Sh** head (literally)

I boycotted blogging this week, not for any particular reason other than that I felt like a boycott was in order.  Maybe I'll call it a staycation to give it some validity.  Whatever it was, I'm feeling guilty now, more about the other blog than this one, but partially about this one.  Since I don't have any ideas brewing for the other one, I'm going to post a story here that I've already related to a number of you. I figure it'll make me feel a teeny bit less lazy and unproductive, and also, it's kind of a funny story, one worth remembering down the line if anyone needs to write a speech for Hannah and wants to include an embarrassing anecdote from her childhood to warm up the audience.

When it comes to waking up, this has been kind of a gross week for Hannah.  On Saturday it was vomit; on Wednesday it was poop.  She woke up super early that day, before 6:00. (Her sleep has been incredibly screwed up lately which screws up my schedule/routine which makes sanity incredibly difficult for me, even with acupuncture so I've been trying desperately to get her back on a good sleep schedule.)  Since ignoring her hasn't ever worked very well, I decided to try something new: I calmly entered her room and told her it wasn't time to get up yet so she should go back to sleep or play quietly and I'd see her in another hour.  Hah!!    Yeah right.

About 15 minutes later I was laying in bed finishing up my bottle of water and getting ready to head downstairs to take my probiotic and do some stretches (which I was determined to do since I haven't been able to all week because of Hannah's early bird antics) when Eric decided that he couldn't ignore the crying anymore and went in to get her. The thing that stinks about Eric going to get her is that all he does is bring her directly to me, and HELLO! There is a reason that I haven't gone to get her.  As it turns out, it's a good thing he did go in to get her--THIS ONE TIME--because she was standing at the end of her crib naked from the waist down, poopy diaper in one hand, poop all over the other, holding up the poopy hand and saying "help, help, help."

For the record, I did bend over the crib and give her butt a sniff when I went in at 5:45 just to make sure she didn't have a reason for waking up that early, and I smelled nothing! Sigh.  I swear that I could have unending patience for months on end and cater to her every screaming whim but the one time I decide to call her bluff and ignore the cry for wolf, that's the time that she decides to change her own poopy diaper and make me look like a giant jerk face.

Eric cleaned her up, and I continued to lay in bed, quietly sipping my water and listening to the conversation between daddy and daughter about the perils of changing ones own poopy diaper.  Later that morning I discovered a crusted bit of brown in her hair and, upon smelling her head, determined it to be renegade poop.  I probably shouldn't admit this, but I didn't wash it....I combed it out, wetted the spot down, and avoided smelling her head for the rest of the day.  I think my gross tolerance, low to begin with, gets lower every day that I am a mom.

There's more: later that day she refused to nap (I blame over exhaustion but it's possible that I've read too much Sleep Lady).  I was up and down the stairs a bunch and then she was quiet for a bit, and then loud again so I trudged back up huffing and puffing in annoyance all the way and found her, for the second time that day, naked in her crib.  She had removed her shorts and diaper, disassembled the liners from the pocket of the diaper, and shoved the diaper pieces between the bumper and the crib bars.  And I'd ignored her for long enough that there were a few wet spots scattered throughout the crib.

Have I mentioned that I hate changing crib sheets?? It's impossible to reach the dang mattress, even with the bar down, and the stupid bumpers crowd everything up so that I can't get the corners around the mattress edge without a lot of struggling, and the back corners are totally not reachable...Is there some trick that I just don't know about? Don't hold out on me moms, if you've got the trick, spread the love.

Sheets changed, baby changed and back in bed, load of laundry going, and I'm back downstairs in an attempt to do something productive. Within about 15 minutes the sound of "UH OH!" gets louder and louder from her room.  That's what she says when she drops her lovey or water or when she needs help with something. I return for like the 17th time that afternoon and am none too happy about it only to find that she has stripped herself down AGAIN and peed in the crib AGAIN.  Are you SERIOUS??

This time I got smart: I put her in a onesie.  It was so hot out this week that I was skipping that seemingly unnecessary layer, but as it turns out, it's quite necessary if not for warmth than as a diaper lock-down device.  So far she hasn't figured out how to unsnap the onesie so the new rule in this house is that Hannah is not allowed in her bed without a diaper AND a diaper lock-down device.

Problem solved, future grievances avoided. Until she figures out snaps...

Another Poopy Story

Pictures from this weekend are still coming, I promise, but I haven't had a chance to edit them yet and need to tell this story from this morning while it's fresh in my head.  You know how I told you that Hannah has learned how to take off her diaper? (You probably know where this is headed...)  This morning she was crawling around the kitchen while I cleaned up from breakfast and I heard the rrrrriippp of a velcro tab. I looked down at her and thought, "I hope there's not a poop in there. I should check."  But I didn't check. I don't know why I didn't check; I know that she's a morning pooper and I know that she hadn't pooped yet that morning so odds were HIGH that there was a poop in those pants, but I didn't check. I just kept right on doing what I was doing.  With her diaper half hanging off of her, she hightailed it from one end of the kitchen to the other and plopped herself down in front of this little truck I bought her yesterday. I kept one eye on her and frequently glanced over with both eyes in the way that is customary for mom's with young kids who are trying to get things down.  And then I noticed it.  The poop-like substance that was smeared all over one leg and foot. A closer inspection revealed that said poop-like substance was indeed poop and that it was also creeping up her stomach via the belly button highway.  I guess I shouldn't have been surprised, but nothing ever really prepares you for your baby covered in poop, even foresight and logic.  So I carefully picked her up by her non-poopy parts being careful to hold her out and away from my entire non-poopy self and carried her up to the tub.  After rinsing her off completely, I put her at the far end of the tub, rinsed the floaters down the drain, and filled the tub with clean water so I could soap her up and scrub her down.  And thus begins another exciting day!

Kitchen Duty

Summer and the socializing that comes with it is in full swing, and as a result, my computer time is waning.  Obviously that's a good thing in that it means we're having too much fun to sit around and stare at a this glaring screen, but it's not a good thing for blogging.  Of course, it hasn't been all social fun time; I also spent a lot of time in the kitchen last week, so much that the bottom of my right foot got sore, presumably from standing on it for so long (??).    Not that that's not fun time, because it is. I really like hanging out in the kitchen and experimenting with new recipes especially now that there's some food in season. Last week we bought fresh peas at the farmer's market for the first time. We hadn't ever tasted fresh peas before and loved them so much that we housed the majority of them raw from the bag we bought them in.

On Tuesday I made potato leek soup, most of which I froze.  On Wednesday I made this kale and white bean soup that was awesome the first time around but is just so-so this time, and again froze most of it.  On Thursday I made two pans of lasagna, one to keep and one to give away. And on Friday, I made macaroni salad, beet and carrot vegggie burgers (awesome), and two loaves of bread the old fashioned way. That night after Hannah was asleep, I took a pan of lasagna, some of each of the soups, and a loaf of bread over to Mary's because she'd delivered her baby girl earlier last week and arrived home from the hospital on Friday. It was Eric's idea actually. We both agreed that bringing food is at the top of the list of Helpful Things You Can Do When Your Friend Has A Baby, and he reminded me of that earlier in the week when we got the it's-a-girl text message.  In addition to friends and neighbors bringing us yummy food in the hospital to keep us from starving, Libby had made a ton of delicious food in advance that she dropped off the day we got home and that fed us for the first week.  That's a debt I'm more than happy to pay forward and look forward to being able to do so a few more times this year.

When I got home from Mary's I spent another hour or more sitting on the back porch talking with MC and Amy. I just couldn't pull myself away even though I keep going to bed later and later and every morning I wake up and say I'm going to go to bed early that night...I love my neighbors.

I've got a pretty funny diaper story from Saturday, though I can't find the words to write it nearly as funny as Eric's impersonation.  I left early that morning to go climbing with Brandy and left Eric to put Hannah down for her morning nap, only she didn't ever fall asleep.  First she sat up there and pooped.  This is a normal routine for her if she doesn't poop earlier in the morning; she'll sit in her crib and play with her aquarium or read books until she poops and then when she does, she'll scream for us to come change her.  After that she usually passes right out.  But not this time.  Nope.  This time, after Eric cleaned her up and laid her back down, she took off her diaper, stood up with the diaper in one hand, peered over the bars of the crib, and pitched the diaper overboard.  He was watching her in the monitor when she did this and his impersonation of it is hysterical; it's all in the facial expression and I'm just not a good enough writer to relate the hilarity that has become Hannah. 

She's been running around in just a diaper a lot lately both because of the heat (we are using the air conditioning but keep it at 78 degrees--just enough to cut the humidity) and also because feeding her makes the kind of mess you might find in a barnyard after the pigs have been fed.  I'm tired of all her clothes getting stained. At first I thought it wasn't that big of a deal, after all, she's a baby and I'm no fashionista so it's no big deal if we end up with a little stain here and there, but the stains aren't little and they aren't here and there; they cover the entire front of one of her super cute shirts that I really like.  I've soaked it in both Oxyclean and Borax and it faded a bit, but not all the way so I decided that it does kinda matter and that I should at least try not to wreck her clothes, and since she rips off her bibs (not that they cover much territory anyway), the only option is to strip her down before every meal.  In addition to not ruining any more of her clothes, naked meal time makes for an easier clean up.  She's gotten pretty good at diaper removal and will often peel back the velcro tabs while shoveling peas into her mouth so when she's finished, I just drop her naked little butt into the sink and let her play there while I clean up.  

I think that bathing babies in the sink is really cute--in addition to being easier on the bather's back--but I never understood the logistics of how to make it work.  When they're itty bitty, they're too long to lay flat in the bottom of the sink (unless your sink is huge) and not yet capable of sitting up, so how do you do it? Wash with one hand and prop them up with the other?  Not that we had the option to try to figure it out considering   we tore out our kitchen, sink and everything else, shortly after Hannah was born.  Anyway, she loves to slide around the tub on all fours and we love to watch her being all crazy.

I've got more pictures and stories from our super fun weekend, but the pics aren't uploaded, and I'm too tired and zombie-like to tell the stories.  

Cloth Dipes!

I have yet to get a decent cloth diaper pic, but here are a couple of un-decent (by "un-decent" I just mean "not properly illustrative") pics featuring Hannah in her green Bum Genius diaper. We stocked up and started using them a couple weeks ago. Although they are "one size fits all," they were a bit too big for her that first month--not that I'd have had the wherewithal to deal with them at that point anyway.

We're using them pretty regularly during the day now but I haven't yet been brave enough to make the switch during night time...And we also haven't made the switch when traveling (not sure how to transport the dirty diaper back home--in a plastic bag?? I'm guessing my mom can enlighten me on this as she used cloth diapers for me and the little bro...).

I also think it only fair to note that these diapers are totally cheating as far as cloth diapering goes because they are super duper easy and work pretty much like disposables except that you have to rinse the poo off, wash 'em, and reuse 'em. Of course, you pay a pretty penny for that kind of convenience ($17 a pop--we got 7 for $35 on Craig's List though), but I figure they're still cheaper than using disposables, especially since I can use 'em again for child number 2 (who is not even a thought in my mind at this time, I assure you).