The husbands other new baby

My husband is not a spender. He can squeeze the life out of a nickel better than any two people I know. He also didn't get that "college days" portion of his life, skipping directly from a child to a husband and father. So it really didn't come as a surprise to me that he's having his "mid-life crisis" a little pre-mid-life. Last summer he bought a motorcycle, (although, with the gas prices so high it was actually the "responsible" thing to do!) and this summer he bought a raft.

For some people, the word "raft" brings to mind a few logs strapped together by Ginger and the Professor. Oh, no. This is a river raft with an aluminum oar frame. It's like a whitewater raft, only not really. He spent a lot of time researching these things. It's all he could talk about! (If you polled his co-workers, none of them would know the name of our 2 month old son, but most of them would be able to tell you that the husband just bought a 14 foot raft!) When our neighbor offered to give him an oar frame (retail:$600!) the husband was so excited! He was just like a little kid at Christmas time!

Rafting, or "floating the river" as it is called around here, is a major pastime in our neck of the woods. We live at the confluence of two famous rivers, one for being the longest, free-flowing river in the country (meaning it doesn't have any dams or locks or anything), and the other is famous for being the "river that runs through it" in the movie. I'm told that both rivers are excellent for fly-fishing. Not that we would know. We don't fish. (What if you catch something? Then what do you do with it? The step between casting a line and frying trout in butter is a step that I want to continue to skip!) And it's not like we're whitewater rafting, either. That looks scary. And you might spill your beer.

We've had this raft since April, and the husband has already floated four times. Personally, I like to wait for the temperature to go above 65 degrees before I set foot in a river consisting almost primarily of (just) melted snow. But last weekend, I was finally able to try out "our" latest toy. (And by "our" I mean "his". He swears it's for both of us, but he uses it frequently without me and I have a feeling that if I wanted to use it without him, he would have a serious fit.)

The husband's 13 year old son was visiting us for the weekend, so we went for a "float", the husband, the older boy, the angel and me. (Peanut is too small. It might not be whitewater, but it's still a river, ya know?) I packed sandwiches for a picnic. (This is what had been missing from the other floats, which is why you should always invite women...they often bring food.) The older boy had done this before, in fact, he floated much of the way on an inner tube, awkwardly perched like a cat in a bathtub! (That water is cold!!) The angel had never been on the river before, and her reaction was priceless! Everytime we would hit some rapids, or as she called them, "rabbits", she would shriek and giggle and carry on. Probably more than was really called for, since the "rapids" were about the size of a jet boat wake. She would call out, "Stir, Daddy, stir!" I guess she wasn't quite sure what he was doing with those big "spoons" on the side of the boat, but whatever it was, he should do it faster! We stopped on an island to enjoy our picnic, and both kids scarfed down the smoked turkey with pesto sandwich, proving they are less persnickity when they are genuinely hungry. A couple hours and a bottle of sunscreen later, we were done. Tired, dirty and a little chilled, we returned home to collect the peanut. (A nursing mamma needs her baby after a few hours apart!)

To be fair, we had a great time. It was wonderful to crack jokes and quote movies with the husband, to play word games with the kids, and to watch my step-son try to teach my angel how to skip rocks. Just the four of us, trapped together on a 14 foot raft with nothing to do but talk to each other and snack on Cheez-its. Maybe the raft wasn't such a silly purchase after all!

The Diaper Debate (a little long, bare with me)

So babies need diapers. Back when I was a child, mothers wrapped folded pieces of cloth around baby's bum, used gigantic safty pins with ducks on them to hold it together and covered it with vinyl pants. When soiled, the cloths went into a big bucket of water to soak until wash day. And the smell was awful. Did I miss anything?

Then came the fabulous technology of disposable diapers. These are pieces of paper and plastic wrapped around baby's bum, which are simply thrown away after use. They have evolved to include some sort of mystery substance that turns into little jelly "seeds" when wet. I'm pretty sure this is the absorbent part, but I don't know what it is, until I see it tucked into the folds around baby's thighs because the diaper "over-absorbed", if you know what I mean.

Lately there has been some debate over which of these methods is the best, for the baby and the environment. I have noticed a marked increase in the amount of trash I take out each week, so much that we may have get the larger sized can for our household. (The blue thingys you haul out to the street once a week) Our baby, on average, uses two garbage bags (the tall kitchen drawstring variety) of diapers each week. As he gets bigger he will use fewer diapers, but the diapers will get bigger, so I figure this is what we can expect from him. Now, in our tiny town of 3,000 people, let's assume there are 100 kids in diapers, for the sake of easy math. (That's newborns through 3-4 year olds, and it's a pretty good approximation) That's two hundred bags of diapers each week, or 10,400 bags of human poop going to our landfill each year!(And this is just a tiny rural town. Now imagine a city's diaper load!!) Not to mention the fact that those diapers will take 500 years or so to break down, due to the amount of plastic and "mystery jelly seeds" they contain. And on that note, what are those mystery jelly seeds? Are they going to tell me down the road that they cause cancer? (Like talc baby powder.)

So I decided to look into cloth diapers. I remember my younger siblings wearing them, and one never forgets the smell of the "diaper pail". However, doing a little internet research, today's cloth diapers are totally different. These ain't your mamma's cloth diapers! Sure, they still have regular squares of cloth, but even the pins have gone the way of 8-track tapes. Now they use a thing called a Snappi to hold them together, or you can use a "wrap", where you just lay the diaper in it and it goes on with velcro. Plus, and this is my favorite part, they make what they call AIO's or All In Ones. These diapers have an absorbent inner and a waterproof outer, so they work just like disposables except instead of throwing them away, you wash them. Plus, they come in cute colors and prints. You almost don't want to cover them with pants! And they don't go into the bucket of putrid water, either. They sit in a dry pail until wash day, which surprisingly is less smelly. For my little breastfed baby, smelly isn't really a huge problem. But once he starts eating food, this is something to think about!

The debate claims that washing the diapers is just as bad for the environment as throwing them away, and they have a point. I usually wash clothes in cold water, but diapers need to be washed in hot water. However I usually use about a 1/4 to 1/2 cup of detergent in a load of laundry, but in the diaper load I only use about a tablespoon of liquid detergent. (Seems counter-intuitive, but you don't want too much soap with your diapers. It also makes me wonder if I'm using way too much soap with my clothes, which are far less "dirty" than diapers! Something to think about.) And they use no bleach or other harsh chemicals (except the occasional Oxyclean) and no fabric softener (or dryer sheets). So in reality, a load of diapers costs probably half what a load of regular laundry costs me. And the water from your washing machine goes to the same place as the water from your toilet. And they are prepared to treat human waste at those facilities. The landfill is not. We are supposed to be removing as much poop as we can from disposables too, (it says so on the package!) but hardly anybody does this. Cause, lets face it, it's icky. And if you have to take that extra step and deal with the poop, than the "simplicity" of disposables isn't so simple after all.

Now let's talk money. We go through a little more than a package of diapers (80 count) a week. That's about $10.99 every week. (Not counting wipes, which is debate for another day!) And we use Luvs, a mid-priced diaper because the cheaper "store" brand diapers tend to leak and gave my angel terrible diaper rash. But if you use higher end diapers (Pampers, Huggies) add another two or three bucks. That's $572 a year, times three years (I'm being super optimistic here!) is $1,716. (Or $2,184 if you use Huggies.) I don't know about you all, but a thousand here, a thousand there...pretty soon it starts to add up to real money! If you bought the most expensive cloth diapering system, you'd pay about $600. Total. That's for the BumGenius brand system. And there are many less expensive options.

So, I've decided to give cloth a chance. I have chosen to sew my own diapers, saving even more money! Plus, it's kind of fun. Here are some pictures of a few of my "creations".

These diapers have a fleece outer, and a microfiber soaker inside. (Think ShamWow, only less hokey.) The pattern is a hybrid between Mama Bird and Rita's Rump patterns, both free on the internet. My first try was a disaster, but now I think I've got it figured out! (Lest you think that I am one of those seamstress, stay-at-home moms, let me assure you that I am not! I can barely sew a straight stitch, and I'm using an archaic sewing machine that used to belong to the husbands mother. We rescued it from a storage barn and cleaned it up. It has two speeds, zero and seventy miles per hour.)

We still use disposables too, but hopefully we can cut back by using cloth, and as my "stash" of diapers increases we can use less and less! I'll let you know about some of the trials and tribulations of using cloth as I get more into it. But for now, it's something I want to try, if for no other reason than to say that I gave it a shot!

Oh, Momma!

Yes, Mother's Day is approaching. Have you got something for your mother, yet? I got my mother's day gift last Saturday, when the husband took me shopping for clothes. Without kids. (Does it seem wrong that I wanted to commemorate Mother's Day by pretending I don't have any kids for 5 or 6 hours?) We would have done it on actual Mother's Day, but my mom was taking care of the kids for us, and next weekend she and her girlfriends are road tripping to go to an Eagles concert. (Once your kids are grown you get to act like coeds again. I can't wait!) So we took advantage of the free babysitting last weekend instead.

For those of you keeping score, this was the first time I have left my peanut. (Except once, I left him with his father for twenty minutes to run to the grocery store, and I called home twice to check on them.) It has been awhile since I've had an infant around, and I forgot the "baby time warp". (Those of you who are fans of Paul Reiser, the Mad About You guy, may know that babies warp time in two ways: A. You can shake plastic keys until your arm hurts, play a rousing game of "stick out your tongue", engage in a thousand rounds of peek-a-boo, only to realize a mere 15 minutes have passed, and B. The simple acts of showering, dressing, eating and getting out the door with a baby takes 3.5 hours.) I also had to offer a short clinic on the use of a bottle warmer, and a quick tutorial on how to use the stroller. (The thing has more bells and whistles than my first car.) Then I walked out the door, leaving them in my mother's capable hands. (If she has questions, the angel knows what to do.)

The shopping was both painful and necessary. I decided it was time to get out of my maternity jeans. (I didn't want my friends and family to have to stage an intervention.) But my pre-baby jeans were creating a little more muffin top than I am comfortable with. (By the way, you're not a size 10 if all your fat is squished out the top. Just buy the 14 and get over it!) But I love shopping with the husband! For one thing, he has absolutely no fashion sense, so he never offers anything but a smile and nod when asked direct questions in a clothing store. He also turns into Daddy Warbucks. Can't decide between two pairs of jeans? Get 'em both, baby! (Oddly enough, this is the same man who has a fit when I spend money on a sweater from the clearance rack. Apparently, I've cheated him out of the opportunity to buy me six of them!) So I took advantage of him, and some fabulous sales, and purchased a new, plus-size wardrobe. (This is of course to tide me over until I get back into my "skinny jeans". It could happen!)

But when I was carting my purchases into the house, I realized that almost half of what I had bought that day had been for the kids. New swimsuits for the angel, and some adorable mini swim trunks for the peanut. It's just so much fun to shop for them! And after all, spending my day away from kids buying things for those kids is why they have a Mother's Day in the first place!

And on that note, a heart-felt THANK YOU to my own Mom, without whom I would never be able to leave the house. Thank you for loving my babies as much as I do!