The Arbolog |

Things are all clicking into place for me these days. As some of you know, I will be taking on the childcare for Bonnie, my friend Shauna’s daughter, upon Shauna’s return to work. Bonnie will be here three days a week, and I think having her here will be incredibly beneficial for Kale to have his friend with him some days of the week. It’s mutally beneficial both both Shauna and I that I will take on Bonnie, financially speaking. Shauna is slated to return to work at the end of August and her and I have agreed to this on a trial basis with a re-evaluation date in the future. I’m really looking forward to it. 

I’m also going to be at the Farmer’s Market most Thursdays starting June 25th and running till October 8th with my tiny booth for Chai By Night. Although necessity is dictating that I haul all my gear (and Kale) to the market place in a wagon since Ross and I share our car and the market starts before Ross is generally off work, I’ve decided to make this a “thing” – a challenge for Chai By Night to be a low ecological footprint booth at the market. So even if Ross is able to work from home some Thursday afternoons, I will still use my wagon and haul my gear to the market and simply take advantage of Ross being home to perhaps leave Kale behind so I can work the market baby-free. I did a dry run of all the gear in the wagon this weekend and it’s going to work great. I have a few final details to complete for Chai By Night’s participation (along with more chai making!) and one of them is a banner. Originally, I had planned to order a vinyl banner off some internet company for about $50, but since I’ve decided to make this a eco-challenge for me, I’ve also decided I am going to make a fabric banner because vinyl is so icky. I need to find some recycled material that has red stars on it and intend to get to work sewing on that this week. 

I’m in the last few details of going back to my former employer on a part time basis when my maternity leave runs out June 13th. About a month after I left, my boss semi-retired and took on another position within the company. A peer was promoted from within the company to his spot, and so now he’s officially my boss. I like him as he’s very professional, and he and I have been negotiated a part time position that will benefit both my employer and myself, allowing me a fairly flexible schedule a few evenings a week and one weekend day. Working a little bit for my former employer will ensure that Ross and I can afford for me to stay home, plus I don’t feel quite so pressured for Chai By Night and Usb0rne Books to take off in any particular way. 

So things feel good. 

As for Kale (sidenote: I booked our tickets to Calgary, and the ticket reservation agent repeated it all back to me, and she referred to Kale as Master Kale Arbo, and holy cow did that crack me up for some reason – I mean, he’s 10 months old! He doesn’t need a title yet!). Anyway, as for Kale, he just popped another tooth, bringing our total to 5, although I think tomorrow I will be able to post that there are 6 because I can see it RIGHT THERE. He’s become a bit of a vampire lately:

From Kale 9-12 months

I also think – although who knows sometimes – that he’s trying to change to one nap a day so it’s been a bit well…. whiny here lately while we ride this out.  But here is a happy moment (although slightly blurry):

From Kale 9-12 months

I’ve got a couple of blog posts on the back burner, but the weather has been so nice I haven’t yet gotten around to adding photos, editing, etc. And as some of you pointed out, I need to do some template tweaking as more than one of you thought that previous post about mountain biking was written by me for the first few sentences until you realized it was actually Ross.

Also, last night, I thought I’d be HILARIOUS and Kale had an Orange Dinner:

From Kale 9-12 months

From left: grated carrot, stewed carrot, cheese, and sweet potato, plus peach puffs in front.

Gillian asked in the comments section on a previous post: How are you finding being a SAHM overall? What do you guys do during the day?

And I guess the short answer is that I freakin’ love it.

Don’t get me wrong, I have moments when there is nothing more that I would like to do other than pack up my bag with a bag lunch and go to work and talk with adults who don’t need me to change their messy diapers and talk to them about how “we are peeling potatoes and this is a potato and isn’t it interesting how brown it is and doesn’t it feel interesting and one day you will love potatoes and you can eat them baked or mashed or BLAHBLAHBLAH”. Of course the minutiae and the monotony and the mundane and the repetitiveness of our day can get to me at times. I get frustrated when I know Kale is tired and yet he resists sleep because there are so many things to See! and Do! and Experience! and Cram in My Cakehole!

I get frustrated at how messy the house is (that’s the control freak talking) and a few times I have chased Ross, Kale and Mooki out of the house so I could throw on some music and clean like a fiend. I feel like I have no time whatsoever to myself (although here I am now typing away in the MIDDLE OF THE DAY so you know that’s not totally true) and I admit I clock watch to a degree until Ross is due home and when Ross isn’t here at exactly the time I am expecting him I get snarky and crabby to him and I can’t stop myself because there are times when I am literally aching to get ten minutes to myself when I don’t need to answer the call of the Very Small Tyrant.

But the joy! Oh. My. God. Kale is so beautiful and sweet and loving. He grins and flirts and chatters to me and I feel myself melting. I get to stop and think about how amazing our world is because I am experiencing it all over again with Kale. When he hears a noise he’s never heard before his little eyebrows go up and he opens his ginormous anime eyes and you can see him processing that new noise and the next time he hears it, you can see the flicker of recognition. It amazes me. He amazes me – his development and growth blows my mind and every time we do something new and I think “Uh-oh, this is going to be too much for him” he blows me away with how easily he just takes to things.

When he was very little, I watched a lot of TV while he kicked his legs and waved his arms spastically on the couch because I didn’t know what else to do with him. When we got the bouncy chair, I started bringing him along on chores. I had to empty the dishwasher? He came along. Suddenly the TV was on only in the background so I could listen to adult voices. Then it faded, and now I rarely turn it on during the day. Today I watched about 10 minutes of the noon news but it bored me so I shut it off and sat down at the computer to send an email to someone I had been meaning to talk to.

Kale and I dance to the oldies a lot during the day, spinning and hugging on the living room rug and I sing to him in my awful tone deaf voice and he makes me feel like I can really sing. We go outside to the patio and look at things – plants, the sky, Mooki and I put him up to flowers to let him smell them. I do things like empty the dishwasher, flat iron my hair, fold laundry, bake cookies and he watches and studies me as I explain what I am doing. We talk, Kale and I, about what we’ve seen and what we’ve done.

We go for a walk every afternoon and at first these walks were like narcolepsy to him and he slept the entire time. Now he cranes his neck to see things and watch from the comfort of the carrier while he licks and sucks on the strap of the carrier. I have started facing him outward so he can see things as they come at us instead of burrowing his face against me. I’ve started walking farther and farther and making up reasons to go for a walk. Like, I have four library books and I take four days to return them just so that for four days I can walk to the library. (Walking to the library is free, walking to Starbucks is not and is fattening and needs to remain a treat and not a daily ritual.) Today we walked to the market on the other side of town to get sour cream and tomatoes. Then we came home and got Mooki and walked her.

I’ve only recently realized that Kale needs to sleep more than I was letting him. Or perhaps he just needs to sleep more NOW that he is taking in all these new and exciting things, I’m not 100% positive. So our normal day starts at 6:30 with a feeding and Ross kisses us goodbye and Kale and I cuddle together in bed and we often fall back asleep till 8 or 8:30 or so and sometimes we just hang out burrowed in the covers. Even though we are transitioning Kale to his own bed (he sleeps in the bassinet beside us now and will eventually sleep in his own room and eventually, the crib), in the mornings I can’t resist bringing him to bed with us. Sometimes, oftentimes, he’s there from the wee hours when he was fed. We usually get up and Kale gets changed and dressed into “day wear” (he has a ridiculous amount of clothes and I intend for him to wear everything at least once) and then he watches while I do my morning routine of tooth brushing and face washing and deodorant applying and by then its often food time again. We usually do some sort of chore at this point – fold laundry is a good one – and when I see Kale yawning and looking away I know he has had enough so we go and have some quiet time together and he often falls asleep with a bit of coaxing from me.

He will often sleep the rest of the morning at this point, and then awake when his belly tells him he needs to be fed, and so I often take this time to check my email, write blog posts, research things on the internet, or chat with any friends who happen to be online. Kale eats and then we hang out and often will play or talk or dance or just hang out together on the bed or the couch. I try and introduce him to things at this point in his day – he’s fed and awake and in the mood so he might meet a stuffed elephant for the first time or perhaps I put something cold or soft into his hand and tell him what I am doing.

After another nap, usually a shorter one, we go for our walk to wherever we are going and then when we get home, he usually has the rest of his nap. I tried getting him to nap straight through and then go for a walk but he often wakes up miserable so this works better to do it as a two parter.

I try and get something going for dinner at this point, although, if Kale is getting owly then dinner waits. Thankfully, Ross is a good cook so as long as something has been taken out, Ross will make it when he gets home. Ross usually comes home around this point and he is excited to see Kale so I get to pass him off and either run an errand with the car by myself (last night I went to the craft store and bought some stickers of crows) or I have a long shower.

Kale has started having “the witching hour” every night around 7 or 7:30 or so, and its because of this that I think I haven’t been encouraging enough sleep during the day. We’ve been experimenting this past few days with more “induced” naps and it seems to be making the witching hour more like the witching 15 minutes. He is inconsolable for the witching hour – so obviously tired and spun but unable to stop wailing to unwind and sleep. He will eventually drop off, though, with either Ross or myself soothing for however long it takes. A few people have referred to Kale’s witching hour as colic, and I refuse to do so because it’s not colic because it rarely lasts for more than a half hour and it doesn’t happen every night. I think its just a build up of the day and seriously? It’s not that bad. The magic bullet when the witching hour occurs is to nurse and last night when the witching hour wasn’t showing any signs of abating, I fed him and he confort sucked for the first time in weeks.

Kale often drops to sleep and Ross and I have dinner together and after some TV watching (the other night we rented movies and got to watch one of them ALL THE WAY THROUGH) we go to bed and wake Kale for his last feeding before night.

He sleeps now with a bit of a pattern. He will go 4 hours, 4 hours, and then 2. Or perhaps 4 hours, 2 hours, then 4 hours. Sometimes its 3 instead of 4 and other times its 3-3-3. Either way, he sleeps well enough that I feel lucky.

I love being a Mom, I feel so happy and peaceful these days. Of course there are moments when I am ready to break things and there are teeth marks in the edge of Kale’s pacifier from ME gritting my teeth as I carry him from room to room, but for the most part every single day gets better and better and while I am not yet wishing for these new baby days to hurry up I can’t wait to experience things with Kale and I think about things like the first time it snows (hopefully it snows this year) or showing him an icicle or seeing Christmas lights on a tree and even further ahead – spring time and cherry blossoms and everything else.

So really, being a Stay At Home Mom is everything I expected, a lot of things I didn’t expect and I don’t think I could ask for much more. I finally feel like I can check another thing off my Life’s Goals list.

Waaaaay back when I was researching cloth diapers in the early days of my pregnancy, I ran across a website that was selling their own brand of cloth diapers as well as diapering fabric. Cloth Diapers Eh (CDE for short) is the business of two smart, savvy, stay-at-home-moms who are skilled enough to make some incredibly adorable diapers for a good price using awesome quality fabrics.

At the time, I registered with them (they offer a registry service and as a bonus I got a free pair of breast pads for registering) and a week before my baby shower they had to take their website down for maintenance and so sadly, no one was able to purchase me any of their products. It was okay, I thought, because I had made three dozen diapers for Kale for the newborn days and I wasn’t worried about needing the next size for a few months. That was before I gave birth to a moosey giraffe and poor Kale grew out of the diapers I made in about as many weeks as it took me to make the damn things. Kale has been in disposables since then (about 6 weeks now) while Ross and I searched for a replacement type of cloth diaper that we were both happy with.

I tried a Bum Genius Pocket Diaper (hated the velcro and hated the “made in China”) and a Fuzzi Buns Pocket Diaper (leaked like mad on my long and lean boy) and Mother Ease Terry dipes with a cover (hated the incredibly bulk in Kale’s crotch and the two parts you have to manhandle onto a squirming infant) and so I put off buying the diapers for a few weeks because I wanted Kale to grow to “the next size” that was commonly offered by most companies – the size that theoretically will carry him for a few months.

I finally ordered three diapers from the ladies at CDE to confirm the size and fit on Kale and I am DELIGHTED with them. They are soft on Kale’s butt, trim between his crotch, feature snaps as a closure, and are long enough up his back so that we have no butt crack peep shows and potential poop blowouts. I bought a chocolate brown one, an orange one, and a dark green one, and when you buy them you simply indicate if you want boyish or girlish or neutral and the ladies pick out the snaps and the thread in co-ordinating colours so each dipe is a bit of a treat when you receive it – you have no idea what the finished product is going to be and each one is different.

From Kale

I washed the three dipes three times before using them because I have read that the fleece gets more absorbent with each wash. We used the first diaper and Kale promptly pooped so it was a christening of the diaper and YAY – no leaks. The second one was also poopy and also no leaks. The third diaper he wore for a nap and when he woke up it was soaked but again – no leaks. I think it could have also taken more liquid if required.

So today I ordered the other 9 diapers, a swim diaper (Ross is gungho for Waterbabies so I figured why not – we have swim diaper covers but no absorbent part) and wet bags for dirty diapers that are made from PUL as well.

The construction of the diapers is excellent and from high quality fabrics - the outer layer is made from 2 mil PUL and micro fleece and have a birdseye pique layer in between and have a six layer snap in hemp and fleece soaker pad with a target zone layer as well. They are made using a serger and the snaps are also high quality and there are four rows on each side for tailoring the fit. They offer a newborn, small, medium, and large size – the newborn dipe has a cutaway for the umbilical cord stump and the rest feature elastic at the waist and the back for a good fit. The medium sized diaper (the size I bought for Kale) is rated for 15-27 lbs – I am not sure of Kale’s current exact weight, but I suspect he is barely 15 pounds and we have the diaper fitting on the tightest snap position no problem. Turnaround was about 1 week – the diapers are not made in advance and are made to order based on gender request.

From Kale

Price wise the diapers are very comparable to the others on the market that are similar in fabrics and construction. Each medium diaper is $21.95 (newborns and smalls are cheaper, large is more expensive) and when you buy 12 diapers at once you get a free diaper thrown in. They also recently started offering a package deal with discounts that includes everything you need to get going – 12 diapers, a sprayer, a wet bad, a wool cover, some inserts… and the package is offered in all the different sizes as well. The ladies were incredibly cool about using my workplace internal mail as a means of shipping (free for me) but even had I shipped using Canada Post, their rates appear quite reasonable.

Lastly, these two ladies (and I should mention them by name here, and not keep referring to them as “the ladies”), Gina and Lindy, are Work-At-Home-Moms from British Columbia and I really like supporting not only moms but also local people rather than some big company in the US. I feel confident that if anything goes wrong with these diapers (say a seam busts or anything) Gina and Lindy will make it right.

All in all, I have to recommend their product and their business. Cloth Diapers Eh are a Jen and Kale approved product.

From Kale