juggling life

It's been a while since I updated this blog, mostly because things got CRAZY around here!  We decided to buy a house, which would put me closer to school and thus in quick driving range if there was a child emergency, so I got busy with packing up the household.  It won't be news to anyone who has ever moved their whole family, but packing up myself, my child, and my husband was a LOT of work!  This was compounded by being foster parents, so in the midst of the move, we needed to update all of our foster paperwork, as well as get things like fire and safety inspections that most people aren't required to have.  We closed on the house on August 13, and moved gradually over the following week in an effort to (1) let Pooh get used to the new place, and (2) get a few things unpacked so that all of the unpacking wasn't taking place with Pooh running around.  Unfortunately, school was starting for me, so I would go to school all day, then go to the new place to clean and/or unpack, then head home to play with the men, clean, and pack.  Needless to say, I'm glad to be all in one place now!  And, to have started the school year and at least somewhat have gotten in to the swing of things.

But this juggling being a mom, wife, and full-time professor is not easy, I must say!  There are a lot of days when I get home, have an hour or two with Pooh running around, eating dinner, getting a bath, etc, and when he goes to bed at 7, I'm exhausted!  On days when I still have schoolwork to do once I'm home, it's often a struggle to force myself to pick it back up when all i want to do is crash.  Of course, it's also difficult to force myself to pick anything else up, like toys, trash, and my clothes.  So I'm not doing a very good job of keeping a clean house (admittedly one of my greatest problems even before I had a family!).  Since we didn't unpack everything before moving in, it's beginning to drive me crazy (and the hubby is already there).  So I've been trying to figure out a system - a plan to keep my sane, as well as my house clean and my family fed and clothed.  So far, the only thing that's really working is...

washing cloth diapers!  The pail gets stinky and/or we run out of diapers if we don't wash the lot about every 2 days, and I've been ultra diligent about doing it.  This is an especially onerous task because neither our washer nor our dryer work right.  The washer overflows the drain if we just let it run, so we have to be onhand to open the lid (multiple times) and stop the drainage whenever it's ending either the wash or rinse cycle.  And the timer on the dryer is not working, so we can't just turn it on 30 min and go to bed cause it will run all night that way.  Instead, we have to set a timer, and when it goes off, manually open the door of the dryer to stop it.  Now, I know we could go buy a new washer and dryer, but that's not really what we want to do.  First of all, the washer problem is a drain issue, not a washer problem, so we'd be likely to have the same problem with any machine.  Second of all, the dryer works great, it just doesn't time itself.  Third of all, buying new machines seems wasteful when ours work, and with us trying to reduce~reuse~recycle, tossing these out goes against our basic philosophy.

But this is not a post to lament about our w/d situation!  What I'm trying to say is that the laundering of cloth diapers is one of the most onerous (as well as odorous!) tasks around the house, and I've found myself able to accomplish it quite effectively as part of my routine.  So I know it's possible for me to establish and stick with new routines.   Why then, can't I effectively manage other household routines?  I've decided it's that I haven't figured out what I want the routine to be.  I'm a person who likes to plan.  Lesson planning is one of my favorite things about being a teacher.  As a planner, I'm a listmaker  prone to making lists for all kinds of things, and known to add things to my list that I've accomplished just for the simple satisfaction of crossing things off!   So, I'm now on a quest to determine and plan the best routine for making my home a pleasant and better-than-livable abode.  Any suggestions?

New lessons being learned...

but by Pooh, not by us:

(1)  toilet paper goes in the toilet.  he demonstrated this knowledge by tossing a new roll of paper in there the other day when I neglected to put the lid down.  My lesson:  always attach the roll to the paper roll holder.  it won't stop him, but it'll take a lot longer for the entire roll to end up in the toilet.  and let's be honest - it'll be on the floor first, so it may never make it to the toilet!

(2) velcro is fun.  Pooh demonstrates this knowledge by opening any and all velcro fastenings.  it started with his shoes, which are sandals with velcro straps.  then he moved on to his cloth diapers - as soon as i fasten them, he unfastens.  i'm learning to put a cover or a pair of shorts on him really really quickly.  but now he's discovered that his disposables also have velcro fastenings - Pdaddy put him down for bed last night, and this morning we awoke to him, naked, standing in a little puddle.  i think we need to buy more shorts...

and my newest lesson regarding cloth diapering...

is that one should always put pants on over velcro fastened pocket diapers when worn by inquisitive almost-two-year-olds.  Otherwise, one might check on said toddler later only to find him sitting naked, on a sheet that he has soaked, having thrown said diaper out of his crib.  Thankfully Hopefully, there was will be no poop for him to play with!

I was so excited this evening to try out some of the diapers in my new stash!  We had been using disposables for the last 2 days so that we didn't have a stinky laundry area when our agency worker came today, so I hadn't gotten to try a single one previously.  As soon as she left, I popped one of the fitteds on Pooh, stuck a new-to-us cover over it, and let him run around.  Less than 5 minutes later, the cover came off (new velcro needed), so I pulled out one of the covers we already had, and happily agreed when he asked to watch Elmo.  One soaked comforter later, I changed him into one of the bum genius pockets, gave him a bottle of milk, and popped him into his crib for beddy-bye.

Yep, bye-bye bedding!  When P-daddy came home about 15 minutes later with yummy BBQ, Pooh knew it and kept calling him, so P-daddy went in to say goodnight.  He came right back out, doubled over in laughter.   Thus we learned our newest lesson regarding covering velcro tabs with pants or some such thing.  We'll see in the morning (1) whether he's still wearing the diaper, and (2) whether he has leaked through all the layers.

Why I love Craigslist.org

More cloth diapers, at awesome prices!

Thanks to a wonderful local cloth diapering mom who is updating her stash and getting rid of lots of cloth diapers, I got an awesome deal today!  She advertised the lot on craigslist as 19 pieces, but she counted the inserts as part of the pocket diapers, and then she threw in 2 extra bumgenius pockets that had stains and needed to be sunned.  So I actually got 25 pieces for $25!  Here's what that included:

- 6 bumgenius one-size pocket diapers
- 2 bumgenius one-size pocket diapers (need to be sunned)
- 2 happy heinys pocket diapers
- 2 other pocket diapers that I'm unsure of the name of
- 1 diaper cover
- 5 doublers/inserts for pocket diapers
- 7 fitted cloth diapers

I'm super excited about these, as I think this gives us a pretty full stash!  Along with what we had before, this gives us the following:
12 pocket diapers
7 doublers/inserts
35-40 pre-folds (not sure exactly how many)
2 diaper pins
2 snappis
7 fitted diapers
9 diaper covers (4 that I bought new, 1 from today, and 4 'plastic pants' that came with the pre-folds)

I'm not convinced that the fitteds will fit Pooh - I think they are smaller than he is.  But I'm washing the lot tonight (after the cloth from the last 2 days finishes - the smell in our non-ventilated laundry room was becoming unbearable), and I'll try them tomorrow.  If they don't work, then my sister D will get them for her youngest, who just celebrated her first birthday.

Another reason I'm excited about these is that I'm hoping they'll help P-daddy feel more comfortable with cloth diapering.  He likes the idea, but he seems to think that putting on the pre-folds, pinning or snappi-ing, and then covering, is just possibly more trouble than it's worth.  He's all about simplicity, and cloth diapering so far is simply not fitting into that philosophy.  But I'm planning to use the pre-folds we already have to stuff the pocket diapers we just got, and then they should be just as easy for P-daddy as a disposable would be! 

One last reason for excitement about these is that we are getting sick of blow-outs with disposables.  We have yet to let Pooh out of the house in a cloth diaper, mostly (for me at least) because I was dreading the thought of changing one when we are out.  So we have been using disposables for the last couple days when we've been out of the house, and we've had several blow-outs:-(  Last night, I went out after work with a few friends, and P-daddy got Pooh ready for bed, so he just put a disposable on him.  We awoke to crying at 2am; Pooh had completely reached the absorbency limit of the disposable he had on - everything was soaked, and the beads in the diaper were literally spilling out (not a problem for Pooh, cause he loves playing with them!).  With the new stash, I'm hoping that we feel comfortable enough to start using cloth in public.

Yay for recycling, for craigslist, and for clothdiapering mommies who clean out their stashes and don't charge "new" prices!

lessons in cloth diapering

So we've been cloth diapering for a week or so now, and in my mind (though perhaps not in P-daddy's) I'm committed to trying this for 2 months.  Really, in my mind it's that I'll try it until October 1, and if I'm not finding it's working at that time, I'll go back to disposables.  But so far, I kind of like it!  I've now received all 4 of the covers that I ordered (I'll be posting more reviews in the next few days), and I'm starting to learn a few things along the way that are making this experiment more user-friendly:

1) Get some snappis!  I didn't have these for the first few days, so I was using pins, and the snappis are way easier.  Also, to this point, P-daddy had refused to put a cloth diaper on Pooh - he'll take one off, but then put a disposable on.  I'm hoping that the snappis will help convince him to at least try it.  Update:  so far, this hope has not been realized:-( But I'm hoping the new stash will increase his comfort level even more.

2) Use a doubler at night!  Last night was the first night we did this, and when Pooh got up this morning, the back of his diaper was not even wet (it's typically wet front to back and side to side.  We only have 2 doublers, but I'll definitely be using them in his nighttime diapers (or trying other kinds of things to absorb more than just the cloth diaper does alone).  Update:  second day to try this was not quite as successful - still wet from end to end and side to side.  But  I can only imagine how bad it would have been without the doubler in it!

3) Change on a schedule.  Changing Pooh every time he is wet is impossible - he seriously pees at least every half hour.  But I've been trying to make sure that he gets changed every 1.5-2 hours, or when he poops, and the wetness isn't nearly as bad as what it was before.  I think we were changing him pretty often, but not necessarily on a regular schedule, and for some reason, this is working pretty well.  Update:  Pooh is going to be mostly in disposables this weekend, as our agency worker is coming on Monday and we want the laundry room to smell clean and fresh and not like urine and feces.  Today, I noticed that we are changing disposables every hour to 1.5 hours.  The boy drinks a LOT of water, lemme tell you!  But knowing this, setting a 1.5 hour limit on a cloth diaper does not seem unreasonable at all.

4) Find a diaper cover that fits (you'll read more about this in the reviews to come!).