A Day in My Working Life

6:40 wake up, eat breakfast, pack lunch, get dressed
7:15 leave my house
7:40 arrive at school (work)
9:15 begin teaching
12:15 to 12:45 lunch break
3:20 school ends
3:45 leave school
4:10 arrive home (on Monday, Tueday, and Friday) OR 4:25 arrive at Sweet Pea's grandma's house to pick her up (Wednesday and Thursday)
nurse Sweet Pea
check email, bank accounts, appointments, etc. online
unload the dishwasher, start a load of laundry, sweep, etc.
take a walk with Sweet Pea and Glen
6:30 start dinner
7:30ish Average arrives home from work (Tuesday - Thursday) and we eat dinner
8:00 watch a little TV, wash dishes, etc.
9:00 Sweet Pea takes a bath and gets ready for bed
9:30 nursing, rocking, etc.
10:00ish Sweet Pea falls asleep
shower
plan next day's outfit
clean and pack breast pump supplies
fold and put away laundry, etc.
11:15 go to bed
and start it all again in the morning

Average has taken over quite a few of the household duties now that he is home with Sweet Pea on Mondays and Fridays. We are so lucky to only have Sweet Pea with non-family care one day a week. Even though I am getting less sleep and the house is messier during the week, my life actually feels more balanced. After one week (I know this may change), I am feeling like working is a good thing for me right now and enjoying the time being creative and working with other people outside the home. I do miss Sweet Pea and am super excited to see her at the end of each work day, but she is very happy with her babysitters so far, and is on a better sleep schedule right now than she has had since she was 5 months old. I will be working for the next nine weeks, and then have the summer off! Just one of the perks of being a teacher. I had a lot of anxiety about what it would be like to be back and work, wondering if I would hate it and find it very difficult to get up in the morning and be away from my baby all day, but it really feels fine so far. Thank goodness for daylight savings time so that I have lots of daylight in the afternoon to hang out with Sweet Pea, getting household stuff done as well as spending time outside.

If you have made the transition from home to work, what was the hardest part? What helped to make the transition smoother?

Diapering a Newborn

This blog post is for the Cloth Diaper Bloggers Carnival VII, from Cloth Diapering Bloggers (Ning network) and Dirty Diaper Laundry.

We started using cloth diapers on Sweet Pea from day one. She was born at home, and I had all my diapers prepped (you need to pre-wash them a few times) and folded and ready to go. We didn't even buy any disposables, so it was easy to just jump right into cloth! We started out with a stash of about two dozen small Chinese prefolds, four extra-small Thirsties covers, a couple of assorted other covers, two newborn Kissaluvs fitteds, two newborn Little Beetle fitteds, and three extra-small Thirsties all-in-ones. It took less than a week to get confident with the prefolds and they wash and dry so easily compared to other diaper options. We mostly used them with a twist fold and a snappi to hold the diaper together. Thirsties XS have a lower spot in the front rise to accommodate the cord stump, and the Kissaluvs have a snap-down spot in front for the same thing. We had a few others brands of diapers as well, but the ones I listed are the ones that fit the best for us.  If we can afford it, next time I'd like to get more fitteds and all-in-ones just to make the diapering quicker and easier since you change the diapers SO frequently in those first weeks/months. We didn't have any issues with meconium (initial, black tarry baby poop) staining, and I'm glad we started with cloth so we didn't even have to make a transition - cloth was part of our routine from the beginning. We passed our newborn diapers on to another family once Sweet Pea grew out of them, and that family passed them to another, and now they are back to us. They are still in great condition for one or two more babies, so definitely worth the investment even though she didn't wear them for very long. Newborn diapers are so cute and tiny - thinking about them makes me want to have a baby! Is that crazy?

Here is Sweet Pea at just a couple of days old during a diaper change:

Our Birth Story

Years ago I became obsessed with reading birth stories. I found hundreds online and I would read a few every day. I loved learning about all the different experiences, the different “normals” for people, and getting a peek into one of the most important times in a human life. Reading these birth stories was part of what inspired me to become a doula. After I gave birth to Sweet Pea, I wrote nearly three pages detailing the whole event and my feelings about everything that happened, and I have told my birth story many times. However, for me, the birth was a private event, and I don't think I want to share it with the world wide web in its entirety. I will share that it was a challenging, joyous, and powerful experience for me, and leave you with these facts:

Our baby was born Thursday, February 26, at home in the water.

She weighed 8 pounds, 4.5 ounces, and was 22.5 inches long.

Her heartbeat was checked regularly with a Doppler throughout labor, and I had one blood pressure check but those were the only monitoring methods my midwives used with me besides watching and talking to me.

My birth attendants were: my husband, my sister, my best friend, and my two wonderful midwives, one of whom came straight from another birth to be with me, while pregnant herself.

Labor began with my water breaking a little after 1:00 A.M. Around 3:00 or 4:00, contractions started to get hard. Around 5:30 I got into the tub in our dining room, about two hours later I started feeling “pushy,” and at 8:50 A.M. I pushed her out! It was one of the shortest labors I have been to.

Garden Construction - Laying Path

No time to write a full post today, but I wanted to share some photos from the weekend's work. Once again, we had one sunny day and two days of rain and mud. Sunday night our camera stopped working so I don't know when I will next have new pictures to share.

Saturday, the digging is done and the raspberry trellis is up:

Starting to get the path in place:

Sunday, putting in the "Snap-Edge" to hold the pavers in place. These come in 8-foot lengths, and you basically nail them to the ground with giant spikes.

 

The connection to the patio is shown below. Average had to make several cuts to the pavers to get this corner to look this way, but he is still considering adding one more triangle-cut stone. What do you think?

Here we are Sunday afternoon, completely muddy, tired, and sore, but very happy with ourselves!

As always, there is still more to do: filling and planting the cells of the path, getting new soil for the raised beds, repairing our lawn, and tilling for the flower bed next to the house. But, the hardest, heaviest work is done! Average weighed the pavers and they are about 65 pounds each. No wonder his back is hurting!

Thank you to my sister Molly for coming and digging, shoveling gravel, and moving many pavers for us. Thanks to my mom for babysitting Sweet Pea, bringing dinner on Friday, and tidying up the house. Thanks to Average's mom and partner for preparing an amazing turkey dinner for us all on Saturday night. Thanks to our friend Brad for making the gravel layer get put in so quickly, and finally thanks to my dad for watching Sweet Pea on Sunday afternoon so we could get the path totally put in and properly edged. We couldn't have accomplished this without all of your help! We are so lucky to have such amazing family and friends.

Green Cleaning in the Bathroom

Today I did my first whole-room cleaning with only home-made products. I attacked the bathroom, which was dingy and soap-scummed.

For the sink, toilet, and bathtub, I used straight white vinegar rubbed on with a sponge or a brush, followed by a scrubbing with baking soda. The fizzing and foaming when the two combined made it kind of fun! I found I didn't have to scrub any harder than I usually do with my store-bought products, and the porcelain is now sparkling clean! The mirrors and floor were cleaned with vinegar and water. Vinegar doesn't smell the greatest, but the smell disappears as soon as it dries.

The most disgusting area of the bathroom, worse than the toilet, is the tile around our window. This window is the only one that the previous owners didn't replace with a new vinyl one. I think the reason is that they would have had to re-do the tile, but I sure wish they would have changed it! It is a metal window that slides open to the side. The sliding area fills up with yucky, slimy water, as the condensation that forms on the window is constantly rolling down into it. Instead of replacing the window and re-doing the tile, they just added some additional grout and sealant in the whole area, in a messy fashion. So, mildew and mold has a great place to grow in the gummy corners, and in some areas it looks like there is mildew BELOW the new sealant. I have tried many different products to clean this window area, and everything works equally poorly. Someday we will remodel this bathroom, but for now I just want to be able to maintain it looking a little less gross. I decided to do an experiment and compare tea tree oil (TTO) with grapefruit seed extract (GSE). I have taken GSE with juice as a home remedy for preventing infection, and have used diluted TTO on my skin and scalp. I bought some cheap spray bottles to mix my cleaners with water. I used about 20 drops of GSE with 14 ounces of water in one bottle, and about a teaspoon of TTO with 14 ounces of water in another bottle. I sprayed each cleaner on one half of the window and surrounding tile, and waited a few minutes while I cleaned another area. I was so excited when I came back to the window area, wiped my sponge across, and black mildew came off! Both cleaners seemed to work equally well, but I think I prefer the TTO because it leaves a cleaner, fresher smell in the room, and I have heard that it is produced in a greener process. Now, the gross window area isn't totally white and sparkling, like the tub is, but it is a huge improvement.

If you have done any blog posts comparing green cleaning products, please feel free to leave your links in comments!

One of the great things about using these cleaning ingredients is that I felt totally comfortable with Sweet Pea in the bathroom with me while I was doing the cleaning. The fumes are not harmful, as they are with some conventional cleaning products, and if she somehow got ahold of one of my spray bottles or sponges, a taste of them wouldn't be poisonous for her.

What room should I tackle next?
Also, does anyone have a recipe for a green carpet cleaner?

Who Am I?

I haven't yet written a complete "About Me" post yet, and I figured it's about time. I plan to use this for a new page of the blog using the new "Pages" feature of blogger.

Who Am I?
Before I had a baby (daughter's alias: Sweet Pea), before I became a teacher, before I got married (husband's alias: Average), before I spent six months in Spain, before I had one job for more than a few months, I was the kind of person who had an easy time describing herself. I won more local scholarships (in my tiny Oregon town) than anyone else the year that I graduated from high school, partly because I could clearly and distinctly explain who I was and where I was going. I participated in about as many extracurricular activities as a person can, and I was thrilled to go to college. I felt like I had limitless possibilities, and in a way, I did. It doesn't really feel that way anymore. I have been struggling to write this post for weeks, because even though there are plenty of labels I can apply to myself (mom, wife, teacher, doula), I somehow am finding it harder to define who I am. I have a husband, a mortgage, a dog, a baby, and not much free time. However, I am happy to have this blog in my life because I am finding it helps me to redefine what my priorities are and who I want to be in this new role of parenthood. I have loved writing about my choices and experiences here, and hope that I am able to inform and entertain you in the process. I started blogging because I felt I needed an outlet to share my personal thoughts and I wanted to keep my mind sharp with writing. Being a stay-at-home-mom has many challenges, one of which is the feeling of isolation during those days at home, especially in the beginning when it can be hard to get out with the baby. I felt like I was learning so much from books, the internet, and my experiences, and making so many important choices and changes in my life and I wanted to share it with someone - or everyone! So, I followed the lead of so many other "mommy-bloggers" out there and started writing for the internet. This blog has brought me new friends, new ideas, and a sense of satisfaction when I publish each post. The main topics I have covered include cloth diapers, food and gardening, home improvement and sewing, and our family's attempts at living a more green and healthy lifestyle with a new baby. I plan to continue to write on these topics, but expect that my blog will change some as my baby ages, as my work situation evolves, and as we add to our family.

My work history:
I have worked as a middle school and high school teacher, a substitute teacher, a receptionist, litter patrol crew member, assistant publisher for an online magazine, a restaurant hostess/waitress, a forest protection officer, and a wild-land firefighter. Being a mother is the hardest job I've had. I am about to start a long-term substitute teaching job, and expect that perhaps being a working mother will become the hardest thing I've done. I'll let you know.

The random facts:
My favorite color is blue, I love dessert, I like a clean house but I don't like to clean, I enjoy movies and TV more than I think I should, and I (like many many people) have always wanted to write a book. I married my best friend and the love of my life five years ago. He walked down the aisle to the throne room theme from Star Wars, and we spent our honeymoon in Belize. I am tall - 5'10". I can speak, understand, read, and write Spanish. I trained as a doula four years ago and have attended 8 births in that role. I love being a mother, but have struggled with many aspects of it: breastfeeding was a huge challenge for us, bedtime is often difficult, my baby is fickle about her tastes and will eat something one day and refuse it the next, and we have had to make lifestyle changes that I was probably in a little bit of denial about before our baby was born. However, Sweet Pea is incredibly easy to love and brings an abundance of joy and laughter to our lives. She has helped me to feel motivated to be more healthy in many aspects of my life, and I feel like I am constantly learning each day that I spend with her. So the hardest job is also the best job I've had.

Thanks for reading.

Garden Construction - Digging and More Digging

When we bought our house over a year ago, the backyard consisted of grass, five overgrown fruit trees, two large rotting raised beds, and a corner compost pile. Last fall I hired a garden designer to help us plan for changes to our backyard, and we had our fruit trees professionally pruned. This month we started spending lots of time standing in the yard saying "hmmm... what about," scratching our heads and sighing. It seemed to be such a long process to figure out what to start with, what materials we wanted to use, and how much of the plan we could tackle this year. This past weekend we finally made some physical progress, which is much more satisfying than mental progress, and we have the sore muscles, muddy shoes, and scrapes (in addition to the changes to the yard itself) to prove it. We have deconstructed the old beds and compost pile, built 6 new 4'x8' cedar-board raised beds, and dug out for the path that will go around and between each bed, along the length of the yard and connecting to the patio and garden shed. We are using Turfstone, an open-cell concrete paver, for the path.

Saturday was sunny and Sweet Pea was happy to play in the grass for most of the day. Once we really got into the digging we fenced her in with the final raised bed (photo above), kind of like a giant open-bottom playpen. Sunday was rainy and she fell down, got her hands muddy, and cried as soon as I set her on the ground. She doesn't like to play on wet ground, apparently. So, I spent part of the day working with her in the ERGO on my back, avoiding any tasks that required much bending over. In the afternoon I went inside and hung out with her for a while, then got back to digging once she went down for a nap (thank goodness for baby monitors!)

Before we began. Average, measuring and sighing:

Sweet Pea does some measurements of her own:

Five of the beds are in place. That's my dad on the right, playing with Sweet Pea. He helped us out a ton on Saturday. Thanks, Dad!

These pavers are super heavy to move around! They are four inches tall and nearly 15"x30". But, they are great for drainage, and I think they look super cool. Plus, they will be great for walking on barefoot once we get the cells (empty diamonds) planted with moss and other "walkables."

Glen tries to help. Digging while baby-wearing. I think she is asleep here:

This is as far as we got by the end of the weekend. The gravel, sand, and pavers will be delivered this week and my mom and sister are kindly coming up to assist us in building the path.

We have more digging to do to get to the 8" depth recommended for installing the path with proper base layer, and still need to plot out and dig the connections to the patio and the garden shed (on the far end of the house, around the corner. Average is also hard at work constructing a set of poles to string wire between to support the raspberries as they grow, and has already completed building the new compost bin. Yes, we have undertaken a major job here, but there is even more I want to do! I really want to install the flower bed along the house this summer, as it is just one long bare, blank exterior wall right now, but we will see how much digging I can handle before I decide it's good enough for this year. The most important thing to us was being able to continue and expand our food-growing this year, so the raised beds have been the primary goal, and we did them! Woo hoo!

This is the long-term plan we are using, with a few modifications, from Villa Verde Garden Design:

Care.com Free Weekend

For anyone looking for a nanny, babysitter, pet sitter, senior care provider, or other care-person:

Care.com's Free Weekend starts tomorrow. This opportunity runs March 19th through March 21st.
During this weekend, anyone can search for caregivers, post jobs, and get contact information.

Green Cleaning

As part of my effort to lead a more green and healthy lifestyle, with fewer toxic products in my home, I have started learning about green cleaning. With just a few ingredients you can make most of your cleaners, and they generally work as well as the store-bought ones. In addition, your home-made cleaners will almost always be cheaper than the ones you buy ready-made in the store!

The basic ingredients that you will need are vinegar, baking soda, and water. For some cleaning jobs you might also want hydrogen peroxide, grapefruit seed extract, essential oils such as lemon or thyme, or borax. Two great articles/posts on this topic can be found at: Little Acorns to Mighty Oaks and Green America.

I used baking soda to clean my stove top yesterday and it worked great, and I am planning on testing out different variations of mixtures of grapefruit seed extract, vinegar, and essential oils, on the mildew around the window in my shower. Please share any suggestions or tips!

Feeding My One-Year-Old

You may have read about our earlier experiences and struggles with feeding Sweet Pea solids. Over the last month, she has continued to slowly expand her palate, and to eat with more regularity, saving me lots of worry. She has also continued to gain weight and height, and generally seems healthy and happy. Some major breakthroughs on the way to more consistent eating came, first when she learned the sign for "milk" and could let me know when she was hungry, then when she learned the sign for "more" which she usually uses for solid food, and finally, now that she is beginning to, messily, feed herself with utensils. She seems to really prefer to use the spoon herself, and last night ate a bowl of applesauce after Average handed her the spoon, when she had initially refused being spoon-fed by him. All of this goes to support my theory that she prefers to do things on her own. She seems to want to be in control of her own consumption and be able to make choices about what, when, and how much to eat. I am happy to provide those choices as long as she is eating something! Here she is with her spoon last night:

Right now she is eating three meals a day, and sometimes an afternoon snack as well. We usually do jarred baby food (we like to get the organic varieties, such as Earth's Best) and dry cereals like Cheerios and Rice Krispies for breakfast. For lunch, some favorites are crackers and cheese and scrambled eggs. Sometimes she eats what I'm eating if it's manageable with her eight teeth and tiny mouth. For dinner, we try to feed her what we're eating (she loves corn, rice, potatoes, and cooked veggies). The general idea is that we start by offering what we're eating. If she won't eat that, then we try purees and yogurt, if she won't eat that, then we try cereal or crackers. Sometimes after she's had a few bites of something she likes that she can feed herself (such as Annie's Cheddar Bunnies) she is more open to taking in other foods, too. I have found that feeding her is all about patience. If she turns her head away or throws things, I just go about eating my food, or play with her for a minute or two, and try again. About half the time, on the second try she is ready to eat. She sits in her Bumbo on a chair pulled up to the table with us most of the time, or in a high chair or in our laps at restaurants. I also give her a snack cup full of crackers, raisins, or yogurt melts to graze from throughout the day and during car rides. She is also still breastfeeding about four to five times a day, and once at night.

In general, I think her eating habits are fairly typical of a one-year-old, but like we had a longer road to get here than most. Maybe it would have been easier if I would have followed the standard directions and started her with rice cereal, then moved to veggies purees, then fruits, and so on. Or maybe not? I have a strong feeling that Sweet Pea's eating habits are just an expression of her personality.

What are your kids favorite foods and preferred ways to eat? Have your parents shared any stories about what it was like feeding you as a toddler? I'd love to read any insights or ideas in comments, as always.