James Michael Herring

Yesterday was an exciting day! James Michael Herring was born! We went to the hospital last night to meet the new member of Tom and Carrie's beautiful family. John cried in the car on the way there. I thought about how, on this day in years to come, we will likely be celebrating with the Herrings and John will be going to his friend's birthday party. We can tell the story that they first met on the day James was born, and John was crabby! In John's defense, it was getting close to his bed time...


I thought I would let the blogging world know. Here is what Tom said last night on Facebook:

"Facebook followers, I give you: James Michael Herring. Born 6:33pm 9/29/09, 7lbs 15 oz, 19". After 5 hours of labor, Mom and baby are doing great. Thanks to everyone for their thoughts and prayers."

Congratulations!!

Update:
Here are some pictures from last night. Doesn't John look huge??

Our Health Care

As of September 1st, we have not had health insurance. I was covered through teaching and Andrew hasn't been insured. But that is all about to change...

We just sent in our application to Samaritan Ministries. We heard about this health sharing program from our friends Darius and Janet when we went to visit them in August. They mentioned that they didn't have insurance but were in a health sharing ministry. I was intrigued. This kind of ministry was completely foreign to me, but now that I have looked into it, it makes more sense to me than having health insurance.

In this ministry, we will share a monthly amount to people around the country who have medical needs. The first three of our payments will go directly to Samaritan Ministries for administration fees. After that, they will tell us another member to send our money to. There is an annual administration fee of $170, but other than that, our money will go directly to a fellow Christian in need. Our monthly share amount is $285 (that is the amount for a two-parent family of any size!).

The best part about this ministry is they do not support abortion! Now we can rest assured that our money for health care is not going to support abortion.

If this sparks your interest, as it did mine, check out the short movie below or visit their website:

Samaritan Ministries from Samaritan Ministries on Vimeo.

Adventures in Cloth Diapering: How I Wash those Spelly Dipes!

Some friends have asked me how I wash our cloth diapers, so I thought I would share it with everyone.

First, you should know how our bathroom is set up. The changing table is in the bathroom, along with the washer and dryer. This set up is very convenient and efficient (you will see why in a minute)!



After reading around on the internet and reading the cleaning instructions that came with the diapers, I have come up with the following system:

Storing those smelly diapers

1. After I take off John's messy diaper, I put it directly in our top-loading washing machine. Because the washing machine is right next to the changing table, I use it as a "dry pail." Click HERE to learn more about the different kinds of pails you can use.

2. I wash the diapers once a day, usually in the morning. Some people have asked "what if you need to do laundry, and there are dirty diapers in your washing machine?" Well, since I wash the diapers in the morning, if I have any laundry for the day, I will do that right after I wash the diapers. I don't typically have laundry to do every day, but there is a window of opportunity when the need arises. If John has a messy diaper while I am doing other laundry, I put his dirty diaper in a wet bag and keep it there until the washer is free again.

Washing

3. First, I use the "soak" setting on the washing machine with a small water load and cold water. The purpose of this is to rinse off the poop. Breast milk poop is water soluble, so it does not need to be rinsed off in the toilet. When we start solid foods, we will need to spray off the solid poop in the toilet. For that reason, we may put off solid foods until he is potty trained! ;) Just kidding!

4. Then I drain the poopy water out of the washing machine.

5. Here are the settings I use for the wash cycle: Medium water load, 2 rinses, hot water to begin with, cold water for the 2nd rinse.

6. I use 1/4 of a tablespoon (yes, it's only a small amount!) of Charlie's detergent and 4 drops of tea tree oil.

Drying

7. I hang dry the pocket diapers and the cloth wipes. The pocket diapers take about 12 hours to be completely dry. The wipes are dry in about 2 hours.


8. For the inserts and pre-folds, I check for staining first. If they are stained, I put them on our window sill that gets a lot of afternoon sun. Even on a cloudy day, the sun will bleach the stain right out of those inserts! I am always amazed!


9. If the inserts and pre-folds are not stained, I dry them in the dryer.

Preparing

10. When the diapers are clean, dry, and stain-free, I assemble them so they are ready to be used. This involves stuffing the pocket diaper with the insert. This makes it easy for Andrew and my mom when they change John's diaper. It's as easy to put on as a disposable!

That's it!

I hope that all made sense! I try to keep everything really simple. Many cloth diapering parents have other methods of storing, washing, and drying their diapers. This is just what has worked for us so far.

Related posts:
9-27-09 Cloth Wipes
9-22-09 And the Winner is...
8-24-09 Reviews and New Diapers
8-12-09 The Sun is Amazing!
7-22-09 The Beginning

Menu Planning Monday

I want to let all of you in on a little secret - you may already know about it: There is a blog called "I'm an Organizing Junkie" (orgjunkie.com). Every Monday, Laura, the "organizing junkie," hosts "Menu Planning Monday." This means she posts her own menu for the week and invites other people to leave links to their blogs where they post their menus.

For the past few months, I have been going to this blog every Monday and I excitedly browse through hundreds of people's menus. Some people provide links to the recipes they will be using (insert drooling here). If I find something that I think Andrew and I will enjoy, I bookmark it on Delicious for future use. I love finding new recipes! So I have been mooching off this blog for a while now, and I think it is finally time for me to participate. Here is my menu for this coming week! Enjoy!

Monday - Taco salad
Tuesday - White bean and chicken chili
Wednesday - Tortellini Marinara
Thursday - Chicken and rice casserole with "Texas Rolls" (Texas Rolls can be found in the freezer section of your grocery store - you defrost them and bake. They taste fantastic and it seems like I made homemade rolls!)
Friday - Out to eat with Grandma Launceford (My mom's mom)
Saturday - Dinner in Bellingham
Sunday - Dinner in Bellingham

For more menu plans, hop on over to orgjunkie.com. You won't regret it!

Adventures in Cloth Diapering: Cloth Wipes

At one of my baby showers, my friend Samantha (who sparked my interest in cloth diapers) gave me a bunch of diapers to try and a basket with homemade cloth wipes. I began using the cloth wipes long before I used cloth diapers. They are SO easy, and they have saved us a lot of money. We recently bought some disposable wipes for a friend who just had a baby - we spent over $5 for a pack of three refills! When I bought those, I realized even more how great cloth wipes are.

The wipes we use were made by Samantha. They are pieces of flannel that are surged around the edges. She picked cute, gender-neutral fabric that doesn't show stains (for the most part). I bought more fabric to make some of my own, though I haven't gotten around to it yet. I bought 3/4 yard of three different patterned fabric (1/4 of each). I found that 1/4 yard makes about 25 wipes!

Samantha gave me about 30 wipes. This is a great amount. I wash them right along with my diapers and with the frequency of my washing, I never run out of clean wipes.

Here are some pictures of the wipes, to give you a better idea:



I also use a homemade spray to moisten the wipes. Here is the recipe I use:

1 cup water
2 T baby soap
1 T olive oil
A few drops of essential oil (This is optional. I use "Clarity" from Sensaria)

To use the wipes and the spray, I spray the cloth wipe and wipe John's bum with the moistened wipe. I usually only have to use one wipe to get him clean - sometime two. Then I toss it in the washing machine with the cloth diapers. It's that easy!!

My next cloth diapering post will be about how I wash the diapers.

Related posts:
9-22-09 And the Winner is...
8-24-09 Reviews and New Diapers
8-12-09 The Sun is Amazing!
7-22-09 The Beginning

7 Quick Takes ~ Vol. 9

Hosted at Conversion Diary

1. Tummy time: This week, when John was on his tummy, he pivoted 180 degrees! I got on the floor and crawled toward him. He smiled and started moving his legs like he wanted to crawl to me. He wants to crawl, but he needs to get some more core muscle strength. Before I know it, I'll be chasing him all over!

2. We just heard on the radio about a couple who did in-vetro fertilization and they were mistakenly implanted with another couple's embryos. They decided to bring the baby to term and give the baby to the biological parents. The biological parents were overjoyed to have their child! This made me wonder: If the woman who was implanted with the wrong embryos decided to have an abortion, would the biological parents have any ability to intervene? After all, the embryo would be their wanted child.

3. Lesson learned: I really want to get an ergo baby carrier, most of my friends with kids have one and I have heard great things about them! So we decided to get one. The nearest retailer is in Poulsbo, which is about 25-30 minutes away. I packed John in the car and we drove out to Poulsbo. They didn't have the color we wanted. Sad. This reminded me of the value of calling ahead. Especially when you are toting around a little one, you should always call ahead when you are making a special trip to go somewhere for one specific item. On a similar note, I have also learned the value of drive-through banking - what a blessing!!

4. The Front Lines: The 40 days for Life has begun! This is a campaign to end abortion that involves prayer, fasting, and community outreach. It mainly involves standing vigil at the local abortion facility. So for the next 40 days, people will be praying outside the Planned Parenthood in Bremerton from Sept. 23rd through Nov. 1st from 7am to 7pm. John and I signed up for the 9-10 hour slot on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Last Thursday, we had a beautiful thing happen. A man pulled over on the shoulder of the road. He got out of his car (you never know if this is a good thing...) and came over to where we were standing - another man, Michael, was praying with us, so don't worry. The stranger knelt down and put his hand on Michael's shoulder. He began to cry. Michael asked him if he wanted to stay and pray with us. He got up and said "I will be praying" and then walked away. We had the feeling that he may have been suffering from past involvement with abortion. So after he left we prayed for him and that he will feel the power of Our Lord's mercy. Click HERE to see if there is a 40DFL campaign going on in your area!

5. Brewing Beer: Right now Andrew is watching a tutorial video about home brewing beer. We are thinking that we will probably start brewing our own beer to save some money - and have some fun!

6. Postpartum Update: So I know you all love updates on John, but you may also be wondering how my healing has gone. I had an "easy" time with postpartum recovery - compared to stories I have heard from friends. After about two weeks, I felt almost back to "normal." Now that it has been over four months, I feel great! Mentally, sometimes I feel a little foggy, but that is probably because of the sleep interruptions during the night. My "baby belly" is still there a little. I was looking at my stretch marks today. They have faded a lot! Right after John was delivered, my stretch marks were bright red. Now they have faded to a light pink color. It is hard for me to look at them and see beauty, but I try to think of them as "love" marks.

7. Dinner Party: At the Our Lady Star of the Sea's school auction in February we donated a dinner night for three couples at the "Historic Manette Fire Station" with on site childcare included. It has taken a long time for all of our schedules to line up, but we finally hosted the dinner last night! It was SO fun! The adults' dinner was in my parents living area, and the children were entertained in our apartment. My parents did the cooking, Andrew was the waiter, and Becky and I did the childcare. I know I had a great time, I hope the families that came enjoyed themselves also! The kids acted out the nativity story and guess who payed Jesus? - Yup, little Johnny! =)

Now we are just like the Duggars!!

(Minus 18 kids...)

As I said in my quick takes last Saturday, we have adopted the same organizing system that the Duggars use. I learned about this system by reading their book.

Here are the nuts and bolts:

They use numbered cardboard filing boxes. Everything that they don't use on a daily basis goes in a box. Each box has a corresponding index card. On the index card is a list of the contents in the box. The index cards are stored in a recipe box for easy access. When you want to find something, you take out the recipe box, and search for the item by looking on the cards. When you find it on the card, you know what box it is in. All of their boxes are stored in closets.

We modified the system a little bit. Instead of using index cards, we are using a Google Doc. This will be better for finding things, because we can just do an electronic search and find the item we need right away. Right now all of the boxes we have are in our closet (we've been blessed with a big closet). We are starting out with 20 boxes and if we need more, there is room to store things in the basement. The best part about this is when we have to move again, almost everything will already be in a box!!

20 Boxes and Counting!!!

Happy Birthday Perky!

Today is the birthday of my dear friend, Becky (who I refer to as "Perky"). We had her over last night for dinner and a huckleberry pie - the first pie from the new batch we picked in August!

Adventures in Cloth Diapering: And the winner is...

FuzziBunz!!

After trying Bum Genius, pre-folds with covers, and FuzziBunz, we decided to invest in more FuzziBunz because they are our favorite! I suppose we could try more, but we really like FuzziBunz - so I think we are done with our search for the best cloth diaper.

My review of FuzziBunz One-Size Pocket Diaper:

• It is one-size, so it will fit from birth to potty-training.
• The lining on the inside is very soft! (If I had to wear a diaper, this would be it!)
  
• I have had no problems with stains on the pocket diaper. The insert does hold onto stains, but the sun takes care of those.
• The snaps are great!
• Seems very durable and high-quality (I should hope so, for $18 bucks a pop!).
• The diaper is one-sized because the elastic is adjustable. It isn't too difficult to figure out. I like this because it makes the diaper less bulky, as opposed to the snap system that Bum Genius uses.
  
• The only downside I can think of is it takes a little bit of time to adjust the elastic, so if I ever had two different sized kiddos in diapers, it would be difficult to use the diapers interchangeably with both of them.

I have bought all of our FuzziBunz diapers at www.Kellyscloset.com. The shipping has been fast and they have a great rewards program. I haven't had any reason to contact their customer service, so I can't tell you about that. FYI - From September 10th through October 30th there is a deal on FuzziBunz diapers: If you buy 9, you get $40 back in other Fuzzi Bunz products! So now would be a good time to hop on the bandwagon!

Related Posts:
8-24-09 Reviews and New Diapers
8-12-09 The Sun is Amazing!
7-22-09 The Beginning

Cutie-pie!

Here is a much-needed dose of John's cuteness:

Awe, look at that little guy (*sigh!*)