Five Favorites: Summer Sanity edition

Joining Hallie for Five Favorites again this week.  

1.  Starbucks Iced Coffee. Philly has a way of smacking me upside the head every time I dare to say something nice about the weather.  After I wrote about it being a fairly pleasant summer so far, weather wise, we had a week of 95+ degrees with over 80% humidity, and now the temps have dropped into the 80s, but the humidity remains above 90%.  Like I said, we live in a swamp.  Oh, and our door won't lock properly on the first try because the humidity has swelled the wood so badly, so we are slamming and reslamming door repeatedly every time we have to go in or out.  (I bruised my shoulder last night trying to get the deadbolt to engage). 

That said, my favorite thing this week is a trenta iced decaf coffee with whole milk and five splenda from Starbucks.  (I know splenda is bad for you, but so is coffee, so whatev.  This gal needs something to keep her going!)  

2.  Huggies Little Movers Slip On Diapers. I have three in diapers right now (I can't believe I just wrote that).  My older three kids have fairly significant GI issues, which means lots and lots of #2 messes.  My eldest is completely potty trained, so we no longer have to worry too much about him, but Boo is about half-potty trained and still wearing pull ups.  I would like to thank the manufacturers of Little Movers slip on diapers, because they are SO much better than pull ups.  They go on like pull ups, but have the pull away sides with tabs that can be wrapped up securely like a diaper when you have a mess to contain (unlike regular pull ups, which not only lack a tab on most models, lack sides that stick together post-mess in a logical fashion).  And since I'm frequently cleaning up stuff running down little legs and all over clothing, I don't need a pull up that doesn't close up without the aid of a plastic bag and a hazmat suit.  

3.  Charlie Banana Cloth Diapers. We cloth diapered when Piglet was a baby, but given the aforementioned GI issues, I hit the wall with it when he was around 18 months and still stooling heavily 8-12 times per day (sorry, but there it is...).  We used a diaper service at the time, which was nice on the washing, but we still dealt with diaper smell in the house or out back much of the time as it was a weekly pick up.  We tried gDiapers for travel and had epic fails with them--not what you want when in an airport or on a plane. At the time, I figured I might as well go to disposables and save my sanity, if we were going to be smelling it anyway.  

That said, I am looking at how much we are spending on diapers every month, and am having insane thoughts of trying to cloth diaper one of the remaining kids--possibly the baby since she is still breastfeeding and it isn't as disgusting to clean up and wash that mess (amiright?)  Please someone talk me out of this, because I'm half-considering Charlie Banana all-in-ones for Ponchik.  I dare not mention it to my husband unless I'm ready to commit for realz--he would prefer me to use cloth, and I would prefer me to save the shreds of sanity I have left.  

How stinking cute are these?  

4. The Good Wife.  I know I'm about four years late to the party on this excellent series, but holy cow, it is good.  I'm about half-way through season 1 on amazon instant watch and I'm completely addicted.  Yay for summer time watching with a nursing baby!

5.  Floor AC units. We don't have central air in our row home, and for the first few years here, we had nothing except our ceiling fans to help us through the blisteringly hot and humid summers.  We tried a window unit a few years back, but have since discovered it is unsafe to install in our second floor windows.  Last summer, we finally bought the last floor unit available at Lowe's and put it in our bedroom.  I hauled the 66 pound unit up all our 47 stairs, and installed it myself.  Last week, I bought a second smaller unit, and hauled its 55 pound self up those same 47 stairs to the third floor and installed it, plus brought the 66 pound unit down to the second floor for more efficient use there.  My Rosie the Riveter antics caught up with me a day or two later, and I find a week on, I'm still more tired than usual, but hey, at least I'm cooler than I was!  It definitely helps with a fussy nursing baby (the heat/humidity is driving her and me batty) and takes a bit of frustration out of my mostly frustrating nursing experience.

This Soleus model is the one we bought for the third floor.  The second floor unit is a DeLonghi.

That's it for me this week; go see Hallie for more Five Faves.