Kimber's Navy Family

Well, baby #5 has decided that I apparently do not need sleep and she isn't even born yet. I thought I would put these wee hours of the morning to use and write a blog post while I sipped my lemon ginger tea in a quiet, still sleeping house. With 4 children and another on the way, I am not always eager to drag all the children to the store for small errands. Throw in having a husband on submarines, 2 asthmatic children, twin preschoolers, and the roughest pregnancy yet and you can bet running errands is my least favorite thing to do (well, changing pee sheets is probably actually my least favorite thing to do). When our twins were newborns, I really started utilizing the convenience of online shopping. Now I have honed that skill to level expert. Here are my tips on making online shopping work for you and avoiding small errands: 1. Buy in bulk The first step to successful online shopping: go to Costco. We plan our Costco trips every 1-2 weeks. Our twins are in prescho...

Well, cloth diapering has been different than I thought it would be. I tried to approach cloth diapering with an open mind, knowing that it was something that we were dedicated to. So, with that said, our cloth diapering journey has been full of ups and downs and lots of learning. Cloth diapering tips  My first recommendation when cloth diapering is to find a local baby store that carries cloth diapers. This was such a great resource to me, beyond just having a local business to support with my cloth diaper purchases. A lot of local baby stores hold cloth diapering classes. This was informative to me because it discussed all the different types of cloth diapers for all the different ages and stages as well as how wash routines for each of those as well. This is also where I went every time I needed to troubleshoot our cloth diapering routine . My second recommendation-- and one that may be harder to support-- is having a cloth friendly pediatrician. Our kids have all bee...

Wow! It has been awhile since my last blog post. A lot has happened since then. We are in the midst of a PCS, one of those military moves where we won't be at our next destination for months and we are living with relatives and traveling to visit friends. These are all good things, but it has been exceedingly stressful planning this out with 4 children. On top of the craziness of getting our house ready to be packed out, we are making this move with a season change: wardrobes for 2 seasons for our family of 6 with a cross country drive at the end of these couple months. We have been consciously trying to pack our belongings in a way that we  hope will fit in our vehicles when we drive from the east coast to the west coast (and trying not to stress out over a 5 day drive with 4 children, in the meantime). I packed our winter clothes lightly, with the hope that the winter will wrap up soon. I'm relying on layering and the one winter jacket I brought for each family member. It...

Several weeks ago we started having problems with baby #4 and Freetime diapers. {What is a Freetime? Read my post " Cloth diapering an infant: BumGenius Freetime and Elemental diapers. "} Everytime I put him in a Freetime diaper, he would break out in a rash. I started suspecting that his skin might be getting irritated by the liners in a Freetime diaper, which are different than the organic cotton in an Elemental. Well, one day he ended up wearing a Freetime diaper and taking a long nap. When he woke up and I went to change him, he had a bad diaper rash. Over the next couple days, the diaper rash turned into yeast and suddenly we had a full blow problem on our hands. How do I clear up yeast when in cloth diapers? After some Google searching, I learned nystatin is not cloth diaper safe. The nystatin will get on the liners and form a waterproof barrier, apparently. {This is the same reason why a lot of diaper rash creams are not cloth diaper safe.} I read about two methods ...