Baby Steps

We've been making slow progress to getting the nursery ready to paint. Gary, Joe's step-dad, has been staying with us this past week while Grandma is in the hospital recovering from surgery. In his free moments, he's helped us continue to scrap wallpaper paste from the walls. Last night I continued working, and realized we'd gotten to the point where it was more effective to use a wet rag to wipe the walls down, scraping the hard bits off when I got to those. After a few hours of scrubbing walls, my fingers and forearms were tired, so Joe's arrival home and suggestion that we go visit Grandma (now that she's out of the ICU) sounded great! I got about 1/4 of the walls done in about 3 hours yesterday, so I'm hoping that another night of scrubbing walls tonight will get us very close to being finished! Then we just have to mud and prime, and we'll be set.

In other baby news, we're continuing to gather items in preparation for little Joseph's arrival. I found a really cute diaper bag last week. It's rather unconventional looking, (Joe had already told me he wants one himself that's more manly), from the Gap, but is fun, has a bunch of pockets and changing pad, looks more like a big purse than a diaper bag (this picture doesn't reflect just how big the bag is), and best of all, had been marked down to $20 from $70! The bottom also opens up wider so that it could theoretically stand on its own when loaded up.

So if I find something I like better or seems more functional, I can always return it, but for now I'm kinda excited about my cute, pink diaper bag. At first I felt a little silly getting the pink one with a boy on the way, but I figured, hey, I'm a girl, I'm carrying the bag, I can do whatever I want. So there! :)

We have also made the decision to try cloth diapers on little Joe. I'm excited about the possibility of less blowouts and diaper rash, faster potty training, less trash/better for the environment and the cost savings over using only disposables. I know we may decide it's not for us down the road, and we still plan on using disposable diapers when we're traveling, out of convenience, but for now this is the goal. The other fun part is how much cuter cloth diapers have become than what our parents used on us, and they seem so much easier and convenient now!

While we could buy everything and it would still be relatively affordable, I've found some patterns to make my own fitted diapers (they resemble the shape of disposables) out of things around the house (old towels, sheets, etc) and cheap fabrics. They still need a waterproof cover, but those aren't too expensive. I went to a variety of places yesterday to start gathering supplies, and I think I may have enough fabric at this point to make a newborn/infant stash of fitted diapers that will in the end have cost us about $30-40. I still need to get elastic and aplix, a form of velcro that is softer and apparently holds up better through the millions of washings. I figure once I get the hang of the pattern, I'll be able to knock out a bunch of diapers at a time.

When he's big enough, we'll probably switch to using AIO's (all in ones), or AI2s (all in twos) which don't require a cover as they have the water-resistant material built in. The difference between the two is the AIOs have the absorbent pad sewn in, whereas the AI2s have snap-in "soaker" pads that can be swapped out and help the diaper dry faster after being washed. These diapers are pricey, but use an ingenious system of snaps and velcro so that they adjust to fit babies from about 8 lbs to 35 lbs, so they should last through potty training. Check out this website to see the variety of diapers that are on the market: http://www.pinstripesandpolkadots.com/ Aren't they adorable?? Many people can use these diapers through multiple children, which would be fantastic. The hard part will be not going overboard with all of the variety of options and cute patterns/colors!