We had a big bag of chips to go with our summer favorite of tomatillo salsa so this pico de gallo is perfect, or would be if I had all the ingredients. Since necessity is the mother of invention I fit the recipe to work with what I had on hand. Here's what worked for me:
A few notes. You may have noticed that I didn't add any sort of chilies. I like my pico de gallo to be really mild, if you don't you might want to finely chop a chili like a serrano or a jalapeno and add it depending on what you like. This is especially important if you use parsley either because that is what you have on hand or because you are one of the unfortunate souls for whom cilantro tastes like metalic soap. Also, I used lemon juice because that's what I had, if you have it lime juice would work better. Finally, I didn't add garlic because we'd just run out. If you have garlic you might want to add that too.
Almost a week ago now A. started crawling. This milestone felt like it took forever to get here, not because she was behind, but because she had been "army crawling" for a couple of months before this and showed no signs of ever wanting to crawl properly. I had given up on expecting her to ever crawl normally as she was getting around well enough and was starting to really pull-up and cruise. After all, why crawl when you can walk? Every once in a while she would get up on her hands and knees and go a couple of feet, but then she'd drop down on her belly and take off. Her doctor wasn't worried so I decided not be either and had gotten used to my army crawling girl. Then one day my world changed. I woke up and she was crawling. (Quite literally, she'd been playing with my husband when she started crawling and I was still in bed getting a few extra minutes of sleep.) I was really proud of her and tried hard not to focus on how much more of a big girl she looks like.
Then over the weekend we attempted another new thing. We never did buy a baby bathtub and when she was tiny we just bathed her in the kitchen sink. By the time she outgrew the sink she could sit up reasonably well, but wasn't stable enough to be trusted in the tub on her own so I would get in the bathtub with her. She could sit and play while holding onto my legs and it was a great way for us both to get clean. At this point it has been a while since she has needed to grab onto me and she is quite comfortable in the water so we decided to let her try being in there on her own (with close supervision of course). She loved having the extra space to play with her boat and we now have a new bath-time routine.
If all this growing up wasn't enough yesterday afternoon I got confirmation that her recent crankiness is the result of teething. Her first tooth is now poking through her gums! At 9.5 months it's about time and having a tooth will let her eat some things that she hasn't been able to handle yet. I am happy for her and jumped for joy when I felt that tiny tooth, but at the same time all these things happening at once make me feel like I'm loosing my baby. I am loving watching her grow up, but I miss the tiny baby that I cuddled in my arms for so many months. That said, I am loving the little girl she is becoming.
There are many answers to this question, but the one that springs to my mind first is "tradition". When I was a kid my granddad made my sister and I cars for our Barbies out of wood, empty shoe polish tins and old lids. My mom made us dinosaurs out of scraps leftover from various projects and remnants (I'm assuming). My dad helped me make a swing in the back yard and let my sister and I build things with scrap wood. One of my earliest memories of my mom sewing was when she was working on a larger version of the ball you see to the left. The ball was probably about 6" across and belonged to my little sister. It had some of the neatest fabrics, various scraps that went together to make a pleasing whole. As a kid I always thought this ball was really neat, not just because it was neat in and of itself, but because my mom was clever enough to make it. I would love it for my children to remember me that way.
This alludes to a second reason to make toys for your children. Even the simplest toys are special when they are made with love. Add a dose of creative play and special memories are created. Even a simple gauze swaddle blanket, made at home because Target didn't have them for sale when we needed them, can become a fun toy. We use ours to play peek-a-boo, build forts, provide shade and act silly. I can only imagine how much more fun we will have as my daughter gets older and starts playing pretend. The best part is that since I made it myself I was able to pick colors like coral, melon and kelly green that are so saturated that they are fun in and of themselves. I love that they things that I make to fill my need to be creative can help my daughter fill hers.
Another reason to make your own toys is that you can make something that can't be found in stores. My daughter is small for her age which means she has small hands. When she reached the stage where she wanted to grab, hold and toss toys they were all too big for her hands. I found a pattern for this puzzle ball in Last-Minute Patchwork and Quilted Gifts and realized it fit the bill perfectly. I checked out a copy from the library and was able to use the instructions and scraps from old projects to make this ball for free. The ball is big enough to have some real substance, while still having surfaces that can be grabbed with small hands. Add to that the bright colors (or make it in black and white for a young baby) and it is a real hit.
My husband and I don't want to baby proof our bedroom. It is our space and we feel that children of any age should not be in there unsupervised and without our permission. For a long time we had just been redirecting our daughter when she tried to explore our room and putting up a baby gate when other babies were visiting so that the dogs had their own area. The big problem is that there is a bookcase with a lot of old books just outside the door to the master bedroom that seems to be a magnet for little hands. After more time that I want to think about spent attempting to redirect and frequently physically removing a certain little girl from that space we decided a baby gate was in order. We decided to spring for one of the ones with a door in it so we don't have to worry about stepping over it or removing it. We love it, Audrey, not so much. While we were at Home Depot picking up the gate we decided to get a couple off the outlet covers that have sliding covers on them. After looking everywhere and failing to find them we finally tracked down a person to ask. It turns out that they now have something even better. You can now buy tamper resistant outlets that look just like a normal electrical outlet and work just like a normal electrical outlet if you are plugging in the vacuum, but that you can't stick a bobby pin in. Basically the have a little gate just inside the plug itself that only opens if you stick something in both sides at the same time. This is easy if you are sticking a plug in, almost impossible if you are sticking a fork, coat hanger or bobby pin in. The best part is that these little gadgets are actually cheaper than the sliding outlet covers and you don't have to worry where you put them like you do with the little plastic plugs. The only downside is that you have to install them so if you are afraid of doing your own electrical work you'd have to hire someone to do it for you. (One thing I was seeing said that houses built after 2008 all had them, but if your house is older they are worth considering.) 
All the major pattern companies have patterns for baby clothes. You can go to their websites and figure out which patterns you like and then watch the sales at your local fabric store. I find that mine generally have at least one brand of pattern on sale every couple of weeks and they rotate through the brands. By being a little patient I was able to get a ton of baby patterns for $0.99-$1.50 each. You can also wait for fabric and notions to go on sale and get everything for a cute baby outfit for half price. The other thing to watch is the remnant bin. All fabric stores have them, these are the bolt ends and the scraps "too small to save". The fabric in the remnant bin is perfectly good fabric, there is just less than 1 yard of it so you can buy it at half price. Since most baby clothes take 1 yard or less of fabric this is a great option. The outfit above was made from a 1/2 yard of fabric I found in the remnant bin. I had to get rather creative with the pattern placement (make sure you follow the grain line and print direction if you want it to look right) and there wasn't enough for the lining, but I was able to pull it off. Unless you looked at the inside or read this post you would never know that the outfit is lined with muslin instead of matching fabric.
One of the other nice things about making your own baby clothes is that it is probably your best bet at getting cute boy clothes. You can pick a fabric you like and combine it with a fairly simple pattern and get something that is both adorable and boyish. This is a great option for all of you who complain about the lack of good boy clothes. All it takes to get custom clothes is a good pattern, a sewing machine and some time. Also, just because the first outfit takes you forever don't assume that all outfits will. The first time I made this pattern took every free moment for a full week. The second time only took about 4 hours worth of naps.
I love white muslin curtains. They are a classic, they are pretty, they are practical (aka machine washable). Unfortunately, they can be hard to find. (Though this may be because I hate shopping and thus didn't know where to look.) However, muslin is easy to find and tends to be pretty cheap. If a place sells fabric, they probably sell muslin. All you need to do is to figure out how big your windows are and make two panels that will slide on a rod and have a hem that won't fray. Each panel should be about the same width as the window, though if you want really fluffy, flowing curtains you will want to go wider. By making each panel the same width as the window the total width of the curtains winds up being about twice the width of the window which is generally considered to be pretty standard. Add a valance that matches the rest of the stuff in the room and you're set.
could never find just the right look for was a changing pad cover. The bedding set that we got didn't have a matching changing pad cover and none of the others quite went either and I couldn't see spending $15 for something that I didn't love. After using a receiving blanket for months I finally realized that I had the perfect flannel in my fabric stash and made this one. It goes really well with the bedding set and cost less than $5 to make (I bought the fabric when Jo-Anns was having a huge sale on their flannel). It also only took a couple of hours including drafting the pattern. To make the pattern I simply traced the ends of the changing pad and added seam allowances. Then I figured out how much it would need to hang down to fold under like it is supposed to. I cut two pieces that size and then measured out how big to make the middle and side panels. (Measure the size of each rectangle and add a seam allowance each place you want a seam.) Then sew the rectangles together, add an end piece on each end and make a casing around the bottom for 1/4" elastic. Voila, a fancy contoured changing pad cover! I have grand plans for making more of these because I love the look and I love that my wedding ring is no longer catching on the plastic of the pad itself.
The last thing that I made was gauze swaddle blankets. My daughter slept better when swaddled, but the receiving blankets get small fast. We kept using them for a really long time because we couldn't find anything better that wasn't really expensive. Eventually, I found some gauze for a really good price at Fabric.com and realized that I could make my own gauze swaddle blankets. I washed (to pre-shrink the fabric) and ironed the fabric, cut it to 45"x45" and then did a narrow hem all the way around. Now I can have fancy swaddle blankets in any color I want. Too bad I didn't think of it sooner. On the bright side, they make great playthings...
Before my daughter was born I had decided that we would use cloth diapers because I liked the idea of being able to reuse them and I didn't relish the idea of having to drag myself to the store with a baby because I'd run out of diapers. I also liked the idea that we wouldn't be making nearly as much trash with cloth diapers as with disposables. As it is we rarely fill a 13 gallon trash bag in a week and this is something that makes me happy. As I learned more about cloth diapers I also realized how cute they can be which was a big selling point (does that make me shallow?). I had a lot of people tell me that it would be too much work and that I'd switch to disposables in no time. I figured that I was more stubborn than that and decided to prove them wrong. I had one friend who had used cloth 
diapers for her kids telling me that it was easy and it turns out that she was the one that was right. From the time my daughter was about a week old she was almost exclusively in cloth diapers. We used disposables for one vacation and we have used them as extras in the diaper bag for when we run out of cloth diapers because they take up less space. All in all we have only ever used one package in each size of diapers and we've had to make an effort to finish each small package. For us cloth is just so much easier (not to mention cheaper, more environmentally friendly and better for our daughter's sensitive skin). This leaves me wondering why everyone doesn't 
use them. I understand that a large part of their appeal for us is due to the fact that we have a washer and dryer in our home. I can understand someone not doing cloth diapers if they don't have this, but what about those that do? All I can figure is that people don't know how great they can be so I am going to answer a few questions that I had before I started. If anyone else has questions please let me know and I'll be glad to answer those too. Cloth diapers may not be for everyone, but they are worth looking into if you have a little one in diapers.
