Monthly Archives: February 2011

Feb 24 2011

difficult day!

Ugh! Today was a difficult day. Savannah refused to nap – I laid her down two different times, and both times she was quiet for about 20-30 minutes and then started screaming from her crib. *sigh* And then, to top it off, she didn’t go to bed until 10:30! Again, every time we tried to lay her down she would just cry. I gave her some Tylenol because she is teething (her upper incisors) and am wondering if that’s why she’s been boycotting naps recently. Maybe she’ll sleep late tomorrow morning. :-)

I am proud of myself – I swam three times this week! I have been aiming to swim 1200 yards each time. I usually get tired around 800 yards and have to push myself for the rest, which is a good thing I think. I know it probably doesn’t sound very far (it’s like 3/4 of a mile, I think), but I am so out of shape! I usually alternate between all the strokes except butterfly, which definitely helps pass the time. I get bored doing lap after lap of freestyle. :-) Swimming definitely gives you some thinking time… but if I think too much then I lose track of where I am. I need some sort of lap counter!

I went grocery shopping for the week last Monday, which is significant because I tend to be an every-day shopper. I have been trying to force myself to cook. Consequently, our kitchen is slowly being cleaned (finally). You can always tell who cooked the meal by how messy the kitchen is. :-) I tend to clean up spills and wash dishes as I go along, and Paul is the opposite. We don’t really have a good place to put our pots and pans, so we keep them on the floor of the kitchen, which means we have to wash them before using them. That doesn’t give us much motivation to clean them after using them! I’ve decided we should keep them on the dining room table. I mean, we don’t really use it for anything else. :-p

Today a friend of a friend came by to observe Savannah. She is currently studying to be a toddler teacher at a Montessori school, and she needs to observe kids of different ages in their home environment. She came and watched Savannah, and took notes. I tried to peek to see what kind of observations she was making, but I couldn’t read it fast enough. :-) I realized how often I leave Savannah to play by herself in the living room while I go do housework, like cook dinner. I felt kind of bad that Savannah isn’t a “normal” 18 month old – she doesn’t move like a normal kid, but her development is about normal except for perhaps her talking (or lack thereof). Paul said that every kid has something “wrong”, and it’s probably good for her to see kids with all sorts of issues/delays.

Tomorrow, the carpet people are coming back. They put new carpet in our den last June, but Ebony had a urinary tract infection and peed all over the place. So the carpet people are coming and replacing the pad. I hope this does the trick! They said that they’ve had people have similar issues, and it’s hit or miss if just replacing the pad works. The carpet is still in great shape, so I really hope we don’t have to replace it!! I am looking forward to getting the smell down in the den back to normal.

Well I should go help Paul take everything out of the den. I don’t think we fully unpacked from last time we did this, when we got the carpet cleaned in December. Which probably shows what we can sell/give away. :-)

Feb 22 2011

love/hate of microfiber

One of the popular things in cloth diapers right now is to stuff pocket diapers with microfiber inserts. Microfiber is a synthetic fiber that absorbs a lot of moisture, cutting down on the bulk of cloth diapers. It is also good for nighttime diapers as it can hold a lot of liquid.

The bulk of my diaper stash are Baby Kanga pocket diapers, stuffed with bumGenius microfiber inserts. (See the picture to know what a microfiber insert looks like.) For about a year, I was pretty happy with them and didn’t have any issues at all. Then, I started having smell issues. I felt like I was just washing them over and over. After we bought the house, we discovered that our pipes need to be replaced – they are old and rusting, so our water is full of minerals. I found a detergent for cloth diapers that’s made for hard water like ours. I was really excited! I was hoping this would be the trick needed to get my inserts smelling like new again.

Well, long story short, after about 2 months or so I had to stop using the detergent because it gave Savannah *such* a bad diaper rash. I ended up doing disposables for most of the month of December, and then after Christmas I stripped the diapers. I boiled all the inserts, and then washed them in Calgon (a water softener), and then washed them without detergent or Calgon about 5 times. They smelled brand new after I finished, and I switched detergent.

In the meantime, I’ve done some research about microfiber and found some stuff that has made me sad. For one, microfiber is terrible with hard water. It tends to trap the minerals from the water, and people often have smell and repelling issues after about a year. I’ve also discovered that front-loaders do a poor job of getting diapers clean (I wish I’d known this when we bought our washer and dryer new while I was pregnant!).

So, the short is that I need to replace all the microfiber inserts. I think I’m going to go with all-cotton prefolds to stuff in my pocket diapers. I also want to get more soakers for my GroVia system – they are all-cotton as well, with PUL backing. It’s a bit frustrating, but you live and you learn, right?

Feb 18 2011

Firefly roundup

I love it when Firefly is referenced in other TV shows! Last night’s Community is the most recent shout-out. I knew it was coming thanks to this scoop from Michael Ausiello (who is my source for all my TV news):

Question: Any good news you can share about Community’s Annie and Jeff? —Megan
Ausiello: Um, aside from them sharing a couch in a hospital waiting room, there aren’t any Annie-Jeff developments in Thursday’s episode. Jeff does have a memorable encounter with Pierce, however. Oh, and there’s a Firefly reference! For those keeping track at home, that brings to 134 the number of times Joss Whedon’s classic has received a shout-out on a scripted series this season.

And here’s the shout-out: Continue reading »

Feb 14 2011

Happy Valentine’s Day!

Today when I was at the grocery store, I picked up these:
Valentine's Day tulips

Hopefully Paul doesn’t see this until he gets home from work. :-)

Paul proposed to me by putting a ring in a tulip, so I thought it was an appropriate flower for Valentine’s Day! I chose purple because it’s my favorite color, hehe. I was going to make some red velvet cake for dessert, but I decided it probably wasn’t a good idea to have a whole cake floating around while I’m trying to lose weight.

(By the way, I reread that blog post from 2004 and wow, I sound like a high schooler. Heh. It’s also somewhat hard for me to read it and know that 3 months later we would break up, followed by many months of heartbreak and sorrow, before we finally were able to get back together and mend our relationship. I am glad that we’re together now!)

It’s been gorgeous today – the thermometer in the car read 60. I took Savannah to the park which she adored; she LOVES the park, especially swinging and sliding. It’s also good exercise for me because the park is about a 20 minute walk from our house. On the way there, a cute little fluffy dog came up and greeted us, which totally made Savannah’s day. She barked for like the next 3 minutes until she got distracted by something else. I love these warmer days, and seeing these flowers just makes me so excited for spring! I’m sure we’ll still have a few more cold spells before it’s really spring, but I’ll take these warm days while I have them. :-)