Four Months

Four months.  A third of a year.  My little growing Quinn.  You are starting to get SO BIG.  I notice it so much more now than I did in the first few months.  It makes me happy and sad at the same time.  Happy because I love watching you grow and develop into the fun little person that you are, but sad that you are starting to become more and more independent with every moment of every day.

I haven’t really been paying attention to the “milestones” you should be meeting.  I don’t want to be that crazy parent who is like, “YOU SHOULD BE COOKING FULL MEALS FOR YOURSELF RIGHT NOW, YOU’RE 4 MONTHS OLD!”  I just soak in what you do every day, and know that you are going forward and not backwards.  I’m not sure if that’s good or not.  You can’t detect it until you’re 14 months or later, but I worry about autism every day.  I don’t know why, you were born a perfect little baby, and we really haven’t had many issues thus far, I just worry that this good streak will end, and something will go wrong.  So just keep moving forward… and I think we will be good.

You love to grab things.  You may have loved it last month… but you really love it this month.  You always have things in your hands.  It doesn’t matter if you’re moving it around, or if it makes noise, you just want to hold on.  Sometimes, it’s to your disadvantage, like if you lose one thing in your hand, you go to your binky and you rip it out to hold you sometimes get upset, because you can’t quite figure out how to put it back in, but you’re getting there.  You have the motion right, just not the direction, so sometimes you just end up chewing on the handle.  One day last week, you were just sitting in my lap sucking on your binky and taking in the world around you.  I was topless since you had just spit up down my shirt, and into my bra (another thing you are awesome at) you took your binky out, looked over, and latched on and started eating.  This is something I will always remember and cherish, and will probably gross you out every time you hear the story, but I already know you are going to be a woman in charge someday.  You knew what you wanted, and you took it, all on your own.  No waiting for other people, just do it!  You also love to grab on to shirts, hair, and to thumbs.  You love to hold on to people’s thumbs and stand on their laps.  You love to use your little legs so much; I’m starting to think you may be running marathons before you ever learn to crawl.

Two weeks ago, we bought you an activity center where you sit in the middle, and the little seat turns around and there’s stuff to do all around you.  While you meet the age requirement, you are a petite one, and we’ve stuffed it with blankets, and put pillows underneath you, but I think it will be at least another month before you can even fit in it.  You are finally starting to chunk up to everyone’s relief.  You are a skinny little girl, and not in a sickly way, but somehow, everyone just expects babies to be chunky… and you are starting to get some rolls.

All in all, you are a pretty happy baby.  Only when you are really tired or your tummy hurts do you really cry.  Most of the times when you need something you just make noises (screams or just random shouts.)  It makes it easier to take care of you, and know when you are really hurting.  We had a tough few months in the beginning with all the crying, and not being able to figure out what’s going on, so I appreciate the break.

For whatever reason (and I am not complaining at all on this one) the car seat has become far less traumatic for you.  Instead of crying and throwing a fit 100% of the time, it’s only about 33% of the time, and it’s usually only when you are tightened in it.  I don’t know if you are realizing that you like the car, or you’ve just given up, because you realize that no matter if you’re crying or not, you’re not getting out of your car seat.  You still sleep on most of the car trips we take.  If you don’t, you rarely cry.  I don’t know if you get to see anything around you, but you seem to relax on car rides, and sometimes we can hear you chatting with yourself.  I hope you keep that, as you grow older.  Daddy has some vacation plans for you, and it would be awesome if you weren’t one of those bratty kids on car rides.  Haha.  You still insist on keeping your 2 am bedtime, but hey, at least it’s routine.  A few nights a week you will go to bed a little earlier at 1 am, and sometimes if I’m really lucky, you’ll even go to bed as early as midnight.  Baby steps though, you’re working on it.

Whenever we go out, everyone always compliments on what a beautiful baby you are.  I know, I see that precious little face every day.  Tell me something I don’t know people.  I may be a little biased though.  They also comment on how good you are.  You really are a pretty well behaved baby.  Your dad makes going out a little bit more dramatic than it needs to be sometimes, but overall you’ve never been a bad baby to have out and about.  You’ve had one melt down in Wal-Mart (who doesn’t want to when they walk into that store?) and it turned out you weren’t feeling well.  Only once has daddy had to take you out of a restaurant.  Even then, he didn’t need to, he just couldn’t get you out of your car seat fast enough to his liking, and so he literally ran out with you in the car seat, got you out, and came back in.  He’s silly like that.  All you wanted was to look around, and you were content once you were able to see over the table.

The highlight of this last month was a joy that I can’t even begin to describe accurately.  It was about 11:30 at night, and you and I were sitting on the bed while daddy was getting ready for work.  Landon and Lucy (our dogs) were running around the house being themselves.  Sometimes when he gets ready for work, your dad will play with the dogs, and this was one of those nights.  When your dad had stopped playing, Landon decided that he wasn’t done.  He picked up his toy, and began shaking it with his head ferociously, and throwing it up into the air.  You thought this was the funniest thing, and we heard you laugh for the very first time.  Landon caught it too, because he kept doing things to make you laugh, and it went on for about 5 minutes.  It was such a magical moment; you have such a sweet, precious little laugh.  Daddy loved hearing it so much, he was almost late for work that night, and bragged about your laughter to his co-workers.  Sadly, you’ve only laughed one more time since then, and it was caused by the same events.  Daddy and I have been trying in vain to get you to laugh at us, to no avail.  It will come someday I’m sure, and someday, we will forget to enjoy your laughter as much as we did on that day, because we will hear it so often, but I will never forget that moment that we all three got to share, and neither will daddy.

Today also marks the day, one year ago, that I found out I was pregnant with you.  I thought I was full of joy and love for you then, but little did I know what was to come.  I love you more and more every day.  Sometimes I feel like my heart may explode when I look at you.  You are so amazing, and I am so glad I had a part in creating you, and that I can call you my daughter.

I love you,

Momma

Interesting facts about breastmilk

I found this the other day, and while I knew some of it, like the ingredients, and the costs, some of it still blew my mind.

Taken from Lucie's List

Meet Pearl

We bought this car as a second vehicle almost a week ago. We've been a single vehicle family for a little over a year now, and it worked well with carpooling, and work schedules. Now that neither of those two are an option, and I need to find a job, a second car was a must. We know the car needs a little work, and we are taking her in Wednesday to get the look over from Honda. Hopefully, we wont need too much done, and she will last just like every other Honda out there.

The Diaper Challenge

Since we use Pampers for Quinn's spoiled little tush, I figured it was time to see if there was a more economical option out there.  I almost feel like I am doing an elementary school science project, but oh well. I made charts and stuff.  Yay!  Charts!

First, I ordered three different sample packs.  I'm including the Pamper's data as a baseline, since we know we like them, and we have no problems with them, besides cost of course.

Seeing my lovely chart now, we should have left off the Naty diapers, as they follow the same exact pricing as Pampers.  Oh well.  We are currently on size 1 diapers, which is why I listed all the way up until size 3.  Here's the cost comparison per diaper:

As you can see, the diapers.com diapers are priced significantly lower than any other. So they win hands down in the cost factor.

We also had "comfort" to look at.  If the diapers felt like sandpaper, or were stiff, I, personally, would not want to wear them; therefore, I couldn't expect my child to be comfortable in them either.  Pampers, diapers.com, and Seventh Generation diapers were all pretty soft, and almost cloth like.  The Naty diapers totally lost in this category, although they we're pretty much out as soon as I made my chart.  They were super stiff, and pretty rough.  Yuck.

Next we had convenience.  Only Pampers had stretchy tabs.  Seems dumb, but when you don't have them, you notice.  Seventh Generation made up for this by having a back stretchy thing.  It’s hard to explain, but it gave some give.  Naty was, again, stiff as a board, and Diapers had a little stretch to their tabs, but nothing to brag home about.  Where Naty lost again, and none of the other diapers did, was disposal.  With all the other diapers, even though the tabs are like a Velcro like material... Naty had NO WHERE to stick them when you are done with the diaper.  There was no wrapping up that mess, so that was a big no go to me.  God forbid the trash can roll over, or I miss when I toss it in, I am not cleaning up a poopy mess twice when I don't have to.  The rest of them had something to stick it too, all the way around.  Yay for them!

Lastly, we had the most important test of all:  the inside!  We have only (luckily) had to deal with diaper rash once, and that's when we switched to the sensitive Swadlers, versus the normal Swadlers, and we haven’t had any problems since.  We had stuck to brands that listed no extra chemicals, no bleach, chlorine, fragrances, etc. etc. as well as hypoallergenic.

Night 1, we tried Seventh Generation.  I had planned on putting the diapers on right when I put Quinn down for her actual bedtime (not attempted bedtime… try as I may) so that they would be put to the fullest test of overnight wetness, which is about 7-9 hours.  Well, silly me, I took a shower, and Jason took it upon himself to put her in the new diaper around 9 pm.  Lucky for him we had two… and she pooped.  Brilliant!  I highly doubted that we would ever get a poo test in because she’s so unpredictable, but we did.  And they passed.  It was a messy one too, but none got out, although it was reached to the max in every direction.  I kept her in regular diapers the rest of the night until she was ready for bed, and swapped out her last diaper for a Seventh Generation one.  Lasted through the night, and no leaks!  Jason’s only complaint is that they are a very light brown.  No design on them at all.  He just thought they looked “dirty”; I’d probably go with dingy more than dirty but to each their own.  Pretty much no one sees her without an outfit on anyway, so no big deal.  Pass pass pass!

The next night, our only other option was the diapers.com diapers, because the Naty diapers were shipped from a different location, and they hadn’t arrived yet.  Lots of people complained about how there were green and purple designs on the diapers, and if your baby wore white it showed right through.  Really?  Let’s call the fashion police on that one!  The designs were cute, with stripes and polka dots.  Many of the reviewers online said they got monkeys on their diapers, but I got a bunny on both of mine, standing next to a big “B”.  Maybe it had something to do with the size.  The diapers were easy to put on, and I did the first one a little bit before her bedtime because I was hoping for another poopy one, and I got it!  (Yes, it’s a sad day when you hope for poop!)  While the diaper held the poop very well, Quinn only had it on for an hour, two max, and she already had diaper rash developing.  I didn’t even both with the second diaper.  I am not putting either of us through that again.

I made my little chart before I even tried the Naty diapers.  Seeing that they really didn’t matter, I just used them in the middle of the day yesterday… and got another pooper!  They were very stiff to put on, and almost hard, as they had no give (hence the love of stretchy tabs.)  When she pooped, I could smell it.  Normally her poop doesn’t smell, and if it does, it’s minimal since she is exclusively breastfed.  I am convinced something “natural” (since that’s what these diapers bragged about) in the diaper made her poop stink.  I could tell she had a poopy diaper before I even picked her up.  While her rash has still not gone away completely, it got no worse with these diapers, but with all their cons, as well as not being any cheaper than Pampers, they were also a no go.

Yesterday, I ordered a pack of Seventh Generation diapers.  The price was nice, and size 1 diapers are 20% off until sometime in December (we will grow out of that size before then) so they are even cheaper than normal.  If we make it through the pack with no major incidents, than I think we will have a new diaper, and a few more bucks in our pockets even when buying by the case.  If not, back to Pampers we will go.

Mo' diapers, mo' money.

Another diaper story?  I know.  Aren’t you sick of this shit?  Har har har.  See what I did there?

Anyway, in light of my last diapering disaster, I am not about to let it happen again, even with disposables.  A month or so back, I found diapers.com.  I love this site.  Not only do they offer free 2 day shipping on orders over $49, which is easy to accomplish with diaper jumbo packs, but they are also a part of a network of sites, and if you order from those sites (which offer home products, drugstore products, pet products, and toys), they knock down the free shipping requirement to $39!  I also love wag.com which is part of this network, as they offer our dog food, and while it is a few bucks more (I think $3) we don’t have to drive to the next town to get it (45 minutes each way) and we don’t pay taxes, so it’s worth it all around for the time saved, and gas spent.  I don’t know about the other sites, but I do know that diapers.com also accepts coupons, which makes it all the more worthwhile!

Anyway, back to the story.  I have been looking for a more cost-effective diaper, but it also needed to be fragrance-free, and hypoallergenic.  Most diaper packs you have to buy a whole bunch and you’re forking out at least $10 a pack.  That’s a lot of money, and a lot of diapers if you end up not liking them.  I was thrilled in my search last night that diapers.com has sample packs!  I got three different brands for $0.99 each!  They each come with two diapers, and some of the packs even come with wipe samples.  I am so excited that I don’t have to fork out another load of cash, albeit a lot cheaper than the whole cloth diaper fiasco, just to test out some different options.

Don’t get me wrong, I love Pampers, but they are so expensive.  I want my little girl’s tush to be pampered too, but if I can get a diaper for a lot less, and it does the same good work that pampers does, I’m all for it, because that means we can put that money towards other things for her.

I’ll have to report back when we have the results.

Cloth Diapers

Before I ever got pregnant, I knew that I wanted to cloth diaper.  I did hours, probably days of research on cloth diapering since it had changed so much from when I was in cloth diapers.  I ultimately made my decision based on the “ease” of getting the diapers.  I wanted to be able to go to the store, and buy the supplies if needed, and gDiapers were the only one that I could go to the store and actually look at.  I can now officially say, that was the worst decision ever.

The concept seems pretty convenient, but these diapers are definitely not convenient in any way, shape or form.  They are also the most expensive, and are one of the few cloth diapering systems that have sizes, whereas many have one size fits all… so if they had actually worked, not only would I have spent a fortune this time around, but she’s about to outgrow this size, so I would have had to start all over again.  Now that I have done more research, looked up all my gripes about the diapers, and found so many other people with the same issues.

I was also able to find out that there are so many other brands out there, that are so much less expensive.  With gDiapers (minus the starter pack we got) you have to buy the outer pants one by one, or in multi-packs, then you have to buy the liners in packages of six, and the cloth inserts the same.  Total, I have 18 cloth inserts, 18 liners, 6 small/medium diapers, and 12 newborn sized diapers.  Total, that’s probably close to at least $300-$400 and now I’m stuck with them, and they only work (most of the time) really for wet diapers.  Wet diapers leak 25% of the time, and dirty diapers usually leak.  They latch together with Velcro in the back, which if you think about it, if you have a baby who likes to take off their diaper, this is genius, but the other 99% of the time, it’s a pain in the ass to put the diapers on, and take them off.

I am so upset with myself for this, because it was really something that I wanted to do, and so I insisted on forking out the money, and it has been a complete waste.  Since I’d have to buy the next size up anyway eventually, I really want to try with another brand, that while I would have to order online, and wait for it to arrive, they seem like they would be a much better solution, less expensive, and I have yet to read any bad reviews.  Plus, they come completely bundled together, and I could buy one at a time, and instead of forking out an entire fortune to see that they don’t work, it would be under $10 to find my mistake.

I still really want to cloth diaper, it makes me cringe every time I place my order for diapers, and I can’t help but think about all the other things I could be spending that money on.  I just wish the world didn’t have to make things so difficult when trying to “improve” them.  I probably should have just gone with the original old-school version of cloth diapering.  Oh well, lesson learned

No insurance.

No insurance for us means: go to the ER as many times as you can!

Currently sitting in a room with Jason, who has yet another kidney stone.

Yay!