And now for something completely different...

This article was in Vanity Fair earlier this week, which lead me to think it's about time to start my annual viewing of our West Wing DVDs. On that...

Possibly my favorite speech from The West Wing:

And also, while we're sharing West Wing clips, I sent this one to my dad, the father of 5 daughters, thinking he could relate to the part where President Bartlett explains the term "Abu el Benat." 

And I think at some point around X's birth, someone said "babies come with hats..." so there's this too...

I sleep with one eye open...

Literally, in Baby X's case. (Does anyone else have a kid who does that?)

Cloth Diapering

Disclaimer #1: This is not going to be an interesting post for anyone who doesn't have kids, who doesn't use cloth diapers, or who is dead set on disposable diapers for their future kids. But I read lots of websites and blogs, and talked to a lot of people before we ended up with our system for cloth diapers, and since my sister is starting cloth diapering with her baby today, I thought I'd write up how our system works. It's amazing how many people ask about it when they see or hear that we use cloth diapers.

Disclaimer #2: We do use 7th Generation brand disposables for night time. They last a little longer before leaking than cloth, but other than that I don't find them to be any more convenient than cloth.

Why cloth?

• Cost: It's definitely the cheaper way to go (for 40 diaper changes, the cost comes to $5 for cloth (laundry costs-- we pay for each load) vs. $12 for 7th Gen disposables vs. $18 for flushable g-inserts). 
• Fewer blow outs: We've used 7th Generation disposables, and occasionally Pampers. The disposables tend to have more blow outs in my experience, and when a blow out occurs in the gDiapers, it's a smaller mess (poo has multiple layers to get through before getting to clothes). 
• Better for baby: While I can't say for sure yet whether this is true, cloth diapered babies are supposedly easier to potty train and get fewer diaper rashes. (We haven't had an incident of diaper rash yet). And the chemicals used in disposables have been associated with some issues in boy babies... not to be paranoid, but when it comes to my baby's bum, I'd rather avoid too many chemicals.
• What about the laundry: I don't mind the extra laundry-- I'm doing so much with a baby as it is,  another load is no big deal. 
• Isn't it gross?: Yes, you do work with poo a bit more, I don't mind it so much. (Kenneth says he has to remind himself every time he rinses a diaper that this is better for the environment. I remind myself that rinsing a diaper is quicker than a trip to the store... really, it's about laziness for me. Not all 7th Generation sizes are available on Amazon Prime.) 
• It's green: Less petroleum usage in packaging and distribution, and of course, you're not adding to landfills. 
• The theory that you use so much water to clean the diapers that the environmental impact of using disposables vs cloth doesn't hold much water (haha) to me. Washers now tend to be high efficiency, and water can be cleaned and reused. Land, not so much. Not to mention, come summer, we'll be line drying our diapers (we do with most of our clothes in the summer), so we'll be saving energy there. On top of that, the plastic used to package the diapers and the fuel for producing and shipping the diapers only occurs once for cloth vs many times for disposable. And you can reuse cloth on other children. Reusing disposables would be ineffective and gross... obviously. I think the debate on which is better for the environment is pretty well decided in favor of cloth.

How it works for us:

Our cast of characters:

cloth inserts (small and medium size), g-pants with liner snapped in

diaper sprayer

Diaper pail (an old trash can of Kenneth's), lined with a Kushies antibacterial pail liner. We also have a Munchkin baking soda filled "nursery refresher" glued inside the lid. So far,  no smell issues. If we ever do though, the pail will move outside. 

Flushable wipes

We use what I think is called the dry pail method. How it works is pretty simple. 

1. When a diaper is wet, it goes straight to the diaper pail.
2. When a diaper is dirty, it gets taken to the bathroom, and we spray poo into the toilet with the bumGenius diaper sprayer (which doubles as a bidet, if you're into that sort of thing). Some say you can throw the dirty diapers of exclusively breast fed babies straight into the washer since breast milk poo is water soluble. I think that's kind of gross and gDiapers recommend the poo be rinsed off anyway, so that's what we do.
3. When we're out, the cloth insert (and liner and gPants if necessary) go in a wet bag in the diaper bag. I take care of it when we get home. No big deal.

Washing:

1. When it's time to wash, the bag and diapers all go into the washing machine. We wash them on hot and use half the detergent we would for a normal load (per gDiapers instructions). We use Kirkland Signature Environmentally Friendly detergent. 
2. I throw the gPants in with the cloth inserts (and burp rags, and other baby things sometimes) in when I remember to. Most of the time though, if a little pee or poo gets on the gPants (usually once or twice a day for us), I just give it a quick hand-wash in the sink. I'm not about to do a whole extra load of laundry just to get the gPants clean. We have a small bottle of detergent in the bathroom for this purpose.

Wee little bottle of detergent.

What we found out that makes it easier:

1. 2 cloth inserts are really necessary, if you don't want to be changing a diaper every hour. GDiapers  only recommends 2 (hemp sides together) for sleep time, but I just can't change a diaper often enough to prevent leaks when there's only 1 insert. So, 2 it is. We rarely have leaks this way.

Double stuffed and ready for action

1. The diaper sprayer. OH man. We used to use the peri bottle from the hospital, which took for-ev-er to rinse the poo diapers. The sprayer makes a diaper change take a total of maybe 3 minutes, if that. I heard about the sprayer in this post on the Young House Love blog and it is as great as it seems.
2. The perfect number of gPants for us seems to be 6. When I hand wash them, they hang to dry in our shower, and it takes a day or 2 to dry. So with 6, we always have enough clean, dry ones on hand. (They don't get dirty every time they're used.) 
3. We have 12 medium cloth inserts and 24 small ones (thinking younger babies need more frequent diaper changes). Once we found out about the need to use 2 cloth inserts, we started using a small and a medium together rather than 2 medium (less bulk in the diaper + gets more use from the smalls). Right now, we do a load of diaper inserts about every 3 days.

That's it. Cloth diapering-- easy peasy.

In other news, we're sleep training tonight-- we're using the pick up/put down method to get Xavier to learn to sleep in his crib instead of with us. Heaven help us.

2 teeth! & 4 months

X cut his 1st tooth last Thursday, and by Saturday morning tooth #2 had found its way through his little gums. He was a bit fussier than normal but teething hasn't been too bad overall.

The pediatrician gave us the ok to start solids whenever we feel ready at the 4 month visit this Thursday. On one hand, I'm afraid of my milk supply dropping & I'm intrigued by baby-led weaning-- both of which seem like better reasons to wait until 6 months. (Have you heard of baby led weaning? Basically you don't do baby food-- no purées. Love the idea.) On the other hand, I love cooking (even if my energy for it lately has been non-existent) & one of the things I've been looking forward to sharing with X is all the different foods there are out there. I'm excited to introduce him to my farmer's market favorites---berries, fresh tomatoes, squash... And his dad and I are negotiating on when babies can start having donuts. (Mom says no sugar before 1yr. Dad disagrees.) and if we can start on food now, it's hard to be patient & wait any longer. So, we'll see what we end up doing with food.

Other 4 month news... X weighs 13lbs 10oz, has 40cm head and is 23 inches long. He's on the wee side in everything but weight (and there he's only in the 25th percentile) so we don't expect him to be a football player... But maybe baseball or wrestling?

We're working on sleep still. I've been reading tons of books, but I still don't know that we're any closer to having a plan for getting X to sleep in his crib. It seems like the gentler methods aren't going to work and we may need to cry it out to get him to sleep in his crib for all naps and at night.

X is a pretty happy baby-- when he isn't tired, sick, or in pain. There are certainly bad parts every day (nap time & bed time) but most of the time I just think how lucky we are to have such a healthy, happy, mellow baby.

A good night of sleep with a 4 month old:

This is what parenthood does. This is what a good night of sleep looks like:

5:30: Baby hasn't napped well today. Looks like he'll have a 6:30 bed time.
6:30: Wrap up household things, start getting baby ready for bed
7:00 Husband comes home with dinner. Baby is now ready for bed. Wife starts trying to get baby to sleep.
7:30: Baby wakes up during transfer from arms to crib. Mom grumbles, leaves bedroom/baby's room with baby and decides to eat her cold veggie burger while Dad plays with baby.
7:45: Mom starts getting ready for bed-- because it's clear that baby is going to take a while and anyway, Mom's bedtime is approaching. (Sign number one that having a baby ages you-- 8:30 becomes your bedtime.)
8:00: Re-do bedtime routine. Nurse baby since it's been a while.
8:35: Baby asleep! Hooray!
9:00: Successful crib transfer. Yay again!
9:45: Mom goes to sleep finally
10:15: Baby is awake, and not happy to find himself in the crib. After reading about such maneuvers for babies who don't like sleeping in their crib, Mom attempts laying next to baby as much as possible while he is in the crib (it's a cosleeper hooked to the side of our bed so it kind of works). Baby is not fooled. He knows he is not in the big bed.  He screams his displeasure.
10:40: After a quick powwow, Mom and Dad decide to let baby sleep in the bed with them... again. But at least now the baby is asleep, laying on his tummy (against SIDS safety recommendations), on Mom (not comfortable for Mom, but by God it gets the baby to sleep), in Mom and Dad's bed (also against SIDS safety recommendations). Bad, bad, bad. But effective. Mom and Baby are asleep.
1:00am: Baby wakes up for a feeding. We got 2.5 hours of sleep. It was fantastic. Also fantastic- it's been 5 hours since Little Dude ate. This means he CAN go all night with only a couple of wakings for feedings. Doesn't mean he will, but at least we know it's possible. Baby goes back to sleep on Mom's chest.
5:00am: Baby wakes up for a feeding again... 4 hours after the last time! 4 hours of uninterrupted sleep for all! Hooray! Nevermind the fact that we broke rules to make it happen. Point is, we all slept. Yay!
5:45am: Baby is (wait for it).. back to sleep! He was convinced that 5:45 IS sleep time, not wake time. We're all back to sleep until...
7:00am: Mom's alarm goes off. Baby and Dad are still asleep. Mom weighs options-- get up and have a (relatively speaking) leisurely morning before work but move Baby on to the bed or crib-- which will probably wake him up, which will wake Dad up. Or let Baby and Dad keep sleeping for 30 minutes, and (probably) have a rushed morning instead.  Another 30 minutes of sleep for Baby and Dad seems the wiser course of action.
7:30: Everybody up and at 'em for the day.

The weekend in camera photos

(this post is mostly an experiment in writing blog posts on my phone)

Mom had surgery on the 9th, (minor surgery, but still, surgery). Knowing my mom is about as bad at resting as I am, I thought it would be a good weekend to visit and try to keep mom from overdoing it. I'm not getting enough sleep these days to feel safe driving for 3 hours each way, so X and I went to Vancouver by train. It was Xavier's first train ride. And X's first time being away from daddy overnight. I took lots of pictures & videos so Kenneth could see what his boy was up to. These are out of order, but here's a little of what we did & saw.

Picking up pens when pregnant...

Xavier's sleep has been regressing lately-- I'm getting less sleep now than I did when he was 3 weeks old, although now every once in a while he'll throw us a bone and sleep for a 4 hour block of time. And both Kenneth and I are at work now full-time. Talk about exhausting. Anyway, my creativitythese days is centered on finding creative ways to sleep more. But I have hilarious cousins who write blog posts that make me laugh. My cousin Ashley is VERY pregnant right now, and wrote this about picking up pens while pregnant. Enjoy.