Of Diapers and the Changing Thereof, part 1 of a likely series

I'm not sure if it's come up on the blog yet, but after some research, Hollie and I have decide to give reusable cloth diapers a shot. There are a couple of reasons why.

1. Cloth diapers mean less waste. We're a generally ecologically minded family. We try to buy local, buy recycled when we can, save our rain water, compost a lot of our vegetative waste, etc. That's not a pat on the back, because I know there are lots of ways in which we aren't terribly green. In my opinion, you do the best you can, try to feel good about it, and if you can afford to make better choices later on, great.

And for us, right now, we're making the choice to reuse cloth diapers rather than throw away a whole lot of disposable diapers, with a caveat. We're not insane. Sometimes it's just going to make a lot more sense to use a disposable diaper. Case in point: when the baby first gets here, she's going to be too small for just about every long-term reusable diaper we've looked at. So until her legs are large enough to comfortably fill out the leg holes in a reusable diaper, we'll be using disposables. Buying a set of one-size, tiny, newborn reusable diapers isn't terribly responsible, since she'll wear them for a really short period of time. And it isn't very economical, which brings me to my next point.

2. Cloth diapering is cheaper. Now you get what you pay for. Disposable diapers are more expensive, but the reason is largely one of convenience. One and done, throw it away, and you never have to deal with that particular mess again. Cloth diapering means we're going to have to clean waste-filled diapers (We looked into a diaper service, and there just aren't any around here). But the positive trade-off here is less cost.

Let's do some quick math. I'm going to have to use some averages here, so keep that in mind. A box of size 2 Pampers diapers (fitting 12-18lb babies) has 152 diapers in it, and costs $40 at Walmart. Smaller diapers have more per box, larger have less, but the price per box stays the same, which means as the kid ages, the diapers get more expensive. Might be able to get it cheaper at Sam's Club or BJs, but this is my example.

Clearly the number of diapers a kid goes through as an infant is higher than number the kid will go through at age 3, but again, we'll make some assumptions. This site claims that the kid will go through about 2800 diapers in the first year, which for our example means about $742 in diapers for the first year.

Even presuming that it will only cost that much per year through age 3, you end up spending, at minimum, $2,226 on diapers for every kid you have. The reality is that those big kid diapers are way more expensive, and the total cost probably tops $3,000. And every kid is different. Ours might poop a lot more. Who knows?

Cloth diapers, on the other hand, are certainly more expensive per diaper. The ones we've stocked up on so far, Bum Genius, are $17 a pop. But we'll need far fewer. For $500, we can get 30 one-size diapers that adjust as the kid grows (the recommended range is 7 to 35lbs). Get 'em on sale, and you can do a lot better than that. At minimum, even factoring in a slightly higher water bill because we'll wash them ourselves, we save $1,500 over three years. More than likely, that savings is closer to $2,300. We've got to do a lot of laundry, but to save two grand and assuage my guilty green conscience, I'll take it. (And if/when we have a second kid, these diapers will still be good. Might need some new elastic on some, but still cheaper to replace a handful of cloth diapers than to go all disposable.)

3. Also, these diapers are really cute. Seriously. They're not even on the kid yet, and just look at them.
Speaking of diapers, I made some progress on that changing table top I've been mentioning every so often. Last weekend, I borrowed some saw time at the in-laws, and cut all the pieces out. We ran into a bit of trouble with the router, but I think the shape of things turned out pretty good.

Here's the base and back:
And here's the whole thing:
Now, I have to actually attach these pieces to each other, paint it, then affix it to the dresser, but that's a project for tomorrow. I'll let you know how it turns out.

Geeking out on a Thursday

We're exactly five weeks from the due date at this point, and while I don't have a whole lot to say on the subject of impending fatherhood, there are a number of geeky things that caught my eye over the last week that I have to share.

1. Many of you know that I make origami jewelry. In fact, I just sold a bunch at the Academy of Natural Sciences Bug Fest this past weekend. Frankly though, it looks like I need to step up my game. Check this out.
That, my friends, is a dress made from 1,000 paper cranes. I'm going to have a daughter... maybe I should start planning a prom dress now.

2. I often lament the smallness of my house. Lately it seems that all the purchases I've made or shower gifts I've gotten in preparing for the new baby are either baby receptacles (crib, car seat, high chair, etc.) or more storage (a small shed, cabinets, under-bed storage, etc.) It's a good house though, and I like it. But I kind of wish I had one of these small houses in Japan. If nothing else, they're great conversation pieces. It's absolutely amazing what architects have managed to do with such tiny spaces. Check out the Lucky Drops house in the slideshow. It's just crazy.

3. I love science fiction, but I'm not a huge astronomy nerd, which probably doesn't present as wide a dichotomy as I like to think. The solar system is interesting (and Pluto IS a Planet!), and I'm curious about what lies beyond our little section of the Milky Way, but finding Orion and the Big Dipper is pretty much the extent of my actual astronomical knowledge. That said, tomorrow marks Neptune's first trip around the sun since its discovery in 1846. I find that pretty amazing. It puts things in perspective, too. These last eight months or so have seemed like forever to Hollie and I, but for Neptune, it's just been the last eight months of a journey it's been on for 164 years. Well, much longer than that, actually, but let's go with the last eight months of its latest trip. Makes you feel a little small. Which is comforting, in a weird way.

Stay-cation Schmay-cation

Time off from work often frustrates me (unless I'm actually going away on vacation, but that almost never happens). Don't get me wrong--not going into the office is a fine thing indeed. It's just that I always have a long list of projects I want to get done and I almost never make a large enough dent in the list to satisfy myself. I've tried to compensate by making smaller lists. Sometimes this works, and sometimes it doesn't.

After the first day of vacation this go round, I was feeling pretty crappy. I was tired, and didn't feel like I was going to get a good start on my list of projects. We've decided we want to freeze a lot of food for use during the first few months of baby time, so it's about time to get moving on that front. Over the weekend, we bought a case of tomatoes at the farmers market ($12. Good deal!), and I made it my mission to use as many as I could. So first thing on Monday, I started working in the kitchen. Late on Tuesday, I was finally done with all the cooking I could stand to do.

This is the result.
Left to right, that's tomato soup, pesto, spaghetti sauce, guacamole and salsa. Bearing in mind that the pesto contains no tomato, those containers represent something like 110 tomatoes (and I think I had 30 or so tomatoes leftover). I love cooking, but after working in the kitchen for the better part of two days, I feel like I don't have much to show for it. (There was another container of guacamole, but Hollie and I ate it. Also, I'm not freezing the guac or the salsa, I'm eating them now.)

Now, that's not all I did on Monday and Tuesday, but it sure felt like it. I also added two coats of Alien Green to a wall in the nursery, and started on the cabinets I needed to put up. But in terms of something physical that I could point to and say, "Hey, I got something done!" that food is basically it.

But today? Ooh boy, today felt good. This is what I got done today.
Eight hours ago, that wall was bare. Hollie's dad came over and helped me get these two cabinets up on the wall above the changing table. The wall that I painted again on Monday. After he left, I got the doors up.
We also took a trip to Lowe's so we could use the van to get a small shed I wanted for the side of the house. (Side note: I feel like every major project I've tackled in the last six months has been to add storage of some form or another to my tiny house.)

End result?
There's a vast difference between cooking and construction. I know this. But there's something about a home improvement project that is inherently more satisfying. Maybe it's the physical size of the things I tackled today. Maybe it's the sweat that goes into manual labor. Whatever it is, I felt awful about what I had been able to accomplish by Tuesday afternoon, but 24 hours later, I feel pretty excellent. Let's hope the next two days feel this good.

I suck at blogging! i.e. The last 2 weeks in brief

You have the best of intentions when you start a project like this, but then life gets in the way. Excuses aren't much fun to read, though, so I'll just cover the last couple of weeks in highlight form. Scroll to your favorite bullet point and read what interests you!

1. Baby Showers: Not just for ladies anymore.
Two weekends ago, my parents threw a baby shower for us, and the whole thing was quite nice. (Hollie's parents threw a shower for us a few weeks before that, and I mentioned some of the gifts we received back in this post. It was the local shower, and thus the one all our friends came to.)

Among other things, my mom made us a diaper cake. What is a diaper cake, you ask? It's a lot less gross than it sounds.

Taking a cue from the pattern on the pack-and-play we registered for, my mom decided the theme for the event would be owls. Many, many owls. To paraphrase Zoolander... Owls. So hot right now.

She also wrote a couple of quizzes for attendees: one that matched superheroes to their secret identities (nailed it); one that tested Peanuts knowledge (Hollie cleaned up); another matching baby animal names to their adult counterparts (Hollie and I tied Edit: Hollie got a perfect score; I got three wrong. Oops!); and a final test on celebrity baby names. I did not do well on the last one. My great-Aunt Nancy though? Apparently she either has an eidetic memory or covertly studies US Weekly while sitting at her booth at craft shows.

On top of that event, my coworkers pulled off the amazing feat of surprising me with a baby shower. My boss had been surreptitiously emailing the entire music school to set up what she referred to as a "Man Shower." The inappropriateness of that title notwithstanding, she really did surprise me. I had no idea what was going down, despite the fact that my entire office emptied out around me to prepare for it last Thursday. There was great food, and folks showed up from all six branches of the school. Some former coworkers even made it out. It feels weird to say that I was moved by the entire thing, but it was just such an extraordinarily nice surprise.

2. Diagnosis Mega-Baby: Not so Much
Shifting gears to events not-at-all-that-surprising, our daughter's status as Mega-Baby has been downgraded to Possibly-Long-Limbed-But-Otherwise-Normal-Baby. But that's not as much fun to say. On Thursday, we had what I think was our sixth ultrasound. I'll let that sink in a minute before I continue.

This particular ultrasound took place at the hospital, much like the last one. We didn't get the same awesome tech as last time, but this much-younger tech seemed pretty experienced nonetheless. We were in the waiting room for about 20 minutes, but the ultrasound itself took about five. These results confirmed the prognosis of the last visit. Normal baby, normal fluids, and all is right with the world. You know, aside from the additional three specialist visits and all the accompanying time and cost that entailed. Better safe than sorry, I suppose, but still irritating. If this is the first time you've heard about this visit, the mundane nature of it meant I didn't really give it much thought after it was over, especially given that the office "Man Shower" happened the same day.

The most amusing part of the visit, though, came at the end. Our ultrasound tech was shadowed by a trainee, as noted by her jacket with the words "Jefferson Ultrasound Trainee" emblazoned on the back. (Sidebar: How cool is the word "emblazoned"? I've always loved it.) After she finished, the first tech asked Hollie if it would be okay if the trainee took a few pictures. Hollie agreed, since we had to wait for a doctor's consultation anyway.

After all the ultrasounds we've been through, I'm pretty sure either Hollie or I could have taken better ultrasounds than this trainee. But that's fine, that's why she's training. That aside, I have a word of advice for all medical professionals, in training or otherwise. If you want to instill a basic level of confidence in your patients, maybe it would be a good idea to take all the Silly Bands off your wrist. I'm just saying.

3. Grease was the Muffled, Hard-to-Hear Word
Finally, the day after the ultrasound, we took our niece, Alissa, to see a local production of Grease. We had been planning this for a while, since a friend of ours, Jessica, is playing Frenchy. But in the days leading up to the show, it occurred separately to Hollie and me that Grease is not the most family-friendly of shows.

But we'd already bought tickets, and we figured that a lot of the questionable content would go over Alissa's head. She's 9-and-a-half, and pretty bright, but we hoped that the lights and sound of the experience would be enough to keep her entertained without catching on to the risque nature of the content.

It turns out we didn't need to worry. All of the sung innuendo was swallowed up by poor sound design, canned music that was louder than the singers, and singers who were too distracted by their own voices to bother enunciating. And the spoken profanity was usually crushed by somebody stepping on someone else's line.

I should point out that Alissa really enjoyed the show, and despite the above critique, the whole experience was pretty entertaining for me as well, although probably not in the way the director and actors intended. The choreography was pretty good, and the actors really threw themselves into it, something I know I'd have struggled with had I been on stage.

And Jessica did a really good job as Frenchy. If a show could somehow have been built around Frenchy, Rizzo, Doody and Sonny, I think it would've been pretty successful. Thankfully, I'm not the only one who noticed that Jessica was a standout in the cast. You're in print now, Jess. Is that your first review?

In closing, hopefully I can get my act together and write some more. I have off all next week, and a bunch of projects are in the pipeline before this baby arrives. Here's hoping I remember to tell you about all of it.