And More Updates

Yeah, yeah... I suck at making up blog titles.  This is going to be a quickie since Harper could wake up at any time and there's a lot of stuff that deserves it's own post so I promise more will be coming later!

Harper finally had her 6 month check-up today.  She's 17 lbs and 26 inches, 60th percentile for both height and weight.  I was a bit concerned that she's down from the 75th percentile for weight, but the doc assured me that it's just because she's crawling.  Apparently babies tend to have a dip when they start moving around.  She loves that Harper's still breastfed and LOVED our cute little cloth diapers.  All in all, we have a very happy, healthy baby.  Not so much as a single fever or ear infection since she's been born.

Cheap velcro and leaking -- FUN

As far as those cute little gDiapers go, I'm having mixed feelings.  I've had a couple questions about them, so I definitely want to talk about them in more depth, but anyone thinking about them may want to hold off. 

Kaelin started homeschooling last Monday.  Overall, I think it's going to work well for us.  There's a little bit of an adjustment on both our parts, but I think she's learned more in a week than she did in a month at Marrington.  She's loving Latin and she's getting a lot more out of her Bible readings than I thought she would.  I'm going to start doing a weekly recap of everything she's learning once we get out of the review stuff. 

I started my fall vegetable garden.  While this might not sound all that impressive, I've never had the green thumb that the rest of my family has.  I mean, I lived on a freaking farm.  My dad was a farmer and I can't even have a houseplant.  Yet, vegetables are expensive and it would be great if I knew how to grow my own food for when the apocalypse comes and I can't just mosey down to Publix.  My Brussels sprouts aren't looking too hot, but my zucchini are magnificent.  I mean, they're only sprouts right now, but they haven't died yet.  Win!  If I even get one little cherry tomato out of this thing, I'll consider it a success!

Brussels sprouts, tomatoes, and zucchini!

Jason's got less than 3 weeks of Prototype left!  These last six months have been pretty trying on our family, but one way or another, it's almost over.  He's on mids (8:30 PM - 8:30 AM) which is the hardest shift he has.  He never gets enough sleep and he walks around like a zombie ALL.  THE.  TIME.  He fell asleep at Harper's doctor appointment this morning if that's any indication of how sleep-deprived he is.  Of course, it's his own fault because he sits downstairs and watches cartoons with me, I mean the kids, instead of sleeping.  He even failed a watch this week because of it.  He was so upset about it because he had down everything perfect up until the last 10 minutes.  He started to zone out and turned a valve the wrong way.  His instructor really didn't want to fail him, but if he did something stupid like that on a real watch, he could have killed someone.  The sad thing is, I gave him a harder time about it than the staff did.  He was worried it would screw up his chances of staying on as an instructor, but his crew kept telling him not to worry about it and that several instructors have failed more than one watch as a student. 

I, being a former nuke, told him to suck it up and stop failing because if he gets sent to Guam, he's going alone.

Ok, maybe I wasn't quite so blunt.  But I did tell him that the Navy's his job and he needs to do whatever he needs to do to not screw up at work even if it means chugging coffee for 12 hours.  Then I reminded him that it's not the end of the world if he doesn't get staff as long as they don't send him to welding school.  Welding school is in Groton and only 3 months long so we wouldn't get to go with him if they made him go there.  I'm sorry, but I'm not spending 12 weeks in this craphole without my husband. 
I feel bad that he's had such a shitty experience with the boat being down practically the whole time while his friends in New York were able to board weeks ago.  Oh well.

Let's see... what else?  I got my first official check from the magazine I write for.  My article should be out in the November issue so I'll probably spend that first check buying magazines that prove I'm an official writer.  Oh, and I totally fit into my old pants (KUrunner desperately needs an update).  Yay me, again!

Updates

Jason officially was picked up for staff so we won't be moving any time soon.  Poor guys having a hard time getting checkouts though because the staff is like, "You don't need to know this as a student, but you'll have to know it in a few months so go learn it now."  He was the only person on his crew to be selected as staff though, so I'm pretty proud of him.  His "friend" also applied, but she didn't even get an interview.  I know, I'm a bitch, but that makes me smile just a little.  She's getting a divorce though, so I'm not really enjoying her misery to the full extent because I'm not that mean.  I did spend the morning in happy tears because a guy who's made life really sucky for the whole crew got really crappy orders when almost everyone else got what they wanted.  Karma, baby! 

Our toilet is broken and no amount of plunging seems to fix it.  We put in a request form with the housing office, but they suck.  Apparently a non-flushing toilet isn't high priority.  Yeah, they're going to like it when I wake up at 2 in the morning and forget it's broken and water seeps through to the bottom floor.  I absolutely love my house, but hate the company we rent from (yet, they are still better than Balfour Beatty who privatized base housing.)

Kaelin starts Mother of Divine Grace homeschool on Monday.  We're pretty excited.  I'm a bit nervous because I'm not sure I should be teaching her Latin or Catholic catechism but it's got to be better than the crap excuse for public school here.  Also, there isn't a Catholic school in town.  Blarg.

Harper is NUTS.  This kid can crawl - hands and knees belly off the floor type crawl.  I mean one end of the room to the other in the 10 seconds it takes to pull out her baby jail Pack & Play.  Also, notice how they aren't called playpens anymore?  I guess people didn't like the idea of putting their kids in a pen.  Anyways, I sit her in her bedroom floor to get pjs out of the closet and she'll be under her crib before I turn around.  She really likes it under her crib.  And under Jason's desk.  And under the coffee table. 

She's in gDiapers now.  I love them.  They are so much lighter than our prefolds/cover combination.  Maybe that's why she's able to get around so fast now.  We also discovered Harps could be a baby model.  Scout's also coming around to her.  It's not like he didn't like her, but now he lets her crawl up and pet him. 

Seriously, aren't I cuter than the babies on the packs of diapers?

Still no teeth, though.

My April marathon has been canceled.  No clue why.  It was on the website one day, then not the next.  I can't justify going to Kansas just to run a half so maybe it is a good time to try for Baby MacGyver Chuck Norris Thundercats Snake Eyes Picard.  Not that we are having any luck with that yet.  I guess I'm going to have to find another race, but since I don't know if it will take us a month or a year to get pregnant, I don't want to lock myself in, you know?

I need a new camera.  I love that my iPhone has a video camera and it takes AMAZING pictures outside in full light.  But if it's not 100% bright in the house, the pictures come out grainy.  Suggestions?

How Do You Raise More Than One Kid?

Kaelin was an only child for a long time.  After she was born, our family was complete.  We knew we didn't want or need any more kids. 

But life happens and several years later, Jason and I started talking babies.  If?  When?  How many?

Harper was born when Kaelin was 8 1/2 years old.  She loves her little sister and she's a great big sister.  Honestly, I really can't imagine trying to raise another baby without her help.  But things are different now.  I'm older.  I have so much more patience with Harper than I did with Kaelin.  Kaelin had colic.  She would scream for something around 20 hours a day.  When her dad came home, he turned on the Playstation and asked me why I couldn't shut the baby up.  After all, he'd been at work all day. 

I only breastfed Kaelin for 6 weeks and never exclusively.  We didn't cloth diaper.  I didn't feed her homemade baby food.  I had no problem sticking her in front of the tv when she was being too bothersome.  I stuck her in daycare and went back to school without a second thought. 

Harper's experienced the opposite of everything.  She's exclusively breastfed and cloth diapered.  I bought a food processor and have books about making your own purees.  The only tv she watches is when Kaelin or I watch tv.  I'm still not sure if I'll ever go back to work, but I hate the thought of not being with Harper all day.

Do I love Harper more than I love Kaelin?  Of course not.  Do I feel that Harper's gotten a lot more attention than Kaelin did, even as an only child?  Maybe. 

A four month old takes a lot more work than an almost nine year old.  I have to give Harper a bath while Kaelin can take an unsupervised shower.  I have to nurse Harper while Kaelin can pour her own cereal.  Kaelin's content to read quitely in her room while I have to play with Harps.  I try to do special things with Kaelin like let her run errands with me while Jason takes the baby, but she's not really interested.  She doesn't want to watch movies with me and rarely curls up with me in bed.  It doesn't seem that Kaelin feels the same way I do; she's already in negotiations for another sibling (as long as it's a girl).  Yet she tells my parents that she never gets to spend time with me.  Am I missing something?

Wow, I'm completely rambling now.

Would I feel differently if Kaelin and Harper were closer in age?  Or does it not matter how old they are -- I'll always worry that I'm treating them differently?  Does this get easier with more kids?  Harder?  Am I going to have to pay huge therapy bills? 

Baby Butt Woes

Before Harps was born, we decided to cloth diaper -- we didn't want chemicals sitting on her skin 23 hours a day.  But when we came home from the hospital, we were overwhelmed.  There are so many different styles and brands of cloth diapers.  We poured over the internet, but we still didn't know what we should buy. 

So for the first few weeks of her life, we used disposable diapers.  We splurged and bought the most expensive Huggies organic cotton diapers thinking that they'd be the friendliest to her sensitive little butt.  Her bottom got red.  We switched and tried Pampers Dry Max.  Her bottom looked like we had sat her in lye.  (Check out this other Pampers test.)  Since the most expensive disposable diapers we could buy were bothering Harper's butt, we tried Luvs.  Her bottom would be perfect, then within 10 minutes of having a diaper on, it would be red.

We broke down and bought cloth diapers.  We decided on prefolds and a mix of Thirsties and Bummis covers.

And we loved them.

Seriously, have you ever seen a cuter little butt?

Harper's butt was perfect.  The cloth diapers were so much cuter (and cheaper) than disposables.  They take all of 5 extra minutes a week to wash and haven't made any impact on our water or electric bills.  For three months, we went about our business and Harper's rear was as cute as ever.

Until this month.  Harper had a rash, and not just a my-butt's-red-from-the-diaper-rash.  We followed all the advice google could offer.  Harper started spending hours naked so her butt could air out.  I washed her diapers with superhot water.  We slathered her little bum with ointments, but it made no difference.  We put her back into the absolutely cheapest disposables we could find so we wouldn't ruin her cloth diapers with Desitin.

Harper's rash before treatment.

We finally took her to the doctor's and we were informed it was a yeast rash and given an antifungal.  She said she hadn't seen a baby in the last two weeks without a yeast rash just because it was so hot and humid.  She assured us that we were doing nothing wrong and that after a couple days with the medicine, Harper's butt would be as good as new. 

I went back to the internet and looked up all I could about cloth diapers and yeast.  The consensus was that I would have to boil the diapers then rinse them with vinegar so any yeast would be killed.  Obviously, I didn't want to reinfect her while we were trying to get rid of her rash.  We continued to use the $4/pack diapers while I sanitized every cloth diaper we had.  After a few days, her rash went away.  We happily put her newly cleaned cloth diapers back on her.  But two days later, the rash is back.

Harper's rash as of last night.

I don't know if it's because of the cloth diapers or because we spent the day outside in the heat and humidity. 

I really hope it's not the cloth diapers.  I love cloth diapering.  I could try to reboil/rewash all of her diapers and wipes and see if that helps, but I don't know what boiling them a second time will do if it didn't help the first time.  She's never had a problem with the cloth before.  I don't know why she would be sensitive to it now.  She was back in cloth a couple days before the rash reappeared.  Could it be that her diapers are fine, but what remained of her rash flared back up as soon as her butt hit the humidity? 

Do you guys have any tips for a yeast diaper rash?  How do you wash your diapers?