Camian Academy

Cloth diapers have come a really long way since my mom was folding and pinning and covering with plastic pants. For that matter they’ve come a long way since Ani was born almost 7 years ago. By the time Ani and Cameron potty trained I had fallen in love with Fuzzi Bunz. Back then they were a bit different than they are today and only came in white.

We used prefolds and Bumkins covers on Fritz for his first nearly four months. Then he got a bit too wiggly for them and not too patient during diaper changes so over the last couple months we tried out lots of different diapers. Most of them were pocket diapers. Some of them were okay, some were good, some were great. Fuzzi Bunz, bumGenius 2.0, and TK Cuddlers Cubbies are the best we’ve found. The best place to buy cloth diapers (aside from the Cubbies since those are custom made) is Abby’s Lane (tell her I sent you!).

Here’s Fritz trying to crawl while wearing a green Fuzzi Bunz.

And here’s Fritz playing with his new toy from his Nan while wearing a grasshopper bumGenius 2.0.

A couple or three Christmases ago I made no-sew fleece throws for everyone. I always intended to make one for myself but I never got around to it. My favorite one was the one I made for Grandmomma. Bright pink with flowers on one side and psychadelic neon colors on the other. It was just so cheerful.

Yesterday the beautiful blanket was returned to me. Grandmomma died in February. A few months ago I asked my aunt if she would give me the blanket I had given Grandmomma (my aunt said of course - she has her own I made her in a fall leaves theme). Yesterday my brother and sister-in-law and their girls stopped by on their way to celebrate Christmas with my sister-in-law’s family. They brought the blanket with them.

Last night I fell asleep in the chair cuddled up under the blanket with my baby boy. It’s warm, it’s beautiful, and it belonged to Grandmomma. I am so glad to have it back.

A while back I related the story of the postal worker that wanted me to pay for shipping to Northern Ireland instead of the Republic of Ireland to save me some money. Well, once again I am wondering about the geography knowledge of some postal workers. Yesterday Jamie mailed his mother’s Christmas present. He sent it from a different post office in a different county (but still in VA). And this time he couldn’t convince the woman to charge the higher amount. She told him she was the postmaster and she had to enter the code for Northern Ireland if he was sending something to Ireland. She would not listen to him that Northern Ireland is not the only Ireland and the Republic of Ireland is not part of the UK. She said she was right about how she was charging him and knew what she was doing. Apparently being the postmaster excuses lack of geographical knowledge. Now I am curious to see if/when the gift will get there and if there will be postage due or if the lower than actually required to send to the Republic of Ireland postage will get it there as normal after all. I’m not sure exactly how international postage costs work since it is only handled by the US part of the time.

This week we learned about Christmas in Poland. We read the book during the course of the week. The kids were most fascinated by all the snow in the pictures. Last week everyone in the pictures from the Philippines were wearing short sleeves and this week everyone in the pictures from Poland were bundled up and looked cold. Amazing how drastically different the weather can be depending on where you live. We had two Polish dinners. We ate fried fish (I hated it, everyone else loved it) one night and pierogies (Cameron hated it, the rest of us loved it) another night. We made six more ornaments for the tree. They are called world ornaments and the picture really doesn’t do them justice.

Next Week: The Holy Land!

I’ve already written about how I feel about gift cards. Well, it appears my daughter does not agree. Ani LOVES gift cards. She wants lots of them. Of course this is the child who also wants a credit card, so perhaps it is a matter of a gift card being as much like a credit card as she can have at 6 years old. A week or so ago she told us she wanted a gift card to anywhere. She’s not picky. She had one to Toys R Us once and another to Target once. Yesterday she told me she’d most like a gift card to A.C. Moore. Hopefully Santa was listening.

In October my dad had surgery to break up kidney stones. Last night my mom had emergency surgery to remove her gallbladder due to a large (5 cm) gallstone. When I told the big kids their grandmother was having surgery, Cameron said “Oh! Mommis must have caught the stones from Daddies!”

I “met” Summer on an e-mail list for women due in July. Her little boy was born the same week as my little boy and they live not all that far away from us in Virginia. Today we discovered that the boys must be twins… or at least have relatives who shop at the same places.

Her Baby and My Baby