Cloth diapers and making baby food

What started out as a necessity for financial reasons has turned out to be oddly satisfying and an unexpected joy!

This picture cracks me up. It is the first time we put a cloth diaper on Benjamin. The diaper was fine (since you can fold them to fit), but the cover was huge! And I just love the look on his face--like he knows!

I know a lot of people think we're nuts for using cloth diapers, but I have really come to enjoy it. It is very satisfying to put a load of diapers in the washing machine when I think about the equivalent diapers I could be dumping in the trash. Now that we've been cloth diapering for several months using a disposable seems like tossing a quarter in the trashcan every couple of hours! I also (and I know this sounds crazy) really enjoy diapering my baby in a way I didn't when we were using disposables. It's a little like driving a stick-shift vs. driving an automatic. I tend to enjoy that which I have to put more effort into.

I am also really enjoying making Benjamin's baby food. I never realized that it is possible to do this much with homemade baby food, but so far I have been able to make him cereal plus all his fruits and vegetables. Homemade offers so many more options than Gerber. For example, Benjamin's first fruit was avacado! (Have you ever seen that in a jar?) I am also able to make his rice cereal from brown rice, which offers so much more nutrition than white.

It has really been fun to watch him as he tries each new food. I am ridiculously excited every 4 days when it's time to introduce something new. Perhaps it's just because I have invested in it that I feel such a pride when he gingerly tests a new food, considers it for a moment, and promptly opens his mouth wide for more. I guess it's one of the only tangible ways I can know for sure I'm taking good care of my precious little one. P.S. Just for the record, this little man is a vacuum! He has not yet met a food he doesn't like. :)