A fabulous find

This blog was created to keep our friends and family informed of Emmy's progress when she was in the hospital, and we've kept it up to share with those near and far what a joy she is!

But, I interrupt this regularly scheduled blog to share about these wonderful light bulbs I have discovered. Yes, I said light bulbs.

We do our best to live as "green" as possible at this point in our lives. There's still a lot more we'd like to do but for now we recycle everything we can, compost, keep our thermostat set as high or low as possible (depending on the season), buy organic when we can, try to avoid using harmful chemicals, and other other little things I can't remember right now. We also use the compact fluorescent light (CFL) bulbs in most of the lamps in our home.

Nonetheless, I have never been a huge fan of the light put out by these curlique fluorescent bulbs. It's very yellow and just not very pretty light. Until now! I have discovered a glorious light bulb brand called Bright Effects. It is a fluorescent, and thus energy efficient, but it puts out a pretty, clean, white light! I love them! (I found them at Lowe's, by the way).

Using the compact fluorescent bulbs saves you money in energy costs, which is good for you and the environment! Plus, they last much longer than incandescent bulbs so there are less bulbs in the landfills. However, keep in mind that they do contain mercury, so you should not throw them in the regular garbage. Home Depots now collect them for recycling, and sites like lamprecycle.org can help you find out how to recycle them.

In case you can't tell, I'm really excited about these light bulbs. Thank you for indulging me. Perhaps next time I'll give you a diatribe on composting. Yay!

I now return you to Emmy updates. By the way, Emmy loves the wonderful light coming from the lamp by her changing table that now has one of these CFL blubs in it.

Big Baby Bottoms

Cute ruffles on her bottom, huh? No, it's not the ruffles making her rear end look so huge. It's the cloth diapers we are finally able to use! They do look a little ridiculous on her still because they add a lot of visual bulk to her tiny frame. We're glad they fit, though, and we're able to use to start using them. I bought some of the tiniest covers and preemie pre-folds I could find while I was on bed rest and so far, so good. I even washed my first load today with success and dried them in the sun (which really does bleach out stains). I feel like all that research and chatting with other cloth diapering Moms has paid off!

Speaking of moms, we're so grateful for my mom's help this week. We've had a good week and been well fed and cared for. And we know we've gotten some extra sleep thanks to her extra hands. She is heading home tomorrow and we haven't killed each other yet! Thanks, Mom, for everything!

Emmy's still working on sleeping in her crib or pack-n-play at night. She slept for almost a 4 hour stretch last night...of course that was in the bed with us, but you gotta do what you gotta do. I'm not opposed to co-sleeping, I just don't think it's for me. Emmy, however, currently disagrees, so we're working on a happy medium.

There's some fun news to share, but I must go for now. It's Emmy's dinnertime, so I'll post that later on.