Old friends, new babies

(unhappy babe)

(not happy) 

(old friend, new(ish) babe)

I just got off the phone with my elementary/high school best friend who just had a baby (15 days ago). It brought back so many memories of what it was like to have a 2-week old (I was a little more honest later). At the time I was pretty desperate to hear other moms say that it was hard. It seemed to me that other moms were all making it seem easy. But it's hard. At the time I remember thinking that I was never going to feel normal again, or get enough sleep again. But now, of course, just like they all said, I look back on that time so fondly. At the time, I was keeping track of Cohen's sleeping and eating at night. For some reason recording it made me feel better. I liked adding up how much sleep I got at night. If it was more than 5 hours a night, I was happy. This was my entry on August 4th, 2013, when Cohen was around 16 days old:

9:30 pm: asleep after eating R and L
10:10 pm: awake. L again. no P or P.
10:10 pm: 11:30 pm walked around by J. very irritable.
11:30 pm: asleep
1:00 am: P + P. feed on L
1:30 am: asleep with swaddle and womb noise machine
3:00 am: no P or P. feed on R.
3:30 am: asleep with swaddle and W
5:30 am: P + P. feed on L.
6:00 am: asleep
7:30 am: awake. feed on R a bit
9:30 am: P+P. feed on R.

Yep. And that is around the time that you go to a mommy group, and a few other moms are talking about how their baby slept through the night from day one. My friend is actually doing so amazing. She has read the books, and she is super organized.

Another friend of mine who was visiting the other week said that I seem more sure of myself now then before I was a mom. I love that, and I think maybe it's true for all parents.

On the long weekend (we now have a toddler)

(rocket pop and vanilla ice cream) 

(always backwards down the slide) 

(picking green tomatoes) 

(relaxation time) 

(this took four hours!! i need to bring snacks next time) 

(hiking) 

(family selfie) 

(swings)

Such a great weekend. Both my dudes were feeling pretty under the weather, so we embraced it and watched a lot of TV, and read a lot of books. We did a few bike rides, took some walks, watched some baseball, had friends for dinner.

And then yesterday afternoon, Cohen just started walking! We figured it would be another month or two for sure! I was surprised that he went from barely being able to take a step to suddenly being able to walk all around the house. We are so proud of him. Jon and I just keep looking at each other, smiling. We were talking about how a year ago, Cohen was just a tiny little guy who couldn't even hold his head up! Having a kid is crazy and amazing. Jon and I feel seriously lucky that we get to watch this dude grow up.

An update on cloth diapers

We have been doing the cloth diaper thing for over a year now, and I am still loving it (here is my original post about it). 

We haven't bought any more cloth diapers, so we are still using the same 7 liners and 20 or so inserts that we started with. We mostly have flip diapers, but we also have a few applecheeks. Now that Cohen needs less diaper changes (probably 5-8 per day as opposed to the 10-12 per day when he was under 6 months old), we only do our diaper laundry every other day. We run the diapers through a rinse cycle first, then we do a hot wash with baby detergent. 

The best thing we have found: our diaper sprayer. In my mind, you need a diaper sprayer if you are going to be doing the cloth diaper thing with solid foods. Whenever there are solids in the diaper, we just take it to the toilet and spray it. It really is easy. We also sometimes use flushable liners, especially when the babysitter is here. The liners make it even easier. You just throw the solids and the liner in the toilet and flush. The diaper sprayer was really easy to install, and you hardly notice it on the side of our toilet.

We still use disposables whenever we are traveling. I wouldn't even think of trying to do the cloth diapers thing while we are staying with friends or family. But I do think we have saved money by only buying a few packs of disposables in the year we have been doing this. It is easier for me to see the savings with the reusable wipes. I paid maybe $20 for the thin washcloths we use as wipes. They have paid for themselves over and over.

I really do think cloth diapers are the way to go if your lifestyle can handle it.

13 months old!

I was going to bail on these little monthly updates, but now I am thinking I will be grateful to be able to look back on what was going on with Cohen each month. Especially since he is changing so much all the time! So, lately:

- Cohen has taken a few steps here and there, but that's it. Still loving the crawling very fast

- He loves to say "dad" whenever he sees Jon, and now he says "dog" anytime he hears barking or sees the neighbor's dog. The other morning he put my iPhone up to his ear and said hello, and Jon and I flipped! It was so cute, and it came out more like "dull-Oh."

- He refuses to sit and let us read to him before bed these days. He's way too busy throwing every book, diaper, and blanket on the floor before bed. He will throw all his diapers on the floor one by one, then he will slowly put them all back, then repeat. 

- Favourite foods: Bread, buns, muffins, scones. Basically any kind of baked good. He also loves black beans from a can. 

- Favourite activity: The slide at the playground. We try to visit every day. Bonus if we bike there. He loves bike rides on the back of his dad's bike. 

Hotel review: Quality Hotel Harbourview

On the weekend we stayed at the Quality Hotel in St. John's while we were in town for J's triathlon. We took Cohen to the Aquarena, which is this aquatic centre that has a huge kiddy pool with warm water. Cohen completely loved it. We have started sitting him on the side of the pool and letting him fall in so his head it completely underwater. I was scared at first, but he loves it. His face is submersed for maybe 2 seconds, and when he comes up, he has such a big smile on his face. So cute. Anyway, this hotel:

Price: For our smallish room, it came to around $260 including tax for the night. Average for downtown St. John's.
Bathroom: Old. The tub was really scratched up and beige, and everything just seemed a little dirty.
Pool: Nope.
Breakfast: Nope. Apparently there is a buffet breakfast in the restaurant attached to the hotel, but we didn't check it out, and it wasn't included.
Wifi: So good. We even watched some Netflix with no problem.
TV: Good. I ended up watching this Suze Orman show about finances. I dunno.
Location: Awesome. Right downtown. We love being able to put Cohen in the stroller in the room, and just walk right out to downtown for a coffee and shopping.
Parking: They have a parking garage, and it is included with your room. Not bad.

Notes: So as soon as we got there, I walked in to the bathroom, and got a tiny piece of glass stuck in my foot. We thought it was weird, but whatever. Then it happened to Jon. So I looked, and the bathroom had a ton of tiny shards of glass everywhere. I talked to the front desk and requested a new room, mostly because Cohen is a crawler. There were no other rooms, so they instead went in with a vacuum and gave us the room for free. I still had to get down on my hands and knees and pick up tiny bits of glass later, but I thought they dealt with the problem pretty well. It turned out that the last guest had dropped a glass on the ceramic tile. We would definitely stay at this hotel again, because we were so happy with the quick and apologetic way they dealt with our issue.