7 Must-Have Baby Items - To Give or Register For

I'm pretty picky when it comes to what I buy or keep for my daughter. We live in a small two-bedroom apartment, and we don't have a lot of room for clutter, or barriers for noise. My husband and I decided before our daughter was born that we didn't want any electronic, noise-making, light-up toys. In the past year and a half, I have developed a collection of favorite items that we have either purchased, or were generously given to us. If I had to do it over, I would still buy all these items in a heartbeat.

1. FisherPrice Rock'n Play - $43.99-$59.99

We used this ALL the time. Our daughter slept in one of these for the first 2-3 months until she transitioned to her crib. I was able to borrow one from my sister-in-law after my niece outgrew it, but I would gladly pay the sixty dollars if I needed to. They carry this in multiple colors/patterns at Target.

2. Sara Gillingham book series

These board book, finger puppet combo books are a gem. There are several more in the series. I found and purchased our first two at a little book store in North Carolina long before I was pregnant. My mom purchased the rest of the collection for our daughter's 1st birthday, and they are an absolute favorite. 

3. Hape Stacking Blocks - $19.99

A friend of mine purchased this set for our daughter's 1st birthday. I knew it would be a hit with her because she loves fitting shapes together. I love this because it includes animals, colors, shapes, letters, and numbers, and when all the boxes are inside each other it takes up minimal space. 

4. B. Zany Zoo Activity Block - $59.99

My husband and I splurged a bit this Christmas and invested in this awesome toy for our daughter and any future children. It's a bright and fun twist on the age-old whatever these are called that you see in every pediatrician's office. She loves it and it's recommend for ages 1-3 so hopefully it will be loved for a while!

5. Elegant Baby Wooden Alphabet Blocks (set of 36) - $29.95

I was fortunate enough to find a set of these for $7 at a "Just For Friends" event when we lived in Washington state. The company is no longer selling them from their official website, but you can find them on Amazon. Our set is black and white, which they don't seem to make anymore, but I love the color ones. Each block has a capital, a lower case, a picture that starts with that letter and the corresponding word. I love that there are extra blocks (extra vowels) so when she starts learning to spell she can actually use her blocks to make more than one word. 

6. Hape Bird Stacker

We received this as a gift for Hadley's 1st birthday, and it was instantly a favorite, and one she continues to play with. I put it together for her the first time and she's been able to do it herself from 12 months. The sad part is, I cannot find this exact one for sale anywhere! If I could it would be given to ever baby I know. They used to be at Target, but they're nowhere to be found, even on the Hape brand official website. However, Hape has many other great wooden and bamboo toys to be discovered. Check out their website here.

7. Melissa & Doug Felt Sandwich Making Kit - $19.99

This was another great gift given to Hadley for Christmas this year by her sweet auntie. It came with all the pieces pictured, and I love that it's felt! The pieces stick together so you can actually form a "sandwich," and bonus: they don't make a bunch of noise clacking together. It's recommended for ages 3+ but our 15-month-old already loves playing with them!

5 Reasons to Be Thankful For Extra Laundry

Just to clarify, I'm sharing five reasons why I'm thankful for extra laundry this week, and how it's changing my outlook on being thankful in general. 

My daughter has barfed six out of seven nights this week at bedtime. It "ruined" our New Year's Eve plans, and another night when friends were visiting. I found myself complaining about her inconvenient timing to more than one family member and friend throughout the week. But yesterday, as I folded my third crib sheet in a row, I started thinking--extra laundry to fold is a first-world problem. 

You're probably familiar with the term being used in GIF listicles and strings of pictures on the internet, all poking fun at ourselves for the things we deem problems. For example, "I need to get to the third floor, but the elevator is broken," or "My laptop bag hurts my shoulder," and "I want to change the channel, but the remote is on the other side of the room." 

So I took the opportunity, as a personal challenge, to think of things that I was thankful for in relation to my daughter's barf-a-thon. Here's my top 5:

1. I'm thankful I have a washer and dryer in my apartment and don't have to haul buckets of water and hand wash all the laundry, or even take it to a laundromat.

2. I'm thankful for more than one crib sheet so I can quickly change the bed when I need to.

3. I'm thankful for a crib and mattress for my daughter that I can put said sheets on.

4. I'm thankful that I have a home to put a crib in, and a separate room so I can get sleep most nights.

5. I'm thankful that my daughter is otherwise healthy and that there isn't a serious medical condition causing her to be sick.

My hope is to continue finding the joy in circumstances that might otherwise be frustrating or discouraging. 

And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.  

- Colossians 3:17

 

10 Free Christmas Printables!

I'm a huge fan of free printables, from wall decor to drink tags--I think they're the greatest! Since Christmas is right around the corner, I thought I would do everyone a favor and round up my favorites for the season. Some can be used to spruce up your wrapping, or last minute decorative details for the mantle. However you choose to use your printables, I hope you enjoy them!

1. Festive Chalkboard Gift Tags

2. Christmas Labels for Homemade Baking

3. Chic Paper Bows and Tags

4. Illustrated Gift Tags in English and Spanish

5. DIY Christmas Card + Free Printable

6. Printable Christmas Garland

7. Whimsical Wall Decor

8. Fun and Festive Framable Art

9. Chic and Sparkly Gift Tags

10. Hot Chocolate Bar Drink Tags

Finishing the Haiti Story

Ok so I've been halfway lazy and halfway overwhelmed with finishing up the Haiti story. However, I have one or two faithful readers who have requested that I do so. So here we go...

Later in the afternoon in Doko, some of us ladies on the team had been passing around a little baby who had been brought to the church by someone in the village. Little babies getting passed around is not a surprise, but what was a surprise was when we found out his mother had dropped him off with another woman around 4 am, and had not been back since. As far as we knew, this little baby boy had not eaten all day, and he was definitely hungry. As soon as we discovered this, everyone standing within earshot looked at me. By then, most of the team knew that I had offered to feed the infants at the hospital, but had been turned away due to cultural obstacles. (Culture aside, I told Lisa that, had I had difficulty nursing my own daughter, I couldn't imagine how weird it would be if someone who didn't speak english showed up to my hospital room offering to feed her for me.)

We had no bottle except what I had been pumping in to, and I hadn't brought the top because I didn't think I would need it. So we improvised, taking a ziploc bag with my pumped milk, we poked a pinhole in it and fed away! I'm sure we were breaking a million rules by U.S. health standards, but in Haiti it didn't matter. What mattered was this 2 to 3-month-old baby hadn't eaten all day, and we could do something about it. 

Many of the Haitians, who had been hanging out at the church, smiled and laughed as they watched several of us tending to the baby. Me and Cherie, another woman on the team, both had the joy of being peed on by the little guy. We decided to engineer a makeshift diaper out of the yellow cloth you can see in the background. The cloth, coincidentally was someone's super-absorbent towel they had brought on the trip -- whoops.

We successfully filled this sweet baby, and he quickly fell asleep. We passed him around some more before someone located his aunt, who could nurse him until the mother returned. I want to make a point of saying that Haitian mothers are very attentive to their babies, and this was an unusual situation.

While there was still daylight, there was one thing that I really wanted to do before leaving Doko. When I was in elementary school living in the village Dimsisi, in Papua New Guinea, the kids taught me how to weave a "ball" out of palm tree leaves. I wanted to teach some of the people in Doko how to make it. Unlike my village in PNG, there were no young (short) palm trees in Doko, so someone needed to climb a palm tree to cut down palm frond. This quickly got everyone's interest, and someone was located who could complete the task.

A group of about 40 people took off down the trail to watch as a guy climbed a palm tree to get us a palm frond. Carrying a small axe, he climbed a 40 to 50-foot palm tree that was growing out of the incline of a mountain.

After hacking down a frond, the group made the short trek back to the church, where I would begin my attempt to teach them how to make the ball. I hadn't anticipated so many students--probably 50 or 60 people surrounded me and Kate, who would translate my directions.

It got somewhat comical as I tried to teach Kate, who then had to not only understand my directions, but also translate them to the crowd that was anxiously waiting.

We were quickly losing daylight, and the crowd erupted with laughter as different people held up their projects, tangled messes, jokingly asking if their's looked right. Haitians love to laugh, and they're not afraid to laugh at themselves. Soon, everyone was laughing, and many people gave up. However, I was able to teach Kate, who successfully taught two or three others how to weave a ball.

It was so cool to think about how I brought an art from one incredibly remote village in Papua New Guinea to another incredibly remote village on the other side of the world.

After our arts and crafts time third-world-style, everyone shuffled inside the church building for another out-of-this-world worship service.

At 10 pm we repeated the night before by setting up our sleeping pallets by moonlight and flashlight while 60+ people stood around us watching. Kate and I traded our sad blankets for bigger one to share, and we both slept like babies.

In the morning we packed up and headed off down the mountain to repeat the hike backwards. I had been worried about the trip back, and although my ankles were hurting, the hike felt so much shorter than I expected.

At the end of the 8-hour hike, we were picked up by our bus, and made the dusty 1 1/2-hour ride back to Jeremie.








We arrived at the hotel covered in a thick layer of sweat and dust.

Before I took a shower, Kate took a picture of my hair caked in dirt. By the way, my hair is not blonde, that's dirt!

The next day the group split up, and some of us went to one orphanage, and the rest went to another. To get to the orphanage I went to, we had to take a 30-minute motorcycle taxi ride. We hopped on, two passengers and one driver per motorcycle, and took off through the city.

Once we were out of the city, we were once again blasted with dust. By the end, our faces looked like we powdered them!



In the morning we packed up and were on the bus by 5 am, ready to head back to Port Au Prince. We seemed to pick up more people every time we stopped, and what took us 8 hours the first time, ended up around 13 hours by the time we reached the hotel in Port Au Prince.

Cramped from the long ride, hungry, thirsty, and filthy, our showers and dinner never tasted so good. 

So I've done my best to share the summary of my trip, but in all honesty, I feel like I would never succeed in putting everything into words. 

The final thought I want to share is that somehow only the important things seemed to exist on this trip. I didn't have cell service for most of the time, I didn't check my e-mail, I didn't care that I pretty much had a bad hair week and a half, or that I wasn't wearing makeup. On a selfish level, I felt free. But on another level, that freedom allowed me to focus on how I could be used by God on this trip, and to actually see Him at work through me and others. When I got back to the U.S. I spent several days trying to figure out how I could mirror that freedom while living my life in the U.S. with a husband, a daughter, a job, a cell phone, e-mail, and everything else that comes with our society. I failed at determining an answer, but feel certain that, with enough trips to Haiti, I will find it.

If anyone would like to know more about the family who led the Haiti trip I was on, or are interested in going on a trip to Haiti visit: www.full-life-haiti.blogspot.com. 

More on the Haiti trip

My blog disappeared for a day, but thanks to a "yes" answer to prayer, it's back--no explanation whatsoever for why it was missing.

Before I continue, I need to explain that it's so difficult to put this trip into words. I saw, experienced, and learned so much, not just about myself and the Haitian people, but also about God's incredible power, faithfulness, and love. I will do my best to share some of the thoughts and feelings I had while in Haiti, but understand that no words seem sufficient to capture the whole trip.

To pick up where I left off, beginning after the market, we: prayed over a well-known place for voodoo rituals in a cemetery.

Cemetery in Jeremie.

A group went to pray for the sick in the hospital while I went to the maternity ward and offered to feed infants. There were more than 12 babies whose mothers were unable to feed them. They wouldn't let me feed any babies because it goes against Haitian culture for anyone but a sister to feed their child. Sunday we went to church, took a break at the beach, and in the evening I returned with some of the girls to the hospital to distribute socks, sheets, and money to patients they had prayed for. In Haiti, the hospitals do not provide anything extra, including food, so if the patient does not have family, they essentially have no one taking care of them.

Monday morning we woke up at 3:30 am to leave for Doko, and drove an hour and a half to the beginning of the "trail." We hiked 14 miles through the most rugged and beautiful territory I have ever seen, climbing more than 4,000 feet in elevation.

We crossed the river 78 times. Many of the crossings were just knee deep, but towards the end we crossed more than one that were chest deep. No matter where we were on the trail, the Haitians who were hiking with us were right by our sides ready to help. Either to get up or down a tricky spot, or to help pass our bags so we could wade through deep water, they were helping us before we ever had to ask. Many times on the trail I found myself away from the rest of the team, but I began to notice that there was always at least one Haitian not far behind me. It occurred to me that they were making sure that nothing happened to me.

Whenever I came up on a difficult part of the trail to maneuver, they would hurry in front of me to help me down, over, through, whichever was the case. I was so moved by their care for me, even though they didn't know me, not even my name, yet they were demonstrating true unconditional love for me, and everyone else on the team. I started to tear-up on the trail as I thought about how it was such a beautiful depiction of Christ's love for us. If these Haitians could show love to me without even knowing me, how much more God must love us, have created each one of us.

We were the first white people to ever visit Doko, and a few of the younger kids cried when we were first arriving in the village. We taught and played duck-duck-goose, and they loved it.

Afterwards, we ate dinner, and then had a church service with the wildest worship I have ever experienced. Every man, woman, and child were dancing everywhere, filling the aisle, and singing at the top of their lungs. The pastor would ring a bell to signal people to stop and they would just keep going!

The church service went until 10 pm, and we were so exhausted. Using only flashlights, we set up our pallets under the tarp structure, which had been built specially for our visit, while about 60 to 100 people from the church watched us. It was quite comical, and I felt a little like a zoo animal, especially when we had all gotten settled, turned the flashlights off, and the people were still congregated around us in the moonlight, watching to see if we sleep the same way they do and discussing it amongst themselves. While we were all laying there, cracking jokes about our situation, I heard Lisa say, "Grace, is this better than watching TV?" Yes. Yes it was. 

Our little camping spot, in front of the church building in Doko, where we spent two nights. 

To the left, where the brown tarp is showing, is where Kate and I had our little pallet. We were freezing with only a sheet and two children's blankets between the two of us so we ended up shamelessly spooning in the middle of the night to stay warm. Above, Bryan, Isaac, and I are brushing our teeth in the bushes right outside the church building. If you're looking closely, you might think I'm brushing my teeth with 7up, but that is just the bottle I was using for water since TSA took my Nalgeene bottle at Fort Lauderdale.

After we picked up our bedding and had some delicious Haitian coffee, we helped with preparations for dinner. These beautiful women start preparing dinner before it's even light out. We got in on the action around 8 am.

We scrubbed the goat meat with oranges, and  picked as many little shards of bone out as possible before boiling it.

Being introduced to our dinner. 

After helping with dinner preparations, a group of us, led by Lisa, went into the village to meet people and pray for them. We met this beautiful woman. Above: the numbers etched with charcoal on the house behind her are her children's phone numbers.

She showed us the coffee beans she grows by her home and sells in the markets. While we were with her, we met a little girl whose hand was limp. We learned that this woman had raised her after the girl's mother died. From birth, the girl had been unable to walk, but this woman worked with her and taught her to walk by the age of seven.

The group stopped and prayed for this woman, her home, and her family. We prayed again specifically for healing of the little girl's hand.

It was so hard to see many people in the village who suffered from ailments, which might be cured or treated quickly and easily back home, but were a permanent or threatening condition in Doko, because they have no access to healthcare.

After we returned to the church I began asking some of the children if they wanted their picture taken. Each time I took a picture I would show them their image on the back of the camera.

 

Having their picture taken, something we take for granted in the states, is so exciting for them. They do not have cameras, and mirrors are scarce in Doko, so seeing themselves in real-live color is so special. It was amazing for me to get to see their faces light up, and hear them giggle as they saw their picture.

When I started there were only a few children, who were very timid, but with each picture I took, more and more children were coming up hoping to have their picture taken.

 

 

 

Within five or ten minutes I had so many kids wanting their picture taken that I decided to get a group picture.

To be continued again...

Reflections on Haiti - #1

I intended to keep a journal while I was in Haiti, but there never was a spare moment to write in the one I brought. When I went back to look at my journal, I had one full entry, and then a partial one that dropped off mid sentence. Now that I'm back, I am overwhelmed at the thought of trying to put into words all that I saw and felt while I was in Haiti. 

Suddenly I'm back in the grind of American life, but I'm exhausted in more ways than one-- physically, emotionally, mentally. I found myself crying several times yesterday thinking of Haiti. It's hard to explain what I'm feeling, and I've even lived through a similar experience for a much longer period of time, so I can't imagine what it must feel like for those of whom this was a brand new experience. The only way I can do this is to start from the beginning.

After my 10-hour overnight layover in the Fort Lauderdale airport, I was finally on my flight to Port Au Prince. Since I hadn't slept at all the night before I fell asleep almost immediately. The plane was filled mainly with Haitians, one of whom was a young woman and her toddler-aged daughter sitting in the row in front of me. I woke up to a strange groaning and then people calling for help. It took me a moment, through my glazed sleepy eyes, to figure out what was going on. The young Haitian woman in front of me was having a seizure. The flight attendants frantically called for any passengers with medical knowledge. A middle-aged American man, and a young Haitian man responded, and together with the flight attendants, did their best to take care of the woman. What might have been a simple solution, was complicated by an obvious language and culture barrier. Every question had to be translated into Kreyol. My heart was pounding as I thought about the woman's daughter, who was being held by a stranger in the row beside her mother's. I couldn't help but think of my own daughter and if I were ever traveling alone with her and something happened to me. I didn't have much time to process the flight before we landed, the women and her daughter were taken to a hospital, and I was on my way through immigration to meet up with the rest of the team.

When all the team had arrived, we loaded up a large bus, and headed for Jeremie. Bryan and Lisa said the bus ride could take anywhere from 8 to 18 hours depending on if we got a flat tire, or if we had to stop for road construction. 

So we took bets on what time we would arrive in Jeremie - winner got half of a bag of peanut M&M's. 

Below: Leaving Port Au Prince Friday, January 10th at 11:45 am.

A market in Port Au Prince

It was quite the bumpy ride, even with significant road improvements, so I didn't take many pictures, but below you can see what most of the ride looked like. 

We arrived in Jeremie sometime between 9 and 10 pm, and one of the team members, Cianna, graciously accepted her M&M award while throwing up from motion sickness. It was a tiring ride for sure, and since most of the team had only slept a couple of hours the night before, everyone quickly settled into their hotel rooms to get some much needed sleep.

The next morning, after some delicious chopped liver over noodles for breakfast, we set out for the market in Jeremie. On our way there, we passed this man, probably in his fifties, carrying two five-gallon buckets filled with water. He is one of many people in Jeremie who have to walk miles to get clean water. Some of the guys on our team offered to carry the water the rest of the way for the man. 

 Below: Part of the market in Jeremie. Motorcycles frequently drove through the masses of people. 

The market was incredible. Masses of people congregated throughout the streets; motorcycles honking as they made their way through clusters of people moving shoulder to shoulder. Under primitive structures, people were selling various produce, while others butchered massive cuts of meat with machetes. We wove our way on narrow paths through the market, passing booths of food, clothing, and packaged goods. People were selling anything from wheel barrows of some sort of meal, to black and white, pointy toe, patten leather shoes.

The whole time that we walked to and through the market, I was accompanied by a young Haitian man, Fritznel, who was teaching me Kreyol. As we continued through the market, Fritznel began to tell me about his faith in God. He kept telling me over and over how he, and we, are nothing without God, but with God anything can be done. He told me about his faith in the power of prayer, and how we must pray all the time because that is how we come to know God better. What he was telling me was so simple, things I know in my head, but prayer is something I have been struggling with in my heart, and so his words hit me like a ton of bricks. I was so humbled by this young man's faith in God and his devotion to prayer.

To be continued... (if I don't do this in segments I will never get it done!)