Me: Losing the Preggo Look

The most challenging part of pregnancy is not the morning sickness or lack of energy, it is after the baby is born.  I love holding an infant, but it is not easy balancing sleep and gazing at the new baby.  With the first two children I felt like there was actually time to rest and even take a nap.  Newborns are like the perfect sleep aid, nursing puts one right to sleep.  Unfortunately, sleep during the day is rarely possible.  Even if I could find a time when all my kids happen to nap, I need the time for other things like meal prep and such.  Cooking for a big family require more time chopping, unless you happen to be the perfect plan ahead mom who makes all the weeks meals in advance when the husband is home. 

I have thought that maybe I could just work everything out perfectly and there would be more time to rest, but spacing out the work makes it less stressful.  Cooking is my retreat from the crazy household.  It is a place for creativity (when my baby is actually sleeping).  One would be surprised at how relaxing it is to make a salad or mix home ground wheat for a fresh loaf of bread.  Now that I think about it, I could create the perfect workout by just spending time in the kitchen.  My arms are still aching from making homemade tortillas.

Working out is so helpful for feeling some kind of well being after having a baby.  It is so hard to find time alone, but if it is possible sometimes working out can quiet the mind a bit.  If I had had a stressful day, putting on a Jillian Michaels dvd really helps me.  Then there are times when I am in a more quiet frame of mind, so I will use a New York City Ballet workout dvd.  These options have been great.  Also for strength training I go back to Erin O'Brien.  She is a mix of the ballet workout and Jillian Michaels.  Then if I do not feel like using the dvds I have, I search on the Netflix watch instantly workouts.  I like the Crunch workouts the best. 

My problem is not trying to workout, though finding the time is hard, it is being patient with the fact that it takes time to get one's body back after nine months of pregnancy.  In my case, I am looking at three years of pregnancy.  I had a two year gap in between my first two kids and my most recent three.  During that two year gap, I never reached my goals for getting back into shape, so I guess one could fairly say, I have months of work ahead of me and I need to stop being to hard on myself.  Let's face it, women want to look their best at all times.  I want to as well.  However looking my best will have to wait.

For now I can focus on workouts and eating healthy, but feeding my newborn has to be the priority.  Some people lose all the baby weight in a couple of months with or without breastfeeding, but that is not the case in my experience.  If you happen to be like me, remind yourself that it took nine months to grow a baby and it will take up to two years to fully recover.  I have not found a lot of stats regarding moms like me who have had several babies in a row, but I can imagine it might take me longer.  I will just have to wait and see. 

Projects : Cloth Diapers

I mentioned in my Baby #5 blog that making cloth diapers was becoming an obsession.  I was not kidding.  It is way too much fun.  The first round of cloth diapers for Bria were pretty standard.  I made some All In One diapers and some covers to go over a few newborn sized fitted diapers I had made in the past.  I tried all different ways of making diapers such as wool covers from an old sweater, FOE(fold over elastic) to make the other five covers.  I used velcro for everything because I do not own a snap press.  There was a process of carefully selecting the fabrics I wanted to use.  I bought two yards of hemp fleece and one yard of PUL (yellow with polka dots).  My pattern was a tracing of an older (bought) newborn sized diaper.  Before the baby is born it is hard to judge the exact measurements a diaper should be.  I have also traced a newborn disposable diaper in the past too. 

This time around I am trying to perfect my skills.  I have an actual baby to measure and I found a pattern a friend of mine told me about for free on the internet. ( http://littlecomettails.com/2008/11/oldies-are-goodies-but-freebies-are-oh-so-sweet/ ) This pattern is called the Tighty Whitey Hipster diaper.  I also attempted to make my own pattern along side of this with my own baby's measurements to see what I liked the best.

My supplies were slightly different this time around.  I bought 3 yards of PUL in fun colors like Plum, Sage, and Spice from http://www.diapersewingsupplies.com.  This stuff is really nice high quality stuff.  I also purchased 1/4" elastic, 3 yards of loop tape, and 1 yard of hook.  There is also a free trial product with purchase so I requested some FOE in vanilla (2 yds enough for one large sized diaper).  Then I thought to save some cash I would search for old fabric to make the rest of the diaper. 

I got together old pairs of sweatpants, receiving blankets, maternity tee shirts, and some old jersey knit pillow cases.  Flannel and jersey knit work great for diapers.  With a focus on AIO diapers this time I needed to find large enough pieces of fabric for the inside part of the diaper.  One maternity shirt could make two diapers this way, or if it was cut fancy I would use the plain back for the diaper and the other side for insert layers.  Flannel receiving blankets were easier to use.  Both are nice fabrics against the baby's skin.

Next one needs to make six layers of fabric for inserts.  This takes up more fabric that I imagined.  I used left over pieces of shirts, blankets, and I even found some old tees just to cut up for inserts.  It was a great way of getting rid of clutter in my closet too.  I have to admit by the last couple of diapers I was running out of old cloth around the house, but somehow managed to find just enough to make seventeen diapers.  I have enough PUL for 24 but at this point I was also all out of elastic.  Due to my budget I am calling it quits with 17 diapers.  This lasts about a day and a half, but I have been washing diapers every day since my first two diapers are a little bit big and Charis is wearing them (my second youngest).  So really I am working with 15 diapers and a newborn.

I liked my own pattern enough to make two diapers out of it, but it was a bit smaller than the one I found on the internet, so I decided to make most of my diapers from the internet pattern.  These are really cute diapers with lots of extra room.  I love the fold in taps to keep the hook from getting stuck to other diapers in the wash.  Also this allows for the diaper to be washed open making it cleaner and easier to dry.  I must say I am not complaining.  Even my one and half year old looks great in the larger version of this diaper and there are not major leaks.  The leg holes are slightly large for my infant, but we have only had a couple leaks from her (usually when I have put off changing her since I do have 5 kids at this point and always something to do).

Now that my stash is full of newborn and size small diapers I am ready to start thinking about making medium diapers.  This size will most likely be used for much longer than the smalls.  My newborn diapers only were in use for around five weeks.  I am out of old cloth, so I will most likely be looking at what kind of fabric I like the best and buying that.

Fabric choices are more complex than I thought.  For an AIO diaper the biggest problem with fabrics like hemp fleece is that they take FOREVER to dry.  Hemp is super absorbent making it a great diaper fabric, but I think I will stick to using it as one layer for the inside of the diaper or making boosters out it.  I would like to try hemp jersey.  Maybe a thinner fabric will dry better.  Jersey has been my favorite fabric so far.  The old tee shirt diapers are soft, easy to clean, and fast to dry.  Flannel requires a longer drying time, but it has been fairly easy to remove toddler solids off of it.  Everything depends on priorities.  If I lived somewhere dry and hot I would just dry my diapers outside, but that is hardly ever an option in Port Townsend, WA.  Keep your climate in mind when picking out fabrics.  Dry time is important because sometimes you are down to your last diaper when the rest are in the dryer.

As for types of diapers, I have tried them all now.  They are all great in different situations, but I would have to say a homemade AIO is the easiest diaper to use.  There is less to put in a diaper bag for trips, less to teach your husband about, and it is the closest thing to a disposable diaper.  If you make your own diapers, cost is less of a problem.  One can make 18 to 24 diapers for around 30-50 dollars.  If you combine buying PUL with old fabric, it is a fairly cost effective way to have a decent stash of cloth diapers.

If one wants to purchase diapers, consider getting a few AIOs for the road and maybe night changes.  Then consider something like the Flip diaper for around the house and during the day.  I like pocket diapers, such as Fuzzi Bunz, because one has more control over how many inserts are needed for different situations, but stuffing pockets all the time got frustrating and running around with inserts took up a lot of space in the washer.

Buying cloth diapers was a great introduction to the concept, but now I love making them.  It would be hard to put my creative mind away and just buy diapers at this point.  I love having control over the look, the feel, the exact size, and much more.  If I have to change diapers for seven plus years, it might as well be fun. :)  I am already thinking about the way of designing the perfect diaper bag for cloth diapering.  I will post more on this project in the future.  Enjoy the diaper photos.   

 

Cutting out the  Tighty Whitey Hipster diaper

Supplies                           My own pattern





More Hipsters

 Sweet Bria in my own diaper design

Parenting: The Chaos With Pee

There are these wonderful times in life where one thinks that potty training means all the diapers go in the trash and I am left with just a few messes to clean up.  That is completely wrong, at least it has been for me.  If anyone has found a tidy way to potty train, please teach me.

At first it can go either way, one might think my child is amazing and there have only been a couple of clean up times.  Then there is the child who leaves mess after mess on the floor, even after being escorted to the potty every ten to fifteen minutes.  Not to mention there are so many stages of potty training, it is hard to remember them all.  It took over a year for me to stop worry about my first two kids having accidents.  Even after that time I found out my daughter enjoyed using the heating vent as a chamber pot in the night.  Um...yuck.

I thought poop was actually less work than pee.  It tends to stay wadded up in a child's clothing instead of soaking the place.  My latest potty training journey has taught me otherwise.  I have a little boy who does not mind sitting in a mess and even playing in the poop if it happens to fall down his leg.  This is challenging.  The first two kids did not like to be dirty and hated being wet.

My third child has finally gotten to the point where it is less of a hassle to go in the potty most of the time.  It is refreshing to go from, "NO POTTY" all the time to him asking to use the potty.  This has taken months!  I love the little guy, but it has been so frustrating. 

When I finally thought we were getting somewhere I noticed the boys' bedroom smelling like a bathroom.  My first thought was to check the heat vent.  This was the last place a child decided to pee, so it had to be that again.  I was only partly right.  After days of spraying the heat vent with this great stuff the carpet cleaners gave my mom, I realized the smell was not going away.

Nope there was another spot in the room and I was going to have to sniff around the room like a puppy.  Then I found it...near the heating vent, but also near the dresser.  Yes, it was in the closet.  What a great place to hide pee from mommy.  I know that my son is not the first because this story has been told to me before. 

The challenge is getting worse.  I am cleaning the floor every day.  The smell will not go away and I know he is still peeing in the closet.  There has to be a way to make it stop.  Why am I being a drama queen about something so silly?  The truth is, I just got one room to smell nice again and now we are dealing with another one.  I am so thankful we never got a pet!

Food: The Grocery List

How does one even go about writing a grocery list?  Do you really need to take the time to do this?  A basic grocery shop depends on many factors.  How many times a week does one want to go shopping?  What is the family budget and for how many people will the food be for?  Are all the meals and snacks going to be eaten in the home?  I guess one could write a long list of questions just revolving around writing a simple shopping list. 

My mother had a notepad on the fridge and every time we would run out of something it went on that list.  She would add things on sale to prepare dinners, but other than that we had the same staples in the house.  I remember having the same breakfast and lunch for years.  I had two toaster waffles and for lunch a turkey sandwich, an orange, and a granola bar.  We always came home to a freshly prepared meal with some kind of meat, vegetable, and starch.  Food preparation was simple. 

I went in to married life thinking this is how it is done.  We would go to maybe a couple of grocery stores to get things on sale and our meals would be modeled a lot like the ones I grew up eating.  Meanwhile, my husband was looking forward to his bowl of cereal (more like a couple of them) and peanut butter and applesauce sandwiches.  Sometimes we would get provolone cheese and hummus.  Since, I was not in a dinner routine yet, I spent lots of time looking through the two cookbooks I owned and writing down the ingredients as a part of my shopping list.  Most of the time I was too tired to cook the meals I planned and we went out to eat.  As a couple, this was an expensive option, but we only needed to buy for two people. 

I tried to work in a budget of 75 dollars a month.  We would buy two or three different fruit options, four to five veggies, some pasta, some rice, a box of cereal, yogurts, and a few other things.  Our list changed as I quickly realized that boxed cereal was costing us a fortune because one box does not feed a hungry husband more than two days at best.  It was also hard to stick to the budget at first because we did not own basic things like salt, pepper, and olive oil.  Regardless of this simple structure, it only really worked for our family until we had more than two kids.  Granted our budget got up to 100 to 125 dollars a week with a couple of kids.

When baby number three came along we started to spend more and more money, not to mention I spent so much time at the store.  I no longer had as much order because I was buying food that kids could eat, baby food, and a few things that adults might enjoy.  I never trained my kids to only eat kid friendly foods like mac and cheese and chicken nuggets, but choking was something I wanted to avoid as well. 

Then we discovered the wonderful world of buying in bulk.  At this point we all loved eating steel cut oats for breakfast, ate a decent amount of rice, beans, lentil, eggs, and other things that would be good to buy in large quantities.  When we got our tax refund, we went ahead and spent about 600 hundred dollars in bulk food from Azure Standard.  It was great to have a large supplies of things.  All I had to do is buy local produce and dairy.  Our list was shorter and we seemed to save money too.  I noticed about a fifty dollar difference at the store and I  am sure out rice, oats, and other supplies were lasting three to six months.  Some things were lasting even longer. 

Our family food budget became more predictable and easier to keep under control.  I spend around 150 dollars a week at the store and around 200 hundred dollars a month with Azure Standard.  My husband and I constantly comment that if we did not have so many kids, we would not have figured out how to save so much money.  What would be the point in having 50 lbs of oats for four people?  How long would it take to get through this?  With our current family size I think it lasts about seven months.  Believe it or not, we actually see the bottom of our bucket before the end of the year. 

Instead of having a single grocery list I have a favorites on the Azure Standard website,  and I have a basic local list.  I try to mainly shop at our food coop because I really want to support local farmers and often it is cheaper to find local organic food than it is to buy organic at the big chain grocery stores.  I may have a handful of recipes I use most of the time, but because I love spending time in the kitchen we try new things once in awhile too.  Trying to find the most effective way to budget and shop has been important.  Our families needs are growing and changing and my desire to buy healthy organic food is increasing.  I no longer buy meat because it on sale, as do I no longer buy my produce this way, but analyzing our diet is another story for another day.