7 Quick Takes Friday #37

--- 1 ---

I have had a stomach bug or something this week. I had one exactly this time last womanly cycle. It really made me paranoid about Toxic Shock Syndrome since I had the fever, headaches, and nausea both times. I even went to urgent care to have tests run, but they blew me off. I am not sure they even did the tests for TSS. That did not stop them from prescribing me antibiotics (which isn't a treatment for TSS) even though the doctor freely admitted she couldn't find anything wrong with me even after doing flu swabbing and blood tests. I guess the good news is that I don't have mono, because they tested me for that too.

Don't forget that if you have any TSS symptoms at all, you can always visit You ARE Loved and download their pamphlet to bring to your doctor. You can also @ them on Twitter @youAREloved . I believe Suzan is the one who runs their Twitter and she is AMAZING. She talked me through the whole experience via DM. A big Thank You to my YAL friends!

--- 2 ---

I think my conclusion might be that apparently my immune system is taking a bit of a dive around the beginning of my period each month (TMI? you're welcome.), which results in me catching whatever stomach bug is going around. I am planning on treating myself with Thieves Oil and taking extra probiotics during the first few days of my next cycle and we'll see how that goes.

--- 3---

I am trying out a new Young Living product this month - NingXia Red. It's a supplement that's supposed to have tons of vitamins and antioxidants. I will do a post about it as soon as I see how it's going!

--- 4 ---

I failed to do a garden update post this week, so I'll try to do that this weekend. However, here are a few shots of the sprouts that are coming up from the seeds I planted!! Some of the seeds were possibly washed away last weekend in the rain, so they aren't all coming up and not in the places I originally planted them, but that's OK. I think?



On the other hand, the seeds I was supposed to start inside the house have done nothing at all after 3 weeks. Pretty sure they're dead. Which sucks since I was really hoping for lots of nice organic bell peppers. Those things are stinking expensive at the store!

Ah well, maybe I can trade beets or peas to someone for bell peppers.

--- 5 ---

This week we also got to visit my friend Ashleigh's chickens so that Little Sir could see what they were like. He was very excited the whole few blocks to her house and kept saying how we were "going to see the chickens!". I asked him if he wanted to get some chickens of his own and he said yes!

--- 6 ---

I was all excited to dye Easter eggs with Little Sir using natural foods for dyes, even though I only had 3 truly white eggs (the rest are brown or bluish or whatever comes out of the free ranging hens). I tried using red lettuce and beet juice for red and this is what I got:

Exactly the same color as the brown hen eggs.
Great.
It also took more than 30 minutes to do this terrible dye job.
I am not trying any more natural dyes, forget it. I will go use the toxic stuff. Christian and I are the only ones who will actually eat the eggs anyway, neither of the kids will eat hard boiled. We've spent more than 30 years eating dyed Easter eggs and it hasn't killed us yet.

--- 7 ---

One of my next goals is to acquire a bread machine. I am determined to stop having to buy gourmet bread from the grocery bakery, even if it is only $2 a loaf. I just have to figure out how to get one for little to no money. If you have an extra one lying around, let me know!

~~~

Well that's all for this week, be sure to visit Conversion Diary for links to more 7 Quick Takes Fridays.

Milk for our family: raw, goat, non-dairy, etc.

photo by mojitopt

I think our experiments with various kinds of milk and non-milk have come to a close in this family.

First of all, neither of our kids have reacted negatively or had any behavioral, allergy, or digestive issues with regular, organic cow's milk. When they were infants, they both needed "sensitive" infant formula, but by the time they each hit 1 year old, they had outgrown the need for it.

We have now tried goat's milk, almond milk, and most recently raw milk. The kids had no problem with the taste of any of those variations, but in the end all but goats' milk made them sick. Goat's milk is expensive, and after checking with my doctor, we would have to buy vitamin D supplements for the kids if we wanted to use goats' milk instead of cow's. Which would make goats milk even MORE cost prohibitive for us.

When all is said and done, why were we investigating non-traditional milk anyway?

I'm embarrassed to say that the answer is: guilt.

All the other "green" moms say cow's milk is the devil. It will make your kids hyper! They can't digest it! It has hormones! We aren't supposed to drink milk from other animals!

I hear all those things and I feel like I'm doing something terrible to my kids by giving them organic cow's milk, even though they have absolutely no problems with it at all. So I switched to goats, but I saw no difference in hyperactivity or focus. I switched to almond and got 2-3 weeks of diarrhea. I switched to raw milk and got diarrhea AND constipation AND vomiting for the kids, and a fever and nausea for me.

Why am I doing this?! I am tired of the gastrointestinal distress that milk alternatives are giving us. I am quitting. We are going back to regular, organic cow's milk.

In my heart, I don't feel like this is the wrong choice for our particular family. It's like formula feeding - I would love for things to have worked out differently, but they didn't. I was not able to tell my boobs how to manufacture milk past 6-8 months, it was a choice my body made without my consent.  My mother and I both have stomach problems, something our body does without our consent. Unfortunately, my kids have inherited my stomach issues. They can't handle the milk alternatives. Raw milk was supposed to help with that but it turned out to be just one of the things our stomachs can't handle. I am really very sorry about that. We had a lot of fun driving out to farms to get it! Maybe we will still go out for honey and yogurt.

I wanted to be honest with my blog readers in case you've struggled with similar decisions. I firmly believe that different things work for different kids and different families. What is important is that our family made this decision consciously, by investigating all the possibilities and then deciding what works best for us. I'd encourage everyone to do your own milk or non-milk investigations, and I hope that in the process you find what works best for your family too!

I'm going to #BlogHer12!

I am so excited to announce that I am officially going to BlogHer 2012!

I will be going as a Mic Wrangler volunteer, which means I will work designated sessions helping bring the microphone to attendees as they interact with the panelists, so that everyone in the room can hear and everything is recorded for the podcasts that a released after the conference. In 2010, I was a Volunteer Wrangler, meaning I organized all the volunteers. So I have an idea what I'm going into.

This will be my 3rd BlogHer conference (previously 2010 and 2011), but my VERY FIRST where I won't be either pregnant or have a baby with me! I also will not be officially working for anyone except in my volunteer position (unless I find a sponsor).

All that to say: I'll be able to socialize freely this time and I can't wait! If you're a blogger and you're going, please leave me a comment or @ me on Twitter to make sure we meet up!

Meet my roommates
Since I'm paying my own way this time, it was most cost-effective to find 3 other bloggers to split the room. I am so excited to be rooming with the fabulous Valerie from Charmed Valerie, Jennifer of Real Posh Mom, and another Jen aka Punky from Punky and the City.

I can't wait to meet up with these ladies and compare our experiences! If you have some time, go visit their blogs today!

...and if you know a company looking for exposure to thousands of bloggers by sponsoring me - introduce me!

Saturday promotions: wooden toys, killing trees, and saving money

It's the weekend and you know what that means: time for me to highlight some promotions I've seen from my affiliate networks this week. Shameless advertising: it's how I {try to} pay the bills. Please note, however, that I will never include an advertisement or link to something I wouldn't buy myself. And you know how picky I am!

This is an easy one - a sweepstakes entry form for a $500 Melissa &' Doug birthday party! We love Melissa &' Doug wooden toys for our kids because they are more durable and less toxic than plastic.



Next is something slightly less crunchy. In fact, this one probably kills trees but I have to tell you, I love these things. $1 off Color Wonder markers and paper by Crayola! While Little Sir is possibly old enough to know better, he would still color all over the entire house, including his sister, if I let him have real markers. So Color Wonder is still our friend. Fortunately, he can color the same pages over and over, so we don't use a ton of paper. Also, I hide the markers from him sometimes.



The next promotion is Totsy, which is kind of like a Daily Deals site for moms and kids. It has multiple categories and a lot of women's clothing too! I registered a while back and enjoy perusing it. I'd recommend it for anyone who wants higher quality items but doesn't want to pay the specialty or boutique prices.



That's all for today - thanks for supporting my network affliates, and thereby supporting this blog!

Toddler/baby immunity boost with Thieves Oil

**Updated 11/2012**

The end of cold and flu season is in sight, and I'm sorry I haven't shared this with you sooner. But, I really wanted to wait and see if it really, truly worked. I don't want to tell my friends and readers that something can prevent babies from getting a cold and cough or seriously shorten the length of sickness in toddlers and babies unless I am really sure about it.

As I'm typing this (fingers crossed), we've only had 2 bouts of slight coughing with the kids for the entire cold and flu season so far! Not enough to go to the doctor at all. We did take Little Lady to the doctor once for a fever that I suspected might be an ear infection, since she had no other symptoms at all, but it turned out to just be teething. The time that they did both get coughs was when I had taken them off Thieves Oil for a few weeks because I was not diluting it enough. Hint: If you don't dilute it enough, your kids will get diarrhea! Poor babies. They actually didn't notice, but it was kind of gross for me, what with the cloth diapers and all.

I am cautiously optimistic that we have avoided sickness this season due to Young Living Thieves Oil, which I've been applying to the kids' feet when they start to exhibit any symptoms or when they're going to be in an environment with more concentrated exposure to germs than usual (like Mother's Day Out or the play areas at the mall). I can guarantee it's not my excellent housekeeping skills or their diet (Little Sir still refuses to eat any meat or beans and has recently stopped some of the dairy he was eating before. How is he still alive?!).

Here to tell you about Thieves Oil for kids, and show you how he likes to put it on his feet, is Little Sir {video here}:
He is definitely the cutest little Young Living sales guy. If you're interested in ordering your own Thieves Oil, please visit my online store www.youngliving.org/jennybradford !

Update: I've had some feedback expressing surprise at the cost of Thieves Oil. I have previously published a helpful post on why essential oils are so expensive, but also bear in mind that for the cost of one copay to your doctor and one prescription medicine, you can get a bottle of Thieves that will build your entire family's immunity for at least 6 months (more, if your children are under 5 and use diluted oils). Not to mention, avoiding illness avoids all unhappiness and inconvenience of constant sickness. Your health is worth it!

If you're local to the DFW area, you can get free shipping and hand delivery if you order by 5pm CST today, March 22! Contact me first at jenny [dot] bradford [at] gmail [dot] com and I'll add your order to my standing order going out tomorrow. Shipping takes about a week.

I hope this might help your kiddos with prevention and faster recovery from illness, as it has for us!

Using CoinStar with PayPal for healthy food on the cheap

My friend Ashleigh from Thankfully Thrifty was kind enough to take me shopping at Albertsons last weekend to share with me her talent for finding great deals on healthy food and safe products. It really helped in the deal-finding process that we were both child-free thanks to our husbands!

You see, I've not been doing so great with our budgeting lately...you might say that our family misses my part time job income more than I thought we would. So I'm sticking to my cute fabric cash envelopes for Groceries and Home purchases. We were down to the wire for the next few days of groceries.

We do have one location where we stash some extra cash - our change jar!

 The last time Christian and I went to the grocery store together (it's rare!) he noticed that the CoinStar machines now had a PayPal logo. We Googled and found out that now you can use the CoinStar machines located conveniently in most grocery stores to cash out funds from Paypal or add funds to Paypal. I'd only used CoinStar once before, years ago, when helping a friend clean house.

Now seemed the perfect time to cash in our coin jar to get a few things we needed before payday. Here I am at the CoinStar kiosk at Albertsons:

I soon realized that not only can you cash in your coins at this kiosk, but you can cash out funds from Paypal as well.

When I was getting paid via PayPal for freelance work last year, I could have gone to the kiosk to withdraw funds in cash any time. Good to know about this CoinStar option for the future.

Of course, I chose to add my coins to my PayPal account today. What was really fun was watching the total on the screen climb as it sorted the coins. Here's a little #PayPalCoinStar video!

I ended up with $8.66. Not bad!

The only issue I had with the user experience was that the "Continue" button was located on the opposite side from where I expected it to be - watch out for that!

On to shopping: I went for bananas, milk, and eggs. Always on the lookout for cheap, fast meals, I also picked up 2 boxes of our family's favorite.

Beans and rice - not just for Dave Ramsey fans! There are imitation brands, but I like this brand because it does not have trans fats. We like to pair our beans and rice with cornbread muffins made from a (trans fat free) mix I buy at Costco for a complete meal.
And I found this great deal on huge plums - plums are not in the Dirty Dozen, so they're OK to buy non-organic (I also remove the skins for my kids).

The kids are loving them!


And heads up, my mama friends - Albertsons carries organic squeezy food now! Those of you who know me in real life know that my kids go through these like crazy, and that I never pay more than $1 per pouch. Well, here they are, 10 for $10:

Run out and get them now, while the sale is still on!

A conscientious tip about coffee - did you know that you can get organic and Fair Trade Certified K-cups for your Keurig?

I have a Keurig and although I use my reusable K-cup filter the majority of the time, I like to keep a variety of K-cups on hand for overnight  guests or when I am so tired that I can't comprehend disassembling/reassembling my K-cup reusable filter! As you probably know, this is a great price for K-cups.

Finally, a "safe products" tip. Here I am, using my phone to scan a bath product with the GoodGuide iPhone app.

It's my favorite app for finding out if the ingredients in a product cause any concerns (and also how I attempt to detect my nemesis, phthalates!). It will give you the health rating and also the societal conscience rating of the company. Love it!

So there you have it, some tips for scraping the barrel of your home for loose change using CoinStar and PayPal, buying smart whether it's organic or not, and my favorite app for making conscientious choices at the grocery store!

Other links for further help or info with PayPal or Coinstar features:
PayPal on Facebook and Twitter
CoinStar on Facebook and Twitter

More from me: Google+ photo album of my shopping trip

And a special thanks again to Ashleigh of Thankfully Thrifty and my friends at Collective Bias!


*NOTE: I have been paid (at Coinstar’s request) to try and blog about Coinstar’s products/services as part of a Collective Bias shopper insights study. All opinions are my own. #CBias

My Garden: soil and seeds!

I mentioned in 7 Quick Takes Friday that we filled the garden bed with soil from Texas Pure Products soil mix this week.

The cute baby in the picture is showing me the stick she was chewing on. YUM.

I used the last of my cash grocery money on Saturday to buy 4 packets of organic Seeds Of Change seeds, which I planted exactly like SproutRobot.com told me to. This included building some kind of weird 4 legged thingy around which I planted peas.


The peas are supposed to climb this thing?! Eh?

The final step in this planting was supposed to be to water enough that at least 1-2 inches of the soil are soaked. As you may not know, we are under water restriction in our area. We still have not built or acquired a rain barrel (I KNOW, right?). There was rain in the forecast when I completed this planting.

Rain, baby, rain!! It's my garden's only hope!

P.S. I had no idea gardening was so back-breaking. I am in so much pain in muscles that I had forgotten I had! I also have essentials oils for that. Anyone want to hear about those?

7 Quick Takes Friday #36

--- 1 ---

After publishing my post about raw milk, I made the mistake of going to the CDC web site and reading what they think of raw milk. I am not even going to link to it because it is too depressing. Let me sum it up for you: they are pretty adamant that it is going to kill everyone. I got freaked out about that, now I am not sure if I want to continue with the raw milk thing. We are still working on the gallon we have. I wouldn't be able to drive somewhere to buy it for almost a week, so I guess we have a little while to decide.

--- 2 ---

I am so excited to announce that I am officially going to BlogHer 2012! I think this warrants its own post, so I'll be talking more about it later.

--- 3---

We finally got the dirt put into our raised bed garden! Here is a super cute picture of Little Lady and Little Sir helping me fill it up.

 

He was digging up dirt from the yard with his sand trowel and walking over to the garden to dump it in. The cuteness kills me! Little Lady was eating dirt. Yum.
 

--- 4 ---

Here are some more things to be confused about: I signed up for SproutRobot emails and it is telling me that I need to wait 2 weeks to let the bed "settle" before I can plant anything. At the same time, it says that the planting time for my area for most of the things I want to plant is RIGHT NOW OMG DO NOT WAIT YOU HAVE TO DO IT BEFORE SUNDAY. What?!

There is no way I can win with this stuff. This is hard work! I want to take a nap!
Whine, whine, whine.

--- 5 ---

I have read Book 1 and Book 2 of The Hunger Games series in the last week and they continue to be more awesome than I thought. I am waiting to borrow Book 3 from a friend. If I am not able to borrow it by this weekend I may actually go ahead and buy it on Kindle like I did with Book 2.

I am sad that I probably won't get to see the movie until it comes out in Netflix, but oh well. That is how things work with 2 small children. Movies = Netflix.

--- 6 ---

I'm really working on trying to take this blogging more seriously, but I know that only posting twice a week is really not helping with that goal. We are missing the income from my part time job much more than I thought we would.

--- 7 ---

All the other things I wanted to put in this spot had to do with my kids. I am really trying to keep this blog from being all about them. So, have a great weekend everyone!

~~~

Well that's all for this week, be sure to visit Conversion Diary for links to more 7 Quick Takes Fridays.

Getting raw milk

The kids and I took a little 24-hour trip to my parents' in East Texas on Tuesday and Wednesday. Since this week is Spring Break, there's no Bible study on Wednesday morning and no Mother's Day Out on Thursday (Aaaaagh!). On our way to my parents' house, we stopped by a farm outside of Big Sandy to buy raw milk.

Why raw milk?

Raw milk has a ton of health benefits, so I decided to purchase it for health reasons and not taste. I had never tasted raw milk before, and it does taste good! I was actually surprised it didn't taste significantly different than regular store-bought organic milk. I know the good stuff is still in there, despite it tasting the same.

I had also been told that raw milk can be left unrefrigerated for longer periods of time, much like breast milk. This is another one of the main reasons I bought it, because Little Lady likes to sip on her milk for hours instead of drinking it all at once. Since this closely resembles breastfeeding, which I was unable to do past her 8th month, I want to foster her ability to do this while making a healthy choice for her nutrition.


An excerpt from Raw-Milk-Facts.com:

Raw milk is a living food with remarkable self-protective properties, but here's the kick: most foods tend to go south as they age, raw milk just keeps getting better.
Not to keep harping on this, but what the heck: through helpful bacterial fermentation, you can expect an increase in enzymes, vitamins, mineral availability and overall digestibility. Not bad for old age!

I talked to the owner of the farm by phone before going out and he explained that there is a little storefront in one of the barns that you can drive up to, select the items you want, sign the list for what you bought, and leave your payment in a locked box. While we were there, he came by and we chatted for a while (he keeps a close eye on who comes and goes from the barn, if you're wondering).



It was so fun meeting the real farmer and buying milk that literally came from the cow the day before!



While we were there, I also bought an ENTIRE QUART of raw, local (East Texas bees are still considered local to the Dallas/Richardson area) honey for $10! That is a huge bargain since I pay more than twice that at the grocery store here in Dallas for honey from the same area.



It's too bad that farm isn't closer, because 2.5 hours is too much to drive regularly for me. But if you are closer to Big Sandy, I'd highly recommend it! We'll surely go by the next time we're headed to my parents'.

I've heard from my friends here in Dallas that there is another local farm that sells raw milk, so I'll be checking that out next.

Have you tried raw milk yourself or with your kids? What do you think about the risks or benefits?

7 Quick Takes Friday #35

--- 1 ---

In case you missed it, I had another post over at CottonBabies blog about sleep deprivation. At least the last few years have been worth... something? As if to make a point, Little Sir has been waking up with screaming nightmares around 2am and Little Lady screamed for an hour straight last night as if she was in pain but we never figured out why. We were both just sitting there with her for about 30 minutes, asking each other what we should do after trying all the usual things. We are such effective parents. She is going to be in therapy one day trying to figure out why she has a deep distrust of her parents' competency.

--- 2 ---

As you've seen from my raised bed garden post, I'm heading for an all new level of plant-killing. A while ago, my mother got us a Miracle-Gro Kids' Garden kind of like this one.  I was so excited to show Little Sir how the plants came up. He loved it! However, this week they all mysteriously died:

In this picture they appear parched, but that is Instagram's filter. In fact, they were nice and damp but not soggy

I have no idea what happened, they were doing so well?!

Now I have received some well cared-for tomato and bell pepper sproutlings from A'Dell (she's awesome, go check out her blog Are Things Complicated Yet?). I am keeping them in our half-bath with a light on them at all times. I am terrified I am going to kill them before I get some soil in our garden to transplant them!

--- 3---

This week I also tried to make my own flour tortillas and FAILED miserably. You can check out the recipe(s) I tried on my Pinterest food board. Anyone know the magical trick to make flour tortillas?! Mine tasted like baking soda and they were hard as rocks. Also, Pinterest has never failed me before when it comes to recipes. I am very disillusioned with you, Pinterest. How could you?

--- 4 ---

We are now having a cold spell here in Dallas, which is awesome since all my long sleeved shirts were eaten by our kitchen counter and I have been making do with my summer shirts. LOTS OF CARDIGANS.

--- 5 ---

I cannot tell you how happy I am that we do not owe the IRS our entire savings this year, as we have in years past. It took going down to one income to put us in a tax bracket that we can actually afford. Yay for being poorer?

--- 6 ---

I sewed some things this week and am very proud of myself. It was only hemming some homemade cloth wipes and fixing the hole in a pair of baby pants, but YAY ME. Now maybe I can work on doing something with those shirts with the holes. I have created a Pinterest board for t-shirt related creations. Which is what we do when we want to say we're going to do something but just look at pictures of it online instead.

--- 7 ---

Oh dear, I have started reading The Hunger Games for our neighborhood book club and so far I cannot put it down! How embarrassing. I thought I was too sophisticated for this kind of fluffy thing, BUT NO. I am seriously considering Googling the movie trailer.

~~~

Well that's all for this week, be sure to visit Conversion Diary for links to more 7 Quick Takes Fridays.

Solved: the mystery of tiny holes in shirts

I think we have solved the mystery of the tiny holes in my shirts!

The bad news is that, after doing laundry, the number of shirts affected has (hopefully) topped out at 10 shirts. That was pretty much all my long-sleeved and mid-sleeved shirts. I've taken out my summer clothes now, since I had no more shirts left. Are blazers still "in"? I have a ton of those I could wear over my summer tops. But, I digress...


What was ripping tiny holes in all my shirts around hip-level?


We think it is our granite counter tops. It must happen when I am leaning over the sink washing the endless baby bottles, sippy cups, and plastic dinnerware because I am too paranoid about plastic leeching chemicals at high temperatures to put any of those things in the dishwasher.

Way to go, fear of plastic. You just cost me 10 shirts.

Also, per comments from several friends on Facebook - I don't think this would happen to everyone with granite counter tops, it's just the particular bevel of our counter tops. Most counter tops are more rounded on the edges than ours are.

My first idea was to get some cool half-aprons.

Source: craftster.org via Jamie on Pinterest

Then, my husband suggested we just put the gummy crib protectors from our kids' crib on the edge of the counter.

Classy!

My Garden: raised bed setup & homemade weed barrier

This is the year that I attempt to garden. Also known as the year I will probably kill more plants simultaneously than I have ever done in the past. I apologize to these brave and doomed plants ahead of time.

That said, we have finally managed to assemble the shell of a raised garden bed. We are the least handy people that you could possibly know, so we bought these handy dandy assemble-itself raised bed corners with a built-in soaker hose plug-in in one corner.

All you have to do is buy untreated lumber and insert it into the slots. However, no one mentioned that untreated lumber actually measures wider than treated lumber because it doesn't shrink in production from being treated with chemicals. So the boards, instead of being smaller than the slots they were supposed to go into, were actually the exact SAME SIZE, meaning they wouldn't go in the slots. We had to borrow a table saw and Christian spent the kids' naptime on Saturday slicing tiny chunks off the ends of each board. I was scared he was going to cut of his fingers, but fortunately all he did was give everyone cedar allergies (it's cedar wood).

In the end, we have this awesome raised bed, all ready for me to call someone off Craigslist and get some compost and dirt delivered!



The cardboard at the bottom is one layer of newspaper and one layer of cardboard.



Theoretically, this will form a weed barrier that will eventually decompose enough for the plants to break through if they need to grow further downward, while still preventing weeds from re-growing underneath.

Step 1: build raised bed = complete!
Step 2: get dirt
Step 3: get plants

Any advice/suggestions on growing things and making a garden for a first-timer with a black thumb?

The mystery of 6 destroyed shirts

I am putting this mystery out into the internets, hoping that someone can solve this for me. I have lost 7 of my everyday shirts to a mysterious scourge of tiny holes. Every day I lose another one. I only had about 12 shirts, total, in my whole wardrobe to begin with, so this is quite a blow. I am now wearing tank tops with sweaters a lot.

You might think moths, right? Well, here's the thing - the holes are in the SAME PLACE on each shirt. Here is a picture I drew to illustrate the location of the holes using an image I stole from a major retailer and a very cheap drawing program, because I am a terrible photographer and could not figure out how to take pictures of the 7 shirts.

Even weirder: Christian has one shirt with the same tiny holes. Only one. But I have 7.

In fact, when I started writing this post I had 6 shirts with holes. Then I looked at the shirt I was wearing, which was fully intact this morning when I put it on. Now? 5 TINY HOLES!

Here are some theories:

• The seatbelt of our car. I drive the Honda Fit 99% of the time, Christian rarely drives it. The seatbelt, maybe? If so, how? I have actually examined the seatbelt and cannot find any sharp pieces sticking out anywhere.
• The Ergo. I use it every day. I did use it today, when these holes appeared. Christian rarely uses it. Again, I have examined the Ergo and cannot find any sharp pieces sticking out anywhere.
• Leaning against counters. This blogger says this is why she got holes in her clothes. But she only had one hole in each shirt. I have 5-6 tiny holes. Also, my holes do not look like something has worn into them. They look like something caught on the cloth.

Can anyone help me solve this mystery? Pretty soon I will be entirely shirtless.

Related: any shirt manufacturers out there who need me to review their clothing? Now accepting free shirts.

SOLVED: Here is my final conclusion on what happened to my shirts!

UPDATE: I am now wearing aprons at the deathly countertops.

Cloth diaper Thurs: ones&twos AIO

Time for another cloth diaper review! I had heard a lot about this new brand, ones&twos, from some blogger friends. The company really aims to make an affordable cloth diaper so that more people can enjoy cloth. I tried the pink diaper on Little Lady:

The reason I tried it on Little Lady is not just because it is pink, but because these diapers do run a tad small. I wasn't sure it would stay on Little Sir (he's currently 2 yrs, 4 months). Little Lady wears the diaper with the rise completely unsnapped - she's 19 lbs. at exactly 1 year old. So when she gets too much bigger, we'd probably need to retire this diaper. I feel like this diaper would make a GREAT newborn diaper!

I love how the diaper fits her now, though. The leg elastic is so nice and snug and I love how grippy the velcro is.

I'm going to give you the image from their web site to show you what the inside of this All-In-One looks like:

As you can see, there is an included soaker. We never use the diaper without the soaker because Little Lady is an extremely heavy wetter. One thing I love: the soaker is so super soft! I just want to sit there and stroke it. It's silky or something! I am sure it feels good on the baby's bottom.

Pros:

• Soaker is very soft
• Love using the soaker because you can pull it out and spray poop off it instead of having to spray the inside of the diaper
• Nice, comfy fit (makes the fluffy bum look super cute)
• Great price!!
• Nice, bright color options
• Adjustable rise
• Great newborn diaper

Cons:

• Diaper does run a little small
• Only comes in aplix/velcro right now
• Typical AIO issues (i.e., you can't stuff a pocket)

Overall, I really like this diaper!

Rating: 4 out of 5