Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner are using a Fleurville Diaper Bag for Violet! That’s fantastic!

Our newest bag, the Kemby Sidekick, is what you get when you have an experienced mom designing a diaper bag.  Something brillant that will literally make a mom’s life so much easier.  When you leave the house, how many things do you have to carry?  Want one less thing?  (No, I’m not referring to the fact that you wouldn’t have to carry your child.  I wouldn’t call them “one less thing!”) However, it would be nice not to have to pack a carrier as well as your diaper bag.  This bag is showing up as the next “must have” thing in magazines, from Baby Couture to Pregnancy and Newborn, and just was just mentioned as the most innovative carrier, beating even the bjorn in a side by side comparison!  The best part about it, in my opinion?  You can carry a child up to 35 pounds!!  For those of us with small children, that’s a lot of use out of this bag/carrier!  The bag comes in beautiful colors, and easy to use instructions.  Check it out!

At first glance, this looks like an adorable sleeping baby. Look again. Can you tell it’s not real? That baby, referred to as a “reborn doll” is a carefully constructed, handmade doll repainted several times to have the appearance of an actual newborn. These dolls are custom made for collectors or those seeking to fill an “emotional need” by having an infant around. Some say they are “like a Michelangelo original painting,” and recognize them as art. Some of the dolls are designed with electronic and warming devices to give them the warmth, heartbeat, and breathing of a newborn.

Check out the article and more pictures of the realistic infants here: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26959338/displaymode/1107/s/2/framenumber/1/

What do you think?

My daughter loves to help around the house. She’s two, so it’s not always necessarily helpful, but her company is wonderful. It makes kitchen work more enjoyable, which results in a cleaner, more organized kitchen! Today while we were cleaning the kitchen, she decided to tell me stories. “Once on a time,” she started out, and then she proceeded to tell me that she ate a robot and it tasted like a giant big pink chocolate ice cream. I didn’t even know there was such a flavor as pink chocolate. But I digress.

Her most recent favorite chore is emptying the silverware from the dishwasher. I open the silverware drawer, and she puts each piece of silverware in it, unorganized, in a pile, one piece at a time. Then, when she’s not looking, I separate the knives from the forks and put them in the correct location. Yesterday, I got distracted scrubbing the baby’s chair, and I noticed out of the corner of my eye that she was dragging a chair to the counter. I didn’t think anything of it, sometimes she does that to pretend that she is washing dishes. I came over to see what she was talking about, however, when she yelled, “I did it!” I looked in the drawer, and sure enough, she had done it. She had organized each piece of silverware into it’s place in the drawer. For the first time, my two year old was not only enjoyable company, but actual help! I was so proud.

I know at some point this will be a chore to her, not a game, and I will have to make her empty the dishwasher instead of let her. But for now, to keep my kitchen more organized, I will accept her company, her stories, and now, her help.

I am constantly in awe of my daughters, and each stage they reach growing up. Tonight was one of the best nights I’ve experienced. Emma found a “haterpiller” today (which amazed me, they used to be snakes! When did she learn that the small ones are actually caterpillars?!). She asked me, very matter of factly, if she could keep it as a pet. Here’s how the conversation went:

“Mommy, the haterpiller misses his mommy. I will be his mommy. I will go get him grass to eat!” She started. (I actually know how she knows he would eat grass. This is from a failed experience of us keeping roly polies as pets.)

“Okay, what is his name?” She always answers this the same. “His name,” whether it be a dog, cat, or any other animal, is always the same as the type of animal. It’s name is always dog, cat, or insert type of animal here.

“His name is Fluffy.” She answered. WHAT? Since when do you know how to name things?! “I will be his mommy and I will take care of him and he can sleep with the fishies.” (She doesn’t really mean that she is a mobster and she will place his feet in cement and drown him. She means his house can go on her dresser where she has a fish tank in her room.) She proceeded to introduce him to her little sister. She explained that they were giants to Fluffy, and that they needed to be very gentle with him so they didn’t scare him. When did my daughter become so responsible?

Daddy took her out and they made him a home (in the failed home of the roly polies), and they collected dirt and leaves to create a realistic environment for him. A home for Fluffy, my daughter’s first official pet. (The roly polies don’t really count, we were just trying to get her over her debilitating fear of bugs and we couldn’t keep them alive anyway)

Right now Dan is upstairs putting them to bed, and Emma is making him say goodnight to Fluffy. Twice. I can’t believe she’s so grown up and responsible, trying to be a good mommy for him. Makes me feel kind of inadequate. I hope I know how to keep him alive for her! Makes me feel a little younger than I really am.

Before I become too sentimental with this blog (and since I can’t come up with a clever, funny way to end it since I am feeling to sentimental) I’ll sign off with the comment that I am so lucky to have the little (and not so little!) girls that I have.

This very week, Sophie reached the age that Emma was when Sophie was born. It’s the strangest realization. She’s sixteen months this week, which is still a baby! However, when Emma was sixteen months, she was a big girl in my mind. When I look back at her milestones, they are at about the same spot (even though Sophie isn’t walking…and Emma THANKFULLY started walking a week before her sissy came along). The difference was, Emma had to grow up when she was almost sixteen months old. She was suddenly the big sister.

I remember when I brought Sophia Jeanne home, Emma’s hands looked enormous to me. I couldn’t believe how huge she suddenly seemed. No matter how hard I try, I can’t see Sophie’s hands as large. When I compare pictures though, the two girls are exactly the same size. I remember expecting so much of Emma. She brought me kleenex while I was nursing, would throw away trash for me, and retrieve the channel changer. She helped bring plates (just the plastic ones) to the table, and would carry the silverware to the drawer from the dishwasher, and go get her shoes when it was time to leave. I can’t even imagine Sophie doing one of those things. She’s just a baby! When we came home from the hospital, I realized Emma no longer smelled like a baby, because she became the big girl. Sophie still smells like the baby.

Now, at two and a half, I have come to rely a huge amount on Emma. She’s the best big sister, and loves to take care of “her baby” Sophie. When I am cooking dinner and Sophie fusses, Emma will go get crackers from the cupboard, take some out, give them to Sophie, then return the box to the cupboard. She’ll then run around and dance to entertain her. It’s wonderful to watch. They share a room, and sometimes right before they fall asleep I’ll hear Emma singing to her baby sissy. It’s always ABC or “Doe, a Deer.” And it’s always beautiful… I wonder if Sophie will be capable of doing those things when she’s two and a half, or if she’ll be younger at that age than Emma is now.

Having the two girls so close together was not intentional, and not always fun or easy, but it’s incredible now and I wouldn’t change it for anything. I feel so lucky to watch them grow closer and closer, take care of each other, and become a team. It has certainly been strange this week to realize that this was the age Emma was when Sophie was born. Makes me realize why people gave me such funny looks. I literally had two babies!

So, my sister in law is literally one of the funniest people I’ve ever met. She called a few months ago, irritated with her idea to use cloth diapers on her son. When I answered the phone, I could almost see her throwing her hands up in frustration. “I’m completely soaking wet from holding him. I don’t know why people say these things work, it just soaks right through. It’s as if he’s not wearing anything!” I asked her what she was using as a plastic cover, and the silence was very telling. “I’m supposed to use a cover?” I tried to contain my laughter to be sympathetic with her urine soaked plight.

When her son was first born, Betsy decided to use the cloth diapers in order to save money. Diapers are so ridiculously expensive, especially when you have two wearing them (wouldn’t I know? I’ve had two in diapers for a year and a half now!). Before very long though, she had taken it a step further. I tried again not to laugh when she explained to me that she was potty training him, as an infant. She had researched infant potty training, and thought she could do it with him. My laughing quickly stopped when she invited me to watch. She held him over the toilet, told him to “Go potty,” and he DID! The event had an eerie resemblance to the scene in “Meet the Fockers” when the cat uses the toilet… But, regardless of how odd it was, she has to change a lot fewer diapers than I do…

This was the original article she read on the subject, and then she continued researching. It actually worked for her! Gabriel, her son, was a completely potty trained three month old. He’s now nine months, and going strong. It sounds an awful lot of work, like training the mom rather than the baby, but who am I to criticize, I’m still changing diapers!

This one is hard for me, because I wanted to write about chocolate chip cookies. But someone already did chocolate chip bread! Then I wanted to write about diet coke, but someone did that too (or regular coke at least…) Then I realized I must have food on the brain. So, my current FAVORITE food is (drumroll please) Jalapenos! Seriously, I’m completely addicted to them. The jarred kind, extra hot. I eat them on everything right now, from nachos to turkey sandwiches. I wake up in the night craving them, and sneak down to eat them straight from the jar. I literally obsess over them.

Anyway, my daughters see the jar of jalapenos come out at every meal, and lately have been asking for them. My two year old understands the concept of spicy, so I warn her, and every once in a while, she’ll venture to have tiny piece of a jalapeno. I make sure she has milk first, and she calmly scrunches up her nose and downs half her glass of milk immediately after eating it. My one year old doesn’t understand the concept, so I’ve been more cautious with her. She watches her sissy eat them though, so the begging became more insistent today.

When she finally wore me down, I carefully explained to her that it would be Owwie Spicy, but she kept repeating “peese! peese!” so I finally gave in. I cut off the tiniest sliver and put it on her tongue. She stared blankly for a moment, then began to panic. She scraped at her tongue frantically, trying to remove the spice. I tried to get her to take a drink but she refused, so I removed the offensive jalapeno and waited out her panic. I thought that she would finally stop asking for jalapenos, but I was wrong. As soon as she calmed down, she let out a cackle, yelled “SPICY!” (the word sounded like a war cry) pointed at the remainder of the jalapeno, and asked for more. That kids is feisty. The whole experience just made me love jalapenos a little more.

Wondering why we don’t have McAfee?  We’re secure, we just didn’t think it was the best idea…  Read why here:

http://crestapillsbury.wordpress.com/2008/08/01/what-is-mcafee-thinking/

Dramatically.  Emma is nearly potty trained.  That means, for the first time in a year and a half, I won’t be buying two seperate sizes of diapers.  Can I carry a smaller diaper bag now?  I’ll have to choose new favorites :)  I can’t even imagine going to the store, and only leaving with one massive box of diapers.  I’m working on ALWAYS remembering to pack an extra outfit though.  Time to reevaluate the packing list!