Pardon my lack of blogging this past week. It’s been a busy one.
My brother was married yesterday. My dad came into town on Thursday, so he came over to hang out with Nora and me, then all of us kids got together with him and went out to dinner. Friday, I had the bridesmaid pampering stuff in the morning, my dad spent the afternoon with Nora and me, and then we had the rehearsal and dinner.
Saturday was the wedding, and it was a beautiful day and a lot of fun. What a long day, though! I brought Nora with me to the “getting ready” portion of the day, then my mother-in-law picked her up to babysit through the ceremony and pictures. She met us at the reception, at which point we were reunited with the little beauty. Wasn’t she looking pretty in her fancy red dress? :)
Congratulations, Tyler and Marie. We’re really happy for you guys. Enjoy the honeymoon!
I love adding sliced apples to turkey sandwiches. A couple slices of good wheat bread with turkey, honey mustard, cheddar, lettuce, and sliced apple? That just may be my perfect sandwich.
So when I saw this recipe for caramelized apple grilled cheese sandwiches on Beantown Baker, I knew we would have to try them, too. One night this week, we were looking for an easy dinner, so we whipped up these sandwiches with salads.
And well, they’re everything you’d expect them to be. In other words, they’re delightful. However, they’re like… dessert. They tasted a bit too much like pie to be dinner, in my opinion. Even lunch might be pushing it. But if you’re in the mood for a sweet snack, these are your solution.
We used cheddar cheese, because that’s what we had, but Jen used gouda with great results, too.
Caramelized Apple Grilled Cheese Sandwiches
(Source: Beantown Baker)
Ingredients:
– 1 Tbsp. butter
– 1 Tbsp. brown sugar
– 1 dash of cinnamon
– 1 apple (peeled, cored and sliced)
– 2 thick slices of good cheese (cheddar or gouda work well)
– 2 slices of good bread
– 1 Tbsp. butter
Directions:
1. Melt the butter in a non-stick pan.
2. Add the sugar and cinnamon and cook until bubbly.
3. Add the apples and saute until tender, about 5 minutes.
4. Assemble sandwich and grill until golden brown on both sides, about 2-4 minutes per side.
Nap time is where it’s at.
(Put Nora in her boppy for tummy time, and two minutes later, she was asleep. Oh well, we’ll work on head control another day!)
A few weeks before our peanut arrived, I posted about our intention to cloth diaper, and shared with you our plans and the things we had purchased for our starter stash.
Well, now that Nora is one month old, I know that some of you are likely curious about how this whole cloth diapering business is going for us. The short answer is that it is going great! I’m pretty sure I’ve already fallen in love with it.
Going back to the beginning… we didn’t mess with the cloth diapers for the first two weeks of Nora’s life. We had a pretty decent supply of newborn and size 1 disposables thanks to my baby showers, so we figured we might as well use them. Plus, Nora was just so tiny, I didn’t think there was any way that the cloth diapers were going to work very well on her. Looking back, I’m sure they would’ve been fine, but I don’t regret doing things the way we did them, either.
But when Nora was two weeks old, I decided to bust out one of the cloth diapers and see what we were working with. And I’ll be honest–when I got that first diaper on her (which was a little bit of a challenge in and of itself), I was totally second guessing myself. Not only did it take me longer to change her, but the diaper seemed SO BIG that I thought she looked borderline ridiculous. I knew to expect a “fluffy butt,” but I did not expect it to be that extreme. It seemed like her pants barely fit her anymore. Then, later that night, I had her in my lap and the diaper leaked on me.
We certainly weren’t off to a great start.
The next day, I don’t think I even put a single cloth diaper on her as I was kind of disappointed in the whole thing, and I was actually saying things to Michael like, “Well, worst case scenario, we can sell what we bought and we’ll probably get almost all of our money back.”
But on Monday, I woke up with a renewed determination about it, and I wanted to be sure to give cloth diapering a fair chance before giving up on it. So, back into a cloth diaper Nora went.
And, well, I had to admit that while still big–it was awfully cute. I also did some more internet reading and found that people said that as you get better at putting them on, the prefold/cover combination becomes a little less bulky. So I looked for instructions to remind myself how to do it, and the next time I put a fresh diaper on her, I made sure to make everything a little tighter (now that I know what I’m doing, in that photo above, the diaper is actually way too loose on her).
We haven’t looked back.
In two and a half weeks, we’ve never had a leak, we’ve never had a blowout, and things have been going great. I officially love cloth diapering.
When we first worked the cloth diapers into our routine, I was still afraid to take her out of the house in them, so I was using disposables for trips out of the house. But after a few days of that, I became more comfortable with the cloth and started using them all day long.
At this point, we’re still using disposables at night, as I don’t think the prefolds are absorbent enough for overnight. I don’t like to have her go more than 2-3 hours without changing her prefold diaper, and even then, sometimes the prefold is completely soaked (like every inch of it). And because she’ll sometimes sleep for longer stretches at night, I’d hate to have her sitting in a diaper that wet for an extended period of time. So until we move into our next stage of cloth diapering (pocket diapers) and can use an extra insert for nighttime, we will stick with disposables for overnight. Thankfully, that only means using two disposables a day, which we can live with for now. Especially since we still have a supply left from the diapers people purchased us for the baby showers.
As for our starter stash, it has served us pretty well. The 24 prefolds are definitely enough for us–I’m doing diaper laundry every third day. Once I was feeling confident that we were sticking with this, we did order one more Thirsties Duo (size 1) diaper cover, as I was often running out of covers before I ran out of prefolds. (Sometimes, baby poop will leak out the side of the prefold, but is thankfully caught by the cover–but this means the cover goes in the diaper pail for washing instead of being reused!) I also ordered an additional wet bag for traveling outside of the house, and an additional pail liner (we only had one of each before now).
Here is what the laundry pile looks like before folding. It’s really not a lot of work to do this every couple of days. My biggest complaint is folding the cloth wipes since they tend to stick together due to a little bit of static. We’ll see how long the folding lasts before I just throw them all into the bin in a big ball. :)
Here’s our diaper drawer. We use the baking soda to sprinkle in the pail every so often to help combat any odors, though I really haven’t noticed any thus far.
Oh, and have I mentioned we’re using cloth wipes as well? If you’re using cloth diapers, it’s just easier to use cloth wipes as well, since everything can be thrown into the diaper pail for washing. We purchased several packs of cheap baby wash cloths (the really thin ones, Gerber brand) at Babies R Us. They come in packs of 8 for like $5, and I think we got four packs. I have yet to run out of cloth wipes. We use a spray bottle filled with water to wet the wipes. We haven’t found the need to add anything to the water.
For washing, I do a cold rinse, then add the detergent (we’re using Charlie’s Soap), then run a hot wash with another cold rinse. After it’s all done, I hang the covers up to dry. Then all prefolds, wipes, wet bags and the pail liner get thrown into the dryer on low heat. I’ll usually remove the wet bags and pail liner about 20 minutes into the drying cycle and hang them to dry the rest of the way.
Here’s Nora in just the prefold and a Snappi. We’ve been using the “angel wing” fold, and it seems to work very well for us.
And here she is with the Thirsties Duo cover, all diapered up. (This is the extra one that I ordered–of course, now that we have a girl, I just had to order it in pink!)
I think that’s really it for our routine and our experience so far. It’s really been great–and I know that if we can get the hang of and enjoy prefolds, we’ll be more than fine when we get to the pocket diaper stage, as things will be even easier.
My biggest concern right now is where we go from here. It’s my understanding that most one-size pocket diapers do not fit babies well until they are around 12-13 lbs. And well, Nora is a month old and she’s probably hanging out around 8 lbs. right now. Ideally, we’d be able to move directly from the newborn prefolds to the pocket diaper, but I’m not sure if that’ll work–I’m worried she’ll outgrow the newborn prefolds (the Green Mountain Diapers “orange” prefolds) before she’ll actually fit into the pocket diapers. And if that’s the case, do we invest in another 24 prefolds in the next size up (the Green Mountain Diapers “yellow” prefolds) so we can continue to use the Thirsties Duo covers, or do we use some more disposables to hold us over until she can fit into the pockets? Ugh, I really hope to not have to do the latter, but I’m not sure if buying the next size prefolds will be the way to go, either. For now, I’m just hoping that she’ll continue to fit into the newborn prefolds for a while!
I hope this answers some of the questions you all may have, but if there are others, please feel free to ask in the comments. And if any of you cloth diapering moms have any wisdom to offer, please, I’m all ears!
If you’re curious about our stash and how we got started on this cloth diapering thing, please check out my first post on the subject.
Dear Nora,
You are one month old today. I can hardly believe it, as it still seems like just yesterday that you were born. Instead of expressing your age in days and weeks, we can now say you are one month old. Amazing.
One month and one day ago, I didn’t have you in my life. It’s actually hard to remember those days now. You’ve only been here for 30 days, but you fit into our lives so perfectly that it almost seems like you have been here all along.
Before you were born, some of our friends with kids told us not to worry if, after you arrived, we had feelings of “Oh my gosh, what did we do?” because it’s natural for new parents to feel overwhelmed with such a big change in their lives. Daddy and I talk frequently about how neither of us felt those feelings—not for one minute. Don’t get us wrong, there are challenging times, but still, there is joy to be found in it all. I guess we were just REALLY ready for you. And having all of those friends and family members who became parents before us—well, maybe their experiences helped us to have very realistic expectations.
You are growing and changing every day. As your mommy, I am faced with the dichotomy of wanting to see you grow, and wanting you to stay this small forever. I worry that as you grow bigger, I won’t be able to remember you ever being this little–it makes me sad. But Daddy and I make a conscious effort to enjoy every minute of your life at this moment, drinking in every detail of you. The smell of your hair, your tiny little ears, the way you suckle in your sleep, the turn of the corners of your mouth as you smile your gassy newborn smiles. The way you stare at us with your wide open, blue-gray eyes. Your long fingers, and your teeny-tiny replicas of Daddy’s toes.
At night, when we get ready for bed, I put a fresh diaper on you, change you into your pajamas, and nurse you in the glider chair in your room. Instead of falling asleep for the night at the breast, you are usually very alert and awake after your bedtime feeding. I burp you, then swaddle you in your swaddle blanket and give you your pacifier (which you LOVE). I carry you into our bedroom and pass you to Daddy to snuggle in bed while I get myself ready for sleep.
Once we’re all in bed together, Daddy and I spend a few minutes just staring at you. You look like a little glow worm or a burrito when you’re all wrapped up in your swaddle, with just your head showing. It’s adorable. But the thing we enjoy the most is the way you suck on your pacifier. As the rest of your body lies still in the dark, all cuddled inside your blanket, the only movement we can see is the back and forth movement of your binky. We joke about how you look like Maggie from The Simpsons.
Sometimes we’ll read you bedtime stories or poems. Daddy kisses you goodnight and rolls over to get some sleep, as he has to get up for work in the morning. I’ll usually stay awake a little longer, snuggling you until you start to drift off, or sometimes, until you’re out like a light. I say a little prayer, kiss you, and put you into your Rock ‘N’ Play bassinet, then sleep as I await your awakening for your middle of the night feeding.
It is moments like these–the simple, everyday, seemingly mundane things–that are now so much more special because we have you with us.
You are a great sleeper. On a normal night, you’ll generally sleep between four and seven hours before waking me to eat. Some nights, you decide to get up more often than that, but that’s rare for you. When you were about three weeks old, though, you went through a growth spurt and you were eating like a champ every few hours—you had me up several times throughout the night those days—but it only lasted maybe 3-4 nights before you were back to your usual. We know how lucky we are, because other parents tell us so! I’m seriously thankful every day, and I try to prepare myself for your good sleep habits to end. So far, they continue, and you’ve been a dream. Remind me to thank you for this when you’re older, OK? All I can say is, I hope you’re not going to make us pay for this during your teen years. :)
If I’m being 100% honest, there are nights when you spend a few hours sleeping with me—oops! I know it’s not a good habit, but sometimes I’ll drift off while I’m waiting for you to drift off. And sometimes, you’ll be a little fussy and you just want to be held. Some mornings, you’ll fuss early and I’ll tuck you into the crook of my arm in bed so we can both get another hour or two of sleep. I try not to feel guilty about this, as parents have been doing this for centuries. Plus, I know that these times will not last forever, so instead of looking at it like it’s wrong, I choose to just enjoy it while it lasts. As you get older, there will be plenty of nights for you to sleep alone in your crib.
The mornings are some of my favorite times with you. I love busting you out of your swaddle in the morning, and it almost always results in the most amazing baby stretches. You stretch out your whole body, from your head to your toes. Your arms fly up over your head and your legs and feet flex—it’s hilariously cute.
You still nap a lot during the day. Some days, it seems like all you do is sleep, while other days, you have much more awake time. You sleep in your Rock ‘N’ Play, which we pull out into the living room during the days, or in your vibrating bouncy seat. You also like to sleep while being held (surprise, surprise). In the evenings, we sometimes lie on the couch and let you sleep on our chests, which just may be our favorite way to snuggle you.
We are both doing really well with breastfeeding. I love it, and I’m pretty sure you do, too. (But then again, you’re a baby, and I think it’s in your nature to love it.) I was totally determined to breastfeed and am so happy that it is working out for the two of us. We have mastered nursing in the car when we’re out and about, and thankfully, we’ve also become really good at the whole side-lying thing for your middle-of-the-night meals (it.is.AWESOME).
I don’t know much about baby neck muscles, but I think you have amazing head control for your age. Other people say so, too, so surely it must be true? Your head is not very “floppy” at all, as you hold it up very well on your own. When I put you up on my shoulder to burp you, you are always pulling your head away from my shoulder and turning your head from side to side, looking all around. You follow things with your eyes, and seem to really like the Fisher Price jungle music/lights thingy in your crib.
Although you’re not “doing” much these days, I could still stare at you all day long. You are such a miracle, and we feel so blessed to have you. I promise to continue to cherish you. Thank you for choosing me to be your mommy. It’s been an amazing first month, and we can’t wait for the next.
We already love you more than we ever knew possible.
Hugs and kisses,
Mommy
About
I'm Heather. I'm 33 and have been married to Michael for seven years. Together, we have two beautiful little girls we love more than anything, and a miniature dachshund who drives us crazy. I'm a full-time working mom who has very little time for my own "stuff" these days, like home improvement, cooking/baking, cake decorating, and photography. Despite the team not making the playoffs since 1999, I'm STILL a Buffalo Bills fan, which I think speaks to my loyalty AND sense of humor. I can't wait to pick up the pace with travel again some day... you know, when we're done being ruled by tiny fists. Welcome to my blog.
