Miscellany

A couple weeks ago I decided to sort of strip our diapers to make sure all the excess detergent was rinsed out and they were very clean.  I have fifty-one diapers and I’m not sure what made me think I could fit them all in my washer at one time.  For the record, I cannot.  Anyway, I decided I needed to take pictures of them all clean and stuffed and ready to wear.  I think they’re pretty.  :) 

These are my Bum Genius 4.0s.  They were favorites for a long time and we still use them frequently.  A few are delaminating and no longer work well.  As we come across those, I’m marking the tag and will set them aside for swim diapers.

Below are my Freetimes, my current very favorite kind of diaper.  I love them.  Even though we have 30, it’s not quite enough for two babies, even washing once a day.  This summer when we’re hanging them outside (and when the babies are needing less frequent diaper changes) they will be plenty.  And honestly, by then I’ll have probably accumulated a few more.  :)  I hang diapers in my laundry room these days, which is suuuuper convenient, but the Freetimes do take the better part of a day to dry inside.

You’ll see on the bottom right a pretty florally patterned diaper that I have come to love.  I bought it back before I knew both babies were boys and just recently decided to pull it out and actually use it.  :)  I think they love it and take turns wearing it.  I may get some more patterns.  They’re kind of fun.

We also have a stash of prefolds and covers, but we don’t use them a ton, opting mostly for convenience with TWO babies needing diapers.  :)

We recently pulled out the 3-6 month clothes, and the boys are actually too big for some of it!  These outfits fit them so sweetly though, and I love the colors!  The hats are a bit snug, but I crammed them on for the picture.  :)

Joanna is SO SWEET with her siblings.  Here, she’s reading a story to the babies.

Another photography project I’m working on this year (what?! Another one!) is taking a self-portrait every month on the date of my birthday (the 21st).  I’m not too bad about getting in pictures myself, but I know I could be better.  And I’m quite terrible at actually taking pictures of myself.  Which, by the way, if freaking hard!  I used the tripod for this one.  I made the girls stand in for me by holding their arms way up high so I could set my focus and everything.  We were outside in the afternoon before the light quite got pretty, so I have a lot of really terrible pictures.  I ended up just squatting down because I was getting a good shot of Natalie in this spot, but I was too tall!  The sun was hitting by face in not a pretty way.  It was a fun exercise and I look forward to working on my self portrait skills this year.  I set an alarm on my iPod so I might actually remember to do it.

I am loving that we’re getting an actual taste of winter this year!  I got all bundled up for choir practice the other night and I made Matt take a quick picture of me.

I posted the picture because 1. I want to remember the cold when I’m melting this summer and 2. I want to explain why it’s blurry (not Matt’s fault) and how I plan to prevent that from happening again.

When I have Matt take a picture with my camera, I usually have him switch it over to Auto.  Auto means he doesn’t have to worry what setting I have it on, and the camera does all the work.  This also means that he can’t tell the camera where to focus, and that is frustrating.  Anyway, I was reading this post about photography for beginners, and there was a great tip that I think will fix our problem!  I haven’t actually told Matt about it yet, but maybe he’ll read this post and I won’t have to.  (I kid.)  So the plan will be to use the “P” mode instead of Auto.  They’re almost the same, but you can set ISO and a manual focus point in P mode.  I will have to remind him to set the ISO to Auto or it’ll mess with the other settings.  Anyway, I always have the manual focus point set in the middle, and Matt knows how to put it on what he wants to focus on, press the shutter part way down, then recompose the shot before shooting.  And this should fix our focus problem we often have.

And then maybe someday I’ll teach him how to shoot on Manual.  :)