Preparing for Baby - Part 2

Now that we have our list of essentials, I've started doing some research and making some choices...there are SO many choices! It's a little crazy.

First on the list was diapers. My husband and I are both pretty earth conscious. I'm definitely not outrageous about my efforts or opinions, but I like to do my part to preserve and protect the planet as much as I am able. That said, I have always been curious about cloth diapers, but whenever I've asked friends they either tell me "good luck' and leave it at that or say they tried but just couldn't make it work. I completely understand the convenience of disposable diapers and I'm definitely of the mind set that everyone has to find what works for them and do it. It's all a process and I know there will most likely be times when we slap on a disposable because it's the best option at the time. However, it concerns me to think about my baby's most delicate parts being in touch with all those chemicals everyday for 2-3 years! With all that in mind, I started my research to see if cloth diapers might work for our family.

Here's what I learned:
There are lots of people using cloth diapers who love them and with the internet there are many places to get great tips on using them effectively. There are a variety of cloth diaper choices out there, not to mention the more environmentally friendly disposable choices too. Over 18 billion diapers go into the landfill every year, just in the U.S. and each diaper takes more than 500 years to decompose - yikes!

Here's what I realized:
For our family, I think cloth diapers would work best when we're close to home, but for camping or vacation or other overnight outtings disposable probably makes more sense. What I really need is a hybrid of some kind...enter gDiapers.

To me, these little bundles of cuteness seem like the best of both worlds. They consist of an outter cloth cover, a waterproof liner and a cloth or biodegradable (compostable if it's just pee) insert. So we will be able to use cloth when it makes sense, but have the convenience (and guilt free use) of the disposable/compostable insert when we're out and about. You can learn more about gDiapers here.

I just ordered the new baby bundle and the tiny g's are SO cute I can barely stand it! It's hard to believe we're going to have a tiny little person in our house soon who will actually fit into those itty bitty diapers. For us gDiapers just seem like the best option. They aren't necessarily the least expensive (another great reason to use cloth diapers), but I think overall they make the most sense. Stay tuned once we have our baby and I will let you know if they are as great in the real world as I'm hoping...

Here are a couple resources I came across during my research that I found to be helpful:
"The Diaper Dilemma" in the May/June 2010 issue. Unfortunately they don't have a link to the article on their website, but they do have this section with video resources related to cloth diapering. here

This site has a bunch of great information on using cloth diapers.

I would love to hear about your thoughts/research on diaper choices along with any good links you come across!

Preparing for Baby - Part 1

One of the funny things about adoption is until you get matched with a birthmother, you don't have a due date. It's a little weird. You know a baby is coming, but it could be in a day, a week, or even a year. I had a minor freak out the other day when realizing several of the couples we have met through our adoption agency have gotten babies rather quickly. One was over night! One day business as usual, the next day, good morning mommy and daddy!

Because most everything we need for baby we are getting from friends and family I haven't felt a need to really gather everything, I just thought when the time comes I'll put the word out and work with the people who are giving us things to collect them. But we decided over the weekend, that when it all comes together the last thing we're going to want to be thinking about is "wait, where is that car seat and how are we going to get it?" So we agreed, let's pull together the essentials so we have them at the ready. We live in a very small house so setting up a baby room for us isn't a functional choice - we'll be able to make room when the time comes for the baby to have his or her own room (if we still live in this house) but for now it just doesn't make sense to clear out all that precious space and not be using it. Plus, I'm not really drawn to doing that anyway. I've learned in our 8 months of waiting I go through phases of wanting to nest and wanting to take a break from thinking about all things baby related. It ebbs and flows. So we have our little area where the collected baby things will live until we're ready to bust them out for real.

Our list of essentials is as follows:

• Car Seat
• Clothes
• Blankets
• Bassinet
• Stroller
• Changing Station (including diapers and other supplies)
• Feeding Supplies (including bottles and any cleaning supplies - formula will wait until we know what they are started on at the hospital since we've heard it can be explosive to change it up too quickly)
• Swing (although this isn't essential)
• Bouncy Seat (also not really essential, but will be nice to have from what I hear)

What is on your list?
Stay tuned for more on this topic. Next up diapers...who knew there were so many choices?

New Button

You might notice I have a new button on my side bar! It's a link to an e-book that I truly recommend if you are trying to start up a creative business of any kind. Kelly Rae Roberts' story is super inspiring, you can find out more about her here. I took her e-course earlier this year because I am interested in jump starting my own creative business...details still in the works...and now she is offering an e-book with everything she learned along the way to getting her ver successful business up and running. I can honestly say the wealth of information included in this book is amazing. It covers everything that was in the class I took and I left feeling saturated with ideas and empowered to actually take a step into my creative dreams.

Plus if you click through from my link and decide to purchase the e-book, I will get credit as an affiliate which is great too! Just an small example of how wonderful Kelly Rae is and her willingness to share her success.

From time to time I may share links to other artists and opportunities, but please rest assured it will only be to people I whole heartedly support and feel their services/products would be exciting and helpful to anyone visiting here.

Adoption Videos?

I've been wanting to do a video of us for our adoption website. I think being able to see someone moving around makes you feel like you are getting to know them more personally than just photos. I've been thinking about it a lot though because I've seen some adoption videos that are so serious, almost like the couple is being interviewed on their couch and I really didn't want to do that. In all my thinking and planning, I realized we are going to need to take more videos because seriously all we ever photograph or video is our dogs, it's kind of ridiculous. So, as practice I made a video of them. It was fun and I learned a lot. We really do love them like crazy. They are such good girls - even if they are barking at the mailman right now.

Song: Buy a Dog by Luce (www.luceband.com)

What do you think about making an adoption video?

I love this place

We went camping last weekend up in Fort Bragg, about 2 1/2 hours north of where we live and we stopped at this beach. It's called glass beach, you can see why. There was no sand, just beach glass. We even dug down to see if we could get to sand, nope, just glass and some rocks with a few pieces of seaweed thrown in. It is seriously the coolest place I've ever been. I've never seen anything like it. It was wonderful. I can't wait to go back.

The waiting itch

When we started this process I decided I was just going to put it in my head that it would be at least a year. Our agency told us the "average" wait time is 6-18 months, so I knew 1 year was a good marker. We haven't hit a year yet (we are right around 8 months), but I'm starting to get the wait itch (as I like to call it). It's this strange feeling of hope, excitement and worry. Worry that no one will ever pick us and a year from now - or even longer - we'll still be waiting. There's also some fear mixed in of getting getting "the call" and how that will unfold. It's a strange mix of emotions. I think some of this was prompted by our first contact which fell through. The flurry of that experience and the idea of actually becoming parents just brought it all to the forefront. Don't get me wrong. I love my life. I have an amazing husband, a job I love, great friends and family, two awesome dogs. I'm healthy and those I love are healthy. It's a great life. I'm just ready to be a mom. I can feel myself trying to fight off the impatience that's creeping in, but I think I just have to ride the waves as they come. I feel like a little kid in the back of the car..."are we there yet?" (cue foot tapping)