Runaway October

I hope all of you are hav­ing a won­der­ful day. I know I am!

My boys got me this:

Isn’t it cute?

Here’s a Mother’s Day Inter­view from my 3 year old, Declan:

My Mom

I really love it when my mom puts my clothes on.

My mom likes to wear underwear.

My mom always tells me, “Go to time­out.” (Yikes!)

The best thing she does is feed me breakfast.

It makes her happy when we get on our bikes, go bye bye and have breakfast.

My mom loves to relax by sit­ting in the chair and talk­ing to me.

I like it when she reads bed time stories.

The best thing she cooks is pancakes.

When my mom shops she likes to buy food and fabric.

My mom’s favorite house­hold chore is ironing.

My mom’s favorite TV show is Spongebob.

If she could go on a trip, she would go to the park.

I love my mom because she is a good, nice mama!

Thanks to Let’s Explore for the won­der­ful idea!

Rowan has always had what we affec­tion­ately called “Old Man Hair” — Really fine, wispy and eas­ily messed up. Recently it has got­ten too long for me to be eas­ily amused by spik­ing it up, so it was time for a hair­cut. Since it was to be his first hair­cut we were going to go to one of those salons for kids, but we arived to find that they had per­me­nantly closed their doors. Makes sense in this econ­omy, I guess. Declan was sad, he had talked about get­ting a hair­cut all morning.

So, we just fig­ured we’d do what we always do: Buzz ‘Em!

Declan Before:

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Dur­ing:

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After! So handsome!

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Rowan was quite unsure about the whole experience…

Before:

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He did really well.

I’m sure the buzzing feel­ing on his head felt funny at first. About halfway through we had to stop to let him nurse so that he’d hold still for the rest of the “styling”.

Dur­ing:

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After! Yay!

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Look at all that beau­ti­ful hair! Declan and I had a con­ver­sa­tion about what to do with it. He wanted to wad it all up and put it in his lit­tle tin lunch­box, but I won out by telling him that the birds needed it. He thought it was really cool that the birds could use his hair to make nests out of. Hope­fully I can find a nest full of hair so he can see how his gen­eros­ity is being put to good use.

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While I was work­ing I could eas­ily spend all day cruis­ing the inter­net, with lim­ited acces­si­bil­ity because of fire­walls and IP block­ers. I spent most of my time perus­ing par­ent­ing forums. My favorite was Mothering.com, which is where I came across the crazy notion that sham­poo was mak­ing my curly hair unruly. They called it No ‘Poo, I called it nuts. While doing some research I came to real­ize that typ­i­cal sham­poo was chock full of chem­i­cals, most that I couldn’t pro­nounce and didn’t want to rub on my head. 

There are a cou­ple of premises behind No ‘Poo. A few are:

• Sham­poo is a deter­gent and lit­er­ally strips your hair of mois­ture, oil and shine, mak­ing it prone to dam­age and break­age.
  
• Curly hair is espe­cially prone to sham­poo dam­age because it is more porous and frag­ile.
  
• Because hair is fre­quently stripped of its nat­ural oils, your scalp goes into hyper­drive. This is why some peo­ple describe their hair as an oil slick.
  

Start with three main ingre­di­ents — Bak­ing Soda, Apple Cider Vine­gar and a good con­di­tioner. When pur­chas­ing a con­di­tioner, read the ingre­di­ents.

• Try to find some­thing that does not have any ‘cones’ — Dime­thicone, Sil­i­cone, etc. These will coat your hair and you’ll end up with a greasy mess.
  
• Avoid min­eral oil, a nasty byprod­uct of gaso­line dis­till­ing. Your body id unable to absorb it, so it will also cre­ate a greasy mess. It also blocks the scalp from releas­ing built up tox­ins and oil. Acne any­one?
  
• Also avoid Sodium Lau­ryl Sul­fate (SLS) and Sodium Lau­reth Sul­fate (SLFS). Known skin irri­tants, SLS and SLFS are com­monly added to sham­poo and other deter­gents as a foam­ing aget. They are cur­rently being ques­tioned regard­ing can­cer and toxic build up in tis­sues.
  
• If you use a gel, use a clear one. You may find that oils work well for you now, such as coconut oil, jojoba oil, apri­cot oil, extra vir­gin olive oil. Some peo­ple like to use alcohol-free Aloe Vera gel.
  

When Declan was born, I was a shower and sham­poo every day kind of girl. I used lots of extras to keep my hair in check. I tried No ‘Poo for about a week before I couldn’t han­dle it. My roots were detox­ing and super greasy and my ends were dry, split and straw like. I had to go in pub­lic like that for 40+ hours a weeks. Eek.

Now that I stay home with the boys, I don’t get out as often and sham­poo­ing has come down to 2 or 3 times a weeks, to save time in the shower. I’m hop­ing that my hair wont have to detox nearly as much this time, and if it does, oh well. I can always wear a hat to the gro­cery store.

I’ll be photo doc­u­ment­ing my jour­ney and post­ing more info as I go. Next Up — No ‘Poo routines.

Here are some No ‘Poo sources:

What is No ‘Poo?

Info: Sham­poo Free

The No ‘Poo Method

The No Sham­poo Alter­na­tive — No Poo

Of Course I Washed My Hair Last Year (I’m Almost Certain)

How to Ditch Shampoo

All about the No ‘Poo Routine

Break the Sham­poo Habit

Treat­ing Your Hair Like a Bath­room Sink

Conditioner-Only Hair Washing

Wise Woman Forum — The No Sham­poo Thread

Moth­er­ing Dot Com­mune — Going No Shampoo

Have you ever con­sid­ered chang­ing up your beauty rou­tine in such a dra­matic way? If so, how or why not?

Have any of you tried No ‘Poo?

Some­times it’s so nice to just wipe a slate clean and start over again.

Last years res­o­lu­tions were hit or miss.

1…) Stop cussing, com­pletely. Neg­a­tive

2…) Smile more. Kinda sorta, I guess.

3…) Spend more indi­vid­ual time with Declan and treat him like an adult. Yes and no.

4…) Cre­ate and add some items to my Etsy shop. Nope.

5…) Do more craft projects — for myself and with the kids. Yes!

So, once again I’m going to set some res­o­lu­tions and think about them ran­domly throughtout the year and feel bad when I don’t hit them 100%. Yep. Sounds about right.

1.) Stop cussing, com­pletely — How did I end up wih such a potty mouth? While I admit that Declan telling me my ass is too big makes me gig­gle, it’s also quite embarass­ing in public.

2.) Detox­ify the house — This one is dif­fi­cult because my mom buys her own clean­ing prod­ucts and calls me, jok­ingly, a tree­hug­ger for my choices. It’s just so easy to have things build up under the sinks. Thank­fully I clean so infre­quently that it’s not a real issue to toss every­thing. I’m also going to start “No ‘Poo“ing my hair again. I tried before while work­ing but couldn’t han­dle going out in pub­lic dur­ing the really wonky phase. Here’s a great Live­Jour­nal com­mu­nity for it. We have an on again, off again rela­tion­ship with the health­ier beauty prod­ucts, mainly because of finances. I think it might be time to just suck it up and buy what I know is best for the fam­ily — not best for my bank account.

3.) ETSY — Seri­ously, why can’t I get this going? I’ve decided not to do any­more swaps, so maybe that will make it eas­ier? Wih the purc­ahse of a new sewing machine (50% off clear­ance sale) I’m definitly going to com­plete more projects, but I’d like to make a lit­tle extra cash too.

4.) Try to cut back on HFCS and MSG — With that com­bi­na­tion it leaves next to zilch to buy. Thank­fully Matt is on board with me and we’ve both done some research into the issue. Frankly it scares us.

Alright, I think that’s enough bab­bling. And the boys are wait­ing on me to watch a movie.

Thanks for reading!

The theme for the Back Tack 4 Swap that is. I know my part­ner has received her good­ies, so here’s an almost full reveal of what I sent.

Gold {some­thing that sparkles}:

A sim­ple neck­lace made with hemp and fair trade glass beads. I bought enough to make one for myself too. I also included an altered jour­nal which had a lit­tle bit of shim­mer to it.

Frank­in­cense {some­thing that smells or tastes good}:

These are home­made soaps and an assort­ment of itty bitty choco­late bars. The soap was fun, easy and such a blast to make, even Declan helped. We will be mak­ing more soon.

Myrrh {a lit­tle some­thing for you}:

Another beau­ti­ful Emme­line apron, com­plete wth pock­ets (with extra good­ies inside) and dec­o­ra­tive stitch­ing. This is the 5^th one I’ve made, still not one for myself yet. I need to learn a bet­ter way to pho­to­graph an apron. Not pic­tured are 4 lit­tle Otedamas that are just adorably addic­tive, both to make and play with.

That’s all for now. We’re off to the Tamale Fes­ti­val today, and maybe a lit­tle craft fair that I heard some buzz about. I’ll let you know.