JUST THE TWO OF US

Gage turned two a month ago, and in the month since his birthday, he has blossomed past toddler-hood into a little person who converses and has opinons. He is most definitely two years old. After dropping Corwyn off at pre-school three days a week, I usually rush home to get Gage into bed for a good nap before heading back to pick Corwyn up, but today was so gloriously sunny and crisp that we walked back slowly and took a detour through the woods, just me and my little guy.  

It was slow and quiet and magical and perfect.  A day to remember with my little Gage.

SAUCY BOTTOMS DIAPER SERVICE REVIEW

Background:  I've been using a diaper service since Gage was two months old.  First I used Diapers Naturally (and reviewed them here), then I used Happy Baby Cheeks (and reviewed them here). It recently came to my attention that there is another diaper service in the Lower Mainland, and as I get a great deal of traffic to my diaper service review posts, I contacted Saucy Bottoms and asked to try them out.  I'll also be adding them to my side-by-side-comparison.

First Impressions: When I called, I spoke with the one of the owners, Barbara, and she explained that she comes to your home and gets you "all set up" for your service, including a demonstration on how to use the diapers.  She arrived at my home promptly at our appointment time, and laid out all the goods.

I really appreciated the in-home orientation.  Even though I am comfortable using cloth diapers because I've been using them for a long time, it would have been really helpful to me when I first started. Barbara uses her friendly bear to show you how to fold and put on the diapers and wrap covers.  This was really beneficial, because in my opinion, diagrams and explanations are not nearly as good.  There is more than one way to fold a prefold diaper and it's nice to have someone who knows what they are doing demonstrate them for you and answer any questions you have and help you find the best fold and fit for your baby.  

Barbara is extremely helpful and knowledgeable, and she does this business for the love - she told me that her and her husband are passionate about helping families use cloth diapers because of the great benefits of them, and being able to keep up with the laundry of doing it yourself is not always possible, and she really enjoys being able help families with a service.

Diapers are delivered by Andrew in a big and shiny silver pick-up truck with the Saucy Bottoms logo on the side.  Diaper delivery and pick up of soiled diapers is twice a week, so that diapers are not sitting unwashed for too long.  This is twice the remembering to put your dirty diapers out though.

This is the pretty sight that greeted me when I opened my pail for the first time

The Diapers:

The diapers that Saucy Bottoms provides are organic cotton Bummis prefolds.   My previous experience with prefolds was with Diapers Naturally, and I was not impressed impressed, so I was a bit skeptical that prefolds would perform well. However I was pleasantly surprised.  The Bummis prefolds are thick, soft and absorbant. 

I found they performed very well and Gage didn't seem to notice the change from the Happy Baby Cheeks diapers.  

Because you fold the diapers in such a way to have more thickness (and more absorbency) in the front (for a boy) I found they worked really well at night.  I was even able to re-use the cover I'd used at night in the morning because it was still dry.  However, this means that the moisture isn't wicked away from the baby's skin because this is a cotton prefold, it absorbs really well, but doesn't take the moisture away.  I have some fleece liners, so after the first night, I used them, because I don't want his skin to be really wet all night.  That's a recipe for rashes. Different diapers work differently, and I think it's good to be aware of how cotton prefolds work and use a stay-dry liner at night so baby doesn't have wetness beside their skin all night. UPDATED:  Because of my feedback, Saucy Bottoms now includes stay dry fleece liners as an optional part of their service if you want them - no extra charge.

The diapers all pre-folded in a wet bag

The diapers come pre-folded in a wet bag, which means they are quick and easy to just drop into the cover and put on the baby.

The one thing I don't like about these diapers is the fact that prefolds just don't hold in poop that well.  Every poop Gage had while wearing them resulted in poop on the cover, which is not something I was used to - the fitted Happy Baby Cheeks diapers I was using previously hold in the poop really well, and it rarely gets on the covers.  It's not that big of a deal, but I think you should consider this when you are deciding the number of covers to purchase or rent.  I wash my covers pretty much every day, and I have six.  I'd want a couple more if I was going to be using Saucy Bottoms long-term.  Updated: Saucy Bottoms will now include Snappis for no extra charge if you would like them.   I think this is a great addition to the service - Snappis really make pre-folds stay on and fit snugger and would greatly decrease incidences of poop getting on your covers and having poop blow-outs.   

The Covers:

The first week of service, Saucy Bottoms lends you three different covers to try out and see which fit your baby and you like best.  These are all Bummis covers: Super Lite, Super Brite and Super Whisper Wrap.  You can then either rent or purchase the covers that work best for you.  They also provide a pull on wool cover that you can put on over the wrap cover at night time.  I used it for two nights, and found that it just wasn't necessary, as the prefolds were absorbant enough. If you are using the wool cover, when it gets soiled, you send it back and you get a fresh one.  Barbara washes and re-lanolizes them.

Other:

The clean diapers have no discernable smell.  Saucy Bottoms uses Rockin Green Detergent to wash the diapers and they go through multiple pre-rinse, sanitizing, wash and rinse cycles. 

A white diaper pail with a carbon odor filter in the lid is included as par tof your service.  It comes with a wet bag, and you get an extra wet bag to keep your diapers in as well. The pail has handles that pop firmly over the lid so that the pail is not easily opened by small children.  You do need to make sure you open it before you change your diaper though, because it's not something you can really do with one hand holding a dirty diaper.

Look at these wipes!  Aren't they lovely?

The cloth wipes are so nice that I almost felt bad using them! I did use them though, and they work really well.  I just moistened them with warm water and after they were used they just get tossed in the pail with the diapers.  Super handy and easy and Gage liked being wiped with warm cloth much better than he did with cold, disposable wipes.

Overall:

I was happy with the performance of the diapers and this service includes some extras that the other services don't.  The weekly service is $25 and includes use of the pail & wet-bag, diapers, cloth wipes, and a wool soaker for overnight wear, with no start-up or delivery fees.  If you refer friends who sign up for the service you get $5 off your weekly service per referral.  With five referrals, your service is free.  Your first week of service is free so that you can try out the different covers and figure out which ones fit your baby best, and your second week is free as a congratulatory new baby gift.  Pampers and Huggies won't beat that!  

The thing about cloth diapers is that it's not a one-size fits all sort of thing - there's a lot of personal preference involved.  My husband loved the simplicity of the prefolds and preferred them over fitted Happy Baby Cheeks, while my preference is the fitted diapers.  However, personal preference for fitted or pre-fold diapers aside, the Saucy Bottoms diaper service is excellent, Barbara and Andrew love providing a quality service with quality diapers and accessories.  Cloth diapering is better for your baby and for the environment, and I strongly encourage everybody to make the switch to cloth, whether purchasing your own stash or signing up for a service.    

Disclosure:  Saucy Bottoms gave me two weeks free to try out the service.  All opinions are my own.

SNAPSHOTS

He is four.  Almost four and a half.  He is so old. He says things all in one breath like "Mom, I'm going to eat a lot of granola and then be really fast and have webs like spiderman and TRAP ALL THE BAD GUYS!!!!  Can I sit on your lap? It's so nice to be together."

Most of the time, I'm refereeing the hair pulling, biting, toy-throwing, hitting whirlwind that is Corwyn and Gage playing together, but sometimes there are these magical moments where the stars align and kindess and connection spring forth between them and that makes it all worth it.

IN MY VEINS

Nothing goes as planned

Everything will break...

We have been carrying a burden of grief for many months now.  Friends have died, our church unexpectedly dissolved in a cloud of sadness and a sense of work unfinished. Children we loved with our whole hearts have moved away and refused to talk to us again, friends who were dear, dear, dear found work in other provinces.

Everything will change

Nothin stays the same

Nobody is perfect

Oh, but everyone is to blame

The stress of grief and sadness and loss wears at relationships, rubs rough against the tender places of my heart and leaves me raw.

Everything is dark

It's more than you could take

But you catch a glimpse of sunlight

Shining,

Shining down on your face

This weekend, I experienced the sunlight.  Glimmers of hope in the darkness.  And then to make a sunny day even better, a friend, far away and on the phone connected dots for me, in a few simple words and I could see the hand, the love, the work of Jesus, who has never left me, even in the darkness when I can't see.

Oh, you're in my veins, and I cannot get you out

No, I cannot get you out

No, I cannot get you out

And then, as I am almost ready to fall asleep, I hear a song for the first time, and it speaks my heart for me.  And I know that it will all be okay.

SO.....

So, my laptop died.  Weeks and weeks ago. I can check facebook and email on my phone, but it's too difficult to blog on the teeny tiny screen.  So I just haven't. 

However, I ordered a new laptop this week, and it should be here sometime next week.

I will be back, don't worry.

FEATURED

My dear friend Christina Crook was gracious enough to ask me to contribute to her weekly column at She Loves Magazine. 

Writing it felt good.  Scary, like coming out of the closet, because I say things like feminist, pro-choice and Christian all in the same breath, and many people don't think those words work together, but they do, inside of me, and it is honest and true to my conscience to put them out into the open.  So there you are, without futher ado...you can read my confession of conflicted faith here: On Gender Roles, Quiet Times, and Making Art Not War

One day, (like after my sister's wedding and we finish painting our dining room) I'll blog again.  Thanks for sticking around, neglected readers.  I love you!

THIS IS HOW WE DO IT: GETTING AROUND TOWN, KNOCKING OFF PRICEY DIAPER BAGS AND GASP! MAKING KIDS WALK ON THEIR OWN TWO FEET

So, to my great shame, I don't know how to drive.  Let's not talk about that and move on to the fact that I go out a lot with my kids.  Parks, community centers, play dates with friends, the library, running errands....and we get there by bus. 

I've blogged before about my adventures with my truly wonderful double Mountain Buggy, but as Corwn got bigger, it was killing my back to push it up hills with him in it, so I needed a new rig.  Corwyn, being three years old, has two perfectly good legs, and it was time that I started making him use them.  We walk a lot. On top of an exactly 1 km walk to the bus stop, once we get off the bus, we often walk long distances to our final destination, or walk all or part of the way home. I was finding he was getting pretty tired by the end of the day and begging to be carried, which couldn't happen and led to temper tantrums.   So...my super awesome friend Marisa was selling her single Mountain Buggy with every single accessory possible, including the brand new Free Rider attachment and I snapped it up.

I should tell you that my number one ultimate goal in life while adventuring about with my children is to push the stroller with one hand and have the other hand free to hold a coffee. 

The Free Rider has been incredible.  Corwyn loves riding his scooter so much that I no longer have to drag him along by his arm because he won't hold my hand or walk another step unless I am pulling him.  He will go much further distances, much faster on it than on foot, and when he does get tired, he loves to have a ride on it as as a buggy board.  Either way, I can hold my coffee. BI-WINNING, I tell you!

My number two ultimate goal in life is to never have to carry bags because it hurts my back.  I have admired the Skip + Hop bags for quite some time, but they were just a bit too spendy for my slim pocketbook.  I didn't have any bags that quite sat properly when hung over the handle, and I don't like putting heavy bags on my giant carabiner because it marks up the handle of the stroller, and then one day, I was in my favourite thrift store and stumbled upon this great bag, which was brand new and only $2.  I had a flash of inspiration and decided to make my own clip-on-to-the-stroller bag.

I did a little surgery on the bag and I can now carry the 5,017 items needed for a day of adventure with two small children without having it all falling out of the stroller basket and without breaking my back.  All while sipping my coffee.

Here's how I modified the bag: After a foray down to Dressew, I got two plastic clips and two plastic loops and a new nylon strap, which all cost about $5. I sniped the narrow shoulder strap that came on the bag in half, attached the clips to the strap. Then I attached the loops to the bag with a little bit of the nylon strap that I bought and then I sewed a new and wider strap straight onto the bag and viola $7 total for my fancy, hands-free stroller bag.  Hurrah!

If you think I'm mean for making Corwyn walk 2-6 km per day,  scientists think kids spend too much time in strollers, and he sure sleeps good at night after a day running around.

Unfortunately, I can't push the stroller, hold a coffee AND take a picture of myself, so this one of the stroller, Free Rider and my new bag looking all pretty will have to do.

My stroller is all pimped out, yo.

And here is a bonus picture of Corwyn's super cute face which he kept sticking in front of my camera when I was trying to photograph my the bag.  How could I not take a picture of that smile?

And that's how we do it!  We're off now for a fun morning with my super-awesome friend Marisa and my dear friend Christina who recently moved to Toronto, but is in town for one last, sweet visit before she has her baby in a few weeks.  Hope your day is as sunny and lovely as ours is going to be!

SUMMER DAYS

June....blue skies, green grass and warm breezes.

My boys are growing up so fast I can't even breathe.

They stay small for such a short time.  Corwyn has lost all his babyness. He's a big boy now and it is sort of breaking my heart, while also bringing so much joy as we can have such great conversations and adventures.  His hair is totally out of control, but he is insisting that he wants it long "like Demetrius" - a little boy on our street who has hair down to his waist and wears it in braids.  Gage is crawling like a maniac, cruising around furniture and peeking around corners. He smiles all the time.  My heart is full.

INTERNAL CONFLICT

It is nearly midnight, and my boys are asleep.  Gage is lying, sprawled out on his stomach in the middle of our bed, snoring through his congested nose.  Corwyn is curled up tight around a dolphin, a rabbit and a bear.  He called out for me in his sleep a few minutes ago and I went and layed down with him until his breathing settled into its resting rhythm and I could slip out.  As I stood up, thinking he was asleep, he reached his hand up into the air, fingers splayed out.  "Give me some yuv mum." he mumbled, and  I kissed his palm five times and then he closed his fingers tight into a fist and tucked it under the blanket, right beside his heart.

In a haze of exhaustion today, I tucked Corwyn into the easy chair in his room with a stack of books, threw a bucket of toys on the floor for Gage, scanned the room for any unsafe for crawling baby items and shut the door.  Then I laid down on Corwyn's bed and dozed.  I was roused, after a while (too soon), by tiny hands, soft, soft, soft on my cheeks, holding my face gently and a wide open baby mouth landing square on my lips. "mwah, mwah, mwah" Gage said as he kissed me again and again until I picked him up and squeezed him.

These moments are the kind of moments that are so beautiful that they hurt.  They split your mothering heart open wide with the ache of love.

My friend Christina recently wrote a piece titled "Dear Friends Who Have No Children" and she begins it by saying:

"Dear friends who have no children,

Do not be led to believe the RAMPANT FALLACY that kids will fit nicely into your life.

They will NOT.

They will TAKE OVER IT.

Parenting is a FULL TIME OCCUPATION.

Further on, she says:

"Children are the joy of life. But childbirth, childcare, and childEVERYTHING are one giant act of sacrifice.
The same way we surrender ourselves to love, to partnership, to faith, we surrender ourselves to parenthood, leaving behind the tidy shelves, careers, and ideas we had about how our lives might unfold."  (Read the rest here)

I was thinking about Christina's words as I laid in bed with Corwyn tonight.  The gratitude I feel as I hold my healthy, beautiful son in my arms coexists uncomfortably with overwhelming frustration. It's pretty clear that Christina is frustrated by the all-consuming nature of parenting small humans.  I know that I am.  As much as I love being a mother at home with her children, I also feel trapped, isolated, stagnant.  This causes me to feel guilt-ridden, and then angry and resentful.  My "job" right now is to raise tiny little humans into adults that I hope will be compassionate, forgiving, generous, loving, open-mined, Jesus-following, injustice-fighting, pro-choice, earth-protecting, kind, cool, brave, feminist, creative, beautiful, bold and secure.   That's a lot of responsibility on my shoulders. I have these two wide-eyed, impressionable humans on my hands every single day and I get to mold them however I want.  It's the opportunity of a life time, right?

And yet, some days I'm bored.  Because playing cars and trains and finger painting is boring. As is reading the three word per page picture book about airplanes over and over again forty one times in one day. And seriously, if I have to put together that f***ing Larry Boy puzzle again, I will throw it through the window. Diaper changing is not glamorous, and neither is waking up five (or eight or twelve) times in a night to tend to a baby (or a preschooler).

Some days, my patience is stretched so thin that I can see right through it, and on the other side, I see the impatient, yelling mother that I could be, but never want to be, the mother I pray that I will not ever become.  Because these fragile little people do not deserve that.

I was raised to be ambitious.  My parents homeschooled me, investing thousands of hours teaching me to be a critical thinker, to study, read, devour information.  I was taught to aim high, to dream, to aspire and to work hard.

I was also taught to clean the house, bake bread and other home-making skills.  I started babysitting at age 12. I never doubted that I would be a wife and mother.

And here I am, a wife and mother.  The thing I always knew I would be.  I love my children.  I am grateful that I was easily able to conceive and birth my babies hale and hearty into the world.  I think I should be satisfied. I think I should be joy-filled and content. But I am not.  I have business dreams, creative ideas, aspirations and ambitions.  And right now, I get to change diapers.

Oh, I could put my kids into daycare and tromp off and do the things I want to do, but I actually made a choice to be a stay at home mother. This was my liberated woman, feminist CHOICE to stay home with my children.   I have to remind myself of that on the bad days.  I chose to be here. I am a stay at home feminist breeder.  Hear me roar.

I don't play the mommy wars. I don't judge my choice to stay at home as better than another mother's choice to work.  It sucks to be a mother who works - I've been one, so I know, and it sucks to be a mother who stays home - I am one, so I know.  Both paths have their blessings and burdens. As mothers, we do what we need to do, make the choices that are right for each of our families. No matter what we do, it is hard.

I believe the human condition to be one of always desiring something more, something greater.  Finding contentment and choosing gratitude in the place that I am in is a challenge, a direction to always be aiming towards.  I'm not there yet.

I used to wear suits and pointy-toed heels, and I felt good.  Now, I barely get to shower and none of my pointy-toed shoes fit thanks to pregnancy permanently enlarging my feet. I used to go out socially nearly every night of the week.  Now, most weeks I don't go more than one block from my house, and adult socialization is rare and usually on the phone. I struggle with feelings of extreme isolation, of thwarted ambition, of creativity stagnating for lack of time. 

When I worked, I struggled with how busy my life was,  how little time it seemed I had with my son and my husband.  But when I was at work, I was productive, I left the building feeling that I had accomplished something, that I was useful and more than "just a mother".  I did good work. But the guilt I felt as I dropped my son off at his daycare, the tears he cried cut into my heart and left me aching all day long.  I quit my job and chose to stay home and be "only" a mother.

And in being "only" a mother I experience so much joy, I am able to catch each and every spontaneous kiss, cute moment, milestone and achievement of my children.  For this I am grateful, and blessed.  And yet, as I wade through laundry and dishes and diapers, I also long for those pointy-toed heels, for the time to sew, paint and create, for the freedom to be with women as they birth.

There are no easy outs, or answers. Just moments of exquisite joy, and moments of agonizing frustration.  For many years now, my mantra has been "good is good enough".  It is good to be where I am, but I am struggling with the "good enough" part.  I need to breathe.  To be present.  To choose gratitude. And sometimes - like right now - even immediately after placing kisses in the palm of my son's hand - those things are hard to do.

SAD PANDA

For Mothers Day, my children decided to celebrate by having strep. Then they rubbed their snot in their eyes and gave themselves eye infections.

When we tried to take Corwyn to the clinic, we found that it had unexpectedly closed early for an unknown reason, (ahem, half an hour before a playoff game) so we had to take him to Urgent Care at the hospital. (which was completely empty with no wait, thanks to the aforementioned game)

Poor sad panda quietly complied with all the poking and prodding and only brightened slightly when a nurse brought him a juice box (big treat in our house) He is now on super nasty tasting antibiotics and is recovering.

 

Meet Eye Infection Baby. He's cute and contagious.

Blogging will resume shortly. If I can keep my kid's snot out of my eyes.

THIS IS HOW WE DO IT: MILK JUG GARDEN CLOCHES

So...I love garden magazines, even though mine will never be in one, and I always see these beautiful glass garden cloches.  They are like mini green houses that create a bubble of warmth for your seedling and protect them from pests, like slugs and snails (or neighborhood feral cat colonies in our case).  However, at $30 -$70 per cloche, that's a bit steep for our limited means.

Last year, we had a dozen lovely cucumber seedlings that succumbed to cold, slugs and cat trampling.  This was very sad, and we swore it would never happen again.  A few months ago. we started saving our milk jugs. We have a nice little collection now.  Yup, we kept all those milk jugs on the side of our house.  Ghetto is the name of the game around here.

This week, I cut the bottoms off of a few of them, not pretty, I just hacked off the bottoms with the garden scissors.

and I set out my sunflower seedlings.  Aren't they cute?  Corwyn planted them and watched them grow on the kitchen windowsill. 

We plant sunflowers in a bed at the front of our house, and I put a cloche over each one.  They keep toasty warm in there! Not only do cloches allow you to set things out earlier, they protect your tender seedlings from slugs and snails.  We have the added problem of feral cats, which will trample, nap on, dig up generally destroy small plants, so the cloches protect plants from kitties too!

If you plant milk jugs, can you grow a cow?

GRANDPA IS HERE!

First off, I'd like to apologize for my lacking blogging.  I have had sick children for about five weeks.  This has sucked.  Not only am I really, really tired of putting children into headlocks so that I can wipe their noses, but also, sleep has been an elusive thing.  Oh sleep, how I miss you.  With sick children, I basically haven't left my house, except for a a day or so here and there between the consecutive illnesses since the beginning of March.  Oh, outside world, how I miss you.

Gage was particularly sick, verging on pneumonia and the poor little guy had to go on antibiotics.  Corwyn has never had antibiotics in his life, and Gage had to have them before he was even six months old. That was sad. He also hated them and had to be restrained and force-fed the meds.  This has caused him to be quite resistant to my attempts to feed him solids, he seems to associate any non-breast object in the vicinity of his mouth as a great threat. 

However, we are healthy now, and the garden is growing and the smiles are abundant, and joy of great joy, Grandpa and Uncle Carter are visiting for an entire week from Ontario.  Uncle Carter is six years old, and Corwyn is so excited to follow "Untle Tarter" around and have a friend to play with.

Gage is happy to be in his Grandpa's arms for the very first time!