Cloth Diapering Update

Cross post from our baby blog (the gnluv blog)

This post was supposed to be written back in August right after we prepped our batch of cloth diapers. The weekend I supposed to write the post was the weekend that G was born.

I wanted to attempt cloth diapers, so A left the diaper research and plans to me. The idea of landfill waste due to disposable diapers makes me cringe and as we bring G into this world it’s even more important that we attempt to leave the world a better place for the next generation.

When I first saw this shirt, I couldn’t get it out of mind. It pretty much summed up the main driver for cloth diapering.

Our plan was to give the cloth diapers a try and see if it would work for us. The plan was to:

• Start with disposables until the meconium passed but use eco-friendly disposables. Tushies were the ones I selected.
• Switch to Kissaluvs Size 0 (KL0) until he’s about 12 lbs and use some infant prefolds if we ran out of KL0s between washings.
• Go to Bum Genius 3.0s from 12 lbs to potty training.

I didn’t want to use prefolds exclusively (which is what diaper services use), and the thought of the added eco-impact of a diaper service coming from San Jose didn’t sit well with me either. But we did buy prefolds to use as backups and burp clothes since they are so cheap ($1.50 - $2.50 each).

Before G was born I placed our order with with Jillian's Drawers for the KL0s and some prefolds (as backups). I prepped them so we would be ready to start using them we G came home. Here's a pic of our first stash of diaper goodies.

The plan changed when G was born. He was too small for the Tushies (the smallest size is a Size 1) or the Kissaluvs, so we stuck with the eco-awful Pampers Swaddlers they issued us in the hospital. I was worried that 4 weeks of Swaddlers disposables would spoil us and that we wouldn’t give the cloth diapers a fair chance.

We started using the Kissaluvs two weeks ago. So how’s it going?

We had more leaks the first week (about 1/day). But realized it was because if any part of the KL0 wasn’t covered by the waterproof cover (we’re using ProWraps) then once the diaper was wet it just wicked the wetness to G’s clothes. Our leaks have been minimized, but if someone can recommend a better cover I'm all ears.

We decided to continue with disposables at night because the KL0s can’t hold the pee from even a 4-5 hour sleep session and there isn’t room for a doubler. Life is all about trade offs and in this case we chose SLEEP.

We need to change his diaper more often with cloth since he really tells us when he’s wet now. It’s getting easier to tell the diaper cry from the other cries.

We’re using about 6-8 KL0s per day and 2 disposables per night. We’re washing a load of diapers every other day. For now, we’re sticking with it. Let’s hope we make it to the Bum Genius stage in a couple of months.

I'm hoping it will be easy to stick with this plan since our day care provider supports cloth diapering and our good friends A&B are also doing cloth diapers -- so we have a support group!

If you are considering cloth diapers, check out the Trial Program from Jillian’s Drawers where you can try a variety of cloth diapers for only $10!

And for more info on cloth diapering, check out the Tutorial at Jillian’s Drawers and let them debunk a few myths.

Bun in the Oven pics on Augie's Blog

As I expected Augie posted pics from our photo session on his blog this morning. Check them out -- I'll paste in one pic below (mostly because I'm lazy and a bit slammed w/ work today) - but we'll post more later when we get the full CD of pics from him. Although I'm sure he's already selected the best ones.

Teaser from Pregnancy Pics

Today we did another photo shoot with Augie for some pregnancy photos. As always it's great to work with Augie. We met at his house in the morning and drove to an area near San Ramon that is still pretty rural - fields, horses, animals. We did some shots near a huge old tree, some in an open field with blue skies, along a fence with horses in the background, and some fun shots.

He sent us a teaser blue sky photo which has us excited to see the rest of them. I'll post a few more when we get them, although I wouldn't be surprised to see a few more appear on Augie's blog very soon.

Shameless plug - Cloth Diapers?

Shameless cross post to support Baby Cheapskate and to enter into a raffle for cloth diapers. Interested in entering?

http://babycheapskate.blogspot.com/2008/07/giveaway-12-bumgenius-30-diapers.html

 

And so there is some content here - have any of you tried cloth diapers? wash yourselves or use a service? basic cloth diapers or all-in-ones? Tried but stopped, why?

Give me your insights in the comments!!! At this point, we are planning on giving cloth diapering a go (after the first couple of weeks - hoping we can skip the need for newborn sized cloth diapers and go straight to the all-in-one Bum Genius diapers).

Stair Railing Make Over

The latest home project was a remodel of the stair railings. We've been thinking of what to do with our railings since moving in two years ago. We wanted something a bit more contemporary, and we needed to make it safer for Baby G once he starts running around. The current verticals have a 7 inch gap; large enough to fit MY head through.

This is the only pic I could find of the original railing - although it is from when the house was for sale, so it's old.

We're very happy with the end result.

The project started with removing the oak wood top rail. I stripped the old stain, did two coats of new stain, and two coats of clear. This only took two weekends of work. Then I had the stainless steel cables made by a rigging shop in Southern CA - 22 cables for the sloped railing and 33 cables for the flat railings.

A coat of black paint was also needed. With a pregnant wife in the house I needed to find a zero-VOC paint - an industrial zero-VOC, self-priming paint for metal did the trick (but was expensive at $60/gallon).

The fun then started - drilling 110+ holes into the steel railing. At 4 minutes per hole plus changing bits, resting, and general cleanup you can see why this stage took three  long tiring days and about 10-12 drill bits. Cleaning up the tiny metal shavings wasn't very fun either.

After the drilling and clean up, it was time to drop in the cables, tighten them up, and put the wooden top rails back on.

See the full Flickr set for more pics.

RANT: Shutterfly can't Add Pictures

I haven't used Shutterfly in a long time, so I decided to use one of their Free Print offers and give Shutterfly a spin again. But it's a bit hard to use the service when you can't upload pictures!

The text on the pages of their Add Pictures flow refers to buttons that don't exist! If you don't put a BROWSE button on the page or a NEXT button you can't really finish the Add Pictures flow. No Added Pictures = No User Engagement.

I tried it in Firefox 2. This is the page I received when I clicked Add Pictures (highlighting added during screen grab). I couldn't find the Browse button. Somewhat hard to load an image if you can get to the file on your PC.

So I tried it in IE6. After a few pages of errors because it couldn't load the page. But I got past the login and clicked Add Pictures.

Well, now. It's a different page layout. But once again, a button is missing. This time it's the NEXT button. As a guess, I hit Enter and it worked.. took me to the next page in the flow.

But no dice. Once again, the page refers to the mystery BROWSE button.

So what should I do? Maybe it's time for me to completely ditch Shutterfly completely, which I've pretty much done over the last year or so. The occasion email offer and looking at friends shared albums is all the gets me to their site anyways.

And for this problem to happen the same day that Multiply releases some brand spanking new features! Omen?

Commuting Costs Spreadsheet

In my last post on Gas Prices and Commuting I confessed that I whipped up a spreadsheet to model the commuting costs of several options. It started with a basic question of "I wonder at what gas price it will make financial sense to take the train instead of the motorcycle?"

Note that this was just financial sense! Which makes this somewhat of an academic exercise because there are other factors to consider in the question of commuting options. How about: commute times, flexibility, carbon footprint, productivity.

I attempted to include in the model:

• fuel costs ($/gallon)
• train/bus fares (using 10 ride CalTrain tickets)
• parking (daily parking costs)
• oil changes (every 3000 mi for motorcycle, 5000 mi for car)
• tire cost (ballpark cost of tires per mile)
• pre-tax treatment for commuting benefits

The pre-tax treatment is pretty important. Parking and mass transit costs can be paid from the pre-tax withdrawals from my paycheck - using a 34% tax rate means that $10 paid from pretax money is only equal to $6.60 of after tax money.

Here is a shot of the spreadsheet table. The final cost is a round trip total. the blue shaded items are the ones that can be paid from the pre-tax account. Here is a view only version of the sheet on Google Docs. If you want to know more just let me know via the comments.

Note: At the time of this post, our gas price is $4.599/gallon. To answer my original question, I just kept increasing the $/gal until the total amount for the train was less than the motorcycle amount. This happened at about $6.70/gal.

After comparing the motorcycle to taking CalTrain to SF, I added a few other commute options which aren't really options until we buy a second car (which we'll do soon before Baby G arrives).

What can you do with a similar sheet? Compare your commuting options, compare the costs of a commute with two different vehicles you are considering buying, calculate your total commute costs over a period of time.

Embrace the spreadsheet! It's your friend!

Changes for the blog

I've made a few changes and updates to the aerialsoul blog. Minor items but things I've been wanting to do for a while.

1. I've burned the RSS feed with FeedBurner which allows me some basic stats for tracking those of you that are reading the blog using a blog reader. Is there anyone actually reading this? Huh? If so, drop me a comment.

2. Added an option to receive the new blog posts via email -- see the bottom right side of the main blog page to sign up for email delivery! Now those that don't use RSS or Blog readers can still stay updated with very little effort.

3. Added the Disqus commenting tool to the blog. This replaces the default commenting provided by Blogger. One of the nice features it that is allows threaded discussions (which Multiply has done for a long time). You will only see this new comment feature on the new posts -- this will be the first one.

4. Added a few new widgets to the right sidebar on the main blog pages. Added a Blog list that shows the recent posts from 4 of my fav blogs and a slide show of my recent Flickr pics.

Gas Prices and Commuting

I've been watching the gas prices go up week after week and lately it's day after day. Ava is sick of hearing me gasp at the gas prices each time we pass the corner gas station. It's really just become a morbid fascination.

This pic pretty much sums up my thoughts.

Photo from T-Shirt Humor

I'm shocked at how fast the prices are rising, but I'm also optimistic that we will finally see some lasting changes in behavior. Short term spikes in prices don't really change the way people behave or what decisions they make. They aren't likely to run out and sell the SUV and buy a hybrid just because fuel goes up a bit. I'm happy to hear that we are actually seeing some movements in the cars people are purchasing -- and not just in California.

So what have I been doing?

For the last few months, I've been using MyMileMarker to log our fuel purchases. I use the mobile version of the service to log each fill up on the motorcycle and the Civic. I've also lately used their Twitter interface which is super easy to send a Twitter msg from my phone giving the vehicle name, odometer reading, gallons, price/gallon. It helps to monitor the mileage on a regular basis. ServiceBeacon also added a feature to track fuel purchases.

I also wanted to know at which price point was it cheaper for me to take CalTrain on a regular basis instead of riding the motorcycle to work. So of course, I whipped up a spreadsheet (those that know me well, know that Excel is a very good friend of mine).

I know from an eco standpoint, I should be riding the train more often. But the eco decisions are tempered with the reality that I only have 24 hours in a day and the train adds 20-30 minutes each way to my commute.

I'll make another post soon with the details of my spreadsheet work, but I found out that when gas reaches $7.50/gallon, it's cheaper to take the train to work instead of the motorcycle. The bike gets 48 mpg and parking is $2.50/day -- and it saves me an hour a day.

BUT I may start riding the train more often once G arrives. I haven't found a car seat for the motorcycle, so a car will be needed when I start incorporating day care drop offs and pick ups to the daily ritual.

My Network Board profiled on Lifehacker

The network board I built a while back to unclutter my desk was profiled last week on Lifehacker. Here is the LH post - Three Reader Gadget Pegboard Mounts.

This is pretty much a full circle blog project - I got the idea from a LH post, came up with a solution that worked for my situation, posted it to my blog, recently posted pics to a LH Flickr group, the solution is posted back to LH, and now I'm posting about the LH post. Great!

I've been thinking about trying to make this project into a product - it's a simple idea/solution, but it still takes time to execute it. But who doesn't want to declutter their desk? Would you consider purchasing this 'type of product' to organize the devices on your desk?

Test Post using Win Live Writer

I've been a bit frustrated by the Blogger tool for post creation and came across a post on Lifehacker about Windows Live Writer. I decided to install it and give it a whirl. So this is just a quick post to see how well it can actually push a post to my blog.

If I can find a tool where I don't dread the details of posting more than actually writing, maybe I'll post a bit more often.

Now for a pic - here is a pic of a friend's newborn girl that I took this weekend -- beautiful Reese looks so peaceful.

New Biz Cards

For the first time in six years I've gotten a new batch of business cards (for work, not personal cards). My previous roles have been very internally focused so I didn't even worry about business cards, but with the new role I do need them.

As I looked at yet another card, it made me walk backwards through the list of jobs I've had and wish that I had a copy (or an image) of each of my cards. I know I have a few of them tucked away in files or old laptop bags. If I find them I'll update this post with a Business Card walk down memory lane. For now, it's just an image of where I stand today professionally.

Rant: Pay for Bad Service - Airline Baggage Fees

If you've traveled recently you probably know about the airline baggage policy changes. The increased fees for baggage have been changing for quite a while, but for me it's getting pretty ridiculous. These fees look to be last ditch efforts for an industry in a steady state of decline.

NOTE: Pay attention to baggage policies BEFORE you buy your tickets. The extra fees you pay for baggage may make it worth buying a more expensive ticket that allows for more baggage. And at least know your baggage weights before you leave home -- in some cases it's cheaper to pay extra baggage fees online instead of at the airport. And be careful packing those large suitcases, it doesn't take much to get to 50lbs (typical weight limit for luggage on economy tickets).


Expedia recently sent me a nice link to updated baggage policies for an upcoming trip (see the image or Expedia's link).

What strikes me as 0dd is American Airlines' baggage policy. Currently they are the ONLY airline charging for your FIRST checked bag! And they have the WORST rate of mishandled bags - 6.85 Mishandled baggage per 1000 passengers. The other large airlines aren't great either, but AA is the worst of this list. (sorry for the poor images, still figuring out SnagIt).


Isn't this some type of leap of faith?

"We suck so pay us more and then we can make it better."

I can see the unintended impact of this policy. Anyone else see a plane load of people trying to cram over sized carry on bags into the overhead?

Obama Car spotted

In SF it's never odd to see tricked out or 'art cars' cruising down the highway, but this car caught my eye. We were driving on 280 South near Palo Alto on Friday night when this car cruised past us. It's covered in Obama bumper stickers -- COVERED!!!

I hit the gas while Ava pulled out her phone to snap a shot. As we slid up beside them and snapped a pic, I felt obliged to give them a thumbs up!! Our friend Jake would be proud!

Travel Tips

After our recent trip to Italy and Bulgaria, I thought I would pass along some travel tips that may seem obvious to some and could save you frustration later.

1. Let your bank and credit cards know you are traveling
The banks are trying harder to fight fraud so they will quickly put a security block on your ATM and credit cards. Take the 5 minutes to call the number on the back of your cards (including your ATM card) and let them know your travel dates and destinations. There were 5-6 of us on our Italy trip that had problems with our ATM cards.

2. Consider using a GPS
The Europe maps for our GPS unit were worth every penny of the $150 we spent. Just be sure how to enter the addresses for your destination. They saved us several times when driving through Italy.

3. Get the phone numbers for your credit cards and bank
Get the international calling details for your credit cards and bank BEFORE you leave. We had problems using the toll free numbers from outside of the USA - and of course, when the bank called to alert us to the security block placed on our cards they left the toll free number to call them back.

4. Find out the details of Roaming coverage and Costs for your mobile phone
Find out the roaming costs before you leave and determine if it makes sense to sign up for an International Calling Plan before you leave. Even if you don't plan on using your mobile phone it's good to have the info just in case. And be careful about data charges!!! Just because you can get a data connection doesn't mean it's covered under you plan -- and roaming data plans typically charge per MB which can add up quickly!

5. Understand how to call FROM your destination
This part really made me feel like an idiot. But figure out how to call from your mobile in roaming mode either within your destination country and back to the US. Also how to call from a landline phone.

6. Set up email filters and rules to hide the non-urgent emails
If you are traveling for vacation you probably still want to read email but try to hide the crap from your inbox, especially if you will be using internet cafes or pay for bandwidth connections. I just setup a label (SAVE) and quickly labeled the msgs from my Inbox as I checked email -- I would have rather had them automatically labeled based on rules defined before I left.

7. Get currency before you leave or right when you land
I'm on the fence on this one and will have to do some more research, but I'm starting to like having a small amount of local currency as soon as I arrive. I'm suspicious of the fees charged when exchanging money at the airports, so I'm going to consider getting currency from the foreign exchange desk of my local bank. My bank also charged a Currency Exchange Fee when I used the ATM card for purchases, so watch out for these fees too.

What's in a Head Nod?

Have you ever realized how much is communicated by a head nod? Especially when you can't use verbal communication? Over the last week, I've been even more aware of how much I depend on body language and head movements for communication. In Bulgaria, you can't depend on the head nod of up/down for Yes and side/side for No because it's reversed in BG. They use the up/down for No and side/side for Yes. Does any other culture do this?

There are many communication studies about how much is communicated via non-verbal cues -- something like 80% is communicated via non-verbal actions (I'm too lazy to link to a specific study). So even though I know the Bulgarian words for Yes and No (da = yes, ne = no), I still find myself paying more attention to the body language than the words. It's even worse if I'm not close enough to hear the words.

We were walking across the parking lot of the metro station on Monday near the BG capital of Sophia and tried to wave down a taxi. As the driver saw the hand wave (seems the taxi hand motion is understood across cultures), he moved his head left to right. I slowed down and started looking for another taxi. When I turned back, Ava was walking faster to the cab as I saw him still shaking his head but also waving us to the taxi.

The head nod can get even more confusing when some Bulgarians switch it up because they know you aren't a local, so you really need to pay attention to the words!!

Sofia Take Two

Background - My first trip to Sofia, Bulgaria was two years ago in August 2006. Sofia is where Ava was born and lived until 1991 when she moved to California. She's been back to Sofia four times before this trip to see family and friends.

It's been two years since Ava and I were last in Sofia, Bulgaria. So what were my initial impressions of Sofia on this second trip?

It's been a little over a year since BG was accepted into the EU, so I expected to see visiable changes.

First - the Sofia airport is now sporting a new terminal that looks very nice and presents a great first impression upon arrival. Clean, shiny surfaces. Good signage (including English). And all in all pretty efficient to clear through Passport checks, baggage claims, and customs review. No forms to fill out, just show passport, get your bags and get out. No need for us to deal with a rental car since Ava's aunt picked us up, but I'm not brave enough to drive in the capital anyways.

Second - on the drive from the airport, the number of newer cars on the road was surprising. It seems one of the results of an improving economy is that people replace the old cars. Many are used cars that have come from the US (and other countries), but most of the cars look to be less than 10 years old. There are a fair number of new and expensive cars (Porsche, BMW, Audi...even saw a Bentley one night). The driving habits seem to be improved as well -- I guess if you drive a new car you aren't as willing to risk a fender bender. Two years ago, it was down right scary sitting in the back seat of a car driving in Sofia. Now it's still a bit freaky at times, but not scary (at least not scary ALL of the time). It's almost to the point that I may consider renting a car next trip for our drives outside of the capital.

Third - as the price of gas passed $4/gallon at home before we left, I had been tracking gas increases for months. Well, $4/gallon is chump change compared to fuel prices in Europe. In Sofia, the price is about 2.50 leva/liter for diesel -- which works out to $7.72/gallon!!!! It was even more expensive in Italy -- diesel ended up about $8.61/gallon. So while the economy has improved, cars are newer which is great for improved emissions, but the overall number of cars has increased. So traffic is pretty bad now in and around Sofia at rush hour.

Forth - the basic infrastructure in and around Sofia is in need of major investments. The roads and sidewalks probably haven't had any work in the last two years. The roads are full of pot holes, some are big enough to be called sink holes. The locals know where they are and swerve all over the road to avoid them -- sometimes at 40 mph. So to the outsider, it looks like cars are just swerving around randomly, but it's an orchorstated manuveur that is anticipated by other drivers. The government really needs to pick up the pace of improvements in this area.

Fifth -- (the numbers will stop now) The number of new construction projects taking place within sight of older run down buildings is even more pronounced. It's just odd to see solid structurally sound buildings in need of TLC sitting next to the new 10-15 story hotel or business office building. It must be due to the ownership and legal structures of the old buildings that make it easier for developers to acquire land and start a new building. I don't have any real info on this situation but I just can't stop wondering why it's the case. It presents an odd juxtoposition of shiny new building along side what appears to be a run down structure.

These are just the top items that hit me at the beginning of this trip to BG. Nothing too deep or emotional. Sometimees it's strange what stays at the top of my mind on trips.

IkeaHacker Headboards

Our custom Malm Headboard hack was mentioned on IkeaHacker this week!!! Yeah!!

Here is the link -- LINK to IkeaHacker Post. We were mentioned along with a few other headboards.

Amazing Engagement Shots

I just couldn't resist posting about these engagement shots. Our good friend Augie Chang (who shot our engagement photos, wedding, and some casual photos) frequently posts to his blog about his activities and puts teaser shots of his photo sessions. Today he posted some of the most amazing engagement photos I've seen -- if I didn't know better I'd swear they were a work of photoshop magic. I'm just going to put a single image from Augie's site here (hope he approves) as my teaser, but know it's worth clicking the link below.

Augie - Linda and Calvin E-Session Soaked

If you can't find it, Build It.

Ava and I typically spend a fair amount of time finding items for the house. We start with an idea of what we are looking for, usually a specific design with function! If it doesn't function, it's not worth it.

For more than 12 years, I've had a lift top coffee table that is VERY functional. We use it for dinner in front of the TV and laptop use on the sofa. The old table was given a new life 4 years ago when I refinished it with a mahogany stain.

After a new sofa, new entertainment unit, and art for our living room, we were having a hard time finding a modern table that still had a lift top with a storage area. I found a Room & Board stainless steel base that worked, so it was time to build what we wanted. It took a lot longer than I expected, but we're happy with the results.




I used birch plywood with birch veneer edging to cover up the visible plywood layers. The corners are glued and dowel joined. I had to rig up some brackets to hang the wood box from the base frame. The lift-top mechanism was harvested from our old table, but the springs were too strong for the new top. I was able to remove the old springs and install a weaker spring (who would have thought Home Depot sold springs).


I also made a table top for a matching console table frame, which will sit behind our sofa for a living room desk area.

Here is the Flickr set.