Full Blown DDD

I'm calling today a full blown Domestic Daddery Day, or DDD for short.

Up early to make breakfast and pack lunch for my beautiful bride, as well as helping her find the scarf to her ensemble. I then drove her to work, brought Michelle back home and made her breakfast. While eating breakfast, I cleaned the kitchen and am now running laundry. Of course I've had to break away a moment or two to change diapers.

Cleaning the kitchen has helped me take a quick inventory of our produce supply, and I realize that I have several apples that are about to go bad, so I think I'll make an Apple Crumb Pie. Oooh yum.

Next this morning, I'll vacuum and put the kiddo down for her nap. Then I'll be able to spend a little time working on my goal of learning 100 songs in 100 days. I'm writing about that in my other blog: spoon-and-fork.blogspot.com. Shameless plug? Of course.

Today is going to be a good day. I've already had a productive start and I'm taking time to write a post in my blog. Granted, the post is super lame, and I highly doubt anyone actually cares about my morning. But hey, sometimes we need to write stuff down.

Until next time.

Play date night

Neighbors with kids are awesome. We arranged tonight to be a date night for one couple, and a play date for the kids. We are the hosts of the play date.

There's all sorts of reasons to be grateful for having a play date, but I think the best reason is to have a break from the normal. I'm happy for my friends who get to go out and have a date where they don't have to worry about slow service or one of them rolling on the floor or throwing a plate. It's got to be nice for them and I'm quite happy for them.

For us, it's fun to have a change of pace, too.

This little buddy we are watching is pretty awesome. I'll admit we are using the distracto-matic and put a few movies on, but whatever keeps us content I say.

Toodles for now. I don't have a ton of time to write. :-)

Laundry Detergent

This is quite possibly the most boring thing to write about, so I'll keep it brief. Cloth diapers are fickle. The diaper inserts we use are made of hemp and other materials that are extremely absorbant. The good part about this is the reduction of "mess" in the diaper, but the bad part is that it absorbs certain chemicals in detergents. If too much builds up in the insert, the result is a very ouchy butt.

Nicole found "Rocking Green" laundry detergent which is perfect for cloth diapers. Low carbon footprint, actually an okay thing to wash your diapers with, etc. We have completely switched out our normal detergent and use Rockin' Green for everything.

So there you go. One more dynamic regarding cloth diapers that we don't normally talk about; what kind of laundry soap to use.

Join me next time when I sell out on another product. :-)

Changing Cloth Diapers

Elbow deep in yesterday's lunch
shortly after breakfast.
A cleansing wipe or two and then
Our bottom is back to best.
Then it's dad to the toilet
Don't ask me what I do there.
But once again I'm elbow deep
inside the porcelain chair.
Wring it out, then in the bag.
Oh the ammonia smell is thick.
Time to rinse and wash and rinse again.
Three times'll do the trick.
Cloth diapers are great and all
if only 'tweren't for the poo.
But after all, that's what they're for
So I guess they'll have to do.

Nap time

There are certain things I plan on in my day, and one of them is nap time. Nap time is by far the most important time of day for me because that's when I shower and clean and write and do everything I want to do without extra help. Sometimes nap time lasts, and sometimes it's really short, but we all love nap time. What I don't love about nap time is when it never comes. Today, it never came. I like to blame the recent construction out my window.

My day has taken a dreadful turn because my daughter never took a nap. So instead of parenting and playing with my child, I'm griping about it on my blog. :-)

Cloth baby wipes equal less waste

If any of you are in the realm of deciding whether you want to use cloth diapers, don't take it too lightly. In my opinion, cloth diapers is a lot of work, but totally worth it. I am reminded of this every time I take my garbage out and find a huge bags of disposable diapers sitting in the dumpster. I doubt we have used enough disposable diapers to fill up a single garbage bag in our daughter's first two years. THAT'S why we chose cloth diapers.

In the first month of our daughter's life, we filled up a garbage bag with disposable wipes, and said "why not have cloth wipes too?" It turns out, they're really not that complicated. Nicole bought a huge sheet of fabric (brown), and cut it into squares. We doubled up the squares, sewed them together, and clipped the edges to prevent them from stringing out. In short, we made about 60 cloth wipes for the price of buying five. They have lasted us almost two years now, and have kept us from buying baby wipes.

I'm sure I'll talk of cloth wipes again. I just wanted to mention them.