K and A, that is. I just love watch­ing them as they expe­ri­ence some­thing new for the first time or as they learn to do some­thing. Lately, A has been prac­tic­ing stand­ing up with­out hold­ing on to any­thing. He will crawl up to me, Jason, or a piece of fur­ni­ture (yes, I just com­pared myself and my hus­band to fur­ni­ture!), stand there for a moment, and then let go. When he does, he gets a huge grin on his face and plops down on his butt. He is so proud of him­self for doing that on his own. It’s so amaz­ing to watch him. K has been exper­i­ment­ing with lan­guage and words lately. He has started singing along with us when we sing a few of his favorite songs. He is also using new words on a daily basis. Recently, he has started using “both” and “either.”

I have a friend, who I respect a lot, that said some­thing once that really got me think­ing. She said that she had read some­where that every time you do some­thing for a child, you take away his oppor­tu­nity to learn it for him­self. Now, there are some­thing I obvi­ously want to be a part of my child learn­ing, but other things I want to stand back and let him dis­cover the world on his own. The other thing that she had said that got me think­ing was so often we as adults tell kids how to play with par­tic­u­lar toys. Some­times, we tend to get too caught up in the right way to play with some­thing that we for­get about let­ting the child decide what is the right way to play. For exam­ple, we have this lit­tle duck key chain that Jason’s friend, Harry, gave us. K played with it for a while, and then he got bored with it. That was until he found a new use for it. The duck isn’t just a duck. It has a lit­tle but­ton on the side, and when you push it, a light turns on and it quacks. Well, of course, in the mind of a 2 year old, the duck became a cam­era! As some­one who likes rules and likes to do things the “right” way, I never would have thought to tell him it could be used as a cam­era. He fig­ured that out on his own, and he loves tak­ing our pic­tures with his duck cam­era. Maybe he takes after his aunts who are photographers.

I think over the course of the next sev­eral months, I will prob­a­bly be chang­ing my blog top­ics up a lit­tle. When I was breast­feed­ing K fre­quently or when A was born and I was feed­ing both boys fre­quently, I felt like I had a lot more to say about nurs­ing specif­i­cally. Now that they’re get­ting older, it’s just some­thing that’s an every day part of our lives. It just is. I don’t think or worry about it too much. We’ve got­ten over most of the hur­dles and pit­falls. A is sleep­ing bet­ter, and K has kept up his 2 a day nurs­ing rou­tine for the past few weeks.

Some of the top­ics that I have become more inter­ested in lately are healthy eat­ing, green liv­ing, cook­ing, exer­cise, and expand­ing my read­ing reper­toire. Maybe I’ll fin­ish a book (with­out read­ing the end­ing ahead of time) and do a review of it. Who knows?

What are you read­ing? I’m always look­ing for a good book or a good rec­om­men­da­tion. I start lots of books, and I fin­ish a few. I will start any­thing that sounds even remotely inter­est­ing. I’m not lim­ited to a cer­tain genre, author, or sto­ry­line. I read Chris­t­ian authors and non-Christian authors. I read fic­tion and non­fic­tion. I read as much as I can. I have always loved to read. As a child, my mom says that I taught myself to read around the time I was 4. Since then, I have almost always had at least one book in the process of being read.

Right now, I don’t have a night­stand, but I do have a read­ing list. Some of these I just started, and some I have been work­ing on for a while.

The Breast­feed­ing Answer Book — Who doesn’t love a good sev­eral hun­dred page, spi­ral bound, infor­ma­tional book?

Reclaim­ing Nick — I read this review on 5 Min­utes for Books, and I thought I should start at the begin­ning of the series instead of at the end.

Hap­pi­ness Sold Sep­a­rately — I got this book off freecy­cle. If someone’s giv­ing a book away, it’s worth tak­ing a chance, right?

I’m sure there are a few oth­ers, but these are the ones that get most of my time right now. How about you?

A while ago, I wrote about our new com­post bin that Jason and his dad had made. I was a lit­tle skep­ti­cal that we would be able to fill it all up. Who throws that much food? Well, it’s pretty much full. We have some of our lawn clip­pings in there and some food with it, too. Jason goes out once in a while, and he moves it around and turns it. I guess he waters it, too.

When we first started the project, I thought it was just some­thing fun to do. I also thought it would be nice to even­tu­ally have the com­post for our gar­den. I didn’t real­ize until today when I was read­ing on 5 Min­utes for Going Green (a fab­u­lous blog, by the way), that com­post­ing has another ben­e­fit. Food that is thrown away is the largest com­po­nent of land­fill waste. When food is thrown away, it does not become com­post. The con­di­tions in the land­fill are anaer­o­bic (oxygen-free), and instead of becom­ing fab­u­lous fer­til­izer, it breaks down to become methane gas. Methane gas is a green­house gas, and it is three times more potent than car­bon diox­ide. In an era where global warm­ing has become an every­day con­ver­sa­tion, it seems like com­post­ing is one small thing that the aver­age per­son can do with lit­tle extra effort and expense.

The other day I received an e-mail telling me that my blog was listed along with 99 oth­ers as one of the top 100 women’s health blogs. I haven’t had a chance to look through the entire list yet, but I know that I’m always look­ing for new blogs to read. The list is divided into sev­eral sec­tions: Nutri­tion and Spe­cial Diets, Exer­cise, Infer­til­ity, Preg­nancy, Child­birth and Breast­feed­ing, Weight­loss, Health Chal­lenges, Fit and Healthy Over 40, Phys­i­cal Well­be­ing, and Men­tal Well­be­ing. Thanks for choos­ing me to be on this list!

Whoops! On Thurs­day night, Jason, the boys, and I were on our way home from a potluck to cel­e­brate World Breast­feed­ing Week. As we were in the car, Jason said, “Did you post any­thing on your blog about World Breast­feed­ing Week?” Um, no, whoops! I did not post any­thing about it. When I thought about it, I real­ized the rea­son I didn’t is because it was such a part of my life and my daily blog read­ing that I assumed every­one would know. Who doesn’t know that World Breast­feed­ing Week is August 1–7? Then I real­ized that until 2 years ago I had not heard of it.

So, I guess I need to con­sider this my chance to spread the word. Maybe next year, I will be able to announce it ear­lier and invite a few of you to a world breast­feed­ing week event!

I decided after try­ing all those lip­sticks that I should prob­a­bly post a pic­ture of my nor­mal lip­stick. I think that when you see it, you’ll agree it looks fine. It’s noth­ing super obvi­ous or flashy. it’s fine. That’s my prob­lem with it, though. It’s just fine. I want some­thing a lit­tle dif­fer­ent and more excit­ing. Maybe rais­in­berry is it. I’ll have to think about it.

My usual look

Bet­ter late than never, right?

Yuck, yuck, yuck. Let’s just say that I couldn’t find a way to make this color work for me. I didn’t wear it out of the house. Lip gloss just didn’t do it. It was very obvi­ously not me.

Pink Melon

Today’s lip­stick is okay. I don’t feel like it’s the right shade for me, but I’m not ashamed to be seen wear­ing it either, so I guess that’s okay, too. I would not buy it for myself though. Oh, I for­got to add that I chose this color because my blush from Merle Nor­mal is called Dusty Rose, so I thought they might go well together. I don’t think they do though.

Dusty Rose

This is my favorite so far. It’s not quite the right shade, but it’s fun, dif­fer­ent, and oh-so-close! I think I might need to explore some of the col­ors that are like this one but just a lit­tle different.

Rais­in­berry