A Craftier Post Than Usual

This is spring break for Grace from the academic rigor that is 2-day-a-week preschool so we have been verrrrrrry slow to get moving this Monday. My younger daughter slept the latest of everyone, actually. Left to her own devices, Violet will sleep well past 9am, at least since the time change. Grace has not quite adjusted to the time change either, come to think of it, and has been sleeping pretty late herself lately. You should have seen me getting us ready for church yesterday morning-- a whole week after the time change and I still barely made it to the late service on time.

Rob returns from all his conference travel tomorrow and I will be very happy to have him back. I will admit that it has been nice to stretch out in the now-spacious queen bed (especially since there is a darling baby in it with me), but the extra space is weak compensation indeed for his absence. There were times during Grace's cosleeping when we contemplated a king bed and I have a sneaking suspicion that such thoughts will occur to us again. Anyway, tomorrow our family will be made whole again and perhaps we will also return to cooking dinner from scratch and more structure to our days and whatnot. I am really glad that Rob doesn't travel much for his job normally.

Grace has been waking up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom lately. She's potty-trained during the day but still in a diaper at night. Though often dry in the morning, she still sometimes isn't and I'm not in a big rush to, you know, change sheets in the middle of the night so I haven't pushed the night-time panty-wearing. Most nights during Rob's absence she has woken up calling out for me to take her the bathroom, leaving me to wonder if Rob normally does this every night and I have not noticed. It's a good sign for her ultimate bathroom habit maturity, I know, but since she is still months away from using the toilet by herself this means I have to get up, which in the middle of the night strikes me as mostly not a good sign. It reminds me of just about a year ago when Grace started sleeping through the whole night and I started getting less sleep. Good, and yet somehow bad...

Speaking of children relieving themselves (aren't you GLAD you read my FASCINATING BLOG?!) at 12 weeks or so Violet has grown out of our stash of small cloth diapers and has moved into mediums. If I remember correctly, Grace didn't do that until she was 4-5 months old, just another scrap of evidence to add to the mountain that Violet is indeed a bigger baby than Grace was. "Yes, Julia," you say patiently, "you've told us." Yet somehow reflecting on this fact does not cease to hold my attention... Anyway, I sold all the medium cloth diapers (which Grace wore from 5 months to 21 months) before we moved so I have been putting together a new stash of mediums. We have a few Fuzzi Bunz (which are my main go-to favorite diaper), some one-size bumGenius that Grace wore, and last week I finished sewing up a batch of pocket diapers myself!

I put them together like a Fuzzi Bunz, with a PUL outer layer, a wicking fleece inner layer, and a microfiber terry insert. The pattern I used is based on Mama Bird's pattern, but I modified it a bit in shape. I also found this tutorial helpful and I got my fabrics from Wazoodle. This is the second set of diapers I've sewn; the first set was for when Grace outgrew her mediums and she still wears them at night.

I'm really happy with how they turned out and they fit Violet well-- no leaks, trim under clothes, etc. I am so glad that I invested in a snap press because I really don't like diapers with Velcro; laundry is so annoying and it wears out much faster. So now we are almost set up for mediums. Since there's a recession on, I am exploring the prefold/snappi option with wool covers. I will admit that part of the reason this appeals to me is it allows to get out my knitting needles: