Sunshine and sunbonnets

We have been sooooo cooped up...

But no more!  Nice weather is here and I think it's here to stay!

What a gorgeous weekend we had!  Finally, finally, we have been able to spend some real, solid time outside.  Sure, there have been walks, runs, a handful of nice days here and there, but this weekend was the start to some serious outdoor time.

I made sure Rosie spent basically as much time outside as I did.  Since her arrival in November, I can pretty confidently say she knows exactly what each of the rooms in our house is like.  She's seen it all!  It's time she started learning about the great outdoors.

I found her a couple cute new sun hats over the weekend and Saturday afternoon she donned one of them and helped me plant some flowers...

Are you familiar with Sunbonnet Sue?  The old quilt pattern?  I have a Sunbonnet Sue quilt from when I was a little girl.  I think Rosie looks like a Sunbonnet Sue in the photo above.  Compare Rosie to the pattern here...

I also think it's quite appropriate that Rosie is playing with her giant ladybug while helping her mama garden!

Here she is modeling her new, cute hat...

We didn't spend as much time outside today.  She did, however, get some experience with lying in the grass.  She seemed to really love it.  She stayed very still and relaxed for quite some time.  I love how loung-y she looks...

Her legs, which are ALWAYS moving, were still - for several minutes...

Todd said I needed to move her around so she could mow the yard...

The poor dogs have been particularly cooped up.  They've done a number on our yard - brown spots, dead spots, bald spots - and Todd has worked hard to try to fix it.  This means the dogs have been quarantined to the house or the back "yard" which they hate.  Yard is in quotes because in its current state it can hardly be considered a yard.  It's just concrete.  No wonder they hate going back there and love to lounge like this instead.  Oh, Lulu...

Not to be outdone, here's Rigby posing for his lounge lizard shot...

Everyone is enjoying our nice weather!  

Big girl food

Rosie is getting to be such a big girl!

We've started experimenting with something more than formula and oatmeal.

First up on the menu...peaches!

I loved watching Rosie's first tastes of the food.  You could just see the wheels turning, taking note of the taste, texture and overall experience of something different.  She sits in her bouncy chair while I'm in the kitchen cooking and I will bring foods to her nose to smell.  She has always stopped what she's doing to really smell what I put in front of her.  I'm hoping this will somehow make her an open-minded eater!  

I've read when starting new foods you should only offer one kind for at least three days to see how your baby does with it.  In three days we successfully finished one container of peaches and she started to act like she really loved them.  Yesterday, she began taking my hand with the spoon in it and directing it toward her mouth.  Today, with daddy, she had a death grip on the spoon, not wanting him to take it out of her mouth long enough to get another scoop!  

Next up are sweet potatoes.  If liking a food is at all based on what the baby's mom ate while pregnant, then Rosie should go bonkers for sweet potatoes.  I couldn't seem to get enough of them when I was pregnant!  

For these first experimental bites I've used the go-to Gerber foods.  In the future, however, I have aspirations of making a lot of Rosie's baby food myself and have already read through one yummy sounding cookbook we received as a baby gift.  It doesn't seem that difficult, but we'll see!  

Cloth diapering adventures have officially begun!

Our cloth diapers arrived Saturday!

I know in my previous post about our cloth diaper trial period we were quite decided on the hybrid style of diaper.  After much research on the different styles and brands we thought we really had it boiled down.

I was about to make the call to the store in Colorado to place our order when a friend told me to check out a Wyoming cloth diaper company.  I had no idea one even existed!

Out of curiosity, I looked up Baby Beduga in Pinedale, Wyo.  The company is owned by Crystal, a stay-at-home mom who believes strongly in cloth diapering and wants to make it affordable for other families to do so too.

Hers are a pocket style diaper and are one of the styles we had initially decided against.  The absorbent pad slides down the pocket in the back of the diaper.  We had opted against this style for no other reason, really, than we ultimately thought hybrids would be easier and cheaper.

We thought that until we saw her prices.  They are crazy low!  And by that I mean they are half the price of other popular brands.  Example: Rumparooz, a mainstream pocket diaper, sells for about $25/diaper and includes one insert.  Baby Beduga? Plain colored diapers are $7.99 and printed ones are $9.10!  They also include an insert.

My eyes about popped out of my head when I saw those numbers!

The low price automatically made me think they must be of lesser quality, so I did some Googling.  They have been reviewed on several "mommy blogs" and the consensus is nothing short of rave.

We ordered one to see for ourselves and discovered we really liked it! The snaps seem to be spaced appropriately for easy adjustment as Rosie grows.

The material is good quality as is the stitching.

Rosie christened the trial diaper with a big poo right off the bat, so we got to see right away how they clean up.  The diaper rinsed easily and didn't stain.  A good sign.

While it wasn't the style we wanted we were willing to go a different direction for the price.  Not to mention she is a Wyoming company and I like to patronize local small businesses.

We bought an assortment of solid colored and printed diapers.  Crystal has some diapers made of a minky material, which I was on the fence about, leaning toward not wanting them.  After talking about it on the phone she surprised us by nicely throwing in the cow print minky diaper for us to try.  It's really, really soft and I see Rosie wearing it mostly during days around the house where she won't have something on over a diaper.

I did buy one white solid colored one, which seems daring for a cloth diaper, right?  The thought was, it would be nice to have for under dresses when we might not want a bright diaper showing.

Here are the cute printed diapers we ordered.  Aren't they ADORABLE??

We got all of this - 19 diapers (we already had the one trial), 20 additional inserts, one wet bag for the nursery (the orange-y yellow bag), and one wet bag for the diaper bag (the pink bag) - all for slightly less than half of what we would have paid for the hybrid brand we were going to order.

Amazing.

To be fair, all of my initial assessments are based on a couple wears and washes.  I'll update a little later on how things are going and holding up.  I have confidence, though, that we made a great and economical decision and so far would recommend Baby Beduga to others!

Guess who rolled over today?

It was so unexpected.  I laid her down for a nap and put her paci in the crib with her.  She saw it and started reaching for it.  

I was just impressed at first that she actually grabbed it and brought it to her mouth with such purpose and focus.  I watched her drop it close to her chest and she fished around until she found it again.  

I ran outside to get Todd so he could watch all her new tricks.  When we came back in we found her on her tummy!  

She's been able to get herself about 98 percent over, but keeps getting hung up on her arm.

Looks like we've had a break through!

In this photo, I had moved her around so she wouldn't get her feet caught up in the crib.  She's got that paci in her sights!

Yay, Rosie!

Ticket to freedom

A stroller.  

That is my ticket to freedom.

Having a baby in winter is hard.  You're even more confined to the indoors than "normal" after giving birth.  We/I took Rosie on several walks, bundled up in her car seat that fit nicely in her other stroller, but that wasn't good enough.

The other stroller meant I still, somehow, needed to try to find a separate time to work out.  That was getting really compromised with all the other daily duties and I was getting increasingly frustrated.  I was tired of being a prisoner of our house and the baby weight wasn't coming off as quickly as I hoped.

Then our BOB arrived.  When it showed up on our front porch I felt like it may as well have been a giant Publisher's Clearing House check sitting there.  Suddenly, I could do whatever I wanted!  I could get out WITH Rosie and incorporate her into my workouts.  I wouldn't have to give them up because of Todd's schedule or her nap time.  

We took it on an inaugural outing over the weekend and I could barely contain my excitement.  

This weekend, with the weather finally warming up, Rosie and I will definitely be hitting the open road!