Waahh!

Big sis was trying to be nice by letting him use her special pillow and piling toys around (and on) him, but he's not that into it.

Ginormous Gator

Gator looks huge in this picture. He is getting bigger all the time. I'm curious to hear his stats at his two month checkup this week.

See all those Little People, rubber duckies, etc. on the bed? They are some of Violet's "friends". She loads about 15 of them into the doll stroller and pushes them around. They must be in the room she wants to be in. When big sis is feeling generous, she shares with little brother. Whether he's interested in having toys piled on him or not.

For Mimi, press one. For GG, press two.

Fun with a phone earlier tonight. 

Daddy wears his sunglasses on his head. So that's where hers belong, right??

She burned some energy today at the pool. There was great alarm when she realized that her frog did not come back from the pool. Temporary tattoos can't stay forever. We decided he must have liked the water too much to come home.

Feet Feats

Earlier this week, Violet came home from Grandma's with these:

And a frog "tattoo" on her arm. She's thrilled by both. 

But I don't know what's up with those feet. She keeps sending them to time out. Sometimes we don't know why. Sometimes it's because they are on the table when we are eating. Because of course, it's all the fault of the feet, not the brain controlling them.

Old-School Cloth Diapers

Happy in a clean diaper 

(which he's still wearing as I type this)

Old-school prefold diapers intimidated me so much when I first started cloth diapering. Pocket diapers are a lot more straightforward to put on...and I had a wriggly child. But with the new baby, I was determined to try prefolds. After diapering a bucking bronco of a toddler, an infant doesn't seem nearly as hard.

Prefolds are an inexpensive way to cloth diaper. You can customize your fold to your child. And best of all, the diapers can be used for all sorts of things...including a great burp cloth. (Like this one, which may be yellowed with dried spit up...but was right by my computer so I snapped a quick pic.)

The prefolds I use are NOT the thin Gerber ones you might find at a big box store. Those make so-so burp cloths, but are not good cloth diapers. Most of my prefolds came from a Little Lions coop, but there are many places you can buy good, thick Chinese prefolds like mine.

The diapers haven't changed much, but fastening has. Some people still use pins, but many parents use a Snappi. It's a T-shaped stretchy plastic fastener with hooks on the ends. My diaper folding technique isn't the best, but the covers I use have contained things when the diapers wasn't snug enough on the legs. 

The covers I use are made of PUL, a waterproof fabric. You can also use wool or some fleece as a cover. I'm loving PUL covers with an extra leg gusset to contain poopsplosions and hook and loop fasteners for easy adjusting of size. I really like my Thirsties covers and Bummis Super Brite covers for the newborn stage. 

Gator is wearing a small Bummis Super Brite in the photo above, with an infant prefold underneath. I use this cover with fitted diapers as well, and it fits differently over those. Both fitteds and prefolds require a cover to be waterproof. And with my rudimentary prefold-folding skills, a good cover is a real clothing saver!

Yes

My daughter keeps coming up to me, sweetly holding out her hand toward me...only to say "I got a booger". Lovely. 

She is saying another word that we've waited a looong time to hear regularly. It's "yes". For months she's repeated what we say as her affirmative response. "Yes." Such a simple word, yet so nice to hear. Too bad we hear "no!!" a lot more often.

Russell the Sheep

My awesome friend Stacia sent us what has become Violet's favorite book at the moment. Her parents like reading it (and rereading it and rereading it...) more than most children's books. It's cleverly illustrated and a fun book in general.

Russell, like my little girl, has trouble falling asleep. So he tries all sorts of things to fall asleep, but nothing works. We get to see what happens to poor Russell as he makes these misguided attempts to get comfortable. Someone seemed to identify with Russell and is fighting sleep a little less these days. 

"Russell Book" gets asked for almost every night. A stuffed frog of mine has been renamed Russell, too, which is a high honor. Very few of the baby dolls and stuffed animals in our house have names, and the ones that do tend to be named after important people in my daughter's life. 

One of my favorite things about Russell the Sheep is the illustrations. On every spread, there is a frog friend. He's easier to find on some pages than others, and sometimes we just go through the book and look for the frog. 

The illustrations and storyline of the book are such that my little girl can tell us the story, complete with favorite quotes ("hopping mad!"). She's never done that with a book before. 

We love this book and highly recommend it, especially for a two year old who has trouble falling asleep!