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Locked and Loaded

Posted on by Amy
Two rounds of moxibustion – $108
Five visits to the chiropractor – $125
Hours and hours spent in various contorted and sometimes uncomfortable positions – See “visits to the chiropractor”
One hospital admission, five hours of monitoring, IV, ultrasound, medication, and doctor pressing on belly for about two minutes – $$$$$$?
Getting kicked instead of head-butted in the ribs – PRICELESS!!
That’s right. I went in to the hospital yesterday to have my doctor do the external version. It WORKED!!! After all the hours spent trying so many other strategies, good ol’ medical intervention came through for me. Baby Girl is now head down and has been for over 24 hours. Saw my doctor again today and she said that if a baby flips back to breech it usually happens within the first 24 hours. Plus Baby Girl is nicely in my pelvis, so hopefully, she’ll stay this way and not flip back around!! I’m still a little nervous she’ll flip back, but mostly very relieved that she is now headed in the right direction.
A little over two weeks now until my due date. And can I just say I feel fabulous??? The first time I got out of bed after my doctor flipped her, I could immediately feel a difference in how I felt. It’s amazing how much more uncomfortable I was with Baby Girl facing the wrong way. My back hurts less, I can breathe easier, and I feel much more balanced. My belly looks way different too. It is over an inch smaller than the last time I measured it. Check out the difference:
Before
After
And because I know no one looks at this blog to see photos of me, here’s some adorableness.



It could be any day now that my Miss becomes a Big Sis. I can’t wait to see it. She will be amazing.

Eventful

Posted on by Amy
The past two days have been quite eventful.
First of all, yesterday morning, Miss peed on the potty for the first time. She did a potty dance to celebrate (and not a stupid one like on that dumb commercial).



I’m actually not really trying to potty train her right now. I don’t especially think it’s a good idea for me to be juggling a new-newborn and the “Mama-I-Have-To-Go” dashes to the toilet at the same time. Plus, I honestly think she’s a bit young still to be pushing it. Give me a few months with Baby Girl, and then maybe we’ll go there. But for now, Miss is just quite fascinated by the potty. She has started asking to go on the potty, though until yesterday morning she had never actually gone. But yesterday she made her dad and me proud. I don’t really think she even knew why we were whooping and celebrating, but she did seem to get a kick out of dumping the little potty into the big potty and flushing. She likes to wave “bye-bye” to the contents as they swirl and disappear. Whatever works!

Then last night after Miss went to bed, I realized that I was having regular contractions that weren’t terribly long or close together, but enough so that I began to wonder about them. I was on the phone with my hubby who was driving to a weekend gathering with his brother and cousins (5 hours away!!) and he suggested I call the nurse just to see what she said. I didn’t think much of it, but since Baby Girl is breech still I thought maybe they’d tell me at what point I should consider coming in or something. Well the nurse I spoke to kind of freaked out and said I needed to get to L&D right away and was making all these dire statements about the baby being breech and so on. So, basically, I got a neighbor to come over until my babysitter could get here, threw the last few things needed into my bag and headed for the hospital. My hubby turned around and started high tailing it home. Thankfully, I was just monitored for a few hours and though my contractions stayed fairly steady, they didn’t get stronger and I didn’t show any signs of labor progressing in that time, so they let me go home. Today the contractions have gone back to being irregular, so that’s good!!
And today we went to the air show here in town. It’s the second largest air show in the world. We’ve lived here for two years but I’ve never made it to the show. This year, we just had to take Miss. See, she has a bit of a fascination with planes. She could spend hours siting on her Daddy’s lap looking at pictures of planes in magazines or watching videos of planes flying on his computer. This is how I found them the other day after he came home from work:


She totally loves planes and says “Pay!” and points up anytime she hears one. She had a great time at the air show today. Here she is dancing around a bit as we were sitting and watching planes take off for a while.


She did get kind of bored after a bit.

I think she likes to watch them flying much more than to look at them parked on the ground. We did get to see some really cool things though. We saw the Goodyear blimp, both flying around pretty close up and also parked on the ground. I have to say it was kind of strange to see such a huge thing parked on top of the tiny little box on the bottom of it.

Here is the most enormous plane ever. They had another one that was flying maneuvers all over and it was amazing to watch this behemoth plane float around in the sky like it was nothing.
Then there was this stealth, remote-controlled, spy plane thing that can take crazily detailed photos from over 60,000 feet in the sky.
And then there was, well, this.
I have no idea. . . But we had a great time. By the end of it I was wishing I had rented one of those motorized scooters to haul my booty back to the car, but it was worth it to watch Miss enjoy the planes and the people watching so much.

Enjoying Every Minute

Posted on by Amy
Today was a fabulous summer day. One of those days when everything seems to slow down just a little bit and you get the chance to soak up every ounce of summery goodness.

We started the day with gymnastics class. Miss loves gymnastics class. She is my little climber and loves to roll around on the floor, so I thought she would enjoy it, and she sure does. She dances around, jumps on the trampoline and the mats, climbs up the wall of bars like a little monkey, and is working on a killer pull up and L-sit. Today she was in rare form just being her funny silly little self. She throws her arms in the air and marches around, makes funny faces and jumps. I love to watch her in there.
We came home from gymnastics and went right to the pool, where we soaked up the sun and splashed around. Miss is getting more daring in the water and likes to splash in the fountains or try to sit on the mini fountains. We had lunch and ice cream and more playing, and she fell asleep in the car in the three minutes it took to drive home. My girl knows how to play hard.
After her nap we went out and enjoyed the backyard. We took a few shadow photos.

We enjoyed the landscaping, which is so hard to keep clear of weeds this year with the amount of rain we’ve had, but it’s still peaceful and private and colorful and ours.

And there’s nothing like watching my girl point to a flower and say “Pi-ee” (pretty) and then lean over to smell it like it’s the most special thing in the world.
And of course, what would a summer day outside be without some bubbles??? Miss has learned to blow bubbles, but still seems to eat more than she blows. I think the problem is that some of the bubble blowers we have are kind of like pipes and have to be put in your mouth and blown, whereas others are just the normal ones you hold up and blow through. She treats them all like the pipe kind, and thus ends up with lots of bubble stuff in her mouth. It’s awfully cute though, and today she was kind of blowing bubbles out the corners of her mouth while she had one of the bubble sticks in there. Very talented!
To top off the day we had the most fabulous dinner outside on our deck. Homemade brats that my hubby grilled and fresh-from-the-farm sweet corn on the cob. Literally, I picked up our CSA produce box today, so the corn must have been very recently picked. It was some of the best sweet corn I’ve ever eaten. And homemade brats beat store-bought any day.

It was a full and happy day.
And to give a quick update on Baby Girl, I went for another ultrasound and appointment yesterday. She is looking wonderful and healthy. She is still breech. I am still trying chiropractic (every other day) and moxibustion (once a day), plus all my other little strategies to get her to turn. She seems to be trying pretty hard and a few times I thought for sure she was going to make her move. If she doesn’t flip by Tuesday I am scheduled to go to the hospital for an external cephalic version, which of course is just my doctor trying to turn her manually by pressing and pushing on my belly. Wish me luck!

New Furniture and the Amazing, Unbelievable, Ridiculously Enormous Belly

Posted on by Amy
We have had the same old furniture in our house for ages. Seriously, the couch we have been using in our family room is the one I bought when I was an intern, in 2002. It was cheap and kind of junky then. It is now comfy, but sadly lumpy and old-looking. It has been moved to our sunroom as I recently ordered new furniture and it was delivered last week. I am so happy with it! My hubby has been wanting a leather recliner for as long as I’ve known him. He now has one.

And the new couch is wonderfully comfortable and should last forever. I got what I think is a pretty long-wearing upholstery (I had small children and black dogs in mind when I picked it) in neutral colors, so this will be our couch for many many years to come. Interestingly, the upholstery I picked kind of reminds me of the fabric that was on the couch my parents had in our house when I was growing up. I didn’t realize it when I picked it. Didn’t realize it actually until just now. That couch lasted a long time, so hopefully I made a good choice. Unfortunately the rug we have had in the family room doesn’t really work with the new stuff, so it will move into the sunroom, where we need a rug anyway, and I am looking for a new rug for the family room. You may notice the dark brown, kind of grungy looking cushions under my hubby in the photo below. Those are the cushions I’ve been keeping piled on the floor for propping my butt up to get Baby Girl to turn!
It’s been a while since I’ve posted a belly photo. It’s also been quite a while since I measured my belly. I keep a record of my belly measurement and weight in my pregnancy journal, as I did when pregnant with Miss as well. I looked and saw that my belly measurement as of yesterday (four weeks pre due date) is an inch larger than my belly measurement ten days prior to Miss’s birth (which would have been one week pre-due date) and almost two inches bigger than it was at this point in my pregnancy with her. Whoa belly.
So even if for no other reason, Baby Girl has to flip to prevent one of two possibilities from happening: 1. my belly explodes, 2. the weight of my belly pulling so far forward forces me to fall on my face. Just kidding. But I’m still working on the turning thing. Baby Girl seems to be trying hard to get herself turned in the right direction. She’s still moving around like crazy. I have a moxibustion appointment tomorrow morning, and went to my first chiropractor appointment yesterday to get a shot at the Webster technique that is supposed to align the pelvis to make it easier for the baby to turn. Still hopeful. Still smiling!

I Have Good News and Bad News

Posted on by Amy

I wanted to post an update on Wednesday after my appointment, but our internet was down all evening.

Sooo, the great news is that Baby Girl is growing right on schedule and looks fabulous. She is about six pounds, is practicing her breathing and has lots of fuzzy hair!!
As I’m sure you can guess, the bad news is that she’s still breech. Thus, I have not had much time for blogging. Or working, or cleaning my house, or anything else for that matter. I am either taking care of Miss or putting myself into some sort of contorted position to hopefully help this baby flip herself. I know last time I posted about this I mentioned being on knees and elbows a lot (which I am right now too!). But I’ve been reading more and more and have tried many things beyond the knees and elbows. Here are some of the things I’m trying as often as I can:
1. Elevating my hips while on my back. I put the couch pillows down and put my butt on them with my head and shoulders on the floor. Sometimes I roll myself from side to side in this position.
2. Knees on the stair landing, walk hands down three steps, hang there for a minute or two with arms straight.
3. Playing music to the lower part of my belly.
4. Playing my recorded voice to the lower part of my belly.
5. Shining a flashlight on the lower part of my belly. Sometimes running the flashlight from where her head is down to the lower part of my belly. “Come to the light little Baby. . .”
6. Moxibustion! I haven’t actually tried this yet, but I have an appointment for Monday morning.
7. Sitting in a very full, very lukewarm bathtub for a very long time.
That’s not really everything, but that’s most of it. Once it stops raining, I have every intention of going to the pool as much as possible and doing handstands in the water. I am not messing around. I really need this little one to flip!!! I have another ultrasound and biophysical profile scheduled for next Wednesday.
On another, related note, I got some other kind of good news. I had been under the assumption that if I had to have a second c-section, the possibility of my ever having a natural delivery was gone. But my doctor had never actually told me this, so I asked her on Wednesday. She said that the situation would be more complicated of course, but that a regular delivery after two c-sections wouldn’t be totally out of the question. It would be dependent on seeing that the scar from my last section had held up well and she would want me to wait at least two years between births. Then it would be a possibility. So, while that doesn’t make me feel too much better about the possibility of having to have another c-section, it helps some. Of course, that’s getting way ahead of the game here, and I am not giving up yet on this Baby Girl turning herself in the right direction. So keep the good head-down vibes coming!!! I will try to post a little more frequently, but if I don’t, just know that I’m probably elevating my butt above my head in one way or another and not able to manage a keyboard too well 🙂 Flip, Baby, Flip!!!

35 Weeks, 17 Months, and Some Good Old-Fashioned Summertime Fun

Posted on by Amy
Yesterday marked 35 weeks in my pregnancy. Baby Girl is growing and all is going quite well. She is still moving around like crazy and a few times I’ve thought she might have turned, but I’m pretty sure she’s still breech now. I’ll find out for sure on Wednesday. Only five or so weeks to go!
Tomorrow, Miss is 17 months old. She has had a major increase in language in the past few weeks, which has been so fun. We have been at my in-laws’ farm for the past week, and some of the new words she has started saying since we’ve been here include, “pond,” “elk,” “water,” “bug,”and “deer.” If you are familiar with my in-laws’ farm, these words make perfect sense. If you’re not, I’ll just say there are a lot of animals mounted in the house (elk, deer, mountain lion, turkey, goose, duck, antelope, and a huge salmon, to name some of them), the property is on a lake and there are lots of ponds around. She also has recently started saying “Wow!” which she kind of says with a similar inflection to Joey on the old show “Blossom” (I think that’s the right character/show), and she is putting a few words together on occasion. This age is so fun and I’m enjoying every minute with her.
We’ve been having a great time this summer, just doing fun summertime stuff. Here’s a sample of some of the good times we’ve had in the past week.
Fun in the pool.


Trying to get Daddy to put on the swimmies first.

One for Daddy, one for Miss.

Playing on the riding toys.


Bubbles!





Swimming at the beach.

She loves the sand.



Speaking of old-fashioned fun, today I was out hanging Miss’s diapers on the clothesline, which always feels kind of like an old-fashioned thing to do, when I looked over and saw my husband raking hay in the tractor. I had a moment of feeling all “Laura Ingalls Wilder” or something. Except I guess maybe they didn’t have tractors in “Little House on the Prairie,” did they? Whatever. It was a cool moment. And I got this cool photo.

The girl can dance

Posted on by Amy
I love wedding receptions. There is no better place to let loose and dance yourself silly. Where else do you get to hear such a variety of songs, all just perfect for dancing? You can do the “Twist,” throw your head back and sing loudly to “Paradise by the Dashboard Lights,” shake your booty and rap all the words to “Ice Ice Baby,” slow dance to any number of great love songs, seemingly always played two at a time, and do all sorts of line dances. Songs like “Love Shack,” “Groove is in the Heart,” “Takin’ Care of Business,” “Shout!” and so many others just beg to be danced to. It helps that at all of the weddings in my husband’s family, he and/or his brother and/or cousin(s) play DJ or jam out as the band (they were the band at our wedding) and always have an uncanny sense of how to keep a party rocking.
We went to a wedding this weekend for one of my hubby’s cousins, and this one did not disappoint. In fact, it was especially fun because not only did I get to dance and enjoy the music, but I got to watch Miss have her first taste of the wedding reception dance floor. It took her a little while to warm up, but once she did it was just fantastic to watch her.
At first she didn’t want to get down on the floor. She was very puzzled by all the dancing people around her and just wanted to observe what was going on. She danced with Momma.



She danced with Daddy.

Then she got down on the floor, but was still a bit reserved. She just hung around close to my legs and continued to watch for a bit.

She watched the big boys getting down.
We did the “Hokey Pokey.”

And finally she started warming up.

Started to feel the groove.

And finally, pure dancing joy.
She had so much fun. She loved the music. She loved watching the dancing. She loved doing the dancing. And by the end of the night she was so tired she was just running all over the dance floor, I think to keep herself from falling down and passing out in exhaustion. It was a blast. It is so amazing to me every day to watch her do and experience new things. And P.S., my girl’s got some killer moves!

Turn, Turn, Turn

Posted on by Amy
I had a regular prenatal appointment yesterday. Baby Girl is breech. This is not good news. As I type this I am on knees and elbows, because I’ve heard that spending time in this position can help a breech baby to flip. I don’t know if that’s true, but it can’t hurt, right? Well, except that it does kind of. It’s really not the most comfortable position, and I may end up with permanent carpet indentations on my knees and elbows. If she turns it’s all worth it though.
Funny thing? Having Baby Girl be breech has been a big fear for me during this pregnancy. This is not ha-ha funny, but funny in an ironic, crappy kind of way. Why? Because I had to have a c-section with Miss. It was not planned that way. My big fabulous plan was to have an all natural, medication-free birth. She was head-down, ready to go. I went into labor on my own. Things were progressing. But then her heart rate went way up, she was showing late decelerations, and she passed meconium. None of which are very good signs, so my doc recommended a c-section and my husband and I agreed.
Miss was born perfect and healthy, so I have much to be thankful for. But I can still say that c-sections really suck. I did not want to have pain medication, yet there I was, completely numb, probably from about my armpits down. I really wanted to hold my daughter immediately after her birth, but my arms were strapped down, I was shaking uncontrollably, and the anesthesiologist was stressing and hovering around my head because my blood pressure got really low. It was almost two hours after she was born I think before I finally got to hold her. And that’s all without even mentioning the crappy recovery from surgery.
Don’t get me wrong. I don’t mean to sound like I’m complaining. I have a beautiful, healthy, perfect daughter, and I could not justify risking that in order to have the birth experience that I had “planned” for. That said, I really, really do not want another c-section. I have been talking with my doctor about having a VBAC with any pregnancies after Miss pretty much since the minute she told me I should have a section. Seriously, in the same breath that she was recommending a section for Miss’s delivery, she was telling me that I would be a good candidate for VBAC with future pregnancies. She knew how much I didn’t want a c-section. We also discussed this at my 6 week post-partum checkup and started talking about it from appointment #1 with this pregnancy. My doctor has been very supportive of this option.
Of course, it’s only an option if certain criteria are met. 1) I either have to go into labor on my own before 41 weeks (the max she will allow me to remain pregnant) or 2)be dilated enough that she can break my water to induce labor, since it’s not a good idea to use medications to induce labor for a VBAC (using small amounts of pitocin to augment labor is okay, I guess, but the amount needed to induce labor is not okay). 3) I can’t have pre-eclampsia. And, oh yeah, 4) the baby has to be head-down!!!!
So, here I am on knees and elbows, sending major head-down vibes to this little girl. I know there is still time for her to flip, and I’m hopeful. I’m only about 34 weeks now. It can happen. I will have another ultrasound at my next appointment at 36 weeks. If Baby Girl is still breech I will discuss the possibility of doing an external version with my doc (having her manually turn the baby by pressing on my belly). I didn’t see my doc at yesterday’s appointment so I’m not sure how she will feel about doing that. There are risks, of course, so I’m not sure either. For right now I’m willing this baby to get herself facing the right direction. I’d appreciate any good baby-flipping vibes you all would be willing to send my way too, or any other suggestions on how to get her to flip.
And just in case this post has seemed like a big downer (not intentional, but probably the case), I’ll leave you with something fun from today. First of all, Miss is really enjoying this whole “Mommy-on-her-knees-and-elbows” thing, as it allows her to use me as a jungle gym. Second, check out how grown up she looks eating a peach all by herself. Simple pleasures 🙂



Happy 4th of July!

Posted on by Amy
This is a day late, but we were having so much fun this weekend I didn’t get to post it yesterday.
We started off the 4th of July festivities by checking out the local festival called “Sawdust Days” which is held at a local park and runs through the holiday weekend with fireworks on Saturday and a veteran’s parade on Sunday. I was bummed that we missed it last year, and determined that we would check it out this year. So as soon as my hubby got home from work on Thursday I rushed him to change clothes and off we went, planning to indulge in some yummy fair food for dinner.
Unfortunately, the Sawdust Days seem to have been misnamed. The festival should have been called the “Freaks and Stinky People Fair.” I promise, I am not a snob. Go to any state fair or even smaller scale festival, and much of the fun is the confluence of people from all walks of life. I love people watching. But this small local event was truly the most concentrated gathering of scary, strange, and heavily body-odored people I have ever seen. And I worked in prisons and prison psychiatric hospitals for many years! Needless to say, we went, we saw, we hightailed it out of there and ate dinner at a downtown restaurant. We did however get a good laugh from the experience.
The rest of the weekend was truly a fun time. Friday morning Miss and I took the Expedition to have one of the headlights fixed and did a little shopping at Big Lots while waiting for the work to be done. I found a great “painting” for my bedroom for only $10. I just love a bargain. Then we went to a quilt shop down the road where I picked up some fabric to make curtains and the bedskirt for Baby Girl’s room. As we walked around the store Miss kept pointing at all the fabrics and quilts hanging up and saying her version of “pretty,” which sounds sort of like “pi-ee” with a very awed vocal inflection. It was so cute.
Saturday morning we went to the farmer’s market. We found some great local produce as well as some locally made salsa and salad dressing/marinade. I just love the farmer’s market. But the best part of the weekend was that Miss and I spent the majority of it (Friday, Saturday and Sunday afternoons) playing at the pool. We have met some new friends there, a mom and her little girl who is just about 2 months older than Miss. It is so fun to watch Miss and her little friend play together. They do a lot of staring at each other and working on sharing. Yesterday it was super cute to watch them take turns stomping and splashing in a puddle by the pool. I’m happy to have met a new mom-friend too, and we had a fantastic time at the pool, even though my hubby was working all weekend and couldn’t come with us.
Last night we went to a neighborhood barbecue and met some new people. Miss was, of course, the star of the party. How could she not be looking all festive and adorable?



I love the 4th of July. We didn’t get to attend any fireworks shows, because Miss goes to bed long before it is dark enough here for that, but we heard plenty and I’m looking forward to years in the future when we can take Miss to see some great fireworks shows on this patriotic holiday.

Though today was the observed holiday for a lot of people, my hubby still had to work and the weather took a turn for the worse here. It was overcast and looked like the sky might open up at any moment and pour down rain. It never actually did, but we skipped the pool anyway. We went for low-key today. Miss and I made basil ice cubes, to preserve some of the fresh basil we have for this winter. And she spent quite a bit of time having a blast playing with, eh, dog toys.

Yes, I am a little bit ashamed to admit to the sorry state of the dog toys in our home. What you see in the photo above was once a stuffed tomato with a squeaker inside. One of my dogs has no interest in toys, and the other just tears a toy apart so that the stuffing is all over the house and the squeaker is rendered mute within moments of giving it to him. That doesn’t mean I don’t give him toys from time to time anyway, it just means they don’t last in any form that would be recognizable as a toy for very long. Consequently, we have many scraps of stiff-from-dog-slobber plush in a rainbow of colors (previously a frog, a Santa, a white dog, etc.). Miss seemed a little grossed out by a few of the pieces too, picking them up gingerly with thumb and forefinger and holding them out to the dog in an attempt to play. But she was also fascinated by them for long enough that I got to sit and enjoy rocking in a chair and watching her dump out the whole dog toy basket and peruse the bits.

This green one seemed to be her favorite. It was once a tadpole-like toy with a tennis ball in one end, I think. Now it’s just the green tail part, and she plays with the ball separately.
She thought it would be fashionable as a scarf.
But I think maybe it grossed her out.
To top off the weekend I made a delicious stir fry for dinner with tons of fresh veggies from our CSA box and now my hard-working hubby is out enjoying an evening round of golf. Here’s hoping everyone else has had as much fun as we have this holiday weekend.

A Small Story about a Big Bag

Posted on by Amy
Okay, maybe it’s not really a small story, but here it is anyway:
When I was pregnant with Miss, the first baby-related item I bought was a custom diaper bag from 1154 Lill. I love 1154 Lill, because you can select from many different styles of bags and then pick the fabric you want for the bag, either in one of their stores or right on their website. I first bought a Lill bag in Kansas City in one of their stores (which has since closed I think, though they still have stores in Chicago and I believe Boston). The first bag I bought was a laptop bag, and I still use it when I work. It’s a gorgeous bag, and I love it. So, when the time came to get a diaper bag, naturally I wanted to design my own Lill bag. Here is the bag I made online when pregnant with Miss:

This has been a great bag and I have received tons of compliments on it. It is sturdy and has held up very well to daily use and often over-stuffing with the many things I need to tote around with Miss. However, it has some things about it that annoy me, like this:
And also the fact that the strap is just a bit too long and is not adjustable other than to make it really short. So when I’m carrying Miss and my bag, the bag hangs just a bit too low for me to get into it with one hand while holding her with the other. I always end up stopping, bending my leg and lifting my foot to push the bag up enough that I can reach my keys or whatever else I need to get out of the bag. Plus, if you’ve ever packed a diaper bag with cloth diapers, you know how much room they take up. When I bought this bag, I did not necessarily plan to cloth diaper Miss and didn’t know enough about using cloth for that to have that be something that would go into my selection of diaper bag. This bag has usually been sufficient for handling cloth diapers for one baby, but when I think about adding all the stuff that I need for two babies in cloth diapers, one a newborn and one a toddler. . . well, I knew this bag would just not cut it.
Fortunately, I had heard of a mom who makes fabulous bags and sells them in an Etsy shop, Brooke Van Gory Designs (Can you tell I’m seriously Etsy addicted? I just love buying things made by other moms). I told my hubby that I wanted a gift certificate for her Up-sized Expedient Weekender/Diaper bag for my birthday. This is a very large diaper bag with lots of pockets and a matching wetbag that can hook on to the outside of the bag instead of taking up room on the inside for dirty diapers (what a great idea!!). Being the fabulous husband he is, he got it for me. I was so excited I contacted Brooke right away and she helped me pick the fabric for my bag. A great thing about her bags is that you can pick from fabrics she has shown on her website, or you can pick almost anything else that you can find, provided it would work for the construction of the bag (when designing a Lill bag, you have to choose from the fabrics they have in their store). Brooke and I looked through lots of different fabrics (Michael Miller, Amy Butler, etc.) to select what I wanted for my bag.
Now here comes the part where the small story isn’t so small. Brooke got the bag made and shipped it off to me. Unfortunately, my hubby almost never uses Paypal (which is how he paid for the bag, as is typical for most Etsy shops) and didn’t even realize that the address on his account was our old address in North Carolina, where we haven’t lived in over two years! Well, it didn’t occur to either of us that Brooke would print the shipping label from Paypal (though this is a pretty standard practice among sellers who use Paypal), but that’s what happened and the bag got sent to the old homestead in NC. It took about a week before Brooke and I realized what had happened, at which point I proceeded to call the post office and start an investigation to find the bag. Unfortunately the PO dropped the ball and the “investigation” was not pursued, so another week went by before I contacted them again and they tried to speak with the mail carrier to find out what he could remember about the delivery. In the meantime, I sent a letter through snail mail (I didn’t have a phone number or email, but of course had the address. . .) to the people who bought the house from us asking them to please be on the lookout for the bag and mark it “return to sender” and put it back in the mail at their earliest convenience. The woman who bought the house from us called me and told me they had just sold the house themselves and would pass along the request to the new owners at their closing later that day. I told her that the bag had already been delivered two weeks before. Unfortunately she and her husband had not been living in the house for over a month, so the bag was delivered and sat at my old, vacant, house for up to two weeks. My phone number was passed along to the new owners. I never heard anything from them, though I didn’t expect to, figuring the bag was long gone at that point.
I was sad. I really wanted that bag.
Then, Brooke swooped in and saved the day. She just decided to remake the bag for me, and so she did. Talk about customer service. I have to give her major props for doing that, and for how completely awesome the bag turned out. After all that build up, here it is:
I knew it would be bigger than my old bag, but couldn’t believe how much bigger it turned out to be!!
Both bags have plenty of outer storage space, plus lots of pockets inside. My old bag had four interior pockets, which was great, except that I ended up without a good place to store my “mommy stuff” (lip balm, Tums, etc.), so I just threw it in the same pocket with the snacks/sippy cup, etc. Here’s a photo of the old bag, containing toys, a changing pad, a bonnet, one cloth diaper, some food, diaper cleanup stuff, and Miss’s Tiny Diner placemat (which I LOVE; I am a serious baby gear head):
Here’s the new bag containing the same stuff. There is so much more room in there!! And even better, there’s a whole extra pocket (5 total on the inside of this bag) where I can put my “mommy stuff” and zip it away.
The straps are just the right length to be able to reach into the bag while it’s on my shoulder. The bag is actually almost too big. Almost. But not really. I have been known to cram a lot of stuff into a bag when toting one child, and this bag will definitely be none too big when I have stuff for two. And the quality of the workmanship it top notch. Plus, the Brooke bag is significantly less expensive!
The only thing I regret a little about this bag is that it is sooo similar in its color scheme to my old bag. Obviously that’s because I love the colors in both of them. And I do absolutely love the new bag, I just have a very small part of me that wishes I had branched out to something a little different. But realistically, that would only be useful if I were planning to switch between bags to match what I was wearing or something, and I know I will probably never switch back to the old bag again, so it’s probably best that I got the new bag in the color scheme that I love the most rather than going for something different just because. So yeah, scratch that. I’m so glad I got what I got.
I have to say big “Thanks!!” to my hubby and to Brooke for this fantastic new bag!! I’m so excited to start carrying little newborn-sized cloth diapers in there in a few months. And I have to say, if you’re in the market for a bag, check out Brooke’s Etsy shop. She has smaller bags too if you’re not in the market for a super duper diaper bag/weekend travel bag, she does great work at great prices, and she’s fantastic to work with. Five stars for sure!