Happy Mother's Day!

I hope all of you moms out there are having a fabulous Mother’s Day. I am not really in the mood to celebrate motherhood right now. I guess I don't really feel very good at the whole mommy thing right now. I think the potty training thing is just getting to me. I sure have failed as a mom in that area. There are tons of other things I fail at as a mom as well. As you can see the hormones are out of control these days. Yes, I can blame it all the hormones…they have to be good for something, right? Happy Mother’s Day everyone! Do something special for yourself!

Gdiaper Cloth Inserts

I started using Gdiapers about six months ago with my 14 month old. I don’t use them all the time, especially since now that I cloth diaper, but I really do like the flexibility of them. First things first, the Gdiaper little g pant is just too cute for words. They come in a variety of colors and the medium size fits from about 15 pounds to 28 pounds. We got some good use out of our mediums and for my son he is now into the larger size. The disposable inserts that you can buy for them are great and I love the convenience for traveling, etc. I prefer to use the little g pant with cloth inserts though. I made about ten inserts for little a about five months ago using fabrics that I already had lying around and then some microfiber towels that I purchased from the automotive section at Target. They have worked out quite well for us. I use them in a rotation with the little g pants and my slow growing cloth diaper stash.

Well this morning I decided to make some small inserts to go in the little g pants I purchased for our little girl to be born this summer. I pretty much followed the same process that I did for making the large size cloth inserts, but just cut these smaller. I think they will work great. I used two microfiber kitchen towels for the small inserts and two receiving blankets that were used and given to me by a friend of a friend. I am so excited about how they turned out. I hope they will work well for the little girl. I figured out that each insert costs somewhere around 30 cents. I love how cloth diapering not only saves the environment, but also my checking account. These are extra green since I recycled the receiving blankets. This makes me happy.

Over the past few months I have been building up a stash of diapers for her. I have 11 little g diaper pants, 10 Sassy Pants AIO diapers (I bought used on CL), 2 brand new Sassy Pants pocket diapers, 8 infant prefolds (I will probably just use these as inserts in pocket diapers or something…prefolds are not my thing usually) and 7 Fuzzi Buns that my friend used and gave to me for this baby. I don’t think that will be enough considering how frequently a little one goes, but I am well on my way.

If you have cloth diapered an infant please share your wisdom with me. I am still very new to cloth diapering and would love any advice from a veteran. Please share your experiences, stories or advice in the comments section, especially on diapering an infant or newborn. My cloth diapering experience started just a few months ago when my son was about 16 months old, so I have no idea how it will be with this new little girl.

MOPS Carnival and Painted Belly...

This morning was our second to last MOPS meeting for the year. The year has flown by so fast. I am thankful to have found MOPS. It has been wonderful to be a part such a great team this year that works so hard to put MOPS on for the local moms. We had a carnival for our second to last meeting. It was fabulous. We had games, prizes, carnival food, face painting, group photo session, and a picture frame craft. We also had a few group games to start out. It was a blast if I do say so myself. We had a great turn out and I think all the ladies really enjoyed themselves. I am excited to continue to be on the steering team next year.

So while everyone was cleaning up (usually I help as well) the face painting gal was kind enough to stay and paint a design on my HUGE belly (see the design above). This is something totally out of character for me have done. I mean I am very modest and usually don’t just show my belly to anyone, anywhere. There is another gal there who is a totally cute pregnant gal, unlike me and hers looked so cute so I thought I would give it a try. I guess I am glad I did because I would never know unless I tried. After this experience, I have decided that nothing really makes me cute when I am pregnant. I am just huge (and still have a few months left) and not cute and that is just how pregnancy is for me. I am learning to accept it. I mean this is my third pregnancy in less than four years. I have had a lot of practice with it and should just know by now that I am not cute and have not felt good about me since I got pregnant the first time. I am hoping one day I will feel better about myself and that I will feel more like me eventually. I am still working out (not that you could tell) and I try to eat relatively healthy. I don’t use being pregnant as an excuse to eat more, but it doesn’t seem to matter, I am still huge. Oh well!

I remember when I was first pregnant with Big A. I had all of these grand plans of how great pregnancy would be and that I would just stay the same, but add a belly. Boy was I wrong. Pregnancy and I just don’t mix. I gained weight everywhere with my first and then I got pregnant seven months later with my second and couldn’t seem to lose the weight from the first before getting pregnant. I gained less with my second and I have gained less with my third (I haven't gained anything in two months, but I am still gigantic. No, I am not a cute, glowing pregnant lady, more like a huge, unattractive, blob. I have lost hope now that I will ever be the same again. Oh well, such is life. I was definitely not blessed with good genetics that is for sure. I often wonder how and why God made me this way. One day maybe I will feel better, but for now I am just pregnant and positively miserable. The good news is the pregnancy will come and go and out of the whole ordeal I get a baby to love and raise for the next however many years. The good and bad news is I will never be me again now that I have had children. I am still trying to wrap my mind around that one. Some days are okay and I can accept that. There are other days where I just want to run back in time and be me again.

An update on the potty training journey…Big A didn’t have any accidents at MOPS, but she did have two accidents within an hour of each other at a MOPS lunch that we had after tear down and clean up. I was bummed that I had to leave, but I didn’t have any clothes for her and I told her if she had another accident we would be going home. She started to throw a fit, but ended up making it out of there without kicking and screaming. I don’t know what I am going to do with that girl. I am thinking of having the two older neighbor girls make fun of her for wetting her pants. Is that just mean of me or what? It sure doesn’t matter when I tell her that “Babies pee and poop in their pants. Big girls pee and poop in the toilet.” She doesn’t seem to care about anything. Nothing motivates her, but the little girl at the babysitters. What am I going to do?

Well I hope everyone enjoys a great weekend. I am still going to try to keep positing once a day for the next eight days. 

Cloth Diapering: The first of many posts...

I almost forgot to post something today. Here is my post for today. Give me a break, it was written pretty late at night so hopefully it is coherent enough to read. :)

Cloth diapering is something that has become somewhat of an obsession/addiction with me. I know that sounds completely insane, but just wait. If you try it and really give it a chance you might just get hooked like me.

Here are two common questions that I get when people find out that I cloth diaper.

Do you wash your own diapers and isn’t it horrible if you do?
I do wash my own diapers, every other day. I actually do not mind washing the diapers. The process is very easy. I simply dump the bag of diapers into the washing machine, turning the wet bag inside out as I put them in. I toss the wet bag in and wash. Since I have a front loading machine, which is great for the environment and energy bill, but not so good for washing cloth diapers, I am still working out a good washing procedure that works for me. It really is easy and for some reason I don’t mind it. I actually get a lot of satisfaction from cloth diapering and even the stuffing the pockets, the folding and putting away.

What about the poop?
I must admit that I am not a dunker. I cheat. I use liners that are biodegrable, flushable and for the most part contain the poop. I have had a few leaks here and there off the liner, not out of the diaper, but those are rare. I actually have more trouble with my three year old in cloth training pants pooping and having to clean those up. The liners really make cloth diapering simple and less messy.

This post is just the first post of many on cloth diapering. I have learned a lot about it in the past six months. Although, I have only been cloth diapering for four months (and not on the days that I work) it took me about two months to research, purchase and get ready to start (I was also in my first trimester of pregnancy for part of that and I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to handle washing the diapers then). Well I hope this post peek’s your interest in cloth diapering, but in all honesty I am not writing it to convert anyone. I just want to share my experience, document it, enjoy it and well like I said in the beginning I am addicted.

Mother's Day Give Away at Kelly's Closet

Kelly's Closet is hosting a fabulous and I mean fabulous give away in honor of Mother's day on their blog The Cloth Diaper Whisperer. Please go check it out. It is amazing what they are giving away. What a great package for some lucky cloth diapering mom out there. Wowsers! Are you feeling lucky? Go enter to win. If you don't need the cloth diapers I am sure you could find someone who would just love and adore you for giving them to her (including me). :)

Happy Birthday Honey!

This post is in honor of my husband. I may not always say it with words (especially lately), but I love you so much honey. You are a good dad, a good husband and a good man. I hope you have a fabulous birthday.

We are planning to celebrate with a dinner out with the kids and then a homemade cake. Since I am writing this post in advance I am hoping to make him a fabulous homemade cake that he will love, but we will see if my intention ends up coming to fruition. I have a lot of plans these days and sometimes they happen and sometimes I am just too tired, pregnant or exhausted to make a dent in them. I hope for my honey I will come through.

Mr. D already got his birthday present a little early. Check out this post if you are wondering what he got for his birthday. 

Jen D.

Diaper Cake Baby Shower Gift

Diaper Cake….
Here are some pictures of the diaper cake that I made for my co-worker. Unfortunately, I was unable to attend her shower and my husband forgot to take it into her on Thursday (the shower date) and then on Friday as well. Oh well! I hope to get it to her this week. We will see. I think she might already be on leave. This is her first baby and they know they are having a little girl. I thought it would be fun to make her a diaper cake.

This is the fourth diaper cake that I have made. I wish I took pictures of it before I put in the bag. They are so much fun to make and even more fun to give. I hope that she likes it. I am sure that there will be more babies for me to make diaper cakes for shortly. I will try to do a diaper cake tutorial next time that I make one. That way you can see how it is done. It is very easy and such a fabulous gift for any mom to be.

In this diaper cake there are approximately 75 size 1 diapers, a receiving blanket, a teething toy, a bib, 2 baby bottles (BPA free), a girlie onsie, and one pair of newborn pajamas.

I hope you are enjoying a wonderful day!

Jen D.