ETA: Check out Roz’s blog for her pregnancy pics that I took. They turned out great!
So I was digging through old pics last night and came across the following…
Me in my Easter Finery…
My “Mean Face” that I apparently would make on demand…
Me looking like a smartass in my late seventies pack and play…
Me in my crib. Check out that bedding! I would LOVE to have that now. How retro is that? And best of all is that I had a super retro crazy wallpaper on the wall behind it too. It was like pattern overload.
See that apple down in the bottom of the pic? I still have that for Dash. He LOVES it and it was made in the US. My parents are such packrats.
Dash in his beach gear. I just want to smooch that little belly.
1. Come on, it’s my blog. I can do 10 on Wednesday if I want to…
2. I saw Miss Roz and the future Miss Surrelle this weekend and it was fabulous. Good to see my sweet friend, and good to see the beach. I think my soul needs a little beach time every now and then.
3. Dash and I are done nursing, officially. He quit about 3 weeks ago but I was still pumping and this weekend was the end of it. I was really sad the last 3 weeks about it, but when I finally decided this was the end, I’m more relieved than sad.
4. Dash had his 9 month checkup yesterday, he is 30″ tall, 22lbs 14.25oz. 90% for weight and 95% for height.
5. He also has a smidge of an ear infection, and I blame it on not nursing. Skipping over feelings of guilt… (keep telling myself HE quit, not me…)
6. I just bought the Taylor Swift CD and the Sara Bareilles CD and I love them both.
The Sara Bareilles CD is ok, that song is the best song. The Taylor Swift CD is excellent, several good songs, and even if you don’t love country music you have to appreciate that she’s 17 and wrote the entire album and plays the guitar for each song. And at the end of her “thank yous” in the album she says:
P.S. To all the boys who thought they would be cool and break my heart, guess what? Here are 11 songs about you. Ha.
And that made me laugh.
7. As much as I hate my job, and I do hate it, we got our quarterly bonus yesterday and it was very generous. So I hate it a little less today.
8. John’s thinking about getting an aerospace engineering degree from UAH. He’s doing so well at Calhoun and his math teacher suggested it to him. I’m so proud of him and his ambition.
9. Dash is in speed-crawling mode where you can’t leave him alone for one second or he’ll be across the room. When he just started sitting up we got a lot of “oh just wait until he’s crawling, you’ll wish he was still just sitting” and I haven’t felt like that at all. I’m so thrilled that he can explore things on his own timetable without having to cry for someone to pick him up and move him to the next toy. It’s a fun time in the Dixon household.
10. This recipe is really good, and super easy (and healthy, too) We had it with Jasmine Rice which I didn’t realize is also sticky rice and I LOVE sticky rice. LOVE it. Anyway, we did it with pork chops instead of tenderloin and it was just fine. Cooked it the same length of time, too.
I wish I had a cute picture to post, I have a cute outfit that’s a little red romper that says “Born 2 Break Hearts” and the Heart is actually a heart. Very Valentiney. It’s an 18mo outfit though and it unfortunately doesn’t fit. My big sweet baby.
So a Happy Valentine’s Day wish will have to do.
What are you all doing with your sweeties tonite?
John has school (how romantic) so I’m cooking an easy dinner and we’ll hang out as much as we can since I won’t see him again until Monday or so for any decent length of time. I’m going to visit my sweet Roz this weekend and John can’t go because he has to work, so I’ll get home Saturday night, he’ll go to work Sunday morning, and won’t be home until late Sunday. But I’m off all day Monday thanks to our dear presidents
Erin posted info about her cloth diapers and asked others to do the same, so here’s my cloth diapering story…
Mostly, I cloth diaper because I’m cheap.
Of course there’re other benefits that we’re fully aware of, but mostly it’s because the thought of spending $2500 on diapers over the lifetime of a child gives me the shakes. So here’s my story.
My parents cloth diapered the old school way, they had these washrag looking things that they safety pinned on and put a diaper cover over them. (They still have them now, actually, 27 years later. ) They had a laundry shoot and a pale of bleachy water at the bottom, and they just threw them down the shoot and threw the whole thing in the laundry when they were ready to wash them. I kind of thought I would cloth diaper, just because if they can do it in 1980 then I’m sure I could do it now. I had no idea what was out there though. Then Erin comes along and she’s all about the cloth diapering, so I talked to her about it and got John on the bandwagon and we were good to go.
We started out with prefolds, the same one Erin uses, diaperraps. These didn’t work out well for us though, and I’m still not sure why. Maybe it was the way we were folding them, maybe Dash is a particularly heavy wetter (and big poo-er). Anyway, we had several blowouts and it seemed like if he wet them more than once that was the end of that for him and he usually goes to the bathroom several times during a nap. So he would go to sleep with a clean diaper, wet it twice and wake up screaming 45 minutes later because he was wet. Also, Dash squirms a LOT during a changing, and always has. I’ve changed his diaper several times while he’s standing up, and many times when he’s on all fours. If you lay him down, he starts to roll over and if you make him lay back down he screams bloody murder. And if you use the little belt thing on the changer, he still manages to squirm his way out of it. I just needed something faster. Anyway, these are great diapers, just not for us. And the best part is if you try them and they’re not for you either, you have several very good burp cloths on your hands. They’re fantastic for that. And they’re cheap. It really is a good way to start out, and if they work for you, you’ll save a ton of money over the ones I use.
So, after much frustration, dear Roz points out an article by Andrea. Fabulous post. Very informative. Here’s the link. She has several posts about cloth diapers and has tried several different kinds. Just type in Cloth Diapers in the search field on the right of the blog.
So begins my love of bumgenius. I have 2.0, there are 3.0’s out there now. They are bumGenius One-Size diapers, one-size because they have three sets of snaps on the front, so you can make them smaller or larger depending on the size of your baby. It says they fit from 8lbs to 35lbs, and they still fit my little chunky monkey just fine. Here’s the link where I bought mine.
Here’s my personal pros and cons.
Pros:
One diaper for life. I have 21 of these and I never have to buy them again.
They’re still holding up lovely. I’m sure they’ll make it to the end of Dash’s diapering career and well into the next child’s if not all the way through. They haven’t lost any of their waterproofing and they’re still super absorbent.
They’re cute. We have 4 white, 6 green, 6 blue and 5 yellow.
If you ever have to diaper two children at once, you don’t have to separate by size. Since they’re all the same, you just adjust for each child.
I’ve heard that some daycares allow these diapers because they are so similar to disposables. I’m sure they have to come stuffed and they won’t unstuff them, and I think you have to provide a wetbag for each one. Just something to keep in mind if daycare is in your plans…
Cons:
Expensive as far as cloth diapers go (though right in there with the other all-in-ones out on the market like Kissaluvs and Swaddlebees.)
Pulling the insert out can be a little messy depending on where the poo is located
Stuffing them after each washing can be a bit of a pain.
You don’t get to play around with all the cute diaper covers out there. Like this one
And these.
Oh, I’m jealous. This is definitely the biggest con for me.
Still with me? Sorry so long.
Other details… we have a wet bag diaper pail liner that you just throw in the wash with the diapers. Works well for us. We could use two, but again, the cheapness. We don’t have travel wetbags, we use either ziplock bags or walmart plastic shopping bags while we’re out and about. They work just fine and you just toss them when you’re home. I probably should invest in wetbags though, maybe I can find some that are machine washable… I digress. We have a diaper sprayer, John loves it, I would rather dunk the diapers. I guess it’s just a matter of preference though. If you don’t like it for the diapers, you can always follow the suggestion on the box and use it as a bidet. We do a diaper load every other day, since he goes through 9-ish a day. I’m always the one to stuff them, sometimes John helps with the wash (i.e. throws them in the washer), and I haven’t gone crazy yet.
Oh and the cloth wipes. I forgot. We used to use these and I loved them, once the poo changed from BF poo to normal baby poo though, John didn’t like them as much. So we use regular wipes. I’m just glad he’s willing to use the cloth diapers, I have to pick my battles sometimes.
If you have any questions, I’ll be more than happy to answer them as much as I can. Check out Erin’s post and her sister-in-law Parmy’s post, too, they have great info.
We finally had a beautiful day here Tuesday so I took advantage of it for Dash’s 9 month pictures. He won’t be 9 months until the 15th, and I’m going to try to get some better pictures this weekend, but who knows if I’ll get a chance…
So this is my favorite…
And this one. My Dad sings this crazy song and moves his feet back and forth and Dash is just obsessed with what his shoes are doing. To the point that if Dad starts singing that song Dash looks up at him and then down to the floor to see what those feet are doing. My parents are in love with him and he’s pretty crazy about them, too. One of the many perks of the grandparents living around the corner…
Hope all of you have a good Thursday, I’ve been thinking it was Friday all day, but John’s bringing Dash to have lunch with me today so that will make it go by faster…
My wedding ring still doesn’t fit. I can cram it on my fat little finger but it isn’t pretty. So for Valentine’s Day, I wanted a temporary ring, so we went to Kay Jewelers and bought a plain jane white gold wedding band and I love it. I don’t have to worry about the diamonds getting caught in my yarn, and it fits. It really bothered me to not have a wedding ring on.
Anyway, so I needed an equally good gift for John. John’s easy to buy for, but hard to buy something spectacular for. He loves Alabama and the Red Sox, so you can always get him a hat or a jersey and he’s happy. But it’s hard to come up with something a bit more creative. So today, I was thinking and thinking and decided to check the red sox website for spring training tickets, and they have some! Standing Room Only, but I don’t care. So that’s what John’s getting for Valentine’s Day. They were sold out when they first went on sale so I was shocked to get them.
Also, my darling sweet boy has decided that nursing is for the birds. For a while he would only nurse at naps and night time, and roll away and literally scream bloody murder any other time. Then he cut out nap times, and yesterday he cut out the night time nursings, too. I’m going to try one more time tonite and see if it’s a fluke, but if it’s not then I think he’s officially done. I could keep on pumping, and I’m having a hard time emotionally giving that up (not the pumping, the pumping blows, just the giving Dash my milk part, albeit by pumping…) but I don’t want to pump on the weekends and I’d have to if I went to exclusively pumping. So it might just be time to say goodbye to this ol’ pump. My best and worst baby device for the past 8 and a half (almost nine! Yikes) months. It’s definitely a love hate relationship.
So I’m going to miss nursing, with all it’s ups and downs… we finally got it figured out and I got to where I enjoyed the time we had together as much as he did and probably a little more. And ditching the boobie makes him even more of a big kid, and that’s pretty hard for me too. Either way, I’m glad we gave it the old college try and I’m proud of myself for making it this long, since I wasn’t super gung-ho to start with.
My big sweet baby.
