Elimination Communication

"As featured on Good Morning America..... London and Angela!"
That right people London and I got our "15 min" of youtube fame today. (ok more like 20 seconds but we will take it). The video clip that I posted on youtube when London was 5 weeks old was used as an example on Good Morning America for a segment they did on Pressures to Potty. Now as much as I love that they didn't make Elimination Communication look bad, I really didn't care for the fact that they made it sound like potty training. They didn't ask me but I don't feel any pressure at all to have him potty trained, I didn't start using elimination communication to get him potty trained. I did use cloth diapers in hopes he would get there sooner though. :)

Elimination Communication, EC, isn't about potty training, its not about catching pee/poop, its a natural, non-coercive, its goal is not to be potty trained....its goal is to successfully have communication between baby and parent about baby's elimination needs.  Noticing your child is trying to tell you something they want and you are helping fulfill that need. Its the same as noticing a kid making a licking their lips or rooting as communicating with you they are hungry. Yawning or rubbing their  eyes to communicate to you they are sleeping. EC is just noticing your kid is grunting/doing the wiggle circular butt move/curling their legs a certain way as telling you their need to eliminate. Then just like you give them food, putting them down for nap, you take them to the potty....they don't HAVE to drink/sleep or go potty....but often times they do.These are things a child is born to communicate with their caregivers from day one. But not one that western cultures teach caregivers to look for. I myself  found it strange at first when I was told about it while on my travels in Asia. I thought people were trying to make their kids grow up to fast and expecting way to much from them or simply it was impossible for a newborn to do, or you had to hover over you child all day/night. However once I saw it in practice and realized how that a newborn was clearly "telling" their mom they needed to go.... well once you know the cues its hard to ignore. I don't think we give newborns enough credit.

Now I consider myself to have an EC graduate. What this means is that London successfully communicates with me when he needs to eliminate. He uses the "toilet" sign-language motion to tell me. He is working on saying potty/pee/poop as well.  This does not mean he is potty trained. A potty training graduate can remove their pants/underwear, get themselves on their potty, use the potty, wipe themselves and then get their bottoms back up. London isn't close to doing this yet. Right now he tells me he has to go and I do the rest. I'm in no rush to get him potty trained either. We just show him what we do and he tries to copy that. He can get lose underwear off by himself, he can get on his little potty chair almost correctly, he tries to wipe but usually falls when he does since he wipes from the front. He can't get his pants up  or on at all. He physically can't do some of that right now, its getting closer but we aren't there yet. 


Here is a great website for more information if you interested- Diaper Free Baby.
And we only did EC part-time. Never diaper free! London was in cloth diapers till he became a graduate!


Here is the full video that got GMA attention!-

Geocaching

All ready to go!

 Per wiki- "Geocaching is an outdoor sporting activity in which the participants use a Global Positioning System(GPS) to hide and seek containers, called "geocaches" or "caches", anywhere in the world. A typical cache is a small waterproof container containing a logbook where the geocacher enters the date they found it. Larger containers such as plastic storage containers (tupperware or similar) can also contain items for trading, usually toys or trinkets of little value. Geocaching is often described as a "game of high-tech hide and seek," or I like to call it "adult treasure hunting".
Here is a little video explaining it:

The Cache

It was briefly mentioned in my Day In The Life Of post. But I wanted to talk about it a touch more since its one of my new things in feb! The official Geocaching website is where I got started. I entered in my local info and found 9 caches in the area. I wanted an easy one for my first try.
This one was in a park that I have been to before and really liked. My coordinates were S 19° 51.230 W 043° 59.769. I plugged this info into my GPS and off we went! I do need to add here that I have never used the walking GPS guide before. When we got to the park I was doing the guiding and I got us lost. Troy then took over and realized I never hit the "start" button so thats why it wasn't telling us where to go but only showing me a distant map. Oh well at least we figured it out! So with Troy's guidence we came to the area. I saw the box first (or troy let me think I did!). 
 Unfortunately this cache is not maintained well and I'm pretty sure people are stealing the trinkets. :( I found a very weathered/tattered log book and that was it. No pen, no "gift", the log book wasn't even in a weather proof container. There was a piece of trash..... a bottle lid-which I took because hey I wanted SOMETHING! LOL The log book was just laying in a water valve box.

Me signing the log book

It was so very disappointing that was all to be found. I logged my info in to the book and we left a pen and a "gift" for the next person. I hope no one steals it. And I'm not sharing what it was.....if you want to know come and find it!
As much of a disappointment this cache was it was really fun looking for it and i'm not letting one bad one put a bad taste in my mouth. The rest in this area seem difficult to find (location hard to get to with a child). We will have to wait till we move/travel to do it again, but we will keep this up!

View of the park from the cache. (not the pretty part)

Day in the life of...

Did a little project for some online friends and wanted to share with you all. Two days here actually. A weekend day with daddy home and a normal everyday with just london and I.

DITLO

Fried chicken....not like grandma's.

So I tried to make Grandma B's fried chicken..... FAIL! I burned my hands so bad from oil while flipping the chicken I'm not cooking till they heal. No pictures because it was that bad and my hands hurt to bad to take photos. :(
I tried to do it from memory, maybe that was the problem. Here is what I did.... (PLEASE help me out on what I did wrong).
Bought whole chicken with skin cut up (I need to learn how to do this myself I think!). Rolled chicken pieces in a salt/pepper/flour combo till coated. Heated up frying pan with 1/2 inch thick canola oil. Places chicken in pan. Waited about 10 min till skin was brown then flipped..... pour oil on my hands in the process! Cooked another 10 min then put chicken on papertowels to dry off a touch. They LOOKED fine but when I cut into it they were still pink and undercooked. But I would have been burning them if I let them cook longer. So the skin tasted great but the chicken was bad. My ideas of why it may not have been as good--
Maybe the pan was to hot?
How long do you let it cook for?
Next time vegetable oil not canola oil?
Tongs not spatula to flip with!
I would LOVE to learn to make Grandma B's gravy also but I can't remember how she did it and i'm sure in true grandma form she has no idea on measurements. UGH! Alice if you read this---HELP!

Valentine's Day.

I <3 you!

A cute simple way to spruce up a meal with love....
Cut strawberry hearts! I put them on london's oatmeal today.

What is a VPN and how to get it

What is a VPN?
Per Wikipedia a VPN is-
"A virtual private network (VPN) is a computer network that uses a public telecommunication infrastructure such as the Internet to provide remote offices or individual users with secure access to their organization's network. It aims to avoid an expensive system of owned or leased lines that can be used by only one organization.
It encapsulates data transfers using a secure cryptographic method between two or more networked devices which are not on the same private network so as to keep the transferred data private from other devices on one or more intervening local or wide area networks. There are many different classifications, implementations, and uses for VPNs."

In other words-----a VPN make the internet think your computer is really located in the "host" country.....in my case I have it located in the USA.

Why do you need a VPN?
Well if you travel/live overseas you have noticed when you get online that many of the USA sites block other countries from viewing. Or in China and some other countries who monitor and block what their citizen's can view it gets you around that also. So when I log into my VPN it allows me to view ABC/Fox/Hulu/etc so I can watch all my American tv without having download it. It also lets me use my Pandora and my Swagbucks! (more to come on those sites later). Plus if you want to hide yourself while looking at other's blogs it will tag you in the VPN's city not the one your in.... now I sound all stalker like don't I? :D

What do you use?
I have been using VPNod.com for my VPN for many months now. I simply sent them an email (from the one you want linked-and I have never gotten spam from them once) to: promotions at vpnod dot com and in the subject line entered VPNod. I got my password info in a matter of minutes. To learn how to set it up follow these very simple directions that even come with pictures (yes its dummy proof!)
MacOsX
Windows
And there are some other operating systems it also works for but I'm not linking them all- just go here- http://www.vpnod.com/

What don't you like about it?
The only thing so far that I don't like about it is that sometimes it take about 2-3 sign in attempts to get on to the VPN. But thats well worth it to watch Grey's Anatomy and get my swagbucks! :)

Is it legal?
The use of VPN is legal in all countries EXCEPT: Cuba, Iran, Libya, North Korea, Sudan and Syria.....but its not like I was planning on visiting those warm/fuzzy feeling locations any time soon.