Don't fall over: I'm blogging again!

I am sitting in the car in my driveway with the engine running, surfing the internet on the laptop because D is asleep in the back and there's not enough time to take him inside for a nap before The Little Gym, but I want him to get as much sleep as possible. I'm curious what the neighbors think.

I wouldn't have been here at all except that a potential host family I spoke with last night asked me to call this morning between 8 and noon. I agreed without thinking about how busy my morning was going to be: drop off Z at school, go to the chiropractor, The Little Gym with D, get some groceries, fit lunch in there somewhere, and pick up Z by 12:30. Crazy! So when D fell asleep I figured I could make the phone call from the car using the laptop because our router is in the front room and we can get internet from the front yard and driveway. I felt rather clever :-) Of course, the guy didn't answer the phone. All that effort to have the materials, the computer to take notes, the sleeping baby who wouldn't interrupt, and no one answers the phone! I left a message, but, honestly, how many of you return sales calls? Yeah, me either.

As it turns out, it's a good thing I came home real quick instead of heading straight to the grocery story or another errand. Apparently it's "that time of the month", early, and without warning. Ugh. Starting back up after baby is the worst. Everything's off-schedule and completely unpredictable. I guess it explains the mood swings earlier this week (Sorry C!).

You didn't really want to know about that, did you?

Let's see, what else? We're enjoying our house very much, though half the bedrooms are being used as storage and we don't have much more livable space than we had in the apartment. It'll be so nice when everything is finally in its place! As soon as we figure out where those places are... We still haven't painted everything we want to paint: the kids' bedrooms, our bathroom, and we've discovered we need to paint the wall near the eating table with something washable (can you imagine??).

If you're wondering about the outcome of my diaper stripping experiment, I was thinking I'd put it in its own post when I had something definitive, but since I'm here I might as well talk about it before I forget what's going on. So I soaked the covers in water and dish soap for 1/2 a day (because we're busy, not because I thought it needed that much time) and then rinsed about 3-4 times (so that's actually 6-8 rinses because I have that "extra rinse" option on the machine), until there were no more bubbles that I could see, then tumble dried on low. Then I didn't think about what I was doing and put all the covers in the basket on the changing table, mixing together the ones I had stripped with the ones that hadn't (it's absolutely impossible to get every single article belonging to a child clean, because they're always using/wearing/playing with at least one or 5). So now I have no idea which ones were stripped and which ones weren't. Some of them are still leaking and some of them aren't, but they weren't all leaking to begin with, so I kinda feel like I'm back to square one except I don't want to strip them all because some of them don't need it. Does your head hurt yet? I explained some of this to Curtis and we traced all the problems back to the covers/pockets I bought off Craigslist. After we had bought them we discovered that 1) we didn't get much of a discount from new 2) all the elastic was shot because 3) they had been stored in the garage. I wish we had just bought new. I probably wouldn't be having all these troubles. So, anyway, that's where I am with those. And Kate - I did get your message about CD and just haven't sat down to write a book back! ;-)

Okay, it's about time for me to head off to our class. Thanks for killing some time with me :-)

Washing Cloth Diapers

I know I haven't been blogging much, and this really isn't an amazing post to convince any readers to come back, but I'm experimenting and need some place to record what's going on.

The problem: Daniel's cloth diaper covers are retaining odors and not keeping his clothes dry (it's not so much leakage around the sides as that the waterproof barrier is failing).

Probable cause: detergent buildup.

Discussion: I already use very little detergent on the covers, but I'm not sure that it's getting all rinsed out in my high efficiency (HE) front loader (FL). For those familiar with HE FLs, you know that their whole reason for existence is to use less water. This is fine in almost all circumstances, unless you're trying to wash cloth diapers (and, for the record, I'm not talking about prefolds - those I have no trouble with. It's the pockets/covers that have the problems).

Let me run through my normal wash routine real quick (again, for pockets/covers):

1. Cold rinse, no spin (this means they're good and wet for the next cycle = more water)
2. Warm wash on delicate (read somewhere that delicate cycles use more water; also, hot water not hot enough to sanitize and is harsher on materials, warm is sufficient), medium spin (no particular reason, not sure what's better), extra rinse on cold
3. Rinse/spin with extra rinse, cold.
4. If bubbles are visible, another rinse/spin with extra rinse, cold.
5. Tumble dry low (if sun is out I'll lay them out in the grass and am looking forward to a laundry line!!)

Steps taken to solve the problem: I add a sopping wet towel to the load to trick the machine into adding more water. I don't know if it's working or not, but it makes me feel better. I did manage to get the odors out by adding baking soda to the wash and vinegar to the rinse. Info I found online said to add 1/4 cup of each. When I went to add the baking soda, 1/4 cup looked like waaaay too much, so I only added about 1/2 of my scoop (for the math-impaired, that would be 1/8 cup). I did add the full 1/4 cup of vinegar. By the way, I love having a spot for fabric softener because it makes adding anything to the rinse so much easier!! The machine I had at the apartment didn't even have a spot for bleach, let alone fabric softener. Note: if your machine does not have these nifty compartments, you can use a Downy ball to add vinegar or fabric softener to the rinse. Haven't tried it myself, but I read that somewhere and thought I should include here.

So now the covers don't smell as soon as D takes care of business, but they're really failing in the waterproof department.

Today's experiment: stripping the diapers. The purpose of stripping is to remove detergent or urine buildup. (In my case, since my covers smell clean when they come out of the wash, I know it's not a urine buildup problem.) According to the mighty internet, there are several products on the market that can be used for this purpose. I have had success in the past with dish soap. Most CDing (cloth diapering) mommas would have said "Dawn" instead of "dish soap" in that last sentence, but I have not found any definitive explanation on why that particular brand. If you know, please fill me in! All I could glean was that you need to use plain soap, without any moisturizers or other additives because they'll just make the problem worse.

How to strip diapers: First, your diapers need to be clean, so wash them as usual first. They don't need to be dry, or even spun out, just clean. Then, wash again without any other detergent and add dish soap (just a couple drops!!) to the wash cycle, then rinse, rinse, rinse, and rinse some more until there are no more bubbles. The last time I stripped the covers, I was using a TL (the one without any extra bells and whistles) and it took 5 rinses on a medium load setting. This time, I have a HE FL. Some things I read online said not to put dish soap in your FL, especially if it's HE. Others have used it to strip diapers without any trouble. I'm actually rather torn on this one. As I type, the covers on their wash cycle, so I haven't stripped them yet. I'm thinking I shouldn't put dish soap in the washer, at least not yet. So I'm going to follow the alternative method: soak the covers in the sink with dish soap for 30-40 minutes, then throw in the machine and rinse, rinse, rinse, and rinse some more until there are no more bubbles.

In case you're wondering, whenever I say "I read online", I mean that I typed some search string into Google and clicked a few links to blogs, forums, detergent companies' websites, CD manufacturers' websites, and who know what else. I cannot tell you where I got a specific piece of information. If you're looking for answers to similar questions I hope this has helped, and if you have a tip to share, please leave a comment!! I will say that one of my favorite places to ask questions are in the forums on diaperpin.com, but I do a lot of other searches to try to get as much info as possible. Washing cloth diapers is a pretty broad topic because there are so many different brands and types of diapers, brands and types of detergent (incl. homemade), various additives (baking soda/vinegar, tea tree oil, etc.) and washing machines. So glean what you can from as many sources as you want and put together your own system that works for you.

As I said, this is where I'm recording my notes, so I'll put this post up and will hopefully make time to write a follow-up post when this experiment is done! Thanks for bearing with me :-)

It's my morning off! Kinda...

Zachary has his first day of Mother's Morning Out today.

It's two days a week from 9 to 1. As Daniel and I were walking back to the car after dropping him off this morning, I was trying to figure out what was so weird about leaving Z behind. This isn't the first time I've dropped him off somewhere: he's been going to MOPS since he was 5 months old; I've dropped him off with friends for a couple hours, sometimes with D and sometimes not; but what was so strange about this morning? Then I realized that I've never left him for so many hours as part of a scheduled, weekly thing. Two days a week! Until May!

On our way home I kept thinking of so many errands I could run real quick, and I had to remind myself, over and over, that I'll have plenty of opportunities to run errands with just one kid - this isn't my only chance. Today I'm focusing on cleaning and organizing (which is why I'm blogging, obviously) without a little whirlwind coming behind me and undoing everything.

I'm excited for him: hopefully he'll make a friend or two, and on future mornings he won't find it necessary to walk behind me as soon as he catches sight of the room.

I love you, Little Bug. You amaze me every time I turn around. Have a great First (of many Firsts) Day of School.

This is why we have AAA

We had an unplanned dinner out the other night. We were going to have dinner at home after running a couple errands, but when 7pm found us at a car repair place across the street from a McDonald's after waiting an hour for a towtruck, we had dinner there instead. A towtruck? Yes, we had to have the Acura towed after it overheated. (It was classic: we were driving down the road getting more and more concerned about the awful engine noises. When we stopped at a red light, the engine died and white steam billowed out from under the hood.)

Why did it overheat? We now know that the radiator wasn't quite up to snuff and a couple fans needed to be replaced (not to mention a faulty temperature gauge), but the precipitating event was letting it idle for an hour while we swept crud out of our new house before the flooring went in. The boys were asleep in the back seat, so we left the car running with the a/c on, which is our modus operandi when visiting the house since the boys usually fall asleep on the way there. The difference is that we're usually in the Escape, which has never had a problem idling for an hour.

Why were we in the Acura, then? Well, that's the car that had the carseats in it when we decided to go to the house. I had gone to a MOPS Steering Team meeting the night before and didn't want to take the Acura, so I moved the carseats over so C could take the boys to the grocery store while I was at my meeting. Why couldn't C have taken the boys in the Escape and I take the Acura? The driver's door window mechanism on the Acura had broken, so the window was stuck down. C had bought the part needed but hadn't had a chance to get it fixed before my meeting and I didn't feel comfortable parking a car with a window down in the church parking lot at night because it's in the middle of downtown and there have been unsavory characters lurking in the area. (Side note: C fixed the window all by himself (with a little help from YouTube) on Sunday morning, saving us $$!)

And that is how we found ourselves at a car repair place across the street from McDonald's on Sunday evening. After shuffling the car to another place (the first one didn't really do the type of repairs we needed), we learned that we had melted the radiator, but the engine was okay. (Which is really good, because replacing the engine would have cost us as much as we paid for the car originally!! Which, if you think about it, means we got an excellent deal on the car.) So it's now Wednesday and we've been a one car family for a few days again. The car should be fixed by this evening, and it really shouldn't need any more work beyond general maintenance for another couple years.

(So I wrote most of this post while one boy was hanging on my leg and the other one was picking on his brother. Fun!)

Chocolate Chip, of course

I made cookies today. I was rummaging through our cupboards and not finding anything for a little between-meals pick-me-up, wait, let me qualify that: nothing containing chocolate, and since Daniel was still napping, I thought I'd try to get a batch of cookies in the oven before he woke up. Not only did I get the cookies in, but I got the kitchen cleaned up and the cookies back out before I heard a peep from the bedroom. That little boy took a 3 hour nap after lunch! Those three hours are the only reason I was sane when C came home from work. It was so bad this morning that I sent an email to him at 11:43am that simply read "today sucks. that is all." I wrote it on my phone during lunch while holding D with one arm because I couldn't stand his fussing any longer, snatching bites of my sandwich with the other hand in between telling Zachary that he needed to stop whining and if he would just let me finish my lunch I would be able to take care of his pressing need to pick up the tomato he had dropped on the floor for the umpteenth time. This wonderful lunch followed a morning that had gone much the same way. Which is why, at 11:43, I had only just gotten out of pj's, the laundry had not progressed, the kitchen was still a mess from the night before, the cat box reeked, and the floor was covered in toys. But then D went down for a nap that lasted three hours and by the time C came home, all my chores were done and I even had a plate of cookies waiting for him. Amazing how much I can accomplish when one child is sleeping! The other one (the older one) is pretty good at entertaining himself as long as I'm busy doing something (read: if I sit down, he's all over me, hence the reason I don't blog much.)

But back to the cookies. Since we only have one cookie sheet, I couldn't bake up all the dough at once. We probably don't need them all baked up anyway, but I didn't cut the recipe down, so after putting a few in the oven, I had a lot of dough left over. What to do? I froze it. I portioned it out, rolled it into balls, and froze it on parchment paper. Once frozen, I transferred the balls to a ziploc freezer bag and voilà! do-it-yourself break-n-bake cookie dough! I feel very clever ;-) (Gotta give credit where it's due: I had a little help from the The America's Test Kitchen Family Cookbook for the recipe, freezing instructions, and revised baking instructions. Love that book.)

There's a Fungus Among Us

(I have been meaning to get on here and tell you about this, but every time I've sat down at the computer in the last five days, I find myself doing 20 other things that are more important and then I run out of time to blog! But this time I remembered to blog first.)

We were on vacation in California for two weeks. The kitties were taken care of during that time, so all's well on that front. However, I did leave a few dirty diapers in each of the diaper pails (because, let's face it, that's life). The couple in the 'messies' pail were fine ("fine" being relative, I suppose), but I noticed some fuzzy stuff growing in the 'wets' pail. When I dumped the contents into the washer, I discovered not only white fuzzy stuff, but pink stuff too, and a mushroom that was 8 inches long. Raise your hand if you're grossed out, but a little fascinated too... Who would've thought a mushroom would grow on urine soaked diapers?? Normally I like to take a picture of these sorts of things, but it didn't happen this time (mostly because I wanted to get the crud washed right away. Do you know how small fungus spores are and how quickly they can spread?).

I have no idea how the fungus got in the pail. Any thoughts?

We don't have any two week trips planned for any time soon, but I may need to do something a little different next time I have to leave diapers in the pail like that!

Strollers

For a family who originally didn't want a stroller, we sure have gone through them! When we were expecting Zachary we noticed many, many cases where the child was being carried or walking and the stroller was a glorified shopping cart, so we decided to only use a carrier and not get a stroller. We have a Snugli that we enjoyed using and still have in the back of car. (I use it mainly for going to the library these days).
Here's Curtis carrying newborn Zachary into Babies R Us to purchase his crib (Sept. 07, Nashville)
Here's Curtis holding 11 month old Zachary while preparing dinner (August 08, Nashville) We now know, however, that to think we didn't need a stroller and could get by with just the carrier was silly! We are now on our fourth stroller in two years. Not because we wear them out, but we just can't seem to make up our minds.

This was our first stroller. A blue Graco LiteRider. (Picture taken on Balboa Island, July 2008). My mom picked it up at a second-hand store in California. We used the stroller so often during that trip to California that Curtis and I took it back to Nashville with us when it was time to go home. We used it several times and I have many pictures of Zachary in it at various events.

Stroller #2: a green Graco stroller, slightly newer than the blue one, it included such features as a one-hand fold and drink/snack holder for the parent. (Picture taken in State College, PA, July 4th, 2009). We flew back to CA at Christmas and my mom had picked up another second-hand stroller so that she'd have one when we visited. We had flown the blue one out so as to use it throughout our trip (our trips to CA always involve traveling to more than one location), but the green one was nicer, so we left the blue one (but WHERE did we leave it??) and took the green one back with us. Again, we found ourselves using it quite a bit, even after Zachary started walking.

Stroller #3: a blue Sit-n-Stand stroller by Swan. One child sits in the seat in the front and the older child has a place to sit or stand behind. When we were expecting Daniel, we picked up this Sit-n-Stand stroller on Craigslist (in Nashville). It was great: Daniel's car seat fit on the front and Zachary had a nice little spot in the back. Sometimes he liked to sit and sometimes he liked to stand. The stroller wasn't the newest version of the Sit-n-Stand, and I definitely missed the drink/snack tray on the handle. Also, the basket was impossible to get into, because of Z's seat, so I used a hook to hang my bag from the handle. It was also very long and barely fit in my Escape. But it worked great and pushed easily. However, on the trip to the Huntsville Botanical Gardens where I took the picture to the right (June 2010), I put Daniel in the stroller seat (instead of in his carseat) and discovered the rest of the stroller's shortcomings: the stroller requires a small but tedious modification to go from holding a carseat to holding a child; the seat only has a three-point harness (no shoulder straps); and the seat only reclines so far (because of the seat behind it). I also didn't really like that both children couldn't snooze at the same time. So I jumped on craigslist again...

Stroller #4: a gray and turquoise Graco DuoGlider stroller. What I like about this stroller: both boys have five-point harnesses; the rear seat fully reclines (read: baby lies flat); both boys have sun shades; the basket is accessible (and it's very large); one-hand fold; parent drink/snack tray. However, the reviews I found online said that it was a very heavy stroller and when it has two kids in it, can be very difficult to turn and nearly impossible to push on anything but flat, smooth concrete. I was a little worried about all that, until the first time I took it out. Even with both kids and a huge diaper bag, I had no trouble with pushing or turning, even on a grassy incline, and lifting it into my Escape was no more difficult than any of the other strollers we've had. So, verdict? I'm very happy with this stroller, if only it didn't smell like the inside of someone's storage unit.

The below picture was taken at Sam's Club (with my iPhone, which is why it's a little fuzzy). Zachary had fallen asleep in the car and did not want to wake up, so we pulled out the double stroller, fully reclined the rear seat for the sleeping child and put the wide-awake child in the front. It worked great! Of course, it only worked because Curtis and I were shopping together, so one of us pushed the cart and one pushed the stroller.

No telling if we'll be sticking with this one for a while or not, but the great thing about strollers is that Craigslist is littered with them and it's pretty easy to get a nice one for less than $100. (We didn't pay more than $60 for any of these.) Although it does sometimes happen that Z is walking, I'm holding Daniel, and the stroller is nothing more than a glorified shopping cart, I almost always pull it out of the car when we go somewhere. Having it allows the boys the option of riding, it's extremely convenient if they fall asleep, it's great for feeding them, and it allows me to bring my diaper bag in its entirety which I could not do otherwise as it's too heavy for me to carry for any length of time. So I've found I love having a stroller, I'm particularly pleased to have a double stroller for my boys (despite the two year age difference), and I don't care if you are laughing at me for thinking I would never need one :-)