Macy & Family

cloth diaper contests

I know a couple of you are expecting your own little ones in the next few months, so I thought if you were interested in cloth diapering I would give you a few links to check out. These are all places that hold contests so you can win free diapers!

1. Cloth Diaper Blog. They have near weekly contests that are easy to enter. I have won a contest here before.

2. The Cloth Diaper Whisperer. They have weekly contests which offer many ways to enter. They also offer a separate twitter only contest during the week. They have lots of tips and articles about all kinds of things related to cloth diapers.

3. Dirty Diaper Laundry. Kim does video reviews of all kinds of cloth diapers and usually there is an accompanying contest.

4. Your Mama Reviews. This site does reviews on baby products in general, but there are quite a few cloth diaper contests.

My last tip is to join twitter and follow me. There are tons of people who list their contests on twitter and I follow quite a bit of them and post their contests often.

Good luck! Let me know if you win anything.

pregnancy

I forgot to tell everyone our new name for baby #2. For his/her time in my uterus we will call him/her Bubba Mae.

This pregnancy I am going to a midwife practice here in town. They share an office with my old doctor and only deliver in the hospital. The main difference between a doctor and midwife is that they are more present during your labor and delivery and they tend to have a more natural position on labor. I think for me it is the better option. While I loved my doctor, the doctor who happened to be present at my delivery was not someone who liked at all. I really didn’t want to risk having her show up the day the baby is born. The midwife practice consists of three midwives, and I will see them all equally during my pregnancy and one of the three will be at my delivery. This means no strangers. If there was a problem in pregnancy or delivery, one of the doctors from my old doctor’s practice would be called in. I like that the option is there should the need arise. I also like that I will be in a hospital should an emergency come up.

Another thing that is different this pregnancy is that we have no maternity health insurance, which means we will be paying totally out of pocket! Fun, huh? Overall our health insurance is pretty good, but when you buy your own insurance, there isn’t really any maternity coverage available. Well, they offer it, but it basically equals out to cover as much as you pay for the insurance, which to me, says not worth it. The midwives offer a discount for paying in full by week 32, so that is the plan. I had to do the same thing with the doctor, and really it isn’t that much more to pay out of pocket for the midwife as it was with insurance (for the doctor or midwife). I still need to call the hospital and try and see if they have a pre-payment plan, so that we can start paying for it now. All we have to do now is pray that I don’t have any complications during pregnancy, since that could add up quickly.

I’m still feeling fine. I’m so thankful that I don’t get morning (or all-day) sickness. I am still tired, but I was still tired at this point last time. I go to the midwife next week for a check-up. Hopefully I will have gained a little weight.

month 14

Greta learns to identify her second body part this month, her belly button! Her wave turns into a huge arm wave. Sometimes we think she might fall over from waving so big! Greta is not a big crier, especially when she falls down. When she does cry it usually means it really hurt, but often before I know if she is going to cry or not, we say ‘whoa’. A few times this month she fell down and said ‘whoa’! Greta got her first real injury this month. She got a bloody lip after falling into a laundry basket and hitting her teeth on the laundry basket.

This month both Greta and I got some 24 hour bug. We both had pretty high fevers and were generally miserable, but got better quickly, so never got to the doctor to find out what was wrong.

Greta was big into stacking blocks this month. Once she stacked 4 blocks! Greta learned to sit on the ball and bounce this month. I think her cousin taught her this while he was visiting. We just have to remind her not to bounce on the tile.

This month Greta’s 8th tooth finally came in. Her other 7 teeth had been in for a while, so we were starting to wonder where the 8th one was. It came in much faster than the others did.

This month she started folding her hands for grace. She only really does it if there is no food on her tray yet. Many times I end up getting her food ready before I sit down and say grace, so she doesn’t always fold them, but I’m impressed none-the-less.

This month we had a visit from Matt’s parents and our one nephew. We had a great time with them. Matt’s mom taught Greta ‘so big’, which she loves doing. In fact the first time she saw Gremmy on the computer after their visit she immediately held her arms in the air!

This month is when eating seemed to click for Greta. She actually was interested in eating and started consuming measurable amounts of food. She likes most everything except for meat. She used to eat a little meat when she was younger, but apparently has decided to be a vegetarian for the time being. Every time we give her a piece of meat, she puts it in her mouth to taste it and then spits it back out. I’m glad she is willing to at least try it. Greta still nurses quite a bit, but food is actually meaning something to her, which is good. For a while I thought I would be going to college with her to nurse her since real food was yucky. Towards the end of the month Greta had her first ‘solid’ poop. Clearly she wasn’t eating that much solid food before

Towards the second half of the month it seems like Greta’s understanding of life just exploded. She actually seemed to know what we were talking about and responded appropriately. Like when we say do you want to go outside, she either goes to get her shoes to go outside or runs to the door and squeals. It seems like in just a few weeks time EVERYTHING clicked. I say go find your water, she looks high and low for it until she finds it, or until I give her enough clues to find it.

We didn’t buy Greta shoes until right before her first birthday. Every shoe I tried on her foot didn’t fit since she has quite wide feet. Since we knew she would be walking soon we wanted her to have some shoes so she could get down in public without putting her dirty toes on the ground. She loves her shoes. She always wants to put them on when we mention anything about leaving or going outside. But she also knows the no shoes in the house rule as well. As soon as we come inside, she sits down and starts pulling on them to get them off.

Greta continues to love the outside. Too bad it is so hot out these days and the grass is hard and crunchy on the feet. Soon enough we will be spending lots more time outside.

month 13

Greta had an exciting month 13 since that is when she started walking! Of course she wasn’t walking by the time we went to the pediatrician for her 12 month check-up, but she started just a few days later. The thing is, we are pretty sure Greta knew how to walk for a while. She was very steady on her feet and could stand without holding onto something for a very long time. She also could walk while holding onto things for about 2 months. She was just afraid to let go. She wouldn’t really ever walk while holding our hands, she just wanted to do it all by herself. Once she did start walking, she was a pro almost immediately. She didn’t fall very much at all.

Greta started dancing this month. We have music on in the house quite often and I try to get her to dance all the time, but she finally started doing a little dance on her birthday! This month her wave turned into a hand wave. Previously it was more of a ‘hey – what’s up’ kind of wave.

While my parents were here my dad tried very hard to teach her to shake her head yes, but she wouldn’t have it. A few weeks later she finally started doing it. We taught her the sign for all-done and she actually started using it. I wish I had taught her more sign language, but oh well, next kid This month she was definitely saying Albert, dada, and hi.

Once this month she bent over and picked up the 4 lb medicine ball. It was quite funny as she looks like those weightlifters in competitions, with her legs spread wide and lifting with the legs. Greta started doing head-stands this month. She did them all the time, I think mainly to get a different perspective on life.

Once she mastered walking forward, she started on walking backward and is actually pretty good.

Eating continued to be sub-par this month, but at least she still has lots of yummy milk to fill her up.

month 12

During month 12 Greta did quite a lot. She learned to kiss, but still did it sparingly. She learned to get to the standing position without holding onto something. Greta started shaking her head no to mean (at least some of the time). Greta started saying ‘hi’ along with waving hi and waving bye. Greta also was saying dada to mean dada.

Greta was big into putting toys in buckets, baskets and on shelves. She also started to use walk behind toys to walk a little. Greta learned to identify her first body part, her tongue. She also liked to stick her tongue out.

This month Greta really started to take her diapers off quite a bit. Thankfully we had some snap ones on order

We went on two trips this month. First we went to Orlando for Katie’s memorial service. After we got back Greta and I headed to Houston to help watch over my aunt and uncle’s house and keep an eye on my cousin while my aunt and uncle were out of town. We did lots of swimming while we were there. Greta was good on the plane rides, but not so good in the car. We had lots of screaming and lots of stopping on the drive there and back. We also had a visit from my parents for Greta’s birthday.

Greta was still not too into eating solid food this month. She loved yogurt and cheese and would eat other stuff very sparingly.

pigtails, pregnancy and cantaloupe

Yesterday we put Greta’s hair in pigtails for the first time. We think it is totally and utterly adorable!

What they say is true…the belly appears much earlier in second pregnancies. Here is it at 14 weeks.

Greta practicing for her new role:

We finally got a melon from our garden. Most of them have rotted or died or just stopped growing. But finally a cantaloupe was made and ripened! It was pretty tasty, although it was quite tiny.

a few funny things

Greta loves to get a hold of Matt’s belt. Albert also loves Matt’s belt. Greta likes to swing the belt around and Albert will chase after it. Of course after I got out the video camera Albert stopped participating, but it is still a cute video.

Greta loves to wear dress up accessories, mostly hats and glasses. Here she is with my glasses and also with her Aunt Katie’s glasses. (P.S. We are building a box of dress up things for Greta’s Christmas gift, so if anyone has any items they would like to donate, we would love them )

One day Greta put each and every block through the front door of the dollhouse. I tried to put one through the window and she let me know that is not how the game was played.

For a few weeks Greta has been folding her hands for grace before meals. It is adorable! She now sometimes reminds us if we forget at breakfast or lunch. Next up, learning how to say the actual prayers!

new air travel diaper routine

For all of airplane trips in the past year we had used disposable diapers. Cloth diapers took up too much room in the luggage and since we have to pay for every bag most trips it didn’t seem worth it, especially when most of our trips were only a few days long. We did use cloth diapers while in FL for Christmas, but only because my mom had just received some new diapers I had ordered, so they were already there.

I started feeling guilty about throwing all those diapers in the trash, thinking about how they take 500 years to decompose, and I got tried of them always leaking. Pretty much at least once a trip we had a poop blow-out, which we never had with cloth diapers.

Most of the summer gDiapers was having a sale on their covers. Buy the 6 pack of covers (which is normally $70) for $40! Finally at the end of July I went ahead and bought them. I knew if we didn’t like them we could always use them as covers for our diapers or sell them for about the same price. For those of you who don’t know about gDiapers, they are made of three components, the cover, the liner, and the insert. The gDiaper inserts are better for the environment than a traditional disposable diaper because they can be flushed, composted, or thrown away. If thrown away they decompose in 50-150 DAYS, not 500 YEARS like disposable diapers.

In addition to the covers, I bought some prefold diapers to use as the insert while we were at our location. Since we were staying with Matt’s family I knew washing wouldn’t be a problem, since Matt’s mother washed diapers for many years as a young mother. The prefold diapers take up relatively little space in the luggage compared to our regular diapers. I also bought some of the disposable inserts, only one package, which we still have half left over for another trip.

So we weren’t leaving until about 5 pm on Friday afternoon, but since I learned my lesson about leaving dirty diapers for longer than a day or two (they got moldy and I wasn’t able to get them clean), I started my normal dirty diaper laundry in the morning and put Greta in the gDiaper disposable inserts with the gDiaper covers. She wore those until we were at Matt’s parents house about 1 am Friday night/Saturday morning. Then for the next three days we used the prefolds as our inserts. I washed diapers on Sunday morning and again on Monday evening, so that they would be dry and ready for the trip home.

Overall, it was almost as easy as having our diapers along. I really missed our diaper sprayer for rinsing the poop off, but made do with dunking them in the toilet. The prefolds we have are pretty thick, so I may order some smaller ones for the next trip. Greta didn’t ever completely soak one of the prefolds, even overnight.

With everything we have we should be good to go for another trip. I have enough disposable inserts for another two travel days and the prefolds and covers are ready to go for the next trip. I knew we would be traveling a lot this fall, so I figured it was worth the investment. The gDiaper inserts are a little more than regular disposable diapers, but to me it is justified since the decompose so fast. Now I don’t have to feel guilty about filling up landfills with useless trash.

P.S. Typically when we travel by car we bring our diapers since we have space and we are usually going to my aunt and uncle’s house and they don’t mind if we do diaper laundry in their washer.

problems

We are having a few problems here on the blog. Using the old format no matter what I do there is a spam ad at the top. So for now we have the default theme up, which I don’t really like and which stretches the pictures funny (in case you were wondering why everyone looks so skinny). Hopefully I’ll have it fixed and back to normal, or at least a new normal sometime soon.

trip to PA – day 3 & 4

On Monday, most of the day revolved around Matt’s aunt’s funeral. His aunt died last week after a long battle with cancer. We just happened to be in PA for the funeral, which was nice, but also sad. We went to the funeral, then the burial, then the luncheon. It was nice to be able to see almost all of the extended family. Afterwards we went swimming with Matt’s sister and family. The pool was definitely cooler than our Texas pools, but it still wasn’t that bad.

Tuesday morning we got up and spent the last morning visiting with family. We went out to say goodbye to Matt’s grandfather.

Then we spent the rest of the morning playing outside at Matt’s parents’ house.

Greta decided to check and see if Priscilla had a belly button. Good news, she does!

Here is the view from Matt’s parents’ house. Lovely, isn’t it?

Greta’s hair was exceptionally curly while we were in PA, due to the much higher humidity. Despite it being very, very hot here in Texas, the humidity is relatively low. As you can see by the difference in her hair, the humidity was super high on Tuesday.

Here is a picture of all the grandkids! We were able to get one where everyone is looking and smiling!

We left Matt’s parents’ house about 11:30 and headed down towards the airport. We stopped in to visit a friend from college. Greta enjoyed playing with her daughter.