If you are in the mood for a fantastic animal stew I know just the place you can go. Sweet Pea’s kitchen! He adds just the right amount of puzzle pieces and slobber to the mix and it tastes fabulous. Care to join us for some stew?

The past few days have been really icy and cold. With not much opportunity to go outside and run off some energy we have had to become somewhat creative. So I thought to myself, what is one thing all kids love? Water!! So I gave him a bowl of water, a cup, and a spoon and he played for quite some time!! He dished the water from the bowl to the cup, poured the water, drank the water. He was very amused. So if you ever need some down time or can’t think of something to do, water will do the trick!

The face says it all.

I love fresh squeezed orange juice. It tastes nothing like what comes in the bottle from the store. In fact, it is ten times better! And because it is fresh with no preservatives it is much healthier.  The only sad part is we hardly ever get to make any. Because fresh fruit cost so much, we limit ourselves to one piece per day. Not really conducive to drinking a cup of fresh squeezed OJ everyday.

It was such a great surprise when hubby came back from the store last night with a whole bag of oranges!! The store was trying to get rid of them, so they bagged them up and were selling them for $1.50/bag! So this afternoon Sweet Pea and I got out the juicer and started squeezing oranges.

Four oranges and fifteen minutes later we had ourselves a small cup of OJ. You can see how this could get expensive. For each of us to have a small cup everyday we would need 12 oranges daily! Not really doable. So it was such a treat to have this cup. Sweet Pea tried it and didn’t really like it. I think it was to tangy for him.

Hopefully the store will have the oranges on sale more often to we can have a wonderful treat!

It has come to my attention that even though my blog is titled Mostly Natural Momma, I have yet to share with you how I have tried to make my home more natural and green. So I am going to start this little segment called Now More Natural. Here goes:

One day when I was pregnant with Sweet Pea I started getting out my cleaning supplies to clean the bathroom. My tote was filled with bleach products, comet, and lots of other cleaners full of chemicals. I thought to myself…maybe I could convince my hubby to clean the bathroom by telling him that his pregnant wife should not be cleaning the bathroom and breathing in all this nasty stuff. And that got me thinking even more. Should anybody really be breathing it in and risking getting it all over their hands, eyes, and mouth? What are these chemicals really doing to our bodies? Maybe just breathing it in once is okay, but we all know that bathrooms must be cleaned way more than that.

My mind really started racing at that point. The new baby was surely going to find a way into the cabinet and drink my 409. Not good. I had to find some other alternative.

So I turned to my friends and the internet. Two cleaners that constantly were brought up were Babyganics and Shaklee. Both cleaners are non-toxic and free of harsh chemicals. I found that the babyganics cleaners worked a little better than the Shaklee. And if you do buy this product, make sure you buy a scented version because the non-scented smells nasty. My hubby will not go into the bathroom at all if he knows have have cleaned it with unscented babyganics because it smells that bad. But even though these products are advertised to be non-toxic, I still get a little nervous about Sweet Pea. I loves to help me clean and I want to let him. On top of that, the non-toxic cleaners tend to be a little more expensive than the regular stuff and that is always a negative.

So I started researching a little more and have found the solution. Vinegar. I started cleaning with vinegar a few weeks ago and will never go back. I am absolutly amazed at how well vinegar cleans. My sinks and counters have never looked so shiny. I found this awesome website called 1001 Uses for white distilled vinegar. It gives specific directions for cleaning any room in the house and much more. Now I can hand Sweet Pea a rag and let him scrub until his little heart’s content and I don’t worry about it at all. Oh…and it is really cheap!!

Today Daddy had the day off and we decided to spend the morning at the Children’s Museum! We actually spent some of our Christmas money to get a yearly membership and after spending all morning there we realized it was totally worth the money! Sweet Pea and I will probably end up spending at least one morning a week there. The whole museum was split up into different rooms and I was very impressed with each. Each room was designed to enhance some aspect of a child’s learning. 

The first place we stopped was the sand pit. Here the kids could dig for dinasour bones. As you can see from the picture Sweet Pea was not at all interested in going in. He put one foot in the sand before he decided that the feeling was to weird and insisted that we move on to the next thing.

The next room was designed specifically for ages 0-2. Sweet Pea fits right into this age range and climbed on everything. As you can see the equiptment was the perfect height.  

This room also had aquariums filled with fish and various reptiles.

The next room was the fire station room. The fire engine had wheels to drive and a slide down the back. Off to the side there was a closet filled with fire hats and jackets. Just perfect for pretend play.

The next room was a farm. The kids could take bags and fill them with produce then “sell” them at the farmer’s market. There was also a pretend cow to milk and play horses to ride. 

We ended the day with a yummy smoothie!! It was so much fun and we can’t wait to go back!

The imagination of a child is a wonderful thing. It is also fun to be the person that gets to observe this imagination on a daily basis. At any given time, any object can be anything. Last week, everything was a phone to Sweet Pea. He had lots of people to call and spent a good portion of the day in important meetings. What a fun thing to watch and encourage! Everytime he would put the “phone” down I would ask him who who was talking to and he would look at me and just start babbling a long explanation of his conversation. What fun! 

My mom was in town last weekend for a visit and whenever she is here we like to do a project with Sweet Pea. This time we searched through the archives over at Chasing Cherrios and found a really fun project. Making a color book with your child and his toys! We took the idea and kind of made it our own. To see Chasing Cherrios final product click here. We took pictures of Sweet Pea in nine different colors, printed the pictures, laminated them, and then put them together with rings. There are so many different ways this project could be done. Chasing Cherrios did more of a scrapbook of colors. Just take the idea and run with it! Here are a few of our color pictures:

And here is the final product:

Sweet Pea loves it already! He carries it around and points to everything in the pictures. We talk about the colors and the toys. It has really become quite the conversation piece between me and Sweet Pea. 

You will have to click on the first one to be able to read it: