Abigail pulls herself up to standing, now. Seriously.

Picture taken at 5 months and 18 days.

I’m going to go ahead and give up on reading about normal infant development, because this kid ain’t normal.

(Though: This bodes well for early operation of the .22 though, now doesn’t it!)

I don’t know if I’ve mentioned it here or not, but we use cloth diapers. Mainly prefolds in covers like this.

I’m an addict. I love cloth diapering.

1. I’m cheap. Have you seen the price of Pampers lately? I can’t even fathom how many we would have gone through by now – but rather than pick up a pack a week, I’ve bought diapers once and get to use them over and over again. There’s even a booming market for second (and third, and fourth) hand cloth diapers, so you can recoup cost when you’re done with them.

2. Disposables are wasteful. Yes, believe it or not, I do give a rip about the environment. Dumping disposables into a landfill – where they are estimated to take about 500 years to biodegrade – for the sake of ‘convenience’ is something I just can’t reconcile.

3. I couldn’t get behind the idea of putting chemical-laden junk against a baby’s most sensitive bits.

4. Babies that are in cloth spend less time in wet diapers because you really have to change them promptly. They also tend to be more aware of their elimination patterns because they can feel wetness. Cloth-diapered babies are often easier to potty train. Considering Abigail has one of these and uses it at least 50% of the time – at under six months – I’d say we’re going to do pretty well in that department. (Note: We’ve been doing part-time EC since she was six weeks old, and cloth diapers are the perfect complement.)

5. No diaper pins necessary.

One of the coolest products I’ve seen in a long time is the gDiaper. gDiapers are a reusable cloth cover you can put cloth inserts into, or flushable one-time-use inserts. For those who don’t want to worry about keeping track of cloth while out-and-about or traveling, or who would like to minimize their consumption while having at least part of the convenience of disposables, the flushables are really cool. I’ve also seen infant-sized prefolds used as gDiaper inserts (rather than the cloth inserts available from the company) and they work great.

Anyway, the reason I bring this up now: My best friend is a gDiaper devotee, and she mentioned that as part of their gMom program she has a sale code for $30 off the everyday g’s six-pack, which is six of the gPants (covers). You can then choose cloth, flushables, or order inserts elsewhere.

Shipping to my zip is $9.95, which I think is a flat rate. That means you’re getting each cover for about $8.33 shipped – a very good deal for any type of cover, and an especially good deal for covers as versatile as g’s.

It’s time to up-size Abigail into a new set of covers, anyway, so I’m definitely ordering a pack. I’ll probably keep using the infant prefolds we have as our inserts, so the total to upgrade our diapers to something that will fit her for another thirteen pounds is under $50. That’s less than about one month of Pampers.

If you’d like to order a pack, buy some for a baby shower, or just pass along the deal – the code to use at checkout is g1153Gates. Keep in mind it’s only good on the six-pack, so make sure you have this item in your cart to get the $30 discount. Deal expires July 31, 2009.

Chris Shugart, on nutrition – an excerpt:

Dear government, if you want to help me:

1) Butt the fuck out of my life.

2) Get the fuck out of my way.

3) And if you really want to help me… stop trying to help me! “Help” is government-speak for “control.”

4) Stay away from my dinner plate. I will fucking bite your chubby fingers and suck the saturated fat right out.

Nom nom nom.

Worth noting: The article is just a rant, but Shugart writes good stuff on nutrition and fitness elsewhere on T-Nation, if you’re interested.

I keep seeing leftists justifying the passage of cap-and-trade, a ~1500 page bill nobody had time to read, by saying “Well, nobody read the PATRIOT Act before they passed that!”

That’s the state of politics in our country, folks. Two wrongs now equal a right.

Passed the house. Minnick voted against it – I called to say thanks, but they’ve left the office for the weekend and his mailbox is full.

For all you climate-change types who are so very principled and so committed to saving the earth that you want the government to enforce your POV at the point of a gun, you have given up buying anything and everything from China, right?

*crickets*

I’d just like to point out that I’m really not a nut, and won’t be coating my furniture in ballistic gel or taping bubblewrap to the walls to protect my child from bumps and bruises.

When I mention babyproofing, I’m talking about some basic ‘don’t leave small objects on the floor,’ ‘make a modest effort to make it so she can’t chew on power cords,’ ‘lock the cabinet under the sink so she doesn’t drink bleach’ kinda stuff. We have a very small house and limited storage space, so putting everything dangerous out of reach isn’t an option. The nice part about having a very small house, however, is that she’s never very far away, so I don’t think she can get in too much trouble without me catching on quickly.

On that note, did you guys know there are ‘professional babyproofers’ who do it as a JOB? Like, people PAY THEM to babyproof their houses? The hell?

So, never fear, PGB fans: the Girl Child will be allowed to bonk her head, eat all the dirt she wants, wrestle with the dog, shoot her .22, and probably tip over a chair or two backward because she won’t stop rocking back on the rear legs.

Michael Jackson is dead.

Me, calling The Inconvenience: “Michael Jackson is dead.”
TI: “Huh. That was a quick three.”
Me: “Whut?”
TI: “They always die in threes. Ed McMahon, Farrah Fawcett, and Michael Jackson.”
Me: “Farrah Fawcett is dead!?!?!”
TI: “Yup. All other celebrities: You may now breathe a sigh of relief. You’re safe for now.”

Hello, my name is Laurel, and I’m an Apple addict.

This time around, I sent in the MacBook to AppleCare for some repairs. I’d kind of let them accumulate, mostly because I never want to part with my laptop long enough to get it fixed, but the time had come. You see, I planned to give the laptop to The Inconvenience to use for law school, so it needed some AppleCare love before that could happen.

Off it went with the following:
- cracked bezel around the LCD/palmrests (defective plastic issue)
- iSight feedback noise related to lighting (defect)
- some keys no longer working (pretty sure that was my fault, and by ‘my’ I mean ‘the Girl Child’)
- coffee spilled on the bottom right corner of the LCD, which then wicked up INTO the LCD (definitely my fault)

I was expecting to be charged for the spill damage, at least, and sure enough I received an estimate asking me to authorize a $775 repair. ACK. No way we can afford that right now, especially since the laptop was still functional – just sorta stained.

I called AppleCare and explained to the first guy (a human being speaking first-language American English) I talked to that I needed them to just go ahead and fix the other stuff and skip the LCD. He said they couldn’t do that, but was kind of unclear on why, and said they needed to transfer me to the Tier 2 supervisor. Okey-dokey.

Enter Donald (another human being speaking first-language American English), my Person Of The Year. He explained that they can’t do a partial repair, because they test and re-warranty the computer’s condition when it leaves the facility. I, in turn, explained that I hadn’t known that, and sorry-for-the-sob-story-but… and told him why I was getting it fixed and that we really don’t have money for a $775 repair. Could he make an exception and just acknowledge somehow the LCD was no longer covered? He couldn’t do that, so I then asked if we could reduce the cost somehow.

(This is the part where Don becomes Person Of The Year.)

Don then said, “I will go ahead and make an exception for you, because I appreciate you being honest about spilling coffee on your computer. Most people send them in and pretend they don’t know what happened to them. So, thanks. I’ll authorize a full repair at no cost.”

I am sending Don a Christmas Card.

Oh, I didn’t mention the part where Apple had overnighted a box for me to send the MacBook to them, which was overnighted to them, and then overnighted back to me when the repair was done. I mailed it on Monday. It came back to me before noon today. Three-day turnaround.

When it arrived, I found:

- A new top case
- New bezels around the LCD and palmrests
- A new keyboard
- A new trackpad
- A repaired or replaced iSight (it’s not whining anymore)
- OS X 10.5!

That’s right, FREE OS UPGRADE. I had been dual-booting OS X 10.4 and Ubuntu, and they wiped the drive and installed 10.5. I don’t know if that was some Apple tech’s way of saying OS X > Linux, but whatever – I’m pleased as punch about it. I had gone to Ubuntu because 10.4 was getting so far behind the curve, and I couldn’t afford to upgrade to 10.5, so problem solved.

I. Love. Apple.

We’re also going to have a slight issue with The Inconvenience co-opting this for law school, methinks.

Now that the Girl Child is crawling, I’m finding myself behind the curve on babyproofing. I’ve been making a list of things we should buy – outlet covers, cabinet locks – and doing a little reading on the internet to make sure I’m covering all my bases.

Some things, non-slip bath mats, make sense and are things I wouldn’t have thought of. Other stuff, like faucet covers so the Girl Child doesn’t bonk her head hard, seem excessive.

Anyway, I was skimming through a checklist on BabyCenter and came to a section labeled “Guns.” Their first piece of advice?

• Get rid of them — they’re not safe around children.

…………………..? Excuse me?

They go on to say,

• If you must have guns, store them, unloaded, in a locked and inaccessible spot.
• Store the ammunition in a separate locked and inaccessible spot.
• Use additional gun safety devices such as trigger locks.
• Start teaching your child that guns are weapons, not toys.

Oh gag me. I realize this website is designed for mass sheeple consumption, and all, but really? Suggestion number one is “Get rid of them” and suggestions two, three and four are “render them inoperable?”

Off to send an email…

I was just reading a CNN biography of Neda Agha-Soltan, and thought this passage was worth noting:

A friend of hers interprets the fact that her body was released so quickly as a tacit acknowledgment by the government that the killing was carried out by government forces. That theory is supported by the fact that Iran’s strict gun-control laws mean private citizens cannot carry firearms, the friend said.

Governments do not fear disarmed people.