I have been interested in the concept of Soap Nuts for ages and today I finally caved in and bought myself some and Lavender Essential Oil to try, from the In a Soap Nut Shell website

Basic idea is shove a few Soap Nuts in a sack, into the washing machine and a few drops of essential oil in the conditioner drawer (optional) and you can clean your washing with no expensive chemicals.

Apparantly the only disadvantage is that over time the whites might need a boost as the Soap Nuts don't have any bleach in them and the reverse is also true, colours stay bright and don't fade either, which is good.

If I find I need my whites to be whiter, I'll buy Ecover bleach which is a natural non-chlorine bleach to use occassionally with the Soap Nuts.

I can't wait for them to arrive, lets hope they actually work !!!

Babychair has just had an explosion of using new hand signals and signs.

She has used and responded to 'Milk' and 'More' since she was tiny and started pointing at things to give more meaning to her "What's that ?" information gathering for quite a while and she waves hello and bye to everyone....including the bedtime television show.

We are never going to be 100 sign word vocab family but I think introducing some signs can be very helpful.
So I have been trying to introduce a signs for 'food' and for 'toilet', as I thought they would be the most useful for us.

I signed and asked her if she needed to go to the toilet, never expecting an apt response, when out of the blue, she copied me and signed toilet twice. I was so excited and took her upstairs where she did a courtesy wee for me. She also started pointing to the ceiling to indicate wanting to go upstairs when she wanted to find piggie.

I never thought that a 12 month old baby could understand and communicate so well on so many levels. Babychair never fails to amaze me on a daily basis...just seeing her makes my heart melt...from the chirpy morning calls to the over tired strop. DH & I are truly blessed by Babychair.