Remember that qulted bunny kimono I made for Abraham?

Here he is wearing it on his birthday.  It’s way too big.  The sleeves went past his hands and the hem went down past his knees.

a few hours old

Today I put the kimono on him again and decided to take a picture to compare.  It fits him just right!

almost seven weeks old

And here’s some more cute pictures from today.

He is about 9 pounds now.

Unless your water heater is a fancy new on-demand one, it is probably taking up about 20% of your electric bill (if it’s electric -I’m not sure about gas). Even if you for some reason never use hot water, your hot water heater is still running constantly, 24/7. There are a couple things you can do to your water heater to save money. You can turn the temperature down to 120 degrees (lowest recommended). You can buy a water tank insulating blanket (I’ve heard mixed opinions as to how safe these are). You can install a timer and program it so it turns your water heater off at night or when you’re not home (about $30). Or if you’re really cheap like me and Samuel, just throw the circuit breaker switch that says “water heater” every night before you go to bed, and turn it back on in the morning. Then you’re not paying for the electricity to heat the water all night, which you won’t use. I know it works because I can hear the thing turn on when I throw the switch in the morning. If you take a shower in the mornings this might not work so well, but Samuel and I are evening shower people.
We’ve only been doing this for a few days so I don’t have any electric bill numbers to show you, but we’ll see what happens. The heater finally turned on last night -I think it got down to 20 degrees or maybe lower. So that will make the bill go up. Our thermostat is set at 60 so brrrr! don’t come over if you hate cold houses! It’s not too bad though. Just have to wear warm things and put more blankets on the bed. I put up a blanket over our north window to block cold air. The south windows I keep open if the sun is shining in, and close the curtains when it goes away. Thankfully we don’t have any doors to the outside.
I know this sounds really extreme, and it kind of is, but the other day I read a thread on the mothering.com forums called “November low income mamas” where moms with low incomes discuss their problems and provide support and tips to each other. Reading it really humbled me and made me want to cry! One mom said something like, “my baby (toddler) is sick all the time because it’s so cold and he only has one pair of warm pants and one coat and they always seem to be dirty. I just want to be able to buy my baby something new and cute that’s not old and worn but I can’t even afford to go to the thrift store!”

:’(

Most of these women are single moms who have to work and pay for daycare. And of course their jobs pay hardly anything because they can’t go to school, and then they get laid off, and then they get evicted….

:’(

I really want to help people when I get more money. We pay a small (tiny) humanitarian offering to our church but as soon as we get more money I really really want to help people like this.

p.s.
I’ve gotten 12 swagbucks in 3 days, and when I get 500 some I can redeem them for a $50 Amazon gift card. That will probably take about five months.

no wonder we have no money. i just read that housing shouldn’t take up more than 35% of your income.  ours takes up 60%, and we’re stuck with it until june.  live and learn i guess.

the sad thing is, there’s nothing cheaper in this town unless we want college student roommates, or to live with my parents, or live in a town 30-60 minutes away.

and perhaps even sadder, i kind of wish we’d done one of those things to begin with.  but back then we had lots of savings and assumed samuel would get a job right away.

on the bright side, we’ve found a few new ways to scrimp and, based on our budget, have made a goal to save $30 a month minimum. i’ve been inspired by this blog, under 1000 per month.

p.s. click on the link to the right, “swagbucks”.  if you sign up they give you a toolbar that you use to search the internet, and if you happen to search random terms they’ve picked, you get a “swagbuck”.  i get 2-3 per day so far.  they can be redeemed as Amazon gift cards.  you can buy practically anything on amazon, so it’s almost like real money.  if you sign up through me (just click on the link on m blog) they’ll match your first 100 swagbucks and give them to me! (my first pyramid scheme, how exciting!) anyway there’s basically no effort whatsover on your part -you just get paid for surfing the web.   the search engine they use is google and ask.com, so it won’t change the quality of the results at all.  the blogger i linked to above explains how it works and why it’s not a gimmick in this post.  she uses her gift cards to pay for her husband’s textbooks and a few other things.

please, please, if you spend any time online searching for things, sign up through me so we can have a little more income.  i know it sound dumb, but seriously, it is completely painless and would help us out.

I am feeling really awesome right now because I just finished altering a vintage wool suit that I bought at the thrift store yesterday for $5.50, and I’m wearing it.  I’ve never owned a skirt suit before and I feel rather sharp (and sister missionary).  I love that it’s vintage (70’s I’d guess) because the skirt is below knee length and flared, instead of above knee length and tight, with a slit.

A new suit might cost $200, so in theory I saved $194.50.  Or, even if I found a used one, but didn’t know how to alter sleeve length and waistband (too short and too small) then I might have spent another $50 on alterations, according to this website. Which would still be saving a lot of money, but that would be money I don’t have.

I’m trying to build the perfect wardrobe (snicker).  My bust and waist measurements have grown since giving birth, which is upsetting to me because now tons of my clothes don’t fit, including things I’ve made.  I think I still look attractive -it’s not the extra inches themselves that make me sad.  It’s that my clothes either don’t fit or barely fit and look awful on me.  Some I can alter,  and some will probably fit me someday, but yesterday  I got rid of a huge pile of clothes that will probably never fit me again, and then bought some clothes and tons of sewing notions at the thrift store.  So I’m kind of starting out with a clean slate.  My closet and drawers have lots of breathing room now -it’s nice.

I have very little money to spend, so I was getting a little depressed looking around online at nice clothes I would like to have.  There is just no way I can pay $20 for one cardigan -and that’s the cheap cardigan!  But then I decided to get creative and (I always want to say “damn the man” here but I do not curse and “darn the man” sounds so dumb, so I will just say something less striking) use my sewing and altering skills to get the kind of wardrobe I want.  It is really fulfilling to get what I want for much less money because of skills I have.

If anyone who lives near me would like some clothes altered and has the money, I would be happy to do it for some extra cash.  If you look at that alterations pricing website I linked to above, I would charge 30% less than that since I’m not a “professional.”  I do have three years experience doing alterations in a costume shop for BYU theater department.  Or, if you want something sewn “from scratch,” or repaired, I can do that too.  I can even make stuffed toys and dolls.  In fact, I’m thinking of starting up an etsy shop soon.

Abraham is showing some preferences lately.  The most obvious is if he’s awake when I wear him in the Moby, he insists that the fabric not be covering his head.  He has pretty good head control -but he’s still a little wobbly.  Actually, I’m pretty impressed with his head control.  He loves to hold his head up and look around.  Hopefully he won’t grow up too headstrong.   Anyway, if I try to cover the back of his head with the Moby to keep his head from bobbing around, he screams angrliy!  Then if I take it off he is happy again.  So I have to hold his head for him until he falls asleep (which usually takes about five minutes) and then I can sneak the fabric over his head.

I took some pictures of this yesterday.

He’s also smiled at us a few times. 

Today was our first day using cloth diapers, not counting a brief stint during the meconium days when we soon realized that the prefolds we had were just too big for a tiny newborn.  Oh, and meconium is gross.

I decided I wanted to try wool soakers for diaper covers.  These are what people used before plastic pants were invented.  They are knitted or felted wool pants worn over a cotton diaper.  Because of the properties of wool (waterproof, antibacterial) they don’t get damp even when the diaper is soaked, and they don’t smell bad either.  You only have to wash them every couple weeks, the rest of the time you can just air dry them if they do get a little damp.  Plus wool is very breatheable, especially compared to plastic pants.  So all this seems too good to be true, right?

I really wanted to believe in wool’s superpowers, but I was skeptical.  So I made some wool soakers to try out.  There are many patterns out there for knitted or crocheted soakers, as well as soakers made out of old cut up sweaters.  I don’t enjoy knitting and never really learned how to crochet, plus yarn is so expensive, especially wool yarn,  so I hightailed it to my local thrift shop and bought three wool sweaters for a buck seventy-five a piece.  After looking at so many patterns I knew kind of what I wanted to do, so I winged it and made two wool soakers out of one of the sweaters.  The pattern I made up was nice and simple, just a triangle, with the three corners meeting in the front of the diaper, leaving holes for the legs.  The ribbing of the sweater makes the waistband of the diaper, and I used the neck ribbing around the leg holes for one of them, but nothing for the other one.  I think I like the other one better- it’s simpler.  But we’ll see how well it stops leaks.  I somehow doubled up the fabric in the front of the diaper for extra absorbency -can’t remember how I did it, so next time maybe I will take pictures.

This is the first one I made, with the neck ribbing around the leg holes.

So today was troubleshooting day, and really, there were no problems, except I need to make a drawstring around the waistband because it’s a little loose.  Also unfortunately his onesies don’t really work with this, or cloth diapers in general, because they’re so bulky.  Some of his onesies are stained around the leg holes (already!) and so I might cut them into t-shirts.  His footie pjs and sleep sacks work well though, and that’s most of his wardrobe.  For the other wool soakers I’m going to make “longies,” or a long-legged version that look like pants.  Oh, and I’m going to make some kimono shirts.

So, I’m really happy.  The wool covers seem to be working very well.  The cotton prefold can come out soaked and stinky, but the wool cover is dry and smells like wool.  I really, really like them!  Why did they ever go with plastic pants in the first place?

cuteness overload ^_^

I had to take a picture of this expression.  I love it.  This is what babies look like right after they pop off the breast and you kind of roll them into your lap so you can adjust your clothes.  A full tummy=total bliss.

he’s just so gosh darn cute!

I love wearing him around the house.  He loves to look at things around him…until he falls asleep, anyway!

All I’ve done all day is hold him and nurse him and admire him.  Talk about an easy job!  Well,  add in the fact that I’ve not slept for more than 2-3 hours in a row for the past couple weeks….

I tried out the moby wrap and I like it better than the sling!  Abraham can be upright in it, so it is especially nice when he has gas in his tummy, because I can hold him and comfort him without his body being squished or folded, which makes his tummy hurt more.  Also I like it because he doesn’t fall away from my body when I lean over.  He feels more securely attatched.  And it is nice to see his face.

Here’s a picture from to day.  He’s fast asleep

Today I made some pants for Abraham out of an old fleece blanket.  We got so many beautiful blankets as gifts, both homemade and not.  So I decided to use some of the hand-me-down fleece blankets to make pants for him, since he only has one pair that actually fit him and he seriously needs more.

I used this tutorial.  It’s super easy and took me about ten minutes!  These days, that’s my kind of project!