Happenings Lately

Things have been pretty awesome lately. Our lives are great and we are loving life with Owen. I have been home with Owen for almost 12 weeks and it has been fabulous! It has been a lot of work and being a mom is hard, but I adore it and luckily Owen is basically a perfect child so he makes it a lot easier!

Last week was a really gorgeous Saturday so we went on a long walk. There was still tons of snow, but we really wanted to get out and it was such amazing weather.

I wrapped up Owen in my solly baby wrap and he fell right to sleep! It was so precious and I loved cuddling him with me. My back got a little sore since he is quite a biggie but it was worth it!

We have gone to visit Dan at work a few times and it has been really fun. Last week we went to an awesome Thai place downtown called My Thai. I love Thai food and this is another awesome Thai place on my list! I think Owen wanted a taste of the spring roll…

Dad’s choice of outfit…Dan’s sister gave us a bunch of cute hand me downs from her boys and this awesomeness was part of that. He seems to have liked it!

I have gone down to West Jordan to visit my mom and sister several times when Dan has school at night and they have smothered him (in a good way of course). I love seeing them with my sweet babe!

Owen is lucky to have TONS of cousins on Danny’s side. He is the 16th grandchild and there is one more due in May! There will still be a lot more to come too and he has 3 other cousins that are within 9 months of him (Brioney in July, Benson in September, Owen in December, and baby boy Hill in May)! 3 of the 4 babies will be in the same grade and they are all boys. Tons of fun. Here is Owen with baby Benson and Taylor.

We have had some fun doing photo shoots in his adorable little outfits. What a doll.

Last weekend, we went on a quick trip to Las Vegas. We left Thursday afternoon and came home on Sunday evening. We had a lot of fun but we also learned a lot. We stayed in the Mandalay Bay because I got a great deal using Priceline (almost half price!), but the hotel was MASSIVE and took forever to walk to our car, which is tough with a baby. And there were not really any baby friendly cheap restaurants in the hotel either. We probably should have just gone to St. George which is just as warm and a few hours closer! But we still had fun and Owen was a dream child the whole time. Our room was super nice and we did some fun things.

The weather on Friday wasn’t too great but we drove to the temple and after the rain stopped, we walked around then drove back to our hotel via the scenic route.

We spent Friday evening in our hotel room just chillin. We had a nice room and a pretty sweet view since we were on the 25th floor. Owen loves to coo and talk to us and it is the most precious thing ever! Dan is the cutest dad ever and I love watching how much Owen loves him!

This baby still loves the bathtub!

On Saturday we drove to Hoover Dam and it was awesome! The weather was really nice and comfortable and Owen slept the whole time we walked around the visitor’s center and the dam. We were so glad Owen wakes us up early because we got to the dam early and by the time we were ready to leave, the line was huge and the place was way busy.

The dam and the bridge were HUGE. I had been there when I was young but didn’t remember much of it and we really loved walking around and seeing just how amazing the whole place is!

After Hoover Dam, we found a park and Dan and I ate some snacks and sat on the grass while Owen slept. it was really nice and relaxing. Then that evening we went to an AMAZING buffet at the M Resort. We had eaten there a few years ago when Dan did the Ragnar in Las Vegas and it didn’t disappoint again. We were nervous to spend a lot of money on a buffet when there was a chance we would have to leave early or not enjoy it as much because Owen got fussy or something, but he was a gem.

It was a seafood buffet so there was all kinds of yummy seafood (Dan tried crawfish and all the weird stuff). I love shrimp so I pounded about a million of those babies. There was a whole Asian section, Italian, all kinds of meat, vegetables, bread and everything else you can think of. And the desserts…whoa. Dream come true. There was tons of gelato and every dessert you can imagine. Amazing.

After the early dinner (we missed the crowds thanks again to O-man), we drove to the strip and parked at the Bellagio. Dan had never seen the fountains so we walked around the lobby and just a few blocks down the strip. We watched a few of the fountain shows and then Owen was done and so were we!

On Sunday morning before we left we took a long walk around our hotel and a little ways down the strip. The sun was shining and it was gorgeous! Perfect timing for us to leave…

I had some fun adventures feeding Owen all over the place. Nursing is convenient since you don’t have to bring formula, bottles, or find warm water, but it is also a little difficult because you are so worried you are going to flash people and I’m sure some people saw my religiousness but oh well. We made it work and did a lot of feedings in the back seat of the car. I also got pretty dang good at changing the kid in the car with him in my lap. Dan hypnotized him with his hands while I changed him.

I took some pictures of him for 11 weeks and he smiled in every single picture.

What a cutie pie! He is starting to look more like Dan to me and I love it. He is a super happy baby and doing so well with naps and sleeping at night! He usually sleeps around 10 hours except that I wake him up at 10:00pm to feed him but he goes right back to sleep. Sometimes he wakes up in the night but goes right back to sleep if we re-swaddle him and give him his binky.

I am going back to work next week and I am excited but nervous. I’m so lucky because I will only be going into the office on Mondays and Wednesdays then I’ll work from home the rest of the time. I really love my job and miss it and the people there so I’m glad to go back, but I will miss Owen and it will be so hard to leave him! My neighbor is going to watch him and I know she’ll do a great job but it will be tough. I’m glad Owen will be able to be around her kids and so grateful for the flexibility of my job to work from home and be with him 3 days a week!

Cloth Diaper Love

A few updates now that Owen is 7 1/2 months old and has been eating solids for about 6 weeks. See below in red.

 

I have been thinking about this post for a long time and I’m finally ready to write it! I want to share my obsession with cloth diapers now that I know that I love them and we have been using them for about 7 weeks now. I had first heard of cloth diapers from my sister in law but I didn’t look into it much. Then one of my favorite blogs, Young House Love wrote about using cloth diapers and I really became interested in it. I read a lot about it before I had become pregnant and then when I got pregnant, I read everything I could find about cloth diapers! I knew I wanted to use them and I want to share our experience so far. I figured that no matter what, you are going to be dealing with poop. So after researching a TON, I decided to for it and we have really loved it so far.

Owen’s first time in a cloth diaper! He is so tiny, I think he was about 10 or 14 days old here.

The main reason that I decided to use them was to save money. I got the following information from http://loveclothdiapers.blogspot.com. Let’s assume that the average family using disposables will consume about 63 diapers a week (9 changes in a day). Each disposable diaper costs about 27 cents (a package of Huggies on Amazon.com). Therefore, disposables are costing roughly $68 a month, $816 a year, or $2,040 in 2 ½ years, and this is conservatively speaking. And if you take care of your diapers, they will last a long time and you can use them for multiple kids! We are planning on having more kids (don’t think about that right now…) so we could save thousands of dollars in diapers! The initial up front cost of cloth diapers for us was probably around $400 for everything-the diapers, laundry soap, garbage can and liners, etc. I also received a few cloth diapers as gifts which I LOVED! So $2000+ vs $400? Not too shabby.

Another reason I was happy to use cloth is the environmental factor. I’m not a super hippie granola person in general, but it is nice to know that we are not putting thousands of diapers in the landfill. I have also heard that many kids in cloth diapers tend to potty train earlier. I wouldn’t complain about that either.

I was pretty overwhelmed with all the information out there about cloth diapers. And since I’m an obsessive researcher type, I read just about anything and everything. And there is a whole world of cloth diapering fanatics out there. Honestly, it’s crazy. And there are so many different kinds of diapers so I’m just going to show you guys what we have and how it’s working for us!

I have a few different types of diapers and I like all of them. Here is what I have:

(12) BumGenius 4.0: These are pocket diapers where you stuff an insert into a pocket. They have snaps and the fit can be adjusted depending on how you snap them.

(4) Charlie Banana: These are also pocket diapers but they are a bit more trim than the BumGenius. And they come in adorable colors and prints. They are sold by Target and they are my favorite diapers.

(1) FuzziBunz: These are pocket diapers as well and very similar to Charlie Banana but I still like CB better!
(2) BumGenius All In One: These do not require stuffing and everything is all together in one diaper. These are convenient but more bulky. We have one with velcro and one with snaps.

(1) SoftBums Echo: I really like SoftBums because they are very trim and small. The Echo has an insert that snaps into the diaper part instead of a pocket. If the diaper doesn’t get dirty, you can re-use the diaper and put in a new insert. I always just use it once.

(1) SoftBums Omni: This is almost the same as the Echo except that it has a pocket. So you can stuff the pocket or snap the insert in.

We have 21 diapers and I do laundry about every 3 days. When we change Owen, we take the dirty diaper 2 steps across the hall to his bathroom and either shake the insert out or pull it out and throw them both in the garbage can with a PlanetWise Pail liner. These liners are antimicrobial and I have not noticed any smell at all in the bathroom with the diapers. I have two bags so I can use one while the other is in the wash.

We have a sprayer attached to our toilet to spray off the poop but we don’t use it. Since Owen is only eating breast milk right now, the diapers do not need to be sprayed. I have not noticed any issues when washing them without spraying so we are not bothering with it yet.

When it is time to wash diapers, I pull out the bag with the dirty diapers and dump everything in the washing machine. I turn the bag inside out as I dump it all into the wash. I do one cycle on cold without detergent and then one cycle on hot with detergent. After much deliberation and research, I am using Charlie’s Soap as well as the Charlie’s Hard Water booster. It is a natural non-toxic biodegradable detergent and so far I really like it. It is $12 for a big tub and it only takes a tablespoon to use so it will last forever. I have since switched to regular Tide powder because we started having some weird stink issues. I stripped my diapers and started using Tide and haven’t had any issues since then.

After the wash is done, I pull out the inserts and usually lay them to dry on a drying rack in the sunshine in our bay window. The sun completely bleaches any stains on the white inserts. It’s honestly amazing! Sometimes I put them in the dryer if I’m in a hurry. I hang up the diapers on this sweet Octopus Hanger from Ikea (my mom gave me two for a shower gift!). It is perfect for drying diapers and I’m sure I will use it for other things in the future.

After everything is clean and dry, I have to stuff the diapers by putting the microfiber inserts inside the pockets. It probably takes me about 10-15 minutes to do. It’s not a big deal and I have never really minded doing laundry. I get a strange satisfaction out of seeing neatly folded clothes and the same goes for clean diapers ready for the babe!

Owen has recently started sleeping through the night (YESSSSS), so I want to be careful about him getting diaper rash from being in a diaper for 8 hours or so. You are not supposed to use most kinds of diaper rash cream with cloth diapers because it can ruin them so I have these liners that are kind of like dryer sheets that I can set on the diaper and then use diaper cream. It creates a barrier between the diaper and the bum so I think it will help. They are flushable so it makes it really convenient. I think we will also probably use them when we are travelling and using cloth but so far we haven’t had to.

 

Some things I love about cloth diapers:

• Big money saver
• Better for the environment
• NO BLOW OUTS (or leaks)
• They are cute!

Some things I don’t like about cloth diapers:

• More bulky than disposables (but I have some that are less bulky than others)
• You have to wash, dry and stuff them
• I’m kind of scared about when he starts eating “real” food and we have to deal with nastier poop! Update: this has actually been easier because his poops are solid and I can just plop them into the toilet. I have only had to use the sprayer twice so far.

So far the cloth diapers are a success! My mom thought/thinks I am looney and lots of people are way skeptical when they hear about it. But things have come a long way since our parents were using old school cloth diapers and we have loved it! We plan on continuing to use them with Owen and our future children. If anyone wants to know more, let me know!