– 30 seconds after I get the cranky, screaming, angry baby to take a nap and FINALLY sit down my husband walks in the door and looks disapprovingly at the mess.

– If we are ten minutes early leaving the house the baby will poop as I’m putting him in the car seat.

– The nights I am absolutely starving are the nights I have nothing planned for dinner.

– If I cut up gallons of fruit/vegetables/wise and healthy options for Baby Evan he refuses to eat anything but Goldfish.

– If I DON’T cut up gallons of fruit/vegetables/wise and healthy options for Baby Evan he screams and throws his Goldfish on the floor because he hates them.

– Baby nap time is always over before mommy nap time can start.

– My house is always in the worst state of disaster when someone stops by unexpectedly.

– Five minutes after someone tells me I look fantastic and barely pregnant at all someone else will tell me “Oh my God you’re huge! Look at that bump!!!”

– The sharpest, pointiest toy is the one that gets left on the floor of the dark hallway to be stepped on.

– The baby will do a great job scribbling with a crayon until I stop looking. Then he eats it.

– The 2% of the floor that is wet/sticky is the part I will step in.

– As soon as I tell someone my pregnancy so far has been totally uneventful and mostly symptom free I’m hit with a wave of morning sickness.

– The days I think I look really cute are the days I’m walking around with half my bra showing or my shorts on inside out, both of which I have done this week.

– I will run out of both deodorant and toothpaste on the sweatiest, grossest day of the year.

– The laundry will all be dirty again before I even get it folded and put away.

– Whatever my husband is doing right at the moment I need his help with something else is the ABSOLUTE MOST ANNOYING THING IN THE ENTIRE WORLD.

First, we remove the onesie.

Then we go for a little drive.

Time to break for a little snack.

Mmmmmm...watermelon.

Oh you mean moving the slide into the kitchen so I can reach the counter ISN'T a wise choice? LOOK I HAVE A BELLY BUTTON!

Nothing to see here. Go back to the couch mama.

Tickle fight with dada

And now it's time for a little chillaxin'

Today’s pictures brought to you by the letter F.

F is for “Fluffy butt”
“Fun”
“Freakin’ adorable”

and of course

“Father’s Day”

Happy Special Dad’s Day to my wonderful husband E! I hope our little terror knows how lucky he is to have you. I know I do.

It’s sort of ironic to use “At Last” as your wedding song when you’re only like, 8 years old when you get married. Ok, I was 22 but I might as well have been 8. I think the only reason my mother didn’t run screaming in terror when her 21 year old came home for Christmas with a diamond ring and a bag full of bridal magazines was that she and my dad also got married at the ripe old age of 22, exactly 30 years and 3 days before I did. And they’re still going strong.

Lucky for you my external hard drive is STILL at the computer doctor on life support so my 2000+ wedding photos are unavailable. It’s a shame really, since I could have easily posted all 2000 of them today for the wedding blog hop. There isn’t a single one I don’t absolutely love.

But since I’m working off of just a few I stole from myself on Facebook and a few I scanned in from my album I’ll try to keep this short. Short-ish. Medium length. Not ridiculously long.

I was the kind of girl who had (has) a box of stuff labeled “For My Dream Wedding” and kept a running list of which color flower/cake/bridesmaid dresses/bubbles/carpet runner/butterflies should be used for whatever month my current dream wedding took place in. I was basically Monica from Friends, although I like to think my crazy bridezilla moments were limited to breakdowns at work behind a closed office door rather than screaming fights with my bridesmaids or vendors. But who knows, maybe EVERYONE knew I was crazy. It may have been a good thing that E was deployed for 90% of our engagement or he might have called the whole thing off when I made him go to the FOURTH cake tasting because I couldn’t decide between the lemon curd or the raspberry filling.

I absolutely ADORED obsessing over those details and I happen to think everything worked out as perfectly as any wedding possibly can, from the inexplicably gorgeous weather (August in Charleston is NOT supposed to have 0% humidity) to the surprise fireworks during our rehearsal dinner cruise (put on by the city for something else but that I claimed were for me) to the leisurely carriage ride around the city between the ceremony and the reception so E and I got some quite time together before the drinking reception started.

Sometimes I remember every detail so well I can’t believe 2004 was 6 whole years ago and not yesterday. And sometimes it feels like the whole day was just something I saw in a movie once. But either way it was totally amazing.

Our church, on the corner of Queen & Church St, Charleston SC

Going to the chapel

And we got married

My dress tried to eat the flowergirl

My girls. Their only request was that my wedding colors NOT be blush and bashful.

The pattern on the cake matches the lace on my dress. The photos on the guest book table are from our parents and grandparents weddings

My aunt caught us on the street to take a picture. It's one of my favorites from the whole day - the driver's face, my laugh, and Sticky Fingers in the background!

We had an open bar. I think that explains the dancing.

 Now it’s your turn! Link up all the pictures of your own wedding you want!

Back in April when I finally decided to switch to cloth diapers I was SO EXCITED, partly because I knew it was the eco-friendly, responsible choice…but also a little because I was finally going to be part of the cool kid’s diaper club, where everyone knew what AIO and AI2 and pre-fold and PUL and insert and pocket meant. I thought maybe someone would even teach me the secret handshake.

Turns out the handshake is just my EW EW EW EW EW! reaction to getting poop on myself AGAIN and I still don’t know what all the abbreviations mean. Luckily, it turns out you don’t have to know all that stuff to use cloth diapers, especially if you’re like us and still haven’t switched full time. It’s not an all-or-nothing experience and every cloth diaper I use is one less disposable in a landfill – and one more adorable fluffy butt I get to squeeze.

Our experience so far:

The good:
– The Katydids are my favorites by far, both because they’re super easy to use and because they’ve never leaked. I stopped using both inserts all the time and they still hold a whole morning full of pee. I also love that they’re easy to carry with me in my (admittedly huge) diaper bag – just once piece & easy to stuff in the wet bag.
– I also really like the one Happy Heiny and one Swaddlebee diaper we have. I’ve quickly learned that pocket diapers or all-in-ones are my favorite and would switch to them full time if I had a budget that allowed me to stock up.
– E has figured out how all our diapers work and will voluntarily put them on Baby Evan as long as they’re stuffed, stacked and available next to the changing table. Most of the time.
– My biggest fear – the WASHING – has been easy-peasy. I use Charlie’s Soap for the diapers and All Free & Clear for the rest of our laundry and haven’t had any trouble with build-up. I also really love hanging my diapers out on the clothes line. Which I know makes me a weirdo.

The bad
-We can’t bring ourselves to give up the disposables at night or when we travel. For a while Baby Evan was doing all his pooping at night, which made a disposable just too tempting. Now it’s just because I know he won’t wake up at 2 am screaming for a diaper change because he’s wet. We also used disposables this weekend when Baby Evan’s teething/new foods diaper rash got out of control and we went through a tube of Desitin every day. I haven’t found something that works as well and is safe for cloth.
– As much as I WANT to love my adorable GoodMamas, the extra step of using a cover makes me sort of dread them. They work great, my new Thirsties Duo covers work great, they really are NOT THAT HARD…but in my diaper stash they’re my second to last choice (last choice being regular old-fashioned pre-folds, which I have yet to even try, despite having 3 dozen stripped and ready to go).
– Although our diaper sprayer does get the poop off the diapers, it also gets the poop on the toilet, the walls, the floor and the person spraying the diaper. Maybe we just have really high water pressure. Maybe we are just not smart enough to do it right. It doesn’t really matter when tiny bits of poop are flying ALL OVER YOUR FACE.

The ugly
– I picked just about the WORST TIME EVER to make this switch. Not only did Baby Evan finally start eating solid food regularly, he started eating meat. If you haven’t had the joy of smelling meat-fed baby poop yet you’re a lucky, lucky person. These diapers are GROSS. The fewer seconds I have to look at or smell the poop the less likely I am to puke on the changing table. It doesn’t help that my super-power-strength sense of smell (thanks pregnancy!) is at an all time high. I can smell a dirty diaper from 30 yards and have to hold my nose when I toss my diaper pail bag in the machine. I’m reallyreallyreallyreally looking forward to trying full-time cloth with a new, exclusively breastfed baby whose poop doesn’t make me throw up in my mouth.

So to sum up: Good change, poor timing. I’m definitely going to keep using cloth at least part-time, and hope to switch to full-time in the future. Anyone have any newborn/small/medium sized all-in-ones or pocket diapers they’re looking to unload?

(Oh! AND! If you’re one of those people who have no interest in switching to cloth but had trouble with a certain diaper brand that may or may not have caused ugly chemical burns on some babies – including ours – may I recommend Luvs? I know, right, who uses Luvs?!?! We needed some disposables for our vacation a few weeks ago and they were the cheapest option at BJ’s so I picked up a box. They work great! They don’t smell funny! The box says something about a money-back guarantee although I know nothing about that! This endorsement is in no way sponsored by Luvs – they don’t know me from a hole in the wall – but my dislike of a certain other brand makes me want to support companies that don’t give my baby a horrible rash.)

When life leaves your blog lacking, that’s what God invented bullet points for.

– Baby Evan officially knows both the word and the sign for dog and will do them both independently and on command. So those 12 weeks of signing class ended up being (almost) effective after all.

– I added threading to the comments section, so you can use the “reply” option if someone has said something SO BRILLIANT or SO AWFUL that you just must speak to them directly. Expect to see a lot more of me in my own comments.

– If you have a discussion with a coworker about fun things to do over the weekend, make sure you’re on the same page regarding whether you are going to do said things TOGETHER or are just hearing about HIS plans. Otherwise you risk his wife and your wife misinterpreting your polite interest as complicit agreement and you will spend your whole weekend visiting museums and quaint seaside villages full of antique stores.

– That last one was totally hypothetical of course.

– Although MAYBE if you took a second out of your busy iPhone-game-playing schedule to, oh, I don’t know, ASK YOUR PREGNANT WIFE HOW SHE’S FEELING she wouldn’t feel the need to drag you all over New England to get some time together.

– No really, these are just generalizations.

– I’m going to have to go bathing suit shopping AGAIN, since last year’s one piece is not a maternity suit and the maternity suit I do have is incredibly uncomfortable and ugly. I seem to remember buying it because it was the only option though, so I may not have any luck.

– In an incredibly strange and somewhat evil twist of fate, this pregnancy has improved my skin quality an enormous amount already (which, according to tradition, means I’m having another boy) and last year’s stretch marks have faded to almost invisible. I suppose this is just in preparation for new, angry, violently purple stretch marks in my 3rd trimester, but I may make it through the summer without looking like I’ve been attacked by wild badgers.

– I think I’m going to go to Target today. Just thought you should know.

– A warning to all new parents: TAKE LOTS OF PICTURES OF YOUR BABY NOW, because before too long they’re going to be running through your kitchen naked and refusing to hold still long enough to focus the camera. And if you DO manage to get them to hold still, it will only be sitting in your lap on the floor and they will somehow still manage to ruin your photo.

At least he's still pretty cute.