When Ian Ain't Healthy...

...ain't nobody healthy.

I'm sick again. It's only a matter of time before Jesse gets sick, and readers of this blog will get sick just by coming in contact with anything that has to do with us. These people out here carry and transfer vicious strains of illnesses.

I Hate Shopping Carts!

I'm convinced that shopping carts are the reason why Ian is sick again. It's probably misguided anger, but I have no explanation as to how my child could get sick a week after he had any direct contact with anyone except his family.

This time around he threw up a few times and has had problems on the other end for the past two days. Today, day three, is the worst so far, even though he hasn't thrown up since Sunday morning. Today I've changed 15 diapers since 2 a.m. It's currently just before noon. Sometimes they're so bad we have to change him in the tub and just bathe him right after. Needless to say, we have suspended our cloth diaper use. Our diaper covers got dirty too fast to keep up.

The solution? I'm going to go shopping early in the morning before Jesse leaves for work and leave Ian at home with him. I'll have another baby soon anyways and it will be impossible to coordinate all three of our schedules, keep everyone entertained during the shopping trip, and have room for two babies (one in a car seat) plus groceries in the cart. I'll have to go to Costco during the day though, because their hours are more restricted. Maybe Jesse will go on Saturdays.

We'll see if this helps his sick-getting.

sidenote: I was telling Jesse the other day that I would have to figure out how I was going to get groceries after the baby was born, because it would be impossible to shop with the two kids. Jesse said, "Why can't you?" Right. He obviously doesn't go shopping with our toddler (not that I think ours is worse than any other--all toddler's moms have it rough) enough to appreciate the complexity of the situation.

You're Lazy. Get A Job.

We got an awesome free leather couch from our upstairs neighbor. Here it is:


It looks saggy, but it's not. Ian loves it, and we think we're going to have the baby sleep in the living room until our lease is up and we can get a bigger apartment, so it was perfect for us to get that for free right now.

Now we can sell these beauties:

and put our new free couch in their place. It should open up quite a bit of space.

I decided that four days of having three couches in our living room was enough so I posted them on craigslist.com. We've had great success with Craigslist (like buying our whole entire living room setup for about $500) so imagine how annoyed I was when I got three emails (so far) from scammers. Here's the first example, from a guy named "Henry Parker":

Email one: is it available ?

Odd that he wrote it in all lowercase, with an inappropriately placed space before the question mark and in a gray font, but I responded in the affirmative and this is what he wrote back:

Thanks for the prompt response. I have instructed my
account officer to mail a certified
check (overnight), while you hold this item for me. Let me know
when you receive the check and I will have my mover
will come pick up at your place. Please forward me
the following info so I can issue your check . . .
1.Your full name
2.Your mailing address(Physical as Ups does not deliver to P.O.Box}
3.Your phone number.
** Please note that I will overnight the payment,and
you should receive it tomorrow. I appreciate you
holding this for me. Please delete the posting as I
am definitely buying it from you and it would be sad
for me to have the payment in the mail only to be
informed of the its sale,also am deaf and will like to be contacted via email**

First off, deaf people can communicate over the phone, Henry, by using a service. Second of all, don't you know that everyone selling things on Craigslist is told not to accept certified cheques or money orders or anything like that? The problem with them is that you can actually issue a bad cheque, have the person cash it, come pick up whatever item they're selling, and then they find out that the check bounced or was issued against a fake account, or was a counterfeit money order or whatever. Then the seller is down two couches and $300.

The next email was from a guy called "David Harry". Sounds fake.

Email one: Do you still have it available for sale?

Not bad--poor grammar, when you consider I'm selling two items, but he used correct spacing and a capitol letter, so he gets five stars.

Email two:

Hi,
Thanks for the response.I am willing to pay your asking price.I will pay by money order as its the only way i can pay you at the moment.I would have loved to come take a look but i am presently out of town on an assignment.I will not be back in town soon. I dont mind adding an extra twenty dollars so you can keep it in my favor,Please send me some pictures.I hope it is in good condition.Reply with your full name,cell phone number,and address where payment should be sent.I will let you know how i intend to go about the pick-up.Please take the posting off craigslist today and consider it sold to me.
Expecting to hear from you soon.

All right, David. First of all, I already posted pictures online. In the ad you responded to. Second, you only get one star for this email because your spacing is off and so is your punctuation. Finally, I'm not stupid, but apparently you are. Oh, and I would have loved for you to be able to come take a look at the couches, so I could see who on earth writes like that.

The third person to try to half-heartedly scam me was a man named "Pastor Ken". Way to try to establish some legitimacy to your name by tacking on the word "pastor", Pastor.

Email one:

Hello, its still available.I Want to know the current condition

Thanks

Stop using grey writing, please. And use correct spacing. And punctuation. And I stated the current condition in my ad.

Email two:

Thanks for your quick reply.Am much satisfied with the condition and price and everything sound good to me.It's Beautiful and exactly my taste and choice.It's my pleasure to buy the unit from you.Are you the owner of the unit?I want you to consider it sold and withdraw the advert from craigslist to avoid disturbance.Because i think this particular unit is exactly what have been searching and looking for some days now and I'm so sorry as i won't be able to come for a look as I'm the busy type.It's my pleasure to buy the unit.So, i will order my financier to arrange for the check and the shipping company will come for the pick up at your location when the check has been clears in your Bank.

If this arrangement is acceptable.Kindly mail me your full Name and your contact information to facilitate the mailing of the check..for the arrangement of the check and i need the picture of the unit.Well,I stay in Colorado...And if you have any more information to know....kindly don't hesitate to ask


Thanks
Pastor Ken.

Pastor Ken, I do "have any more information to know". Are you from Mars? Because you sound like it. But apparently you also have someone to arrange financial matters for you, just like the first guy, so you must not be trying to scam me, either. One more "information to know": Why are you shopping for couches in DC when you "stay in Colorado"? I know they have couches in Colorado, and someone must need to sell theirs. It might not be "exactly what [you] have been searching and looking for some days now", but I'm sure a Colorado "unit" will do just fine.

Oh, and fix your space bar, all of you. Maybe after you get off your lazy behinds and get a job, and stop trying to steal things from people. Or maybe before, if getting a job doesn't appeal to you, so then the next time you try to scam someone you might actually sound humanoid.

It's possible they weren't trying to steal my couches with a fake form of payment. Another Craigslist favorite is getting people's contact information and selling it to junk mail companies. I'm not sure which is worse.

I'm sorry if I sound bitter, but the guy who responded first made a big deal out of wanting to come look at them last night, was half an hour late, and when he did get here he didn't even look at them. He told us some story about how he works for a construction company who buys used furniture and pays to ship it to poor countries as a charity. Why on earth would someone in some developing country want couches like these? To rip apart and sew clothes out of the upholstry? That has to be the least effective charitable action I have ever heard of. Send clothes and hygiene kits.

Am I getting paranoid, or was he possibly trying to see if we had anything valuable to steal? I dislike living in suspicion, and I dislike being hounded by dishonest people.

Cloth Diapering: Days 2 and 3

Day two was fine, except for two things. Ian is getting red marks on his legs where the Velcro of the diaper cover rubs against his legs. And I put a dirty bio liner in the toilet and it clogged it because we had some toilet paper in there already. But that's the first time it's happened.

Day three (today) has already annoyed me, and Ian is sleeping in a disposable right now. His legs started to bother him today, and he made sure I knew that by standing in front of me and tugging on his pants. I changed covers to one that doesn't rub his legs, but it's the only one I can use that doesn't. Another thing that bothered me today was that I had him wearing his cloth diapers without a onesie over them so I could tell easier when his diaper was dirty. The problem with this is that the cloth diapers fold about four and a half inches over because they're too long. All that bulk without the benefit of a onesie holding everything in place doesn't work. His pants kept inching the diaper down, and by the time I had changed two diapers I was done. I slapped him in a disposable and put him down for a nap.

I don't really want to buy more cloth diapers that fit better for my experiment because if I decide it's too much of a hassle I don't want to have more diapers to sell, but I don't know if I'm getting the best experience from these too-big diapers.

I'll think about it.

Cloth Diapering: Day 1

Yesterday I started trying out cloth diapering with Ian. I'm not sure how long I'll try it out before I decide, but we'll see how it goes for this first week. And if you're not curious about cloth diapering, you probably shouldn't read this post, because it will be boring.

I had a doctor's appointment in the morning (the baby's not coming soon, unfortunately) so we started when I got home. This is how my system works, which I think for me is the easiest and cheapest option.

I take a cloth diaper and fold it in thirds lengthwise.


I put it in the diaper cover and fold down the extra length (unfortunately the cloth diapers I got seem to be a bit long compared to their width, but that's okay. I won't make that mistake again.).


I put a bio liner in (biodegradable and reusable if they don't get dirty. They make clean-up after dirty diapers virtually painless),


or a doubler if Ian is going to go a while until I can change him, like at night.


Then I Velcro it closed and cram his fat bottom into his pants.


When I change a diaper I use a new cover just so I can get the next diaper ready, pull the old one to the side, and get Ian taken care of before I take the time to take care of the wet/dirty diaper. It works pretty well so far.

Yesterday I had two dirty diapers and some wet ones. Here are the pros and cons, in my opinion:

Pros:

• You don't have to throw away a diaper, and your diaper pail doesn't have to be emptied every other day to the trash. You just throw in an extra load of laundry when you do laundry.
  
• Cloth diapering is just as expensive as disposables, and really pretty easy. So far.

Cons:

• You do have to view the waste products slightly longer to dispose of them.
• It's hard to tell when you've got a wet/dirty diaper because they're harder to smell than with disposables.

When I first put Ian's diaper on I had folded down the extra length in the front. It looked really funny and he had a hard time sitting down. After laughing a lot, I changed it to the back. He had a much easier time. He did get one diaper cover a little dirty but I washed it in one second. I'm pretty sure he had been dirty a while and I just couldn't smell it. He had no leaks through the night but did sleep fitfully. I'm not sure if this is because he was bulkier than usual or if it was just one of those nights for him. He also got a diaper cover a little wet this morning but I should've changed him earlier. I have a hard time telling when these diapers are wet, too, and it had been a while.

I had read various places that it's hard to fit a cloth diaper into baby clothes now days because cloth is so much bulkier than a disposable, but with Ian's baggy boy clothes it has been no problem.

Hello, Creepy

I was walking out of the grocery store today and some man started talking to me. He asked how old Ian was, if I was having another baby, and a few other basic questions, and then told me he wanted to take me on a shopping spree. I declined, and he insisted another few times, and finally I said I was pressed for time because I was meeting my husband. That's when he backed off and said if I saw him there again to say "hi" and that he would take me out later on our shopping trip. I'm pretty sure by "shopping spree" he meant "killing spree", and I'm not into being murdered.

Oh, and a lady in the store came up to me and was talking to me, and she kept touching me. I do not like strangers touching me, and I'm not sure why the flat look on my face wasn't enough to communicate that to her. Usually does the trick.

If I were rich, I would start getting my groceries delivered to my home. But I'd also be afraid the delivery person would be crazy.

In Which I Am Set Back A Week

I've been saying that I have four and a half weeks left when people ask, but today I compared the calendar with that and I actually have five and a half weeks. I have to be pregnant a whole week longer than I thought! What a disappointment. And I thought I was uncomfortable with four and a half weeks left--I'm imagining what I'm going to feel like when I actually do have four and a half weeks left (or less!), and it's not looking very...comfortable.

On the bright side, that gives me an extra week to get things ready, and an extra week to find a name. Goody. We're trying to decide if we need more receiving blankets. We didn't need very many with Ian because it was summer and our apartment was hot, but now it's winter and I'm just not sure. The thought of voluntarily bringing more baby blankets into the house than we already have is not quite appealing, but I don't think all the fancy knitted blankets will stand up to the repeated washings they will have to sustain if the baby blows out on them all the time.

Oh, and on the other bright side, Ian will go into the nursery next week, and I am sure I've counted those days right.