6 months old!

Today my baby turned 6 months! I can't believe he's already half a year old! I could talk to you about how he loves to watch EVERYTHING AND EVERYONE. Or how he loves to jump. Or how blowing very wet raspberries is one of his favourite pastimes. Or how great it is to watch him giggle and laugh. Or how he's already a solid-feeding champ.

All those things are great, yes they are. But I will tell you how he decided to mark the occasion. He pooed. Now that's not a big deal in the long run, but this is solid-log-type poo. He pooed three times. The first and third time were little poos, and they didn't bother him. In fact, I didn't even know that he pooed until I opened the diaper.

However, the second poo was HUGE! I think because he was experiencing a big solid poo for the first time, and because he was tired (I was getting him ready for his nap), it scared him, and he cried and cried. He also peed, but he's already peed over everything. I was more worried about the poo as this was something new for me, and throwing in cloth diapers into the mix made it much more interesting.

I saw some poo in his bum, then he had a meltdown. As I was trying to take care of that poo, I dropped it on the floor. BabyL kept crying and pooing. Then he started peeing. And continue pooing. I grabbed the flushable bioliners that I had and just caught the poo that way. It was a lot of poo. Finally, when he slowed down, I flushed what I had in my hands down the toilet. Going back to BabyL, he was still at it! And crying. And there were little puddle of pee everywhere. I caught the rest of the poo, and flushed it down the toilet, washed my hands, then cleaned up BabyL and mopped up as much pee as I could, washed my hands again, and put him in a clean diaper. Then I proceeded to put him down for his nap. After that, I brought out my antibacterial cleaners and gave the floor a good scrub.

Priorities people!

Solid poo really changes everything now. Yikes!

Yet another article about BPA exposure and kids

Do you think the media is making a big deal out of this whole BPA thing? After all, we keep seeing another report day after day after day....

Clicky!

Are household products making kids fat?

I read this article and found it very interesting. Now not only do I have to worry about chemicals that will effeminate my son, but I have to try to have him avoid as many chemicals as he can so he doesn't get fat. Will this never end?

Toxic Baby Bibs

I found this article about toxic baby bibs. BabyL loves to eat his bib. I looked up the bib that he's wearing right now, and according to their website, they've tested it and it's safe. The other two bibs I have for him are leather, and they're hard for him to put in his mouth, plus, they are CPSIA safety approved, so we should be okay (hopefully!).

Thoughts on Pregnancy - Part 1

So sorry, I haven't been updating my blog. March was a very busy month for me.

My last day of work was actually yesterday. I had to interview, hire and train my replacement, which takes time. During that process, I was frantically trying to get as much done at work (I was working evenings and weekends), and doing a mind-meld with a newbie is time consuming. Yesterday, things were blowing up left, right and centre, but my replacement seemed to handle it well. At least he took it in stride, so I was pretty confident that he could handle the job. I could only sit back and watch in amusement at all the drama everyone else was causing my staff. Ah, I will miss all the work drama.

That coupled with trying to finish off the baby room, it was pretty hectic. Hubby had to put together the crib, the dresser and hang the curtains. But the baby's room is finally ready! At least the baby finally has a place to sleep. I couldn't say that even just two weeks ago. It was nice though, we received a lot of gifts from friends, so that help a bit, especially the clothing.

For a while there, I was worried that the kid wouldn't have enough clothing. While many people have been promising to give us hand-me-downs, I hadn't seen anything come our way. I'm certain that those people will hold true to their promise, but the kid actually needs some clothing as soon as he's born, and not 2 months down the road. Up until the point where I bit the bullet and bought a few more items, I think the kid had a grand total of three outfits. Any parent will tell you that I would have probably gone through that many outfits in one day! I also bought a whole whack load of cloth diapers. Someone gave me a little stuffed animal as a gift, and I'll be using it to practice swaddling, diapering, putting the kid in the infant carrier and into the car seat. So much to get a handle of!

A part of me was a little loathe to be spending so much money in the last three months, and we've probably spent a little more than we should have on some baby stuff, but we're new at this, and I had to keep reminding myself that start up costs always tend to put a dent into any bank accounts financially, no matter how much you try to plan. The trick for me was to figure out what was a need and what was a want. Plus, a lot of experienced moms told me not to buy too much before the baby was born, because things like clothing sizes, colour, and whether or not the baby will like certain toys like swings, will depend on the baby's preferences/fussiness. So it's been really tough trying to figure these things out, but I think we've done okay and haven't overspent too much.

Around my birthday, which was last week, I discovered the one, and only, thing that I found cool about pregnancy: baby hiccups.

Now I knew about the baby's ability to hiccup while in the womb, and it doesn't hurt the baby. However, it didn't even occur to me that my baby was hiccupping until someone asked me last week. Then, that very night, at about 1.30 am, I realised that the rhythmic kicking was actually the baby hiccuping, and not just the baby actively kicking and doing it's darnedest to keeping me awake. I had felt it before, but never had put two and two together until someone pointed it out to me.

I knew where the head and the rest of the body was, and I could actually feel the body jump up and down inside, like most people do when they hiccup. It was actually a neat experience, and I had to wake Hubby up so he can feel too. I think this was the one time that Hubby didn't mind me waking him up.

Toxic Pregnancies

Maybe I just read too much, but this article and this article really worries me. Does my bebe even have a fighting chance before it's even born? Maybe I should just stop reading this stuff all together, after all, they say that ignorance is bliss.

I do like the second article's tips of what we can do for living a healthier lifestyle. I think a lot of those items are doable. However, going green can cost money, especially if you're buying organic, toxic-free everything. There are plenty of green products on the market, but it's still a bigger cost than the non-green items.

I'm still researching how else I can go green, but I'm finding it pretty draining even trying to focus on things that are non-baby right now. My biggest obsession is finding the perfect cloth diaper, but I do have a desire to slowly green other parts of my life and our household, not just for the bebe, but for ourselves as well, while being mindful of the environment. And on a budget too.

I've managed to bookmark a bunch of sites, but there is so much information out there that it's hard to filter it out the real information from the noise. And if even if I am able to do so, trying to find what works best for our family takes time, research and experimentation.

Baby steps, Weed, baby steps.

Finally, furniture in the baby room!

Believe it or not, we finally picked up furniture for the baby's room. Only it's not for the baby, not really. It's for me. When I'm nursing the baby at 3am. We picked it up today after looking around everywhere! You'll be surprised how expensive a new glider can be, this isn't priced too badly. The brand is also fairly reputable, and it's made in Canada, so I know it'll last a long time.

And to match the chair, a nursing pillow, but in blue with alphabet patterns. If anyone really knows me, I would never buy anything pink, even if I do end up with a girl. Pink is horrid, and I refuse to clad my child in such a vile colour.


And I don't think I've posted this yet, but we got this stroller a few weeks ago. The thing I love about it the most is that it's got the big bad-ass 16"wheels on the back. For about $100 more, you can get a 12" wheel version with aluminum spokes, but I like the 16" one better. It says, "I'm here, now get outta my way!". This thing is not any bigger than most other strollers on the market, and it's only a tiny bit longer, so I don't know why people think it's big. It maneuvers like a dream, and can do very tight turns one-handed, something that the cheaper and "smaller" strollers can't all do.

Cloth Diapers

In an effort to reduce costs and to be somewhat more environmentally friendly, Hubby and I will be trying to use cloth diapers for the bebe. Today, we went to a diapering clinic to help us understand a bit more about what cloth diapering is all about. I had done a ton of research on cloth diapers, but until we actually held the different ones in our hands, it was hard to conceptualise all the different choices out there.

And there are a lot of different choices! I'm not even going to get into all the differences you can have with diapers, diaper covers, liners, doublers, and inserts. You can read this Cloth Diapering Guide here, and more Diapering 101 info here.

I will tell you that there is a bit of experimentation, and trial and error; that's what I've heard from a lot of people. So that may be a bit of frustration, patience and endurance to go getting it to work. But if I can reuse my diapers, or even have them recycled, biodegrade or reused by someone else, I'm going with this option. Or at least try. I definitely will try not to let the lure of convenience with disposables be my scape goat (by the way, I lot of people also tell me that you need to sometimes experiment with different brands of diapers, and they are notorious for leaking as well).

Will I never use disposables? I'm not naive enough to think that will never happen. But I'm at least willing to give the cloth diapering thing a good college try. Some of my friends have looked at me like I'm crazy when I mention using cloth diapers. Some things I've heard is that "they leak" (so do disposables), or "you'll have to do a lot of washing" (still costs less over time than buying disposable diapers), or "you'll get diaper rash" (you get them more with disposables).

My stance on this is that, like everything else with the baby, you need to figure out how things are going to work, yes it takes time and perseverance, and yes, it's going to be frustrating. However, there are lots of resources online, if you're patient enough to look for them. I've already bookmarked a number of diapering reference sites. And it never hurts to ask people for advice, that is sometimes the best source of information.

Often convenience comes at a heavy price on the environment, and I feel that this compromise isn't good enough for me. So cloth diapers, here I come!

Babykeeper

No, this is not a torture device. It's actually a handy gadget to keep your kid from touching all sorts of things or crawling under the door when you have to go wee in a pubic toilet.

It's also one of the more bizarre things I've seen. But apparently there's a market for it, and for a mere $39.99 USD, you can get one shipped to your house.

Babykeeper