Trading Off the Greens

OK, so I've gone a little green with the cloth diapering... and it's going fairly well. I've had to use disposables on Baby Sister quite a few times because she keeps getting a rash... After doing all sorts of insane things with laundering - of which I will spare you the gory details - we finally figured out it was a reaction to strawberries! She's not allergic, but she just can't have too many otherwise she'll get a horrendous diaper rash... crazy. But glad to have figured it out.
But now... Lazy Baby is all out refusing to nurse except for in the middle of the night. It's been a constant battle to get him to nurse. He's distracted by everything and just doesn't want to sit still. So, what I'm saving in disposable diapers I am now spending on formula :( Wondering how close to 1yr they have to be before starting regular milk... I know Doctors will say not before the day they turn one year... but ugghhhh! It's so typical of my life ;) saving in one area only to be spending more in another...

Tweenie is now a Teenie!!!

I have a teenager in the house folks. 13 was a much anticipated happy, happy milestone for tweenie! Who now I must refer to as Teenie. Or maybe something more clever and telling? Maybe tween-dult. She thinks she is an adult around here. Which is what leads to most of our issues. She tries to take charge of everything around here like she's the parent. And it is driving me completely bonkers!!!

I suppose I have let the situation go on for too long. I'm not that take charge kind of person, so a lot of times I just sit back and let her go and only say something when she goes too far. But it's irritating. And frustrating.

She's been really awful at the dinner table. Constantly nagging Little Man to eat. His dinner eating antics are almost out of control. And the big thing is that she insists on doing the whole nagging thing while the husband and I are sitting right there. The thing is - one day last week she had some event which kept her from eating dinner with the family. Little Man ate like an angel.

Since then, the husband and I have told her that WE are the parents and that it is our job to reprimand him if necessary. And that she's to mind her own business and tend to her own eating at the table.

We've had to remind her every single night. And she has complete attitude about it! But seriously, it's not her business. She's one of the kids!! She needs to understand her place and understand that her authority has limits and boundaries. And that she has NO authority when dad and I are in the room. She usually "watches" the little ones while I make dinner, but even then she takes what little authority she has to the extreme. And I constantly have to watch her watching them! It's insane. I keep talking to her about it, but it seems to do no good.

The really messed up thing was that after we have been working on Teenie for the past week or so on this issue - last night at the dinner table I was busy with Lazy Baby and Baby Sister was smearing her peach juice all over herself and the table - to which my husband looked to Teenie and said something to the effect that she should have been all on top of that!! Which totally goes against everything we've done and told her for the past week! UGH!!

Any suggestions?? Of course I will be saying something to the hus about this...

Crazy Crazy Crazy

Yep. I'm completely off my rocker.

I always take on too much.

I'm teaching a workshop starting this Friday. Do I really have time to prepare myself for it? Kind of. Especially if I give up on the sewing, knitting, crocheting, and hunting stuff down bit for the next couple of days. But I'm all obsessive. Seriously. Once I get something that I want to do in my head it's impossible for me to do anything else.

I've been so completely obsessive about everything related to cloth diapering for the past month. I have diapers on the brain. The washing, the sewing, the notions, the pins, the detergent.... etc... It's bonkers folks.

And wool soakers are the bomb. Seriously. I spent a week obsessively collecting wool sweaters from every thrift store in the area. I put them in bags in the spare room until I actually have time to do something with them. Then the other night, went out at 10pm to shake them out in the yard because I read somewhere that you should do that to shake off any moth larva. Seriously. Obsessed. But couldn't stand the thought of ruining the great finds I made before I can make them into soakers... shorties and longies and skirties and wraps and just plain soakers...

I spent a week going from store to store hunting down Kool-Aid packets to dye yarn. I'm crocheting and knitting soakers from virgin uncolored wool... and I can't just leave them white. There is only one store in the area that sells blue kool-aid packets.

There is only one small store in the area that sells diaper pins.

There is no store anywhere around here that sells diaper pail deodorizer disks. Or wool wash in any form other that Woolite - which you can't use to wash your wool soakers.

I have continually searched for a good laundry detergent... none of the stores in the area carry anything...And I just can't but it online... the shipping costs about as much as the detergent. Apparently you can use any detergent - just a much smaller amount. But of course Baby sister has developed a monstrous rash. Which her "mild" diaper rash from disposables was part of the reason I went for cloth...there is so much conflicting info online! It's crazy.

Obsessive I tell ya. But I suppose there are worse things to be obsessed about.