Core & Rind

Hi there! So as I am sure most of you have suspected, this blog is coming to a close. For many reasons: time, my eventual return to work and finally a desire to have a blog for family and friends that is a photojournal of the events of our life. I have explained in detail why I am uncomfortable with this format for as I enter the professional world in a long previous post so I won’t go into that again.

I do have a few loose ends here I want to tie up and will do that here (below). In a few days I will post the URL to our new site and then a week or two after that I will remove this blog from the blogosphere. We would love to have you follow us at our newest site but the format and goals will change. Rather than the blog being a diary of my life and my experiences in mommyhood, the new goal will be to keep grandparents and other relatives up to date and serve as a record of the first years of Baby Pit’s life for him to read later. Onto the loose ends….

On returning to work
I have decided that I do want to go back to work. I believe I will be a better mother if I get out of the house each day and feel like I am participating in the world. I don’t mean to imply that staying at home in anyway is easier or less important, in fact, I think it may be harder. Women who can pull it off are brave.  Being home full-time would make it too easy for me to be the hovering over-involved mother that my personality leads me to be.  Thankfully, I am aware enough that I don’t want to be like that and working will help me realize this goal.  For now I would also like to work part-time but whether or not I will find part-time work is unclear. Another reason I want to go back to work is that we found a fabulous nanny who loves our little boy and he loves her. I feel totally comfortable leaving him with her. In fact, she has much more experience with babies than do!

What type of work am I going to do you ask? At this point it is unclear but I have looked into some administrative jobs and outreach/science education jobs, in fact I had an interview today. The hope is that I will find a niche that I really enjoy and excel at. I will work part-time until my child(ren) are in preschool or older and then move to full-time hopefully with a clear career path already carved out for me.

Cloth diapering
I am so glad I stuck with this. Now it works fabulously and I can’t imagine going back to disposables. In fact my baby has the smoothest, non-diaper rash containing butt. I wasn’t planning on going into details but a few expecting moms that read here are considering it and I have to add my two cents…sorry….

My first bit of advice is don’t start out with cloth diapering if you are overwhelmed with the new baby. It’s kinda silly to buy newborn diapers anyway because they wear them for such a short time period. Just wait for 6-8 weeks when you are used to the new baby “routine” then slowly work them into your life. And always keep some disposables on hand just in case (although besides traveling we have been disposable free for over 3 months now!).

I also recommend buying a few types of diapers and trying them out. Depending on how your baby wets prefolds may or may not work. If you do use prefolds learn several folds and see which one works best, this is definitely the cheapest way to diaper. We like the angel twist the best with a Snappi and a Thirsty diaper cover.

Currently, we use a combination of insert diapers and prefolds. Using insert diapers when the sitter is here (they are more straightforward), to go out with (since they are a little more leak-proof) and slimmer under the clothes. At night we use an insert diaper with two hemp inserts and don’t have to change for almost 12 hours.

Which types of insert diapers do we like? Fuzzi Bunz are my favorites, all of them are second-quality so we purchased at significant discount. They are 100% functional and the irregularities are so minor that they don’t matter. The two snap combo that the Fuzzi bunz uses for fastening on all of their diapers works better for a snug fit than the velcro found on the bumGenius’. Several people recommended that we use the one-size bum geniuses, the idea with these being one diaper fits from newborn to potty training. Sadly, these don’t work for us. For appropriate leak management we are already on the largest size when I use this diaper so there is no way these will last until potty training. For more petite babies, however, they may work just fine. The last diaper type I tried was the Bum genius All in one diaper (insert sewn in). These work OK but they take a little longer to dry and really don’t save that much time since putting an insert in is pretty easy to begin with. I do like having the all in one diaper to grab to take with me as a change for the park, you just have to remember one thing.

Solid Food
After about a week of not knowing what to do when food was placed in his mouth he had an epiphany. Now he is such a good eater. Our nanny is impressed by the volume that he eats in one sitting for a baby his age! So far we have tried yam, banana, applesauce, green beans, spinach, carrots and avocado. He will eat it all but his favorites are yam, banana and avocado. Coincidentally, those are the dog’s favorite foods as well. I bought a food mill but so far am liking the miniature cusinart attachment that came with my mixer a bit better for making food. I am adding one new food each week, next week is blueberries (cooked and pureed) !!!

Misc

My appetite!! Wow! I am not sure if other older infant breastfeeding mom’s feel the same way but I have been eating like a teenage boy! I thought I ate a lot during pregnancy but that wasn’t nuthin! I am famished ALL THE TIME.

Mommy and me swim classes. We started these this week and they have fun but I was a little stressed out the first day worrying whether Baby Pit would like the pool.  He does like the water but complains a little bit when we enter the pool. Once he gets used to it (it is heated) he has been enjoying himself.   The goal of the class for Baby Pit is to get him used to being in the water and the goal for me is to get out of the house and meet people.

Baby Pit has mastered rolling over back and forth, dragging himself around by his hands, pushing himself backward and sitting up for short amounts of time. He is still a little shaky sitting up and if distracted by a toy will lunge and face plant so I still have to keep pillows around him if I step further away than arm’s length. He also continues to be a tall baby (90%) who is average weight, most definitely following in his father’s footsteps as a baby, I was a tiny, tiny infant and child.

That’s it for now! See ya at our other site! Oh and of course, a picture….it is a little dark but the flash washes out his super pale skin too much. I feel like his eyes are glowing blue in this picture, no?