Giveaway at A Mommy's Blessings

I've been entering giveaways like crazy lately... maybe I'll finally win something? The one I just entered is over at A Mommy's Blessings and it's for a Boz The Green Bear Next Door movie. Have you ever heard of Boz? You can learn all about him here. I had never heard of Boz until this giveaway, but now that I have heard of him... I want to own all of his movies! This giveaway is my chance to get Monster one of them for FREE!

Do you want to enter too? Here's the link. :)

Teething Bling Giveaway at What Mama Wants

Hey everyone, Robyn over at What Mama Wants is having a giveaway to win an item from Teething Bling!

I love the idea of these. Monster's favorite activity lately has been "pull on mommy's necklace" but with a Teething Bling necklace, I wouldn't have to worry about him breaking it. Not only does it look great, but it's made out of a safe material for him to chew on - perfect since he's in the midst of cutting his first teeth right now.

I've already entered to win. ... Click here to go to the post where you can enter the giveaway yourself... the giveaway ends on 10/14... hurry! Don't miss it!

How I Came to Cloth!

I figure I should take some time to share how and why I chose to use cloth diapers. Believe me, 1 year ago I would have laughed if you told me I'd be cloth diapering! But last October, at 4 months pregnant, I stumbled upon The Great Cloth Diaper Hunt and got drawn in, searching all over WAHM's websites trying to find that elusive icon. And, somewhere along the way, I started reading the info on those sites, and becoming interested! By the end of October, I'd decided I was giong to cloth diaper this baby!

To be honest, it wasn't about the environment for me. I fell in love with the CUTENESS!! The more research I did, I learned that cloth was better for the environment, as well as for baby's bottom, and my bank account (aside from the obsession that formed, causing me to buy, and buy, and buy - lol)! And, cloth diapers aren't as difficult as they were in my grandma's time.

All I had to do was convince the husband.... but even that was suprisingly easy! I showed him the cost comparison of disposables vs cloth over the period of birth - potty training. I told him that I would do the laundering of the diapers. And I showed him what today's cloth diapers were like. But I had him at the $$$ savings part!

I started buying diapers as soon as I found out we were having a boy, and I haven't really stopped yet! Every time I see a new brand or type of diaper I want to try, I am tempted to buy it - but I try to make myself sell an older one we no longer use as often. :)

I would definately say that choosing to cloth diaper was one of the best parenting decisions I've made. I love that I know I'm not putting any nasty chemicals next to Monster's most sensitive areas. I love that I dont' have to literally throw away hundreds of dollars every month. I love that I can re-use many of the diapers for the next babies, making it an even bigger $$ saver. And, yes, I love the CUTE CLOTH BUTT!

Monster loves his diapers, too!

Feeling invisible

We all know those blogs that seem to have half the world's population reading them on a daily basis...The ones with thousands of follwers. Or heck, even the ones with a few hundred followers!

I'm wondering how anyone ever gets to that point, of having tons and tons of followers. Where do people find them? Although, looking back at how I found a lot of the blogs I now read, I have no idea how I started reading them... but somehow I stumbled upon them (oooh... that just reminded me of StumbleUpon - gosh I love that website.) Anyway, I just feel kinda retarded right now, because I keep posting things on this little ol' blog of mine, that to my knowledge, only 2 people read. :S

Ah, well. I never started blogging to gain a ton of followers; that would actually creep me out a bit to be honest. But... it would be nice to know I'm not just talking to myself every time I post something, you know? Like on facebook - every time you post a "status update" the whole point is for people to read it, right? If nobody will read or comment or "like" any of your status updates... would we bother to post it in the first place? Hmm...

FF Meet-Up

I'm part of an online mommy group at Fertility Friend, and today we had a meet-up for anyone who was local to this area! We had 5 mommies and babies get together, from as far south as Portland, OR to as far north as Seattle, WA. It was so nice to be able to put a real face to a name and see these babies in real life, that we so far had just seen pictures of. We had a very enjoyable time watching the babes interact with each other, and of course we enjoyed chatting with each other, too. 

Monster got to meet Finn, Lily, Rowen, and Libby!

Not much to say about it, other than it was a blast... here are some pics!

  Thanks Heidi for organizing this successful day!

There's nothing like a boy and his dog.

Last night I let Nessie come in the house for a little while... and Monster thought she was the funniest thing ever! He was laughing and giggling every time she ran around or played with her toy. I can't wait until he's older and can interact with her more, to see them play in the backyard together. 


Not that I want Monster to grow up that fast... but it will be a sweet sight. :)

Do The Puyallup

Yesterday we went to the Puyallup Fair. I've gone to the fair every year, as far back as I can remember. So I was excited for Monster's first time going to the fair - the first of many, many more! We went with Ben's sister Alethea & her husband Chris. We didn't do any rides this year, but spent the whole time shopping, looking at animals/exhibits, and then ended the night with a hypnotist show - but more on that later. 

(Me, Monster with his totally awesome new hat, Ben, Chris, Alethea)

Here's Monster on his first bus ride on the way there...

The first thing we did was the ShowPlex - its always fun to wander through a giant building filled with vendors trying to sell you just about anything and everything you never knew you needed! Monster slept through most of the shopping - typical boy!

Then it was on to the Animals of the World exhibit - which is a special exhibit that only comes for the last 4 or 5 days of the fair. It includes animals like....

zebras,

ze-donks (apparently a legit breed of zebra crossed with donkey),

camels,

aplacas - dude, I think you need to trim your bangs,

quails,

African watusi cattle,

Icelandic horses,

donkeys...

and baby donkeys!

llamas, (this guy didn't seem very happy with me)

and emus.

Not to mention the many cows, sheep, goats, and pigs that we saw in the regular barns. Lochlan was fascinated with all of the animals, and especially so with the hay on the ground, lol!

And now... the hypnotist show!! Every year for as long as I can remember, there has been a hypnotist act at the fair - done by Travis Fox. Well, for the first time ever, Travis Fox didn't come to the fair! Instead there was De'Anna the Hypnochick. The show was..... um... different than it was with Travis. First of all, De'Anna wore a sweater-dress that barely covered her below the waist, and fishnet stockings - since when did being a hypnotist require you to dress skanky? Travis Fox never dressed like a skank, LOL. But one funny part of the show was when the "subjects" were told they were at the academy awards, and that we (the audience) were the crowd, filled with celebrities - and they only had 3 minutes to find their favorite celebrity and get an autograph.

Well... people were running and screaming and jumping up and down... and then this one girl stopped in her tracks, looking toward Ben & I, and started yelling, and ran over to Ben and just started to FREAK.OUT. I'm talking jumping up and down, screaming "oh my gawd!" over and over, and -CRYING. Real tears streaming down her face, as Ben hugged her. It was hilarious! So who was he in her eyes? Channing Tatum. :)

But the fun didn't end there  - another lady came over about a minute later and was like "Brad Pitt!! OMG!" And shook Ben's hand - then she looked at me, said "Angelina, it's so nice to meet you! And (noticing me holding Monster) oh - you had another baby!" LOL. I'll give De'Anna this one thing - Travis Fox never had the people interacting with the audience like she did. 

And some random photos from the day...

(And a big thanks to Alethea for lots of great pics!)

Well, I created a blog...

A year ago, I didn't read blogs. Like, ever. Then somehow, over the past year I have become quite the blog reader. It all happened somewhere between getting pregnant and joining a mommy forum, looking for healthy meals to make, and researching cloth diapers. I would start replying to threads on the forum and commenting on people's blogs. And I realized I would write A LOT in my comments. So much, that they could have been original posts in themselves. Which got me thinking that maybe I should have my own blog where I could write all of the stuff that I apparently had to say.

So here I am!

Hopefully I'll end up writing some stuff that people actually are interested in reading! :) Or hey, I can at least just post pictures of my son - people like pictures of babies, right?!