Baby Step 2

Today came with some good news and bad news. Bad news first, I have absolutely no idea where I put my wedding band. Good news, we finally received the check from our insurance company to cover the Jeep being written off. We still owed 16800 on the loan, and were written a check for 18250. After maxing out Elijah's credit card, the Line of Credit and using every available penny we could find, we purchased a new vehicle, leaving us completely broke until this cheque came in. Basically, if an emergency came up, we were screwed. Now, not only do we have a vehicle paid for, lower insurance, better gas mileage, no more car payments, we also have enough money left over form the cheque to complete baby step number 1. Set aside 1000$ as emergency money. CHECK. annnd onto baby step number 2. Eliminate all debt except for your mortgage using the debt snowball. Our debt was as follows:

• My credit card
• Elijah's credit card
• Line of credit
• Jeep loan
• Re-pay mutual funds (not sure this counts)

Now our debt looks like this:

• Elijah's credit card
• Line of credit
• Re-pay mutual funds (still not convinced this counts as debt)

Mind you, we did max out both while purchasing the car...Anyways, things are looking up now!

Encouraging

It seems that I haven't updated my blog in quite some time...

After having been F*cked around by the insurance companies for over a month, they finally came to the decision that the Jeep was a total loss and we were given one weekend to drive to the city and find a new car. There's more to the story than that, but we did end up with a new car and we're getting back enough to cover our loan and then some. On top of that, since we bought the car with cash, we will no longer be paying car payments:)

There just so happened to be a sale on at fabricland that weekend, so we bought some quilting rulers, a rotary knife and a self healing mat, all at 50% off! Also we bought a baby bjorn little potty ( BBLP) Which is a good size for Katie to sit on when she needs to pee. She seems to be associating our cue sound with eliminating, so we're making progress. So far today we've caught two poops and a few pees in the potty :)

I'm still having a very hard time with trying to communicate with Katie about her elimination needs, so we've taken a bit of a step back and are trying to ease into it. Katie sleeps diaper free in our bed at night (on top of a couple towels in case of a miss). We're also keeping her formula in the upstairs bathroom, so feedings go much faster and I don't have to wake up as much. After the first few nights in our bed, Katie seems to be sleeping longer and we enjoy her company. I'm not usually tired during the day anymore because Elijah is able to get me a bottle when I ask for help. I offer her a pee before I feed her, and if she doesn't go we sit on the chair in her room with her suspended over her pee bucket and she'll usually go halfway through. This was a bit of trial and error, but it works quite well now. Although she is still mostly diaper free during the day, she usually ends up being in a diaper for a few hours when I just need a break. We've gone on several walks with her in her undies and both time we've come home dry. Monday night was the more encouraging event so far. Elijah had a hockey game and I needed to get out of the house, so Katie and I joined him even though it was a late game. In the two or so hours we were out, I took Katie to pee twice, (and she fell asleep near the end) and we returned in the same dry diaper we left with! well i think that's it... oh and we won our first play off game last night :)

The total money makeover

When My family was up visiting us, my mom gave us the book "the total money makeover" by Dave Ramsey. Apparently my dad had read through it and decided that each of the kids needed a copy. So... I read it and told Elijah about how I wanted to cancel the credit cards and the line of credit and he thought I was nuts. Then he read it, and came home super excited, talking about how we were going to cut up his credit card and pay off and cancel the line of credit. With the decision to start our makeover, came the decision to sell the jeep (assuming it was going to be repaired) which would bring our debt down significantly. We have since found out there is 99% chance of it being written off. So if everything goes as planned, and we get enough money to pay off our car loan. we should be completely debt free ( with the exception of our mortgage) by November! For any of you that seem to think we're doing this because we're hurting for money, don't. For once, we're being smart about our money, and talking openly with each other about it. There is going to be no longer any stress about what if's, because within 1-2 years we'll be debt free and have a full emergency fund saved up. We're both very excited about taking this journey together and HIGHLY recommend reading the book. Anyways, it's getting late, but we will keep you updated out our TOTAL MONEY MAKEOVER.

Tiny Undies

Front

Katie and I seem to be having a few less misses and she seems to be peeing less often as well, so I thought i'd try making a pair of tiny undies for her to test out, see how they absorb misses and see how they fit. Take a look.

back

I used the scrap shirts we have downstairs from the Dr. Seuss blanket. I could probably make four pairs of tiny undies out of one of Elijah's shirts











They fit pretty well with some room to grow, but I think I'm going to add another 1/2 inch on the rise at the back. when she gets playing her bum crack starts to show. I think I'm going to have to add a couple extra layers at the crotch just in case. Assuming these work well, it's going to be so much better than taking of her diaper every time she has to pee, or just leaving her naked all day.

Nightgowns

I have recently discovered that if you plan on changing your babies diaper during the night, sleepers are not very practical as it wakes the baby up more than need be. So the last few nights, Katie has been going to bed in t-shirts and a diaper, which is okay, except her legs get cold when she wriggles out from under her blankets, and I don't have a lot of t-shirts for her, so what is she supposed to wear during the day when I have her diaper free? So I went in search of a pattern for baby nightgowns. I didn't find one. Elijah and I then found ourselves cutting up old t-shirts and re-purposing them into baby nightgowns. We used some of his old army t-shirts, one green and more blue, as well as a few scraps from old t-shirts I had used to make Katie's Dr. Seuss floor blanket. The first night we made one, the second time we went to make one, we made two in less time it took us to make the first. So now we have three baby nightgowns, which fit Katie well. They aren't that pretty seeing as we didn't have a plan to follow, but they're practical and they were free.

this is the first one we made

Yes there is a giraffe on the sleeve :) just a little girly touch to an army shirt

this one is my favorite. as you can see it has dark blue on the back and pink sleeves

and as a side note, this morning is the first time Katie has put herself in a sitting position without supporting herself with a hand.

Finding your Tribe By Teresa Pitman

Vicki and I are cleaning out her fridge. The vegetable bins have somehow warped and have to be jiggled out, revealing a slimy green pepper and a distinctly brown head of iceberg lettuce. Laughing at the disgusting items, Vicki holds open the lid of the compost bucket, and I dump in the veggie remains. A minute later my toddler wanders into the kitchen and tugs at my shirt. While I sit cross-legged on the floor and nurse her, Vicki washes out the bins and hands out crackers to her two children and my three year old. Then, with everyone fed and content for a few more minutes, we start on the next shelf of the fridge.
By the end of the day, when our husbands arrive, we'll have cleaned the bathrooms, vacuumed all the floors, finished a couple of loads of laundry, and prepared a meal for both families to enjoy. And tomorrow we'll do it all over again at my house.
I'm not exactly sure how Vicki and I first thought of this way of sharing our time. She had worked with my husband, and when she decided to stay home with her first baby, our friendship blossomed. My first child was born soon after, and we both discovered we were incredibly lonely.
The day Vicki brought her daughter home from the hospital she walked into the house and burst into tears. She was terrified by the thought of coping alone with this new baby. I, too, had my own lonely days with my infant son. My husband left for work, taking our only car, before I was even out of bed. The day stretched out endlessly in front of me — changing diapers, washing clothes, cleaning house — with at best the TV or radio as a substitute for adult company. During the cold Canadian winter, even getting outdoors was a challenge.
Vicki and I were spending hours on the phone with each other, but that didn't help. So we hit on this new plan — on one day her husband would drop her off at my house on his way to work. We'd spend the day together, doing housework and caring for our children, and then at the end of the day her husband would come back to our house, and both families would have dinner together. The next day, I'd get dropped off at her house.
The routine continued for several years as our babies grew into toddlers and preschoolers, and then new babies joined our families.
We did not do this every single day, of course, and some days were more productive than others. Sometimes we spent several hours lying together in bed while our babies nursed and older children played on the floor. We talked and sometimes cried. Other days we took the bus to doctors' appointments or to do some shopping.
We discovered that Vicki is a better cook, and I am a better baker. We developed our own categories of housework — I like "wet" work (washing dishes, laundry, washing floors), and she prefers the "dry" variety (vacuuming, sweeping, tidying). We complemented each other. And we always had someone to talk to, laugh with, hold a baby for a bathroom trip, give a hug.
When I read Jean Liedloff's book, The Continuum Concept, I realized that we had formed our own, very small tribe. Spending our days together satisfied our need for adult companionship without separation from our babies, and working together made all the chores — even cleaning disgusting stuff out of the bottom of the fridge — more fun.
Eventually our husbands both found work in other communities, and our daily time together came to an end. But I had seen how important this kind of relationship is for me, and I deliberately tried to recreate it with other friends.
Not long after Vicki and her family moved, I was at a church picnic when I saw Lorna for the first time. She and her family had just arrived in our community. Something about the way she held her baby was familiar to me, and I went up and introduced myself.
She, too, was looking for a tribe, as she had recently moved away from her family. Soon my new friend Lorna and I got together every Thursday to bake bread (and sometimes other foods) for our families for the week. She had a bigger house and roomier kitchen, so we generally went there. We split the cost of the ingredients, and as our children played together (by then, I had three children and Lorna had six), we kneaded and shaped the dough. While the bread was rising, we talked and tended to other tasks. I often brought a basket of things that needed mending, so we could work together while we were waiting.
We were there when she miscarried her seventh baby, and she tended to my older children while I was giving birth to my fourth. I still think of Thursday as baking day, even though Lorna now lives hundreds of miles away.
My children are almost grown, but I still work with parents. The theme of loneliness is as strong and prevalent as it was when I sat crying on my bed with my new baby, wondering how I'd cope with no one to talk to. Certainly the desire to overcome isolation is one of the reasons why women return to work; it's a need easily understood by those of us who opt to stay home with our children.
We truly are social animals; we need to be with other people to feel good, whole, and happy. It's worth the effort to create tribes, however small and imperfect they may be.
Often we try to approach this problem by creating playgroups for our children. I think this has to do with our penchant for independence. We try to pretend that we don't need to be around other people, but we acknowledge that our children do. The result is often that the playgroup meets the children's needs, but the adults are still frustrated.

Create Your Own Tribe

In my experience, there are three important components in finding or creating your own tribe (however small) in our very nontribal society.
Spend a good deal of time together. Short visits are simply that — visits. Everyone is on his or her best behavior; there is a sense of one person being the host and the other person being the guest. The relationship is still distant.
I know that when my sister comes to visit with her children, the first day is inevitably awkward. Even when she tries to help out around the house, she doesn't know where to find things, and I feel uncomfortable thinking that I should be the hostess and not imposing on her.
By the second day, though, there is usually a shift. And by the third day we are happily working together and wishing we could live with each other all the time. What seemed hard on day one feels natural and enjoyable by day five.
You need enough time to experience the rhythms of the day. You want to prepare food, eat, and clean up, and then perhaps nap together — adults and babies alike. You need to experience both talking and comfortable silences. It doesn't have to be several days in a row, although I think that helps, but even one day a week will eventually give you that closeness.
If it's true for my sister and me, with our strong family history and connection, I think it is even truer for friends. We are not used to being in tribes, and yet we long for these connections; it is worth persisting until the awkwardness of the early days fades.
Work together. This is one of the big differences between having a playgroup and "being tribal." The purpose is not for the children to be "socialized" or have fun (although both of those things will happen), it is for you and your friend or friends to accomplish some tasks. The satisfaction of completing your work project — even if it is just cleaning the house or preparing a meal together — will strengthen your relationships and help you feel more like a functioning adult.
One friend commented to me that cleaning house with someone seemed "too intimate." I suggested she start with meal preparation. Invite your friend's family over for dinner and then just ask her to chop some vegetables, stir the sauce, or toss the salad. The food will taste better because you prepared it together.
You can do other projects, too, such as the baking day Lorna and I enjoyed. I live near an old-order Mennonite community now, and the women frequently come together to can foods, make quilts, and complete other large projects. In fact, the whole community will gather to build barns and bring in the harvest. Perhaps you and your friend can plant a garden, or you could have a "mending session," or a time when everyone brings unfinished projects — crafts, sewing, knitting, woodworking — to complete as a group.
How do you work with small children around? Other friends who have tried this say it can sometimes turn into one person watching the children while the other one works. This has happened to me, too, especially in the early stages when the children were still getting used to each other and a stranger's house. It also tends to happen with new moms, who take frequent nursing breaks and care for their infants.
But both of these impediments are temporary and improve over time. Slings and backpacks make it easier to work with a baby or toddler. There may be days when you feel as though you have not accomplished much thanks to a fussy baby or an older child who has had a difficult day. When this happens, remind yourself that life isn't about accomplishing as much as possible. It's about being together, working with and supporting each other.
Try not to be too picky. People who actually live in tribes are born into them. And I suspect that if we lived in tribes there would be people who we would get along with easily and those with whom we wouldn't mesh quite as well.
When we are looking for someone to be in our tribe, we are often searching for someone who will agree with us about everything, and we may pass by some wonderful people by doing that. Vicki and I were initially drawn to each other because we were both young, living a long way from our families, and feeling very lonely. That was about it. We had different ideas about many other things. Her first baby was weaned to a bottle at three months, while mine kept nursing for more than two years, for example. In our discussions about parenting, religion, and politics, we always felt free to respectfully disagree.
Respect, I would guess, is the key. It doesn't matter if one of you is a vegetarian and the other eats meat, as long as you can respect each other's choices.
Are there places to draw the line? I think we all have our own limitations. I know that I wouldn't be comfortable spending a lot of time with someone who spanks their children or is frequently angry with them. But I have been able to forge very good relationships with friends who had a different set of rules than I did.
Vicki and I now live several hundred miles apart. I have since divorced, and she's started her own business. Yet our friendship is unshakeable. All of our children feel the same way. One day Vicki's oldest daughter — now in her 20s — showed up at my front door with a friend. When I enthusiastically invited them in, she turned to her friend and said, "See? I told you she'd be happy to see me. I am like part of her family."

EC and Baby legs

EC
For those of you who don't know, i'm into the whole cloth diaper thing. As soon as my sister told me about cloth diapers, I was hooked. I researched just about everything to do with cloth diapers and found one brand that I thought would suit us perfectly. They have been great. I LOVE my cloth diapers. i love how they look and how i'm saving money and the environment. Despite my love for cloth diapers, i have been intrigued by something called Elimination communication, EC for short.  Basically babies are born with the ability to communicate their needs to us, and it's up to us to meet those needs. When they cry we feed them, when they're cold we warm them up, when they're tired we help them sleep, when they need to eliminate... we stick them in diapers and let them sit in their own waste until it's convenient for us to change them. I'm not saying all of us who live in the western culture are bad parents for diapering our children and not meeting one of their needs. Diapers are convenient and sometimes a necessity. I have gotten great use out of my cloth diapers, despite hearing about EC before Katie was born. My biggest reason for not starting this sooner was that It's cold in Canada, therefore this would be impractical. In the past week, I've started to research EC again, looking into when babies normally need to eliminate, what parents do while traveling, how to get started and of course... what about nighttime? So yesterday I decided to start EC with Katie and see if she's given up on trying to give me cues or not. We managed to catch all the poops in the toilet, and stay dry through each nap and pee in the toilet after each nap. However the pee's in between weren't very successful. Last night when we came back form Walmart, I asked Elijah to see if Katie needed to pee. not sure about what he was doing, but being supportive of the idea, he gave it a try. From upstairs i could hear him saying " Pssssss Psssss " followed by " Hey, it worked!" Later that night while I was at french class, Katie was playing with Elijah and and doing some motions that I told him to look for when she needs to poop. Something clicked and he remembered what i had said, checked her diaper and sure enough she was starting to poop. So Elijah was able to catch his first pee last night, as well as a half poop :) Today is the second day Katie has woken up with a dry diaper in the morning ( i've started changing her diaper at feeds) and been able to have her morning pee in the toilet. The day so far has gone just as well as yesterday, except that I'm keeping track of when she pees, poops, naps and feeds now to see if there's a pattern since she isn't cueing for pees. Check these sites out if you're interested

ourbabyoflove.com
tribalbaby.org
diaperfreebaby.org

Baby Legs!!!
If you don't know what baby legs are, you will shortly. They are another baby product that I LOVE. http://www.babylegs.com/  I'm all for spending money of cute baby things, but 12 a pair? seriously? So I have yet to buy even one pair of these adorable baby leg warmers. Since Katie is crawling around now, and hardly ever wears pants in the house, her little legs and knees were getting red and very dry. So, I looked it up, and turns out they're super easy to make! http://littlenannygoat.blogspot.com/2009/03/babylegs.html  is the best tutorial I found. We went to Walmart and I paid 3$ for a pair of womens knee high socks, and with a total of five minutes of work, I had baby legs! i still have a few more pairs to make, but I think they turned out wonderfully! They stay on well too because of the cuff on the bottom. They're super cute and will make great baby shower gifts.

In the order that they were made, I tried out the black ones on Izzy and found that the cuffs needed to be bigger, so the next two were made a little bit larger. Not bad for 9$ eh? Sure beats 36$