Friday, February 26, 2010

Make that two sad teething overtired babies!

Today is Dylan's turn. He was up all last night (Kennedy was up the night before). Poor babies. Hopefully they will get some teeth out of this. 

Feel better soon Dylan. Mommy knows how hard it is to be a baby. Love you...

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Thursday, February 25, 2010

What do we do with sad, teething, over tired babies?

We give them all their favorite blankets, let them have their bedtime suckies and we remember that babies are allowed to have bad days too.

Feel better soon Kennedy. Mommy loves you...even when you are miserable!

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Monday, February 22, 2010

8 months old!

Seriously... I need time to stop for a bit. They are growing up so fast!!! I love how they are learning new things and thriving but I am not ready!!! Don't they understand!! Of course I am just joking but really!!

Eating - They still get their bottles every three hours or so and they get three "solids" meals a day. We have also added Cheerios! They LOVE  them! It is so cute to see them pick up the Cheerios with their little hands! They concentrate so hard! We have also started to give them a bit of food that we eat. Mostly veggies and potatoes. We haven't introduced meats yet. I am still waiting on that one.

Sleeping - Yay! They are back to sleeping 11 hours again! There was a few weeks when they would sleep for 9 or 10 hours...getting up at 5am was not a good thing! So, I added another meal into the day and pushed their bed time up to 9pm and it seems to be working for now. They sleep from 9pm to about 8am. Also, they have three naps during the day. The first one is 45 minutes. The second one about 2 hours and the third one 1 1/2 hours. If they do not sleep for long enough during the day, they have a horrible night. My babies need their sleep and I am ok with that! If we do something that messes up with their schedule, they are totally thrown off and do not sleep well. They fuss and wake up during the night and the vicious over tired cycle starts. So, we do everything in our power to keep them on schedule and watch for "tired queues".

Diapering - I am happy to say that the cloth diapering is going great! I love it and I think the boys do too!

Playing - They still love their exersaucers. They also love to play with toys on the floor while rolling everywhere! Here is a video of what I mean...


They have also started to make strange with people. It was first Dylan but now Kennedy does it too. If someone they don't know tried to talk to them they FREAK out. After a while they are good to go but at first they are not happy campers!!
More pics!

Hanging out in their cloth dipes and baby legs!
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Watching the Olympics with Daddy D! Go Canada Go!!
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Hanging out in their Exersaucers!
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Love Dylan's new facial expressions!
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Hanging out with Melman!
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Just a regular night at our house!
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Baby-wearing daddy!
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Love my boys!
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Wednesday, February 17, 2010

One year ago today....

We found out we were having twins! It is so hard to believe a whole year has gone by! Our boys are almost 8 months old and they are happy and healthy and perfect! Click here to read about our journey from the day we found out we were preggers to week 16. It includes us finding out there was two itty bitty babies!


Tuesday, February 16, 2010

Going Green!

I just wanted to give a little info about what else we are up to! We are starting to slowly change our household into a non-toxic "green" home. I have been doing tons and tons of research and we have started to change some things. This will be a slow but steady process. I can not get into detail right now (very tired...must sleep!), but the blogs will be happening shortly! What started out as an idea has really turned into a passion of mine. I am excited to make these changes  and even more excited to share them with you all!!

Stay tuned!!!

Our Cloth Diapering Adventure Part 2!!

So far our adventure with cloth has been great! It took a day or so for me to get used to the change but now we are good to go! It takes about the same amount of time to do a cloth diaper change then it would with disposables. The boys love their cloth diapers and I do too! There have been a  few obstacles that we have come across so far. Thankfully, there is a solution for each one. One problem we have some across it that their clothing does not fit them right. They are in between sizes and their bums are a bit too fluffy to fit into 9-12 month clothing. Size 18 month clothing fits their bums but not the rest of them! In a few weeks it will all even out. Another issue is that  Kennedy loves to open his diaper cover!  He usually gets one of the velco tabs off by the time I get to him.  This makes me really sad because I have been having to cover them up with pants to stop this from happening! The covers are WAY too cute to cover up!!! I am going to look into snaps to add to the covers so he leaves it alone. The last problem that we were having is that the cotton prefolds were constantly wet against the boys skin. They didn't seem to mind at all, but it bothered me.....the solution is the reason why I am writing this blog entry!

There are two additional items I have added to our daily diaper routine. One of them being reusable baby wipes and  the other one being fleece liners to go in between the babies bums and the cotton prefolds to keep them dry. I will talk about the reusable baby wipes first!

For us, it only makes sense to have reusable wipes instead of using disposable wipes. If you remember all of our reasons why we switched to cloth in the first place (Our Cloth Diapering Adventure Part 1!!), most of the same reasons go for using reusable wipes. Here are the steps we took to get all set up for reusable baby wipes and baby bum spray!!

First thing we did was buy 1 meter of jersey cotton. It cost us $15.99. I know you can get it for a lot less but we are limited with our fabric stores in our small town.  It is pretty soft and also absorbent. There were not many colors so we went with white (original eh?). Another plus with this fabric is that you do not have to hem it. ** Just want to clarify..I can sew. In fact I LOVE to sew but my sewing machine is at home in Ontario *sigh* so, I have been making items that you do not need to sew.  One negative about the jersey cotton is that it tends to "roll up" after you wash it. I am fine with this...I just lay it flat before I use the wipe. Here is a picture of the fabric

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All I did was cut it into pieces that  I felt were a good size for wipes. It took a long time, but we ended up getting a ton of wipes out of the meter of fabric! Here is the pile of wipes after they were cut

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I store my wipes in an old disposable wipes container. I think this may get old fast as I can't be bothered to fill it back up. I will probably just leave the wipes loose in the drawer beside where I change the boys.

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To go with the wipes, I also made my own "Baby Bum Cleaner!" That is what I call it anyways. I have to mixture in a spray bottle and I spray each wipe before I use it. I used distilled water, Tea Tree Oil and a bit of baby soap. I like the mixture so far! Dallas does not. He can not stand the smell of Tea Tree Oil! I will probably try a different essential oil next time! Here is our Baby Bum Cleaner!

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The next thing I "made" (if you call cutting fabric into rectangles "making" something) is our fleece liners. I LOVE LOVE LOVE these liners! They keep the boys bums dry...even after 12 hours of sleep! The fleece lets the wetness pass through but it does not absorb it so baby stays dry! Another plus is that "solids" fall off the liners sooo easily! I will spare you the details!!! We bought 2 different colors of fleece. Blue for Kennedy and green for Dylan. I use these liners at every diaper change. Some people only use them at night, but I use them all the time. The only negative I have experienced with the fleece is that they actually smell like pee in the morning. I had this problem with the disposables too. I went into the boys room and that was all I could smell. When we switched to cloth, it was GONE! No pee smell at all! I was sooooo happy! Well, now the smell is back....but only after they sleep all night. They do not smell at all during the day. For me this is a small price to pay for my babies to be dry.

Here is a pic of the fleece before I started to cut.

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I cut it first into 4 strips

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Then folded each strip and cut

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Then I folded and cut again!

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Finished product is two stacks of fleece liners!

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Here is the fleece liner laying in a prefold

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And here is a diaper all ready to go with the liner in the middle! **No babies were awake to model!

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That is it for now! I will update more about our cloth diapering when and if something else comes up!

Sunday, February 7, 2010

No Sew Home Made Baby Legs!

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Baby Legs are leggings  or a type of "leg warmer" made for babies.  They keep your babies legs warm while still allowing them to move freely and not be restricted by pants. They are super cute but can be a bit pricey. I have not found a physical store here in Canada that sells them (If you know of one, please let me know in the comments section!) so we would have to order them online. Dallas does not like Baby Legs. As I am writing this, he has no idea that I made my own and put them on the boys. He feels that Baby Legs are not "manly"!!! He may be right, but I still think they are super cute on baby boys and girls.

I have looked at a lot of websites on different ways to make your own. This is by far the easiest! I will give you a little walk through...

Materials 
1 Pair of long Womens dress socks
Scissors 

Here is the package of socks I bought. You can get so many different colors and designs. I picked "manly" colors. They were on sale for $2.95 for a 3 pack.
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Here is a pair of the socks.
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All you have to do it cut off the toe! 
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Turn the sock upside down to put on the baby so that the cut off part is on their thighs. The only problem with making them this way is the "heel" of the sock. It tends to stick out so I just fold it under. You can't even tell it is there! 
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That is it! They are cheap and super cute! I am not sure how washing them will go. They will probably fall apart. I will update the blog once I know! I won't be washing them unless they get super dirty so even if they do fall apart, I still feel it is money well spent! 

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Tuesday, February 2, 2010

Our Cloth Diapering Adventure Part 1!!!!

We made the switch! I am so happy we did. Originally Dallas and I wanted to cloth diaper right from the beginning. When we found out we were having twins, cloth diapering got pushed to the back burner. Now....7 months later we decided it was time and I can not be happier! Here are some reasons why we decided to switch...


  • Mother Nature... It takes 500 years for a disposable diaper to decompose!! Plus, we were taking out the garbage every single day. It made us sick to our stomachs looking at all the dirty disposables in the garbage. 
  • To save money...With a small $300 investment, we will be saving about $2000 in disposable diapers over the next couple of years. 
  • There are toxic chemicals in disposable diapers...they include toluene, ethylbenzene, xylene and dipentene. It scares me to think that these chemicals are touching my babies bums! 
  • Contrary to popular belief, cloth diapering is EASY!  Yes you have another couple loads of laundry a week BUT you do not have to drive to the store to buy diapers and lug them back to the house! 
  • Less diaper rashes...with unbleached organic cotton being the only thing touching my babies skin, there are likely to be less diaper rashes.
  • Potty training earlier...cloth diapered babies are said to potty train about 12 months earlier than disposable diapered babies. It is because they are aware of the wetness. They feel it on their skin whereas disposables hold the moisture away.
  • They are very soft...and oh so cute! 

Ok...now that I got that off my chest I am going to show you what we bought to CD (cloth diaper). We decided to go with prefolds and covers. There are many options out there but this is the most cost efficient. For our covers, we went with Thirsties Duo Wraps. They will fit them up until 30lbs (when they will be potty trained). We got a bunch of cute colors! Dylan has all green and Kennedy has one blue and three orange. Here they are! 

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Underneath the covers, you put the prefolds. We went with 36 unbleached organic cotton prefolds.  They are super absorbent and nice and soft. Here is a pic of the stack of them!

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The other item we needed to CD was a Snappi. Snappi's are used instead of diaper pins. They are easy to use and cute too! 

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There are many different ways to put the prefold in the diaper. You can just fold in and lay it inside or you can put it on your baby and secure it with a Snappi. I am still learning what fold is best for us. The only way to figure it out it trial and error! After you put the prefold on, you do up the cover and you are good to go! Here is a pic of the prefold on Kennedy with the Snappi. 

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So that is it for now! I will leave you with a pic of the boys with their new "fluffy bums!"  They look happy to be in cloth don't they! 

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