cookiemomster's Profile

i love this! it's so happy! congrats on your little one!

i just want to chime in on the car seat (i can't help myself). we have two year old twins. we received, as gifts, both of our car seats - the combi cocorro. this seat goes from 5 to 45 lbs. we *never* had the bucket style car seat that snapped out. people said we were crazy and we caught all kinds of flack for it, but we did it for two reasons. first, we didn't want to buy four car seats within a couple of years - it's wasteful both in terms of materials and money. two, we figured the babes would learn to stay asleep during the transition from car seat to arms to carrier or indoors - and they did. i think we held our babes a lot more than a parent with an infant car seat does. we had to. i highly recommend going with a single car seat and skipping the bucket car seat, it's an unnecessary piece of equipment and your babe will do fine going from seat to moby wrap or carrier, trust me.

the tsa actually makes exceptions for liquids for babies and toddlers - check their web page. we've had no problem (including within the last two weeks) flying with 4 oz pouches, sippy cups of milk (they did check them but didn't make us dump it out), juice boxes over 3 oz, and yogurt.

we use an insulated lunch bag that folds up once empty (it's a packit, which has the freezer pack built into the bag), and bring those squeeze yogurt tubes - it's a special treat and needs no spoon and is a minimal mess. we also pack a lot of the other things that were mentioned here. once of my twins will just snack the whole time on the plane, which she won't do when she's on the ground, and we just let her eat as much as she wants so she stays happy.

if green choices are important to you, and it seems like they are, then you're going to need to add another $400-500 to your budget for a mattress (naturepedic's $249 model seems to be the cheapest "green" mattress if you're buying new and it just goes up from there) along with what goes on the mattress - we may have overdone it since our twins were our first and we didn't really know what to buy, but we have an organic cotton mattress cover and a wool puddle pad on top of that, which both go under the sheets. the puddle pad is a miracle worker - dries super quick, regulates temperature, and protects the mattress pad from needing to be washed every time we have a pee leak over night. the mattress pad and puddle pad combined was another $125 or so. we got a discount and i think we still spent easily $400 on the mattress and bedding. so, we too got ikea cribs, not sure of the model, but they have wood slats and they are wonderful. holding up very well (including against a toddler who JUMPS!), nice looking, and meet european safety standards including for finishes and the standards over there are much more child and earth friendly than the u.s.

yes! did anyone disagree? we got family to chip in on this major nursery purchase and wound up buying a very small la-z-boy recliner (it's pink, it rocks and reclines, it looks like it had its heyday in the 70s and i LOVE it) which has been great for nursing over the last 20 months, great for snuggling and in and reading a story before bed, fun for climbing on (i can't stop them!) and it will fit in well with my living room furniture when we're finally ready to move it out. for the record, i have twins in separate cribs in an 88 sq. foot room, along with a small dresser with a changing table top, an unusable closet, a wall cabinet for storing diapers and the like, diaper can, laundry bag, and the much loved p'kolino clothes tree for things that don't fit in the dresser. you need a chair, and don't forget about wall space for storage - hooks, shelves, cabinets, etc. the chair fits in as well because it has quite a small footprint and it is one of the best things we bought for the nursery.

what beautiful girls! there is nothing better or more joyful than having twins in the house - especially two twirly girls!

since you have triplets (!!!), once you choose which bikes you'd like, if you decide to buy them new, contact the company directly to let them know you'll be buying three. really, you might contact any seller and tell them that, and ask for a discount. i find that many companies are more than happy to do this because it's great customer service, and triplets are a rarity and quite special.

for our twins we use a giant ll bean boat tote - natural canvas with a raspberry handle. picked it up at sears for about $10. it is ENORMOUS, holds a ton of laundry, and has long handles so i can carry it on my shoulder to and from the basement to do the wash. folded up clothes fit beautifully inside when the wash is done. when the girls are ready for a different way to collect laundry, this will become a great beach bag.

we have been cd'ing our 13 month old twins since they came home from the hospital - first in preemie covers w/ preemie prefolds (which are now great clean up cloths) and now in the cottonbabies flips. we found the flips to be economical and i second the opinion that we're doing SO MUCH MORE laundry than ever before that the diapers are no big deal. as for the solid poops, we also have a spatula by the toilet, but i have to say that most of their poops just fall right off. we're scraping very few, and it's just not a big deal. if people are worried about CDs because of the poop, it's worth trying it out. even with twins, and the various prefolds, covers, flips, and wetbags, we probably spent about $350 on everything. at around 25 cents for each disposable diaper, we would've spent an estimated $1400 on disposables in their first year. the flips should fit them until they are potty trained and we've been very happy with how well they work.

i hope people keep asking daycares, as they may become more open to it when they realize how many of their charges are wearing them at home and how easy it is to deal with. some of the daycares around us will allow them no question, others would do it with a doctor's note.

our nursery walls are sherwin williams "steamed milk". i had been checking out nursery design books from the library and read one on color, which suggested that white leads to calm and creativity - the two qualities i most want to help my children have! we have lots of color from different fabrics, their cloth diaper covers which hang up in between uses, and art made and collected.