Click here to view this photo book larger

Photo Book Tip: Create an adventurous travel photo album at Shutterfly.com.

Attachment Parenting Criticism

I found this quote on one of the blogs that I frequent, and it really made me think; I should be more thankful when people criticize my parenting style. 

Attachment parenting comes with so many perks and privileges, but it often comes tagged with the dreaded social disapproval.  It is sometimes frustrating when people give snap judgments and remarks on behalf of my parenting beliefs. 

I'm usually pretty good about brushing off remarks, but if I'm having a particularly sassy day, I tend to harp on them.  This quote will help me on days like that.   

I’d rather be told to relax than to pay attention, I’d rather be told I care too much than too little, I’d rather be told I research too much than not know enough, I’d rather be told I hold my baby too often than too little, I’d rather be told I spend too much time with my baby than not enough, I’d rather find my own way and my own balance than use someone else’s.  My shoes might not fit you but that’s okay because I’m the only one doing the walking in them. 

The quote wasn’t sited on the blog.  

Letter from Baby to Mom

This is such a cute little letter that someone gave to me when my daughter was 6 months old or so.  A wave of peace rushed over me the first time I read it, so I thought I would share it with you.  Give it to a new mom, put a little happy in their day! :)

I don't know why the background is white behind the typing- maybe b/c I copied/pasted it from my Word?  Oh well, i'm not typing it again, hope it doesn't bug you as much as it's bugging me. :)

Letter from Baby to Mom

Hi Mom,

Sorry that i have kept you up all week. i know you are tired and truth be known, so am I, but I just felt I needed you. A lot is going on right now with me and I feel so much better when you pick me up, sing to me, rock me, and feed me. I know it doesn't seem like I could be hungry when I cry every 20 minutes and guess what... I'm not, but when you pull me close and try to feed me it feels so nice. i used to be with you all the time in your tummy and sometimes I feel cold and lonely and I just need to feel close to you again. 

I am sorry that the book on helping me sleep didn't work but I don't feel ready yet. I promise when I am bigger I'll sleep better, maybe even through the night... then again, I've heard about that whole potty thing and I bet that might keep me up too. You really are doing a great job, Mom. I love you.

Oh, and don't worry about your milk. It's great! I know at times I confuse you by not eating one day and then eating sooo much the next but it's just my mood, sorry to confuse things. I am sure you know how I feel though, some days I am more hungry than the next but it only takes a day and your milk becomes exactly what I need. Cool, huh? I know sometimes I eat a lot, but I am growing right now, I know the books don't say I should be having a growth spurt right now, but I am not like all the other kids, I am special...isn't that what you always tell me? 

So please don't get too upset with me. Everything is just so overwhelming at times and I need you. You know what??? I have ears, I just found them. I know it's only 3AM but I wanted to tell you, I am so excited. I know I just woke you up 45 minutes ago to tell you my legs hurt but I am a growing kid and i think just seeing you makes me feel better. You are so pretty Mom, especially at this hour! 

I'll make you a deal...if you can be patient with me when I wake up at night (it'll only last a year or so, and I hear in the big picture a year isn't really that long) and hold me, hug me, and feed me my favorite yummy milk, then I'll stop complaining about that stupid mobile you make me stare at for hours at a time. 

P.S. I am not the only one waking people up... you keep on waking me up to put on that annoying snow suit. No one asked me if I wanted to go out in that crazy weather. 

Your loving child, and again thanks for being so patient with me. I love you very much!

Cloth Diapers

Cloth Diapers and all of their glory

They’re not as scary as you might think they are!  Promise. 

A lot of moms ask me about cloth diapering- I am by no means an expert, but after cloth diapering for 16 months, I suppose I have some experience to back up the hours of research I did before my daughter was born.  So I am here to blog today to testify that cloth diapering is simple- yes. SIMPLE. Contrary to popular belief it doesn’t take hours out of my day, it doesn’t make me gag, and it doesn’t make my house smell.

When I first notified my family and friends that I was planning to cloth diapers almost every single one of them gave me grief—“yeah, goodluck with that” seemed to be their motto, only expecting me to do it as a phase- maybe a month- tops!  If you are getting this same reaction, let me be your friend and tell you that you can do it!  And It will be awesome.  Promise—do you trust me?

     
     Getting Started

It took me a while to decide which cloth diapers to choose- since there are a plethora to choose from.  I finally decided to go with BumGenius 3.0!  They now have a BumGenius 4.0 (I bought a lot of those when they first came out).  I think you’ll agree with me, cloth diapering is addicting, and you’ll want to buy ALL OF THEM!  Hehe Some advice? Don’t get too carried away… Oh who am I kidding.. Go nuts! ;-) This website  came to my rescue when I got carried away, myself. 

BumGenius 3.0/4.0 is wonderful, I chose to buy the hook and loop closure – which is Velcro.  It performs like a disposable diaper, really; when putting it on baby you pull the Velcro tabs and wrap it around baby- and close- easy peasy.  This came especially handy over snaps (the other option) when my daughter turned – oh 8 months old and changing her diaper became a wrestling match. 

      When It Comes To Washing

EBF -If you are EBF (exclusively breast feeding) no need to rinse diaper, just throw in w/ the rest of the pile.

If baby is eating solids and makes a messy diaper- just pop the poop in the toilet, or wash off in the sink- nbd – I do this immediately, I don’t wait until laundry day.  

Wash cycle – You must do a rinse cycle first, then add detergent, start the wash regularly- with a rinse cycle at the end.  Wash water must be hot. 

Detergent – I use rockin’ green detergent, it is made for cloth diapers- I got lucky and won this- You don’t have to go out and buy any special detergent, it is likely you have what you need at home- a dye-free scent- free detergent- I use All Free and Clear- just use half as much as you would normally use. I bought a big bottle for $10 before my daughter was born and used it on her diapers and her clothes and it lasted me 15 months. wowzers!  ps. do not use fabric softener- it will cause your diapers to leak.  

To Dry – I line dry my diapers, always have, they have never seen the inside of my dryer – actually none of my clothes have.  But it is perfectly okay to use the dryer- just 86 the dryer sheets – this will cause the diapers to repel pee pee and leak. 

Assembly—Once everything is dried, it’s time to stuff the diapers- this takes me like 15 minutes to stuff the inserts into the liners, big woop. And I’m done!  Not too time consuming, right? 

     Accessories 

Diaper Sprayer…. Waste of money.  Seriously. Lol I have been cloth diapering for 16 months and not one time have I used a sprayer- I have heard mixed reviews on them.. but for me; it looks like a pain- they attach to your toilet water- so each time you use the sprayer you have to adjust the water pressure.  Poop can be gross, sure- gag worthy even—but I never had a problem quickly rubbing the ends of the diaper together and washing the poop down the sink. 

Diaper pale…. I use this pale. I bought at Babies R Us for like 15 bucks.  It gets the job done- line with a trash bag, or not- whatever.

     Benefits of Cloth Diapering

The Benjamins - we all know diapers are a major expense when raising a child- With cloth being able to last for multiple children it is a major relief for your pocketbook! {did I just type pocketbook? I’m awesome.}

So I will crunch some numbers for you- I spent $250 on 24 diapers, 24 wash cloths, and a spray bottle.  I use the {cheap} wash cloths, nothing fancy, and the spray bottle instead of wipes, and I got my diapers on sale- I got a little lucky- nonetheless That is my cost for diapers until my daughter is potty trained.  And they will still be usable for my second child, yay!

After some major googling, I discovered the average cost of diapers per year is $864/year ($72/month) not including wipes (about $10/month right?) and diaper cream (which is super expensive).  Craaazy!

Babies Bottom – My daughter has never had diaper rash- never.  This is because cloth diapers are free from all the chemicals that are found in disposable diapers - here are a couple that creaped me out--
        --traces of dioxin, a toxic by-product of the paper bleaching process, listed by the EPA as the most toxic of all cancer- linked chemicals.  It is banned in most countries, but not the US.
        --Tributyl-tin (TBT) a toxic pollutant known to cause hormonal problems in humans and animals
        -- Sodium polyacrylate, a type of super absorbent polymer.  also known as the substance that increased the risk of women getting TSS from tampons.  Gross.


Go Green! recycle!  The statistic is like; up to 60% of our landfills in the US are filled with disposable diapers!! eek!  What's even worse is that they take over 500 years to decompose!  Yikes!  Can you put that picture in your head for a moment!?  Seriously. 

 I could talk {type} about cloth diapers all day- there is so much information to learn about them!  If you have any questions, please feel free to ask :)

Lazy River

Nine months in, nine months out… that’s what they say it takes for the little bugger that popped out of me to get accustomed to this thing we call life; and just like that – an equivocal blink of an eye- she’s satisfied every developmental checklist I’ve read, she’s surpassed them even. She’s walking (sometimes running) everywhere she can manage, and insists that she do things herself, yes already. She’s so determined and she loves to challenge herself and I love her for that! Though with challenges comes struggle; my type-a personality daughter has not yet mastered the skill of opening books and flipping pages, I mean- she does it, but she must not get to the page she had in mind, because she often gets frustrated and begins to kick her legs and whimpers. Well it’s either that or she is getting upset she can’t read the words herself, my little genius! It is so thrilling to just watch her play, watching her figure things out for the first time, and watching her examine the outside world and trying to put all the pieces together, It’s truly lifting.
I wrote an update blog a month ago, and apparently never posted it, thank God– I re-read it and it was all about sleep ‘training’ and I broke just about a thousand punctuation and sentence forming rules! Hah not as if my blogs are grammatically correct anyway, but it was a bit ridiculous. Now for some new updates; Avalina is walking everywhere, she doesn’t even crawl anymore – ever – and when people ask how old she is, after my response, it’s as if I confessed to murder; they gasp so loud and give me this look, often followed by an expression like oh my word! Or WOW she’s walking already. Yes people, I am fully aware that my daughter is just THAT amazing – walking at nine months you can cease the drama. I then proceed to tell them that she can form sentences too- just joshin ya! (Hehe remember when that phrase was hip? Joshin) Oh, and sorry about the murder reference, my husband has been home at night recently and we have started to watch our startling sitcoms- Dexter and Breaking Bad; and they are totally awesome, new one comes on tonight (silent yay with arms up in high V). Oh anyway that’s not what you want to be reading about, you want to read about how my darling daughter is doing – well, she poops, she plays, and she eats. That’s basically it – she is, after all, only ten months old people.

That's Life

I’m living like the Amish today (fully equip with whoopee pies) no internet/cable/phone. Our Verizon box decided to fry and they can’t send a dispatcher for another 3 days, what kind of garbage is that? We are so unsatisfied with their crappy customer service so we just cancelled with them. So I super cleaned the kitchen, except for the dead spider on the floor that I can’t bring myself to pick-up gah, and I did some laundry, and since Avalina is still taking a nap I decided to write a blog, Lucky you!
Eight Months is such a tiny time frame, but Avalina has done so much with those eight modest months! She is starting to stand fully, on her own without props, which is crazy to me, she is still crawling strong, and prefers to play with her toys standing up, rather than sitting, and don’t even attempt to lay her down- forget it she’s much too big for that mess! She has four glorious teeth, the bottom two are so big and the top two are just popping out, to me it looks like there will be a little gap between them! Hehe but that’s okay because daddy has one too! Each new developmental stage she passes makes it a little easier on me in one sense, and harder in another – for example, when she started to crawl – awesome!! I didn’t have to hover over her and play with her constantly, but along with crawling came pulling herself up on things, so I had to sit by her side while she became accustomed to her new legs, reminiscent of the little mermaid, hehe she was shaky but determined! Her feeble attempts kept me close by, though there were times when she fell – not cool, but it happens to the best of ‘em. Sometimes I just want to wrap her up with bubble wrap and styrofoam like the boy on Little Giants (picture is above for reference- by the way, I looked exactly like that little boy when I was growing up, for all I know, that is me).
Onto other update news; breastfeeding is going well, and I wish I could say the same about solids! She loves to feed herself but isn’t too fond of putting food in her mouth, though she reluctantly keeps trying! She’ll shove just about anything in her mouth if you let her… well, even if you won’t lol. Her new favorite thing is a wisk, don’t ask me why, she loves it – and so does mommy, it keeps her content while mommy whips up some whoopee pies ;-) haha That and a spatula, the kind with a rubber end, it’s the same texture as a pacifier, so I’m sure that’s why she’s drawn to that one. She still only says mama and dada, although I am pretty convinced that she said Chuck once, when we were playing with our cat (Chuck is his name, but now I call him up-chuck, because most of the time I say to him “shut up Chuck” because ALLLL he does is Meoooooowwwww, Avalina’s next word will probably be meow for this reason… or up-chuck, who knows! Time will tell)

Call Me Irresponsible

It has been almost 7 and a half months since Avalina was born, and I still weigh the exact same amount as I did when I got home from the hospital--despite all of my efforts to shed a few lb’s. In the first few months I lost 10 pounds – I was feeling good, I had 8-10 more pounds to go to get back down to my pre-pregnancy weight. Not so bad considering I was breastfeeding and I was told it was good to pack on a few extra pounds to ensure proper nutrition. At any freakin rate, I would have been happy loosing 5 more pounds, unfortunately I hit a plateau, and couldn’t push through the mediocre digits on the scale. I don’t typically live by the numbers, I usually go off of how I feel, and truth be told I felt like crap…no make that lard! I felt and looked like lard. My thighs touched when I walked (a new feeling to me) my shorts didn’t fit b/c my posterior had doubled in size (if not tripled) I had a chin and a half, and to top it off, I had D cups, okay, that part I could probably live with if I had to since that is the source of my baby’s nutrition-- but seriously I miss my A cups!
So in my mind I settled – all the while I will admit I felt a bit insecure in my new skin, but I figured – eh, I just had a baby, it’ll come off eventually if I continue to eat right and workout. I should probably tell you that my ‘workout’ consists of a Karen Voight DVD called Yoga Sculpt – it is awesome, I used it all through college; it kept me firm and fit—but I also weighted the same amount of a sack of potatoes back then, so I’m not expecting miracles this time around…
Flash forward a few months to May when I took an almost two month long vacation to visit my mom in Pennsylvania – a journey filled with plenty of whoopee pies – my kryptonite. Sure enough the pounds started to slowly creep back on. Ugh. And before I knew it I was back to my swollen-straight-out-of-the-hospital body. When I returned home I promised myself that I would get back in shape. Since this is not where this blog ends, you guessed it, I have not lost a pound. Those damn whoopee pies – my family lovingly bought me a whoopee pie maker –What they did not know is that I do not possess the kind of self control it takes to own a whoopee pie maker. Whoopiee pies EVERY.DAY. Whoops.
I have not expressed to anyone my weight struggles, since I have not gained an excessive amount of weight; it seems silly to complain about it. I should clarify that this blog is not me complaining, it is me making a promise to you. I am writing this to be accountable to someone other than myself, because obviously I need a bit more motivation; so here it goes – I want to loose weight… ugggh can I just tell you ever since I wrote that snip about whoopee pies I have been dieing to make some… rats. So here is my goal – by Christmas I will be back to my pre-pregnancy weight – which means I will be happy if I loose 15 pounds. That is—of course if I’m not pregnant by then. Woah – did that just slap you in the face or what?