My cloth wipe solution

Cloth wipe solution

Ingredients:

-2 cups water
-2 squirts Dr Bronner's liquid castile soap (I use unscented)
-1 squirt natural baby lotion of your choice (for now, I use Burts Bees Milk & Honey, which I think has been "reformulated," and the reformulation is not worth buying--but the old version makes my wipes smell divine. You could also use a drop or two of essential oils if desired, or a plain unscented lotion.)
-Empty jar

Combine in  jar and shake well. Place 5-6 fleece wipes (=cut a cheap fleece blanket into squares; or can serge your own, or use baby washcloths) into a ziploc or other waterproof bag, and pour a small amount of solution over. Squish to equalize coverage. Use within a few days, and replenish as needed. Cute label optional!

I love this because:

• the ingredients are customizable to what your baby does or does not tolerate well (Eve's diaper area looks stellar since we switched back to cloth wipes)
• they're easier to keep "juicy" than disposable wipes, which kept going dry on me
• no questionable or unpronounceable ingredients (even 7th Generation wipes seemed to me to have way too many ingredients)
• there's no more sorting disposable wipes out of the cloth diaper pail
• it's cheap and easy!

Latest challenge: No-spend month

Ever on a quest to save money, we had gotten a bit lax as of late and so with no births on the horizon for November, we've resolved to make it a No Spend Month to try to keep our budget balanced. Well, no extra or nonessential spending. Gas and food are non-optional; as, I've found, is parking if I'm to make any money by working at the hospital. (Getting dropped off would be the only other option, but would cost more in gas than it would save in parking.) But anything else strictly nonessential is out. I meant to keep a tally of how much we've saved, but ha! In my free time, right? So I'll just rattle off a few of the things it's occurred to me to buy, and how I've circumvented it:

-Baby wipes (I know, I know): switched back to cloth.

-Greeting cards: called or emailed instead.

-Groupon, LivingSocial, et al: did without.

-Ditto for eating out (a particular Achilles heel) or getting coffee.

-Buying lunch at work: brown-bagged it (the usual, but tempting to skip when I'm running late, which is always).

And the month isn't even half over yet. Stay tuned for updates, including a fantastic recipe for a natural solution to use on cloth wipes!

We're still here

In more ways than one. It's hard to believe it's been two months since I've posted! In the meantime, we've been through a variety of challenges as a family and had to make some major decisions. Perhaps the most visible of those is that we've decided to stay put for the time being. Thinking it over carefully, alternating parenting round the clock just so we could pay our rent didn't feel like the right thing for our family or the best thing for our girls at this point in our lives. We feel really lucky to have a branch of the family that is happy to have us and our girls camp out with them as long as needed--as well as another branch within a few hours' drive that love us and are happy to lend whatever reinforcements we need as well. We've spent several days this summer with three and four grandparents on deck, and I have to say it's been a lot of fun and very gratifying to see how well everyone works and gets along together. We're grateful and humbled by all the love and support everyone shows us on a daily basis, and it's really reaffirmed for us that there's nothing more important than our family.

So for the foreseeable future, we're going to continue to function as one, big, happy, multigenerational, four-pet, two-business household. (Sounds a little crazy put like that, doesn't it?) One that note, midwifery is starting to take off, which is a little overwhelming but extremely exciting. I remember doing my training in Pennsylvania and spending beautiful fall days with my favorite midwife, driving around the countryside and visiting expectant families in their homes, and thinking "This is the life." Well, it's now at least partially my life as well. And while there are definitely things we miss about the various towns and landscapes we've occupied in the past, being near family is definitely right, and Iowa is starting to feel like home.

Eden is definitely moving into a more settled phase of being as well. She's definitely still intense and energetic, we're all finding our way together and learning to relax and enjoy one another more in the process. She's also learning to channel her energy and focus for longer periods of time. We spend lots of time playing and climbing outside, building with Duplos, and playing with Play-Doh. She's now potty trained and continues to be a spectacular big sister to Eve--who's morphed from a sleepy sack of a newborn into a curious, smiley and easygoing baby who loves watching Eden's adventures from the safety of the sling or Bumbo.

Matt and I are feeling like we're really beginning to hit our stride, in our marriage and as parents. Much of this is due to deliberate reflection and effort on each our parts, and I think it's also helpful to feel like we're finally in a settled spot for awhile. As opposed to our various moves in the past few years, we can make friends or find a restaurant we like without thinking that it's too bad we'll be leaving soon. Even if we don't live at Belmont Hill forever, we feel like we've found the region we'll be calling home, and that's a tremendous relief for everybody.

Easing up

Things with Eden were 1000% better today. While we still had our share of tantrums, potty accidents, and other standard 2-year-old fare, and she is still "declining" to take a nap, she was actually very sweet, cuddly, and affectionate most of the day, did like she was told more often than usual, and spent most of the day using the potty and wearing dry training pants. 

I felt like I'd been let out of jail.

Rough

Is how things have felt lately. With regard to the last post, Eden is still on a hardcore napping strike, and bedtime isn't going well either. (Except for tonight, when we skipped out to a movie and my mom was kind enough to put her down--of course, she went willingly and easily). As a result, she's sleep-deprived and irrational, generally a kicking, screaming, sobbing mess most of the day, making it impossible to get anything done and nearly impossible to keep oneself in check after awhile. We've tried it all to get her to sleep more--longer bedtime routines, shorter bedtime routines, staying with her until she falls asleep, NOT staying with her until she falls asleep...all to no avail. So our nerves are more than a bit frayed from that.

Also, I've taken a nursing job while I work on getting midwifery going, so that we can pay our bills in the meantime--especially with a move in the works. (The idea of flying solo with these two kids (well, mainly the one, to be honest) while Matt is at work, without my parents as backup, is daunting--but we'll see. It had to come sometime, right?) The nursing gig is something I'm thankful for, and only disappointed about because it means I'll be away from the girls more. Probably not a ton, hopefully just a night or two a week--but still, it isn't what I'd planned on. And for us both be pulled away from family life more than we'd like, and still be struggling a bit to make ends meet-- well, again, it's not exactly the picture we fantasized about.

But still. I took Eden to the library today, and I left the diaper bag (and her monkey harness--how I love that monkey harness) at home, and so she was running, yelling, jumping, and climbing like a how-NOT-to-behave-in-the-library video. Then, with my patience running a bit thin with the stresses of the day, in the checkout line was a mom with a little boy confined to a wheelchair. And I realized that that mom would probably give ANYTHING to have the kind of library visit I'd just sighed my way through, even just once. And I remembered that Eden won't always be two, and that money problems are just money problems, and that we're all healthy and together and that those are the two most important things. So I'm able to end the day feeling kind of like I've been pulled through a knothole, but on the whole, grateful, nonetheless.

Crazy

...pretty much sums up the kind of day we had today. It started last night, probably, when we went out to dinner and so didn't get Eden in bed until after 9:30--almost 3 hours later than usual. She's never been a kid who can make that up the next morning (she still rose at 6) or on a nap the next day (still clocked in at under an hour). And by about 10am, I was ready to lose it. Crayons thrown in the litterbox. Crayons bitten off in the mouth.Closed doors repeatedly opened so that cats could frolic down and join the bed and breakfast crowd below. Cat litter played with, cat water dumped. Coffee jostled onto the couch. And that was all just this morning. Then there was a full-on, kicking and screaming tantrum when it was time for naptime, a fork thrown into the toilet later...the list goes on and on.

I'm fairly sure she doesn't get as much sleep as she needs, but we've tried everything we can think of to put her down sooner (she already goes to bed at 7), put her down later (in the hopes that it would get her to sleep in later, but see above) take a longer nap, and take a second nap. All have resulted in a huge outpouring of time and energy, for no gain. AHHHHHHHHHHHHH.

I love Eden, and I can truly say I wouldn't choose for her to be any different of a person than she is, but BOY, she can be tiring. I am whipped. And that's with an especially heavy dose of support from both Matt and my mom today.

Luckily for me, my second child is the very soul of patience. And is gaining weight steadily despite the fact that she never gets to nurse for more than about five minutes at a time.

I'm trying not to think about how days like this will go when we move out of my parents' house. I'm doing my best to follow my resolution to focus on what I need for today. And today, I had what I needed. But there were moments where it felt like, just barely.

Having it to do over again

Awhile back, someone commented on a blog post to ask whether we'd be doing things more or less the same way with Eve that we did with Eden. For the most part, the answer is yes.