Roo Bear the Blue Bear's Third Month = a Week of New Experiences

I suppose every week Rosalie is experiencing new things, but this week was particularly full of newness. Here are the top three new things of the week.

New Thing #1: Our First Mama and Baby Group Hangout
Alameda has something called the Alameda Family Collective which is a group of over 300 local Alameda families with young children. The collective has a bunch of different meet-ups for all types of interests. On Monday, there was a meetup for moms and babies born in 2014. Our friend who we'll be nanny sharing with was hosting and invited me, so I decided to check it out. There were about 8 or so moms and their babies. For a couple of hours we hung out while our babies sat or crawled around on the floor. It was fun to get to meet other moms and talk about our baby experiences. I'm looking forward to attending a few more of these before I go back to work and hopefully make some good friends for both Rosalie and me. Rosalie seemed to enjoy sitting and watching all of the other babies.

New Thing #2: G-diapers
Being concerned about the environment, I struggled to decide what diapers we would use for Rosalie. In grad school I took a life-cycle assessment class where our final project was to compare two similar products and determine which was less harmful from an environmental perspective. I remember one group compared disposable diapers to cloth diapers. It's hard to definitively say which is "better" for the environment as each has its impacts for production, use and disposal. Disposable diapers like Pampers or Huggies take a lot more energy to produce, but use a lot less water and energy (because they're only used once), whereas reusable diapers create a lot less waste that goes to the landfill, but use more water and energy because you have to launder them.

For the first few months, we decided to just use Seventh Generation disposable diapers. But, this week we made a transition. Instead of going with straight cloth diapers, we went with a middle ground or hybrid approach. gDiapers have a reusable cotton outer shell, an inner reusable liner and a disposable flushable and/or compostable pad insert. Rosalie is sporting her blue gDiaper in the photo above. Using the gDiapers are a little bit more work than the disposables, but it's nice to know that we aren't sending as much waste to the landfill, plus Rosalie looks mighty cute in her colorful diapers.


New Thing #3: Swimming
One of the things I learned from the mama's group was about Aquatech - a swimming school on the
island. Every Monday and Friday they have infant hours where the pool is reserved for babies under 1 year old. We bought Rosalie a swimming diaper and headed out to the pool on Friday. We were in the pool for about 30 minutes and while Rosalie didn't seem to love it, she definitely didn't hate it. She didn't cry at all, and instead seemed to take everything in - from the bright lights, to the pool toys, to the warm 90 degree water. There were at least 10 other babies in the pool and one of the best parts was how friendly other parents were. It was fun to walk around the pool and meet the other babies and parents. We were too scared to put Rosalie's head under water, but may try in later visits.

Here is a video of Rosie getting into the water with Adam:

Rosie is a little peanut

I'll end with her third month photo(s). I'm liking the animated photos that Google plus generates, so you'll see a montage of Rosie on the changing table that can be compared to her other changing table photos. In addition, I took one of her in the rocking chair and next to a stuffed giraffe (thanks Julie). Uncle Jason so astutely observed in the 2 month photo that Rosalie looked like she was shrinking. So hopefully the rocking chair and stuffed animal will give a better sense of her growth over time.

Rosie at 3 months