Latest Developments

In addition to meeting another great-grandparent and celebrating his first Thanksgiving, in the past week Harry has:

• Slept through the night most if not all nights -- 8:30/9 until 6:30/7
• Laughed for the first time (and the second, third, and fourth) -- all but once while getting ready for a bath, and all but once sounding a bit like a donkey (a very cute and wonderful donkey)
  
• Begun talking up a storm -- he is quite the chatterbox, full of fascinating things to share and discuss
• Reached for, grasped, and shaken a rattle
• Starting wearing some of his 3-6 month clothing, as he is too long for some of his 0-3 stuff, though we could still fit two of him into some of the 0-3 things at the waist

My little boy is growing up so fast. I am already feeling a bit nostalgic for the days when he was just a teeny tiny guy.

We took him to an unfamiliar place and completely disrupted his bedtime routine but he still went down easily and slept ten hours straight -- BOTH NIGHTS! (We can overlook the refusal to nap and resulting crankiness.)

Cloth Diapering

So, I promised a cloth diaper post.


We committed to cloth diapering Harry before he was born for a number of reasons -- environmental costs and financial costs being two of them. That said, when we first brought him home, we had him in disposables - we had him circumcised and had to apply ointment to the circumcision site until it was healed and didn't want to damage the cloth diapers with it. We kept him in them for a bit because he developed diaper rash and we needed to put Butt Paste on, which is also not cloth diaper-friendly. Finally, we had him in them overnight for a while when we were worried that our heavy wetter would wet right through cloth. We no longer use disposables. We have fewer blowouts with cloth. And our boy seems much happier in them.

Right now, his primary daytime diaper is a Kissaluvs size 0 fitted diaper with a Thirsties size xs cover. We have 11 of the diapers and four covers, though we started with only two covers. These covers are great. They have a double gusset at the leg, which keeps messes contained inside. I know some people hate velcro, and maybe it will be a problem when he can undo it easily himself, but I find it far easier to adjust to the right size. Our guy has skinny little legs, and the velcro lets us get the legs nice and tight. The only leaks we have are when he gets so wet that the fabric at the top of the diaper (above the PUL) gets wet and the moisture seeps through.

We also really like the Kissaluvs. They fit him well, have a snapdown for the early days for the umbilical cord, and have a good number of snaps to use to adjust the size. Since it's like wrapping him in a little blanket, the wet goes straight through, so you need a waterproof cover, and the (breastmilk) poop can go through too if there's enough of it, but nothing ever goes over the top or out the legs, which is great. But we won't use fitted diapers forever. When he pees, they get really wet, and the wet stays against his skin. I'm not a big fan of that. Plus, we would have to keep buying them in different sizes to keep up with his growth, which can be expensive.

Overnight, we have him in BumGenius 3.0 -- and this is what we'll use when he outgrows the fitted diapers. We love them. They keep him fully contained overnight (and when he wears them during the day). Right now, though, they are bulky between the legs. His legs ends up very far apart, and it makes me worry about his ability to move his legs as he learns and develops. So we are waiting to use them full-time until he gets too big for his newborn diapers. I think there are probably different ways to use the inserts so as to keep the legs from being so far apart (like the twist fold you can do with prefolds), but we're lazy right now.

The other diapers and covers we have include infant prefolds, an Imse Vimse organic cotton cover, Bummi's Super Whisper Wrap covers, a Happy Heinys sized pocket diaper, a Happy Heinys one-size-fits-all pocket, and a few FuzziBunz pocket diapers (size small).

The prefolds are fine and are what we used when we ran out of Kissaluvs. Neither of us is super confident with getting them folded and on Harry. With practice, I think we'd do fine with these. We probably would have liked them more had we bought newborn size -- with infant, we have to fold them down to get the fit right, which makes getting them on more difficult. As he grows and we don't need to do this anymore, we'll probably use these more as an extra set of diapers (and we do have some bigger covers to use with them).

The Imse Vimse cover is also really cute, but also didn't fit as well. Even though it is supposed to have fit him since birth, we can't get it tight enough, even when the velcro is pulled all the way across. So he doesn't use this one unless we have no other clean covers.

The Bummi's covers were cute, but doesn't have the double gusset at the leg like the Thirsties, so I was always worried about leaks. And he grew out of them much sooner, as we discovered at his baptism when he was drenched partway through.

I really liked the Happy Heiny's sized pocket (in photo), but P never felt confident with it. And it's now too small. The one-size pocket seems too loose at the legs, so we only use it during the day when poop is less of a concern (the pee is usually contained in the insert). It's less bulky than the BumGenius, but doesn't fit as tightly.

Finally, the FuzziBunz. As I mentioned, our nastiest blowout was with a FuzziBunz. And P doesn't like them at all. It's tough to get the right size adjustment with the snaps. Plus, they're sized, so you need a full stash in every size if it's the only diaper you use. I suspect a baby with chubbier legs would do really well with these, but Harry isn't that baby.

For wipes, we use terry wipes. We make our own solution in a pump pot -- warm water plus baby shampoo and baby oil. He stays clean and non-rashy. We do use disposable wipes when we travel, but will eventually remember to buy a squirt bottle to use on the road and start carrying cloth wipes too. I love the cloth wipes. Even if you aren't ready to do cloth diapers, I highly recommend the cloth wipes, since the disposable ones are sooo expensive.

As for diaper care, we do a wash every two days or so, using Purex detergent. We do a cold prewash and a hot wash with a second rinse. We dry most everything on Medium/High, though we hang dry the covers (we don't wash these after every use -- we wipe them down with the clean part of a wipe and wash when they start to carry an odor).

We also hang dry our wet bag and the bag we use as an alternative to a pail. His room is small, so we use a bag instead of a pail (plus, it's easy to bring downstairs so we don't have to bring him to his room for his daytime changes). It keeps the stink in and stays dry on the outside. It has a hang tab, so we can hang it on the back of the door when it isn't so full. We have two, so we have one to use when the other is in the wash. We ordered them both from Happy Tushies.

We also have two wetbags to use for diapers on the go. One is a Wahmies, the other is a Happy Tushies. We like them both. They are pretty much the same, though the design for the Happy Tushies is cuter.

Thanksgiving

Well, we are heading off for Thanksgiving. For the past 8 years, P and I have celebrated Thanksgiving locally, going either to his aunt's or to his mom's, both of whom live 10-15 minutes from us. Because my own family is so small (or at least the immediate part of it), they were always invited too, so my dad and brother, and later my sister in law, joined us up here. Over the years, the exact composition of the group has changed, but it's always been Ps immediate family and mine.

As I mentioned before, Ps grandmother passed away a few weeks ago. Her wish was to be cremated and have her ashes scattered in two places that were significant in her life -- the family cottage in Canada, and Ps aunt's camp in Maine. Because her birthday would have been this weekend, we are going to be heading up to the camp for Thanksgiving. (It's not entirely clear what will be happening with the ashes. Irony of ironies, Ps aunt feels it would be disrespectful to scatter her mother's ashes where the family dogs are buried, so she wants to bury them in a local cemetery, whereas the rest of us think it is more disrespecful not to honor her wishes. We'll see what happens. Since it's not my family, I'm doing what I can to stay out of it.)

I'm the first to admit that I don't deal well with change. I'm not looking forward to having Thanksgiving be yet another holiday with a ton of time spent in the car. I'm not looking forward to having to take Harry out of his routine right when he's starting to fall into one, especially now that he has slept largely through the night for three nights in a row. And I'm especially not looking forward to not seeing my own family for the holiday.

I'm pretty sure that this is the first year in my life that I have not spent Thanksgiving with my dad and my brother, which feels really weird. As I mentioned in connection with my dad's remarriage this summer, the three of us really clung to one another in the months and years following my parents' divorce. And I feel like 2008 has been the year in which we've been pulled apart. I suppose it had to happen eventually, but it doesn't mean I have to like it, right?

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

What We Bring To The Table

I have mentioned my lack of baking skill before. Due to a few missteps (the final one being an inadvertent use of twice the amount of butter called for in a cookie recipe), I had come to believe that it was something I would never be any good at.

Over the past year or so, though, I've been trying to improve in that area -- with some success. I'm not sure if it's just because I'm home now and feeling like I should be doing something productive with my days or what, but I've been baking a lot (and eating a lot of what I bake, which is another post entirely). Recently, I baked four pumpkin loaves. (Two were excellent, but something went wrong with the other two -- they failed to bake all the way through. I initially blamed the oven, but I'm wondering if the recipe I worked from had the wrong bake temp -- I may have instinctively set it to 350 when I baked them, which would have been the logical temp, whereas I told P to bake the other two at 300, which was what the recipe called for, even though it seemed too low to both of us.)

This week I baked the cookies pictured above. P wanted plain toffee cookies, which sounded really boring to me. And I had trouble finding a recipe for plain toffee -- they all had oatmeal or nuts or chocolate. I finally found one and baked them. But they seemed boring. So I made one sheet of plain toffee, but then added chocolate chips to the remaining dough. I then made a sheet of those. I still had enough dough left for a dozen more cookies, so I added chopped walnuts. Needless-to-say, P preferred the ones with the nuts and the chocolate chips.

My MIL and her husband, as well as Ps grandfather, enjoyed all three kinds when they came that night to see Harry. After previously being told that we didn't need to bring anything to Thanksgiving, my MIL called after trying the cookies to ask if we could make the sweet potato casserole. And some cookies. Did I just need to prove myself?

That Whole Work Thing

As I've mentioned before, I have always defined myself by my job/work/school. I have always worked hard and strongly valued such hard work. I often thought that were I to win the lottery I would like to continue working, in part because of the satisfaction I get from my work and in part because the joy of hard work is a value I want to pass on to Harry and any other children I may be fortunate enough to have.

That was then.

I am now just over one third of the way through my maternity leave (I am very fortunate to get six months off -- I am scheduled to go back in March) and the thought of ever having to return to work horrifies me. It's not really the work thing. Or even the trusting someone else to take care of Harry thing. Instead, it's the amount of time I'll get to spend with Harry.

I always planned to go back part-time. For my job, part-time was going to be 9-5, 4 days a week, which is a 70% schedule. For 70% time, you get 70% pay. I looked at my bank statement from the past month and realized that we'll be cutting it really close if I only get 70% of my salary (plus have to pay for day care, which isn't a huge percentage of my salary, but it's enough to make a dent). (And we don't spend a lot on discretionary stuff -- it's the mortgage, the car payments, car insurance, life insurance, supplemental disability insurance, student loan payments, utilities.) P only earns 25% of our household income, and he pays something like 10% of our bills. (I have yet to figure out where the rest of the money goes -- when I first graduated college, I earned less than he does now but managed to pay for a lot more. And yes, we've been together for nine years, living together for seven, and married for three, but have yet to merge our finances.) And he desperately wants a new job, but a new job is likely to entail a pay cut since it's going to be a career change as well as a job change. The job/career change may not happen right away given the state of the economy, but we need to plan for it.

If I have to go back full-time in order to be able to save money for college for Harry and pay our bills, then I could end up seeing Harry only when he gets up in the morning -- nursing him and getting him ready and dropping him at daycare, then only seeing him on the weekend, and even that wouldn't be guaranteed. Even going part-time will mean doing that, plus picking him up at 5:30, hanging out with him for a couple of hours, and putting him to bed, plus a fairly guaranteed three days a week with him.

I don't want to miss seeing my son grow up. I don't want to risk missing his first words, his first steps. The thought of it makes my heart break. I never thought I'd have any interest in staying home, no matter the circumstances. But all of a sudden, as the reality of having to return to work come March becomes apparent, I find myself staring far more longingly at my lottery season ticket, hoping that this week my number will be up. No win last night. Maybe Friday.

Cloth Diaper Giveaway

A great giveaway -- go enter now.

Reminds me that I meant to post about our experiences thus far with cloth.

Slow Day

Two things:

1. It does appear to be the farts/poops that result in Harry's need for a middle of the night change/feeding. Coincidentally enough after last night's post, Harry hasn't pooped since yesterday's explosion AND he slept until 6:30 this morning. Whoo-hoo! (Though I fear it's going to be very messy the next time he goes.)
2. Also, Harry really likes his playmat:

(Evidently, on day 24 of Nablopomo I run out of things to talk about.)

The One About Poop (I warned you)

For a couple of weeks now, Harry has been going to bed at 9 and getting up some time between 3:30 and 5, getting changed and nursing, then going back to sleep until some time between 6 and 8. (No, his one night of the ten hour sleep didn't repeat itself.) To me, this is a perfectly acceptable schedule. Yeah, I'd love it if he decided to always sleep until 7 or later without waking in the night, but I can definitely work with this. I always assumed he woke up because he was hungry.

So, last night, we heard farts at 12:45, which was sadly only 45 minutes after we went to bed (yes, we're stupid) and only minutes after I fell asleep. Harry also heard himself fart and woke up. P decided that they weren't just farts, so he got up to change him. (He was right.) And being very awake post-change, Harry decided he was hungry. So I was up until 1:30. He then slept until 6:30 and was ready to start his day.

I then thought back. Pretty much every night, his waking is immediately preceded by an audible fart, the kind that wakes us all up (and is almost always accompanied by poop). Maybe if he didn't always fart himself awake (or decided to poop during the day instead of always in the middle of the night), we could all be getting a bit more sleep around here. Sigh.

While I'm already talking about poop, Harry erupted during coffee hour after church this morning. When I picked him up to determine whether he was the source of the smell, poop dripped down his leg, into his sock, onto his carseat, and onto his hat sitting in his carseat. It seemed to be everywhere but on me (hooray for small miracles). It took me 15 minutes to clean him up, get him into a new diaper, and into a new outfit. When I got home, we had to figure out how to take the cover off the carseat and into the wash. It was truly nasty. I never feel confident with him in a FuzziBunz (it never seems tight enough around the leg), and apparently it was with good reason.

Basement Projects

We have a finished room in our basement that we've never put to a ton of use. It's actually a fairly nice space, with knotty pine walls, tile floor, a full-sized (i.e. not basement-style crank-out) window, and a fireplace. On the less-nice side, one wall is covered in mirrors, the heat doesn't work (though we have a space heater), there aren't a ton of power outlets, and there's currently no ceiling, as P rewired the phone and some electric and replaced the crummy old recessed lights with new ones and can't put the ceiling back up until he gets the work permitted and approved by the inspector of wires.

Part of the reason we haven't done much is a lack of a good sense of what to do with it and how to lay it out. Here are the basics: The room is approximately 12 feet by 20 feet. It looks kinda like this:
(Sorry the image sucks). Across from the window is the wall of mirrors. Until this week, we had two arm chairs in front of the fireplace with a little table between them. The exercise bike (unused for many months, since it became uncomfortable partway through pregnancy) sits in the lower left corner, with the exercise step (also unused for many months) leaning against it. The lower right corner houses an old extra TV with a VCR and our old Replay box (a first generation DVR we've had since before they became widely available). We used to have chairs in front of the TV, but moved them upstairs at some point for company. The bike also used to be there at one point. This week, I set up a play area for Harry and any little friends he has over in the space in front of the TV (just because it's open space, not because there's a TV) -- there are blankets on the floor, with the bouncy seat and a playmat down there. Half of his toys are also down there, sitting on the floor. I like the idea of this being an easy play space.

So, what I'm thinking is to get a cheap used sectional to put in the lower left corner with a good spot by the fireplace, then rotate the play space to be more in the center of the room (and partly in front of the sectional), then put the two chairs currently in front of the fireplace in front of the TV so they can be used to watch kids on the play space or to watch TV. Then I'll see where the bike will fit and move it there -- probably the upper right corner. And then I'll try to put the rest of our exercise equipment with/near it. I'm excited to make this space more functional and get more use of out it.

First task: take measurements and look for a cheap sectional. Or, first task: get P to get the permitting and inspection done and put the ceiling back up, then get a sectional.

Once this takes shape, I'll post pictures. Maybe I'll even post some pictures of it as it is now.