Kimber's Navy Family

Several weeks ago we started having problems with baby #4 and Freetime diapers. {What is a Freetime? Read my post " Cloth diapering an infant: BumGenius Freetime and Elemental diapers. "} Everytime I put him in a Freetime diaper, he would break out in a rash. I started suspecting that his skin might be getting irritated by the liners in a Freetime diaper, which are different than the organic cotton in an Elemental. Well, one day he ended up wearing a Freetime diaper and taking a long nap. When he woke up and I went to change him, he had a bad diaper rash. Over the next couple days, the diaper rash turned into yeast and suddenly we had a full blow problem on our hands. How do I clear up yeast when in cloth diapers? After some Google searching, I learned nystatin is not cloth diaper safe. The nystatin will get on the liners and form a waterproof barrier, apparently. {This is the same reason why a lot of diaper rash creams are not cloth diaper safe.} I read about two methods ...

While my hubby was in prototype he came home and said it was time to fill out his dream sheet. Since this is for his JO {Junior Officer} tour-- his first tour as a submarine officer-- he was only able to rank locations and types of boats. For his JO tour, he could only pick out of the submarine bases, which there really aren't that many. Submarine bases: 1. Groton, Connecticut { Naval Submarine Base New London } 2. Norfolk, Virginia { Naval Station Norfolk } 3. Kings Bay, Georgia { Naval Submarine Base Kings Bay } 4. Bangor, Washington { Naval Base Kitsap-Bangor } 5. San Diego, California { Naval Base Point Loma } 6. Honolulu, Hawaii { Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam } 7. Guam { Naval Base Guam } Before I get started on this guide, I want it to be known that this guide is for the spouses , not the military members. This is a very general and very brief summary of the types of boats with information on schedule and boat life. I would also like to state that the only ...

When this homeschool year started, I was excited . Our first "real" year of homeschooling! I opened up my calendar and my feelings shifted slightly, "Oh no! There is nothing on our calendar!" So I started adding things to our calendar. I continued our piano lessons on Wednesdays. He is really interested in music and learning piano. I found a fun ASL co-op class on Thursdays. He likes sign language and I thought he would enjoy doing it with other kids-- just for fun. I found a storytime on Fridays. This is really our only "toddler-friendly" activity. Fall started. We enjoyed our schedule. Then we found a fun co-op class on Wednesdays after our piano lessons. We joined that. Then one of our toddlers needed speech therapy on Mondays. Plus we go to church on either Saturday night or Sunday morning. Plus we still had to go grocery shopping... ...and I joined a mommy meet-up group that I never had time for. ...and a homeschool field tri...

There are a lot of things about having twins that are hard to put into words or hard for people without twins to understand. For some things, parenting twins is double the work. For other things, it is half the work. I absolutely love being a momma to identical twins. However, I read some of these articles about parenting twins or talk to some people with multiples and it feels like they are trying to make parenting twins far more unique or unusual than it is. Some of the things involved in parenting twins applies to parenting more than one child. Having twins in itself is special and unique. Why make it bigger than it is? Why say things in a way that puts down other moms, especially since most moms are moms of singletons? It feels like it is making a divide, when there is no need to create more mommy competition than there is already. I was reading this article and it seemed to cover all the bases for most of the "unique" twin things I hear a lot, "9 things on...

If you follow my blog, you might have read my post, " Mom to all boys ." In it I say: Why does it bother me so much hearing "boys will be boys?" Because, in my experience, people do not use that expression in regards to positive behavior demonstrated by my children. To be honest, most of the time when I hear boys will be boys, parents are using it to justify their children's bad behavior. It really bothers me. I come back to that expression time after time and each time it just makes my skin crawl. Why are we teaching  a future generation of men that their behavior is okay or justified due to their sex? It makes me think back to various jobs I've held when men touched me inappropriately or said inappropriate things, once to a point that I had to report a guy. What if the manager had said, "Boys will be boys"? I am not under some illusion that males and females think/act/are exactly the same and we need to drop all gender references. As our ...

I woke up this morning after a long night with baby #4. Everyone seems to think he's teething, but I am not sure. I don't know why baby #4 is off, teething or a cold. So after that night I came out this morning to a kitchen laden with dishes. That isn't an exaggeration. I have dishes on my stove top, piled in the sink, sitting in front of the microwave. Last night we made cookies. And dinner. And applesauce. Dinner required every bowl and blade of our food processor, which is still on the counter. Our kitchen is a mess . Our children aren't eating. I make them food and they don't eat it. After making room in our kitchen to make breakfast, only one of them ate. I gave them whole grain bread with cinnamon and raisins, toasted with lots of butter on top. Eggs made to order. Yogurt with strawberries and a banana to boot. Water, as requested. Our oldest, of course, ate all his food, but left his dishes on the table. One of our toddlers ate his yogurt and played w...

I've been a military wife for almost 8 years now. We've lived at 4 different duty stations and we are getting ready to move again. While the routine of moving has become {somewhat} familiar, saying good-bye has never become easier. Yesterday a good friend of mine moved away. While I plan on visiting her at their new duty station in the next couple months, I don't know when we will ever {if we will ever} be next door neighbors again. There were many things I loved about living next door to this friend. She always had what I needed, for one. This could range from butter to wine to baby-sitting. She also always had a plate of cookies for us, always was up for a Target run, always ready for a girls night-- planned or not. We shared laughs, bottles of wine {or champagne in one lovely evening}, and tears. She's not much of a hugger, but I managed to get several big hugs from her {yay!}. We had game nights. I could always pop over to her house for an hour or two after my ...