So maybe we were inspired by Uncle James’s cattle while visiting Texas over Easter, but whatever the reason, we are now doing our own form of “ranching”. Alameda County has a program in place to subsidize the purchase of a compost or worm bin (one per household) and we decided to take advantage of it. We received our Wriggly Wranch and our starter pound of worms and set them up today. These little guys will be eating up to half their weight in food scraps per day, producing fertilizer on our patio!

Let us know if you would like any nutrient-rich, worm castings fertilizer in a month or two.

1. So she uses the toilet?

Well, in a nut shell, yeah!

We started EC (elimination communication) with Arden when she was about six weeks old. Basically, the way it works is that we offer her the opportunity to use the potty, usually at key times of the day like when she wakes up in the morning or from naps, and after she eats. She has therefore become accustomed to trying to go whenever we put her on the toilet. Since she’s been doing it all along she has stayed connected with the muscles that give her control over peeing and pooping. It’s been quite amazing to see how much bladder/bowel control Arden exhibits at such a young age.

She still wears gDiapers all the time but we use a lot fewer of them than we would without EC . She does not get offered the potty yet at daycare and only time will tell if EC eventually helps her potty train faster or just make the transition easier, but for now we both can’t imagine doing it any other way. She’s cleaner and happier and really seems to enjoy potty time, and we enjoy that we rarely have to change a poopy diaper (on our 5-day trip to Texas, we only changed two poopy diapers)!

She just transitioned to a new potty seat, instead of us holding her over the toilet. She seems to think the new seat is pretty funny and enjoys reading on the potty now.

Here’s Arden using her new potty seat. She’s holding the toilet paper rod and yes, daddy is reading her a book on the toilet…

2. It’s almost her birthday. Anything she wants/needs?

Arden has an Amazon.com wish list that we’ll try to updated but really she doesn’t need very much. We try to keep things pretty trimmed down here to cope with our limited space. Since we hope she will be a third generation UC Davis alumnus, we are always accepting donations to her 529 college fund/savings account (we’re still determining which kind of saving plan to go with). Really, just having you all visit and keep in touch is a gift in itself.

3. Where did her name come from?

This one is a little tougher. I believe that Gilly originally found it on a baby name website, but once we started researching it, we liked the name more and more. We like to tell people that she is named after the Arden Forest in Shakespeare’s play “As You Like It” because it makes us sound well-read and scholarly, but now you know the truth.

Some websites say Arden means “valley of the eagle” or “fervent, eager, passionate, lofty or burning with enthusiasm”. Most sites agree that it’s of English or Celtic origin.

Her middle name, Rae, is Gilly’s middle name as well, picked by her mom PJ so that Gilly would have a name to use if she ended up being a tomboy.

One thing we can say for sure is she is NOT named after the cosmetics queen Elizabeth Arden or the mall/main throroughfare in Sacramento.