Winter finally made it to our neck of the woods this weekend, and we went outside to play!

Josh wanted to take Henry sledding (on a ver small, slow hill). And Josh had fun, Henry was unfazed.

He was quite taken with the snow itself.  Must be pretty amazing to see such a thing for the first time.

Soft like a pillow! Guess I’ll lay down and take a nap!

I don’t talk about work much on ye old blog, because I’m not interested in pulling a Dooce, but I’ll talk a little about it today, in the most general terms possible because at the end of this pot I’m going to ask you for your advice.

So, in the past week my work world has been rocked.  On Friday my boss asked me to stop by her office before I left for the weekend and when I got there she floated me a potential job opportunity.  Today I got the green light, and my new job starts Tuesday.  This is big news and it’s all going down at light speed.  Everything about my new job will be different, I’m excited and nervous and I am going to learn a whole lot.

This new job isn’t going to be a big change for me only, but it is going to affect my whole family, because I’m making the switch to working 12 hour shifts, some days, some nights. Josh and I talked it over before I accepted and he is on board, but you know, excited (for me) and nervous (for him) too. 

There are pros and cons to this schedule, longer days, yes, but longer weekends too.  I’ve worked shift work before, and I know it is pretty hard on your body, so I’m not really looking forward to that part of it, but I am so excited for a new opportunity.

So here I am at the part where I’m looking for your advice. 12 hour shifts are…long. 12 hour shifts on midnights feel even longer.  Because it gives Hen a rash I’ve been off caffeine and coffee since he was a few weeks old.  I’m looking for some ideas for energizing snacks I can eat between my meals to keep me going. The more natural the better, but I’m looking for some variety too, so, hit me with your best stuff!

Lots of you have written or commented with you babywearing questions and I’m definitely going to try to answer them all , but I wanted to start today with Rebecca’s question:

“I have an random assortment. Now that Lilly is almost 18 lbs and NEVER wants to be set down I’m getting more reliant on my wraps…especially the woven ones. However I just can’t justify spending a fortune on them (mainly bc my husband can’t understand why I need so many and I also have a cloth diaper fetish to defend….don’t ask). I’ve actually found Etsy to be a great resource for affordable, unique wraps. Wonder your opinion on that.”

There are definitely lots of on the cheap and DIY ways to wear your baby, and at the bottom of this post I’ve compiled a list of links that you might find helpful if you are interested in going to DIY route.  What I want to talk about here is CHEAP woven wraps.  Per Rebecca’s question I did some searching on Etsy, and there are definitely lots of options, some good, some bad. Lots of these mama-made wraps are gauze, and these are great options for mamas of smaller babies, especially in warmer climates! Gauze is not supportive for a bigger baby, and would be very uncomfortable and diggy.

Things to look for:

This gauze wrap for $30 or this one for $48 is a great example of what to look for, a long continuous piece of cloth with no sewn on embellishments that can compromise the structural integrity of the wrap.  Always ask questions!  What is the material, are there any visible defects, has the fabric been treated or dyed?

Things to avoid:

This gauze wrap has a damask panel sewed on, I would never use a piece of cloth for carrying my baby that is littered with stress points like this one.  Also avoid long pieces of cloth that are pieced and sewn together from shorter pieces of cloth. Anywhere you introduce a needle and thread you introduce a stress point, and that is where rips form.

Edit: Rebecca from LilPeepersKeepers emailed me about the wrap I’ve linked to above, and I told her I’d share her email with you. Rebecca’s shop does have several wraps without embellishment available and I would be comfortable using them and recommending them to you, but I maintain my stance regarding this particular wrap specifically and sewn embellishments across the width of a wrap in general; I’m simply not comfortable using them or recommending them to others. But this does reinforce my earlier point, ask questions, the more info you have the better. So thank you Rebecca for emailing me today.

Hi there! I’m Rebecca, seamstress and mama behind Li’l Peeper Keepers on Etsy! After seeing that there was some traffic coming from a particular site, I got curious =)!

I located your blog, and was rather intrigued by your comment about a panel being a stress point. Normally in sewing, an extra layer is considered to be further support – an addition, not a distraction.

A stress point would be formed where a seam or an edge is, not merely stitches being present in a fabric. Maybe you thought that the panel is attached to two pieces of the linen gauze on either side (which would indeed be a stress point) and did not realize that the damask panel is simply placed on top of the continuous piece of linen (which is itself a strong fiber).

Thanks for letting me intrude on your day – - and obviously, you do have people that read your blog =)!

If you have a bigger baby and are looking for a thicker woven wrap (not gauze) but aren’t interested in buying retail (because yes, it can definitely get expensive) take some time to look on The Babywearer’s (TBW) For Sale or Trade (FSOT) board.  I buy lots of my wraps used, you can find a great wrap for a lower price and oftentimes used wraps are already broken in and soft for use!  You probably won’t find many $30 or $40 deals here (although I’ve seen a few) but you can find some great prices on wonderful wraps. For example:
Didymos Cotton Forget Me Not Size 4 for $85, Stockholm Hoppediez long $95, Toronto Hoppediez Long $94
Size 2 Hopp $40
Merry Carry $70, Girasol Santa Fe $46
NeoBulle Lille 5 $75
Didymos NINO 4.2 m $70
Didymos Smaragd Robert 5 $85

And these are just a few great deals I found last night in 10 minutes, I’m sure you can find lots more if you take the time to look.  When buying used remember to ask the same questions; What is the material, are there any visible defects, has the fabric been treated or dyed?  Make sure you think about what kinds of carries you want to do and what size you will need to do them, here is a great link that can help you figure it out, or you can email me and I’d be happy to help too.

Here is a link for reviews of many woven wraps.

And for the DIY curious, I’ve never DIY’ed a wrap, preferring to scour FSOT for deals but lots of mams have, and there is a whole world of resources out there:

Sewing your own Wrap
DIY Product Reviews
Useful Links for Making a Wrap
Information About Fabrics

On Sunday we went to the park to enjoy some of this amazing weather!  It is sunny and bright and the park was packed- and this in Chicago in January! Unbelievable!  Henry was less impressed with the park than we were.

On Saturday we had a pretty big scare. Henry knocked down a baby gate and fell down the stairs.  It was definitely the scariest moment of my life, I can’t stop thinking how lucky we are that the worst of his injury is the bruise on his face and not a broken arm or broken neck.  It has been keeping me up and giving me nightmares ever since.  Do me a favor and check all of your baby gates tonight.

One of the things I want to wrote more about is wrapping.  I do plan to write about babywearing but my new love for/obsession with the wraps themselves is what I really want to share.  This is one of those things I have a sneaking suspicion might be of interest to precious few, but I’ve given myself permission to indulge. 

When I first dipped a toe into the world of babywearing I was shocked to see women with ten, twenty, fifty wraps in their “stashes” because honestly, you can really only use one at a time, and they are, well not exactly cheap.  In fact one of the things holding me back from writing more about the beautiful pieces of cloth I’ve started collecting is a fear that you may judge me or think me silly for spending money on them. But, I’ve decided I really don’t care, and while collecting wraps is not the cheapest hobby I can certainly think of many more expensive hobbies that I would love to hear about and I wouldn’t find myself judging one bit. Writing about wraps (and other slings, maybe even SSC’s one day) just feels like a pretty normal extension of something that already consumes a fair amount of my time and interest, and as my babywearing days are limited I’d like to enjoy them to the fullest. 

However, I do want to say, that the true benefits of babywearing are in the closeness and bond with your baby, and that one simple piece of cloth is really truly all you need. The rest are just for fun!

So many people have emailed me about my resolutions, specifically resolution number 5 that I may as well address it.  I know for most people the only reason to have sex would be because it is fun. It feels good, and thank god for that as it’s pretty much our driving biological force.  It didn’t even occur to me that people with normally functioning bodies wouldn’t have the frame of reference to get why sex would be anything but fun. 

So here goes:  when you decide to try to get pregnant, it all starts out kind of fun and exciting, pulling the goalie, seeing what happens.  You carry on with your regularly scheduled love life, and a few weeks later tentatively pee on a stick. Nothing.  Repeat this plan of action for six months or so, then start looking at this process more critically.  You might go to a drugstore and buy ovulation prediction kits.  You might start charting and temping.  You’ll slowly come to the realization that getting pregnant is not quite as easy as they taught us in health class.  Actually, for some of us it is downright difficult. 

Every month that ticks by is more disappointing than the last. Time and opportunity lost. You learn that your window is actually pretty small, so when whatever your preferred ovulation prediction method gives you the green light it’s “get your pants off” time. It doesn’t matter if you are in the mood or not, it doesn’t matter if you are tired or have a headache, shit, it doesn’t matter if you are laid up with the flu. Regardless of your desire, you will be having sex tonight. And Tomorrow night, and maybe tomorrow morning as well. You might start to dread this thing which you once enjoyed so much. Because now it is a chore. Simply a means to an end.

But it won’t be forever. If you are as lucky as we are you might get that baby after all.  And then you will be so tired, and sometimes you’ll choose rest over sex, and that’s OK. But I’ll tell you, and I don’t talk about sex very often but it needs to be said, having a baby is not the end of your sex life.  Yes, we are tired, but we have shared some amazing experiences in the last year and our sex life is better than ever.  But since we are so very tired sometimes we do it just because it’s been too long and we think we should, not very romantic.  And knowing that we want to start trying for another baby sometime this year means that “get your pants off” is somewhere in our future. So while we can I want to have sex with my husband just for fun. And just because we want to.

 Let’s start by reviewing  last year’s resolutions

#1 Take 100 pictures a week- definitely, you should see all the pictures I take that I delete, the oodles of pictures in my Flickr account are merely a fraction of the thousands of pictures I took last year.

#2 Read One Book a Month- when I set this goal I thought I was throwing myself a softball. Dude, I might have read 12 books last year, at least 6 of them were books I’d read before.

#3 Knit 12 finished items- I think I finished 26. I counted a few days ago and came up with 24, but then I remembered a few more so I think the final number is 26. Awesome!  

I sat down yesterday to think about some resolutions for 2012, and they just poured out of me with little thought. So I’m going to run with it.

Blog more- actually write like i used to, not just post pictures
Wear Hen every day, even if it’s just while I’m brushing my teeth
Meditate and practice yoga regularly again because it makes me feel good
Read to Henry everyday
Have sex more often for fun
Get pregnant (much later in the year, like at the end of it)
Finish rehabbing our house

We’ll see how it goes.

I haven’t given much thought to New Year’s resolutions and how they might apply to the rest of my life, but I have been thinking about blogging and how I might resolve to be a better blogger in 2012.

For a few months now I’ve been running on Empty. I’m tired.  I juggle a lot of balls in the air, and as much as I love writing I haven’t had the energy, time or inclination to give it the attention I did in the past.  Many days I’m lucky if I can throw up a few pictures of the babe and hit publish; thoughtful, planned and well formed blogs are few and few between.  My goal for this space  in the New Year is just to write.  Often I find I don’t write about things that interest me because I don’t think there is much of an audience for them, but I think moving forward I’m going to get back to writing for me.  If you read it great, and if you enjoy it even better.

I truly appreciate each and every one of you, I’m so lucky to have all of you in my life and I am looking forward to sharing this new year with you.  As ever, thanks for reading.

No surprise I’m sure that our New Year snuck in with a whimper and not a bang.

I had my toast well before midnight.

And so did Henry.

Happy New Year.