What Isaac is up to (and my updated thoughts on Cloth Diapers)

What Isaac is up to these days:

He loves 'Popcorn Popping on the Apricot Tree', and has just started to do some of the hand motions with me - specifically "a popcorn ball" (he claps his hands) "that would smell so sweet" (he covers his ears with his hands - his interpretation of smelling the popcorn ball) and "it wasn't really so" (he shakes his finger). He also claps at the end of the song.

He loves fans and lights. Wherever we go, he likes to point up at the lights and say (at least I think he is saying) "What's that?" and we say "That's a light" - and sometimes he says his own version of "light" back to us or sometimes he'll keep pointing at lights and saying "What's that?" or "Light!" He also loves fans and gets excited when he sees them. He points at them and we tell him "That's a fan!" He hasn't quite mastered saying the words yet, but he makes sure to always point out the lights and fans to us.

We are starting to work on night weaning him and helping him learn how to fall asleep on his own. It's been tough - he has a healthy pair of lungs on him... lots of screaming and chaos each night! No crying it out, but just laying next to his crib (which is right up against our bed with the side of the crib nearest the bed taken off) and doing our best to comfort him until he falls asleep. We did try cry it out at around 11 months and he stood up in the crib for 2 straight hours without hardly any pause in crying. I decided then that it was just not going to happen and we would have to figure something else out! Plus, it pretty much kills me inside to hear him cry alone in a room without any clue as to why I've abandoned him, as I'm sure everyone can understand!

I used to keep him next to me all night and he would eat every hour or two throughout the night. I was fine with it for a while, especially because it allowed me to have a pretty decent night's sleep most of them time. Once I got pregnant, however, it was a different story. Breastfeeding is now painful and every time my milk lets down, I usually have a wave of emotions (which tend to be negative emotions, such as depression/sadness/etc.) It's not very pleasant to breastfeed anymore, so I'm anxious to get him weaned! So that's our number one priority right now.

Also, he is taking steps now and is getting better week by week. Just a couple of weeks ago he would only take a couple of steps at a time, but he's now at the point where he can walk halfway across the room if he takes his time. Soon enough he'll be running around and we won't know how it happened!

Jared taught him to say "soft" and softly pet his stuffed animals to demonstrate how to be soft... hoping this will help us when the baby comes! It sounds more like "Saah...t" - his S's almost sound like Daffy Duck. So maybe more like "Schpthsbaaah...t"... if that makes sense, haha.

When we ask him, he can usually point where his ears are, where our noses are, and our mouths. He also can say "head" and pat our heads.

He's drinking out of straw cups now - much easier than sippy cups, since he doesn't have to tilt his head back. And he can feed himself baby food when it's in those squeezable pouch things, which is super awessommeee. That is one great invention.

He loves smearing food all over his hair and head when I'm not looking. And when I am. :)

Only the two bottom teeth still. Who knows when the other ones will show up!

He doesn't like grass much, and avoids its prickly-ness at all costs. :)

He's just a fun boy and we love him lots and lots!

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Now onto cloth diapers... I have a confession to make. I have not used cloth diapers for a few months now. Probably ever since I found out I was pregnant. Morning sickness didn't help. But I was also facing leaking problems. I wasn't the smartest person in the world, and I switched out most of my cloth diapers for Fuzzibunz, which are stay-dry cloth diapers. The polyester stay-dry liner is great to wick away wetness, but it's not so great if you want to avoid leaks. They are bound to start repelling pee at some point, and you have to 'strip' your diapers to fix it. I liked Fuzzibunz because they were sooo trim, almost as trim as disposables, but ultimately the leakage got old and I decided to take a break and figure out what to do. Then I got pregnant, and sick, and didn't feel like doing diaper laundry (or any laundry, really) anyway, so I continued using disposables. Then my morning sickness ended, and I realized that Isaac's poo was now considered solid poo and couldn't just be thrown into the washing machine anymore, so my break from cloth diapers continued... I'm still not sure if I'm going to go back to cloth diapers due to the poo dilemma. The leak problem I can fix by using cotton diapers (prefolds) which I still have, but the poo is another story. I don't want to dunk them in the toilet, scrape off the poo, spray it off, or use liners (I tried them and find them annoying). So that's where we are right now with cloth diapers. I also want to say that I understand better now the 'ease of use' of disposables vs. cloth diapers, especially in regards to poop. 

Anyway, I know there are a couple of you who read this that have experience with cloth diapers -- if you have any tips for me, feel free to share! If not, that's fine too! I just thought I'd share that little bit of information for those who are interested in possibly using cloth diapers in the future. Cotton diapers are the way to go for sure, and it's really not much of a pain up until you have solid poops to deal with. And even then there are lots of options to deal with the poop, but none of them are too appealing. Flushable liners were the most appealing to me, but then you have to either guess when your baby is going to poop or always put the liners in the diaper. And they shift around in the diaper, and/or stick to your baby's skin and you have to peel it off (mostly if they peed). So it's not perfect, but it's the solution I found the least poop-particles-in-your-mouth-y. If that makes sense. :)

Until next time...