Yes, I am still pregnant.

Three seperate people have IMed me today, certain that I must have had the baby by now.  So I'm just letting everybody know, the baby is still firmly inside me, doing well, and not even due until Saturday, gosh darn it, so please don't ask because I also have a toddler with a terrible cold that she so kindly shared with me and I'm a little cranky right now.  >.<  I think somebody has been spreading rumors that I'm due sooner than I am...

I like sardines.

We got some the other day at Walmart because, frankly, I was curious.  I wanted to know what the heck the difference between a sardine and an anchovy is, because as far as I could tell they are both just tiny fish in a can, except the anchovies cost about twice as much as the sardines.  So, I decided to crack open the sardines with lunch.  Nothing fancy, just put a bit in the sauce for my ravioli.  THERE WERE WHOLE FISH IN THERE.  No heads or tails, or I think I would have thrown them away immediately, but otherwise whole, intact little fish with bones and skin and everything.  I stared at them for a minute.  I put one on top of my ravioli, and stared at it some more.  Then I figured, if I put a little piece behind a ravioli, maybe it wouldn't be so bad.

And you know what?  They are delicious.  Better than canned tuna.  I have two more from that can still in the fridge, and I think I'm going to try them as a sandwich later tonight.  Well, if I'm not too full from the anchovy pizza I'm making for dinner.

Hidden benefits of cloth diapers

I have to admit, I'm a little surprised at how well this is working out.  We even just got back from our mini vacation in Midway, and didn't use a single disposable diaper!  There are some things that never occured to me about cloth.

1.  Fewer leaks.  We have had exactly three leaky diapers since we started with cloth, and they have been caused by not putting the diaper on correctly, diarrhea, and forgetting to change Elspeth for way too long, respectively.  With the disposables, we had small leaks more mornings than not.

2.  Less smell.  We do not use the lid on our diaper bin.  Because it does not smell.  We aren't doing anything special either -- it's just a five gallon bucked, with a trash bag in it, and a little baking soda sprinkled in the bottom.  I guess if you stuck your face in it, it might be smelly, but just being in the room with it, you don't even notice.  Our disposable diaper trash, on the other hand, REEKED.  Even with the special sealing mechanism that was supposed to keep odors in, when that thing started to get full, you could tell by just smelling, and when you opened the lid, hoo boy!

3.  Have I mentioned the incredible amount of money we're saving?  We're talking, like, thirty dollars a month, and I was buying the cheapest diapers I could find.  The initial investment seems like a lot of money, but seriously, by this time next month the things will have paid for themselves.  And I never run out of diapers.  Goodbye emergency Sam's runs!

4.  Fewer rashes.  Aside from the hives Elspeth was getting because of her allergy, she is getting a lot less of the regular kind of diaper rashes too.  I've come to discover this is pretty usual... more than half of babies in disposables have chronic rashes, while only about 10% of babies in cloth do.

5.  The laundry is oddly satisfying.  I have been line drying, and it feels really useful to put those diapers up there.  Maybe I am the only person on the planet who feels this way, but that big fluffy stack of freshly washed prefolds just says "good job mom!" to me.

So seriously, I think that everybody should consider cloth diapers.  Of course they aren't right for every situation (disposables are wonderfully convenient things), but if more people knew how easy cloth is, I think a lot more babies would wear cloth diapers, at least some of the time.

Allergists are nice, but you never want to need one.

Elspeth is officially allergic to soy now.  And milk.  And eggs.  And we have an epipen in case she accidentally eats some peanuts, so she doesn't die.  T_T  Fortunately, since we have a letter from a real allergist, the WIC program will give us goat milk for Elspeth, which she should tollerate much better.  Which is weird, because I had actually not noticed any allergic symptoms when she has milk or milk products.  But hey, live and learn I suppose.  The big problem of course being that grocery store goat milk is not so great... any milk you buy is a MINIMUM of two weeks old, and goat milk doesn't have as long a shelf life as cow milk, it starts to taste goaty at about the week and a half point.  We are going to have to get some goats some day.

New Flickr pics

Climbing Stove
Originally uploaded by Driggs family

More pictures on Flickr. Not tons, but some. Also, I finally aquired a carseat! Yay! It is on the floor in Elspeth's room because Mark wants to clean out the car a little before we put it in. I just hope I don't lose the seatbelt clip before that happens.

The adventure never ends

So, we have decided to do cloth diapers on the new baby, because it only costs about 20% as much as it would to use disposables.  Well and good.  But the stuff was already here, so I decided to try out my diaper-fu on Elspeth.  That is when I discovered the cause of the perpetual rash around her waist and legs -- she is allergic to something in the disposables.  We have also proved pretty conclusively that she is allergic to soy.  Now the diapers aren't that big a deal (the new one was going to be cloth buns anyway), but the soy, oddly enough, is.  Can't use cooking spray.  Can't use shortening.  No Oreos.  Most brands of granola are out too.  SOY IS IN EVERYTHING!!!  I swear, every time I think I have everything under control, she breaks out again, and yep... soy.  The good news about this is it may explain her egg "allergy" -- sometimes they bother her and sometimes they don't, and it's pretty much random.  Which means it's POSSIBLE that she isn't reacting to the eggs, she's reacting to the soy that they fed the chickens who laid the eggs.  Fortunately, my plans involved raising my own laying flock as soon as I have room anyway.  And soy isn't really good for chickens, so hey... healthy soy free chooks, healthy soy free Elspeth.  But in the mean time, I am getting VERY tired of reading labels.

Well, I didn't get the carseat.

I did, however, order the cloth diapering stuff.  It seems really expensive up front, but when I keep in mind that this is ALL I WILL HAVE TO SPEND ON DIAPERS FOR THE NEXT FOUR MONTHS, it doesn't seem so bad.  Also, the subsequent four months will only cost about a third as much.  I have however found another eBay carseat.  This time, I swear I'm waiting to the LAST second and I'm going to POACH IT!  Less than two days to go tho, and nobody has bid yet, so things are looking a lot more promising than last time.