Chase-Related Home "Improvements" and Crafts

Chase was almost exactly 4 months when we moved out of our apartment and in those 4 months we figured out surprising things that did and didn't work for us in terms of having a baby in our apartment.

Biggest thing that did not work for us (mostly me): having him in the room with us
Before Chase was born, I would scoff at those who thought babies needed their own room. Why wouldn't he just sleep in his crib in our room? I thought. Well, a few days after he was born, I found out that little Chase was a noisy sleeper and every little noise would wake me up and put me on edge. Nate could sleep through it all without a care in the world! Lucky him! I was getting even less sleep than I should have been because Chase's breathing, sighing, even moving was keeping me wide awake! I also theorized that he could smell my milk when I came into the bedroom to sleep so that was also waking him up, making his sleep worse. So, at a few weeks old (maybe 3, I don't even remember anymore!! How quickly it goes!) we moved him to the spare bedroom and it made both of us happier. Although we never really set up a real "nursery," we did pretty much give him his own room by putting his crib and his changing table/dresser in there.

Biggest nice surprise: having the twin bed in the extra bedroom
Even though we got rid of the twin bed (see next post), having it in the spare bedroom was amazing. I could feed Chase there at night, it would keep both of us from waking up too much, and then I could put him in his crib before going back to my own bed. It worked out so well!

Biggest "I told you so"... from our end: cloth diapers
Everyone told us we would never stick with the cloth diapers -- except for Nate's mom who seemed to be our only supporter. We started out with prefolds and covers and then transitioned to pockets (that means nothing to almost all of humanity, but they are cloth diaper terms that I would love to discuss with anyone who cares). We got an amazing deal on craigslist and I painstakingly replaced the elastics on 23 diapers (really the only "craft" part of this post -- but boy was it time consuming!). We love cloth diapers and it actually makes me sad that we may not be able to use them in Switzerland due to us probably not having a washing machine in unit. We made do washing them in our old washing machine (running an extra rinse cycle manually before the wash cycle), but with our new washing machine (see last post), it was even easier! Not only could they be washed directly due to him only receiving breast milk, but they held in poop SO much better than disposables. In the end, we did end up using overnight disposable diapers because this Chase character is the heaviest wetter ever, but one diaper every night made sense economically, and only putting ~700 diapers in the landfill rather than ~6,000 makes sense environmentally. We still use disposables when traveling short term or when we had sitters so those numbers about are a bit of a lie.

Biggest saver of space and money: minimalism
We really tried to get by with the fewest items possible, mostly because our apartment is small and we were going to move so soon. People were so kind and gifted us many clothes and toys/gear. We also received some hand-me-downs which were awesome. Chase outgrew things SO quickly so we tried to pass it forward and gave away old clothes, the swing, and many accessories. Overall, Chase is just happy chilling on the floor with a few toys, although he won't say no to an activity mat. He did have a swing but he wasn't much of a fan and he already outgrew it. Other than that, we were able to get by without any kind of rockers or seats or activity centers. He has a pack-and-play as a crib, a $10 changing pad attached to the top of a dresser, and will have a high chair when we get to Switzerland. Overall, we could have gotten by with even less, but it was nice to have the things we did.

Biggest baby ever: Chase
Both our mothers found our weight records for our first few months (my mom even had it charted on old school graph paper for both my brother and me so I digitalized those points to start). I combined the information and added Chase's info to objectively conclude that Chase is a freakishly large baby. I'm really hoping he is plateauing because he is in 12-18 month clothes and is 4 months old! I am hoping once he starts moving he will get leaner. We got him some sturdy clothes for Switzerland so it would be nice for them to last an appropriate amount of time!

All babies were exclusive breastfed during this time and it's not like the three of us were small! Chase is just HUGE!

New Washer & Dryer

Back in this post, I foreshadowed that the next thing to break was the washer/dryer. Since we had a one-piece washer/dryer, once one broke (in this case: the dryer -- the barrel somehow fell off the back of it!), the whole thing broke. So, of course this happened this summer while we were busy with a bazillion other things. While it was a bit stressful to get a new one, we are so happy with the result!

It started making a weird sound on Thursday (I think this is when the screws fell out), actually broke broke on a Tuesday, and I went out bought new ones that day. As with our previous appliance purchases (microwave and dishwasher), we went to Lowe's. We got a nice deal and paid only $1300 for everything. As you can see above, the options between our old washer/dryer and the new one (the dryer settings are up above the picture -- Sorry) are SO much more improved. Nate even told me he was glad that we met so many years ago in college because it eventually brought him to this amazing washer and dryer. I think that means he likes the washer and dryer over the Chase, but whatevs. They are AMAZING! 

So, to get from the before to the after, there was quite a debacle. While they did deliver the washer and dryer the next day (Wednesday), they forgot the mounting bracket. So that meant that we had a washer in the bathroom and a dryer ind the kitchen. Oh, and no door, since the door had to be taken off to get the appliances in/out. But, the fact that they forgot the bracket was actually a blessing, because once we got the old washer/dryer out, we discovered that there was only one outlet behind the washer/dryer and it was only 220V! This was fine for the combination washer/dryer but the separate units we had purchased required a 220V for the dryer and a 110V for the washer. The person who brought the washer said we could "just use an extension cord across the whole bathroom." Yeah, that's not safe. Or convenient. Both Nate and I had to work the next day so we had scheduled a sitter to come, therefore asking the delivery people to come back on Friday (when I was home). 

Unfortunately, here are the only pictures I got of the process. The bathroom looked so large without the washer/dryer! And I was finally able to clean the floor underneath the washer/dryer (not cleaned in 5+ years!!). The 110V plug was put in to the right of the 220V plug. 

Wednesday evening, I started calling around to see if I could find an electrician who would be able to put in a 110V plug next to the 220V plug. I called a guy who came out that night at 10 or 11 pm. Our downstairs neighbor thought I was going to get killed because Nate was still in lab. The guy came and put in an outlet there super easily (the circuit breaker is on the other side of that wall) and charged a very low price -- for coming an hour after I called him in pretty much the middle of the night. With that in place, we plugged in our washer and the delivery guy came on Friday to attach and place the dryer (and level the whole thing). All in all, it was quite stressful for those two days, but worked out great. We are even more thankful this happened while we were still living in the apartment because having the tenants deal with getting a new washer/dryer and outlet would have been super inconvenient. 

Analysis of Chase Data

For Chase's first two months, I recorded EVERYTHING. Every diaper change, every feeding, every nap. It might have been a bit insane but it was helpful at the beginning. After that, it was just a habit, until I finally decided it was enough and stopped when he was two months old. Now, I have all of this beautiful data about Chase's first two months (April 12th - June 12th). Here are some nice graphs about it (I would normally use Prism to make graphs but my new MacBook Air has too new of an OS to make Prism install correctly, so I am trying out Numbers for this post).

There are lots of different things to discuss here, so I am going to leave it as is so I don't write a novel on just this data. Suffice it to say that at the end of two months, he was nursing more efficiently, soiling his diaper less often, and sleeping more and in longer stretches. I now wish I continued this data to see how he is now at four months because he is even better at eating and sleeping now! 

Chase Danger Jones

Since today is three months exactly after Chase's due date, it's only appropriate to post about our ultimate DIY project (technically mine -- since somehow my body has made this thing and kept it alive for almost three months!).

Little Chase showed up exactly two weeks late on April 12th, 2014. I was induced because of his tardiness, so who knows how much later he would have been if I had not been. In the end, as much as I wanted to avoid an induction (the reason I wanted midwives over an OB), everything turned out just fine. Chase was born a bit shy of 9 pounds and has been one large baby since then. He was almost 14 pounds at 7 weeks (last time he was weighed). Yesterday, he turned 11 weeks and I would not be surprised if he was close to double his birth weight now. Other than eating, Chase enjoys hanging out on his own, sucking on his hands, and kicking lots and lots. He hates hugs and kisses and is not a fan of being held unless he's really tired. While he has been looking at things with interest for a while, he has just started to reach out to toys. He's pretty cute so I think we'll keep him. Overall, he's been a really chill and easy baby -- "a starter baby" as Nate puts it. And, yes, his middle name is actually Danger. 

I have failed to get good smiles on camera, but these are cute pics from two day ago. 

To announce that we were having a boy -- we used scratch-off cards: 

We had two wonderful baby showers -- one in Nebraska and one here in Cambridge. Bridget blogged about the latter one here (Thanks, Bridget!!). We were overwhelmed by all of the excitement and generosity of our friends and family and family friends. 

We also used paper announcements for the birth (someone has to keep the USPS in business, after all!): 

Cleaning and Listing

[This entry was mostly written at the end of March but not published until now. Sorry!]

In one of the entries around the new year, I mentioned that we were going to be renting our apartment when we leave for Switzerland later this summer. This is just a quick update of how that's all coming along and what we've learned from the process so far. The weirdest part is that everything is pretty much already done. Crazy!

We contacted an agency to manage the apartment while we were gone -- it's so hard to deal with tenants if we are abroad. We wanted to rent it furnished so we wouldn't have to deal with putting our furniture in storage.  I took the time to clean up all the clutter around the apartment so potential tenants could get a sense of what it looked like without all of the extra stuff in the way. This mostly included getting rid of clothes and items for donation. I put together 11 bags worth of stuff (spoiler: this didn't actually get donated until June -- oops!):

For the time before donation, they sat in our closet, next to Chase's stuff: 

I also tidied up everything else so that the previously messy bookshelves looked like this (the first one in our bedroom and the other in the living room): 

The bedrooms looked like this: 

The only pictures of our bedroom on this blog! The open door leads back to the entry and the closed door leads to the closet (shown above). 

This is the other bedroom/office. The desk is finally back there, although it used to be in our closet for a long time. 

The kitchen, living room, bathroom, and entry looked just like the pictures I posted earlier of the apartment tour with various updates - here, here, and here. So with everything nice and clean, we had the management company/realtors come by and take some pictures to list it! We listed it on Thursday afternoon, someone contacted the company the following week to look at it -- which they did on Wednesday. By Friday, they put in the application and by the following week, they signed the lease. So literally the first people to view it, went for it. I am so glad that we got it done in March, way before Chase showed up. And the best part is that they wanted all of the furniture except for a few items. Most of those items we have already arranged to give away to friends. 

So now the list of things we have to do before we move: 

- install ceiling fan in our bedroom

- send personal knick-knacks for long-term storage to my parents' house

- sell the twin bed/nightstand

- PACK PACK PACK!!

- donate everything else that we cannot pack/give to friends

TV fix

Can't believe it has been two months since I posted! Such failure on my part but I have a few updates of things that have happened in these last two months.

A few weeks ago (conveniently during the Olympics -- which I have an unhealthy obsession with), our TV stopped turning on correctly. It would blink the green button as if it was trying to turn on, and then not end up turning on. We could trick it by pressing the on button for a long time (like 5 minutes) and then quickly toggle on/off until it finally turned on. So, we did that for a few times, until it just didn't turn on at all. So, after messing with the power cord, we got one more turn on in, and then proceeded to leave the TV on for about 3 days because I NEEDED to watch the end of the Olympics (there was ladies figure skating and I wasn't about to miss that!).

As this was going on, we googled a bit and found out that the problem was most likely busted capacitors in the power supply. After some searching, we found that we could buy a kit off of Amazon that had the replacement capacitors for our specific TV. We figured if the TV was actually done-zo, spending $16 now wouldn't make a dent in the price of a new TV so it was worth a try. Here, I have to mention that this TV is at least 10 years old, if not older. It's also a nice 40'', which now is not anything amazing, but 10 years ago, was pretty darn cool. So, while it's totally understandable that it would be dying, we figured it was worth fixing it if we could.

The kit arrived and looked just like a bunch of capacitors:

The kit came with instructions on how to take the TV apart so we followed everything and made it to the power supply. Unfortunately, since we were (or rather, I was) so excited, there are no pictures of this process. Pretty much it involved lots of unscrewing and taking apart. The hardest part was getting the 16-pin cables out of the power supply board -- but after some wedging here and there, we got them unstuck (and then I promptly labeled them to make sure we didn't mess anything up upon reassembly). The power supply board did have at least three busted capacitors, circled in the next two pictures (you can see they are busted because they're bulging up): 

The next part was done by Nate because his soldering skills are much more up-to-date than mine, and he didn't want me getting close to any kind of lead. He took the power supply board to lab and took out all of the old capacitors and put in all of the new ones. The new ones looked shiny and new and, mostly importantly, flat: 

Then we reinstalled the board into the TV (you can see my cable labeled "right" and "left" in the left picture below): 

With all the cables back, we started to put the TV back together (we had a baggy of about 20-30 screws to screw back in): 

Finally, with the back and stand back on, we put the TV back up and plugged everything in. We turned it on and it worked!! This is my face below upon seeing that it was working perfectly. Nate said that this is what makes the project complete. 

It has worked without a hitch for the last month or so. In the end, we spent $16 to fix an originally $1500 TV. Today, this type of TV sells for closer to $500-800ish, but either way, we saved tons of money on this. And we have a sense of accomplishment for getting it fixed ourselves. Yay! 

Jacket Improvements

I guess this is a combination of an improvement project and a craft. I love my Eddie Bauer jacket and I've worn it for the last few winters. However, it stopped fitting me around the new year, so I needed to improvise for the rest of this winter. At first, I was very into these expanders, but I thought the price was way too high. Then, I spent some time looking up zippers on Amazon so I could make one myself, but zippers are complicated and it seemed way too much trouble. From the first year or two of grad school, I had a jacket that was WAY too big for me. I bought it thinking I would be wearing a bunch of sweaters underneath it, but even with a sweater, there is so much space that wind just goes inside it. However, at the moment, the large size actually works well. The issue with the jacket now is the ripped pockets and the badly attached hood. So, I decided in order to use this jacket for the rest of this (freezing cold) winter, I needed to fix these things.

I started off with the pockets. I don't quite understand why they ripped out, but somehow one side of each pocket was completely ripped. I decided to remove both pockets completely so I could make new ones to put in there. The pockets were also ridiculously small. Since I hate wearing a purse in the winter (really this is not limited to the winter, but it's particularly annoying to have bag on top of a huge bulky coat), I wanted the pockets to be more functional. Ideally, I wanted to have my wallet, cell phone, and keys in my pockets with enough room for my hands, too. I feel like guys don't have these problems, but women's pockets are so tiny and non-functional! Anyway, I decided to make better, larger, non-ripped pockets. I drew a rough pattern around the old pockets I cut out.

Then, I pinned the pattern on to the jacket to make sure the size was right.

Looks good! I actually ended up making the pockets a bit deeper (~1.5 inches) than the pattern. 

I cut them out of the fabric I had left-over from my Halloween skirt. I really like this fabric because it is slightly velvety on one side and pretty darn thick. I used my sewing machine to sew the pockets together. I was scared of using my sewing machine because last time I used it, it got badly gunked up from the stick-on-velcro in the Halloween costume. However, I took everything apart and let the pieces soak in nail polish remover for about five minutes and that nicely did the trick. It worked perfectly after that... well almost.

It's hard to see, but these are sewn everywhere but the opening. Also, as you can see, I failed to iron these. I really should have but I was feeling too lazy so they have a few creases. Oh well. No one is going to see the inside and/or know. 

After the pockets were done, I pinned them into the jacket. I maneuvered the jacket (this thing is huge and heavy, btw) and the pinned pocket under the machine. I think I went two stitches and the needle broke!! So much for a working machine. Oh well. The fabric of the jacket is super thick so I'm not too surprised. However, I decide this was my cue to hand sew in the pockets. I have to say, it wasn't super easy because the fabric was quite thick but hand sewing let me have a bit more control over where I was going and therefore, making my stitches neater in the end. I think the pockets turned out well, and they are HUGE! I made it so the velvety side was inside, so my hands could touch that.

Top: The outside looks exactly the same.

Bottom: Looking inside, into the velvety-ness. You can see a few (neat) stitches, but in general, they look pretty good. 

Right: If I flip the pockets inside out, you can see how HUGE they are! So exciting!

The other issue with the jacket was that the hood was attached by five small elastics that fit around five small buttons. Unfortunately, the elastic had broken (maybe from the cold? I don't know) so they were way too stretched out, and one of the buttons had fallen off. Not only that, but this attachment made it so that there was a lot of space (for wind and cold) between the collar and the hood. I really wanted the hood attached permanently and closely to the collar, so I decided to take off the elastics and buttons and just sew it on.

I pinned everything and then maneuvered it under the machine again (with a new needle). This time, I sewed about a quarter of the hood onto the collar before the needle broke. However, due to the thickness, the stitches looked TERRIBLE. So, I decided to take it out and hand sew it. At this point, I kind of regretted even working on the hood because hand sewing was HARD.  I bent a needle quite badly while hand sewing, so I know it wasn't just me. This took me two days, because it was so frustrating and painful (my nails and fingers hurt for days!). Finally, I finished sewing on the hood and I decided to sew a button on either end of the collar to make sure it had a very strong connection on the two ends. In the end, I am so glad I persevered and did this. The hood feels so much more secure and warmer! I am so excited about this more functional jacket. I wish the weather would warm up a bit, though, because at this point it's way too cold to go comfortably outside, even with the best jacket!

Left: From the outside, the hood (to the left) is tightly sewn on. 

Right: On the inside of the hood, it is sewn on to the collar along the seam that is vertical in this picture. The button marks one side where it is more tightly attached.