Can't Catch a Break

Yesterday BuggaBoo fell and bit his lip badly. We didn't realize how deeply it was cut until later that day when the swelling went down and the bleeding stopped. We took him to the ER where they told us that stitches wouldn't be prudent and rinse it out three times a day.

This morning he woke up looking like this:


The gash has sealed up. His lip feels warm to the touch and he's starting to get a bit of red around the wound. We think some infection is in the sealed part.

Yes, we realize he has problems with his teeth. Our doctor attributes this mostly to his reflux and early eruption of teeth.

So that's been fun.

Earlier today I was cleaning out the chicken pen a bit and BuggaBoo was hanging out watching me. He was doing his normal I'm-three-and-don't-particulary-like-clothing-so-I'm-starkers routine. All the sudden he starts yelling, "Get away! Get away!" and then started screaming.

A wasp had bit him on the penis.

Like I said, poor kid can't get a break.

Discovery of a New Disorder

Smurf Butt: (n) Condition of primarily the diaper-bound set. Genesis of disease is consuming excessive amounts of blueberries, resulting in fecal matter capable of staining, culminating in discoloration of the buttocks.

Saving Stained Clothing, One Dye Bath at a Time

Little children stain their clothes.


It's just a fact of life. They don't have great self-feeding skills, they relish all things dirty, and I don't want to strip them down and pre-treat every time they drop something on themselves.

Usually extremely stained clothing is relegated to the category "play clothes". But I was noticing the other day that Doozer has way more play clothes than nice things. Several of her play clothes were shirts that I love and want to be worn in a more publicly acceptable way.






The idea I had was to dye her shirts a color that was dark enough to cover the stains. I love all things brown so that's what I went with. Cocoa Brown by Rit fit the bill perfectly.



I used the bucket method but used nearly boiling water for part of the bath. After throwing in the three shirts of Doozer I noticed that I had a lot more dye I could use. I scrounged in my own closet and came up with a light blue shirt that had a yellow stain on the front.

The clothes took the dye beautifully. The brown is a bit purple, but that could be because the initial color of the shirts were blue or pink. Right after rinsing I was a bit worried that the appliques were too dark, but washing a drying fixed the problem nicely. Here are the results:


I love how the ric-rac didn't take the dye. The buttons also stayed blue. On the other shirts the buttons became brown.





This one is still a bit stained, but it's a huge difference from before.



Here's my shirt. Sorry, there's no before. Just imagine a light blue shirt. The Hubby says the brown suits me better than the blue. I like how the stitching didn't take the dye.



And now for the last shirt. IN ACTION!

"Show me your shirt. No, not like that!"

In my humble opinion this was a great success. Doozer has gained three more outfits, we have some matchy-matchy clothes, and we got to play mad scientist in the backyard with the dye bath.

Have any of you guys dyed clothes you thought to be without redemption? Have you considered it? Any qualms or fears holding you back? Jump in! The dye bath's fine.

Trust

What do you do when your toddler insists on carrying the eggs back from the hen house at the tender age of 15 months?



Let her show you she can do it.



She's broken only one egg so far. Doozer's been handling eggs for about three months now. Not bad for someone who still regularly stumbles.




This is the face she makes whenever we pull out the camera. I think she thinks she's smiling.

The Monster in My Bed

BuggaBoo is an interesting creature. He likes things to be done just so, and he likes them to be done NOW! One of his most enjoyable activities is crawling into bed with us at the crack of dawn and nursing. Now, I like this ritual as well, but only so much. My perfect morning would be having the boy child wiggle under the covers, nurse once, and then drift off to sleep for another hour or two. His perfect morning would be to wiggle under the covers, kick The Hubby, demand to nurse, pretend to sleep for five minutes, demand to nurse, and then repeat until he finally wakes up Doozer much too early for her liking.

So mornings are something that need to be dealt with. See, Doozer is a fitful sleeper until about 4:00am, so I'm constantly nursing her or switching sides or trying not to move so she finally settles down. BuggaBoo likes to enter the scene between the hours of 5:00am and 6:00am, and since I can't fall asleep at the speed of light like The Hubby can I often don't get a lot of unbroken sleep. I've tried explaining to BuggaBoo that if I don't get sleep in the morning then I'm a grouchy mommy more prone to yelling and such, but at dawn he's not exactly thinking about the rest of the day.

We tried giving him a bright clock and telling him he can't come into our room until the first number was a seven, but that didn't work so well. He woke up at his normal time, came in, and I informed him it wasn't seven yet and he needed to go back to bed. Then every fifteen minutes, just as I was starting to fall asleep he would yell, "Is it a seven yet?" I would say, "Look at your clock," and he would say, "Oh, not yet!" Then the plug got knocked out of the outlet during play that day and I foresaw the plug-knocking happening every day since I don't have a protected outlet near the clock. I didn't want to reset the clock every night so we needed to think of something different.

What it really comes down to is BuggaBoo is very hungry in the morning. He has discerning tastes and often doesn't want to eat what's for dinner. I tell him that's it, that's what we're having, deal with it, so most of the time he doesn't eat enough and goes to bed with an empty tummy. This translates into massive nursing sessions at dawn o'thirty.

Last night I tried leaving out a snack for BuggaBoo in his bedroom. Inspired by these cute lunch plates I made him an underwater scene. I'm sorry there isn't a picture, it was 11:00pm when I finished! I cut three fish from a low-carb pancake, put them on a blue plate, and gave them raisin eyes and banana leather bubbles. Raw pumpkin seeds were the rocks at the bottom of the fish bowl. Thinly sliced carrots were cut into seaweeds shapes, and nori was cut into waves for the surface of the water. Cheese was cut into a moon and little dots of cheese for stars. It was pretty fun and easy to put together!

BuggaBoo didn't even notice that they were fish. He kept insisting that they were just pancakes! So I'm a bit bummed by that. He still bugged me a lot this morning, but he only nursed once. I had promised to let him paint this morning so he just couldn't stand to see me in bed anymore.

However, there is something happy about all this. He has been in a much better mood this morning. So I think that qualifies this as a success. Hooray! I'm ready to repeat this experiment tomorrow.

There's just one catch. I can't think of tons of food that I can safely leave out overnight that aren't full or starches and sugars. Any ideas?