Things I'm Lovin' Right Now

1. Ingrid's imagination.  She will sit with her toys and just have the best conversations with herself.  I've overheard her feeding her baby doll and saying "How many pounces did you eat, baby?  Oh, eleven thirty pounces?  Good!"  Also heard, when playing with her robot doll, in a monotone voice, "I AM A ROBOT.  I AM A ROBOT."  Yesterday we brought up the fire truck from the basement and she played rescue animals all afternoon.  I love that she can entertain herself so well!

2. Our new Bummis wrap.  It's small enough for Otis but it's got plenty of room for him to grow.  Our prefolds fit so nicely in it and it's cute and green with colorful dots all over.  I'm loving our prefolds in general.  We got some Bum Genuius XSs that are good, but last night showed me why I hate AIOs.  I thought they were dry but apparently they weren't, so we ended up having to change Otis' clothes three times in the middle of the night because they'd gotten soaked.  If I put something in the dryer for 80 MINUTES!!!  I expect it to be dry when it comes out! 

3. My family.  Last night after dinner Brendan was playing with Ingrid and I was sewing.  We had music on, a really bad 80s channel, and lots of bad songs came on, which we sang along to and Ingrid danced.  I just love our evenings when we hang out before bedtime.

4. Not being homeless!!  Brendan just found out yesterday that he can stay at his job for a couple more months while he's searching for his new job.  It's a pay cut but it's way better than the nothing we were planning on having in a couple weeks!  And we get to keep our health insurance, which is the biggest relief ever.  Brendan has had a couple phone interviews and next week he has one in Missouri.  Not sure what we think of moving there but a job is a job. 

5. This pattern.  I love it!  A friend got it for me and I've made a few pairs now.  It's so easy and so cute and the sizes are big enough for Ingrid.  I made a pair for her the other day that turned out huge, so I'll be able to use the pattern for awhile for her!  Yay.  It felt really good to sew again.

Preparing for the Bub

Well, I am officially in maternity clothes.  I tried a big skirt a few days ago and when I sat down I felt like my uterus was being smooshed.  So, elastic waist, here I come!  I love wearing maternity clothes for the most part anyway, I never had a hard time adjusting to them.  I always have a poochy belly that doesn't fit right into regular pants so to not have to camouflage it is heaven!

Today Ingrid and I went to the local cloth diaper store and looked for some prefolds.  I have had a hell of a time getting some used off diaperswappers.com!  If you order them brand spankin' new for a dozen, they are usually around $27 with shipping.  Some people wanted $29 for their used ones!  Maybe they are crazy good ones, but still, I am not paying more for used than for new, thank you very much.  Anyway, today I found 18 little wee newborn prefolds for 60cents a piece!  Considering these may only work for a month or so, hooray for savings! 

I also looked through the baby section at Target yesterday.  How on earth do people not find out the gender beforehand??  You used to be able to get gender neutral green or yellow but now every single thing is pink pink pink or blue blue blue.  Even when I knew I was having a girl I hated to buy pink, so that really bums me out that you can't even get green stuff anymore.  Or if it is green it has flowers and ruffles.  Sheesh, not all girls are frilly.  Luckily we are good thrifters in our house, so we have a couple boxes of teeny shirts and gowns and footed pjs to get us through the first month or so.  They look so tiny!!  Ingrid kept holding things up to her saying she was going to wear it, I don't think she quite gets that she isn't the baby I'm talking of anymore!!

Other than that, we aren't really feeling the need to prepare too much more.  A friend has a car seat and bassinet, we already have a couple slings, and I know how to make blankets :)  Plus, what's the point of preparing much in our house if we're not going to be here?  Brendan just informed me that his job will be done in February so he'll have to have a new one lined up by then.  I looked at him dumbfounded--"You do realize I am due January 30th, right?"  His job, by the way, will most likely NOT be in the town in which we currently reside.  Which means a big move out of state either being immensely pregnant or with a very newly born baby.  Gulp.  I am not sure how to take this, as I was under the impression we were going to be here until spring, giving me at least a couple months to get used to two kids before having to schlep them to a new house...

So, preparing what I can right now is all I can do.  Diapers, gowns, and tshirts.  The rest we'll figure out later!

Quit Selling Me Stuff!

I just got my issues of The Mother magazine, and Mothering magazine.  To look at them side by side is funny.  It totally made me realize that even though Mothering is geared toward a more natural hippy dippy kind of parent, they still are a big magazine that have to run ads to make it happen.  So while Parents magazine has ads for Pampers and expensive strollers, Mothering has ads for Bum Genius and expensive baby carriers.  But they're still the same--selling me things I don't need!! 

I remember when I learned about slings and I wanted to get one on a limited budget.  Some of them were pretty expensive but I always saw how you could make your own.  I never did.  I spent the money and got a ridiculously expensive Hotslings pouch, which I love, but now that I know I didn't have to fork over that much...sheesh.  And my Ergo, I just had to have one but never could fathom spending over a hundred dollars on one.  The only reason I have one?  I found one at the thrift store for $8!! 

It was the same with cloth diapers--I went the inexpensive route at first, got some used fitteds and some covers, they worked just fine and kept Ingrid dry.  But it wasn't enough.  I had to get the newest FuzziBunz, in cute colors.  I had to try the Bum Genius, and even though I hated the velcro, I still ended up with seven of them!  They don't work any better than what I had, but I thought I had to have more. 

Isn't that what I'm trying not to do?  Aren't I trying to live with what I have and be happy with what I have?  Aren't I trying to teach Ingrid that it's what we do that makes us happy, not what we own?  But dammit, you see these glossy ads in magazines and think your life would be so much better if you just had a different diaper, a better wrap, another glass bottle with bpa free nipple.  Or that organic cotton whatever that costs five times more than I can afford.

What can you do, we live in a material based culture.  It's up to me to figure out that I can read the articles and enjoy them while ignoring the ads and knowing I don't have to have every little thing that's out there, it will not, in fact, make my life easier or my baby happier.  It's so easy to get sucked into it though!!   

No Impact man

I just watched this documentary last night and it was wonderful!  A family in NY city decides to try to make no environmental impact for one year.  They give up cars and take to biking.  They give up elevators and take to the stairs.  They give up toilet paper, premade cleaning products, and washing machines.  They start composting and eating only local foods.  I never heard of it at the time, but I guess it was a big deal in New York, they were in the Times and on Good Morning America.  It was all new to me, though, and I loved watching it.

They got a lot of negative comments about what they were doing and it just amazes me how people think doing little things like using cloth instead of disposable anything, or making your own cleaning products, or buying local food, is so crazy.  To me it has become so common to use cloth wipes, rags instead of paper towels, and although I haven't done it in awhile, I used to make my own laundry detergent and cleaning products out of cheapness :)  And it's not hard!

The wife of this family was into reality tv, shopping, and eating meat.  By the end of the year, though, she was definitely turned on to the positives of the changes they'd made.  She no longer spent $950 dollars at one clothing store (??!!) and she gave up her coffee addiction (no coffee was grown in New York, therefore had to be nixed.)  There were wonderful scenes of the family stomping their laundry in the bath tub, and playing with their daughter, and eating by candlelight.  I was just so excited to see someone that had a ton of reservations about the project totally turn around and embrace things. 

Obviously not all was good.  They gave up electricity for six months and instead of a refrigerator used a pot in pot contraption that was supposed to work but didn't.  They were basically camping in their NY city apartment, as the wife said.  I'm sure there were times it sucked beyond belief and they probably wanted to go out and get fast food and not have to cook their root vegetables.  But like they said, they were going to the extreme to see what worked, what was possible, and what wasn't feasible.  They realized that it wasn't about giving things up but doing the things they wanted to do in a more sustainable way. 

It was really interesting to me because a lot of what they were doing reminded me of "olden times" for lack of a better term.  Before everything was processed and marketed, people used what they had to do what they needed.  When I was looking at making my own cleaning products everything I read was recipes from someone's grandma.  That's just how it was done.  You took some things you had in your pantry and you cleaned with them.  You drank water from the tap, you didn't buy plastic bottles of it.  You bought your food from local farms or markets, and didn't depend on having blueberries shipped in from Chile in the middle of the winter. 

I know that convenience is really nice sometimes.  I have been known to go for the easy way out many times.  But is it really worth it?  (The stupid thing about this is that I just bought a pack of disposable diapers for Ingrid yesterday after her cloth ones leaked through three nights in a row!  I guess some things are convenient, aren't they?  Sigh...)  For me the movie just drummed up ideas of what I was comfortable with and what I wasn't.  But it got me thinking, and that's the good thing.  I think more people need to think about what they are doing and see what they could maybe do better.

One thing I think I need to work on is the local eating.  Every year I want to do a CSA but every year it seems too expensive.  Every week I say I should go to the farmer's market and then realize I missed it the next day.  When I shop I should look for more locally grown things, and things with less packaging.  What do you think you could change about your habits? 

More TMI, Beware: Family Cloth

As I've said before, I've kinda gone a little crunchy.  Cloth diapers, cloth pads, cloth napkins, etc etc.  The only thing I was still waiting on was using family cloth.  If you're unaware of this, it's using cloth wipes instead of TP.  From what I've been able to find online, people are pretty grossed out by this.  I believe I read someone's comment calling whoever did this an environazi.  However, when I heard about it, I was open to the idea.  But for whatever reason, it's been months and months and I still was using TP. 

Cut to last week when we ran out.  I hate running out of TP!  Sitting there searching the nearby area for anything to use, wondering if your two year old will understand if you tell her to get mommy some TP from the other bathroom.  And I did what I had to do, I used a washcloth.  I survived.  And it got me thinking about family cloth again and how much TP we go through, and how it's really the last of the paper products we still use in our house. 

So, yesterday I rummaged through my scrap box, found some flannel, and went to work.  I came up with 35 5"x5" squares, pinked the edges, and sewed two pieces together.  I have to say, they were pretty cute and inviting right away.  Ingrid wanted to go potty three times in an hour just to be able to use a new wipe.  Hmmm, maybe these would catch on as potty learning tools? 

We put the wipes in a little box on the counter, moved the diaper bin into the bathroom, and viola!  We are the proud new users of family cloth.  My husband came home and saw me making more, and I was just gushing about how proud I was of myself for doing this.  He kind of gave me a look and shrugged.  Whatever, my wife is going crazy again...But he used them when he took Ingrid to the bathroom, that's all I care about. 

So there you go, more personal information about our household practices that you probably never wanted to know.  I did warn you, though.

I've Gone All Hippy

Thanks to all the wonderful blogs I've been following the past year or so, I have gone all hippy.  Cloth diapering, cloth mama pads, thinking of homeschooling, using slings, breastfeeding baby #2 if I can (and for longer than six months, thank you very much.)  It has been so gradual that I hadn't noticed it much.  And then I talked to old friends and realized how much I've gone over to the crunchy side!

Number One:  Slings.  A friend of mine is very pro stroller, and I respect that.  I was trying to tell her how awesome slings are and how babywearing is so great for the baby.  She just isn't into it.  And then she found the warning about bag slings and said for sure no.  Not for them.  I thought back to when I was pregnant for Ingrid and I'd never even heard of a sling.  I spent hours and hours researching strollers, it was an obsession!  And then we got a front pack and I never used our stroller anyway...And then we got slings and carriers and I just loved them so much.  I loved the feeling of having Ingrid right there, she'd lean back and look at me and smile, I'd kiss her every five steps. 

Number Two:  Cloth Diapers.  I have tried to convince so many people that it's really not that big of a deal!  Again, when I was pregnant I thought about using cloth but the upfront costs really made it seem impossible.  It wasn't until I started really looking at things that I realized that you can do it pretty cheaply, and you can do it part time, and you can get a stash little by little, you don't have to have all 20 diapers at once.  And washing and poop, they are not a big deal.  You get used to it.  And after spending $600 on disposables, I cringe thinking of how many awesome organic diapers I coulda bought with that money!!

Number Three:  Paper products in General.  I use cloth pads now.  It's just a given that with using cloth diapers I suddenly saw how silly it was to use disposable pads.  We also don't use paper napkins--I have cheap washcloths we use, and I just started thrifting some cool old cloth napkins.  I used to think they were for fancy dinners, I don't know why it never occured to me to use them every day!  We also don't use paper towels, which doesn't seem like a big deal to me.  We haven't used them in years.  But a maintenance man came to fix our dishwasher and asked for a paper towel.  I said we don't use them and he gave me such an incredulous look!  But I thought about it and duh, why would you use papaer to soak up a spill?  We don't dry ourselves off with paper bath towels do we?? 

Number Four:  Breastfeeding.  I did not breastfeed Ingrid.  I don't regret it one bit.  She grew and grew and she's smart as hell, and she hasn't had a lot of sickness at all.  But...for baby #2 I am going to do everything in my power to breastfeed him/her.  For one, it's so much better than shelling out $20 for a can of formula that smells and stains everything!  And it's easier to stick a boob in the mouth than fumble around for a bottle and measuring the formula at 2 in the morning.  And one thing I got defensive about with my friends was extended breastfeeding.  I have to admit that when I first saw people nursing their toddlers and tandem nursing, I was freaked out.  I just never saw it before.  It was weird to me, it was different, and I just didn't get it.  But after seeing it around it seems normal to me.  Like why not nurse past six months?  Why stop it at one year exactly?  What's wrong with nursing past what someone deems normal?  This was something not one single friend of mine agreed with me on!  They all thought it was gross, and the mother being selfish not wanting to give it up.  And unneccesary, why not just give the kid "real" milk?  I was really quite surprised, as my friends around here in MI nursed their kids as long as they wanted, they never seemed in a hurry to stop, and were actually sad when it did stop.  It seems strange to me to just stop it and give a kid cow's milk instead of human breast milk...

So there you go, I'm a crunchy hippy and I am proud of it!!  Thank you so much to Sarah and Gina and Sunnymama for showing me a different way of being a parent.  It has helped me be the kind of parent I want to be!

New Friends

When we moved here we started going to story time at the library. There was a mom there that had a little girl a little older than Ingrid. I would smile and say hi, and as the weeks went on we'd talk a little more each time. I saw the mom and her daughter at Whole Foods and finally introduced myself so at least I would be able to call her by her name instead of "hey you!" Then story time took a break and Ingrid's nap schedule changed and we didn't see them for a long time. When we did this summer, the mom was about ready to have baby #2, the first I knew she was even pregnant...I thought hmm, I should really get her number so we can hang out but she's got a new baby coming, we're probably moving soon. Why bother?

Well, fate threw us together again, this time at the post office. It's been five months since I've seen them, but the other day as I was mailing something I heard a mom say "Okay, let's mail the diapers!" I turned around because anyone mailing diapers is probably mailing cloth diapers, and of course I have to see who it is...It was the mom and her daughter! And the first thing out of my mouth was "I have to get your phone number so we can have playdates!"

She came over today and it was so fun. Her daughter, P, was kind of shy at first. She just stood there as Ingrid tried to get her to play with her kitchen stuff. P started to play, then walked away, which Ingrid didn't get. She physically grabbed P and turned her toward the kitchen! My little subtle girl...The girls warmed up to each other and played really well, and I got to chat with the mom. We have lots in common, which is something I'm finding that by living here I do tend to meet a lot of moms with similar ideas. I got to watch her with her baby, all wrapped up, napping as the mom swayed while we were having a conversation. Which of course made me want to get started on #2 so I could sway with a sleeping baby all wrapped up close to me.

P is adopted and we talked a lot about that. I always thought about adoption, thinking I wouldn't be able to get pregnant, but once I did have Ingrid, I stopped thinking about it. This family is so awesome, though, they have one adopted, one biological, and are starting to talk about adopting #3. It was really interesting to hear about the process from someone that's done it, hear about the wait, the paperwork, the reasons behind it. I just love that they choose to adopt even though they could have their own. It made me think about bringing another life to this earth just because I want one. Maybe I should go back to thinking about adoption if I want another so badly. That was always my main thing when talking about having one kid--there are so many people in this world, I don't really need to make another. I have love to give, doesn't matter where the kid comes from!

That is the thing I love about making new friends--as much as you have in common with someone, there are always differences. And differences are good--they make you think about why you believe what you do and either challenge you to think differently or confirm your beliefs. I'm glad I ran into her at the post office, I'm glad we exchanged numbers, I'm glad they came over today, and I'm glad I have the opportunity to meet new people!

Week 2: My Ideal Stash

To continue November's theme of how to build a cloth diaper stash over at The Cloth Diaper Report, here's this week's topic: What's your ideal stash?

This all depends on types of diapers and how often you wash. For example, when we use fitteds or prefolds in a cover, I change more often. But using pocket diapers like FuzziBunz or BumGenius, we can go longer between changes. And I usually wash every day, so I don't need a huge stash. But if you don't want to do laundry every day, you'll need more. Personally, it's become such a habit of throwing in the diaper load every afternoon, I don't really think about it.

Our stash right now is 7 FuzziBunz Mediums, 4 BumGenius one size, 2 other pocket diapers, a few fitteds and prefolds, and 4-5 covers. We usually only use the pockets and use the others for backup or at the end of the day when I don't want to "waste" using a pocket. Isn't that stupid? Why does it matter? But in my head, if Ingrid is going to be in her diaper only for an hour before bathtime, I don't want to use a pocket. Things like this will surprise you, so again, be flexible :)

I really like my stash. I have only used them on a toddler though, as we started cloth diapering when Ingrid was a year old. If I were to have a baby in cloth, I know I would need a lot more, as they wet a lot more. And people say different diapers do better for small baby's poo, which I never had to deal with either. But for me, this stash works really well. If I had to change anything, I would probably have more one size diapers, as the Medium FB are getting to fit funny. I should probably go up to the Large but I don't want to spend the money...And they do fit, so I'll just use what I have.

How I Chose my Cloth

I'm participating in a blog hop over at The Cloth Diaper Report about how to build a cloth diaper stash and this week's topic is how did you choose what kinds/brands.

I started out by researching for days on the internet, which just made me overwhelmed and unsure. First I had to learn all the lingo, like what an AIO was, or a prefold, or what OS meant. After that I had to think of how much money I could spend. I had this idea that I needed to get a whole stash right away and go from disposable to cloth overnight. You can do this, but you certainly don't have to. I'm realizing that now.

Anyway, so I researched and saw how much things cost and got a little worried I wouldn't be able to do it. Then I looked on craigslist and found some people in the Ann Arbor area selling their diapers. I was really into the idea of buying used, especially for just starting out. I had read all about how you just don't know what will work for you, and I didn't want to spend a ton of money on something that may not be our favorite. Plus, my daughter was a year old and she's the only one we're having, so these diapers would be used for a year and then we wouldn't need them anymore. I think that made a difference to me, if we were going to have another baby I would feel better about spending more money since they could be reused.

I had two women I was supposed to meet with about their diapers. One had 10 Bum Genius diapers, which would've been $100. The other lady had a box full of "old style" diapers (she said) for $50. I went to her first. She had the motherload of fitted diapers! They are all one size, some aplix closure, some snaps. All have snap in doublers. And there were close to 50 diapers in the box! Plus she had some prefolds and covers, although they were old Gerber plastic pants and not really what I wanted to use...So, I never did make it to the other lady's house, I just bought the huge stash and went home all excited!

We used those exclusively for about a month, and I never had a problem with them. I really liked the big diaper butt look, and the crisp white cotton just looked so--healthy? So much better than paper disposables! And to me, the fact they didn't have pins just made them SO much better than what I thought cloth would be!!

Then, we won two brand spankin' new Fuzzi Bunz diapers from a blog giveaway, and my life changed. They were so amazing, so absorbent, so cute in green and blue. Suddenly my fitteds looked old and bulky. So, back to craigslist and I found a woman selling her old Medium FuzziBunz diapers. I got ten and we were set. And since then I've swapped some of the fitteds for Bum Genius, DryBees, wahms, other covers, and now we have a really diverse stash. Not at all what I'd planned on, either!

I think that's the important thing to realize--you cannot imagine what you're going to like, what is going to work for you, and how those things are going to change as your child gets older. Be flexible, go with the flow, like most other things with being a parent!

A Great Article

Holly over at the Cloth Diaper Experiment posted the link to this article. I think it's pretty funny when people try to say disposables are better than cloth or not as bad for the environment as some would have you believe. Yes, they are convenient sometimes, and yes, I still use them sometimes. But I would never say they are better for the environment than cloth diapers. That's just silly.

Oh, Cloth, How I Missed You!

Last time we went on vacation I brought along all our cloth diapers and went to the laundromat and washed them every two days. It was not worth it at all. I ended up spending over $20 washing them, but because I ran out of quarters I couldn't do an extra rinse on them and all the diapers ended up smelling super bad. Gross.

So, this time when we went to Denver I bought disposables to take along. I got a pack of Earth's Best non-chlorine diapers. Also not worth it. They're paper, they leaked, and they gave her a rash. Rashes are not good, they do not make for happy babies.

When we got home the first thing I did was change Ingrid out of her disposable and into a cloth diaper. They seemed so cozy and soft!! I can't believe I ever used disposables. But there has got to be some compromise for vacations, doesn't there??