Cloth diapering... again

I don't know what made me all if the sudden really keen on cloth diapering baby #3, but all if the sudden I got it in my head and couldn't get it out.

With Finn and Elle a friend had given me basically everything I would need (minus a few covers) to cloth diaper full time - for FREE! (Thanks Glenna!)

We were on a tight budget since Conor was still studying and not working so it was a no-brainer. I never did it full time, and I didn't start with either if them until they were a few months old... but I saved some good cash doing it.

But those things are bulky, and there was no way they were going to fit in my suitcase. Because I had bought a few quality covers, a diaper pail, and a few extra diapers off my SIL, I decided to sell the whole lot used for $20... a great bargain for someone who wants to try it out. They were very simple diapers, but then if you know you are into it, you could always add more quality ones as you go.

With Finn and Elle I only cloth diapered when we were in Canada - so not even a year for Finn, and about a year for Elle.

When I found out I was pregnant, as I said, I started to think about cloth diapering this baby.

Some of the nice new fangled diapers cost $15+ per diaper!  I don't think I can spend that much - even if they are amazing, and do save you money in the end... I like to save MORE money, haha.  So I had decided I was just going to buy flat or prefold diapers.

For those of you who don't know.  Flat diapers are just that, a flat piece of flannel, that you fold and then pin or clip on baby, and throw a diaper cover over.  You can make them or buy them, for generally about $1 each.  Use two at a time if it's naptime or bedtime.  Cheap... oh, and they dry really quick in the sun or dryer. Prefolds are kind of like flat ones, but they've been folded and sewn in the middle so that there's about 5 layers in the center, and then you sometimes have to fold a bit in the front or back depending on the babies size, again pin or clip and add a diaper cover.  These are about $1.50 each I think.

Then there's pocket diapers and all-in-ones.  Pocket diapers are like a shell, and you add an insert (or two) in the pocket... they generally have clips or velcro.  And then all-in-ones are just that, all in one, you just put them on.  These ones take longer to dry because the inserts are thicker.

Most of the time you can buy diapers that are one size or S,M,L.

Alright, so I was just going to look at prefolds or flat diapers, but then I went on ebay to see if I could find any gently used diapers that people were selling, and I found this company, My Little Ripple.

They had really cheap pocket diapers, one size fits all, for less than $4 each (and even less than that if you bought in bulk).

So I went ahead and got 10, decided I would see how they went with Elle, and if I liked them I would buy enough to cloth diaper Elle and baby.

They came soo quickly in the mail!

So pretty!
This is their whole range of colors except pink.  I didn't get pink because I think baby #3 is a boy :)

Had to wash them first, too bad it was a rainy day so they had to dry in front of the fire place.

 I'm actually a lot more keen to do this since they are so cute! haha!

Elle trying on her cute new diapers for the first time!!

 So she's worn them for one day, and we did have one leak... but that's my fault because I'm not used to having to change diapers so often.  With disposables, if she doesn't poop, she can go hours and hours in one, but you need to change cloth diapers every 2-3 hours.

Diaper bum crawling around.
"Crawling" I should say, because when she has bare knees she just crawls on her hands and toes!  It's so cute!

I'm really really happy with these - and especially for the price!!  I'm washing them as we speak and gonna do one more round with them, and if I still like them I'm going to go ahead and order another 20 and some extra inserts... I think that should be enough to cloth diaper two kiddos.  We don't have a very big washing machine, so I would have to wash before I get down to zero diapers anyways.

I did the math with these diapers.  Currently Elle goes through about 5 or 6 disposables a day, at 23 cents a diaper (and those are the cheapest diapers I can find here).  After I have bought 30 diapers and 10 extra inserts I will have spent $90 on these.  If you do that math, that means I'll have these paid in about 4 months with Elle.  If you start from a newborn where you are changing disposables more frequently, that will pay for itself in closer to 2 months!

I'll let you know how it goes!

The state of their closets

I'm getting so bored of Finn and Elle's clothes!

AND a lot of Elle's clothes are becoming too small, especially her shirts, but every store I look at has all summer clothes out.  IT'S NOT SUMMER YET!

What are we supposed to do about our poor kids whose long sleeve shirts don't fit anymore?

I'm getting tired of having to change 4 pieces of clothing whenever she eats and orange, or goes crawling around outside after Finn has had the hose on (tights, pants, onesie, shirt).  It will be so nice when it's time to eat to just be able to pull off ONE piece of clothing off Elle and not have to go through at least 2 wardrobe changes a day! haha

So I'm looking forward to a season change here!

I also just love when the weather warms up and I get to see my baby girls chubby arms and legs!

There is light at the end of the tunnel though - I have Finn in a t-shirt today (to which he started crying and saying that he didn't want his arms poppin' out), and Elle just has socks on instead of tights under her pants!

Things to pray about

I don't know if this will be an issue this pregnancy, but it's something you could keep in your prayers if you are the prayin' type :)

With my last pregnancy we found out at 32 weeks that I had a really short cervix, which could (and did) lead to preterm labor.

It was never checked with Finn, but my doctor guessed that it was probably that way with him as well, which is why he was 2.5 weeks early.

I wasn't put on full bed rest, thankfully. But I just have this fear that if I have the same cervix issues I will be put on bed rest and can expect pre-term labour (or worse) again.

Again, it hasn't been assessed yet, but it's something that's on my mind.

Obviously I will do what's needed to have a healthy baby, but I don't wanna get put on bed rest! Haha

Also it would mean that I would have all of my prenatal appointments at the hospital, which is a PAIN with two kids, as opposed to being able to just see my GP.

So please pray :) They are going to try to book me an appointment with the hospital doctors in between my 10th and 12th week to assess the situation.

*The picture of Elle is from the doctors office, she got up in that chair all by herself and was quite proud of it!

Then she climbed right onto the table - haha.

Finn the grouch

Finn has been so grumpy lately. Right from the start of the morning yelling no to everything and just being generally disagreeable.

I *think* it's because he hasn't been getting enough sleep.

He hasn't really napped for a long time, but he has a really good quiet time while Elle naps.

Then since he was sharing a room with Elle he was going to bed a bit later and then since she's up so early he was getting up earlier (not as early as her, but consistently before 7am)

So our guest is gone now so I put him in the spare room for nap time yesterday and he had a nap!

Then we were able to put him to bed at least 20 minutes earlier than when he was in Elle's room, and he slept past 7 today.

So I'm hoping that we won't have any Oscar the Grouch today!

We have a play date with some friends that have been living in the UK. (They are from here). She was a few weeks pregnant before I got pregnant, so he's just older than Finn. And then they have a little girl. I think she's probably close to 2 though, so a bit older than Elle.

Can't wait to see my friend again and meet her kids!

Succumbing to temptation

I finally gave in to my bread sticks temptation.

So far the amount of work has outweighed my desires... but today the kids were napping and I had already had a rest and was feeling half decent so I went for it.

And BOY am I glad I did.  These were DE-LISH!

I used a yeast recipe this time.  I found one online that specified they were supposed to be like the olive garden/pizza hut breadsticks (depending on what you seasoned the top with).

All in all I'm very happy with them.  I think I didn't *quite* bake them long enough, but that's an easy fix next time.  And all I put on them was butter and parmasen... next time I'll make sure I have garlic salt, I think that would make them a lot tastier... maybe some sea salt too.

YUM!  There's 2 left which I will be eating before bed tonight (and lots of sauce to freeze so that it's there next time I make the breadsticks.)

This was a half of THIS recipe - Unfortunately we don't have a big enough oven to really do the whole recipe, otherwise I totally would have!!

Bumming me out

I'm obviously addicted to Facebook - that's just a given.

I check it constantly and it helps me feel connected with everyone back in Canada.

So what happens when Facebook isn't working right?

I feel lost, and depressed!

For some reason when people comment on my wall posts, they aren't showing up on my Facebook.

I have my iPhone set to notify me when someone comments, and with that I see a little snippet of what they have written, but when I go to Facebook... no comment.

And I know the person didn't just delete it or something, because its happening with 98% of the comments I get.

I just went and checked now, and some of the comments that I know were made are showing now... but some still aren't.

And it doesn't matter if I'm in my iPhone or my computer.

Even if I sign onto Conors Facebook and look at my wall, only some of the comments are there.

Soooo frustrating!

Craving!

Remember my last pregnancy, and my obsession with breadsticks??  TOTALLY back.

BUT I haven't caved yet.  One reason is that those other breadsticks were actually not all that great, but because they weren't yeast bread sticks they were easy to make just before lunch.

The other reason I didn't do yeast bread sticks is that I HATE kneading dough.

BUT we have a mixer now... and it has a dough hook... which means I wouldn't need to knead any dough.

I'm thinking of breaking it out and finding a new breadstick recipe online today.

We'll see!

On the pregnancy note - I've been feeling really good the last 24-30 hours!  Yesterday I felt a bit nauseous in the morning but eating a little something right away did the trick and as long as I had a snack handy I was fine.   I had a nap when the kids napped, and then I actually felt great in the evening.

I even made dinner! Normally at dinner time I'm just exhausted and want nothing to do with food.  But yesterday I had a lot more energy, and while I didn't EAT much of the dinner I made, I wasn't feeling ill or anything.

Elle was up REALLY early this morning (530 am!!) and so Conor took her for a run at 630.  Finn woke up at 645 but I brought him some books and he stayed in his room until 730, so I got to get some more sleep!

Even with that early morning and only a little more sleep, it's almost 2 now and I'm feeling alright.  Tired, but I always get tired around now, pregnant or not.  So hopefully this is the turning point for me.

Having said that, I know I really should NOT complain.  I mean, some people are sick (vomiting sick) ALL through their pregnancy.  I threw up ONCE, and I don't necessarily think it was because of the pregnancy.

Anyways, it's a BEAUTIFUL Saturday afternoon, and I'm happy right now... so that's good :)

Immunizations

In BC you just book an appointment at the health offices to have immunizations done, but here they have set days where you just go and take a number and wait your turn.

Some are during the day (which I didn't want to do, because I would have to bring Finn), but last night they had an evening one, so I left Finn with Conor and took Elle to get her shots.

Poor baby girl!  She had to get 4, and she was just STARING at the lady the whole time, glaring really.  And then cried and cried after the shots.  But then when we were in the waiting room she was fine and was being so cute, laughing and cackling, and playing peek-a-boo with people.

She got the shots at about 6pm, and normally she's had them in the morning, so I didn't know how it might affect bed time.  She seemed fine, but I decided to give her baby Tylenol right before bed just in case.  I think it ended up being a good idea!

She normally goes to bed no problem.  I might have to go in there once to give her the binky and put her blanket back on... but last night she was a monster!

And Conor was on his way to the airport to pick up Matt.  Luckily Finn was engrossed in a show about how they build semi-trucks.  I went into her room a few times and tried just rubbing her back, but she was so upset.  I finally just picked her up and walked around her room with her, and sang "amazing grace" (I've only ever had to sing her to sleep maybe 3 times)... anyways, she finally calmed down in my arms and I put her back in her crib and she didn't cry again after that.

I let Finn finish watching the show about the trucks, and by the time we brushed teeth, read a book and prayed it was 9pm! haha, late night for him.  Conor and Matt got home shortly afterwards.  I stayed up too late chatting (too late meaning 10 or 10:30... it felt like 1am to me!) and regretted it when Elle woke up at 6am with a dirty diaper and wouldn't go back to sleep!

Even Finn was up before 7, even though he went to bed so late.  Awful!

Finn & the baby

Finn has been saying some funny things about the baby.

First, the day I told him that I was pregnant, we were at poker night and all of the sudden, really loudly, he asks me where my other baby is. I just pointed to Elle and said "there's the baby" and then tried to distract him.

Most mornings after we all wake up he comes and asks me "did your baby wake up?"

One day I was I telling him that the baby takes awhile to get all ready before it will come out. Then he told me it will come out at the "hopital". He must remember going to the hospital after Elle was born.

One day when we were talking about the baby he said "maybe when Finn get big, Finn can have a baby in his tummy"

Lastly, I asked him if he thought the baby was going to be a girl like Elle or a boy like him, and he said it is going to be a girl like Elle.  So we'll see if he's right :)

Our first visitor

We are going to be using the spare bedroom for the first time this week!

Unfortunately it's not a visitor from home, but we will forgive him for not being Canadian! Haha.

We met Matt (our visitor) briefly when we were in Australia before. And then when we were planning our move to Rome we found out he was moving there as well.

If it weren't for him, we would not have known about Santa Marinella and I'm sure our stay in Italy would have been much worse off because of it!

Anyways, he's now done in Rome as well and is teaching at a Catholic liberal arts college in Sydney, Campion College. He's coming out here for just under a week I think, so he will be staying with us!

In other news, Elle now has 8 teeth!! I discovered the 8th one (to FINALLY balance out the bottom teeth!) after Finn kicked her in the face causing blood and I had to investigate (she had bit her lip).

Fun!

I'm feeling a bit gross this morning... I'm hungry but everything I think of eating makes me gag.

Cravings and aversions

This pregnancy is much like the others, so far.

I get hungry, and the longer it takes me to get food in my mouth the sicker I will feel.

I don't really remember having specific cravings with Finn, but there were aversions. Like fresh bread. I couldn't touch the stuff without feeling like I was going to hurl! It got to the point that I would have to get Conor to make my lunch for me, because by lunch I was fine with bread, but in the morning I didn't wanna go anywhere near it.

With Elle I loved me some bread sticks with marinara dipping sauce! I would make a whole batch at lunch and Finn would maybe have a piece or two and I would DEVOUR the rest!

With this pregnancy I'm finding breakfast and dinner are difficult. I'm starving at both, but nothing is seeming particularly appetizing. I do manage to eat whatever we make (except stir fry one day, two bites and I was done)... I am eating less though. I find that I can eat just enough to satisfy the intense hunger but if I eat any more than the bare minimum then I feel sick again.

BUT that means that I'm hungry half an hour later, and again, my old standby snacks aren't doing it for me. Bananas are still okay in a crunch but usually I just can't find something around the house that I want to eat.

Except junk food. Pure junk food. I've decided that this baby is trying to revive my eating habits pre-Conor where I ate macaroni and cheese whiz for dinner EVERY NIGHT... Unless I ate McDonalds or pizza. So therefore that's all I want right now. McDonalds. Pizza (pizza hut specifically). Frozen mini-pizzas. Chips. Chocolate. Bread sticks (will have to find my recipe again!)

It's awful. I have a feeling I will be gaining more weight this pregnancy than the other two!!

Fathers Day

The first Sunday of September was Fathers Day in Australia.

Lucky Conor got TWO this year.

Finn and I made a card for him.

Click on the picture and read it closely :)

Travelling

With Conor's job, comes a few travel opportunities.

He's already got two speaking engagements lined up, and a trip to Rome to defend for his doctorate.

Sometimes I will be able to join him, like on one of these trips (sadly, not the one to Rome!)

At the beginning of October he will head to Adelaide for one night, by himself.  Since Elle was born, he's only spent one night away from us, and I was able to pawn off Finn on my mom for the night... so this will be my first time with both of the kids for the night!

Then in the beginning of November he's been asked to speak in Albury, which is about a 3 hour drive from here.  The lady organizing this also mentioned that she has daughters that are DYING to babysit our kids... so we're all going to go and have a little family trip.  It will just be for one night, so hopefully the 3 hour drive there and back isn't too bad.  Maybe we'll get a little coffee date out of it :)

Then comes the big trip - his trip to Rome to defend his thesis and officially get his doctorate.  When you submit your thesis to your readers, it's usually about 3 months before you will then defend it.  Conor has been saying all along that it would be October, but because Rome shuts down for at least some of the summer, I figured it would be in November.

My birthday is in November.   My birthday where we are away from home for.   My birthday in which I turn 30 and am actually very excited about.  Conor facebooked me the other day to tell me that he had been given a defense date.  I held my breath and asked him when it is.  He said November 13th.  I sighed a bit in relief and said that at least he would be home for my birthday.  Then he broke the news that there's a conference on the 18th and 19th and he will be staying there for that.  My birthday is the 19th.  I will be all alone with the kids for probably about 10 days, and one of those days is my birthday.

He better buy me something nice!

On the mend

I am feeling SOO much better today.  Even this morning I was wondering how I would make it through the day without Conor, but I snapped out of it at 10 and have been feeling great since!

I needed to get stamps to mail something that's been in my purse for weeks, so we took a drive to the shopping center with the Elle-friendly play area.  I do need to grocery shop, but I didn't want to overdo it today.  So we just went there to get stamps and then the kids played in the play area for awhile.  So nice to get out!

Maybe after naps we'll even get out to the park for some fresh air!

Moments like these

It's moments like these that really make me wish we were back home with all of our family.

Elle's cold that she passed on to me is KILLING me. Luckily she slept pretty well last night... Finn on the other hand kept waking up coughing and with, what I'm assuming, was a site throat.

Conor eventually moved Finn into the spare room so that he wouldn't wake up Elle.

Elle woke up at 6:30, and my wonderful husband played with her in her room until he had to get up and get ready for work. What I wouldn't give to have him hone today! But he has a lecture this afternoon and had to do some finishing touches preparing for it.

Hopefully Elle will have a good morning nap. I've never just turn in the TV and let Finn watch whatever was on - if he does watch something it's just either the Bob the Builder or Thomas DVD I have... But today the TV will probably be turned on, and I'm not going to feel bad about it, but I'm going to pray I don't regret it tomorrow (and the next day, and the next day...)

Yesterday was a pajama day... Today will be too!

More colds

Now we all have colds!

Conors throat is sore, and Finn & I are a bit snuffily.

It could be worse, but it's wearing me out right now!

But these pics that Finn draw are always fun to look at!

Colds

Elle has a cold and she is MISERABLE!

It's so frustrating - there's nothing I can do to console her at home, she's happy if we go outside though.

Yesterday we went out to the park pretty much right after her nap until dinner time.

Sunday was the first day of spring and yesterday it was 21 degrees! That was a nice change! Today isn't supposed to be AS warm, but that's okay.

I am NOT a scrapbooker

I do not have the patience or creativity to scrapbook.  Which is funny, because I would THINK that I would enjoy scrapbooking.  I always loved going to school supply stores.  And actually, some of the mommy bloggers I read write about trying to organize their scrapbooking stuff - and THAT sounds exciting to me (I'm soo lame!) but it's just not something that I can do.

I tried once, in Australia.  I spilt the glue twice all over the coffee table and packed everything away and never looked at it again!

But I do love taking pictures - especially of the little ones.  And I want albums of them, but the ones where you actually print off the pictures end up so bulky, and not nearly as pretty.

Which is where photobooks come in handy!  I first did one with our wedding pictures.  I think I got the idea from Conor's sister when she was organizing her wedding and told me that a lot of professional wedding photographers now do photobooks... I think she described it to me as a magazine style book.

The pictures are printed directly onto the page.  You choose the layout and pictures and set it all up, order it to be printed, and it gets sent to you.

So I started on the arduous task of making our wedding album... 2 years after our wedding!  I really enjoyed doing this - I like working on the computer and working on my pictures on the computer.  But there were SO many pictures.  And since it was my first time making a photobook I didn't have any concept of what kind of layout I prefer and I hadn't really thought about what order of pictures I wanted.

Anyways, it took a while, and I think I pretty much did it about 4 times before I liked it!  I did our wedding album through picaboo.  You just download their program onto your computer and then find the pictures on your computer or discs that you want and put them into the program and then you can start playing around with layout, theme, etc.

Then when Finnian was born, someone had given me a little baby album.  Just a pretty simple album with room to write about the picture on the side... so I predetermined how many pages I would use for each month of his first year, so then every couple of months I would select that number of pictures, print it out, and add it to the album.

But it's pretty big, and it's not as nice as a photobook!  So I decided to do a photobook for him, and keep it simple by just using the exact pictures (with a couple extras).  I did this one with the mac, because I thought the quality was a little bit better (after seeing a mac photobook that someone else had made).  Also, a good and bad thing is that there are A LOT less layout options than through picaboo... but that's kind of a good thing.  Too many options can make it a lot more difficult.

Now I'm almost through Elle's 1st year book.  I have all the pictures in there except her 12th month, but I have a problem with some of the pictures not sitting right in their spots... so we'll see when I get around to fixing it!

Family Closet

For the time being, everyone's clothes are in our room.

I want to get a dresser for the kids room, but don't want to pay for a NEW dresser for them, I'd rather get a used one, but I haven't seen any that I like yet.

So for now the temporary solution is hanging shelves - but there's no closet in the kids room, so it's in our closet :)

The downside is that if Finn wets the bed, or Elle wakes up with wet clothes, then Conor or I have to come back into our room to get clothes.

BUT the upside is that it makes putting away laundry a lot easier for me! I usually bring the clean clothes basket into my room and (eventually) fold them and leave them on my dresser and forget about them until the kids are in bed at night. Which means I would have to wait until morning to put the clothes back into the kids room. This way I can just put them all away right away!

(I put a picture of Elle's old "walk-in closet", and a picture of the new family closet)

Two to a room: Update

The problem: Elle wakes up early and wakes up Finn.

We are all awake at 6:22am :(

Elle's actually been awake since 6am when she had peed through her clothes.

Ugh! Don't know how to fix this one. I mean, Elle's almost always up this early but Finn usually sleeps until 7.

Two in a room

Today Conor is going to buy some furniture off a UK couple who had been living in Melbourne for 2 years and are moving back to the UK.

One of those items is a double bed for the spare room. So we will be moving Finns bed into Elle's room (the kids room) and tonight is the first night that they will be sharing a room!

When Elle wakes up in the night she's usually pretty quiet, so I don't really think she will disturb Finn much. But Finn is loud when he wakes up (which he still does every night - usually because his blanket has fallen off, or he has to pee), so I hope he doesn't disturb Elle too much.

This also means Finn's bedtime routine will change a bit, because we won't be able to read him his story in his bed since Elle will already be asleep.

Any tips on this subject would be greatly appreciated.

We already have a fan in the room for white noise, which I've heard helps with the adjustments so the kids don't hear every little noise the other one makes.

Wish us luck!