Quiet book ideas

Because I totally have more time on my hands than I know what to do with (eye roll), I've recently been thinking of making a quiet book for Bubba. So I've been casually pinning ideas on Pinterest, and it's made me realize that should I make everything I've pinned, Bubba will have numerous quiet books to choose from. Yeah, chances are I won't make all of them, and I'll actually congratulate myself if I even get one done. But if I work on it a little at a time, maybe it'll get done by the time he's ready to use it. Here are the ones that I LOVE:

Needs Dr. Crusher and Troi to be complete, but aren't these adorable?

That's right... a Star Trek quiet book! This is a complete book, and the picture above is just one of the pages. Those are finger puppets, by the way. How awesome of a mom would I be if I made this? But never fear... I will make them with the correct rank pips. Imagine Captain Picard being demoted. As if!

The cloud is the pocket to hold everything

This cute rainbow has snap-in pieces to help kids work on their snapping as well as their color recognition and matching abilities.

It's like Mr. Potato Head, but not.

 Build your own robot. Enough said.

Sand castles!

This double pager lets you make your own sand castle. All the bottom pieces are interchangeable, so he can really have fun with it.

My head just exploded from the awesomeness!

And finally, yes, a Harry Potter quiet book. Made by the same chick who did the Star Trek quiet book, this one is also a complete book instead of just a page or two. Now you can see why I say I will be making quiet books for the rest of my life. :) Oh, and this chick also has a Star Wars one, which is also cool. But of the 3 she has, it comes in last in my list of awesomeness.

But now that I've listed them all out, I realize I better get on it. Bubba is almost 5 months old, and it can take me a long time to get a project done. So I'm not kidding when I say I hope I get one done by the time he's ready to use it. I shall start with the Star Trek book. Wish me luck!

On the "ability" of being a SAHM

Last night, DH had his company Christmas party, where employees from all the branches come to town to have a nice meal, free alcohol, door prizes and free hotel rooms. It's a huge deal, and they go all-out. Anyway, before the party, DH told me that some of his co-workers are jealous that I am able to be a SAHM. And indeed, a handful of them mentioned to me and DH that they wished they could stay home.

The thing is, they CAN.

Now, I've thought this way long before Dave Ramsey entered my life. So I won't turn this into a "take a Dave Ramsey course" plug, although I'll admit that his program has made it a little easier to be a SAHM. But soooo many people don't realize that if they really really wanted to, and both the husband and wife agreed, one of them can stay home and raise children for a living. They just have to realize that they'd have to sacrifice on some of the more creature comforts Americans have grown to "need". And yes, it is hard. But again, if they really wanted to, they'd find a way.

Here's a list of things we've sacrificed a bit on which makes it possible for me to stay home.

1. Our mortgage is modest enough that I don't need to bring in any money to help keep the roof over our heads. And a modest mortgage means that we have a modest house. No McMansions here.

2. Both our vehicles were bought used, were paid for in cash, and are creeping up on 10 years old. We have no plans on getting a new "used" vehicle anytime soon, as we haven't saved up enough to pay in full, and a car payment would take a big chunk of our budget.

3. DH's cell phone is mostly paid for by his employer, and mine is just a simple TracFone. I can make a call and text. That's it. No camera, no WiFi, no games. It's maybe $100 a year. (No, I don't talk on the phone a lot). If DH's employer decided to stop paying for his cell phone, he'd get a TracFone, too. And like the vehicles, we don't get the newest phones that hit the market.

4. We eat out once a week. Sometimes twice, depending on what's going on. But eating out is expensive, and it's sad when you spend more on eating out than what you spend on groceries. We used to eat out a ton, but when we added up everything we spent, it gave us a wake up call that we were wasting money.

5. We no longer have cable. If DH had his way, we wouldn't have internet, either, but a girl's gotta put her foot down sometime. :) Out of everything I've listed so far, this one is by far the hardest. I liked the background noise it offered, and the trashy MTV shows I got addicted to. But when it comes down to it, we really don't need to spend $60 a month on trashy MTV shows that I could watch for free online.

6. We don't do a lot of shopping. And this might be a product of where we live, where Walmart is the best place to get stuff, but really, we take one or two big shopping trips to Fargo a year. But otherwise, there is very minimal amounts spent on clothing, shoes and whatever else other people like to buy.

7. We don't take many vacations. And by vacations, I mean "go somewhere that's more than 1 state away". We'll take an occasional weekend trip to see friends in Minnesota or go see my family in Montana. But besides gas, those are pretty cheap as we don't pay hotel costs. Maybe some day we'll take a big vacation... and of course we'd save up for it.

Anyway, those are the big things that most people don't want to give up. Not saying that everyone does all those things, but just one or two of them alone can make it impossible for someone to stay home with the kids. But if they really worked at it, I bet they'd find that they COULD stay home.

Black Friday damage

I told myself that I wouldn't go overboard, and would just get the necessities... like sizing up the diapers I really like, and most importantly, a diaper sprayer. I will not start Matthew on solids without one, because I refuse to "dunk and swish"... where you literally dunk the dirty diaper in the toilet to get the poop off.

Anyway, DH and I recently received some extra money, and we took a small portion of it for ourselves. We call it "fun money". I decided to use some of mine on cloth diapers. DH doesn't understand how in the world that could be fun, but trust me, I had a ball! He just shrugged his shoulders because I had fun buying things our baby will poop and pee in.

Unfortunately, the diaper sprayer I'd been eyeing sold out super fast, so I'm still sprayerless. I've tried to buy this darn sprayer a few different times, and every single time I go to buy it, it sells out! It's like I'm not meant to have one, and I'm doomed to a life of dunking and swishing. But if I have to pay full price for one, I will. My mistake is that I wait until they go on sale, and it seems as though others are, too. No more. I figure I have 2 months to get one, as that's when Matthew will be 6 months old, and when I want to start him on solids.

On to diapers....

Most of my existing stash is solid colors, and everything I sized up followed in that path. But there were a few new diapers I wanted to try out, and there I picked some fun prints. I'm very excited to try them out!

Rumparooz G2 One-Size Pocket

Swaddlebees One-Size Simplex AIO

Peachy Green Solo Luxe AIO

Fun, huh? DH is especially going to love that last one. He has a thing for dragons. The side snaps might throw him off though. Oh well. That's the price you pay for having an awesome diaper!

And as always, I'll review once I've gotten a good feel for how they work!

Cloth diaper update

Well, seeing as though Black Friday is coming very quickly, I thought I'd give a quick update on how it's going with the cloth.

Truth be told, I'm a little frustrated, as they continually get the stinkies. This is when detergent doesn't get completely washed out, and next time baby wets the diaper, the urine mixes with the trapped detergent and creates a strong ammonia smell. Then next time they'll not only have trapped detergent, they'll have trapped urine, too. Compounding the problem is that we have very hard water.

I've altered my wash routine many times, and I still haven't landed on the one that works. Right now, it's a warm rinse with no detergent, a hot wash with 2.5 Tbsp of powdered Tide and same amount of washing soda (to help with the hard water problem), and a few short, cold washes, as I usually still see suds after the hot wash. I've tried more detergent, less detergent, no soda, Dawn dish soap, different temps in my wash, different settings, different amounts of cycles.

Next thing I'll try is adding water manually. Since I have a front loader, it uses significantly less water, and as I pointed out in one of my previous posts, you want more water with cloth diapers. I should have just started using more water from the beginning, but I'd read many wash routines from women with my same washing machine, and most didn't need to add water. So I trusted it'd be the same for me. Nope, not looking like it.

I've already stripped all my diapers 3 times, and today I noticed "the smell" again, so another strip will be happening soon. My prefolds are the worst culprit, but fortunately, they're the easiest to fix, even if only temporarily. All I have to do is boil them for 15-30 minutes and then run them though a rinse. The first time I did this, I couldn't believe the grossness of the water after I was done. It was cloudy and yellowish. My other diapers are trickier, because you can't (or shouldn't, rather) boil them since they have elastic and/or plastic snaps. I don't want to completely destroy the diapers, so I use RLR. I still haven't figured out what's in it, but needless to say, it didn't really help much. But I did ALL my diapers, so next time, I'll boil the prefolds and do RLR with my covers and pockets... that way the load will be smaller.

And all I could think of is that I might be super lucky that Matthew hasn't developed ammonia burn or diaper rash from this yet. I might have to strip diapers every month, but if it means he's rash-free, then I'll gladly do it.

Anyway, I've been making a list of new diapers to buy for Black Friday. Won't be a lot, and DH is fighting me over buying more, but some of the diapers we have are sized, and Bubba will soon outgrow them. I have also added a few single diapers of brands I haven't tried yet, but get good reviews. This one I'll have to rein myself in on.

To buy:
6 Thirsties Duo Wrap diaper covers, size 2
4-5 FuzziBunz perfect size diapers, medium
1 swim diaper
2-3 trainers
1 diaper sprayer
RLR
CJ's BUTTer

Looking at:
Rumparooz OS diaper
BumGenius Elemental
BumGenius FreeTime
Kawaii Baby Goodnights
Thirsties fitteds
SoftBums Omni

Yes, you read correctly... I put trainers on the list, even though Matthew isn't even 5 months old yet. And knock on wood, but judging from the fact that he H.A.T.E.S. to be wet, I want to be prepared in the off-chance that he'll potty train early (as in, before Black Friday 2013). I just have to find the right trainers, because if he does PT early, he'll be smaller, and if he doesn't go early, the small sizes won't fit him. So I won't get many, and I'll just sell them off if he doesn't fit them.

Overall, it's going pretty well with the cloth diapering... stinkies aside. Sometimes I just wish I could slap a disposable on him and call it good, but that's not too often. DH even likes cloth, which is surprising. Now if I could only get him excited about buying more of it... :)

Hospital recovery for me

I'm writing this out, because when I was pregnant, I had only a vague idea of how recovery would go, and that recovery would be from a normal vaginal birth. Obviously, I had no plans in getting a c-section, so I didn't even think about what would come after getting major surgery. So here are my memories of it... should have written this down a long time ago, while it was still fresh in my memory. But alas....

First thing we learned, was that when you're in the hospital after having a c-section, it was preferable to let the baby sleep in the nursery instead of in your room. The first night, DH slept at the hospital and the baby was in the room, too. We got pretty much no sleep at all. Matthew cried a lot, and as new parents, we had no idea what was going on. I was not allowed to get out of bed (not that I wanted to), so DH did the vast majority of the care at this point. So we decided it was in everyone's best interest to let the nurses take care of Matthew at night. That way we could get some rest, and if he needed to feed, they'd bring him in to me. The next few nights were a lot more restful with him in the nursery. And the hospital states that they encourage rooming-in, but the nurses kinda think that's a bunch of non-sense. They know that moms want/need their rest while they can get it, and having a newborn in the room will guarantee that they won't get it. They even told us, "that's what we're here for!" Okay, have at it!

I also learned pretty quickly that the instant I started feeling pain, I needed to call the nurse for more meds. If I waited too long and let the pain get too strong, it was harder to get it back under control. The percocet I got also made me tired, so I got lots of sleep with its help.

The compression socks they made me wear for almost the entire 3 day stay were a pain in the butt. I get the point of them, but after 2 days, your legs just want to be left alone. Due to the swelling I got towards the end of pregnancy, my lower legs looked pretty freaky whenever they'd take the socks off. My feet were still hugely puffy, while my ankles were making their reappearance. Then I'd have another area of puffiness and then another of normalcy. Picture is below.

Results of 3 days of compression socks

The surgeon wanted my to keep my catheter in almost the whole time, too, which was nice, but also a huge pain in the butt. It was nice because if I needed to go to the bathroom after drinking tons of water, I didn't even have to think about getting up. But it was a pain in the butt because once I started walking around, the tubing served as a convenient path for the blood that was pouring out of me (sorry). There were a few times I had to turn around and go back to my room to clean up because I was leaving paths in the halls.

Speaking of walking, they had me up on the second day. I just walked around my room a bit, and I was exhausted. But the worst part was the act of getting out of bed. That alone took a good 5 minutes the first few times since it was very painful as well as awkward with all the tubing to negotiate. I got the hang of it towards the end, but it wasn't any less painful. Walking sucked, but was necessary. They gave me a small pillow to hold against my incision and that helped, though it was awkward.

My nurses, for the most part, were awesome. Out of the half a dozen or so that I had, only 1 was questionable... she tried to give me "more" medicine for my Group B Strep. Only I wasn't Group B Strep positive. I managed to catch that in time, as she was just about ready to insert the meds into the IV. Her overall bedside manner was a little brusque, but not horrible. For the other nurses, my only complaint was when one of them came in in the middle of the night to inform me that my baby was "starving" and could they give him some formula. I wasn't intending for him to have formula, but since she worded it like that, it set off my new mom panic alarm. YES! GIVE MY POOR STARVING BABY FORMULA!!!! I was a little annoyed afterward, because one should never use the word "starve" on a brand new mom. They also gave him a paci, which I also didn't intend for him to have, but honestly, I saw that it was either using ME as a paci or an actual paci. I had no intentions of the former, so paci it was. That was a good decision.

The food was alright. Breakfasts were awesome, but lunch and dinner were subpar. I would have asked DH to bring me Taco Bell, but never really had the thought until my food had actually arrived. Oh well.

Nursing was interesting. They put him on a boob as soon as I was out of recovery, and since I couldn't sit up, the lactation consultant just laid him face down on my boob. Not my favorite position, but it's all I could do at that point. Later on, I was able to nurse in the normal position, as well as a modified football hold. He latched really well on one side, but had difficulties on the other. My milk came in on the 3rd day, and one boob produced more than the other. Yes, the one with more milk is the one he latches well on. To this day, I have the same "good" boob and "bad" boob.

I had plenty of distractions for when the baby was sleeping or in the nursery, but I didn't partake in many of them. DH & I watched a movie or two, watched a few episodes on HGTV, or played on the internet. But on the whole, I just wanted to sleep. And sleep I did. It was lovely.

The day of discharge was a bit rushed though... apparently 3 women had called in and were on their way in to have their babies, so the nurses were all busy getting ready for the rush (in my hospital, it's rare to have more than 2 in labor at the same time, so they staff accordingly). So we got signed out quickly and the LC came down with us to make sure our carseat was installed correctly. It was. Then we got in the van and drove home. Oh, and it was also hot as blazes out.

The swag we got from the hospital was: a basket of food stuffs from the cafeteria; the pillow I used to walk around with; the paci they gave him while in the nursery; a flannel burp cloth; a package of Pampers diapers; a package of wipes; a gift set of formula; rectal thermometer; nose sucker; baby wash; baby lotion; small wash bowl; gauze; anti-bacterial ointment; a silver spoon and a Halo swaddle sleep sack. Oh, and they let me take home a few gauze undies, ultra huge pads and some of those waterproof sheet things they put on the beds.

Sorry for the way I wrote this. I mainly wrote this late at night over many days, so it doesn't flow at all. Also not helped that I had a hard time remembering what actually happened. But whatever. I got it done, and that's all that matters. :)

Christmas gift ideas

The closer it gets to Christmas, the more I think about what to get Matthew. And it's hard, because there's so much I want to give him, but then I realize we're still doing Dave Ramsey and that there are limits. Limits are okay, as DH & I aren't super big into holidays, and we want to teach our children that Christmas isn't *just* about getting gifts. But I still want to have fun. So with that in mind, I started formulating gift ideas. And then one day....

On Pinterest, I came across something that I thought was a great idea... the "Four Gift Rule". It can be so easy to overbuy, so I think this will help keep us in check.

1. Something they want
2. Something they need
3. Something they wear
4. Something they read

See? Awesome in its simplicity.

My problem though, is going to be that most of the things I want to buy for Christmas, he'll actually need/want to use before then. So I have some thinking to do about it. Nonetheless, here's my list:

WANT
I think Bubba really wants a jumperoo. His head control is getting better everyday, and he loves to kick his legs, so this would be perfect. But I don't know about waiting until Christmas for something he'll be ready to use sooner than that. I dunno... I just want to get my money's worth if we get this. I don't know what he'll want otherwise. We have a TON of toys given to us, and I'm pretty sure my mom will shower him in toys as well.

NEED
Although I have to get DH on board with it, Bubba will need an amber teething necklace. I've heard awesome things about them, and am eager to try one. Again, we could get this sooner, because he's already showing signs of teething. But I suppose waiting until Christmas will work, too. After all, all his teeth aren't going to pop out all in one day.

WEAR
With Bubba's fluffy butt, putting jeans on him is difficult, as the ones that will fit over his ghetto booty are too big everywhere else. I came across these jeans one day a few months ago, and I decided that these might be the right jeans for him. They're Project Pomona's... jeans made specifically for babies in cloth diapers, although even babies who wear disposables can wear them, too. They have an adjustable waist band and cute cuffs on the legs, which gives them more life than regular sized jeans, as there are 3 pants sizes in each pair. So I think they'll be worth the money.

READ
I also came across this idea on Pinterest... buy a Christmas book, wrap it up, have the kids open it up on the 24th, and then read it to them before they go to bed. We can get away with this this first Christmas, but after that, the kid(s) will get a Christmas book AND another book to go in this category.

So there you have it: my initial Christmas gift list for Bubba!

I'm here!

Yes, I am alive! I just haven't gotten much time to blog. See, I like to write everything all at once. To do otherwise, my writing turns into a choppy, hard-to-follow mess. And I'm sure you all appreciate me not doing that often. :)

Anyway, Matthew is now 10 weeks old, and the love of my life. He's a pretty easy baby, not too fussy, and is a smiley baby. Nonetheless, he's pretty high-maintenance, like all babies tend to be. I'm lucky if I can clean just one little thing a day. Yeah, it'd be easier if his sleeps during the day weren't only 10 minutes long, but by the same token he usually only gets up once during the night, so I'm okay with that.

Having fun during Nakey Time!

He's meeting some good milestones, and DH & I are both in love with him the more he becomes interactive. His favorite thing right now is to get a diaper change. We usually let him have 5-10 minutes "nakey" time before we put the new diaper on, just to let him air out. That's the bad thing about cloth diapers... they're pretty non-stay-dry. The ones that are, Matthew HATES. So he sits in wet diapers (which he generally doesn't mind unless he's super super wet). Anyway, Matthew loves nakey time. He talks, smiles and laughs with whomever is changing him, and this is the only consistent time in which he's happy. Not to say he isn't like this other times. It just is more consistent on the changing table.

He's kind of found his hands, which is good and bad. Good, because it means that if he drops his paci, he'll usually nom on his hands instead of fuss until one of us puts his paci back in. But bad because he's realized that his hands are connected to him, so he's taken to flailing his arms about. He's starting to learn about his feet, too, so his legs also flail a lot. And based off the jumping motions his legs do during nakey time, I think he'll love a jumperoo. Hopefully anyway.

He had his 2 month check up and first rounds of immunizations last week. He now weighs 11lbs, and is 24 inches long. The shots went as well as could be expected... he screamed for a couple of minutes and then calmed down although he was still less-than-happy. When we got home, I put him in a disposable, because the covers we usually put on him land right on the shot sites on his legs. And we used disposables for the next few days, which Matthew really liked, because he could kick his legs more. But we now know that we do not like disposables for another reason... they reek when he pees. Like, we want to gag when it happens, and it resulted in near instantaneous diaper changes. Our Diaper Genie (which we got as a gift and we decided to keep for some reason) was completely full within a day. I don't know if that's normal or not, but I'll assume "no". So we were more than okay to put him back in cloth, although Matthew doesn't think it's as awesome since he can't kick as easily.

He's now almost outgrown all his newborn sized clothes, which is sad. Again, the cloth diapers are the culprit, since they make him longer than he really is. But we'll live. Speaking of clothes, I've found that pants on a baby are super annoying. I like him just wearing a onesie. But I suppose we do live in North Dakota, so more clothing is necessary now.

And related to Matthew, but not about him per se, I've been starting to think about Christmas gifts. He'll be 6 months old by then, and I'm pretty sure he won't even know what's going on, let alone what he got for presents. But nonetheless, I've been formulating ideas, and I think I landed on what I want to get. I'll write another post with all that on there, so you'll have to wait! :) Hope it won't be that long before I post it, but you never know...