Turtle Monkey

I know I owe y’all some photos. I suck about getting out the camera, but I’ll try to be better this week. Until there are photos, how about a summary of Elias’ recent accomplishments?

Friday evening Elias started squealing in delight or just to hear himself squeal. If he’s in a good mood, he squeals almost nonstop. We think this may be the precursor to the laugh. He’s also using consonants a lot more.

For almost a week now, we’ve been putting Elias down to bed around 8pm. Without fail, I will need to spend at least an hour back there total nursing him to sleep or going back in there to calm him, but it’s been working out very well. Hopefully one day soon he’ll just drift right on back to sleep when he wakes himself up instead of calling out for me.

We decided to go out to lunch yesterday, more for the experience of taking Elias out to lunch with us than for the lunch itself. He did very well at the restaurant and amused himself by staring at the passerbys and ceiling fans. Naturally, almost as soon as we all got settled, he started to poop. I’d just changed him before we left and used cloth since I didn’t think we’d be gone for much longer than an hour. I could have brought cloth to change him into, but the diaper bag is already packed with disposables for daycare so I didn’t bother.

So I had my first experience changing a poopy diaper in a public restroom. Thankfully, I was alone through most of his change. On the Border’s changing tables are very clean-looking though (yes, I did use a liner and my own changing pad on top!) and the whole experience wasn’t entirely unpleasant.

Elias sat in his carseat for a little while after that (enough for me to finish more than half my meal) and then voiced his displeasure. He was more than happy to be held by me or Mark, so we took turns passing him back and forth while we finished our meals.

I don’t know why I have a phobia of taking Elias out with us. I guess I just feel like I don’t have the best grasp for how to deal with him, still. And I’m scared he’ll be fussy, but he never is more than we can handle.

Elias is still showing no desire to roll over. That wasn’t even a milestone on the list of ones to check off when we went to the doctor though, so no one is very concerned about this. He’s been strengthening his back muscles and more than once now, he’s corrected his own posture we hold him sitting upright in our laps.

Elias is also finally reaching out and grabbing things with purpose, though his aim is not very good.

It feels this past month has been a little slow developmentally. He’s been spending a lot of time trying to perfect his skills. It definitely seems we’re on the cusp of another developmental spurt, which many resources mention happening at this time anyway. I hope it doesn’t disrupt his sleep patterns too much, but I can’t wait to see what he does this month!

I finally got around to taking a photo of all the diapers currently in rotation on Elias.

The top row is:
- Blue, green and yellow BumGenius 2.0 One Size Pockets
- Medium train and zoo print FuzziBunz
- Berry Pocket Change

The second row is:
- Neon green, menthol blue and periwinkle BumWear One-Size pocket
- Candy stripe Good Mama fitted
- Medium Dream-Eze fitteds

Third row is:
- WAHM puppy print cover
- Medium Bummis Super Brite covers on each side.

At the top of the photo are extra inserts and doublers and the bottom of the photo are premium sized prefolds.

I really like the BumGenius and FuzziBunz pockets. The BumWear are oddly shaped and I’m not sure about them. The pocket change seems to work well, but it’s only been on him two or three times at this point. I’m really liking my fitteds and prefolds using the cover. The dream-eze is only sized up to 20 pounds, but they work very well so I hope he can stay in them a bit longer. He seems to have a lot of room to grow in them.

Going through our ottoman, I found a medium sized pocket diaper I forgot I bought! We could have broken this baby out a month ago! I also found a medium sized cover that I have little use for at the moment because I rarely use prefolds or fitteds and the Thirsties small size covers still fit him well.

I finally snagged a one size GoodMama fitted diaper! These things are currently like beanie babies to cloth diaperers and don’t stay in stock very long. I was very surprised that my order went through without any problems. People praise these diapers to high heaven saying they are workhorses and perfect for overnight use. Currently I’m using a BumGenius 2.0 one size double stuffed overnight without any problems, so we’ll see how the GoodMama does. I’m really excited about receiving it because I’ve never had any pretty fitteds!

I have a LOT of our old cloth diaper stuff to try to unload, but I’m so bad about mailing things that I’m trying to make sure I have all the shipping items ready to go before I make a post about it. I’m going to get rid of our Kissaluv size 0s, contours and many covers. The wife of one of Mark’s oldest friends is pregnant and we talked to them about cloth diapering when we were in Texas. They seemed to be on the fence about it, so Mark and I were considering giving them the Kissaluv diapers and some covers so they can try it out.

I’ve had a blast cloth diapering, it’s much easier than I anticipated and it just seems cleaner than disposable. But enough of my cloth diapering blabber!

Mark started taking showers with Elias because I am not very good at giving baby baths. (I’m not good at dressing baby either - I apparently never practiced on baby dolls.) Both of them really enjoy their shower time and I think this is an excellent way to handle bath time.

The other day I got a little sample pack of Burt’s Bees Baby Bee products and I fell in love with them so quickly that I ran right out and bought full sizes of the Baby Bee Buttermilk Lotion, Dusting Powder, Apricot Oil and Shampoo/Wash. Elias has never smelled so good! The dusting powder smells wonderful and leaves his skin so dry and soft, it’s just so much nicer than baby powder. Elias seems to be reacting well to the products also; his skin has never looked so good!

Milestones: Elias has his first cold this week. We’re not sure if it’s due to daycare or our trip to Texas or maybe a combination of both. He seems to be coping with it well. The first night was rough as he had too many problems breathing sleeping on his back. The next night I got out his cosleeper wedge so he’d be slightly inclined overnight and that seemed to help greatly. His nose is a little snotty and he has a cough, but overall he’s in good spirits unless a booger’s actively trying to come out.

Elias has been attempting to reach for his toys and really enjoys feeling different textures. He fell asleep in his swing this morning while playing with his starfish cloth that has tons of different textures and crinkles. He pulled it up to put in his mouth, but then apparently was overwhelmed with exhaustion and fell asleep. He’s really enjoying his touch and feel books, such as Good Puppy. Mark told me Elias actually grabbed on to one of his feet the other day after looking at it! His vision has improved greatly and he now smiles at us from half way across the room. Every day it’s something new. This is going to be a really fun month.

I get why people rely on the convenience of disposable diapers, I really do, but I couldn’t do it full time. To avoid having to worry about laundry our last couple days in Texas, we went ahead and got a pack of disposable diapers. ($10 for 40! ugh!) I don’t want to be a diaper snob, but cloth is just so much better for our family. This was my first experience with disposables since the pack my mom bought before he was born ran out a couple weeks after we brought him home (we weren’t using them exclusively then, either.)

My biggest complaint about disposable diapers other than the price is the smell. Elias smelled just awful, even if we’d just put a diaper on him. I can’t even describe how yucky a fresh diaper smelled. A dirty diaper was even more offensive. Cloth diapers don’t smell at all in comparison.

The next biggest complaint is that they’re so thin. I’m used to a nice fluffy butt, so using disposables was just weird. There’s a slight advantage to trying to fit him into smaller clothes, but I’d prefer to get clothes a bit looser in the bottom area so I can fit his fluffy butt into it.

Strangely, the disposables seemed to keep more moisture next to his skin, which I thought was weird since that’s a big argument in the cloth vs. disposable debate. The bumgenius and fuzzibunz diapers we’re using almost exclusively now do a MUCH better job at sucking up the liquid and keeping it away from his skin. Every time I changed his disposables, I had to let his bottom air dry for much longer.

The only thing I liked about disposables was I could put the wipe right into it and fold it all up in a neat little package to throw away. I’ll take the slightly more inconvenient cloth diapers any day.

The daycare we’ll be using for Elias doesn’t allow cloth (yet) so he’ll be in disposables while he’s there, but I refuse to use them at home. Just, yick.

My 10 week old baby is 15 lbs! Oh my word. I’m surprised he fits into his 8-16 lb diapers so well, though I’ve noticed the Happy Heineys getting tighter. No wonder he couldn’t fit into that 3 month old outfit I tried putting him in on Saturday.

{I have to wonder what Elias would weigh if he were exclusively breastfed. I know I shouldn’t think things like this because it makes me sad; it’s kind of painful. The doctor (Whom we really like and respect and is VERY pro breastfeeding and anti formula.) reassured me that by continuing to breastfeed even though the majority of his nutrition is coming from formula, it’s giving him more advantages than if he were strictly formula fed.}

I decided to let him go ahead and get all his scheduled shots today. There are only a couple of vaccines I’m really scared of and I won’t have to deal with making the final decision on those for a while. I struggled with the decision to space out the vaccinations, but in the end due to the holidays and the fact that I couldn’t bring myself to watch him get hurt once a week for the next month or so, we got them all today. Oh god, it was truly heartbreaking. He was crying, but clearly trying to work his way through it by sucking on my finger and concentrating on my face. On the second leg, he lost it and no amount of comfort in the world was good enough. He calmed down, but was still sniffly shortly after the shots, but got upset again a few minutes later when I put him in his carseat to leave. When we started moving he calmed again until I got him into the car and he cried when he saw my face (heart. breaking.) Once we were driving, he fell asleep (it was 3pm and he’d only had about 30 minutes of sleep total since waking at 8am).

When we pulled in at home, he woke up and looked around, not crying or upset. I went back there and stuck my face in his carseat and he just stared at me, but no smiles. Once we got into the apartment and I started unbuckling him from the carseat, he smiled big bright smiles at me. Whew! God, those smiles and that forgiveness make things like these so much harder. I immediately put him into the swing, turned it on so I could unpack quickly. He fell back asleep though and I’ve decided to let him sleep. He’s cool to the touch and otherwise seems to be feeling okay. I’m having Mark stop and pick up some infant tylenol on the way home just in case we need it.

Elias got upset when the doctor looked into his ears, but didn’t mind any of the other normal tests. When the doctor was cycling Elias’ legs, Elias smiled at him several times. He gave Doug a smile last night from inside the Moby (too cute!) It’s nice to see my son smiling at strangers.

He was cooing to the nurse every time she was in the room. She said he was a talker. He really seems to put serious consideration into forming the “words” he speaks, which is just hilarious to watch.