This weekend we got to meet our new niece, Lucy, for the first time. She’s a cute little thing to say the least and it was great to be around a baby so young to sort of help me understand what I’m in for in about 4 more months. The main thing I noticed was how many diapers she went through in the few hours we spent with her on Sunday!

Since even before she was officially going to be a mother, Andrea has been interested in trying out gDiapers, an eco-friendly, flushable diaper. How it works, is there are “Little G pants”, which are a small pair of little pants with snap-in liners. Inside the liner you place a bio-degradable, absorbent sheet where the baby does its business. When it’s time to change the diaper, you take out the sheet, toss it in the toilet, stir it up a little with an included plastic stick, and the sheet begins to break down immediately, looking like toilet paper. Then you just flush the whole thing down the toilet.

So when we found out we were expecting, we began looking at the gDiapers, only to find that they are really growing in popularity as an alternative to disposable diapers, meaning their supply of the Little G pants is limited for the time being. (The flushable inserts are plentiful, though, so no worries). However, a few weeks ago I got lucky and was able to order a size Small Starter Kit, which includes two pairs of the Little G pants, a pack of 10 of the flushable diapers and a stir stick. While we were able to look at the diapers and even flushed one just to see how well they worked, we were concerned about how well they would work in practice on a baby. Thankfully, Lucy’s mom, Leigh, was willing to let her daughter be a guinea pig.

And I’m happy to say that the gDiapers seem to work wonderfully. There was no leakage, they were easy to clean, and they broke down and flushed just as described. She only tried one, but over the course of the next few hours, Leigh changed Lucy’s diaper at least three more times, producing three diapers to dispose of. While it was no big deal for us to have dirty diapers in the trash, it also made me realize how awesome these gDiapers are going to be. No waste. No mess. No Rob taking the garbage out every morning. Being able to just flush away the diaper is really a great solution for us.

While we love the gDiapers so far, we’re also going to use cloth diapers as much as possible (probably just around the house) and, of course, we’ll keep disposables on hand for those times when no other option is convenient. We feel like if we have to use 1 or 2 disposables for every 10 g or cloth diapers, that we’re doing what we can for the environment and every little bit helps.

So if you or someone you know is expecting, check out gDiapers as a possible alternative to disposables. Not only are you doing something better for the environment, but the poor dad who has to empty the Diaper Genie every morning will thank you as well.

Sure, the baby still needs a crib…a diaper bag…bottles…clothes…but there’s one thing our little guy or gal has plenty of already and that’s toys. We’ve already picked up a few stuffed animals to decorate the nursery and maybe, just maybe, one of them will become a constant companion to the Little Lammle.

Speaking of constant companions, Andrea and I both had stuffed animals as a kid that we carried with us everywhere. For her, it was a bear in a night shirt called a “Heart-to-Heart Bear”. Now this was no regular teddy bear. Inside its chest was a plastic heart that, when hugged, mimicked the sound and feeling of a heartbeat. My furry pal was, in typical form for me, a stuffed Triceratops (a dinosaur with three horns on its head, usually seen in paintings fighting for its life against a T-Rex). My dinosaur was no regular stuffed animal either. No, it didn’t have a plastic heartbeat or fancy clothes, it had an unusual name - “Horny” - which makes sense if you remember that I was a naive 4-year old naming a dinosaur with big horns sticking out of its face. Of course my dad loved to have me tell people what my dinosaur’s name was, often accompanied by a nudge-nudge, wink-wink and a knowing adult giggle.

When we found out we were going to be parents, I immediately wanted to find a Heart-to-Heart bear for the kid in the hopes that the little one would love its bear just like Mommy does (Yes, Andrea still has her bear). Thanks to the wonders of eBay, I tracked down a nearly perfect specimen with its heart still intact.

If you can’t tell which is the “new” bear and which is Andrea’s, take a look at their profiles, paying special attention to the noses:

As you can see, that bear on the left has seen some serious cuddling over the years…

But we couldn’t leave my childhood out, so we also tracked down our kid’s own Horny the Triceratops.

Sadly, I don’t have my Horny here at our condo (I’m pretty sure we’d find it if we looked in my parents’ attic, though), but I guarantee you my dinosaur would be in excellent shape like the one we have here.

While, we’ve already purchased the Little Lammle toys that we loved as kids, nothing says that it will care for the teddy bear with a heartbeat or a weird little dinosaur. Maybe he or she will instead carry a plush rattlesnake, a giant rubber ant, or, hopefully, something else we’ve already bought, like this Ugly Doll named…Chuckanucka.

How could you NOT want to carry him around? I’m 32 and wouldn’t mind being seen with it in my arms.

Whatever our kid latches on to as its best stuffed friend, I know we’re going to be sure to pack it away in a box so that he or she can one day dig it out and relive what will hopefully be a happy childhood.

And if the toy has a funny euphemism for a name, well, that would be just as much fun for us, too.

We’re still working on the website design, but that’s no reason to stop posting…

Today, Andrea had a check-up and she’s doing great. She’s starting to get a little rounder up front there and has gained four pounds since her last weigh-in. Not bad considering she lost four pounds during the first trimester because so very little tasted good to her. We got to hear the baby’s heartbeat again and the doctor said it’s nice and strong! This was the first time I’d gotten to hear it for any extended period of time and - wow - was it cool. I had this big dumb grin on my face the whole time it was thumping away. It was really great and put both of our minds at ease. Her next appointment is in early August and, if the little bugger cooperates, we should be able to tell the sex at that time. That’s the big thing we’re waiting on right now, as you can probably guess.

Anyway, just wanted to keep everyone posted on how things are coming along. Check back soon and hopefully we’ll have a new site design and a few more entries to read.