What did we do with a huge pile of mulch?

Our yard is a soggy mess for days after each rain. Last spring we invested in a backyard playset for the kids. We got it for a very reasonable price at Sams and built it ourselves in the only spot in the yard that was flat enough for it. It turned out that the absolute soggiest place in the entire yard, the spot that takes days and days to dry out after every rain, is directly under the swings. We put up with it for a season, but now that the kids are a little older and able to use the playset a bit more independently (yea!) I didn’t want us held back by the constant mud. (As a quick aside, last year Ava could climb up but not down. She would climb to the highest level and then wail for me to come get her. Not so much fun for Mama.)

What I would love would be to have a landscaping company come in and install a patio and a drainage system for the yard. That's just a dream though. Instead, we decided to order $100 of high quality playground mulch from a great local company that delivers for free. They dumped the pile in our driveway.

My parents came over for the evening. When we all started the project the kids were very excited. They used buckets and sand table shovels to help fill the wheelbarrow. When it was full one or the other would ride on top around the side yard and into the back to be dumped out along with the mulch. They loved it. Several times Michael took his huge Tonka dump truck and pushed it to the driveway to have Daddy or Grandpa fill it with a shovel. He’d then push it all the way back and dump it on the pile below the playset that I was raking into shape. When the kids got bored with helping, my mom took over their entertainment while my dad and husband continued to fill the wheelbarrow and push it around back to dump wherever I directed them to go next. I did all the raking.

It took about two hours of labor from three adults, but the result looks great. All of the mud from yesterday’s rain is completely covered up. And the whole project was done for a reasonable cost. I think it looks great and I’m quite pleased with how it turned out. I’m calling it a success.

Tot Clock = More Sleep

I wanted to write a review of a product that I love. As I’ve mentioned before, my children are early risers. Michael rarely sleeps past 6:30 in the morning and Ava has never learned to go back to sleep after the sun rises. Right now, after the time change that’s about 6:15, but by the middle of the summer it tends to be in the early 5:00 hour.

Meet the Tot Clock

I decided to try a Tot Clock with Michael. This product is wonderful. Fundamentally it has a clock face that changes colors. It’s standard color is yellow. That’s the “awake color”. You then set a bedtime and a wake-up time. For us, bedtime is 7:40 pm and wake-up time is 7:00 am. At bedtime the clock face turns blue and it stays blue until the time you’ve set as the wake-up time. Then it turns yellow again. Michael knows that he can’t leave his room or call for us until the light turns yellow. It has a nap timer too. So I’ve set his nap timer for an hour and a half. I push a button to turn it on (and turn the light blue) when I leave his room. If he wakes up before the hour and a half he knows he has to wait until the light turns yellow before nap time is over. It has worked beautifully. I love this clock. Michael never calls for us before 7am any more.

There was a flaw in my plan to get more sleep though. It didn’t really do me any good to keep Michael in his room until 7am when Ava was still waking up at 6:15. So I decided to try a Tot Clock for her too. She’s a little young for it, but she loved Michael’s clock and seemed to get the concept. But when I went to order the second Tot Clock for Ava they were out of stock and wouldn’t be getting more in until May.

I didn’t want to wait that long so I tried a similar product I found on Amazon. I hated it. It was difficult to set and didn’t have nearly as many features. Most importantly, it didn’t have a nap feature. Ava was completely confused by the fact that her light didn’t turn green (this clock’s default color was green) letting her know nap time was over. Then I got an email that Tot Clock had some used clocks in stock. I ordered one immediately. Ava was delighted to have one just like her brother’s clock and I shipped the other one back to Amazon. Actually, there is one difference between Ava's clock and Michael's clock. Michael's clock has the standard face plate: the moon and stars. We ordered one with butterflies and flowers for Ava because I knew she would like it and it would make this clock "hers". The company has a ton of optional face plates to choose from.

So now we have two Tot Clocks. They’re working perfectly. We now set our alarm for 6:50 so that we can wake up and pull on clothes before the kids start calling, “Mama, Dada, my clock is yellow!” at 7am. Sure, 45 minutes of extra sleep doesn't sound like all that much, but remember that before now Ava rose with the sun. In the middle of the summer I'm hoping this clock will be getting me almost two hours of extra sleep every day. Besides, the predictability is nice.

I also think it is helping Ava learn to go back to sleep after surfacing. I’ll hear her wake up and fuss a little, but then she’ll fall back asleep for a while. She rarely did that before the clock.

It has a ton of features we’re not using. It will tell a bedtime story, play music and white noise, and function as an alarm clock (who on earth would actually want to wake their toddler up in the morning on purpose?). It has a built in time-out timer (turns red) and activity timer (turns green). If any of this sounds interesting to you check it out. I highly recommend it.

(One drawback: the blue night-time setting is very bright in a small room even on its dimmest setting. You can turn the night-time light off all together, but Ava protested that option. We've ended up turning the clock away from her bed at night and partially covering it with a baby blanket to reduce the extra light in her room.)

Selling baby things - or not?

I decided to bring in a little extra money and declutter the house and garage at the same time. This seems like the perfect time to do a little craigslisting and maybe pay for a month of therapy.

First I decided to list the double stroller. I truly don’t remember the last time we used it. I wrote an amazing, detailed ad for craigslist. I spent at least half an hour working on the ad. In the process of writing the ad I remembered exactly how cool our double stroller is. And I remembered that spring and summer are right around the corner. I started to think about how I could take the kids on long walks, carry all the drinks and snacks in the stroller, and then push them when they were too tired to walk home. So I didn’t post the ad for the stroller on craigslist after all. I did save the ad though. It will be all ready when I am finally prepared to let the stroller go.

Then I decided to list the cloth diapers. We used Fuzzi Bunz cloth diapers with both kids. Now they are pretty much both potty trained. We haven’t used a cloth diaper in months. We use 4 pull-ups a day – two at nap time and two overnight. So, I pulled out all the cloth diaper stuff, sorted it and separated it into three lots of 8 diapers each. I took pictures. I wrote the ad. Then I started remembering how nice cloth diapers are and how expensive the pull-ups are. Ava walked by and desperately wanted to put on a pink one. I started talking to my husband about how perhaps we should start using cloth again for naps. Well, I did list one of the lots of diapers, but at the moment I’m hanging on to the other two. Still deciding. Money is tight right now and pull-ups aren’t cheap. Perhaps I should switch back to cloth for naps.

I still have some wraps I used when the babies are little that I haven’t listed yet, and even I can’t think of a way to use them with a two and three year old so I’m hoping I’ll get those successfully listed without changing my mind. And there’s the single stroller and matching pumpkin seat/carseat base. Again, not much use for those any more. But so far, this project isn’t exactly leading where I’d hoped.