Logan's First Easter

 I realize this post is a little late, but we have been so busy these past couple of weeks. Our Easter weekend was great. Saturday, we hosted the family Easter Egg hunt and had close to 30 people at the house. Easter Sunday we went to church and then had Easter dinner and an Easter Egg hunt with my in laws. and the Easter bunny came to visit :) He brought Logan lots of new toys and clothes. His favorite new toy is his Sophie.

I have also been working on some new stuff for the Etsy shop. I got some really cute new fabric in that I am really excited about. Here is one of my favorites. I also have it in blue. I am working on some new flowers and bows, too.

Logan has really been trying to crawl this past week. He is starting to push himself up on his knees and hands for a couple seconds at a time. I can not believe I have a 7 month old baby. Where does the time go?

We just started him on stage 2 baby foods so I have been experimenting with some new foods. I just bought some split peas and lentils to try. I will post a tutorial as soon as we figure out how to cook them. We are waiting until 8 months to start on meats. That should be interesting. We are also starting to give him a little juice in a sippy cup. He is such a big boy :)

First foods, Sleeping through the night, and no more ammonia :)

These past couple of days have been big ones for us. Logan slept through the night for the first time last night, had his first baby food yesterday, and we finally got rid of our ammonia issues once and for all... It's been a great weekend.

Friday night, Logan slept most of the night. He only woke up once and cried himself to sleep. Saturday I had to get up and feed him once, and he cried it out one other time. But last night, we put him down around 10:30 and he slept until 8:30 this morning! We had a huge storm last night, too, that woke both me and the husband up several times....but he slept right through it. I did go in and check on him 2-3 times just to make sure he was still breathing (I am a worrier..I cant help it), but he didn't so much as make a whimper throughout the night. I am so happy, but I hope he keeps it up. He went through a phase around 3 months where he was sleeping around 6-7 hours a night for a while, but then went back to his old sleeping pattern. I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

Yesterday, we gave him his very first taste of baby food...Earths Best Organic Sweet Potatoes. I don't really think he liked it all that much, but I wanted to start out with vegetables so he doesn't get spoiled on the fruits. The pediatrician said she prefers to wait until babies are 6 months to start baby food, but he was showing all the signs that he was ready for something new. He has been getting cereal for a little over a month now and loves it. He doesn't push the food out of his mouth with his tongue anymore, and he opens his mouth and leans toward the spoon. He loves to eat! Plus, all of the books say between 4-6 months, so I thought 5 months was a pretty good age. We are going to give the sweet potatoes a couple of days and then move on to peas. I do plan on making my own baby food with my new Beaba babycook, but I bought a couple of trays of starter fruits and veggies on sale a couple of months ago, so we are going to use those first.

Also, I am so happy to report that we finally got rid of our ammonia stink issues! Thank goodness! Logans rash was so terrible on Friday night, I was almost in tears. I had used Dawn dish detergent to strip my diapers a couple of days before, but I guess since they had so much build up in them from not stripping them well enough in the past, that all the Dawn did was bring the ammonia to the surface and it caused burns on his little bum :( Thankfully, the rash didn't seem to hurt him. So, I stripped my diapers AGAIN on Saturday. This time I did a cold wash with my Rockin Green Soap and Calgon water softener. Then I ran a second hot  wash with a teaspoon of regular blue Dawn dish detergent and a 1/2 cup of bleach and several extra rinses. I know this sounds like a lot of wasted water, but we have a high efficiency washing machine and you only have to do this once a month. It's been two days and even my overnight diapers have no trace of ammonia smell! I am so excited to finally find a stripping method that works for us...It's strange the things you get excited about when you become a parent!

Gettin' the Stink Out (Our Cloth Diaper Laundry Routine)

How to wash cloth diapers is one of the questions I get asked most frequently. People are fascinated withh why you would want to put poo diapers in your washingmachine. But really, its not that bad.

When a baby is exclusively breast or bottle fed, the poo is water soluable and you can just put the diaper right in the washhing machine. When you start to introduce solids (Cereals, baby food, etc), you need to get the mess off before you wash it.

There are 3 ways to do this.:

1.) You can get biodegradeable inserts which come in a roll of 100 for like 5bucks

2.) You can "swish" the diaper around in the toilet until the solid mess comes off OR

3.) you can get a diaper sprayer (right)) which attaches to your toilet that sprays the mess off. (This is what we do)

So every time my little guy goes #2, I just go to the bathroom and spray the mess off before I put it in the diaper pail. Not too bad. The pee diapers can go right in the pail. You dont need an expensive diaper genie or pail, we use just a plain ol’ trash can with a pail liner in it (left). We use Wahmies brand. I have about 24 diapers and I do laundry every 2-3 days. You dont have to use an expensive detergent, but you do have to use one free of enzymes, brighteners, fabric softeners dyes and most fragrance. The Diaper Jungle has a great chart that tells you which ones are the best to use. View it at http://www.diaperjungle.com/detergent-chart.html. We use Rockin Green soap. We only need about a tablespoon because we have a high effieciency machine, so 1 bag lasts us a while. The first thing I do is put on a pair of rubber gloves and take all the diapers out of the pail. We use pocket diapers (which means they have little inserts that come out) so i take them apart while I am putting them in the washer. (although most of them would come apart in the wash, anyway). I run a cold wash/cold rinse cycle eithout detergent to rinse all the mess off. You can add a little vinegar in this pre wash cycle if you want to help prevent ammonia buildup. Then I run a hot cycle with 1-2 tbs of my Rockin green soap and an extra rinse. …and thats it. I throw them in the dryer (You dont have to line dry modern diapers) with a few dryer balls and I am done. NEVER use fabric softeners with your cloth dipes as it causes them to repel water and leak. Sometimes I have a few that stain a little bit and I put them on a drying rack outside, and the sun bleaches the stains out. I did this today. It really works.

The biggest problem I have ran across cloth diapering is ammonia issues. Urine has ammonia in it and if you dont “Strip” your diapers once in a while it can build up and cause them to be really stinky. To prevent this, I bleach my inserts once a month. We use 7th generation free and clear (without chlorine), but you can use any bleach. And then I rinse them usually twice to make sure to get the bleach out. If i still get stink issues, I just soak the diapers overnight in my Rockin green and run several hot washes. You can also use plain ol blue Dawn dishsoap and rinse rinse rinse until there are no more bubbles in the wash.

It all sounds really complicated, but once you get the hang of it, its not too bad. And with the money you save, the extra effort is WAY worth it.