Holding down the fort

[arobynne]

After 5 lovely days with Cheryl as my lady-in-waiting :), I'm back to caring for the bambino myself during the day. He's half-asleep on my lap at the moment. It's noon, and I've gotten both he and I dressed and I've changed his diaper, put a load of diapers in the wash, brushed my teeth, and eaten a cookie. If only I had eaten some real food, I'

Comments

[ketiya]

davedash and I have been planning on stopping by for a while now, but he was super sick last week and I'm now sick this week so we figured we'd keep our germs away from young inexperienced immune systems. We'll probably give you a call next week to arrange a good time.

You should talk to Lucy about monsterously huge babies. I think Jullian might have been too big for the smallest diapers at birth. Lots of people thought she was having twins too.

[arobynne]

As much as I'd love to see you guys, I appreciate your keeping your germs to yourself :) Any evening but Tuesday would work for us.

We skipped the newborn diapers too. I can't remember how much she said her son weighed at birth, but it was definitely up there.

[tonapah]

He is quite the giant baby!

So what exactly does a baby of that age do all day? Just sleep, basically? I'd imagine he's not old enough to play with yet or keep interested in things.

[arobynne]

I haven't figured out what to do with him when he's awake, so you're not the only one who's wondering. He eats every 1 1/2 -2 1/2 hours when he's awake, which takes 15 minutes, then 5 minutes to burp him (assuming he latches on right away, which he usually does during the day but rarely does at night). We probably change him about as often as he eats, which eats another 10-15 minutes. He's getting better at napping at semi-regular intervals during the day--he probably averages an hour of napping after 2-3 hours awake. Nothing is consistent though--some days he'll just have one 1 hour nap and other days he'll sleep 3 hours in the afternoon, plus two other shorter naps

[tonapah]

put a load of diapers in the wash

So you're using cloth diapers? I didn't think anyone did that anymore. Though perhaps I'm not up on the latest baby trends. :)

[queen_elvis]

Jodi and Cory are doing that. It's certainly better for the environment, but I think it's probably also cheaper.

[arobynne]

My reasons for using cloth diapers are, in approximately descending order--

--finding the softest and most effective diapers is fun
--they're more comfortable for him
--it's cheaper
--it's better for the world

I spent aboutr $125 on diapers so far, and a lot of those he's starting to outgrow already. But I should only have to buy 2 more sizes through age 3 or whatever, which will involve spending maybe $200 each time. It can be done much cheaper, but I like the fancier diapers.

In comparison, 3 years of disposable diapers costs about $2000. You have to add in the cost of using the washer/dryer, but I'm pretty sure I still come out ahead, and that doesn't factor in that I can keep them for subsequent kids.

[davedash]

Isn't the whole process nastier though? I mean you have to put the refuse somewhere to dispose of it... how does it all work? Go into the gory details, but doctor it up with sterile sounding words which won't make me sick.