Fall, Already?

This past Saturday, it was unseasonably "cold" at 71 degrees.  We opened all the doors and windows and welcomed the fresh air.  Funny thing is, we haven't had to shut them since then.  The air conditioner on the main floor has been off for almost a week.  Our upstairs is still on only because a) our bedroom gets pretty warm and b) you need pliers to turn it off.  The knobs on the air conditioner broke off. 

We've had hot drinks (chai and cocoa) a lot more than usual.  We had an amazing chicken tamale bake early in the week.  And I'm seriously considering making a pot roast before the week is out.  I think that fall might be heading our way a little earlier than usual.  Given that the winter was so warm, I'm not really surprised.

The change in weather reminds me that Miss F's first summer is almost over.  Miss F is eight weeks today, and things are still dynamic between us.  For a while, it seemed we had things figured out.  Then, around 6 weeks, she started getting fussy at night.  During the day, though, she's fairly happy.  I don't know if I'd call it colic, but it definitely isn't fun.  But she continues to grow and change.

Last Saturday, as the weather changed, we decided to change our living arrangements.  One of the reasons we had Miss F in our room, aside from convenience and safety, was because her room was rather warm, even at night.  She went into the nursery Saturday night and hasn't had to come back to our room since. 

We even got a bedtime routine down.  She gets changed, but in a sleeper, nurses, and I put her to bed with a lullaby CD.  She doesn't seem to need the pacifier to sleep that way.  We can't swaddle her because she doesn't like it, but we tuck her blanket into the sides of the crib so that her arms are free and her feet can kick.  She seems to be happy with that.

Ever since she went into her own room, she's been sleeping until 5-5:30 am.  That works out perfectly since *B* gets up for work at 4:45 and leaves by 5:15.  I'm actually starting to wonder if she wakes up because he does.  We'll find out one way or another this weekend.  But even at 5 am, I'm getting about SEVEN hours of sleep, which is wonderful.  That's what I would have gotten by going to work anyway!  I've heard of something called the four month wakeful period, so I'm not counting on getting this much sleep forever, but I'm definitely taking advantage of it now.

When I Get Around to It

Over the past three years or so, there has been a growing list of things I wanted and needed to do. We still haven't bought a heater or molding from our mold incident to fix our room. Our wedding quilt lay folded for a little over a year on my dresser. Because of body image issues, I just about refused to look at, organize, and hang my wedding photos. There are nicks in the paint in each room that I wanted to fix, but that means I'd have to cut a sample of paint from the wall and get the paint matched. The faucet in the downstairs bathroom is leaking and needs to be replaced - it took only one night to fill up the sink  I need to sort through my clothing and start a summer/winter rotation.  Since my dad is moving out of the home I grew up in, I had to clean out my old bedroom. All of these things, and many more, nag at me, but I never seem to have the time to fix them.

I'm making it my goal to knock out a big chunk of my to do list this year. *B* has been instrumental in this task. While he was home on paternity leave, he pulled out our wedding photos. While they're not as great as I would have liked, they're all I have. So I'm in the process of framing them and putting them into albums. The other night, we hung our quilt.

 

Last week, my younger brother helped me move all of my belongings out of my dad's house. I sorted through five or six totes full of tchotchkies, keepsakes, and memories from my high school days.  I put everything into piles: keep, toss, and donate.  I whittled a mass of belongings down to a select pile of things to keep.  I was able to donate a huge box of old belongings.

I'm happy to finally start chipping away at this massive list and feel productive in this year "off".

Family Home Evening

As you may or may not remember, *B* and I wanted to try family home evening a while back. We picked a night, but more often than not, it would be like every other night. We don't really have TV, just Netflix, so we tended to spend a lot of time together. We stopped being purposeful about having that night together, but our relationship didn't suffer.

Now that Miss F has come along, we find ourselves spending much less quality time together. Many days I hand her off to him and work on house work I couldn't get done with her, or space out if it's been a rough day.

The one exception has been Wednesdays. On Wednesdays, we walk to the local library, then to the farmers' market. It's a nice time, but the farmers' market isn't open year round, and at some point it'll be too cold to walk. To complicate things, I plan on going back to my part time job in a couple of weeks, and *B* starts school again soon. So one evening a week is really going to be the most we get together.

My mom took Miss F for the night on Friday, and *B* and I got to have that quality time once again.  It was amazingly refreshing.  It really helped us solidify the fact that we need to be purposeful in our time together.  While Miss F is too young for family board games, we can try to come up with things that the three of us can do together.  For a little while during *B*'s paternity leave, I would listen to him read The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy to Miss F.  That might be our FHE until we can come up with a new plan for FHE with a wee one.

What did you do for FHE when the kids were little?

Lost Diapers Found!

All it took was telling people, and *B* cleaning while I was out. We have a strange system for doing laundry, but it works for us. We throw it down the basement steps. For the last two weeks or so, I've noticed a tied grocery bag at the bottom of the steps. I figured it was something of *B*'s, and decided to deal with it later. Turns out there were not two but three diapers in there! One of them is a double color of one we have, so I didn't notice it. Now to find those flip flops...

Losing My Mind, Among Other Things

There is something fishy going on around my house. In some small corner, there must be a vortex sucking up our belongings. In the past two weeks, I've lost two (two!) cloth diapers, my flip flops (very important) and a gift card for the salon. I was especially upset about the gift card because I noticed its absence hours before my appointment. I'm thankful that the salon keeps electronic records and was able to still let me use it.

The diapers are driving me crazy. One is orange and the other, brown. They were in the picture from my cloth diaper post, which was taken three weeks ago. So sometime since July 15th, they sprouted legs. I've torn apart every room on my house, and I can't find any of these things. If you happen to see them, let me know :o)

Cloth Diapering

The other day, *B* and I went to our insurance agent. After our business was done, we chatted since I've known this man since I was a little girl. He mentioned how expensive kids were "with diapers and formula and all." We showed him our cloth diapers and he was shocked at how easy they are now.  We've got two major types of diapers in our stash.

We asked for FuzziBunz on our registry and received twelve of them.

 Miss F enjoying her FuzziBunz:

My mother, as you may remember, gave us an insane number of inserts for them. We wanted more diapers, but buying more FuzziBunz means getting more inserts, which we didn't want.

It turns out that the FuzziBunz inserts can be used with other diapers, specifically Flip diapers. In this way, they can be used with the same shell a number of times. The only thing is that you have to use a liner between the insert and the baby.

Miss F in a Flip:

We also found that disposable wipes are a pain to use with cloth diapers. We'd have to find a place to throw them out.  More often than not, they'd end up in the washer.  So we just decided to use cloth wipes as well.

Picture from the BumGenius website.

We use a peri-bottle that I got at the hospital for the diaper bag because it closes tight.  At home, we use condiment bottles that we got for a dollar each from the grocery store.

 

All we have to do is squirt a little bit of water on the cloth wipes and use as normal.  They go right into the wet bag with the rest of the diaper material.

So far we've had very little in the way of leaks and issues.  Between gifts and what we've spent ourselves, it cost us about $200 to create a large diaper stash that will last us through multiple children.  With Pampers being roughly $0.20 a diaper, we'll break even at 1000 diapers.  Given that Miss F can easily go through 10 diapers a day (and has been going through many more than that recently), we'll break even in about three months.  I'd say that's a worthwhile purchase!

The Down Side of Montessori

*B* and I read Montessori from the Start after a coworker gave it to me as a baby shower gift. We love most of its principles, and were excited to institute them right away when Miss F was born. We made the first mobile for her to use a week or two after she was born.

I've been trying to do more research on Montessori for the under three age range, but I haven't found much. I found Chasing Cheerios, How We Montessori, and Feeding the Soil. For now, it seems I only need to consider mobiles, rattles, and room arrangements. It doesn't seem like a lot, but it's been stressful and frustrating.  I want someone to explain how and when I can implement these things, but usually I'm just pointed to a catalog.  Everything in those catalogs is so expensive.  Luckily, we've been able to make the mobiles.

Miss F's second mobile will be three octahedrons: red, blue, and yellow (gold).  I got mirrored scrapbook paper and this template to make the octahedrons.  I taped the template down to the plastic surrounding the paper, and traced it with a mechanical pencil without the lead.  

 

Then it was easy to fold down the sides.

I still have to decide how I'm going to hang them, but that will be the easy part.

 

The next mobile in the series is a Gobbi mobile.  It should look like this:

 Photo from How We Montessori

Easy, right?  So I thought.  I bought some papier mache ornaments from Michael's.

I also bought some felt because A) five skeins of yarn was expensive and B) I didn't want to have to wind the string around the ball and deal with it getting messed up.  I should have bought the yarn.  The felt ended up squaring off the balls and no amount of trimming made it fit well.

I used double sided tape to put on the felt, so nothing is lost.  I'll just run out and get some yarn.  Maybe I'll find something to knit with the remnants of each skein.

I started to make one more mobile, but it really doesn't fit in with any of the development milestones. 

I might finish it and put it over Miss F's cradle because, though it's not ideal, it's better than the blank wall she stares at now.