In short, I love it. It makes me happy in my soul. And it's so friggin EASY to do. Gone are the days of pins and plastic pants and all that stuff. Now there are a million different kinds of diapers that you can get to find the best fit for your child. We mostly use BumGenius 4.0s and they've been an impressively dependable diaper. I can stuff more or less inside them depending on how long she'll be wearing them. They easily last 12-13 hours overnight with our heavy wetter.
I entered a contest to win a bunch of BumGenius diapers that includes posting on my blog about them for a chance to win, but I had honestly meant to start talking more about cloth diapers on this blog anyways. And we really do love BumGenius (contest or not). So if you're having a baby, considering having a baby, have a child in diapers, or just want to know about cloth diapering in general, hit me up! It's one of the choices I feel the best about making for our family.
And if you ARE interested in cloth diapering, you should really check the contest out. Go to www.KellyWels.com (founder of Kellyscloset.com, a GREAT resource!) and check out the bumGenius 4.0 Sweepstakes! You can find more information about it here. You can also access the sweepstakes entry form here.
Monday, February 28, 2011
Thursday, February 10, 2011
13 months going on 3 years.
I've never been great at punctuality (but I'm improving), which explains why Abby's one year post is a month late. Opps! It doesn't help that my once adorable and helpless baby is now an adorable, feisty, mischievous girl on the go. She no longer sits in one place or takes a few steps here and there before falling. She RUNS. Quickly and with purpose. Towards anything she shouldn't be running towards. Some of her favorite things to get into right now are the dishwasher (magic box of intrigue!), the bathroom trashcan (fun new toys!), and her closet (coolest room EVER!). Needless to say, baby gates and closed doors have become an important feature in our house. She's not quite as good about eating anything we give her anymore, but she's still a champ when it comes to food. Currently, she would do almost anything for a banana and often looks longingly at the fruit bowl on the counter while saying "na-na?" Don't let her fool you though, this is usually after she's had more than her fair share. We're not starving her, though her past growth curve might have suggested that we were! She eats, I swear! She did finally start putting on weight though and now weighs in at a whopping 18.4 lbs at 13 months. By "whopping," I mean she's finally on the growth scale at the 4th percentile! She's 30 inches tall (about 55th percentile) and I forget her head size, but it was giant and measured in the 84th percentile. It's a good thing she has that giant head to hold all those brains for that Ivy league education we're going to force upon her. That's our retirement plan, right there! Which more than likely means that she'll either go through a lot of schooling and then work in the non-profit sector (see also: crappy pay sector). On a completely unrelated sidenote, she has discovered tantrums. My one year old child can throw a pretty mean tantrum when you tell her not to play in the dog water and remove from the situation. Thusly, we're officially screwed.
Anyways, Korea is still as much of an adventure as ever. Now it's just a bitterly cold adventure. We haven't had to much of a chance to explore beyond a lot of day trips to Seoul. But Seoul... oh what a city! I truly love that place. It's so alive and bustling and filled with the most ridiculous and fun things. The street vendors there sell the most random things you would ever expect to find. Ironically I've seen more Swedish Dala horse items than anywhere but Lindsborg, KS and that even includes a previous trip to Sweden. The restaurants in Seoul are one of my favorite things though. You can probably find just about any kind or ethnicity of food you can imagine. Jared and I had dinner at a Bulgarian restaurant awhile ago that was indescribably delicious and impressively affordable as well. But the very best type of food in Seoul, hands down, is the street food. At night time, they line the shopping districts with their carts and cook some of the best and craziest looking food you've ever seen. I'm not sure what a lot of it is, but so far everything has been delicious. Think NYC hot dog carts but with freshly made dumplings and skewers of marinated beef and chicken grilled right in from of you. This one was a local street food vendor, but delicious none the less:
Anyways, Korea is still as much of an adventure as ever. Now it's just a bitterly cold adventure. We haven't had to much of a chance to explore beyond a lot of day trips to Seoul. But Seoul... oh what a city! I truly love that place. It's so alive and bustling and filled with the most ridiculous and fun things. The street vendors there sell the most random things you would ever expect to find. Ironically I've seen more Swedish Dala horse items than anywhere but Lindsborg, KS and that even includes a previous trip to Sweden. The restaurants in Seoul are one of my favorite things though. You can probably find just about any kind or ethnicity of food you can imagine. Jared and I had dinner at a Bulgarian restaurant awhile ago that was indescribably delicious and impressively affordable as well. But the very best type of food in Seoul, hands down, is the street food. At night time, they line the shopping districts with their carts and cook some of the best and craziest looking food you've ever seen. I'm not sure what a lot of it is, but so far everything has been delicious. Think NYC hot dog carts but with freshly made dumplings and skewers of marinated beef and chicken grilled right in from of you. This one was a local street food vendor, but delicious none the less:
Sunday, October 31, 2010
365 days.
What a difference a year makes!
Cutest duck. Ever.
Obviously I haven't been doing so well at updating the blog. I check other people's blogs regularly (I miss you, fellow Auerbachians, thank you for being better updaters!), but I'm hoping that checking them via the Blogger Dashboard instead of checking them regularly will help remind me to update.
We've been in Korea now for about a month and a half now, and in our house for a little over a month. Seems like so long considering it feels like we just got here! We really enjoy it so far and are happy to call Korea home for the next few years. Abby's been a huge hit with all of the locals. Something about an adorable, smiling, blond haired, blue eyed baby girl who loves new people seems to have an effect on them. Who knew!? She loves to smile and wave at everyone she sees and all of the Koreans love to talk to her and play with her. Everyone wins!
On the subject of Abby... we're dangerously close to walking. Scary close. Like, have the video camera ready close. And now that I've said that, she won't start walking for another 6 months out of spite. She's her father's daughter, after all. She crawls lightning fast and can talk now. She says Mama (when she's hungry), Dada (when she wants to play), and bye-bye (with an accompanying wave most times). And she knows her name. My graduate level psychology education tells me that these are all clearly signs of early brilliance. Her grandfather agrees and he's a psychologist, so it must be true. Two people can't both be biased in this situation, right?
Halloween 2009 (Notice the boxes... just unpacked from Germany.)
Halloween 2010 (No visible boxes, but just unpacked in Korea. Some things never change, I suppose.)
Cutest duck. Ever.Obviously I haven't been doing so well at updating the blog. I check other people's blogs regularly (I miss you, fellow Auerbachians, thank you for being better updaters!), but I'm hoping that checking them via the Blogger Dashboard instead of checking them regularly will help remind me to update.
We've been in Korea now for about a month and a half now, and in our house for a little over a month. Seems like so long considering it feels like we just got here! We really enjoy it so far and are happy to call Korea home for the next few years. Abby's been a huge hit with all of the locals. Something about an adorable, smiling, blond haired, blue eyed baby girl who loves new people seems to have an effect on them. Who knew!? She loves to smile and wave at everyone she sees and all of the Koreans love to talk to her and play with her. Everyone wins!
On the subject of Abby... we're dangerously close to walking. Scary close. Like, have the video camera ready close. And now that I've said that, she won't start walking for another 6 months out of spite. She's her father's daughter, after all. She crawls lightning fast and can talk now. She says Mama (when she's hungry), Dada (when she wants to play), and bye-bye (with an accompanying wave most times). And she knows her name. My graduate level psychology education tells me that these are all clearly signs of early brilliance. Her grandfather agrees and he's a psychologist, so it must be true. Two people can't both be biased in this situation, right?
Wednesday, August 11, 2010
Just eat your kimchi.
As the upcoming Korea move vapidly approaches, things to have gotten more and more hectic. I'd love to blame the third (3!) international move in four (4!) years for my lack of blog posting, but we all know that just isn't the case. In reality, I have a very active 7 month old and a poor sense of blog follow-through.
As for the latest and greatest in the Nystrom household, Abby is keeping us on our toes these days. After about four months of cranky, drooling, any minute now, pissed off baby teething behavior it appeared. The first tooth! She was chewing on a rubber duck pirate bath toy in her highchair when her gums started bleeding and we knew for sure the end was nigh. Sure enough, it came to the surface the next day and we had a much happier baby a few days later. Then she surprised us with an out of nowhere second tooth on her 7 month birthday. Which, I would like to point out means she's SEVEN MONTHS OLD! More than half a year! We've managed to keep her alive, in relatively good condition, and away from the various sharp implements and hatchets strewn throughout the house. Thank goodness everything gets packed up in a few weeks and we can pretend that we don't need to childproof for a little while longer. As it stands now, our house is a small child death trap/dangerous wonderland and frankly we're just too lazy to child proof.
Ironically, one of the things I registered for before Abby was born and before we had left Germany were some of the childproof electrical outlet covers. Not knowing what kind of house we'd be living in soon, I didn't worry about any of the cabinet locks or toilet lid things. But electrical outlets? Every house has those! How can I go wrong?! I did not account for a move to Korea, where they most definitely are not going to fit the outlets there. Oh well, we'll use them eventually...
Speaking of the move to Korea, we actually have plane tickets so I think the Army might be serious about us leaving this time. We even have dates for movers to come, which I might add are rapidly upon us. Army regulations state that we can only move half of our normal weight allowance to Korea, and the rest will be staying stateside in government storage. This really isn't that big of a deal, but now we face the task of deciding what stuff is important enough to take with us , what stuff can we live without, and what stuff is stupid to even consider taking (i.e. most of our 110 volt kitchen appliances). We'll be able to get loaner furniture from the Army and a lot of the apartments there actually come semi or fully furnished. After some typical chaos, we have it settled to where the dog and the cat will be able to fly to Korea with us. Our original airline was unwilling to fly any pets over 70 lbs, dog and crate included, which promptly knocked out flying Cody with us and shipping him cargo was just not an option. But that's squared away, so I can breathe a little easier.
And because you, dear reader, have been a trooper and read all my ramblings, I leave you with a picture of an adorable baby with super squishy cheeks!
As for the latest and greatest in the Nystrom household, Abby is keeping us on our toes these days. After about four months of cranky, drooling, any minute now, pissed off baby teething behavior it appeared. The first tooth! She was chewing on a rubber duck pirate bath toy in her highchair when her gums started bleeding and we knew for sure the end was nigh. Sure enough, it came to the surface the next day and we had a much happier baby a few days later. Then she surprised us with an out of nowhere second tooth on her 7 month birthday. Which, I would like to point out means she's SEVEN MONTHS OLD! More than half a year! We've managed to keep her alive, in relatively good condition, and away from the various sharp implements and hatchets strewn throughout the house. Thank goodness everything gets packed up in a few weeks and we can pretend that we don't need to childproof for a little while longer. As it stands now, our house is a small child death trap/dangerous wonderland and frankly we're just too lazy to child proof.
Ironically, one of the things I registered for before Abby was born and before we had left Germany were some of the childproof electrical outlet covers. Not knowing what kind of house we'd be living in soon, I didn't worry about any of the cabinet locks or toilet lid things. But electrical outlets? Every house has those! How can I go wrong?! I did not account for a move to Korea, where they most definitely are not going to fit the outlets there. Oh well, we'll use them eventually...
Speaking of the move to Korea, we actually have plane tickets so I think the Army might be serious about us leaving this time. We even have dates for movers to come, which I might add are rapidly upon us. Army regulations state that we can only move half of our normal weight allowance to Korea, and the rest will be staying stateside in government storage. This really isn't that big of a deal, but now we face the task of deciding what stuff is important enough to take with us , what stuff can we live without, and what stuff is stupid to even consider taking (i.e. most of our 110 volt kitchen appliances). We'll be able to get loaner furniture from the Army and a lot of the apartments there actually come semi or fully furnished. After some typical chaos, we have it settled to where the dog and the cat will be able to fly to Korea with us. Our original airline was unwilling to fly any pets over 70 lbs, dog and crate included, which promptly knocked out flying Cody with us and shipping him cargo was just not an option. But that's squared away, so I can breathe a little easier.
And because you, dear reader, have been a trooper and read all my ramblings, I leave you with a picture of an adorable baby with super squishy cheeks!
Monday, May 3, 2010
What a difference a year makes.
Dear Abigail,
One year ago today, our world began to change in ways we never could have imagined. One year ago today, I naively took a pregnancy test figuring it would be yet another month of heartbreaking negatives. I had more or less given up hope that you would find your way to us. So much so, in fact, that I went on a nice long bike ride with your daddy that day and drank FAR too much delicious iced coffee. But then... when I expected it the least... the screen on the digital test flashed "pregnant." At this point, most people would have found something poignant and emotional to say. Your momma, however, was so shocked that she yelled out "holy crap (but in different words)!" and looked at your daddy with wild-eyed surprise. Apparently I'd forgotten to tell your daddy that I had taken a test, because he looked at me like I was insane. Two minutes, an entire bottle of water, and another test later we had the same answer and sense of complete bewilderment.
One year later and you are a beautiful, active, intelligent and amazing four month old. You are a real person, complete with likes (i.e. your pink stuffed elephant and daddy ) and dislikes (i.e. being hungry and tummy time). I could never really comprehend that I was actually pregnant with you, even as my belly got giant and I got more miserable. But now that you're here, I can't even begin to wrap my brain around this situation. We're parents... and you are a product of us. You look strikingly similar to your daddy, but you have your momma's tongue, feet, and temper. By and large, you are a very easy going baby who takes so well to change and chaos. (Stick with that, by the way, because we're a military family!)
Who knows what the next year will hold, Abigail, but I look forward to seeing you grow and change throughout it. I anticipate you becoming your own person, learning new things, and continuing to charm room fulls of people on a regular basis.
Momma loves you, Abby. I am so blessed to be your mother and so grateful to have you in my life.
Love,
Momma
One year ago today, our world began to change in ways we never could have imagined. One year ago today, I naively took a pregnancy test figuring it would be yet another month of heartbreaking negatives. I had more or less given up hope that you would find your way to us. So much so, in fact, that I went on a nice long bike ride with your daddy that day and drank FAR too much delicious iced coffee. But then... when I expected it the least... the screen on the digital test flashed "pregnant." At this point, most people would have found something poignant and emotional to say. Your momma, however, was so shocked that she yelled out "holy crap (but in different words)!" and looked at your daddy with wild-eyed surprise. Apparently I'd forgotten to tell your daddy that I had taken a test, because he looked at me like I was insane. Two minutes, an entire bottle of water, and another test later we had the same answer and sense of complete bewilderment.
One year later and you are a beautiful, active, intelligent and amazing four month old. You are a real person, complete with likes (i.e. your pink stuffed elephant and daddy ) and dislikes (i.e. being hungry and tummy time). I could never really comprehend that I was actually pregnant with you, even as my belly got giant and I got more miserable. But now that you're here, I can't even begin to wrap my brain around this situation. We're parents... and you are a product of us. You look strikingly similar to your daddy, but you have your momma's tongue, feet, and temper. By and large, you are a very easy going baby who takes so well to change and chaos. (Stick with that, by the way, because we're a military family!)
Who knows what the next year will hold, Abigail, but I look forward to seeing you grow and change throughout it. I anticipate you becoming your own person, learning new things, and continuing to charm room fulls of people on a regular basis.
Momma loves you, Abby. I am so blessed to be your mother and so grateful to have you in my life.
Love,
Momma
Sunday, April 25, 2010
Better Late Than Never (or Why We Don't Shoot Video)
We've clearly been negligent in our blog postings lately... As it turns out, having a nearly four month old (!!!) baby keeps you pretty busy. Abby is learning all sorts of new things lately that most babies don't get to see. She comes to work with me everyday and has adopted the staff as her surrogate family! For those who don't know, I'm the lead case manager/site manager for the local domestic violence shelter. I've been really lucky to have a job where I can also still be a full-time mom, but that will unfortunately be coming to an end this week. Why, you ask? Well that brings us to chaotic point #2 in the Nystrom household! We're currently gearing up for the next great Nystrom Family adventure, two years in South Korea! We're not entirely sure when, but sometime in the next few months we'll be heading out. Stay tuned for more information and travel adventures!
In Abby news, she's... getting... HUGE! It's astonishing that we're quickly approaching the four month mark. She giggles with reckless abandon, has a new found love of bathtime, has made a pink elephant her best friend, and can charm a room like nobody's business. We're having some issues with reflux and digestion, so evenings are a big touchy but she makes up for it by being the happiest baby you ever saw during the day.
While I work on getting some pictures uploaded, check out the (hopefully working) video below! It's a very good example of why we don't often end up with good video footage. But we're working on it and Abby's only getting more adorable, so expect more now that I (think I) know how to work it!
-Pam
In Abby news, she's... getting... HUGE! It's astonishing that we're quickly approaching the four month mark. She giggles with reckless abandon, has a new found love of bathtime, has made a pink elephant her best friend, and can charm a room like nobody's business. We're having some issues with reflux and digestion, so evenings are a big touchy but she makes up for it by being the happiest baby you ever saw during the day.
While I work on getting some pictures uploaded, check out the (hopefully working) video below! It's a very good example of why we don't often end up with good video footage. But we're working on it and Abby's only getting more adorable, so expect more now that I (think I) know how to work it!
-Pam
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