Happy Thanksgiving!

Alexander at 10 Months

At 10 months Alexander:

• Is 22.75 pounds and 30.75 inches
• Wears 12-24 month clothes
• Loves to be a part of everything, even trying to "help" with chores
• Is a chatterbox who loves to babble constantly
• Says mama, dada, nigh-nigh (night-night)
• Waves hi and bye, signs milk, more, and occasionally diaper
• Gets himself into and out of sitting position easily, so it is more fun for him to play sitting for a couple of minutes
• Loves to eat pretty much everything. In one meal he can eat a whole egg or banana or piece of pizza.
• Is doing a little better about not constantly getting into everything 
• is getting better at entertaining himself/playing by himself for a little bit
• Loves to learn
• Loves attention and affection, will come up to us just to give a hug and kiss

Happy Anniversary and Birthday My Love!

On Sunday my husband and I celebrated our 6th wedding anniversary and today is his birthday! I am so thankful to share our lives together. I hope we are given many many more years together.

I love you honey!

And even if its name is quite unfortunate, death by chocolate is an awesome dessert for any occasion. Just assure whomever you are celebrating with that you do indeed wish them a long and healthy life.

Life on the Flip Side: Laundry

Or in which I go crazy and air my dirty (and clean) laundry all over the internet.

I am going to be writing a series entitled: Life on the Flip Side: Learning how things work on the other side of the world. I want to record a little bit of how our daily life works right now, so I can remember later. I'm guessing this won't be the most interesting series for that many people, but I do know one person who will appreciate it (Hi Grandma!), so I figured I might as well go ahead and publish these thoughts.

Today I'll show you briefly how I do laundry, later I'll show you how we do some other things, which may or may not be more exciting.

Our laundry set up is on the balcony off of our bedroom. Our washing machine is a bit smaller than most in America, probably about half of the capacity of a standard American machine. Dryers also aren't common here and are hugely expensive, both to purchase and power, so we just do what most people do here and line dry all of our laundry. We have to bars on the balcony to hang the laundry to dry on. They can be raised and lowered with a crank. The balcony is covered so the laundry doesn't get rained on. It actually isn't a big deal to me to hang up the laundry with this set up and now I have helpers too.

I took these pictures on a day back in February when I needed to get three loads of laundry done in one day. I normally don't do more than one or two, but I got behind had to catch up. I figured taking pictures to blog about this process might motivate my to actually catch up.

Crank to raise and lower bars

I washed one load before I started taking pictures. But since the first load I washed was the diapers, it is probably a good thing, you don't really need to see our dirty diapers. You can use your imagination or not as you see fit.

In the washer you can see the clean diapers, a green washer ball (which helps ionize the water and decreases our need for detergent), a couple other colored washer balls (which increase agitation as this machine only has an agitator at the bottom), and off to the right side of the washing machine you can see my detergent and fabric softener.

Diapers are the highest priority laundry item around here, so on days I need to do more than one load, I try to wash these first. We don't want to run out of diapers. Even if split pants and no diapers are culturally appropriate; we don't use that method for many messy reasons.

Once the diapers are done I summon my minions subjects children/helpers and set a classical music timer to get us all hanging up the laundry fast. The only way I can get anything besides basic household chores done in the day is to have the kids help, so I train them to help as soon as they are able.

I spread out the diapers over the bars and railings to get then to dry as fast as possible.

My biggest helper can grab laundry from the machine and  clip them up while standing on a step ladder.

 

 And the littler helper clips up diaper wipes inside. Many hands make light work.

And we're down with load number one! Many days (and definitely if it is cold and rainy and things are taking a long time to dry) I would be all done with laundry for the day. But February was warm and dry and I needed to catch up on laundry.

Alright, moving right along to the second load. We don't use many paper products so I ask my helpers to bring me the handkerchiefs and the kitchen rag/towels as I start to load up the washer again.

Here comes a cutey with the handkerchiefs.

I add some homemade laundry detergent.

And I fill up my downy ball with vinegar for fabric softener. 

The only way to get hot or warm water to the washing machine is to carry it from the bathtub as the machine is only hooked up to cold. So if we want to run a load with a hot or warm wash, if we're trying to conserve water, of if our cold water has been shut off but we still have hot solar water from the roof, we fill buckets in the bathtub and fill up the machine that way.

Here I had taken a bath and then pretreated and let soak some laundry that needed extra attention. Then we filled the washer with water from the bathtub as well.

Full to the max and ready to go.

Alright, finished hanging up the second load by 1pm. All of my hanging bars and railings are completely full now and I would definitely be done with laundry most days. But it is fairly warm and dry so this will dry quickly. I throw one more load of wash into the machine to hang up later.

 We have some things to do and leave the house for a while.

When we come back in the evening I take down the sheets and diapers that are dry and hang up the last load in between any items that are still damp.

Because of the relatively small area,
everything gets hung on hangers and then hung perpendicular
to the bars to maximize the drying space

The little boys shirts and sweater vests are cute all hanging in a row. :)

And the boys are even cuter as they help me fold the diapers, while I take care of making the bed.

In case your wondering how helpful baby is in all of this, he still only has two jobs.

To dirty the diapers.

And be a good boy and smile when we play diaper peek-a-boo.

And we're done! Three loads of laundry washed. One and a half loads folded and put away. Time to read stories, eat treats, hug my boys, and go to bed.

If I blogged about laundry more often I might not get behind, my balcony would get cleaned more frequently, but any readers might be even more bored.

For the next Life on the Flip Side post I'll talk about shopping, which should be more interesting than laundry. And at least I have cute helpers to take pictures of.

My Favorite Mother's Day Tradition

My favorite thing that we've done every Mother's day since we've had a kid on the outside is to take family pictures and pictures with just me and the boys. I always love how the pictures turn out and seeing what a difference a year makes in our family.

 

I hope all of you moms out there had a wonderful Mother's day and feel treasured and blessed.

Alexander at 6 months

I'm sure you can tell we've been busy lately by my lack of posting. The boys and life in general always keep us busy of course, but we've also been blessed to just have my husband's family come for a visit and my parents are coming for a visit in less than two weeks! I think we may make all our American friends here jealous since our family is so great to travel so far to visit us, but I think maybe they are really just flying around the world to see our kids, including super cute baby man.

Anyway Alexander is half a year old already and changing all the time, like all babies do.

At 6 months Alexander is:

• 18.5 pounds and 28.5 inches long (our longest and "thinnest" baby at this point, but just barely as he is really closely following Aaron's growth trends)
• He is wearing clothing in sizes 9-18months, but he is about to bust the 9 month onesies, so those are going to have to be packed up soon again
• He smiles, giggles, and laughs a lot
• He is still my worst sleeper, doesn't nap much again, and wakes up a lot at night. None of my boys thought sleeping was a particularly good use of time though, and although they are all good at lots of things, sleeping just doesn't seem to be one of them. :)
• He can now scoot all over the floor forward on his tummy, which means now he can intentionally go where he wants to. Watch out, but at least he isn't very fast yet.
• He likes to move, but also has a really good attention span and can pay attention to something for a really long time for his age.
• He can say mmmmmmama! Sometimes it comes it comes out mmm, sometimes mom, and sometimes mama, but it is incredibly intentional and directed only at mama. He is the first to say mama as his first word too (the first two boys definitely said dada first).
• He is totally a mama's boy, but in a different way than my first. Aaron would cry the entire time I was gone and if I would even go to the bathroom. Alexander won't cry that much if I'm gone or out of sight. However, if I in sight but out of reach or not holding him he'll just cry mmmmama over and over. It's cute and heartbreaking sometimes.
• He still doesn't seem to show a naturally gifted ability or bent to either verbal or motor skills, but his determination gained him real mobility and communication in the last month, so it seems to be working for him!
• He has met both maternal and paternal grandparents now!

I love how blue Alexander's eyes are in this picture Grandpa took!