Easter Weekend (a week late)

I know this is a week late, but I was being lazy about getting all my photos uploaded.  Our Easter celebrating started when Fiona's Godfather, Jeremy, dropped off an Easter basket for her.  She is a pretty spoiled little girl :) 

We continued the celebration with some Easter egg dying at my parents' house on Saturday night.  Fiona thought that it was pretty cool.

Grandma Teri was very brave and was letting her put the eggs in the dye.  Fiona really wanted to put her hands in the dye too, but we thwarted most of her efforts.

I got up super early on Easter morning and went to Mass all by myself.  It was pretty strange not having to keep a busy toddler happy.  It was actually kind of nice to be there alone.  After Church I came home and Nathan and Fiona were dressed in their Easter clothes.  Nathan earned big brownie points for actually dragging himself out of bed and handling breakfast and getting dressed (minus hair accessories) all by himself.

Isn't Miss Fiona cute in her Easter dress?  I love that her and Nathan were so well coordinated.  I didn't even plan it.  Unfortunately, I didn't have a matching maternity shirt.  I still think we make a pretty cute family.

After we snapped a picture we let Fiona find her basket from the Easter bunny.

Digging into her goodies.

So after we explored her basket, we packed up and headed to Nathan's parents' for Easter brunch.

Fiona got another Easter basket at Grandma's house and she was loving the Easter eggs with crackers.

Grandma Cheryl even blew up some balloons to play with.

After we were stuffed full of good food and Nathan was trying to fall asleep in the chair we headed home for a quick nap.  The nap didn't pan out, so we headed on over to my parents' for our second Easter meal.  Fiona got yet another Easter basket over there.  Seriously, she isn't loved at all ;)

Fiona helping herself to a cold drink.

We of course had to change Fiona out of her beautiful Easter dress so that we could hunt eggs and play outside in the sandbox.

Hunting eggs with lots of help from the big cousins.

She managed to collect quite a few eggs, but she wanted to stop and open each one.  I had to be sneaky and swap out all her candy eggs for ones with snacks that she could eat.  She didn't notice.  She just liked opening the eggs and dumping the stuff out.

And of course a trip to Grandma and Grandpa's on a nice day wouldn't be complete without swinging.  You can hear her squealing and giggling across the yard.

Easter was a little chaotic and we were glad to go home and go to bed at the end of the day.  Overall, it was a good day with lots of family and good food.

I Made a Mei Tai

I've been wanting a baby carrier that I could use to carry Fiona on my back for awhile.  I love my sling, but it is just uncomfortable to carry her in that right now, while my belly is so big.  So I hit up a good sale at JoAnn's and bought some fabric to make myself a Mei Tai carrier.  I was a little worried that it would be difficult, but it turned out to be not bad at all. 

I'm pretty proud of myself actually.  I usually sew at my Mom's house because I'm pretty much a novice and that way I have help if I screw something up.  My parents went out of town to San Diego and I had my Mom's old sewing machine and really wanted to get started on this project, so I decided to tackle it alone.  There were a few set backs and no expert seamstresses should look to closely because there are a few wonky spots, but overall I think it turned out really well.  Fiona and I had to try it out right away of course, so excuse the Monday morning grossness.

I'm so excited about having a carrier that will work for back carries.  It's really comfy and Fiona doesn't seem to mind either.  I've carried her and my daycare kiddo, Miss G, to the park a couple of times in it without any trouble.  In fact, it's so comfortable that Miss G falls asleep after I walk about 2 feet.

I might even decide to make another one for Nathan to wear.  He liked the idea, but was very much against wearing anything with butterflies on it.  I may have to make a more manly one so he can use it too.  Or else talk him into buying me an Ergo or Beco or something.

Cloth Diaper Carnival VII: Itty Bitty Fluffy Butts

This post is part of the Cloth Diaper Carnival from Cloth Diapering Bloggers (Ning network) and Dirty Diaper Laundry.  Follow the link at the bottom to read other posts or participate. 

This cloth diaper carnival is about cloth diapering newborns, which I am pretty excited about because I'm getting ready to do just that.

When Fiona was a newborn my Mom bought us a month or two from a diaper service in town.  I knew that I wanted to cloth diaper our new bundle of joy, but it was not in the budget at that time.  We ended up using disposables for the first week of her life before the diaper service was set up.  Then we just used the prefolds and some gerber plastic pants with a snappi.  Prefolds are so easy and inexpensive for a newborn.  We did end up cancelling the diaper service and bought some of our own infant prefolds used off of diaperswappers.  They were a very wise investment for us, because Fiona still fit into the infant prefolds at 8 months.  By then we had switched to mainly pockets, but we got a lot of use out of them.

My biggest challenge was just getting my husband to change diapers.  He really doesn't like prefolds, so he didn't change as many diapers unless I had a few disposables available.  My whole family had used cloth diapers, so I was pretty comfortable changing prefolds, so that wasn't a hurdle for me.  I really hated the Gerber plastic pants though.  They wore out very quickly, most of them split at the seam.  I also had a few that got melted in our dryer.

This time around I had a little more money saved up for diapers.  I have already purchased a couple dozen itty bitty (preemie) prefolds in addition to our 36 infant size prefolds.  Fiona was so tiny that she was in the smallest size prefolds for about 2 months.  I'm hoping this baby ends up being about the same size so that I didn't waste money on the preemie prefolds.  I also have stocked up on a few Thirsties covers and a couple of AppleCheeks covers.  I also have a few hand-me down covers, fleece soakers I made, and one wool soaker I bought on diaperswappers.  I also have 2 tiny pocket diapers at the request of my hubby.  I made him practice with the snappi tons before Fiona was born, so he can do it, but he prefers not to.  I think my newborn stash is pretty much complete.  I was thinking that I might get 2-3 more AIOs or pockets for when Nathan changes diapers.  Anyone have any good reccommendations?  I was thinking maybe lil joeys from Rumparooz.  Anyone have any experience with those fitting and working well for tiny babies?

I am planning on using disposables for the first week of this little one's life too.  I figure I will probably have both girls in disposables for a little while, so I can heal and get my mind around life with a newborn and a toddler.