Vertical Stripes

Mom says vertical stripes are slimming but I don't know...

...do they make my butt look big?

P.S. Grammy, please don't get onto Mommy for making me say "butt". She won't really let me say it when I'm old enough to talk for myself. :)

Nothing in Particular

Nothing really to report here right now. Tomorrow the little man is five months old! There will be pics at some point in the next week or so. Probably.

We just had a rough couple of days at our house. At the tail end of all three of us being sick for about a week, Nathan had to go to Midland for work and I was a single parent for a little over 48 hours. For that 48 hours, I slept very little, I discovered multiple places where Kona had decided to "water" things in the house (including my dry clean only drapes), I got a surprise visit from the pest control man (which is a whole story in itself and mildly entertaining because it involves me running around wearing only a towel AND trying to feed Milo all while trying to figure out what's going on with this guy being outside my house, but it's not entertaining enough to go into further detail here, I'll just let that mental picture marinate for a while), Milo went on a sleeping strike, I dropped my wedding ring perilously close to the toilet (it rolled behind a shelf where I was eventually able to contort myself enough to retrieve it) and then, for the grand finale, I dropped my less than three month old phone not close to, but actually IN the toilet. A bowl of rice and 12 hours later, it seems to be doing alright. I suppose only time will tell. Needless to say, we were glad to have the Daddy back home!

I do have a cloth diaper update. We recently invested in a Bottoms Up reusable wipes set. I wasn't sure about it at first but now I LOVE it. The set is around $60 and includes 25 wipes, one "clean" tub, one "dirty" tub, a "clean" and a "dirty" essential oils blend, and a little travel bag to take them with you when you are out and about. You put a little water in each tub, add a few drops of the appropriate essential oils blend to each, and you're all set. Then when it's time to do laundry, just take the "dirty" tub and dump it, wipes, water and all, in the wash with the diapers and that's it! Here's our setup (the orange tray is one I bought to put the tubs on and protect the dresser from stray water droplets):

Things I love about them:

• I can use only one and get him CLEAN, a feat that I am usually unable to accomplish with disposable wipes.
• The essential oil blends smell good, keep the water/wipes from smelling mildewy, and the "clean" blend has something in it (tea tree oil maybe?) that is helpful if we have a little bit of red bottom.
• We are cutting WAY down on the amount of trash we have by using these and since we're already washing diapers, it's not an extra step!
• We're saving money!

My only complaint is the ease of use of the tubs. (I should probably clarify here that by "tubs" I mean plastic containers that are around 6-8 in. square - "tubs" makes them sound huge...they are not.) The lids snap on with a little latch on each of the four sides and if you are surprised by a dirty diaper and don't have them already open, it's a little difficult to do one-handed (while you're holding said dirty diaper in place and trying to keep little hands and feet out of the mess). However, this is NOT a big enough inconvenience to make me not use them. The benefits far outweigh this minor issue.

I'm currently reading the Sleep Lady's Good Night, Sleep Tight. We're trying to get Milo sleeping good, and sleeping through the night. After yesterday I was ready to throw in the towel and just let him sleep with us so I could get ANY amount of sleep. Today things are better though - he's napping like he's supposed to, went to sleep on his own with ZERO crying (I tried letting him cry it out for exactly 20 minutes one night and that was WAY too long for me), and has been in such a good mood today - I think it's because Daddy is home now. Anyway, the book seems good so far. A happy medium between crying it out and running to pick them up every time they whimper.

And finally, for today, a little sneak peek at our Christmas cards. We received them yesterday and will hopefully get them in the mail in the next week, but first we have to get our Christmas decorations finalized (and buy and decorate a tree) by Sunday because we're hosting the college group from church Sunday morning. Yikes! Lots to do. So I will go get busy while it's still naptime. Pics of Christmas decorations and five month pics coming soon!

Cloth Diapering

Disclaimer: I know that cloth is not for everyone. It takes some planning sometimes, a learning curve at first, asking a lot of questions AND a husband who does the laundry at your house. :) It's not always easy and I know it's not a good fit for everyone and I'm not judging anyone for not using them - I just happen to be a big fan and think they're a good answer for us.

I've had a lot of people ask me how the cloth diapering is going so I thought I'd do a post about it. Let me just say right up front, I am by no means an expert on this matter. I learn something new nearly every day. But, for now, here's what I know.

There are about a gazillion different variations of cloth diapers (and that's not really much of an exaggeration). Below is a pic of three of the kinds we use. From L to R: all in one (AIO), one size pocket diaper, fitted.

• AIO - exactly what it sounds like. One piece, nothing to take apart, no cover required. Pretty easy. Down side to these is that they can take a lot longer to dry, but not a big enough deal to discourage me from using them.
• One size pocket diaper - this diaper (which is what we have the most of) will fit from birth to potty training. They have snaps that adjust the size so they fit even little babies. The pocket part is where you put an insert, which is the part of the diaper that soaks up the fluids. Has to be taken apart for washing.
• Fitted diapers usually (I think) come in a couple of different sizes so you have to have new ones as the baby gets bigger. These also require a water proof cover (the equivalent of the old school "plastic pants" that went over diapers...they're MUCH cuter these days).
• Prefolds - these are the ones that used to be the only kind of cloth diaper, required diaper pins, and you see more commonly used for burp cloths these days. Pins are no longer required. I just recently started using these and they're much easier than I thought they'd be, plus they're a very cheap option to increase the number of diapers you have (and thus decrease the number of times per week you have to do laundry)!

Laundry. We do a lot of it. We were doing it about every three days and then in the course of a week Milo outgrew 12 diapers and now we're doing it every other day. You do have to use special soap - the kind we use we've actually started using on all of our laundry. The good thing is (and this is what a lot of people ask about) as long as he's nursing, there's no dunking or rinsing required. If he dirties a diaper, it comes off and goes straight in the pail just like the wet ones. The diaper pail is just a large kitchen trash can with a lid that we put a large wet bag (pail liner) in. Here's what laundry day looks like at our house:


The finished product:



OK - I'm not going to lie. Part (or maybe all) of my original motivation for using cloth was how cute they are. I mean really, how handsome is he??



Another benefit of cloth, besides the cuteness, is that we have had almost no diaper rash. You do have to use a special kind of diaper rash cream if you use cloth because some creams can affect the absorbency of the diaper. We have a GroVia Magic Stick and it truly lives up to its name. Works like a charm. The other thing that is rare with the cloth diapers is blowouts. We've had three and I can trace two of them to operator error (not getting the diaper on tight enough or using a diaper that was a little too small). We used disposables for the first 2-3 weeks we were home from the hospital because people had given us some so we thought we'd use them up and put off the laundry for a little while. I can't even count how many blowouts we had with those!

I think that's pretty much the extent of my knowledge. I would like to take this opportunity to give a big shout out to my friend Katie who cloth diapers her kiddo and has been a great source of help/information - thanks Katie!