My boy is 1

Wow. I can't believe we made it to his party with all the planning and everything that goes with a first birthday.. I can't believe its over. We had such an amazing time.. There were so many people that came to celebrate with us and to show their love to my baby boy. He looked so handsome too! He behaved so well. There were over 60 people there and he just smiled and played with the kids and was 100% OK with everyone holding him and passing him around and he was just all around a good kid.

His aunt Kendra (my sister) got him the most amazing cake. It was so freaking cute and tasted amazing!! I mean it was nicer looking then my wedding cake.

We did a Mickey Mouse theme and everything looked so darn cute. I cant get over how nice everything came together.  It was so worth the stress and emotion that went into it.

I made cake balls for the first time and we made chocolate dipper Oreo's and had fried chicken and pasta salad. Oh it was so amazing!

So cute

Opening presents

Him and his cake 

His cake eating

Stepping out of my comfort zone and LOVING IT!!

For the last few years I have been ashamed of how I look or how I dress to hide how my body looks. I never had enough will power to change how look because I think deep down it was my way of hiding from the world and have an excuse to do so. Which in a way is funny because by "hiding" I ended up making my body worse. So I finally had enough will power to do something about it and stop hiding. (it only took me breaking down in tears in front of the mirror wondering how the hell my husband can get aroused by looking at me).

So I started walking every morning and I also started P90x which is like the biggest change. I joined a Mommy group and have been actually going to quite a few of the meet ups and you know what... I enjoyed it... who would have guessed. Also in this new found will power I also swallowed my pride and said I was sorry to one of my best friends who I was a total Bitch to... and honestly I didn't deserve her forgiveness.. but she proved to be the better of the two of us and forgave me.. and now we seem to be getting back to being good friends.. which is like some of the best news... (its the small things in life that are the biggest and make the most impact).... and with all those changes I lost 10lbs and have gained so much more confidence.

I can't tell you how this little bit of confidence has changed my mindset on so many things, and its not  like I have a ton of it.. but just a little bit. I actually look forward to my Wednesday morning walks with the mommy group. There are two girls that I actually see myself being friends with. They are actually really sweet girls and great moms... they are close to my age AND they don't care that I am fat. So with these new friend ships I look forward to out meet ups and I look forward to getting out of the house and I am starting to accept that I have more to offer then just being the fat person people make jokes about in their head (I know that's not what was happening but in my head it was).

And with all this going out and new friendships my son also gets a huge benefit. We go out with other people instead of me just taking him across the street to the same playground everyday. Which in its own way also encourages me to get out more too... So all in all... I am loving this new chapter in my life!!

Afternoon at the Park!!!

We went to Huntington Central Park today and I got some good shots of My Mr Man!!

we had so much fun! He ran through the grass and went down the slide and went on the swings. It was such a perefect day to go out and play! 

Poor little man

Swollen face 

Hi! Well the last few weeks have been interesting to say in the least. Bradley has been to the hospital twice now with allergic reactions to what we thought was food.




Then he has a Doctors appointment the other day with the allergist and he said that Bradley has Bronchiolitis (which isnt bronchitis)  http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmedhealth/PMH0001970/ and needs a breathing machine called a nebulizer to help him breath.

Granny giving him His nebulizer

Snuggling with Daddy after treatment

In the meantime our kitchen sink pipe broke and the plumber came out and tore down some of the wall and we saw that there was mold behind the wall. I brought this up to the doctor and he said mold can cause this if the baby is allergic to it. So now we are testing the mold to see what it is. Next week Bradley has to go in and have a skin scratch test done to see what else he is or isn't allergic to and potentially will be getting a baby epi pen. Its been really sad to see him struggle like this and to know what he has to go through next week. I know there are other babies who have gone through much worse and I know this could be so much more serious but its still sad to know your baby is in pain and you can't fix it with out doing painful tests.

Catch Up

Hey there,
So its been a while since I wrote on here so I will do a fast catch up blog and then hopefully keep up on it better this time. hehe!

Ok so where to start,



In July we celebrated our first Independence Day with Bradley and he loved the fireworks. He just stared at them in awe of the colors. It was so much fun to watch him get so excited over them. We spent the day at Grandma Lynda's house (GG to Bradley short for Great Grandma) We just all had a great time






Also in July we went swimming several times! He love the water. He love to splash and get it everywhere. He would cry when we got him out of the pool. My mom has a pool so I know this summer he will be in it a lot.

In August My dear friend Danielle got married and Bradley was the ring baby! It was so sweet and a Beautiful wedding. Bradley was in a cute suit and was pulled down the aisle in a wagon by the flower girl. He was a hit and behaved so well. He just sat there the entire ceremony and was just as cute as can be.




In September a friend of mine took some photos of him around the house and they turned out amazing. Some of my favorites so far...

In October we went to the Pumpkin Patch and that was super fun! Bradley had such a blast with all the fun colors to look at! 

In November We had Thanksgiving and that was an interesting time. Bradley was having some stranger danger and was affraid to go to new people so that made my moms dinner of 20+ people a fun place to be. He LOVED the turkey though. He really is a great eater. He loves to play with his food and to feed himself. He loves to eat big boy food.

 In December he started walking!!! That was amazing!!! I cant believe it. 9 months old and walking!! We also saw Santa, He didnt like that to much poor thing was so scared

And that brings us to Jan and I am caught up... missed a lot of little details but no one really reads this anyways. lol!

My struggle and frustrations with Cloth diapering my son

UGH!

I knew since I was about 4 months pregnant that I wanted to cloth diaper my son. I really liked the idea of keeping disposables out the land fills and also I loved the fact that cloth diapers help prevent diaper rash and are better for babies skin. So I set out on the journey of research to find the right company to do cloth diapers. At this point I just thought there were a few choices I would have to make and Vuala, that would be done with and all I would have to do would be to buy them. Boy was I wrong. Once I started looking into things I realized I had more choices then I wanted, One size, Pockets, All in ones, All in twos, Hybrids, Prefolds, Covers, Fitteds, PUL vs TPU, Hemp vs Micro fiber vd Fleece, One size vd Sized, Velcro vs snaps, I could go on. So once you pick what type you want, you then have to sort through the 100s of brands and pick which one of those you want. I have been looking in to these and doing countless hours of research since I was 4 months pregnant, and now Bradley is 3 1/2 months old and I still am coming across plenty of diapers I have never heard of.

We started off with getting different kinds and seeing what we liked, and we liked what one called a hybrid diaper, G Diaper......

This is what it looks like ^

 < This is Bradley 15 days old in his first one

They were very bulky between his legs as you can see. So what a G diaper is a outer fabric layer that has a plastic snap in liner that holds a micro fiber cloth insert. So with each diaper change you just change the micro fiber insert instead of the entire diaper. So it's suppose to save on space since you only need like 6 or 7 outer cover and 20 or so inserts since you wash them. So I fell in love with the idea... until I started using them. As you can see it didn't fit well on him at all. After about 3 days use I hated them. They don't hold in anything. He was leaking out of every diaper. Not to mention the fact that the plastic snap in liner keeps in heat so it makes him super sweaty and very uncomfortable which results in a cranky baby. So overall the G diaper is one of the worst diapers I have tried. Not to mention the fact that they are expensive... $18 for one cover then $30 for 6 micro fiber inserts. So in total to start you would need about $300. Oh and did I mention you would need to spend that much 3 times to get small, med and large. So not the cheapest choice. Why I liked them in the beginning I have NO idea.

So from there we decided that they were a waste of money and we sold them on Ebay.com for almost as much as we spent on them since he only wore a few of them. We then did more research and found the one size pocket diapers.

So as you can see from the diagram, its a diaper that goes one and off just like a disposable and tossed in the hamper after each change... just like a disposable. They said this diaper is husband proof and daycare proof and grandparent proof. So we thought this may be the one so we go some of them. Oh did I mention they are one size and can be adjusted with just a snap (look at the diagram on the right).

So we ordered some and I really liked them, and so did Randy. So we ordered 40 of them. After about a solid 2 weeks of JUST using cloth diapers and I hit some bumps again. They leak when ever he sleeps, naps as short as 1 hour or over night for 8 hours. The diapers we got are called Alvababies, they are about $6 a diaper and are made in China. Other pocket diapers that are made here in US are about $18-$30 a diaper, so my thought is are they not working because they are cheap quality.

Back to the internet I went. There I found many other options that I could do and now I'm all confused again. There are so many choices. The other ones are more expensive and would cost more to test them out. So how do you decide which ones to try with out breaking the bank. Someone asked me why don't I just give up and us disposables over night. I had to explain that its not just bed time. Any one who is a mother out there knows that a nap schedule for a 3 month old is not set in stone. So to make sure he doesn't to sleep in cloth at nap time would be close to impossible.





UGH