Catch up - Earth Friendly

When I don't post for a while I feel like there is so much to catch up on.  I promised a picture of Joseph with his blankie.  He is becoming increasingly more obsessed with it everyday.  I have decided he is not allowed to take it when we leave the house.  I don't want to get into a fight with him later about it, so we are starting now.  

Here are the boys playing hide and seek in Samuel's bed.  Joseph is also crazy about Samuel's bed.  He wants to get in whenever he can.  Luckily Samuel doesn't mind.  Samuel doesn't understand why Joseph won't lay still and try to take a nap with him.  One of these days.

Baby front:  I am 18 weeks tomorrow.  I started to feel the baby about 2 weeks ago, but only at night.  I think I am too busy during the day to think about whether I am feeling movement.  At night when I am relaxing it really goes crazy.  I was craving chocolate milk two night ago and I drank a small glass.  Either the baby loved it or hated it, I am not sure but it kicked and went nuts.  I felt terrible after drinking it.  I have always had a little bit of lactose intolerance, but I guess I am going to try to stay away from milk because I felt really really sick after drinking it.  I bought some Almond milk so we will see where that takes us.

I developed a big varicose vein when I was pregnant with Joseph and it has exploded with this pregnancy.  It is on my upper right inner thigh.  It is huge and it hurts a little bit.  As soon as I get back into shape after this next baby, I am going to have to have surgery to fix it.

I am starting to get bigger and bigger.  It seems like I am growing everyday.  I am starting to wear only maternity clothes.  This pregnancy by far is my best.  I am not feeling terrible and I am only really tired at night.  I am trying to be positive and enjoy every moment because this will be my last.


Earth Friendly Front:

Since we moved into our new house I have been trying desperately to teach the boys to be less wasteful. The amount of paper towels and toilet paper we used to go through was disgusting.  We bought terry cloth towels to clean up messes, dish towels to clean off the counters and tables and we are using cloth napkins instead of paper napkins or paper towels.  So far things have been going really well.  Samuel has barely asked for paper towels and I am feeling really good about utilizing all of our cloth substitutes.  I do laundry about once a week to clean all the cloth items.  Overall I really like the switch.

We are also starting to compost.  I got a stainless steel counter composter for all of our scraps (you can purchase it anywhere, but a lot of discount websites have them on sale.  I see them on The Foundry quite frequently).

 Then last weekend, Dave bought me my outdoor composting tumbler.  It was a pain to put together (took Dave several hours), but it is supposed to be easy and fast to use.  They say if it is in the sunlight and you fill it properly you can have working compost within 3 weeks.  I only did one dump of my indoor bucket so far.  I need to add the organic top soil and some hay and then hopefully things will start working.

 I have wanted to compost for a while, but we didn't want to start a garden at our old place because we knew we were going to move eventually.  As soon as we moved into our new house I wanted to get started.  I have to say that I feel like I have been extremely wasteful.  The amount of stuff that you can compost and not just through in your garbage is amazing.  I love the feeling of being about to utilize scraps and put it towards healthy vegetables we are going to start to grow.

In a few weeks, Dave is going to build me an elevated garden.  I bought a book and just got it in the mail yesterday.  I am going to get all of the great tips and then Dave will put it together.  I can't wait to start gardening and I think it will be a lot of fun for the boys to help out with too.  I am planning to grow veggies and herbs.  I know I want to grow basil, cilantro, rosemary and thyme.  Anyone have suggestions on veggies?  The book I bought gives lots of suggestions, but I want to know what you have done and what has worked.  I am so excited.  I will keep everyone updated on our progress.