Prepping for baby

I've been doing a lot of thinking and planning for the boy to join us. It feels like so much needs to get done, but we have gotten some done already.

Alann's wonderful aunt and uncle gave us 16 bags of outgrown clothes. Most of them are girls, but their youngest boy is only in size 24 month or 2t at the moment. We gave the youngest girl clothes to Craig and Sarah, since we have 0-9 month girls figured out. We kept the rest. We do have 4 bags of boy clothes though, going up to 18 months, so I feel a lot better. I was worried about how we were going to dress him and not have people think we had another girl. Plus now we have clothes to 4T for Claire, so that takes another load off my mind.

In addition, there have been some awesome sales on diapers lately. I bought 300+ Pampers Swaddlers for $50. It came out to 16 cents a diaper (a STEAL for swaddlers). With Claire, we did disposable early on- the first two months I think. That worked out well. I didn't have to worry about getting used to cloth diapers or dealing with sticky early poo. Plus since they go SO often at first, and we don't have a lot of covers, it was a lot less work for me. I'll admit it. I take the green route when it is convenient. I hate throwing things out that still have a purpose and I hate using disposable items when there is an alternative. But, if the disposable route is easier and requires less of me, especially when recovering from having a baby, I'm all for it. So we are planning on diapering in swaddlers full time until the umbilical cord falls off or we run out. Whichever comes last. If we run out before his cord comes off, I will go buy more. I don't want to irritate his little tummy. Today, I found an awesome deal on Target diapers, which is the brand we use with Claire and I assume we will use with Alex, at nighttime and outings. I bought 2 boxes of Claire's dipes and 4 boxes of size 2 dipes for Alex for a whopping 12 cents a diaper. Another 300+ diapers on the way. The boxes of diapers usually last us about a month with Claire. Since we just moved to size 4, I don't think she will be outgrowing them any time soon. And I'm sure that is not nearly enough size 2s for Alex, but saving money isn't great if you have nowhere to store the items and no money to pay for them. I'm happy with those purchases. That just leads us to a few other necessities.

Disposables are for night. We do cloth during the day. I'm sure this isn't a surprise to any of you by now. I'm a little concerned about my cloth cover stash. I think I need more. I know I need more. We currently have 6 covers that I use all the time (Claire usually gets by with 2 or 3 every 3 days. I let them dry between wets and wash them all when it is washing time- Mon and Thurs if you are curious. If they get soiled, I get a clean one.) Those are all velcro. Plus I have one snap one. Which we both hate and use only as a last resort. Plus we have 3 stuffable pockets that could potentially be used as covers I guess. But I really don't like those much either. They tend to leak. It's probably my stuff job and not the diapers themselves. But it is annoying. And I probably won't put them on Alex until much later because of the poop escaping issue. Not good. I know once we are double diapering, I will have to go to three times a week with washing, mostly because I don't have that many prefolds for littles. I have 3 dozen, which sounds like a lot, until you realize you are changing 10 diapers a day, plus oopses and I use that size diaper as a clean-up cloth for Claire's dirty bum sometimes. Plus you can't really let them sit much longer, especially with the little one. And my diaper pail isn't THAT big. Claire fills it herself in three days. So the moral of the story- I am contemplating purchasing more newborn size prefolds. And I know I want 3-4 more covers. The problem with the covers is that I don't know what I want. We have one small baby cover that is wipeable- baby gets it dirty, wipe it clean, good to use again (in theory. I don't like the brand itself. It has some mesh areas that are supposed to make the diaper cooler but really just get in the way and leak). I found another brand that is wipeable that I am contemplating. Here is my concern. I can get my one-size covers that I have now for $13 each. So I could buy 4 new ones for $52. Then I would have 10 and if he soils 3 a day, we should have enough to get us between washes without running out. Or, if I buy this wipeable kind, they are not one size. They are sized, so they would only fit him. And only for a short amount of time. And they are $18 a piece. So I would spend $75 (is my math right?) for 4 covers. And maybe need to use some of the one-sizes anyway. They are wipeable to a point, but if they are too soiled, I just toss them in the wash. I don't want to deal with it. So it is $25 extra and not useful after he grows out of them. Then I would hopefully have Claire potty trained and not using the diapers anyway by the time he needs just the one-sizes, but who knows. I just am not sure which is the better expenditure of my resources.

Claire also needs a dresser. I keep looking at KSL and Craigslist, but so far haven't seen anything good. I don't want to spend too much. But I know I can't fit two kids clothes in the one tiny dresser. I guess we could put her clothes in my dresser if we had to. But I would rather just have another. Of course that brings up the point of where will we put said dresser. I dunno. Your guess is as good as mine.

We are also going to get a bigger pack and play. We like the one we have, but having two babies so close it makes sense to have two. I have my eye on one at Babies R Us. I have a 20% coupon, a 15% coupon, a $5 off coupon and am waiting for the second $5 off coupon to come. Then I will go and see how many of them will apply to just the one item. I'm hoping my second coupon gets here soon. I'm not sure how long the others are good for.

I think that's all the prep we are doing so far. The rest of my mental energy is focused on sewing tasks and getting the house ready to sell tasks. But those are other posts.