An employee in the medicinal section chatted me up about my midwife out at The Farm. She was a fellow natural birth supporter that would kill to birth at The Farm.

After Whole Foods we got to The Farm and let Miss Everly stretch her legs and romp about the grounds for a bit. She had fun on the peace sign swing set and also collected some rocks and acorns from around the place.

The prenatal visit went well. I am now 12 weeks pregnant, almost to the 2nd trimester. We had a good talk while doing the usual prenatal visit stuff. Joked about drinking milk and growing a calf of a baby. Talked diet, blood sugar testing, weight gain and plans for the birth that would minimize the reoccurrance of a severe tear. Here is the 12 week belly shot:

We also discussed the likelihood that this birth would go much faster than the last and that we would need to make appropriate preparations. This time around Nathan won’t be working for a douche bag employer that refuses him sufficient time off work for the birth and postpartum period, so it seems he could be able to stay with Everly and I while we await the start of labor this time. Pamela also took us over to where we would have the option of staying and birthing this baby, it has a bathtub so I was impressed.

When we wrapped up at The Farm we talked about finding a place that wasn’t fast food where we could sit down and enjoy a meal and some time out of the car before we headed home. We choose Logan’s Steakhouse and probably shouldn’t have.

The fact that it’s the type of place you throw your peanut shells on the floor was appealing for a couple with a toddler who also throws her food on the floor.  Unfortunately the throwing food on the floor clientele was crazy annoying.

First while we waited to be seated we used the restroom, Nathan watched a guy leave the urinal, not wash his hands and then walk right over to the giant barrel of peanuts in the waiting area and stick his hands in. Total penis germs all over the peanuts that the entire restaurant was eating from= puke.

Service was good, the food was okay. The people watching was entertaining, especially the older couple behind Nathan in their Sunday’s best who just scowled at everyone else and clearly look WAY out of place. We discussed how they probably had planned on eating at an uppity fine dining place but couldn’t get a table so they had to resort to eating at “the poor people’s steak house”.

When the meal had concluded I took Everly to the restroom for a diaper change before we hit the road and was greeted by a middle aged couple that was hardcore making out in front of the woman’s restroom door. I just maneuvered my way around them and went in the bathroom to begin changing E.

Mid-diaper change Everly announces “Dada!!”, my back is to the restroom door but I explain to her that only ladies are allowed in the restroom. I complete the diaper change and as we head out I spot two sets of feet in a stall, facing each other…

The making out couple was totally in the stall together and they had the nerve to start their shenanigans while I was changing my toddler in there! I was almost angry enough to flag down a restaurant employee to report it. On second thought I just wanted to get the hell out of there ASAP.

Oh and when we finally arrived home at about 10 pm Nathan realized he’d given his entire set of keys to the auto mechanic that morning when we left our car for some repair work. We had no key to get in to the house… and Everly was screaming “home, home, home” and begging to get inside and out of the car already.

After he broke in to the house Everly’s first-ever major meltdown continued. We are talking crazed monkey swinging from the rafters and throwing herself all around the house, running away from you naked, then hurling herself on to the floor and rinse and repeat…  It was about thirty minutes of this before we all collapsed in an exhausted heap and surrendered to the night.

So that is how our Friday road trip went, now I am ready for some weekend veg-out time. Oh and the day long turn around trip thing will not be attempted again anytime soon. Lesson learned.