ezra and noah playing from matt adams on Vimeo.
10 days
It’s only 10 days till Noah & Ezra’s court date. I thought I would share 10 big things we are looking forward to (in no real order).
- finally holding you boys
- hearing you giggle and make goofy baby noises
- seeing you discover new things for the first time
- napping on the couch with you
- seeing you be fascinated with the cats, yet they wont let you catch them (yet)
- taking way too many photos
- oddly enough, I do look forward to trying to figure out two of you at the same time.
- Watching you play with your toes and your tongue.
- seeing you in all the awesome clothes we have and fun cloth diapers. You guys are gonna look so cool.
- did I say holding you yet?
Stephanie thinks we can keep a list a day up for each of the 9 days left. We’ll see how that goes. I stole most the good stuff here. Any ideas on what other lists we can expand on over the next 9 days? We probably need the challenge to keep our minds occupied.
TotRags
Help Save Handmade
Okay I must admit, I am addicted to Etsy.com. I love browsing the handmade crafts, especially the stuff for children. I dream about the stuff I can buy for Tom and Jerry when I find out ages and genders. The sad thing is there is a new law that is about to go into effect that could end handmade stuff for kids. The Hand Made Toy Alliance has this on their website:
The United States Congress rightly recognized that the Consumer Products Safety Commission (CPSC) lacked the authority and staffing to prevent dangerous toys from being imported into the US. So, they passed the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act (CPSIA) in August, 2008. Among other things, the CPSIA bans lead and phthalates in toys, mandates third-party testing and certification for all toys and requires toy makers to permanently label each toy with a date and batch number.
For small American, Canadian, and European toymakers, however, the costs of mandatory testing will likely drive them out of business.
- A toymaker, for example, who makes wooden cars in his garage in Maine to supplement his income cannot afford the $4,000 fee per toy that testing labs are charging to assure compliance with the CPSIA.
- A work at home mom in Minnesota who makes dolls to sell at craft fairs must choose either to violate the law or cease operations.
- A small toy retailer in Vermont who imports wooden toys from Europe, which has long had stringent toy safety standards, must now pay for testing on every toy they import.
- And even the handful of larger toy makers who still employ workers in the United States face increased costs to comply with the CPSIA, even though American-made toys had nothing to do with the toy safety problems of 2007.For small American, Canadian, and European toymakers, however, the costs of mandatory testing will likely drive them out of business.
What can you do? Well the Hand Made Toy Alliance has provided a sample letter. Please write your Representative and your Senators. It is easy and takes less than a minute. They are not asking for the law to go away completely, but rather for changes to be made, so small toy makers can stay in business and crafts can still be sold.
Tom and Jerry have a room!
Matt finished up the painting this weekend. I am very pleased with how everything turned out and so glad I married such a talented man!
Here is a quick video showing a panorama of the room:
He even added flowers and butterflies just for me. 🙂
In Case You Didn't Know
You can sign up at the CPSC’s website to receive email notification when an item is recalled. You can sign up for all recalls or for recalls regarding a specific group, like infant/child. I signed up when we started buying stuff for Tom and Jerry and luckily we haven’t bought anything that was recalled. It is an easy thing to do and I get about one email a week alerting me to recalls.
It was a Tom and Jerry weekend
On Friday night we went over to my parents’ house to make a scrapbook for Tom and Jerry of their family, pets, and home, so that when Matt and I travel to Ethiopia we have this to show them so they can get familiar with the people, animals, and places in their lives. (My mom thought of this great idea.) I know we could just have taken some snapshots, but this was also a fun family activity that got everyone involved and hopefully made them feel a part of the process. (Side note: before we travel we are allowed to send a soft photo album filled with pictures of just Matt and me so Tom and Jerry get to know our faces)
Matt and I holding up the cats’ page
My mom clearly trying to explain something to us (She was the only one who had scrap-booked before)
Jason and Michelle working away on their pages (which were awesome, we also did some pages for Baby A, I am pretty sure she will make her appearance before T&J)
My dad even got in on the action, he was our official circle cutter
We still have to do the pages for the nursery (that needs finished first), Matt’s sister, and me and Matt’s (yeah we forgot to take pics of ourselves).
On Saturday morning we got up bright and early to go garage sale shopping, there was a community garage sale, so we had high hopes. There were several garage sales, but most were extremely small and not much to choose from, we still managed to score some fun stuff.
A soft touch fire truck
Tiger xylophone
12 Pooh books for $1
Jackson getting concerned with why we keep coming home with toys
Matt playing with his hot wheels (yes we know that T&J could both be girls, but this boy wanted some hot wheels and I played with them as a child) Jackson was totally cool with the hot wheels until someone almost nailed him in the head with a flying car.
We also scored a gender neutral, tiny kid’s bike and I already caught Matt working on it
An Environmental-Parenting Blog
I came across a new blog the other day and thought I would share. It is written by a mom trying to live a more natural life for the health of her family and the planet. It was great to read her reviews of sippy cups, glass baby bottles, pacifiers and teethers, and toys. She also wrote interesting articles on how going green saves money and raising kids who care about the world around them.
Anyone else have an environmental/parenting blog they would like to share?