Diaper Fun

When I was about to have my daughter, I knew that I wanted to use cloth diapers so I went through a diaper service. This worked out well, except that it was expensive and the company randomly went under without telling us, leaving us with dirty diapers and no idea what happened. I knew that I at least needed to wash the diapers I had and, low and behold, washing my own diapers was not that difficult once I got over the ick factor, so since October, I have been washing my own diapers and it has worked well for us.

One of my friends is pregnant and has been excited about these new-fangled all-in-one cloth diapers, and I was skeptical. With my prefolds, I just kept reusing the plastic pants and changing the diaper part. My life was already so easy with the Snappy - why would I need a cloth diaper that I would need to change the entire diaper? Wouldn't that make laundry that much more difficult? Also, there are some brands that have way too many snaps on them. How on earth would I know which snap attached to which, for what purpose, and what if the snap came undone? Then there was the whole poop factor, which I did not know how an all-in-one would react to. This wonderful, amazing friend let me borrow her stash of large diapers (she won't need them for a while and they were already bought used,) for me to try, and I LOVE them.

First of all, though I do have to wash the outer layer most every time I change her, it really isn't any more than the regular prefold and sometimes when it is just pee, the liner can be removed and the diaper is still good. How? This fabric is amazing. The first time I put her in these diapers, I kept checking to see if she was wet. She never was, so I thought, "Great. The time I put a nice diaper on her, she refuses to pee." I finally changed her anyway, and the insert was sopping wet but the diaper was completely dry.

The snaps are still a bit of a problem. She wiggles way too much for me to buy a diaper that grows with her because I can barely get the four attached before she starts flipping, so though I like the Wonderoos and Happy Heinys' open slot to load the insert, I won't be buying this style. I will say, however, that not every diaper has snaps. The Bum Genius is really good about a few snaps to adjust the rise and Velcro around the waist, and Happy Heinys has a style that really fits her well with Velcro.

The poop ended up being a reason to get these diapers. Because the material wicks the moisture away, cleaning these diapers was a dream. Well, at least compared to washing a prefold.

There are some drawbacks:
1. Bottom Creams: I think everything can be solved using Boudreaux's Butt Paste, but it stains and has Zinc Oxide. Zinc Oxide limits the absorption of the diapers, and nobody wants to see a brown stain on a diaper - even if it is from the cream. The good news is that most babies in cloth diapers don't get diaper rash very often, but last week she got a pretty bad one from some paper diapers and we had to use the Butt Paste. If anybody knows of some cream that doesn't have Zinc Oxide, we would love to know it!
2. Out and About: Generally speaking, we don't go very far for very long, but one of the drawbacks to a non-disposable diaper is that they don't get thrown away. You do need bags to carry a potentially poopy diaper around.
3. Heavy Wetters: Her sitter tries her best to keep her diapered in the cloth, but my daughter pees constantly in the morning making it very difficult to keep reusing these diapers. What I usually do is keep a prefold in the diaper instead of the insert, or just use my pre-folds in the morning, and put the nice diapers on later.
4. Traveling, Baby-Sitters, or any change of a routine: As passionate as I am about saving the environment one diaper at a time, others are not quite there or their housing situations are not used to babies, much less a cloth diapered baby. I think these could potentially end up solving this dilemma, but we will see.

I found a magazine that had a really good article about diaper options; here's a link:

http://www.mothering.com/green-living/diapering-naturally

My husband wondered what was in it for my friend - here we are shamelessly using her diapers. I hope to compensate this friend of mine eventually with my wealth of prefolds and all the new diapers I will buy because by the time her daughter gets to be my daughter's age, I won't need them anymore.

Peas in a pod

My daughter's growing like a weed.

This is especially an appropriate comment since the moment I finished the 2 year sweater, I have not felt like knitting very much, and my garden has appreciated this. I went to Home Depot just wanting to pick up some mint and Purple Hearts, and found out that they did not have either so I got Oregano, Basil, and Thyme.

I then got the idea to nix the birdbath idea (hubby is thrilled,) and put in a butterfly garden instead (hubby is not so thrilled.) I have this garden that is in an awkward space, but I think I finally figured out what it likes after seeing so many plants die in it. This garden has been the place where flowers go to die, not flourish, so I am going to take pictures soon just in case my calculations are wrong.

I finally found some mint at Whole Foods, but they did not have anything butterfly related, so I went to Shoal Creek Gardener today and I have quite a haul of plants. They are all of local variety, and I like the yards that I have seen them planted in. Especially exciting is how the dog is completely uninterested in this garden. She has been the scourge of many a plant in the past.

So, what does my daughter have to do with any of this? She has had to 'help' me plant all of it. While we were at Shoal Creek today, she surveyed everything very thoughtfully, and tasted at least one of the plants on the way home. In the yard, she has done everything she can to eat anything on the ground. I have had to drop the shovel, get the leaves out of her mouth, then hurry up and plant the next plant before she does it again. Hubby is no help since he has been working on the stairs to the studio. Who knew gardening could be so exciting?

But, as determined as that child is to eat the weeds, I am determined to plant these flowers.

(I wonder where she gets the determination from anyway...)

Has anyone seen my pants?

You don't know the meaning of fear until you wake up in the morning realizing that at some point in the night before, you have lost your pajama pants.

I have always had a problem with sleep walking, sleep talking - pretty much sleep-everything more exciting than what I do when I am awake. Mom remembers a time that when I sleep-cooked ramen noodles in the middle of the night. How does she know it was me? I cleaned the pot. I also sleep-ate the noodles, which was pretty impressive because it was my little brother who liked to eat them - not me.

I'm not saying that I am a heavy sleeper, either. I am notoriously easy to wake up. I heard a mousetrap go off in the middle of the night under the house, and I couldn't sleep thinking about the rat in the trap. I cannot sleep through thunderstorms, and when my cat goes to do his business in the middle of the night, I wake up. In fact, before the dog came around, the cat made a pretty handy security system; any time someone or something was in the back yard, he would paw the back window making a swishing noise. Once, in the middle of the night, this happened, and I got up to look out the back window to see this blinding white light moving across my back yard and almost screamed, until I realized what it was: my neighbors at the time had a cat with an inner ear problem (it was deaf and had a bad sense of balance,) so it would go to the wrong house and meow really loud until they retrieved the cat. Since a storm had blown down half a tree and, consequently, part of the fence, the cat was at our back door. The white specter was not a ghost as I had imagined it, but was my neighbor, butt naked, walking across my yard getting his cat, and I did not have my glasses on. I was not woken by the cat, mainly because I had gotten used to that noise, but I digress.

So, last night I went to bed thinking that the pants to the pajamas I was wearing were shorter than I remembered, so I know I was wearing them. Then, this morning I realized that I was no longer wearing pants. It's also laundry day, so I was wearing the special-occasion undies that, if you're married, you know what I mean.

Probably more frightening is that I have been looking for them all morning and still can't find them. Hubby says that I didn't wear them after all since there are no other signs that anything unusual happened in the house, but because I KNOW I had them on and they are not in the dresser, the fact that nothing in the house is amiss only makes me more concerned.

(If you see a cat with an inner ear problem dragging them somewhere, let me know.)

The end of the 2 year sweater...

The time is almost here when I will take the 2 year sweater into my hands, sew up all the loose ends, put it proudly into water and block the cursed thing into shape for my husband.

To understand the caliber of work this sweater has taken, you must understand the process.

It took me at least 6 months to come up with the yarn and the perfect pattern that my husband would agree to. The yarn was relatively easy, considering I had picked it out for a sweater to make myself until I realized that if I got pregnant, I would not be able to try it on. Why not make hubby a sweater?

Because hubbies are difficult to knit for, that's why.

Finally, I took him to my favorite knit shop that was filled with plenty of patterns to choose from, but all he wanted was the most basic, boring pattern in the entire store. I bought it and began the project with gusto, but soon realized what a daunting task all of those stitches would be. (8 stitches per inch gauge) It soon got set aside while I began quilting, working at the library, and teaching... and then I got pregnant.

While pregnant, I got carpal tunnel making the needles harder to use than ever, so I got down to the arm holes and stopped. After the pregnancy, my hands still didn't cooperate, so I waited until October to pick up the sweater again to finish by Christmas (yet again,) but my daughter had other plans for me and my time. Who said that nursing a baby allotted for plenty of knitting time??? After Christmas, I swore that by Valentines Day it would be done and he would have at least another month to wear it before it got hot again.

For perfect timing, I am on my last inch on the last sleeve and it's around 80 degrees outside. I had to rip out the bottom of the sweater 3 times, (the last time I could not do it but thanks to my sister, it looks great,) the sleeves are a little disproportional, and I have learned, thanks to this sweater, that I twist every single stitch I make. Now my albatross is about to be cut free with that last stitch, and I will commemorate this with much chocolate and rejoicing.

Last week I wanted to show it off to my students. They wondered if someone could actually wear it, so I put it on to show that, yes, it did have arms in the right place and the hole for the neck would fit.

"You look like you are the type of woman who eats cat food on Sundays."

"Yeah, it would go perfectly with a pair of sweatpants."

Let's just say that the hubby had better wear it with slacks, jeans, sweatpants, and whatever else he will wear because after two years of this sweater, he will not be allowed to take it off.

My next project?

Fixing my stitch and starting on a sweater - this time it's for me.

French Connection

I am trying to learn French again. I tried in Elementary School, I tried again in college after a failed attempt at Spanish, and now I am trying again with the help of a friend's books and some books I found at Half Price Books last weekend. I am dedicated to this now, partially because this is my third attempt, and partially because I am going to go to Paris sometime in my lifetime.

So far, not so good.

I have tried reading children's books in French and so far, I really think I need to work on my vocabulary. I tried to figure things out by what things sounded like they should mean since my French Dictionary was at work, but that proved to be a silly idea. Freud would have all sorts of ideas about my psyche if he heard what I thought these children's books were saying, so I have gone with a more basic approach.

I tried a French Verbs Flip Book which has all sorts of verbs, arranged in alphabetical order, in a handy, conjugated order. Sounds perfect, right? Well, I have gotten through the "A"s, and my retention has not been that good. I know now, though, that if someone uses a verb in French that begins with an "A", they could be destroying something, coming close to something, giving something, or playing the accordion. Then again, they might be using a word not in my handy flip book, and I would still be out of luck.

I am not going to give up, though. I figure that if I study my French every time I nurse my daughter, I will probably become an expert by the time I raise enough money to go to Paris.

(Speaking and understanding spoken French, however...)

So now I understand...

It has been a while since my last post. Why? My daughter.

As I said in my last post, I was going to begin shouldering more responsibilities around here with my husband working even more hours than he already works, but that description does not cut it. I already work 40+ hours as a teacher, and now I am the equivalent of a single parent with a husband. I have started to run at school with another teacher friend because exercise at home is impossible; I have even had to hire someone once a week to come over and watch the baby while I catch up with the housework and my school work. The struggle continues into the weekend while I am trying to get the necessities done (vacuuming is not one of them,) while hubby is outside working on the studio. He even commented like our situation is a bit like weathering a hurricane - we are just holding the fort until the storm passes.

My coping skills have gotten better. The dishes are getting done a lot more often, the vegetables from the farm share are getting eaten a lot quicker, and I am still employed. The lady who watches my daughter asked last week, "I know this is a silly question, but how do you go to the bathroom? There is no room in the bathroom for a seat and she screams any time you put her down, not to mention the risk of letting her out of your sight." I had to answer that I put her on the bed in the bedroom right next to the bathroom and watch her from there. This led to a scary moment when she almost flipped off the bed, but I caught her... um, midstream.

I do not understand people who have children on purpose without a steady, trustworthy husband anymore, but I do understand their pain. I also have garnered a new respect for my mother who had four children, and wonder how she got around to do anything. Just the other morning I woke up at my usual time, but my daughter decided she needed to get up with me making the morning processes twice as long. I could not read the paper or drink my tea because of it, and I had to change my shirt because she tossed oatmeal all over it.

Mom always woke up at 5:30 am. I used to think it was because she was a masochist, but now I understand.

Back Pains...

Why is it when someone says that I need to shoulder more responsibility, my back ends up paying the price?

Back when we had a dishwasher, I remember complaining about not having enough time to do the dishes. Then, when we moved into a house without a dishwasher, I remember really complaining about not having enough time doing the dishes and wondering what I was doing to not have enough time to do the dishes. Now that I still don’t have a dishwasher and have an infant, I really don’t understand how I could have complained with a dishwasher, and I am pretty skeptical of the me 6 months ago.

With the new year and my husband, still building the studio but now in busy season with his CPA firm, I have had to take on a lot more responsibility. Things like paying the bills, housework, feeding animals really add up when someone is relying on you so heavily – and I do mean heavily. She wants to be toted everywhere I go, and she has had no trouble gaining weight. She is still working on the crawling thing, so in the meantime, I’m having to carry her everywhere and do more around here.

House chores for a lot of people can usually wait until the weekend, but for us in our little house, it has to be done every day. Yesterday I wondered what was going on that the dog was so underfoot, but then it occurred to me – there is a lot less foot room for human/cat/baby/dog to walk in. My husband’s paintings have filled up an entire room, again waiting for the studio to be completed, and the baby’s things are beginning to infringe on our living space with her new high chair (bought used,) and pack-and-play. Everything has to fit together like a puzzle, and if one piece is out of order, it will need to be set right before someone trips on it.

Now I have a new strategy – I’m strapping her to my back. It’s the same baby carrier I made a while back, but now she is on my back. The house is still not bigger, the husband is still busy working in the studio, dinner is still not cooked, and the dishes still need to be done, but now that she is asleep on my back I don’t have to lay down with her to put her to sleep.

It helps me ‘shoulder’ this responsibility a little better. As they say, when all else fails, get a back up.