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.  :)

Diapers and Bread and Shopping

My sweet Thomas, sleeping all swaddled up.

A peek through the bars…

Yesterday the boys were six weeks old.  Instead of taking lovely pictures of them, I took the opportunity to photograph my six week post-partum self.  I dressed in the same clothes I wore in my last preggo post and had my mom snap a picture of me.  It was chilly in no sleeves and bare feet!  (yay!!)

I also baked bread for the first time in forever yesterday.  It feels so good to be getting reacquainted with my kitchen!

Soooooooooo good!

Back on Black Friday and Cyber Monday and all that, I didn’t do any shopping.  I really didn’t have moments to sit at my computer and shop.  But I did do some shopping this week, just randomly.  I bought a few things online at Children’s Place for Joanna, a few things on Amazon, some diapers, Christmas cards… I could be in trouble.  :)  Anyway, one thing I picked up was a set of lens adapter thingies that let you get close-up and actually focus without a macro lens.  I’ve only played five seconds with them so far, but I think I like ‘em!

This is Joanna’s eye.

Also, updating my personal needs… I actually made a hair cut appointment for later this week.  I bought a pair of jeans (and fit into an old pair I already had!), and found a pair of close-toed black shoes to use while waiting on my feet to (maybe?) shrink back down to their pre-preggo size.  Feels good to be able to get dressed in not sweats.  I’m still working on the bra situation, but that’s the hardest thing.

I will leave you with a picture of most (but not all!) of our diaper stash, all folded and ready to go!

James is SO BIG! (But then it turns into a post about cloth diapers.)

Saturday night was James’ first night to move back in with the girls.  They all slept in the same room until he was 18ish months old, but then we felt a split would help everyone sleep better.  Now with the twins headed our way, we decided James would sleep with the girls instead of the babies.  AND we figured the summer might be a good time for adjustment.

Don’t let them fool you.  They are cute, but ROTTEN!  :)

The first night it took a couple of hours for them all to settle and go to sleep.  I’m sure that was not helped by the copious amounts of sunshine still streaming into the room at bedtime.  :)  Last night was better.  Natalie crashed pretty quickly, and the other two were at least pretty quiet with their shenanigans.  I’m very much hoping their wake time will shift to 7:00 (or later!).  James just can’t seem to sleep past 6 or 6:30, no matter what time he goes to sleep.  If we can’t turn that internal alarm clock off, he’s going to have to go to bed at 6:45pm.  And that is going to cramp my style.

On a related BIG BOY note, he is doing SO WELL with potty training!  It’s been a couple of weeks, and he is using the toilet like a pro.  :)  We’re still working on logistics like pulling the underwear and pants up and down, but I will take it!  He wears a diaper when he sleeps, but that has drastically cut back our diaper usage!  He wears a disposable diaper overnight because we just haven’t found something else that works for a toddler heavy wetter all night.  Then at nap time I’ve been putting him in a prefold and cover.  He doesn’t wet much, and the cotton prefolds can go a little longer between washings without getting nasty.

James’ toys and clothes and stuff moved out of his room about the time he did, leaving the cubbies as a perfect place for organizing baby things!  I pulled out all the diaper supplies we have and got them sorted and counted.

For cloth diapering newborns, this is what I believe we have right now.

• 17 Freetime one-size all-in-one diapers.  These have become my favorites with James, but I never used them on a newborn.  I figure we will wait until the cord stump falls off for them to fit right.  They’re pretty bulky, but I think that will make them great overnight diapers once the babies are (hopefully!) sleeping longer stretches.
• 21 Bum Genius 4.0 pocket diapers.  I love these diapers – they’re so versatile.  I have most of them stuffed with two newborn inserts (I never thought one was enough), and the rest with regular inserts folded down.  The newborn inserts make the diaper less bulky, but like the Freetimes, I think these diapers will probably not fit well until the cord stump falls off.  I didn’t use these much with James as a newborn since I needed them for Natalie.  :)
• 6 covers that I think will fit a newborn – 3 NB sized and 3 that can be snapped down to that size.  These will go over the newborn (orange) sized prefolds (we have 24).  This is what we used in the early days most with James.  They fit so well on those teeny bottoms.
• 8 newborn size pockets/all-in-one diapers: One is a sposo easy, and I loooooooved it with James.  If they still made them, I’d have gotten a few more.  They were soooooo nice for going out or overnight when I didn’t want to mess with the prefolds.  I also have one Fuzzibunz newborn size diaper, but it never fit James well in the legs.  It’s cute, which is why I’m hanging on to it – pictures.  :)  I also bought 6 Bum Genius newborn size all-in-one diapers.  They get great reviews, and I think we’ll love them.  I imagine us using these at night, when the prefolds are just kind of too many steps for tired people.  :)  I bought these when they were one “seconds” sale, and if they go on sale again, I think I’ll get another half dozen.
• All the Bum Genius Freetimes and 4.0s are made to fit from birth to potty training, so those diapers will grow with the babies.  To supplement those we have a few Fuzzibunz and miscellaneous diapers that are fitted small or medium sized.

We may be basically sort of set for diapering the babies.  I’m going to do some more reading about how many diapers are recommended for twins, but we can always order more.  :)  I do think IF we find out at least one twin is a girl, I’m going to have to buy a few pink/purple/flowery diapers.  Even though we cloth diapered Natalie, we didn’t start until we knew we were pregnant with a boy, so I never bought anything I couldn’t pass down to him.  Now is a different story though!!

Errands and Potty Training

Friday morning we had several things on the agenda to take care of, so we tried to get going early.  I was really hoping to have us all ready to leave the house when it was time to take Joanna to school so we wouldn’t have to come back home before running our errands.  And we did!  James slept in until about 7:40, for the first (and only) time in many many weeks, so I tossed his clothes in the car and he ate breakfast in his car seat.  :)

We are in the process of refinancing our home mortgage (yay!!!), so I knew I needed to fax some papers to the mortgage office.  I figured I would try and do that from the church, which wasn’t open yet, so we went to Target first.  I had a few odds and ends that just needed to be picked up at a big store, and it just seems so soothing to walk through Target.  It’s something I haven’t felt up to doing in months.

And for the kids, it’s practically like a theme park.

What could be more exciting?!

We picked up this and that, then wandered over to the baby aisle for toddler underwear!!

This is James’ weird smiling face, but you can see him clutching his package of Thomas underwear.  He was soooooooo excited!

 

We also picked up a pack of the more boring “boy” version of the Gerber trainers.  They’re my actual favorites for potty training and will work for when Thomas is in the wash!  I have a couple size 18 mos leftover from Joanna (she was sooooo petite!), but the smallest they have in the stores is 2T.  That seems to fit James just fine.

James also FELL IN LOVE with a little police car from the dollar spot, so I told him we could take it home and he could have it when he peed in the potty.  Two year olds are very into instant gratification, so that was hard, but worked out okay.  :)

Leaving Target, I realized we were literally across the street from the mortgage place, and it made more sense to stop in than to drive all the way to the church in the hopes we could use the fax machine there.  The lady helping us with this loan is the same one who helped us buy our home initially, but this was the first time I’d laid eyes on her!  They were suuuuuper sweet in the office, and the kids each came home with a little stuffed doggie.  Made their day!  We haven’t closed yet, but I am very excited that in July we should be down to a 15 year mortgage and only paying about $50 more per month!!!!

Then we hit the bank (and got suckers!) before heading home for a few minutes.  I brought things inside, and we killed a bit of time before Joanna’s lunch time.  Then we ran through McDonalds for the requested French fries and chicken nuggets before meeting Joanna at school for lunch!

This is the first time I’d brought the littles up to see Joanna at lunch!  They were veeerrrrryyyyy excited!  And the three of them polished off 20 chicken nuggets and approximately 10,000 fries.  :)

When we got home, James jumped into the fun of potty training.  And I can’t believe how well he’s doing!!!!!

Yesterday I couldn’t find the insert to the little potty, so he was using the big potty.  It’s harder to tell if he’s actually gone in that one, but I think he squeezed out a tiny bit after sitting there for a while.  He was very motivated by the police car.  :)  And he kept his underwear dry.  Then it was almost time to pick up Joanna from school so I changed him over to a diaper in anticipation of nap time.  Here’s the amazing part.  I was in the kitchen, he was sitting on the couch with Natalie, reading and playing.  He hopped up, said “I need to tee tee in the potty” and ran into the bathroom.  I followed, and he did!!!  I couldn’t believe he had done that while sitting in a diaper!

He’s done lots of peeing in the potty since yesterday afternoon, but hasn’t figured out number 2.  I think he wants to (there’s a little school bus on the line), but he’s not sure how to make it work.  He was sitting on the little potty earlier, making grunting noises, then got up and told me he wanted to put his shoes on.  (Whatever, kid.)  Anyway, he comes out of the pantry a minute later having pooped in his underwear.  I guess he needed privacy.  :)  I’m sure he’ll get there!  He has also amazingly stayed dry during nap time the last two days.  And I just witnessed him take off his night time diaper to pee pee in the potty!  Since I’m not really into jumping up every 15 minutes to help James in the bathroom, we’re keeping the toddler potty out in the living room (laminate floor!), so he has access whenever he wants.  :)  Anyway, he loooooves to poor his pee in the big potty when he’s done.  (And then I sanitize the little insert.)  Sorry for all the details, but it’s more for me anyway.  I’m so proud of James!!

Vacuuming

So it’s pretty sad that vacuuming is such a momentous occasion around here that it deserves it’s own blog post, but…

It is.

Our vacuum is pretty big and heavy; it means business, but I figured it was time to start teaching the kids how to use it anyway.  :)

(Joanna took these pictures for me.)

Note: It is much harder to vacuum with James’ “help.”  BUT he didn’t run screaming from it!

Natalie took a shot at vacuuming her room.  It was really hard for her to turn or even push it upright at all.  It won’t be too long though.

Joanna is much better at it, though it’s still pretty hard for her to do.

But we did learn that vacuuming can double as writing practice – look a Y!

She made an H at some point too.  I could totally homeschool.  :)

My cutie pie James. (He wears a PJ top and diaper a lot these days.  It’s rough being the only one who can’t dress yourself.)

After working on the kids’ rooms, the bathroom, and tiny hallway, I had to sit down.  I was absolutely beat.

I had to rest up to even make lunch.  :)

And my dining room looked like this:

So the kids had a picnic.

They loved it, and since I hadn’t vacuumed in there yet, it was perfect.  :)

It took the rest of the day (and some help from Matt) to get the rest of the house vacuumed.  But it is so much more pleasant to be in now!  I had spent time on Sunday and Monday morning putting things away and picking up and organizing to prep for the vacuuming.  I feel much better when the house is in good shape.  I had intended to do some more work including getting caught up on laundry on Tuesday, but I felt so nasty terrible that I scrapped that plan for survival.  :)  Today I actually feel a bit better (hallelujah!), but there are 5 kids here so not much is getting done. 

I was reading back in my blog from when I was was pregnant with James, and it appears that sometime in the 13th week is when I felt the “second trimester” kick in.  I remember with Joanna it was in the 17th week, and I was barely sick with Natalie so it’s not really applicable.  I’m hoping it won’t take tooooooo much longer with this pregnancy.  I’m trying to be patient.  And thankful.

Speaking of thankful, look what showed up on my doorstop today!

It’s our first official purchase for the babies!  I’m going to NOT wash and prep them right away, and I will put them up so I don’t feel tempted to let James break them in.  We really have plenty for diapering him right now, and I want these to be all fresh for the babies!

My favorite diapers are Bum Genius 4.0s and Freetimes from Cotton Babies.  Last week they made a bunch of “seconds” available, and I jumped on it!  I’ve bought seconds before and been so pleased.  Most of the time I can’ t even find the defects but when I do it’s usually like a tiny dot of dirt or ink or something.  I bought 16 Freetimes (a bit more expensive but “all in one” so easier on the laundry front) and 6 4.0s, which are the pockets.  I’ve never tried the Freetimes on a teeny baby, and the pockets just seem like they’ll be trimmer for when they are itty.  The one flowery print on the top of the picture I just couldn’t resist.  They didn’t have the cute “boy” pattern available, but they did have this sweet “girl” print.  If neither of the babies are girls then I’ll just pass it along!

Cleaning up is hard to do.

James sometimes favors his sister’s pink boots over his brown, manly ones.  And sometimes he rocks a headband too.

I’ve had this Sesame Street book for forever, and James LOVES it!  I think Cookie Monster has outstripped Elmo as his favorite Muppet, but for sure they’re very close.

During rest time the girls play in either James’ room or their own room, sometimes both.  On days when the rooms are messy going in, I don’t worry too much about them being super cleaned-up after nap time.  BUT on days when we I have worked hard on giving them a clutter-free space to play, I insist (most of the time) on the room returning to that state after their quiet time.  The girls don’t love this rule.  Sometimes I’m lazy and don’t feel like enforcing the clean-up.  Other times it’s just very stressful to stay on top of it.  And everybody’s whiney.  Yesterday I decided to “lock” them in the room so they couldn’t get out until it was cleaned to my satisfaction.

 

I can see them so I know if they’re actually working on it, and I can call out some encouragement.  :)  Now, they are big and the gate is small, so it’s not like I’m really locking them in, just visually reminding them that they have a job to do.  And it keeps me from being too lazy and just letting the mess slide when they’re whiney and I’m tired.

It has worked well the last couple of days.

Last night the signal from NBC worked great for the first two hours of the primetime broadcast of the Olympics.  Fine through sports I’m not particularly interested in and preliminary races I don’t enjoy watching.  And then when it was time for the Olympics and some swimming finals, the signal got crappy.  Of course.  I know we need an new antenna, we just haven’t done it yet.  Despite it’s age and the fact that one of the ears is a little broken, it’s a good little piece of equipment.  And anyway, we didn’t have a new one at 9:30 last night.  So we moved it around until it was in the only spot for a good signal, and then we built it a tower.

All it took was two TV trays, a bin, a basket, and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.

We plan to go shopping this weekend.

Yesterday I stripped our cloth diapers (to remove any residue from detergent or creams), so this morning they were all clean at the same time.  I couldn’t help myself – I had to take some pictures of the stash.  :)

I have 17 one size Bum Genius snap pocket diapers, 2 Fuzzibunz one size pockets, and 3 Fuzzibunz medium pockets.  These are what fit James right now anyway.  It’s the bulk of what we have though.

We really have plenty for cloth diapering just one child – it’s wonderful!  If we have another baby a few of these will need to be replaced.  Some are showing the wear we’ve inflicted on them.  The BGs are my favorites, and since we have enough, I’m sticking the FBs in the closet for back-up.  They make good back-up; they don’t fit James quite as well as the BGs due to his slightly scrawny physique.  :)

Well, that post was all over the place – time to go fix dinner!

Diaper Sewing

I finally got around to attempting to repair some of our velcro tabbed BumGenius diapers.

I did not have a good time.

Many of the diapers look like this:

The tabs are curled at the ends, making them not stick so well.  After I repaired this one, I decided James could wear the rest as is, providing his clothes covered the diaper.  Otherwise it’s too easy for him to unfasten them.  :)

Actually, I think the main reason they’re curled like that is because for awhile, I washed disposable wipes with the diapers.  I only use them when we’re out and about, but I just went ahead and threw them in the diaper pail with the diapers.  I don’t do this anymore.  They go out with the trash.  If, in fact, this is the reason they’re not working after less than a year of use, then repairing them is not so daunting.  It’ll probably make them useable at least until James is out of diapers.  If they’re just curling because that’s what they’re going to do, I want more snappies!!

Anyway, I used my handy dandy seam-ripper to take off the tabs.

Joanna was watching me, and decided to go get her sewing machine and a shirt to repair.

She told me her sewing machine irons and fixes things.  I’ve got to get me one of those!

Here’s my new tab, all sewn on:

You can see old on the left and new on the right:

All I claim is functionality.  Not aesthetics.  Especially since the first one I sewed on UPSIDE DOWN!  Oh that was frustrating.  And I had no one to blame but myself.  And a few very cute people around here.  I originally had it lined up correctly but somehow moved it.  sigh  I fixed it.

It’s funny, my BG 4.0 velcros are the ones that have the curling tabs.  My 3.0 diapers’ tabs are fine but the laundry tabs (where you stick the velcro when it’s time to wash so they don’t stick to anything) are completely useless.

These are pretty “easy” to fix.

You just sew the new tab over the old tab.  It is a little difficult to reach with the sewing machine, and if you are… ahem… distracted (Thing 1, Thing 2, Thing 3) you just might find yourself sewing all the way through the diaper and having to try again.  Or something like that.

New on the left, old on the right.

And I replaced the other tab too but no “after” picture.

I have one more kit from Bum Genius which includes two sets of outside tabs and two laundry tabs.  Because my diapers all have one problem each, I just used one kit to fix two diapers.  I will get two more fixed.  Then I just might be done for awhile.  :)  It was hard.  I was distracted.  I didn’t like it.

I had all my curly-tabbed ones put away, awaiting repair, but I decided to just use them until they won’t stay closed.  Then I’ll put them aside.  I didn’t have enough diapers to last two days, and it was making me crazy!  Especially since James was on a poop spree.  (TMI?)  The ones with the too-soft laundry tabs tear other things up in the drier, so they really aren’t useable right now.  I only had four of them to begin with though, so I don’t have a ton out of commission. 

I really really want to get more snappy Bum Genius diapers, and get rid of some of the velcro ones.  Frugal Jessica is battling Material Girl Jessica.  Right now Frugal Jessica is winning, but I just might have to take her out.  There’s a sale, and I don’t have any of the dark blue and dark green ones.  :)

Clean diapers, footprints, butter, hairstyles, and teeth.

This post is full of random recent pictures that really have no common thread.  Except that I took them all. 

Last week my diapers were very smelly (even “clean!”) so I washed them, stripped them, and dried the inserts in the dryer.  I sorted all the bits for stuffing, then I just had to take a picture.

And even better – all stuffed and ready to wear!

James and I finally got around to picking up his 6 month footprint plate that I painted a couple of weeks ago.

I like how it turned out.  Now I need to get all the feet back up on the wall in the kids’ room, along with their other miscellaneous wall hangings.  It’s just hard when the only time that’s good for that kind of work is when the kids are asleep but obviously I can’t do that when they’re asleep.  :)

This is the picture that really makes the post random:

It’s homemade butter!  On Friday I had some heavy cream, skimmed off the raw milk, that I didn’t have a plan for.  So I put it (about 1 1/2 cups, maybe a little more) in my Kitchenaid mixer.  I attached the whisk thing, then let it go to town for about 20 minutes or so.  I squeezed all the buttermilk out of the butter using some cheesecloth, then stuck it in the fridge.  I used the buttermilk in pancakes that night.  :)  I find it very cool that you get yellow butter from white cream.  Raw milk is just the coolest stuff.

Joanna can really rock a side ponytail. 

I like putting Natalie’s hair up in a ponytail with a clip for her bangs.

It never lasts though.

I also think this is super cute!  A side ponytail in the front that has her bangs in it!

Today in church I gave Joanna French braided pig tails!  This was after she’d run around in them all day, so they’re scraggly.

 

They were so cute, and brought back memories of high school.  I wore my hair like this a lot for marching band.  It fit well under the hat.

Today James’ second tooth came in, and I managed to take a picture of his two little teeth!

Those little things have been causing him all kinds of trouble.  Maybe he’ll have a little break now?  Ha!

It’s very cute to watch him feel them in his mouth.  He’s always got his tongue or his lip on them, investigating.

My mom told me it was a sign of intelligence when a baby gets his first two teeth in the same week.

I have this feeling she was making it up though.  :)