What a Crock!

Have you seen the recent article on breastfeeding & increased allergies? Articles like this really make my blood boil! You have to wonder who is funding them! Why is it that when positive research to support breastfeeding comes out it is squashed & doesn't arouse so much as a yawn from the media but when one study comes out with something negative to say its plastered everywhere.

There are so many fantastic benefits of breastfeeding! Its free, its easy, it gives your baby immunity they desperately need in their first 6 months & beyond, it helps protect from illness & infection, it helps establish good gut bacteria, it aids in the development of baby's eyesight, speech and intelligence, it helps mum & bub bond, its better for the environment & your babies poo doesn't stink while they are exclusively breastfeed - what more could you possibly ask for! I just wish that the media would stop giving new mums reasons to use formula & start supporting the best option for everyone except the formula companies! BREAST IS BEST!!!

Travelling With Cloth Nappies

We have been on 4 trips since Jet was born & we have used cloth for each & every one of them. I thought id share what we did since i know this can be a struggle for some.

Trip #1 - Camping a couple of hours north for 3 days.

On this trip i took mainly fitteds, flats & pockets. I took plenty of nappies so i would only have to use each one once. We rinsed the dirty nappies & hung them over a line attached to the back of the tent, it was quite a wet camping trip though so most of the fitteds stayed wet. We then stuck all the used nappies in our nappy bucket, took them home & washed them.

This was our first experience travelling with cloth & by far our worst, some of my fitted nappies went mouldy due to the warmth of the tent/car while still being wet.

Trip #2 - Staying with friends in Sydney for one night.

This one was easy, i just took my regular nappies & kept them all in a wet bag then came home & washed them at the end of the trip, luckily none went mouldy. None were rinsed.

Trip #3 - Travelled up to Byron & back (6hrs north) for 12 days.

We splashed out on this trip & stayed in self contained apartments that had a washing machine & dryer, so cloth wasn't hard on this trip at all.

Trip #4 - Rockys parents farm for 2 nights.

This was our best experience travelling with cloth ever & i think im always going to follow this routine. For the 4 hour car trip i used Bubblebubs because i know i can leave them on for up to 6 hours without a leak (i try not to leave them that long but its good to know that you wont have to change bubs clothes because of a blowout). Once we got to the farm basically we just used flats & covers, i did also take some bamboo baby beehinds (BBB's) & boosters for night nappies. Flats are fantastic to use while your travelling through the day because you can just rinse them out after they have been used & stick them on the line, they dry in no time. After they had been rinsed & dried we re-used them then just gave them a good wash in the machine when we got back. That only goes for the ones that just got wee'd in, the pooped on ones got soaked in a bucket for a while, then i gave them a bit of a hand wash & hung them out. When they dried i stuck them in the laundry bag for when we got home. The baby beehinds worked well at night, i took 3 just in case they didnt dry in time but the weather was really hot so i just used the same one both nights in the end.

We have an adventure camping trip coming up (dont ask me what that means, rocky planned it & im trying not to think to much about it!) & im planning on doing the same thing as the farm trip, just flats, covers, snappies, BBB's & boosters. They take up much less room than modern cloth, none of my fab nappies will go mouldy, they are easy to rinse & they dry quickly!

So anyway, thats my travel experience with cloth so far - im still committed to just having cloth on jets bum. Im not sure how i would go travelling through Europe for a month or anything but if that bridge comes ill figure out how to cross it then. If anyone else has any posts on travelling with cloth let me know & ill stick a link to it here, id love to hear how everyone else does it!

Kangaroodle Comp

I just entered a fab comp on DE Reviews to win a $50 voucher at Kangaroodle.

Off to the Farm

Were off to Rockys Parents farm, catch ya all after the long weekend :)

Jets First Brush with Fame

After yesterdays post i thought i better get my act together & scan this page out of the last edition of Essence magazine:Its Jets first ever brush with fame, he is modelling his wonderful minky bubblebub for their discussion on Cloth vs Disposable Nappies - YAY! Its not like its hard to get pics in, i just sent it in because i new that topic was coming up, very pleased he got in though. Click on the pic for a bigger image.

ABA Renewal Bargain

I recently renewed my subscription to the Australian Breastfeeding Association (ABA) & to my pleasant surprise the renewal came with a gift! There was a couple of things i could choose from but i chose the children's book The Biggest Bed in the World by Lindsay Camp. Its a really sweet story about an ever growing family that co-sleeps.

I highly recommend subscribing to the ABA if you are a breastfeeding mum or mum to be. Its a fantastic organisation. When you initially subscribe at the moment you get the book Breastfeeing...naturally free as well which is a great resource (i got it when i joined last year), not to mention Essence magazine which comes out every second month. Essence is packed full of great natural parenting articles, last month they even did one on cloth nappies - there is a pic of Jet in it modelling his fave minky bubblebub (ive been meaning to scan it & stick it up here, ill get around to it one day).

I absolutely love attending my local ABA meetings too, its great to regularly meet with like minded mums - im even thinking of training as a breastfeeding counsellor & Rocky is going to train as a community educator. He already does talks at the BOB's (Basics of Breastfeeding) seminars which are held for all the preggy mums, usually about 3/4 of the partners show up & they are sitting in a room full of very hormonal women talking about breasts which im sure isn't very comfortable for them, so they really respond well to having another bloke to ask questions to.

Anyway, thats my rant for the day. Ill finish with a joke that a fellow ABA'er sent to me yesterday - One saggy boob said to the other saggy boob: "if we dont get some support soon, people will think we're nuts!"

Help - no idea what im doing!!!

Knitters i need your help! My latest project is turning into a total disaster! I was trying to follow this ribbed soaker pattern but i wanted to use both balls of wool at the same time so it would turn out kind of speckally coloured. I also wanted the soaker to be a bit thicker than a regualr one (even thicker than a regular ribbed one) so i thought this might be a good way to do it?

Anyway, both balls of wool are the same, just that elcheapo stuff from lincraft thats 100% wool, 8 ply i think. I cast on 40 stitches then did 17ish inches of k2p2 (with one row 4 rows in of k2 yo p2tog for the drawstring).

Only one of the legs is done in the pics which is why it looks even more funny than it normally would. I think i should have made the leg holes bigger & picked up more stitches too, i only picked up 28 & it looks a little funny!

The main prob appears to be that its to short at the back, the front seems to be ok though so i think if i added more length to the original piece (which was just a rectangle) then it would get to long in the front. Im thinking i should maybe put some short rows in there but im not sure if that would work & im also not sure where. The nappy he has on underneath isnt even a fitted, its a baby beehinds magic-alls wich are pretty trim at night i use a bamboo baby beehind with a massive booster so its lots thicker than the one he has on.

Anyway, im after your suggestions. Should i frog it & just try a different pattern or should i undo the leg ive done, the sides & cast off & keep knitting, maybe adding in some short rows??? HELP!?!

Oh & excuse the grumpy face, jet was chuckin a tanty while i was trying to take pics, i think he is a bit sick of being the guinea pig for my knitting 'creations'.

My Dream

I want to find a home (not just a house!), somewhere we can bring up our kids, thats on a couple of acres (2-10ish) just off the freeway, max of 45 mins from the airport with a house/cabin on it, 2 bedrooms minimum, can be loft style, lots of trees, river views would be great but i dont want to push my luck (any further), & this is the clincher, for under 300k. I know its probably impossible but im putting it out there.

At the moment rocky is away part of the week because he works 12 hour shifts so the commute is just to much, he stays with a mate in sydney, if we lived closer he could see jet every night. Also id love to have a little bit of land. Plant lots of fruit trees, id love one of those massive mango trees, oh oh & and avocado one, a chicken coop (with chickens of course) & a couple of lamas, maybe even a goat.

So thats my dream! just puttin it out there so the universe knows what i want ;)

Anyone else have a dream to share?

Ribbit, Ribbit

This was my first attempt at stripes. The front kinda looks ok:

But the back went a bit funny! Somehow i moved my marker over so the rows werent even, not to meantion the short rows i had to do which i kinda changed colours half way through, not sure if that was a good idea:

You can kind of see a line up the middle of the back, thats where i would wrap the colour i wasnt currently using when i got to it. Im thinking maybe that i should just break the yarn & work in the ends rather than doing that cause it started looking a bit funny.

Anyway, i frogged it all! i was trying to knit it on double pointed needles because i didnt have the right size circular needles (long story there, but basically i bought needles from lincraft marked 4.5mm that were actually only 4mm then went back & got another pair that really were 4.5mm but you couldnt knit with them because the needles were to long & the bit that attaches them was to short - really weird!!!).

Im now attempting to knit a soaker, but no stripes this time, i decided to make it thicker & use both colours at once...stay tuned to see if its a total disaster ;)

Pattern Projects

Heres two tiny tiny knitting projects. I was experimenting with the different stitches to make patterns, I haven't been game to attempt a pattern on anything else yet though!

Squares:
Love heart in seed stitch:

They aren't anything fantastic but its a start, i am only new to knitting after all!

Tip #1 - Dont put coins into your front loader washing machine

This is the most expensive 50c piece ive ever owned, it cost $259!

Rocky was being very helpful by doing the washing but he didnt realise that my jeans still had a coin in the pocket (see this is why i never use cash, you dont see credit cards getting stuck in washers), the jeans didnt actually need washing either - bonus! The washing machine worked a nice little pattern into the middle of the coin though :)

Hug-a-Bug Giveaway

The latest giveaway on Reviewed by Drea is for a Hug-a-Bug wrap! looks so cute i wanna win it!!!