Elias' Favorite Books - 21 months

I wrote a post recently about the books Elias loved from birth to 20 months. Recently, I am learning from his day care providers K&J that he is able to sit through longer and longer books. This has opened a HUGE door for us, expanding our library significantly. We have a lot of books, and recently I purchased almost 45 new books! Yes, that sounds absolutely crazy. I want my kids to love to read and I don't mind spending money to develop good habits and provide some good parent-child time. And perhaps I am also compensating (or overcompensating) for the fact that my parents didn't read to me at all because they didn't know how to read in English (and they didn't have access to Polish children's books).

When K&J told me he's sitting through longer books, that day I ordered 15 Berenstain Bears and Franklin the Turtle books on Amazon. I used my Amazon credit card points for most of the purchase, but still paid $30. Not terrible, especially since I got over half the books the NEXT DAY! Yay for Amazon Prime!

A few days later I told K&J about my purchase and K sorta laughed asking why I didn't just go to the Friends of the Library bookstore?

I really had no good answer. Ummm... first time mom over here! Got a little too excited about lots of new books ... And Amazon Prime is just so easy. The books were new. I got to read reviews. I did this all from my phone without going any where.

And then the guilt hit me. What had I done?! I've been trying to be thrifty lately (combination of trying to save money for a new car and trying principles from the FIRE movement), and I hadn't even given this purchase a second thought. I thought it was a good thing to buy books. They're for my kids after all!

And so on Tuesday I HAD TO CHECK OUT the Friends of the Library bookstore. I ended up spending another $50 there getting almost 30 books! Crazy, yes. But lots of books for reading were gained. I walked these books back a whole mile to my office too. It felt like I did a book binge during my lunch break, sneaking out of the office at 11:30am like some sort of addict. I got Curious George books, more Berenstain Bears, more Franklin, a few Eric Carle books especially this anthology, a Sesame Street Anthology, and 4 Madeline books for Zoe. I felt so accomplished and in love with all the reading we'll be doing.

So, here's to expanding our library and to many many story times.

Our Minimalist Diaper Bag- Simple JanSport Backpack

Meet our diaper bag! We use and LOVE my old JanSport Backpack as our diaper bag for two kids under two. We didn't start with this, but after one year of messy pockets and losing items in traditional diaper bags, we decided this is the diaper bag that works for us. We are not minimalists, and I love how this diaper bag encourages us to cut down on the stuff that accumulates in a diaper bag.

Shopping for a diaper bag was quite a challenge when I was pregnant. I decided to go practical with my choice of a grey backpack with two main compartments, a changing pad, bottle holders, wipe holder, insulated pockets, lots of other pockets, stroller straps and more! It was highly reviewed on Amazon and after much debate I thought this backpack had it all, so I added it to my registry.

And boy do I regret it. What a waste of $50 (yes, a gift, but still!) for the HapTim Multi-function Large Baby Diaper Bag Backpack.

The backpack is HUGE, even with nothing in it. It's shape feels like I am carrying a box on my back. And all the pockets I thought I'd love were hellish -- I couldn't find a thing because things get trapped in the pockets. Even recently when I was re-cleaning out the backpack I found wipes, burp clothes, extra diapers and other randoms things in the pockets! Not to mention all the pockets look similar so it is hard to remember what goes where, and it makes it difficult to share this backpack with another caretaker (like my husband).

Thankfully, I had bought another backpack at a consignment sale at 3 months after baby #1. I got the J.J. Cole Caprice Diaper Bag, Large Capacity Tote (similar pattern). At first I LOVED this diaper bag. It had four pockets on the inside, bottle pockets on the two outside sides, and a smaller wallet like pocket on the outside. I used it mainly as a tote and my husband used the messenger bag strap. It met our needs fine, but the more I used it, the more the inside was just one large mess. Things would get lost in the four interior pockets so easily. Each time this happened, the pocket contents were dumped out in order to locate the needed item. It was hard to put things back in the pockets because these pockets were in such similar positions that it was hard to remember what belonged in which pocket.This lead to one large mess in the main section of the bag, and it drove me NUTS organizing this tote daily.

HapTim Backpack and J.J. Cole Tote Diaper Bags

This is when I decided to streamline our diaper bag. I knew I liked the backpack option, and I knew I needed Ziploc bags to store the items I'd normally store in the pockets. Ziplocs had the advantage of being see through and could be easily categorized! I got my high school JanSport backpack out, and that became our diaper bag. It was lightweight and had two pockets, minimizing our biggest problem of things getting lost.

In the small pocket I store: sanitizing hand wipes, hand sanitizer (I'm thinking of removing this soon), tissues, a bib, lip balm, mother's milk tea, and Elias' Avi-Q Epi Pen.

In the main pocket I keep: Elias' puffy winter coat (which is not car seat safe), a Ziploc with a change of clothes (short sleeve, long sleeve and pants), a changing pad, a second Ziploc with 4 diapers in each size (Size 5 for Elias and size 2 for Zoe), and a smaller Ziploc with wipes. I generally use a separate insulated lunch bag to transport food/snacks and drinks.