Little Sickies

Since Sunday morning, the boys have just been off.  Everett's been running a fever of 100-102 and Callum's not far behind.  They've both been lethargic and cranky and it's just been sad.  Callum was up at 9:30 and 1:15 last night, screaming his head off and appearing that he was trying to crawl out of his skin.  They are remarkably better this morning, but I think we'll still head in to the clinic to make sure everything's ok since Callum still has a rash on his belly and a blister above his lip.
Evidence of the abnormality in our house from yesterday afternoon when Everett hit his 102 degree point:

(Note the ever-present tractor.)

And now today?  Life is back to normal.  The boys are currently sitting on the recliner together, rocking like crazy and giggling.

And Everett drew a picture of me!!!!  Isn't it lovely????

And there's Callum!

Behind on recording the boringness

I blame several sources for my lapse in blogging recently.
1. The iPad.  Since purchasing the addictive little life changer, I have used my laptop maybe five times.  That's all fine and dandy except that typing on an iPad is kind of different than using a real live keyboard and, honestly, I'm pretty bad at it.
2. I've been kind of occupied recently by this whole trying to sell a house situation.  And since broadcasting too much personal detail on a public blog is not such the greatest idea, I haven't really blogged about that.
3. I'm boring.
Then I was told that people don't care about my life anyway and they really just want to hear about the namesakes of the blog.  Well fine then.
Everett:  the three year old has been pretty good lately.  He has his super sweet and helpful moments and the he has his "oh hi, I'm three and didn't you realize that upon reaching the age of three, children do their darnedest to imitate schizophrenic demons?"
The cutest thing lately: Callum will call out, "eh-bet!" and Everett will obviously realize that his brother is calling him and call back, "what, cow-um?".  And then I die from cute.
Callum: he is starting to learn about tantrums.  Oh yay.  They are very very rare and only when he's really tired, so that's nice at least.  Most of the time, he's a sweetie who loves to clean up toys and help out.  He's still loving the idea of going "pah-pee.". Unfortunately, this only involves sitting on the toilet, pretending to flush, and hopping off.  Eh, you win some, you lose some, right?
The cutest thing younger spawn is doing: he will lean his head into your face, waiting for a kiss and once he receives one, he will stand back and clap.  Whether it is applause for you for being able to understand him and give him what he wants or he is just pleased with himself for getting a smooch, doesn't really matter because it's awesome either way.  Even better?  When he's clapping, he's totally straight faced.  Love that kid.
Ok, that's all I can muster tonight.  Happy, family members who complain?  :)

Preschool Science: baking soda and colored vinegar

I finally got around to buying an eyedropper for this preschool science experiment, so today during Callum's nap, we went to town with colored vinegar and a dish of baking soda.

First, we had to learn how to use an eyedropper:

Then Mr. Ev discovers that baking soda and vinegar make some really awesome bubbles:

Then?  Everett tried putting baking soda INTO the jars of vinegar.

Then it was time for a spoon to help out.

Then it turned into dough.

Then things just got ridiculously messy

But, we were left with this face:

TAT: Diapers!!!

This week's Toddle Along Tuesday is on one of my favorite things: diapers!!!!  Too much excitement?  K, I'll tone it down.

I wrote a post a long time ago about cloth diapering Everett, but my stash has changed some, so why not write a new post?  Oh, and I wrote a couple other posts related to cloth diapering over the years.

Without further ado, here is our current stash:

Here's what we have from left to right, back row first.
Wool!  Two soakers, one shorty, three longies, all homemade but one soaker.  Two travel wetbags and one large wetbag.  A huge stack (how did I accumulate this many???) of prefolds.  Two stacks of covers stuffed with tri-folded prefolds.
Three stacks of fitteds: mostly goodmamas with a few bububebes.  Two stacks of pockets: two fuzzibunz and the rest Oh Katy!s. One stack of Thirsties Duo diapers.  One tiny stack of AIOs: a thirsties and two grovias.

We still use a dry pail, still same wash routine.
I've pretty much lost the fitted love and ours are pretty worn out too.  I only use them for our woolies because they snap and stay in place, therefore there is no threat of snagging the woolies.
Still use prefolds all the time, but we don't use snappis anymore.  Don't get me wrong; they're a great invention, but it's just simpler to tri-fold and they world just as well.  They don't hold in messy poo as well, but it still never escapes a cover.
Love our pockets.  I adore Oh Katy!s but Thirsties will always be my true love.  They're actually sleeve diapers (an opening at the back and the front), so you don't even have to pull the inserts out; they agitate out in the wash.
I just recently tried out AIOs and while the Thirsties is nice, the GroVias are so stinking adorable, all natural fibers inside, and just great.  In fact, the husband commented the other day that he likes them the best, so maybe I'll have to look into getting rid of some fitteds and prefolds and look into getting some more GroVias.....right????  :)
I love to answer questions about cloth diapering, so feel free to throw em at me!

Potty training....?

Callum has decided he wants to jump on the potty train.  I am wary, thinking that this will just be a long time of me continually taking him to the bathroom with no results, but I owe it to him to try.
On Wednesday morning, I saw him take a familiar stance, grunt, and do his business.  Typical toddler style.  But then.  He said "pahhh-peeeeee!" and ran to the bathroom, putting his little seat adapter on the toilet.  So I took off his diaper to find a poo, but set him on the potty anyway.  No result.  5 minutes later, he wants to sit again.  Nothing again.  But he's excited so....