Christmas 2010

This Christmas is special for many reasons. Its the first Christmas in two years that our family will be all together again, and with three new additions to the family. The last two years I have spent Christmas in Houston with Matt and his family, and although I love his family, I am so glad to be home this year with my family. This is the 6th Christmas that Matt and I have been a "couple" for, but the very first one that Matt is spending with my family on Christmas day. He has spent every Christmas since he was born at his grandparents house in Houston,so this will be a big change for him. Michelle and Jeremy are here for Christmas, and although he has spent Christmas with my family before, this is the first time that they are here as an engaged couple, making him an official member of our family. This will be the second time that Michelle and Jeremey will get to see lil Miss Paisley since she was born. Last but certainly not least, this is Paisley's first Christmas, and although I know she wont remember it, it will be rememberable for me.

Matt, Paisley and I spent the eve of Christmas eve at Matt's parent's house. They may not have gotton to be there for Paisley's first Christmas day, but they got to have her first Christmas gift opening with her.

Christmas day we will be getting up bright and early so Paisley can open her gifts from us and then we will be heading to my parents house for a great day with my family!

Being a Full Time Stay At Home Mom

Before having a child, most of my days were spent at work, and I still had time to take care of the house, husband, and hang out with friends every Friday and Saturday. Now with a baby I am home all day and cant seem to find very much time to do house work, not to mention time with friends have gotten few and far between  (you cant take a baby to parties). It has always been my dream to be a full time wife and mommy. As soon as we found out I was pregnant, I knew my dream was going to come true. Before I became a FT-SAHM (full time stay at home mom), I thought it was easy peasy, just sitting around all day watching your children play. Boy was I in for a surprise!

Paisley is now 9 months old and way ahead developmentally. She has always been ahead of the game, she is already walking, rolling her tongue and has a mouth full of teeth! Watching her as she learned to stand and be more mobile became a priority, as she falls and bumps her head alot. Paisley was born with a Hemangioma on her head, Hemangiomas are abnormal overgrowth's of blood vessels that can appear as red or purple lumps in the skin and on other parts of the body. If she was to hit her head in the right spot and bust it, she would have to be rushed to the ER so they can cauterize it to stop the bleeding.

Being home all day with Paisley really ensures that I don't miss out on any milestones. It also lets me parent the way I want to parent instead of having baby sitters or a daycare teach her. I've taught her how to walk, talk and how to clap, how to roll a ball and drink from a straw. She understands alot of words including NO, seems as if we have been saying that work alot lately as she gets into everything, and if  I ask her where something is she can look for it (with her eyes) and lets me know where it is. She is starting to point and wave her hand hi. She is starting to feed herself but is still not ready for alot of big people table food. She can climb stairs and other objects like no other, and even trys to dance. When something scares her she crawls as fast as she can into my lap and snuggles there and waits for my hugs and kisses.

Being a SAHM does have its down falls. Paisley has become very Mommy attached and is unsure of other babies and kids. When out of her environment she becomes really needy and wants me even more.  She is just now starting to be OK going to other people. We left her with my mom last weekend so we could go Christmas shopping, she didn't even cry for me once! I am hoping one day I can find some play dates for her so she can get use to other babies. Being home with her all day can sometimes be very overwhelming. There are days when I cant wait for Matt to come home and take over for a little bit while I have a mommy break. I love my daughter to death, and she is my everything, but sometimes I just need to a lil time to myself.

Putting myself on a schedule is just as important as putting Paisley on one. If I don't have a set day to do laundry or cleaning, who knows when it will get done. Fortunately, Paisley doesn't require a ton of attention when at home, giving me time to do things that I need  to do. She follows me around the house as I clean and sits there and plays with her toys.

We still are not sleeping through the night yet. She wakes up at least 3-4 times a night, sometimes more. Its not that big of a deal though, since I am home all day, I can take naps with her if I want to. We are working on trying to get her to put herself to sleep, right now I rock and feed her to sleep most of the time.


Paisley loves being outside and I try to take her out as much as I can, but most days we just spend inside. Being a SAHM has really made me a home body and I hate it. I wish we could get out more but with only having one vehicle at the moment is really hard. Any chance I get to leave the house I take it!

We are still cloth diapering, 7 months now and  I love it. Just now getting the washing thing down though. Had her in disposables for a while when she had a rash but I finally got ahold of some cloth safe diaper cream and diaper liners, I was so happy to get her back in her cloths :) I'm sure we have saved a ton of money and are also helping the environment.

Paisley has just recently become very attached to one of her blankies. My mom crocheted a blankie while I was in labor and gave it to Miss P. She drags it everywhere, puts it in her mouth and trys to walk with it wrapped around her, she even plays peek-a-boo with it. It has really become her security blanket.

Matt, as a baby, was walking by 9 months and was sure that Paisley would be too, and she is! She gets better and walks longer distances each day without falling. Sometimes she gets so excited that she ends up walking really fast or running. When she falls she gets right back up and keeps on trying. When she wants something she goes for it.


There are times when I miss going to work and parties with friends and buying things for myself  but have come to realize that house work can wait, and real friends will stick by you even if you have a child, and there are always new friends to be made.
With my new life consisting of  poopy diapers, runny noses, fussy teething days, sleepless nights, being up to our eye balls in debt, and having very little time for myself... I look down at my precious baby girl sleeping in my arms, and I know, its all worth it.

Diaper Station and Dirty Diaper Station

When I started cloth diapering it just kinda happened, it was a spontaneous move in order to stop my daughters diaper rashes. I didn't know how to store our clean diapers nor our dirty diapers. I searched the web day and night for the best way to do both. I am a visual person, so it really helped me to be able to actually see what other people are doing. So I thought I would share what we do in our house.


 I became a cloth diaper nut and ended up with tons of Gdiapers, Bumgenius 3.0 and Flips. Not to mention a ton and half of inserts.
Here's what we have:
 9 Gdiapers
12 Bumgenius 3.0
5 flips
12 Gcloths
14 Fuzzibunz inserts
12 Gerber Organic prefolds (these I love! they are thin but very absorbent)
5 Gerber prefelds
15 insert socks for our Fuzzibunz
3 rolls of diaper liners to catch the poo
20 cloth diaper liners (great if you have to use rash cream or if your child has a yeast infection)
2 planet wise wet bags

Diaper station:

Top left we have our basket of Bumgenius 3.0
center is our basket of Gdiapers and Flips. Behind the Gdiapers are our insert socks
Top right we have our inserts:
back pile are Gerber prefolds
center are Fuzzibunz
and front are Gcloths


Second shelf
left we have some just incase disposables we got at our baby shower
center is our Gdiaper flushies
and right is a basket of other inserts and doublers
in the back you cant see we have our rolls of diaper liners and cloth and dispoable wipes
bottom shelf is full of blankets.






Dirty diaper storage:

After a diaper change we through all the dirty pieces into the washing machine. At the end of the day we do a cold prewash to rinse out all the pee and poo that may be on the inserts or covers. After the prewash we throw them into a bucket with a lid we picked up at Lowe's for $5, sprinkle some baking soda in there to keep remaining smell down. Doing a cold prewash every night has not increased our water bill at all, alot of people are worried that cloth diapering will cause an increase in their water bill, but honestly we have not seen any difference. We do a cold prewash each night of that days diapers and wash every 3-4 days (we wash in hot water with 1/4 cap of Arm and Hammer laundry soap from Babies 'R' Us, extra rinse on hot)

Alot of people invest in wet bags and diaper pail liners, but honestly, Ive tried using wet bags, and we still ended up with a smelly laundry room. I decided to start doing prewashs at night because the longer the dirty diapers sit there soaked with pee and poo, the more smell you are going to have.

Using Gdiapers, we store the snap in liners and cloth outer cover in a mesh washing bag. The liners have to be washed in cold to help protect the waterproof coating. We wash the liners and outer covers with towels or even our laundry. Hang dry the snap in liners, if you put them in the dryer, it will ruin the waterproof coating.

Cloth diapering: gDiapers vs. Flip and bumgenius 3.0

I swore growing up that I would never use cloth diapers on my children. My sisters and I were all cloth diapered as babies and I remember watching my older sister rinse out our younger sister's poopy diaper in the toilet, and that was something I did not want to do.

The reason we wore cloth diapers was because we had very sensitive skin and disposables would give us a terrible diaper rash.

During my pregnancy I stocked up on disposables assuming I wouldn't cloth diaper.

By the time my daughter was 2 months old, she had already had 2 very bad diaper rashes (bloody and blistery). Every time we changed her we would lather her bum with rash cream in order to either prevent rashes or calm and heal them. Nothing worked.. she was still getting rashes.

I took the plunge and invested in cloth diapers.

 My first initial buy was gDiapers. I liked how they looked and the fact they weren't bulky like some of the other ones I've seen. I liked how they actually looked like lil under pants instead of a diaper. The Gdiapers consist of the outer cover with velcro that fastens in the back, an inner snap in water proof liner that holds either the cloth or a disposable insert that can either be flushed, thrown out or even composted. I  prefer to use the gcloth and also prefolds because they are a money saver in the long run. The point of the snap in liner is to keep the outer lay clean, so if your baby has a messy diaper you only need to change the cloth and snap in liner and reuse the outer cover.
Gdiapers were working great for us until the snap in water proof liner started wearing out after only 3-4 months of use. The elastic had become stretched out and the water proofness was wearing away, meaning I would have to buy more inserts. Apparently the liners are only made to last 4-6 months or 100 washes! Hmm... I thought cloth diapers were supposed to be a money saver? True, a pack of liners is cheaper then disposables, but the fact that you have to replace them every 4-6 months really upset me, especially since we are on a budget! The fact that they are a sized diaper, wasn't a big deal for me, the mediums will fit my daughter for almost her whole first year!

Another issue we had with the gdiaper was during night time use. They worked fine for us for the first month until my daughter started becoming more mobile. She would kick her legs and squirm so much that the inserts (a flip insert and a doubler) would slide down in the liner causing her to wake up soaking wet in the morning. The solution? Bumgenius 3.0 pocket diapers!  They have a stay dry layer that lays against the baby's skin, and  the outer layer is waterproof. In the middle of those two layers is a pocket that you stuff an insert into. This worked out great for us because it kept the insert in place, we wake up dry every morning! The fastening on these diapers is velcro that closes in the front, they don't hold as good as I would like, but then again, we only use them for bedtime.

The last issue we have with the gdiaper was that the velcro wore out fast,and sometimes you can even buy them new with the velcro not sticking! Luckily, Gdiapers will send you free replacement velcro to sew onto your diapers! Gdiapers customer service is one of the best I have ever seen!

As for daytime, I decided to try a new kind of diaper that wouldn't require buying new liners every 4 months. My second initial buy was the Flip diapers. Flips consist of the outer cover which the inside of it is waterproof and has flaps to hold in an insert in place. It is also, along with the bumgenius 3.0, a one size fits most diaper, meaning it grows as your baby grows, this I loved! You can initially use the same diapers from birth to potty training, saving lots of money over the gdiapers, which you would have to buy different sizes. The closure on the flip is snaps, it lasts longer than velcro, but if you have a squirmy baby it may be challenging at times. Its also really slim under clothes which is a plus. The flip is a really simple diaper, no bells or whistles to it, just the cover and and insert! Super easy! So far we haven't had any issues with leaks or the insert sliding down and becoming misplaced. I havent tried it for bedtime yet, but i am planing to try it out soon. Needless to say, I am very happy with the flip and plan on purchasing more when my daughter grows out of her G's and I can sell them!

The story of my life...

I grew up in the country, raising pigs, goats, rabbits, chickens, cats, dogs, geese... I hated it! I wasn't the country girl that my sisters were. I was a girly girl who wanted to be like every other girl in school. I was the rebel child, I didn't listen to the same music as my sisters, nor did i dress the same way, they were country, I wasn't.
My life really stared when I met my husband Matt in September 2005.

We met on MySpace after both of us had just gone through a break up. We were dating for about 2 years before we moved in together, and a year after that in September 2008 we got married. We moved into our very own house just a month before we were married. Shortly after we got married we went through a rough patch and separated for a few months. Our love was stronger then expected and we found our way back together!

Our life took a dramatic 360' turn July 6 2009 when I found out I was pregnant!

 Ever since I was a little girl I have wanted to be a mommy, I can remember carrying a baby doll around up until I was 13 or 14, playing house with my barbie dolls,trying to get my sisters to play with me.
 My dream was finally coming true.

We found out we were having a girl in October of 2009. After that our wallets slimmed dramatically! I went crazy buying things for her, she has more clothes and toys then she really needs.

 I would have had a good pregnancy if it wasn't for sciatica nerve pain. I couldn't stand up for more then about 10-15 unless I was wearing my support belt. I had to quit my job at Gymboree 2 months earlier than i had planned because the pain was so bad. The last 2 months of my pregnancy was spent laying in bed or on the couch. My due date was March 18.  With our last name being O'Connor, it would have been awesome if our daughter was born on March 17, St. Patrick's day... but it didn't happen. Paisley Marie was born on her due date, March 18th at 8:23 PM. My dream had finally come true, I had my precious baby girl in my arms! I was a finally a mom!

Random things about me:
-I am very stubborn, I like things done my way
-I am nosy, I want to know all about whats going on
-I am independent, I like to do things on my own
-I text way too much. I prefer to text rather than talk on the phone
-I am very observant
- I am addicted to cloth diapers
-I have sunny and cloudy days
- I like to present well on good and bad days, even if  I am staying at home
- I like to say what I think and what is on my mind
-I am addicted to Dr. Pepper