Time with the baby.

I Love pictures with a short depth of field, and of course, I love any picture with Evelyn in them.



She can be such a goofball. I am guessing in about 4-5 years I am going to hear a lot of "hey mom, want to hear a joke?"



Love.



Yes, I take my baby out for coffee and a donut. And she sits in the window while I have a looksy at Vogue and revel in the paradox that is eating a donut whilst looking at a high fashion magazine.



Just seems...contradictory?



But if it is too contradictory and I had to choose either the donut or the high fashion magazine, I would choose the donut.

The good dog and the bad dog.

I was reading in Hebrews today and something that stuck out to me was in 13:18 "Pray for us, for we are confident that we have a good conscience in all things desiring to live honorably". I would endeavor to be able to say that. I could say " Pray for me, for I would like to have a good conscience and in all things to desiring to live honorably". I definitely have not arrived. It is hard to have a good conscience. I fear that my conscience is seared having seen so much sin, whether from the media, from experience, or from the depths of my own mind there is much I would rather have left buried yet in my desire for sin I unearthed it.

I believe though that I cannot serve two masters. As I desire righteousness I put this desire for sin away. Its like weight loss. I cannot truly desire to be athletic and yet do nothing about it. It is a passing desire if that is the case, probably not very deep seeded and more like a "oh I wish that could happen" type of thing. At least, that is my thought on it.

I was watching a movie last night with Michael and one of the parts I liked the best was a small conversation between the bad guy, an Apache "bruha" (witch doctor) and Tommy Lee Jones' character (obviously the good guy). The Bruha tells him there are two dogs inside of him, one good and one evil. They are constantly fighting, who is the one who wins? Jones' answer was "probably the one I feed more". How interesting. If I feed the good dog more, he can prevail against the evil one. Unfortunately, the same works the other way. I would like to think that even if I feed the evil dog more the good one will just be dormant for awhile but no, the good one loses ground when I feed the evil one more. The good then has to overcome a mind full of memories, a conscience defiled, and how much harder is that to do? Quite a lot.

Interesting thoughts.

Brutta Giornata

I watched the movie "Angels and Demons" (highly recommend, great movie) and ever since I have been loving the Italian language. It is my next conquest. That was just to explain the title...it means "bad day". Yes. For me its just the day, but for Michael...not such a good week. I had an ok week other than that I had to go into work and get my schedule. So lame, I never want to go back to work! Now that I know how amazing being a mother is and how everyday is perfectly satisfying just kissing chubby little cheeks I never want to leave this. La triste verita della vita (for all who have studied Latin: Italian is rather easy to understand when you have studied Latin, try it, you may be surprised.)

But back to Michael's week. He lost his leatherman. Might not sound like a big deal but it was an 80$ leatherman that he got for his 21st birthday. He loved it. It was actually on his list of favorite things. Yes, it was on the list. So that is strike one. Next up is the car. Our reliable little Saturn. He broke the windshield trying to load some wood into it. Apparently loading wood into a Saturn is a bad idea, but how else will we get it places? So thats another 130$ or so. Then today he went to go skiing, and we found out that all three of our iPods have disappeared. Maybe they got stolen along with Tom (the GPS) out of his car when he left it unlocked at my parents house. They are completely gone.

Our dishwasher is also broken, barely cleans the dishes and the drain gets plugged every other load so he is down on the floor unplugging it. Not a pleasant process. His brothers broken down car is monopolizing our shop. He has to go back to school on Monday. Also, we are realizing that two economy cars may not be enough, we need a vehicle with room. We can barely fit the baby, the dog, the two of us, a stroller, and a diaper bag in our car when we go places. Shucks. We also are not having a good time getting a house loan. When I asked Michael how the house loan was coming along he said "Well (pointed at a spoon sitting on the counter) its moving about as fast as that spoon."

On the plus side, we have many blessings. Our daughter is beautiful and healthy. Our dog is healthy and way to loving. We have amazing camera's. We have a house. We have more than enough food, heat in the winter, and one cool room in the summer. We have a stellar coffee maker.

But still, twas not such a good week.

Onesies, Nasal Spray, and Baby Socks

Well, since my diaper review was received so well by people who have written me on facebook...I will review a few more things that I would have liked to know about before I had a baby. Now...I know I am no strong voice of influence, I can only tell you my own experience.

First of all, onesies. I love onesies. Babies look so adorable when wearing a little white onesie, so babyish. I agree with whoever said babies should only wear baby clothes and let me tell you, onesies are for babies. If a big person wore a white onesie I would be a little shocked (and appalled). But I digress...so for the sizes of these cute little things I will give you a few tidbits of information that I have gleaned. Gerber makes the best onesies, but I strongly dislike their organic cotton version. The sleeves on the organic cotton are too big for the body so it looks like a little fat man shirt. The reason I like the gerber the best is because they only have two snaps on the bottom (better when you have a wiggly little baby). I have found though that the gerber run smaller, Evelyn grew out of the gerber NB after about 4 weeks but she still fits in the Carter's NB at 7 weeks. The Carter's onesies run a little longer and have three snaps on the bottom which really isn't that big of a deal but I would prefer the gerber ones for that reason. Another thing about running small, Ev went from NB Gerber to 3-6 month Gerber. She skipped the 0-3 month size completely because they were about the same size as the NB. As far as long sleeve undershirts, gerber 0-3 month fit Evelyn from the beginning and still does.



See how cute a little babe in a poofy cloth dipe with a little onesie is?



She has arm rolls to spare!



Nasal spray! Blast those boogies. People reading this that aren't interested in baby products, simply stop reading. I have so many pregnant friends right now and having just walked through the first few weeks of this unknown world of newborn baby, I have a little something to say about it. When we brought Evelyn home from the hospital I was scared beyond reason. To my shame I did cry as we left the hospital. All of our nurses were so pleasant and having the advice of our wonderful doctor who visited us every morning was invaluable. I felt so vulnerable taking my dear little baby out of that safe haven. As night time came I was nervous, how could I sleep with no one watching over this dear little girl? Then she started doing the snurgle. It was a mix of a snotty gurgle and it scared the sleep right out of me. I laid next to her small little head and listening. It sounded like she was drowning in this snurgly noise. I don't think I slept a wink that first night, I was so worried she was going to stop breathing. Our house was so dry that she had big old boogies hanging out in her nose. What was I to do?

Well call my mother of course.

She said to put saline drops in her nostril and suction her nose. Saline drops? I was worried, I didn't have saline drops. Well apparently it is easy to make saline drops by dissolving a 1/4 tsp table salt in a 1/2 cup of warm water. After putting a few drops in the little nose you suction with a bulb syringe. Has anyone else ever had trouble trying to get these drops safely into the little nose? Let me tell you they often end up in the mouth, or the eye, or all over the face. Basically anywhere but in the nose. So then what is a poor worried mother to do?

I ended up finding a saline spray that squirts a very fine mist into the baby's nose. It was super easy to use and worked like a charm. One little spray and all those boogies were ready to be suctioned out. She could breathe easy and I could (maybe) sleep soundly...for a few hours at least. Here is the spray I bought: http://www.simplysaline.com/Products_BabySterlieNasalMist.aspx




Now baby socks. I care about baby socks. They have been the constant bane on my child's outfits since she has been donning outfits. She goes strait from feet to chubby legs so socks really don't stay up well. After about 5 weeks of socks constantly falling off I discovered something on clearance at Target called "babylegs". They are basically just little baby leg warmers, and they are super cute to boot. They fit nice and snug over her socks and all the way up her chubber legs and prevent the socks from slipping. The pair of babylegs I found were on clearance so they were only $2.00 but without being on clearance they were a little to steep for me. For your information babylegs are SUPER EASY to make yourself. Just take a pair of cutesy women's knee high socks and cut the feet off. Sew a wide elastic seam under the cut end and seam it up the side to the desired width. Super easy and super cute. I'll take a picture sometime to show you the adorableness.




Thus the end of my baby advice blog. Not much wisdom here but a lot of practicalness! I love adding ness onto the end of a word to make it a verb.

Diapers.

Well good morning! (at least for me) After a night of little sleep because the babe was awake quite a few times I lay here (she is FINALLY sleeping, but she fell asleep on me and I don’t want to move!) and am quite refreshed. The only thing that is not good right now is that the wonderful coffee I just brewed is across the room and as I said, I don’t want to wake this sleeping babe in her precarious state of sleep. I have to wait until she is very asleep to move. Should be soon, hopefully the coffee is not cold by then!

The purpose of this blog is actually to review some baby products. I am no great voice in the baby product world nor do I have wonderful insight on any of the matters baby. I have however been using various baby products since the girl was born and I want to review them to give all my preggo friends insight into my experiences thus far. If it can help them know what to buy and what not to buy I would happy. It would mean saving a few more poor young couples some money!

To start, I am going to do cloth diapers. I plan on doing a different product every day until I run out of constructive things to say…it may be Friday it may be tomorrow, who knows!

Here we go.

My wonderful sister Elisabeth got a bunch of people to go in on a cloth diaper sample pack. Amazing! I had no idea what diapers to go with before, the cloth diaper world is a whole new thing. Its no longer birdseye and layered prefolds with a pin and a plastic cover. These things are high-tech! I look up cloth diapers and get phrases like “4 layer micro fiber insert with hemp liner” thrown at me. How am I to know if a 4 layer micro fiber is better than a hemp or wool or cotton…? By sampling them! There are so many different brands and fit but after almost a week of using all of the different brands every day I have decided what brands I am going to go with and I put my order in last night for 10 more dipes.

So, to start here is a link to the cloth diaper sample pack. Cotton babies is a great website but careful, they don’t always have the lowest prices! I found the best prices by looking for authorized retailers of the products. They seem to have better sales and promotions than the mother site, Cotton babies.

The first diaper I tried was a Knickernappies. It’s a fitted diaper, not a one size. The “one size” was another unfamiliar thing to me but basically it is a diaper that can fit a baby throughout the whole diapering process. Most start at 8lbs and go up to 25+ lbs. The work by having snaps up the front of the diaper that can be folded down according to the size of the baby. That is what all those overwhelming buttons are for on the front of most modern cloth diapers!

But back to this diaper. It is a yellow size small knickernappies. The fit was good and it looked cute on the babe, but my liking of it ends there. The snaps are hard to get on a wiggly baby with the way they are placed. The sides go underneath the front with to me seemed impractical and made the buttoning process even harder. I also had leaking problems when I used it and my baby is only 4 weeks old so its not like she’s got serious volume issues. The insert just tends to slide to the sides when she moves. I have used it without leaks but that was just for BM not for a big wet dipe. It did contain the BM well though!

Next, since we are on the knickernappies role, the one size. I ordered the one size one my own, it did not come in the sample pack. Bad idea! This diaper is ridiculous. First of all the advertisement says it should fit a baby that is 8lbs. Lil babe is 9 ½ lbs but it was absolutely ridiculous on her! I wouldn’t even leave it on her long enough to see if it would leak. I’m not going to break this diaper out again until she is A LOT bigger. Like my nieces size who is 18 months. It also feels kind of strange, the lining on the inside of the dipe is super fluffy. Seems like stuff would stick in it a lot more? So to knickernappies I would break it down like this (for the sized, their one size is not going to get any stars!):
Fit- 5/5 Style- 4/5 Ease of use- 2/5 Function- 2/5

Now onto Grovia. I really liked the feel of this diaper and thought it would be a winner. The material is super nice and stretches nicely. It feels very well made and up to the task. The snaps were easy to use and it was easy to size down (it is a one size) for the babe even though the sides snap in under the front panel like the knickernappies do. The snaps themselves are better quality on the Grovia dipe and easier to use. Unfortunately it did not fit well. When babe moved her legs up there were slight gaps in the middle, which could be cause she is still only almost ten pounds. I did like how the inserts are built in so that I do not have to place them myself. The insides were very heavy weight, not sure if they would allow for ANY air movement. It also looked really bunchy and uncomfy on her. This was definitely the heaviest of all the diapers. Overall, I would never buy one of these as they are the most expensive cloth diaper and definitely not worth the extra money.
Fit- 2/5 Style- 2/5 Ease of use- 5/5 Function- 3/5

Next the Kissaluvs one size. This diaper was pretty middle of the road to me. Everything about it was decent, nothing negative just a criticism. It was super poofy and made her look like a bubble butt. It was easy to put on her, it fit her reasonably well, it didn’t leak, I just don’t like how it looks. Babe is getting fat on her own she doesn’t need the assistance of a poofy diaper to make her bum look big!
Fit-4/5 Style- 3/5 Ease of use- 5/5 Function- 5/5

On to Happy Heiny’s(whats with these names anyways?!). I have these in two versions, one is a one size one is a fitted. I like the fitted but got leaks every time. It looked really cute on her and was even looking like it was almost too small. I don’t think it will fit her all the way up to 14lbs but maybe. It was very easy to put on her, the front closure is Velcro not snaps. Perfect for wiggly babies. Stuffing the liner inside was easy to do but I must not have done it right ANY of the times I have used it. No BM leaks but lots of wet ones. I have not tried the one size because it looks HUGE!
Fit- 4/5 Style- 5/5 Ease of use- 5/5 Function-2/5
Another category for this dipe would be “true to size”. Answer would be negative. It fits her now but I think these may run a little small on the fitted one, not sure about the medium and large but the small feels pretty darn small. I do like it though, wish I could get it not to leak.

Now fuzzibunz. Overall I like this diaper. It fits well, it looks cute, it’s pretty trim and doesn’t give her the bubble look. The snaps are decent. I don’t like the fact that in order to get a good fit it has to be sized. I like the one size concept, especially since babies grow so quickly.
Fit- 5/5 Style- 4/5 Ease of use- 3.5/5 Funtion- 5/5

Saving the best two for last. Bumgenius is a great diaper. I like the Velcro, never tried the snaps. This fits well, doesn’t leak, easy to stuff, has the best colors, and looks cute. I ended up buying 6 more of these. There is not much else to say, they get an all positive review.
Fit- 5/5 Style- 5/5 Ease of use- 5/5 Fuction- 5/5

Now for my favorite, the Doopsy diaper. Don’t be deterred by their websites lame “let doopsy take care of poopsy” motto. This diaper rocks. It is the cheapest one size out there, fits great, and doesn’t leak. It is also the only one size I know of that has an overnight liner that doesn’t cost as much as the diaper itself. I stocked up on the doopsy. It has snaps that are easy to use. When it’s folded down to its smallest size it still looks cute and comfy and the material stretches well. I found this diaper by chance through a video I think, random but fortunate! I would buy all doopsy and never look back if it weren’t for these two things: the Velcro closure and the cute colors on the bumgenius. Doopsy has all very bold colors, I like the bumgenius colors best. I also really like the bumgenius Velcro closure. So easy to us.
Doopsy comes in three option, R (regular) the D (double) and the SD (super duty). I found the SD to be a good buy because it comes with an overnight liner and hemp insert as well as the regular 4 layer micro fiber insert. The D comes with an extra waterproof insert that is specific to the doopsy brand. The R is the same as all the other cloth diapers, just one insert.
The site says that these diapers are good for 10-35lbs but it fits my 4-week-old great already on the smallest setting.
Fit- 5/5 Style- 5/5 Ease of use- 5/5 Function 5/5

Now for the last category: price. Doopsy is the cheapest out there for the quality. Grovia and Kissaluvs are the most expensive. Bumgenius are an ok price for the product, however they run almost 2$ more a diaper than the doopsy ones do.

I bought my diapers here: Twin City Diaper Company
I was able to get the Doopsy SD for only 14.95 a piece (normally 17.95) and 6 Bumgenius diapers for a discounted price of 6 for the price of 5. Total I bought 10 diapers and spent $143.00.

Oh look at the time...

Yes, look at the time. Of course, being that it is 01:54 I am awake with little babe. She gets up every night at about midnight and stays awake alternating being adorable, eating, and taking little (like 2 minutes long) cat naps until after 02:00, then she sleeps for about 2 hours and then is up for the day. Well, she is up until around 09:00 or 10:00. Oh the schedule of a 4 week old.

It feels more like a late night right now since I only got less than an hour of sleep before being awoken by Honeylove, but it is really early morning. Four weeks ago at this time I was in labor almost ready to start pushing to get her out, how crazy it is to me! How my life has changed in four weeks. It is the best and most difficult experience of my life so far. Difficult because it is hard to love this much, hard to put myself out there to be hurt. If anything were to happen to my little dear I would cease to truly live I think. I spend far to much time worrying about her. It is even more vulnerable to me than the marriage, this intense love that takes over. I didn't know I would feel this for my child but it is almost more than I can bear! I know Michael loves me, but Evelyn didn't choose me like he did. She got stuck with me. Hopefully in the future she will choose to love me too and not just love me because I am her food and comfort and jump at her every need.

But on to my accomplishments as a mother. My little mothering accomplishments may seem mundane or useless to you who are so far ahead of me (mom, Beth, Sara, Kris) but to me these things are revolutionary. To know that I am a mother, I have the knowledge, I have the ability, I am empowered. Yes, empowered. To deal with spit up, messy diapers, crying, hunger and a messy house. So take it. (I got the power!)

Anyways.We have had a little problem today, I say "we" because mine is a laundry problem, hers is a spit up problem. They walk hand in hand. She has been spitting up copious amounts and its sad, poor little dear. I looked up different reasons that could be causing all of this spit up and I discovered a lot.

(thank the Lord for internet, I don't know what paranoid new moms did before cell phones and internet!)

Mainly I think she eats too fast and doesn't stop when she gets full. So tonight I tried something different. I fed her for awhile until she seemed to slow down or get uncomfortable (letting go, little legs running, making smacking noises etc.) and then I burped her and gave her a pacifier. Wow! She took the pacifier and it kept her quiet and content. She didn't spit up after that. I realize now that just because she cries and will eat doesn't mean she needs to eat. She went to sleep happy and easily. I feel slightly accomplished, I conquered my baby for the night.

Honeylove.

Yes, that is how I refer to Evelyn most of the time. My little honeylove. Poor little honey has had a sour tummy the last few days. Every two hours we go through the arduous process of trying to nurse, she is hungry but won't latch on because her poor tummy hurts. She just sits there and cries and cries until she has swollen red eyes and is her little lip is quivering. Then I don't know what to do. I try anything to get her to nurse, obviously (because she is starting to get chunky) she does nurse well and eventually after a lot of crying she will eat. Its a hard experience for both of us though.

Today we tried a little gripe water, it seemed to work initially, at least it got her smacking her lips enough from the taste that she nursed well after having it. But then when I had her in the swing (finally sleeping!) she starting sounding like she was drowning in her throat, and then she screamed out in her sleep so I went to pick her up. She looked so pale with her contrasting red eyes from all the crying. Now I have her sleeping on me, she scared me with how pale she looked and then she was so floppy and pliable poor Momma almost had a breakdown. I held it together though, even Michael sitting right next to me didn't notice.

Too many scary aspects involved when trying to take care of such a little and vulnerable person. I have been on the verge of calling my doctor all day, asking her what I should do. I don't know if my diet has her tummy upset, or if its just normal. The amount of her crying the last few days does not seem like it could be normal. I just want to know that she is doing ok, if something I am doing is making her not do well than I will change that. ugh...this is even harder than marriage! Oh the things they (the infamous they) don't tell you.

Poor little honeylove.