Borrowed Book on Parenting

As you can see from my posts lately, I am losing the battle of the wills with my three year old, especially when it comes to potty training. Well today at work a colleague of mine recommended this book (Your Three-Year-Old: Friend or Enemy by Louise Bates Ames, PhD and Frances L. Ilg, MD) to me and actually let me borrow her copy. It is not a new book and was originally published back in the seventies, but I read a few reviews from today’s parents that say it is worth the read. So I am going to start reading it tonight. I have always subscribed to the Love and Logic approach, with natural consequences, etc. However, that is not really working for me with my spirited daughter, especially in the area of potty training. I am looking for some real solutions, strategies, whatever I can that I can try to help me parent and not lose my mind. I apologize for the short post. I am just exhausted. A certain person has been keeping me up with snoring. I get up to go use the bathroom several times a night, but then I can’t seem to fall back asleep because of the snoring. Ugh, the joys of being pregnant.

Doctor's Appointment

I am thinking I will post two posts tomorrow to make up for this not so great post that I am posting now. I am trying to get a post done everyday, but it is not easy.

I had my doctor's appointment today. Things seem to be going well with the little girl inside me. She is measuring perfect and I got my glucose test back and it was negative. I am however slightly anemic, but I would rather be a little low on iron than be diabetic. I am so glad that I don't have to go through the ordeal of having the three hour test. Unfortunately, being anemic means I will need to start taking an iron supplement (hence the picture of pills). Not fun, but better than a special diet for GD. On a not so great note, the new practice that my doctor is with will not even give me the option of a VBAC. To add insult to injury they won't even consider scheduling my mandated c-section anytime before 39 weeks without an amnio and I have no input into the date. My doctor just submits a request to scheduling and that is it no input from either of us. This is a real bummer since I have the same due date with this new little baby that I had with little a. Plus I was really hoping to have her birthday be at least a week earlier than his. Now it looks like unless she decides she will be born on a different day that I may even end up going the full 40 weeks. I think I may resort to inducing my own labor if that is to happen. I am so done with being pregnant now as it is. I can't even wrap my mind around having to go full term. Ugh! I just keep saying this too shall pass, but now it will be a little longer than I had hoped it would be. I have never been accused of being lucky and I definitely know why. Plus with little a I spent the majority of my summer just waiting for him to arrive. I was really hoping to not repeat that this summer. Plus being pregnant in the summer is miserable (plus I am already a terrible pregnant), especially without AC. There is nothing I can do at this point. I am learning that I have very little control over anything in this life. Well hopefully your Tuesday was not as disappointing as mine.

Hodge Podge Post

Well today was a much better day than either this Saturday or Sunday. I can’t believe I am posting this, but I seem to be transparent on this blog and so why start being something different now.


I pretty much lost it on Saturday. Big A went poop in her pants again and I just couldn’t deal. I felt the world closing in on me. I had a huge breakdown. Obviously, if I am okay blogging about it now I survived and I am okay. The picture is of me crying in my car, parked in my garage. I was going to go somewhere, but I couldn’t think of anywhere to go and I knew that in my emotional state I shouldn’t be driving, so I just stayed in my car. I called my mom and cried for a while on her shoulder. I got some potty training advice from her and then both my aunt and uncle. I wish that I could say that helped, but it didn’t. I was pretty shook up. The poopy pants incident was just the straw that broke the camels back so to speak. I have been feeling pretty horrible lately. As I have mentioned before pregnancy just doesn’t agree with me. Well in the car I tried to pull it together so I could go upstairs and face the rest of the night and my so called life. I had posted on Facebook that “I wished there was a place where you could exchange lives.” This was before I got in my car. In the car I was trying to delete that status from my phone, but was unable to. I am still learning how to use my phone. Anyways, playing with my phone was a good distraction and I took this self-portrait in the mirror of my car with the phone. I am a mess. You can see my make up is all smeared and I have black circles around my eyes. I prayed, listened to some praise and worship music and tried to pull myself together. I am hoping that I will feel better about my life and myself one day soon, but until then I guess I will just have to fake it until I make it.

Sunday was just like any other day around our home. I cooked, cleaned, took care of the kids, went to church. You never would have known it was Mother’s Day if you were just peaking in the window. I was bummed about it at first, but I am sure there are a lot of us out there that had similar experiences. I love my kids and I am glad to be their mom, even if it is a very disrespected, never ending, all consuming job. My poor hubby was having a bad day with his own stuff so he was unable to physically do anything to help out. I am starting to accept that life is just hard sometimes.


So today was a much better day. I don’t teach on Mondays so I took Big A and little a to a coffee shop with a friend and her kids. It is a coffee shop that has play area with a paid babysitter that watches your kids. It was my first time going there. It was a lot of fun and my friend and I got to chat and hang out. My kids didn’t stay in the area the whole time, but it was fine. Big A didn’t have any potty accidents so we went to a fancy grocery store afterward our play date and she got to push a cart all of her own. She was so happy. It was very cute. She did pretty well on peeing in the toilet today, but those BM’s are something else. I pray that she just gets it soon.

Before meeting my friend I went and met a lady selling some diapers on Craigslist. I ended up getting some new fluff for the little girl due this summer. I am so excited about these. They are stuffable AIO diapers made by Blueberry and Swaddlebees. I have two Blueberry diapers that I just love already and Blueberry/Swaddlebees is the same company. I can’t wait to try them out. A few of them should fit Big A right now so I might try them on her stuffed for overnight on Thursday. I am washing diapers now. I won’t cloth diaper again this week until Thursday night. I don’t tend use them when I am working. It is just too much for me. I am looking forward to the summer when I can cloth diaper almost a hundred percent. Adding great diapers to my stash always makes me smile and getting a good deal on them is even better.

Well I am doing pretty good on my postings. Now I just have to plan for the rest of the week when I am busy working. Tomorrow, I have a doctor’s appointment and get to see how the little mover and shaker inside me is doing. I will try to post an update either tomorrow or on Wednesday. Have a great week.

Jen D.

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.