Fair-ly Exhausted

...so please enjoy a brief photo montage of our trip to The Common Ground Fair 2009.


Jimmy kept stopping in the middle of the walkways, to play with sand.


See.


Mmmm...Mumma eats an Eggplant and Hummus sandwich. Daddy got a $10 crab roll that had about 30 crabs in it...great value!


Three words: Jimmy Luvs Hay






Someone who loves hay spots his daddy at sound check.


Boids! We never saw baby peepers. =(






This bird looked like a cat.


Poodle.




"You found yourself a fort, little man," said the hippie at the counter.


The Mallett Brothers Band perform.


Jimmy dances


Recycled trains carry fairgoers to and fro the fair. We didn't go this route, we took the folkstar entrance.

Tomorrow = Family Road Trip! Peep!

Both Hubby and I dislike driving, we don't trust other drivers or other cars or earth's animals or poor counties' roads or God's acts, et ceteralious, so going 1.5 hours north for a fair is a fairly big deal for us. Tomorrow we are driving from Portland to Unity for The Common Ground Fair.

The Common Ground Fair is held annually on the 3rd weekend after Labor Day and is pretty hippy-dippy (they ask attendees to leave the disposable diapers at home) and those looking for deep-fried CRAP are s.o.l. This fair food is all fresh and organic, you have to walk about a mile through the woods to reach the fairgrounds from the parking field, and Smokey's Greater Shows is NOT invited...a point of distinction as Wally and I trust traveling fair rides almost as much as we trust New Hampshire drivers (sorry NH drivers...but we never know what you're gonna do! Live free, die, or just run the other way!!) There are presentations on sustainable living and tables of crafts and expos dedicated to alternative medicine, alternative energy, and alternative alternatives in general.

But I think my favorite activity is visiting the animals, particularly the baby chickies. It was on the ride home from one year's trip to the CGF that I cornered my staunch "Never Gonna Have Kids" hubby into changing his mind. Until then it was a bit of an ISSUE and I wasn't at all sure of any outcome...I was intimidated by the whole situation, it was very difficult for me to address, my best friend had just become pregnant with her first and it was time for me to air my increasing feelings about becoming a family. I ended up using the fair's baby chickies as a euphemism to avoid uttering the grief-potent "impregnate me." I was putting my heart on the line, so imagine its glee when he side-glanced at me, flexed his jaw back and forth, held up an index finger and pumped his arm to the beat of each word of "JUST ONE." Within moments his jaw relaxed into a smile and series of chirps and "peep, peep, peeps!" came out. By the following year's fair I was pregnant, our family has become the most important aspect of our lives and to this day we smile when we come across stuffed or real chicks and we refer to Jimmy as our Peep Peep Peep! And it didn't hurt that the Poster/Newspaper Cover Art for that year's fair matched our theme.

Yet as wonderful our little Peep is, he can get a little antsy after too many waking moments in the car so I bought this mega-active Melissa and Doug Latches Board:



And this Thomas Crayon Roll from Etsy.com:



I think these along with juice, animal crackers, and a decent nap should do the trick.

And last but not least, this year's trip will be charmed with something new--Wally will be PERFORMING with David Mallett/The Mallett Brothers Band at the fairground's Amphitheater. It will be the first time Jimmy sees his daddy playing on stage in front of an audience, we are so excited!!!

Flashography, and Exposure

I recently got a new camera and tonight I was wondering why the heck I couldn't get the flash to work. Jimmy was being so cute but the photos kept coming out like these:




Mmhmm. The camera kept telling me to "Raise Flash" "Raise Flash" "Raise the Damn Flash, Rachel" and I kept hitting buttons and picking at the infrared light but nothing was happening. I'm too lazy to dig out the manual so Google kindly gave me this video:



Commenters freak out on the person who posted it but I don't have the D70 I have the L100 and the flash doesn't come up automatically you have to manually RAISE it. With your fingers. Aha! I was filled with accomplishment and cheer and enthusiasm. Thank you gulbayram1 for showing me where my flash is located. Continuez with a proper evening Mother-Son photo session!





Except now I think I preferred it with the flash down.

Oh well. It was still fun, but I think my favorite part of today was when I read the final two paragraphs from this article from The Journal of the American Medical Association. I suppose I shouldn't be "happy" to read that others profit from our society's trust in doctors and that they do so by putting our children under unnecessary medical risks, but my heart gets a surge when I see doctors expo$ing the truth$ behind dangerous half-assed procedures. Below is the clip that led me to read the article. I was struck by Dr. Timothy Johnson's closing comment and by the level of intensity he gave in not recommending Gardasil, I'm glad he said it and I find it encouraging to the research I've been doing re: what Western medicine wants me to put into my precious one's body...and why.

Clothtroversy

Wow, one tiny post about circumcision made this blog show up on a lot more google searches. Lemme try some more controversial issues!

Did you know:

Not one disposable diaper has ever decomposed. I'm 36, and I wore disposable diapers. They're still here.

Human fecal matter goes with these diapers. The packaging directs users to flush the waste into the toilet, but a large majority of disposable users do not do this. So toxic waste POOP is left to float around our environment forever, not to mention extra damage from manufacturing and distribution as they are one-time-use products.

We are a proud cloth diapering family. We started using FuzziBunz diapers when Jimmy was 4 months old and have never looked back. They may not be super cheap, but they WORK and don't leak or blowout like the disposables did. Cleaning costs do add a dent to our water bill, but the luxury of knowing all our diapers are inside out house, that we never have to buy more, sitting back sipping a cup of coffee while they're in the dryer or hanging on the line instead of running frantically to the store to buy more disposables, is priceless. You can't imagine the excitement when we realized we could convert receiving blankets into cloth wipes. Even more sanity saved!

We were also very wigged out when after removing some disposable diapers from our very young son, there would be these weird GEL bits hanging out on his boy bits. Uhhhh....not cool! These turned out to be similar absorbent polymers found in some commercial soil with recommendations against use for vegetables. If it's a chemical not fit for human consumption, I don't think I need it getting too cozy with my son's reproductive organs. You are welcome, future daughter in law.

Chemicals in disposable diapers have also been linked to asthma.

Some well meaning people have told me that they've done the research and that with cleaning chemicals and the fossil fueling of running washing machines, that the environmental impact was pretty much even.

There was one "trusty" agency reporting this matter, but the report was found to be flawed. Trust me, if I didn't have a washer/dryer 2 feet from my changing table I probably wouldn't pipe so pompously about cloth diapering, but it blows my mind that people would be willing to accept that the environmental impact between the two would be equal. What have they been sniffing, disposables?

Being a Boy Mommy

I found this link and thought it was too good not to share.

http://www.oknocirc.blogspot.com/

I don't go a day without being so thankful that we made the right choice, that we kept our baby whole.