happy...

...Saturday! Do you ever think to yourself, "Gee, this weekend is practically empty...I'll just laze the days away..." and then you realize you actually have a ridiculous weekend? Welcome to my life.

Meghan's been waking up when she wets her diaper at night. I am both delighted and perplexed by this. She been peeing (and occasionally pooing) in the potty for a couple of weeks and hasn't had an accident on the floor is over a week. I know she can hold it if she needs to, I just don't know why she doesn't hold it all night. She does drink a lot of liquids and still nurses 3-5 times a day. Today we went and picked out some big girl undies at Walmart. She was pretty excited until we got home and she had them on awhile and then kept wanting to take them off. Up until now she's been bottomless under her dresses so going potty is easy. She only had the undies on for a few hours but no accidents!

I'm not complaining, I hate diaper laundry as much as the next momma. Unfortunately, she usually poos while sleeping and doesn't wake up and so her rash has been flaring up. Not to mention, she's now working on her bottom vampire teeth (I don't know why I haven't looked that up yet.) That reminds me, I need to fill in her baby book...

Since our exciting plans fell through, I can now tell you and the rest of the world our former exciting news. Not baby related, sorry to burst your bubble ;)

I wrote last week (a few weeks ago?) about going to my mother's for spaghetti dinner (I had green beans instead of pasta) and we were supposed to go somewhere, but my mom was really sick with whatever has been going around so we didn't go. All caught up? We were supposed to go look at a house! (!!!) I know!

It all started when my older sister, Lacie, noticed that a house up the street from her was for sale and it happened to be my great-grandpa's old house and she was all excited and nagging me to get a hold of our mother who is goods friends with the real estate agent, Dean. Now, I firmly believe that Dean is a shady guy, but he's very good friends with my mom and her husband, Jim. Dean would also offer to hold the mortgage for us as we are in no position to get one. But, that would mean Dean could charge whatever he wanted in interest, my mom was thinking around 13%! (the current national average is 3.something%)

Drew and I both really hate our apartment (except for the fact that rmy sister in law lives in our complex!) and are definitely moving in April because our lease is up then. So, if we were able to get into a house, especially in/near our home town, that would've been awesome. But I was speaking to my mother yesterday and we agreed that we are in no financial situation to be buying a house that will just get foreclosed anyway. Our future is so uncertain right now, as Drew is getting laid off in a couple weeks.

That's another stresser that's been haunting me. We are about to lose our only income. Drew will qualify for unemployment and Lacie will still be paying me for babysitting Dylan. It is just so scary. There aren't many prospects either. Drew and I talked about me going back to work, but I don't see that happening. And I don't see Drew handling having to watch the kids during the week.

At any rate. Super stressful here. In completely unrelated/baby news, still not pregnant. I think. WARNING. ICK FACTOR AHEAD. PROCEED WITH CAUTION.


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I've been charting my bbt (basal body temperature-your body's base temperature when you wake up in the morning before getting out of bed, peeing, brushing your teeth, etc.) since the end of December. I take my temp orally with a special digital thermometer that goes to hundreths of a degree. You can also take your temperature vaginally or rectally. But really, orally is just fine with me ;) I definitely saw a shift in my temps this month and I 99% know I ovulated on the 29th and I've been checking my cervical fluid. ick. Which seemed more plentiful this month than previously. ick. But that's a good thing for us, because we are in the baby-making business!

In other words, I might have some news around the 10th. I really want
refuse to take a test before then. ;)

I'm off to finish my Super Bowl cookies for the party tomorrow, I get to see Pat (bro-in-law) and Alex's house (his lovely wife) for the first time! Super excited, they moved in last spring!

setbacks...

...seem to be the norm around here. Meghan's diaper rash is flaring up and I was a bit mystified until I stripped half of our diaper stash yesterday. Before, when we only had cotton prefolds and covers, I would just boil the prefolds for 20-30 minutes and covers for 10 minutes. You're not supposed to boil anything with PUL or snaps, as it can warp or cause leaks, but I haven't had any problem with that technique. Now that we have some microfiber inserts, fleece pocket diapers, etc., we get the stinkies/ammonia sometimes. What started this recent bout of stripping was I put Meghan in a Happy Heineys pocket diaper for overnight. We love this because it's easy to use and easy to stuff with extra inserts for overnight. Meg has turned into a heavy wetter at night time since she started drinking milk, water, and juice. The new routine is: I wash everything on hot with a regular amount of diaper soap, a squirt of Dawn dish soap and 2 splashes of bleach. Then an extra wash with just water, so rinse everything clean. I brought all the diapers upstairs and boiled them. Then I rung everything out by hand and hung it all up to dry. The diapers take overnight to dry thoroughly when doing the everyday diaper laundry. The stripped diapers were still quite wet this afternoon, so they're getting a spin in the dryer right now.

I use Dawn because it is "the grease fighter" or whatever their slogan is, so it helps to remove residue left behind by rash creams. I've been using coconut oil, which works great and washes out of the prefolds well, but not the Happy Heineys. The cover is repelling liquid and so Meghan is just sitting in her wet diaper until the liquid is slowly absorbed by the inserts-resulting in the red, angry rash. I'm using the bleach to keep the yeast away until Meg's bum is completely clear. I'm only going to use the 2 splashes of bleach every other week so that the diapers don't deteriorate too fast. Hopefully. :/

I wash every other day or every 3rd day. Lately, every other day. So our diaper stash is split into 2 loads and I'll be doing the whole stripping routine again tomorrow. Big plans for my Saturday-haha.

The beginning of this week didn't start out so great, as far as the scale goes. I gained instead of losing over the weekend. I did not eat right last weekend or exercise and I paid for it on Monday. In addition to not watching what I was eating, I didn't get a chance to exercise, so on Sunday shovelled out our car so I could use it and get some cardio in. :) Kim (mil) called me on Sunday afternoon to say that I was invited to Drew's cousin Katie's baby shower and that it started in 3 hours! I was excited to go because I love babies and parties and getting to see a bunch of Drew's family and their friends from their church.

As Kim was telling me about the party and that I didn't need to bring a gift because of the short notice, I was racking my brain to think of something to bring or quickly whip up with my crochet hook. But 3 hours just wasn't enough time. Add my "workout", Meg's late nap and getting ready to that...I ended up bringing a card. Kim and I were talking about how it would've been nice if I had the time to make an infant sized Mohawk hat like I did for Drew's brother for Christmas. I wish I had had the time to whip up a hat because that would've been too cute and Kim said Katie's husband would've thought it was a hoot. I might make one and give it to Kim to give to Katie anyway, or mail it to her. I don't know. I started a baby blanket for another relative who is due in April and it's not even 1/4 way finished. I started it right after Christmas and I'm only like 10 rows into it.

So back to the exercise deal. I'm thinking about posting my weight numbers on here. I'm not sure if I want the whole world to know exactly how much I weigh, but it would be nice to keep track. I'll probably just post about the milestones, like every 10 pounds or something. I'm not at 10 pounds yet, but I'm getting there! I did work hard all week, worked out every day and I saw a new number today! Very excited about that, I texted Drew right away. :) I also started the Special K diet, like the cereal. I'm eating a bowl for breakfast with fruit, a Special K protein meal bar for lunch with fruit or vegetables, and "regular" food for dinner. Plus Special K protein water, fruits and vegetables for snacks. I do slip up and catch myself splitting a Slim Jim snack with Meghan or eating Goldfish off of her high chair tray when she's done. Sometimes I have a mental battle with myself. ;)

I also have stopped snacking after dinner. It sort of happened subconsciously, the other night I just wasn't hungry after dinner, so I didn't eat. There's a new concept, eh? ;) Then the next night I just didn't eat anything after dinner. Usually Drew and I will have some sort of snack every night when we watch tv or movies together after Meghan goes to sleep. It's getting easier and easier every day. This is such a relief to me because sometimes it feels like an uphill battle.

I love it when it takes 3 4 hours to write a post...

sunday, sunday...

...just another lazy Sunday here in the little apartment. I like to rest on Sundays. Just let the whole week's worth of troubles and chaos slip away as I catch up on some of my blogs that I read! :) Today I read a great post about breastfeeding over at She Breathes Deeply. Mandy is a great, young, Christian momma (just like myself) and I love to read her blog. She has a daughter as well, Lily, who is 10 months old. Anyway, she wrote a post about breastfeeding and all the trouble she had in the beginning and now it's going wonderfully. It really parallels some of the struggles Meghan and I had in the beginning. I was just so unsure of everything and sometimes it felt like giving up would be easiest, but I am so glad we stuck with it. Meg is still a happy nurser at almost 18 months old. :)

Do you ever have to go back read your recent blog posts to make sure you're not repeating repeating yourself? Haha. I just did. I wanted to elaborate on the cloth diaper adventure and I couldn't remember if I had written some things. I hadn't, so now I'm sharing them.

So, I had said Meghan was battling a rash. What I didn't say was that we've been fighting with the rash on and off for at least the last 6 months. :( Side note about our washing routine- I was rinsing every diaper, using 2 scoops of Rockin Green diaper soap (as recommended) in just 1 wash cycle, then line drying.

At first, it was just regular type rashes that would clear right up. Then in August the rash turned into abscesses seemingly overnight. I took Meghan into the Dr where she was prescribed some antibiotics and I was told to use triple antibiotic cream as well. (1st warning sign) It cleared up well and then made a mini appearance right before our family camping trip in September. I was worried about being in the wilderness and her rash getting out of control again, so I called the Dr again. They didn't want to put her on antibiotics again so soon, to avoid her developing an immunity to the medication. I was told to use the Neosporin. I had some bacitracin, so we used that and disposables while camping. Bad. Idea. The abscesses were minuscule, but the red, angry rash flared up like crazy. (2nd warning sign) She was in pain and it hurt me to have to change her diaper.

Since then the rash has been pretty constant. And I am kicking myself for not realizing what it was before now. We could get the rash to go away, but it would almost always start up soon after. (3rd warning sign) I started using coconut oil as a diaper rash cream and it did help more than anything else, but the rash never really went away. It had progressed from a red, angry, raised rash into that plus blisters. :( I was literally crying over it and I wanted so badly to not let it hurt Meghan. I thought I just needed to strip the diapers more. I tried drops of Dawn dish soap in the wash and stripping them by boiling them on the stove. But, again, these were only temporary fixes. Her bum hasn't been completely clear since before August.

Then I saw a blog post from some diaper company or cloth diaper blog about yeast. A light bulb went off and suddenly, everything made sense. CLICK! (hah) It made total sense. The rash that never truly went away, blisters, antibiotics and the fact that I only ran 1 wash cycle. I don't know how many times I've read about extra rinses when washing cloth diapers, but I was/am trying to save money and thought I could cut corners. Turns out I can't.

First thing I did was bleach everything. This is a big no-no in the cloth diaper community because bleach can break down the fibers very fast and ruin the diapers. I always thought I would never bleach and then I realized since I have been drying the diapers inside because of the weather, they weren't getting bleached by the sun! It was like everything aligned at once! So, I bleached every diaper, wipe and cover in our "stash" and washed them a 2nd time with NO SOAP. Then I dried the 100% cotton wipes, prefolds, and fitteds the dryer and everything else (anything with PUL in it) on the drying rack so it wouldn't melt. I noticed an improvement almost immediately. We went through the rest of our disposables that we had leftover from the camping diaper disaster and switched entirely to the bleached cloth and coconut oil (which is safe for cloth diapers because of it's super low melting point).

Her beautiful booty is getting clearer and clearer everyday. No more red, just a few spots of pink skin and the bigger blisters are almost healed. I am beyond happy that I finally figured it out! I am still kicking myself that it took so long for me to get it. I was almost to the point of quitting the cloth. I was hoping Meg would take to potty learning as she showed some interest and then we would only have to deal with diapers at nap time and overnight. But, she's not really interested in the potty. She has peed on it a few times, but that's it. It was really hard to look at her cute, bare bum during the day covered in an angry rash, but it's looking good now!

On to other things...we are still ttc. I got AF again this month, but I had started charting my temperature orally on fertilityfriend.com. I really think we can conceive if I know what is going on with my body. And I started charting, not just to ttc. I have been interested in temping for awhile and I'm pretty "crunchy" and I want to be in tune with my body. Speaking of, I had the strangest dream last night. I was VBACing in a hospital (hah) and Meg's pediatrician was my OB but he was fatter (very strange) and some girls I knew in high school were my L&D nurses. I dreamt that I stopped labor and made all the drs and nurses look at me and listen to my "demands" for the birth, like holding the baby right away, nursing right away, leaving the cord attached until all the blood was in the baby, etc. I did have 2 IV's, 1 in each arm, which was weird. Drew wasn't there though, I was all by myself with the hospital staff. We had a boy, but I don't know the name.

Weird.

My diet and exercising is going pretty good. I've lost 3.3 pounds according to the Wii! I don't know how accurate it is, but it's too small for me to notice a difference yet. Which is ok with me. The WiiFit makes you weigh yourself everyday, which I don't think is effective as far as mentally trying to lose weight, but it's how you "check in" each day, so if you just exercise, it doesn't record that you did anything that day. Not effective. I would say dieting is only going fair. It is really hard for me to not snack throughout the day especially when Dylan and Meghan are both here, because someone is always hungry! We got some super delicious grapefruit at BJ's last weekend so I've been enjoying those at breakfast almost every day ;) I also tried oatmeal with peanut butter and blueberries for the first time and it was strangely good. It's hard to not put sugar and milk on it! I had tried a while ago with just crunchy peanut butter and I didn't like it. But with creamy peanut butter and some frozen blueberries...yum!

My confession today is that I didn't exercise yesterday or today at all, so I'm off to shovel the car out of all the snow we've gotten in the last couple days!