Frosty turns 2

And my baby is two. Surprisingly, I wasn’t sad-the only way is up from here, methinks.

For the grass-maintenance obsessed boy, a whipper snipper from the husband. He doesn’t put this down, and yesterday was following my around while I was mowing, tidying up my edges. For hours. Can’t wait until he’s big enough to do it for real.

From me, some bodgy jewellery. More because I couldn’t bear the thought of a birthday going by that I hadn’t made something for. I also got him a couple of Spot books, because he is obsessed.

This, from the twins-his very own phone. He adores it (he’s also phone obsessed, and yells at me every time i’m on the real phone to give it to him, no matter who it is). He goes to bed with this regularly, and I can often hear him remonstrating his siblings ‘Be quiet, i’m on the phone!’ (Don’t know where he gets that from………)

We’re also going against the Woman’s Weekly-style cakes-mainly, because although they look great they taste like crap. With our kind of everyday diet, a butter cake with buttercream icing is unbearably stodgy and rich. Enter the banana cake with cream cheese frosting-a much, much tastier alternative, and very suited to a kid who eats at least three bananas a day. I think it actually has a better crumb than the buttercakes, so if any of the other kids wants some fancy sculpture work i’ll give it a shot with this.

One down, four more to go in the next three months or so. Eek.

Pants for Frosty

I realised the other evening, upon getting ready to go out on a cool-ish night, that my poor baby has no pants suitable for public view. Luckily he didn't need the ratty old rainbow fleece trackies I chucked in the bag, but next time he'll be stylish and prepared.

Side view

I've held off hemming them for now, as he may not need them for a few more months yet. Love Queensland!

The homemade baby-10 months in.

Well, time has flown and my baby is now 10 months old-he's even taking a few steps. And he is still a homemade baby! I've been meaning to put in regular updates of this project, but life and all..........We haven't bought anything new for him, and he's cost us less than $200 all up. The original plan was to try for three months, then six, and it's just been so easy we've carried on.

I admit, it's pretty easy for your fifth child-we have lots of hand me downs. But then again, our sole present this time was a couple of 000 bodysuits which the monster outgrew by two weeks old-by the time you pop out number five it seems it's old hat and nothing special. Most people should be able to sustain themselves on presents alone for their first!

So, what have we done?

-We've bought him no new items (clothing, toys, furniture etc). I've made him a couple of things, but only with fabric I already had in the cupboard (which is admittedly not too limiting......). I've bought a couple of clothing items from op-shops, and been gifted with a few bags of hand-me-downs.

-He's completely cloth, he hasn't worn a disposable. Very happy with that, as that's the one everyone says you can't do. Ha! All of them have been hand-me-downs or made by me-again, not too limiting as I had three in cloth at one stage and he gets all my experiments. He has a terribly complicated stash.

-He's breastfed, yes I finally achieved it! He has used two tins of organic formula. One for sanity saving for me, and we're using the second for mixing with food-no fridge means no EBM storage and i'm not too keen on the idea of milking myself daily at the kitchen bench.

-It cost $95 to get his tongue tie snipped. Eek, but worth it.

And that's it.  Proof that babies are only expensive if you read and follow the baby books, and therefore 'need' gazillions of gizmos.

Teeny tiny things

Newborn stuff is so fun to make-it's all so miniscule. It'll be more fun when it's finally in use-36 weeks today!

A cotton outer/suedecloth inner pocket, made to the Shar's Newborn pattern.

A teeny weeny fitted, also to Shar's pattern. Some NB cotton outer PUL/suedecloth covers, home drafted pattern.
A fitted (froggy) and cotton PUL outer AIO, made to my pattern. These are S/M-in the first pic the rise is snapped down to newborn, in the second opened to medium. Two red minky/black fleece blankies. The theory is that these can act as nappy covers as well-after all, he'll be a December Queensland baby, nappy and singlet will probably be all he'll wear a lot of the time. So while he's kicking around on the floor, the grass, or in his rocker he can just have a fitted or flat on and be laying on one of these. That's the theory anyway, i'll have to test it-but even if it doesn't work he still has two lush blankies. Sling, to the Karma Baby pattern. I'm kicking myself that I ever bought slings, it literally took under half an hour to make and cost about $4 in fabric. And better yet, it fits-I have a somewhat small but not tiny build and most slings are too big for me. Asha (3.5 years, 13.5 kilos) was more than happy to hop in and try it out for me, it should be more comfortable once I get rid of this big belly! I want to try a mei tai next.

Front carry

And warning, ick factor for the faint hearted :P! More pads for me, i'm so happy I won't be wearing icky sweaty plastic next to my poor battered bits this time. They're topped with cotton velour, with a few layers of bamboo fleece, then the base is PUL and flannelette. The shape is from the 11inch pattern from shewhorunsintheforest, I meant to make them a bit differently but they had a mind of their own in the end. Not perfect, but hey, no-one will be looking at them :P

Plus i've made a pile of bamboo terry wipes and some bamboo terry/needlefelt prefolds-but they're pretty boring looking.

About time I displayed something productive here instead of just blathering on, eh?

Breasts and such

OK OK, I know I said I wasn't going to buy anything for the new baby but i've slipped. I bought one of these t-shirts tonight. It is organic and ethically made though.I couldn't resist when I saw them on sale at Brindabella Baby on Ozebaby. Anyone who knows me knows that breastfeeding is not something that comes easily to me, but i'm determined this time will be different. After all, if I fail now I don't get another chance!

So this shirt can be one of my motivators. D is completely onside this time-he's never really cared how the babies were fed any other time, but i've pounded into his head how important this is to me (and how it means he can't do night feeds :P). I have to admit, I can see his previous stance though-making a bottle and taking over after seeing me sitting crying with bleeding nipples and a screaming newborn at 3am is an act of mercy, not undermining. However he knows this time that that a quick fix is not what is needed.

OK, i'm blathering now. But as penance for buying the shirt here are some hemp and needlefelt prefolds I made him this week. I also have a heap of PUL and FOE on the way to complete the baby stash. Not long to go now, if the scan's dates were right and I go a week early like I did with R that's only 7 weeks-eek!

A new obsession

Dyeing! I've wanted to do if for ages but it's one of those things that never got around to. I bought a Procion pack the other week from Fairy Fabrics (and also got excellent, prompt service and some freebie FOE) but as I haven't yet had the money to go get the rest of the gear needed it's still sitting on my desk. No, it won't cost much, but D has only been working for two weeks and before that we were stuck on the Centrelink studying lifestyle-not so good when we've moved interstate and since then had to pay our rates, insurances and rego.

However, someone suggested wool dyeing with food dye. I have old woolen blankets i've been felting up specifically for this, I have vinegar, I have food dye, so yesterday I got cracking on some newborn covers.

Method-soak wool in some water with vinegar for four hours. I used a large mixing bowl with 2 cups vinegar.

Mix up some food dye with water-I used a dash in about 3/4 of a cup.

Lay out some Glad Wrap on a surface you don't care too much about (mental note-not the cream laminex benches of my rental)

Squeeze out wool until it's fairly dry, then pour/drip on dye. I used a tablespoon and a medicine dropper and liked the dropper best, but one bigger than 5mL would have made life easier.

Wrap in Glad Wrap and microwave for two minutes, then rest for two minutes. Do this three times.

Let cool, remove from wrap, rinse with water and lay flat to dry.

The stripey one was first, and I don't think it was quite wet enough or the dye colour strong enough. I then overcompensated on the splotchy one and made it too wet, so my yellow and blue splotches mixed a bit too much! I also need to find something reusable to replace the Glad Wrap, I went through a disgusting amount to make these.

Now to stick some fold-over elastic around them and see whether i've drafted up a decent pattern! It's also inspired me to dye up some yarn in nice, strong boys colours.........one day.

Booby pads

That's what the kids call them anyway :P

After all the nappies I was craving making something simple. I've always used reusable breastpads, just the Tommee Tippee ones you get from the supermarket-I didn't know about the rest then. They're not too bad actually, once my boobs have settled down.
Fairly simple-two pairs of 3 layers of bamboo fleece, and three pairs of two layers. These are mainly for later on, I leak like a tap for the first few weeks and usually resort to a flat nappy under a tight singlet (for home anyway, would be a bit interesting to go out like that!)


I thought of doing them fancy-putting minky or something on them. But I need the absorbency without bulk, so decided just bamboo will do just fine. Not sure how they'll go without any waterproofing but just figure i'll make more and change more often-can't bear the thought of plastic over leaky nipples in a Queensland summer. I'm planning on making some bigger ones too-these ones are only small.

00 Pants

A quick little pair of pants I made for Johhny 5 (go watch Short Circuit if you don't get it). Just plain red pinwale cord I picked up at an op-shop. Estimated cost about 50c! I drafted up this pattern ages ago to make flongies-it always makes me laugh when the legs are shorter than the rise, stumpy newborns!

And you can just see the bottom of Shorty's red pants I made him yonks ago-1.5 years ago to be exact. My boy is a slow grower!

We've decided that this baby will be our 'homemade baby'-we won't be buying anything new for him, it will all be homemade or secondhand. Being number 5 makes it a bit easier, we have truckloads of stuff. However, my nanna isn't in on the challenge, so sent us this package the other day. There's not really a nice way to ask relatives not to buy you presents, so we won't!