Babies.

Having already had a baby a few years ago, I assumed that this time around, things would be the same.  In many cases, they are.  In others, they are not.

Like burping. I know that I wrote a few weeks back about this.  Those tips and tricks worked for a while, but sometimes (especially at night!), Johnny will not for the life of him give me a burp.  I called the lactation consultant and they recommended putting him in his car seat at night if he won’t burp so he isn’t laying flat on his back.  That sometimes will help the liquid go down and the burp to eventually come up.  I was not sure at first, but I tried it the next night and the kid slept for 4 hours after not bupring!  I guess it did help his tummy not hurt and be full of gas. 

Cradle Cap… my next dilema. Belle had this to a degree, but she had long enough hair to cover it.  Johnny started getting it a few weeks after he was born and it wasn’t a big deal, but it was getting nasty!  Plus, he got his first real haircut (thanks aunt E!) last week so you could really see it all over the top of his head.  Our neighbor swears that if you use adult shampoo and conditioner on the kid, that will clear it up. I also heard that you can use Head and Shoulders once a week on their scalp. Another friend suggested combing his head/hair every day and that would get rid of it.  But you know what I tried yesterday as a comment from another friend?  I took a soft bristled toothbrush and brushed/scrubbed vegetable oil into his hair!  I know I know.. pretty nasty.  I rinsed it out and his hair is still a little oily and his head smells a little funny, but you know what?  About 90% of the cradle cap is gone! Thanks Jess!

Diapers.  Cloth diapers.  I don’t love them yet, but I am glad we made the change.  I think the fact that we keep several disposables in the car, in his room and around the house makes it easier that if the diapers aren’t stuffed and ready to go or if I forgot to get a diaper out of the drawer before Belle takes a nap, I can just put him in a regular diaper.  That has made it  nice.  We have only had a handful of leakes/blowouts (well, not really, just got the corner of his onsie), but last night he was in a disposable and blew out the leg as well.  I don’t think any diaper comes anywhere close to keeping it all contained all the time.

Crying.  Belle was a pretty good baby.  It did take her a long time to learn how to fall asleep on her own. We let her cry it out a lot. But Johnny went through a stage that for 2.5 weeks if he wasn’t eating or sleeping, he was wailing his head off.  If you ever decide you want a headache, just try being around a baby that cries that much.  Man o man, was I thankful for Tylenol during those days! :)  I had heard that peak fussiness was around 6 weeks, but I wasn’t sure if he was having problems with some of the food I was eating. I was about a day away from taking all dairy out of my diet to see if that was the problem, but then he just stopped crying all the time.  Granted, he is still a baby and he still cries, but there are quiet times too when he will just lay on his blanket at watch the ceiling fan! :)  Thinking about having a kid?  You should get a ceiling fan put in!

Anyway, this confirms the fact that all babies are different and just because you did it once, doesn’t mean you know what you are doing the next time around!  But here’s to learning new tricks of the trade!

Too many ideas… not enough time.

The chillins are about to wake up from naps- so here are a few glances into my brain!

-My parents moved away… I’m sad.  I miss them and can’t wait for them to come visit!  But along with this, I’ve been taking pictures of Belle and Johnny with each word from Matthew 28:19 &20 and mailing them a picture each day.  Those are long verses!  I think we will be mailing these postcards for about 40 days! :) 

-My honey is falling apart… Jason is having a rough go with his physical body.  His colon seems fine(thankfully!), but he is having shoulder problems and shin/foot problems.  Along with the fact that he is probably going to have surgery shortly to correct something in his nose to help him breath better and have his adnoids removed.  This has meant and will continue to mean lots of doctor appointments and tests… hopefully we will get some answers soon.  Poor guy- he is usually using severl ice packs each night to try to keep things from hurting.  I’m sorry love.  However, on the bright side, this is the year (since we just had a baby and met our deductible) to have medical problems!  Praise the Lord for insurance!

-My son now weighs a whopping 10.5lbs!  I know that he eats a lot… but GOODNESS!

-We have a schizophrenic window in our car on the driver’s side door.  Sometimes it will open, sometimes it will not.  Sometimes once it is open, it will not work for like 5 min and then go back up again.  The man at the repair shop said he thinks it is a broken wire and that opening and closing the door is causing it to touch every once and while.  Hmmm.  Hope that is what it is and they can get it fixed.  Nothing like going through the drive through only to realize your window doesn’t work! :) 

-I am feeling more and more like my old self every day!  I love my kids and I am so thankful that God has blessed us with the ability to have biological children…. but I do not like being pregnant!  Whew!  My body just aches all the time and I feel like someone has taken over everything!  But things are slowly starting to get back to normal and lets just say that I’m thankful that you can’t be pregnant forever!  The child has to eventually come out!

-Cloth diapering… is going well.  I think I have a system figured out.  I bought a trash can with a foot petal and put it right at the end of the changing table.  That way when I have a dirty wipe, I just open the can with my foot and drop it right in… beautiful!  Now I’m just waiting for Jason to hook up the diaper sprayer and we will be golden!

I think that is it for now….

 

Cloth Diapering, Post Numero Uno.

Seeing as how we have branched into a new phase of life of cloth diapering at the Rohlf household- I’m pretty sure the number of poop stories is going to increase on my blog.  Just thought I would give you all a heads up!

This VERY strange and appalling idea all started back this winter when we met some new friends at a coffee house.  We had them over for dinner and somehow the topic of diapers came up and they told us that they used cloth diapers.  I couldn’t believe it- they did not seem like the type of people that would cloth diaper at all!  Like the same way I think about myself… I WOULD NEVER cloth diaper!  And look at me now!  Anyway, Jess invited me over to her house to see her “set up”.   I’ll just say this, cloth diapering has come a long way since when our parent’s did it!  I went to her house and from there on it just seemed like something I could wrap my head around. Although, without seeing her set up and I mean literally, step by step how they made it work, the idea was completely overwhelming to me!   And, to top it off- Jason and I had already been having a conversation about how we could be more green to become more like the culture in Iowa City in order to reach more people for Christ.  We had been tossing around a few ideas and  is one of them that stuck.  All during my pregnancy, I did research on Fuzzi Bunz (the brand that Jess used) and I was pretty excited!  Granted, with these diapers (they are an “pocket diapers” that have a waterproof lining and a slit in the back to slide in more material to absorb liquid… just google it, they can explain themselves!) are more expensive than the regular cloth diapers that my mom used.  But Jason and I had talked about it and decided that we were looking for something that wasn’t a huge inconvenience and that would last through several kids.  Anyway, we thought we were going with the Fuzzi Bunz (oh yes, and they have snaps and come in several sizes so they can grow with your child- but the down side is you have to order more diapers as your child gets bigger) and were planning/budgeting to make this work.  However, thanks to my friend Rach, she introduced me to the Bum Genious (aren’t these names amazing! and these things rock!  They have velcro so they are more more similiar to disposable diapers and they come in a “one size fits all” diaper! (That way you don’t have to order more diapers as your kiddo grows)  This week I had ordered three of each to see which ones would work best for Johnny (as my children have small thighs so I was afraid of leaking!) and sure enough Johnny leaked through the Fuzzi Bunz, but did great with the Bum Genious.  Granted, he is still a little small for what they recommend for lbs when using these diapers, but we had  the final talk last night and decided to go with the Bum Genious!   Woo hoo!

Anyway, back to yesterday.  I had 6 cloth diapers total.  I put the first one on Johnny at about 10:15am and the last one came off around 8:45pm.  We had one leak (out his leg and onto my shirt), several poopy diapers and one explosive poopy diaper in which he somehow managed to poop down the back pocket of the diaper (the part that is not supposed to get dirty!)  Fun times.  It is still a little awkward right now as I don’t have a system down yet (like where to put the dirty wipes if you are not going to throw away the diaper…hmmm.) Also- since Johnny is exclusively nursing- they “say” (and I use that very carefully!) that you don’t have to rinse out poopy diapers.  Not until you introduce them to solids that is.  I, for one, am not convinced of this as I have seen and smelled some pretty nasty diapers from my children! :)  However, I”m “told” that it is just like yogurt- and you would put yogurt into your washer, right?  Again… hmmm.  They make these things now called diaper sprayers that hook to the side of your toilets to rinse the diapers so you don’t have to get your hands wet!  I think we are going to get one- but since we don’t have it yet- I stood in the bathroom with a plastic cup filled with cold water and attempted to rinse out the poop.  It didn’t work very well.  I’m just trying to imagine that all that “yogurt” is not sitting on the iside of my washing machine.  Oh gosh, here comes the germ freak in me….. I need to stop now.

Right, so, I have ordered more diapers to make it so we can wash the diapers every other day.  I think we are going to stick with disposable diapers for night time- I’ve heard they absorb much better and babies sleep better through the night.  Yeah, I’m all about that.

I need to go now and fold and stuff all my diapers for tomorrow!

Leah Rohlf is cloth diapering… I never thought I would see the day! 

Burping 101.

Apparently, not all babies burp on their own.

I did not know this.

My son stopped burping earlier this week.

Know what happens?

Lots of gas, hurting tummies and tears shed by all parties.

Bummer.

Thankfully, we have google.

We learned new burping techniques.

Guess what?  He burps like a champ now!

Praise the Lord! A sleeping baby is once again residing at the Rohlf house.

The end….. we hope!

“Look mom! We’re snuggling!”

"Look mom! We're snuggling!"

I forgot to post the picture of the kids from my previous post!

1,2 Buckle My Shoe.

They say that going from 1 to 2 kids is the hardest transition.  I’ve also heard that going from 2 to 3 kids is the hardest.  As well as, after 3 kids… it doesn’t matter how many you have, they just join in the ruckus from day 1!

I don’t know about all of that.  I do know that having 1 kid was pretty hard.  I went from “my time” to being on call 24-7.  Not that it isn’t worth it… it was just a hard transition.  As I was leaving the hospital with Johnny in tow- the nurses and my doctor said “Now, you know that having 2 kids is the hardest transition…right?”   Right… thanks for that.  Maybe you could have told me that when I checked into the hospital.  But I guess once you are walking out with your 2 year old and newborn, there is no turning back.

The first week was awful and amazing all at once.  Johnny had his days and nights mixed up so I think just in the first week I lost about 20-30 hours of sleep.  Talk about ‘getting your feet wet’ - I jumped in head first!  However, Jason was off two of the days that week and the other three he took half days.  So having two people around with two kids wasn’t all that bad.  We each took one.

Then week two came along and I was all alone from Monday am at 7:15.  Johhny still had his days and nights mixed up and overall it was a long and hard week.  At the end of that week- he finally figured out that nighttime is for sleeping and would go back to sleep without wailing his head off for hours after his feedings.

Week three- cluster feeding central.  Man o man,  I knew this boy could eat- but this was amazing.  Every afternoon/evening from 4pm on, all he wanted to do was eat.  It didn’t matter if he had just finished eating, he was ready to go again.  Now, that doesn’t seem like a huge deal until you try to do something… like eat dinner.  Or leave the house.  Yep, I was homebound that week.  Thankfully, that ended a few days ago.

We are now in week four and besides being quite tired, we are doing pretty well.  I honestly have to say (with the children God has given me) that the transition from 1-2 kids was easier than 0-1 kid. :)  Maybe it is because we have a routine and I’m used to being interrupted at any moment in the day with who knows what to greet me! :)  But really, Belle finally came around after 2 weeks of “adjustment” to not being the only child in the house and she loves her brother!  If he cries, she comes running.  If he is awake, she is cuddling by his side talking to him.  Yesterday, she laid down on the blanket beside him and put a small blanket over the top of the two of them and said “Look mom, we’re snuggling!”  She is a great big sister.  And my hubby… well, I have yet another reason to brag about him. He is a wonderful daddy and a great help and support to me.  Every night after I’m done feeding Johnny, he will wake up roll over and sometimes kiss me, sometimes just pat me on the arm and sometimes verbally thank me for sacrificing for our family.  What a wonderful thing to look forward to after each feeding.  Knowing that someone sees and understands what I’m going through.  And me, well, my maternity pants don’t fit very well anymore.  And I can’t seem to find regular pants that do.  Thankfully, my maternity shirts were mostly designed to fit a little snug- so they are doing all right.  I’m pretty tired and have headaches quite a bit of the time.  I think they are mostly due to lack of sleep.  But meals are still being delivered to our door (thank you again!!!) and my tomato plants in the garden are not dead yet.. but pretty close!

In closing:

“If you try to keep your life for yourself, you will lose it.  But if you give up your life for me, you will find true life.”- Luke 9:24

“But as for me, how good it is to be near God!  I have made the sovereign Lord my shelter and I will tell everyone about the wonderful things you do.” - Psalm 73:28

And a quote I read this week about beauty (very relavant in my life with the leftover baby weight!)

“A woman is beautiful not because of who she is (her looksor roles), but because of Whose she is.  As we learn to live in the midst of God’s ‘wild about us’ love (Psalm 45:11- The message), we’re transformed.  We become fully alive and impossibly beautiful.” - Jane Rubietta-TCW

A penny saved is a penny earned.

For those who know me well, they understand that I am a bargain shopper!  I enjoy a GREAT deal.  And while I’m not opposed to off brand things- I really get jazzed when I can purchase/snag a quality product for a very good price.  Which leads me to my next delima.

What happens when I need to pay full price for a name brand item?  Two things have been/are in our future that we have needed to purchase.  A washer/dryer set as our new house didn’t come with them and a vacuum.  Now you can look at this two ways.  1) Purchase the cheapest option that will get the job done and know in the near future you maybe be back in the exact same spot, or 2) view these items as an investment, do you research, spend a little (ok, maybe a lot!) more money and know that you will have a quality product that will get the job done and last for a long time. 

So, we purchased a washer and a dryer in the past few weeks.  We deicded on option #2 and saw them as an investment.  We went with the energy efficient machines and got the bigger size for the washer as our family is only getting bigger at this point.  I can do three loads in one now!  Woot woot!  And as it was a chunk from our savings, we saw this as an investment and plan to take these babies with us till they are VERY old!

Now, we have a vacuum that is dying a very slow death. It is  actually my parents old vacuum that they bought from a traveling saleman.  I remember the day they bought it… I was shocked!  I couldn’t believe that they were buying something from a door to door salesman and that they were investing that much money into a vacuum!  However, this puppy has served its time well, I think it is 12-15 years old.  However, as I am vacuuming, it is getting overheated and just stopping sometimes.  And tripping the circuit breaker and I don’t think that is a good idea.  So, I’ve been looking at vacuums and WO-MAN are there a TON of options.  I don’t understand how a vacuum that costs 49.99 and a vacuum that costs 499.99 can both have a 5 star rating.  The problem is that people give the ratings right when they get the vacuum- but who knows how long it will last??? I had a bagless vacuum that I bought several years ago with my first house.  It was like 80 bucks or something.  It worked great for like 2 months and then it was the biggest headache!  It kept getting clogged and leaving chunks all over the house. So I swore I would never buy a cheap vacuum again.  But now I’m looking that the reviews and it is overwhelming how many options there are.  And they now come with “clears alergens from the air” so I’m trying to figure all of this out.  I just want a quality vacuum that has excellent suction to clean the carpet and gets the job done. 

Anybody have any suggestions?  Are you loving your vacuum cleaner?? Then please tell me what you have and where I can get one!

Icky.

Johnny is near the end of the process of loosing his belly button.  Might I say this is something about a newborn that isn’t my cup of tea.  I can handle the 5 poopy diapers in an hour and the spit up, but the smelly, bloody, (and now slimy) belly button falling off about has me losing my lunch.  The visiting nurse came by yesterday and said she thinks it will be gone in a day or two (originally at the hospital they said some babies keep them for up to 3 weeks! YIKES!).  Anyway, I will be glad when this is over and he can have a real bath!

Speaking of the nurse’s visit.  My lil’ champion eater has already gained .5lbs since leaving the hospital.  Whew! That is a lot of nursing!  And for the days/nights being mixed up, things have went so much better the last two nights.  He is learning how to fall asleep after the middle of the night feedings instead of screaming.  It also seems to be the time when he wants to cluster feed… good timing kiddo.

I’ve also decided what that having a church family who actively loves is an amazing thing.  I know that  we have already had a baby once, but I was blown away again that so many people have signed up to bring us meals over the next month.  I’m pretty sure I was taking it for granted that people just bring you meals when you have a baby.  But this is not normal.  Our neighbor has been moving over the past 3 days and I wish I could have helped, but life just hasn’t allowed that right now.  But once again I was so thankful for our church family, who when we said we were moving, showed up in droves and had us out of our old place and into storage in less than an hr!  What a blessing to be surrounded by those who have the heart’s of Christ.  So for all of those out there who have helped us move and are bringing us meals since having a baby, thank you, thank you, THANK YOU!  You are a blessing and a light…even to someone who already knows the Lord.

Nothing like a hot shower and a little mascara to make you feel like a W-O-M-A-N!

Hello world- it has been a whirlwind few days.  Our son, Johnny Roman Rohlf was born on 6.27.08 at 7:23am weighing in a 6lbs, 3oz.  Belle was 5lbs, 12oz- so he a little beefier than she was!

Ok- those where the highlights for people like my dad who are not into the details.  Now for the people like me, who like the details!

Thursday am I woke up feeling quite crampy (my due date was 7.5.08- but Belle came 10 days early so I knew there could be a chance of that happening again).  I got my hospital bag packed and had a doctor’s appointment that morning at 10:30.  I was dialated to 3cm and the doctor helped move things along a bit by stripping my membrains.  She said that she would induce me come Sat am- but that she doubted I would make it that long.  I went home and spent the next 7 or 8 hours waiting for somehting to happen.  I had some contractions throughout the day, but nothing regular.  Jason and I watched a movie that night and after I said “Gee, I made my appointment for next week with the Dr. , but I wasn’t thinking I was going to make it- but I guess I might not go into labor early.”  About an hour later we went to sleep.  Or at least I tried!

About 10pm I had a contraction and from there on, they were coming about 10 min apart.  I just rested and didn’t wake up Jason in case it wasn’t the real thing. Then about 11:30, one came at 5 min apart and that is when I woke him up!  I asked him to go to HyVee and get me a cream cheese danish and some chocolate milk! :)  What a man!  When he got back things were still anywhere from 7-15 min apart and we settled in for the long haul. I got up and started getting things ready to go to the hospital and had 2 contractions that were about 2-3 min apart!  That is when we started moving!  John and Jade came over to stay with Belle since it was about 2:30am and we were off to the hospital.  (Keep in mind that they say you can count on your labors being 1/2 the time of the first and with Belle it was about 9 hours.  We were already about 5 hours into this so I had no idea how fast things could move.)

We got to the hospital around 3am and the nurse didn’t believe me that I was in labor and said she wasn’t sure she wanted to get me a bed.  (Instead she would just put me on the monitors in the small testing rooms.)  I was at the point of not being able to talk through the contractions and once she said that I was starting to get upset!  Then she finally decided  that I could “take up a bed” and had the nerve to tell me that I was a little tense and needed to relax a little.  (Oh yes, this is the same exact nurse that was my nurse with Belle that I wasn’t a fan of the first time around…arg!)  So she gets me settled and the Dr. comes into check me and I am 5 cm dialated and 80% efaced.  Good times.  We decided to walk around a bit and for the next 2 hours I walked and breathed through the contractions.  However, around 5 am, things were getting quite hard and I was emotional (I cry when I’m tired…. oh yes, I was also 8 cm dialated at this point) and exhausted as I hadn’t really slept the 3 nights before.  We opted for the epidural at that point and things went crazy from there on.  I finally got settled and they told me to rest for about an hour. Around 7am they came in to check me and I was ready to go.  I started pushing around 7:15am and I remember asking the Dr. if the baby would be born before 8:04am (Belle’s birth time) and she said “How about 7:24am?”  I looked up at the clock and that was only minutes away!  So I pushed a few more times and John Roman Rohlf was born at 7:23am weighing in at 6lbs, 3oz and 20 3/4 ” long.  Whew!  He came out screaming his head off and continued to scream for the next 20 or 30 min while they were checking him over.  But as soon as they put him in my arms all wrapped up, I touched his cheek and said his name and instantly he was quiet.  Wow… what a moment.

So that was Friday am.  Johnny had to go into the baby warmer a few times on Friday because he was having a hard time keeping warm.  But unlike Belle, he didn’t have any breathing problems and was able to spend the days at the hospital in our room.  Nursing is going very well, it started off a little sketchy, but by Sat afternoon things were moving right along.

We are home now and attempting to adjust to a “new normal” with two kids sharing one room! :)  Last night we were all up from 1-4am so I’m hoping that things are better starting tonight.

One tired and slightly emtotional, but very happy and content Momma,

~L

Learning…

Picture Time!