Spring Break and Not a Real Hippie

It's been a spring break almost good enough to make me forget that I have a job. Which I'm notably trying to forget for a few more hours. I worked around the house, cleaned the back porch and hung up the hammock, flew kites, kept the house clean, cooked, went for walks, read, talked on the phone...practiced being a house wife and just generally enjoyed being alive. My poor Brandon, on the other hand, was struck with a nasty case of strep throat which left him delirious for about half the week. Thankfully, he's back to his spirited self, and I haven't gotten the thing.

The kid's been kicking more this week, or I've felt him more. I was grading research papers (a spring break festivity I omitted from the above list), when he kicked so forcefully it made me sit up straight. It's nice to feel him move, to know that my portly size is less influenced by my recent interest in Ben & Jerry's and actually due to the growth of a small person.

So as far as nursery theme goes, it seems settled that trains and travel are the way to go. I'm happy with that decision, although I feel a sudden pang of guilt that my choice of bedding isn't organic. Is choice of bedding already a parenting decision where I am putting my aesthetic preference over what might be a more responsible choice? I'm still planning to get a few sets of organic sheets, but everything else isn't organic. I have a friend who's as A+ granola as it comes on the East coast, and I admire her simplicity and devotion to organic living. While I do try to make good decisions, I find that possibly I am just not as type A as her, which is maybe a mean way of saying that I'm just not as disciplined. She also plans to use cloth diapers, which leads me to

The Great Diaper Dilemma:

Back in the day, until the 1960s, there were only cloth diapers, so there were far fewer diapers in landfills. As a missionary in the Philippines, my mom only used cloth diapers on three of her kids. So, obviously, its not an impossible task.

But then came the ease of disposable diapers. Babies need to be changed less-often. And, at five months old, when I go back to work and the little fella goes to Apple, he will have to use disposable diapers.

I could opt for cloth diapers for the first few months while I'm home with him, and even in the evenings--his disposable diapers could just be daycare diapers.

Still...enter the financial end of things. Although cloth diapers seem cheaper, you have to buy diapers and diaper covers and you have to cover the laundry expense, which is a time and money issue--really more time as both Brandon and I work full time and sometimes more than full time. Should I invest my few stay-at-home months in using cloth diapers? Advocates say that if the diapers last, then hypothetically, we could save them for future children and thus really save some dough.

On the disposable end of things, buying Huggies in bulk puts us at $.14 a diaper, between $400 and $500 a year. According to Baby Bargains, this is still a few hundred dollars cheaper than investing in disposable diapers and laundry.

So, I don't want to spend hundreds on cloth diapers and then an additional hundreds on disposables. It seems a commitment one way or the other will be best. At this point, I'm leaning towards disposable.