Large Family Rant | Adorable stuff for Elise

[altarflame]

I am tired of the world being built only for families of 1-(MAYBE)3 children.

Something that irritates me to NO END is the ridiculous maximum occupancy laws this county has...for instance, did you know that we would not legally be allowed to move into a 3 bedroom apartment in Dade County, with 4 kids? A couple of years ago we looked into it. Five people is the maximum for a 3 bedroom apartment. That's not even two per bedroom, and it made no difference to them that I was talking about a bunch of tiny children. We've been living, all 7 of us, in two bedrooms here. We sleep with Jake and Elise, which would have been the case regardless of how much space we had, and then Ananda and Aaron are in bunk beds with Isaac in a toddler bed, in the other room. The idea that it might be ILLEGAL is beyond ridiculous to me. Especially when we have a big living room, an office, a kitchen, a big dining room, this computer area, front porch, back patio, yards, the bathroom, the laundry room is even big - I mean there is a ton of central living area here and I often spend a couple of minutes finding someone! I really think it's just that the world is no longer accustomed to what was common place a generation ago - really, I doubt our grandparents all had 8 bedroom houses for their six kids, you know?

Registration forms for a zoo membership or AWANA or birthdays at the ice cream parlor on your discount card or ANY-DAMN-THING, have 2-3 lines for kids' names. The family forms for nurseries at churches don't even have enough space. Dental insurance apps for Grant's jobs don't have enough room for "all of us".

You can buy tshirts with customized people on them - up to five, including parents!

You can buy new age wood carvings of families - with one or two kids in them.

Nobody at any of the dealerships we've been looking at knows anything about conversion vans, which after all have to be converted because nobody just MANUFACTURES passenger vans to seat 9 or more people.

Stores and companies routinely give away "Family Vacations" good for four people.

I am over it.

You know what I love? I love it when we're at BJ's shopping and they have double-wide carts that have attached bench seating, such that FOUR kids can be in it at once strapped in, being pushed along.

Also, www.litteearthangels.com - which is a Christian, hippie, natural living, attachment parenting website with great service - has shirts that say "I am one of many blessings" and it shows abstract figures - two big ones with their arms around a circle of five small ones.

---

Oh oh - I told you about the Gymboree order. You must want to see pictures of everything I've ordered for Elise, right? I mean...baby girl clothes, come on, who can resist?


Patchwork apron dress made by single sahm on ebay(modeled on her daughter):


One other ebay thing:


From Tiny Birds Organics:
This adorable dress!!!


And one of these dress tops,


But in the purple flowered fabric option.


Cotton Overalls.


The pink one.


pajamas


Also, longies from llamajama:


I love making her longies, but she's currently outgrown all the homemade ones and I have a ton of projects going on at once, yarn-wise - I'm working on a tote bag for my sister, and have grand plans for lots of kid sweaters at Christmastime that I'll need to work on all year until then. And a dress idea for Elise that will take me forever in thin cotton yarn. It just isn't practical to take on right now, she'll be potty trained before I'm done.

She's also getting these squeaky sandals, which I think she will find hilarious - I can already picture it:


And some more of this, which I sorely miss from Isaac and Jake's babyhoods but have not been able to foot the bill for more of since the last bottle broke:


AAAAAaaaaaaaaaaaaaand 6 more of these, to round out my stash of fuzzi bunz and go under those beautiful longies:


Brand new Under the Nile diapers are the softest thing EVER. All the ones we have here already - the ones we HAVEN'T thrown away - are full of holes with the elastic shot and the velcro no longer attached - not even fit to give away. But, they were used for Isaac, Jake and Elise, so I still think they are pretty good quality. Especially for the money, and how absorbent they are.

Comments

[marliah.livejournal.com]

I get irritated that big families are left out too. I have 3 kids so *most* of the time I don't run into it. But it weirds me out when I do because I am like "what the heck, I only have 3 kids!" to me three seems like a small number. I always wanted 6, or at the very least 4....

I actually found a new agey statue with 3 kids and two parents and was amazed. It was in a clearance aisle and I doubt I could ever find another one like it lol.

The clothes are absolutely adorable!! I <3 the patchwork and tiny bird organics dresses! So sweet! And squeaker shoes are TOO much fun. A little girl at church had some and I thought it was just the cutest thing.

And yay for new cloth diapers! those are always a nice treat. :)

[altarflame.livejournal.com]

I love hearing someone else have that perspective - I'm on a large families board and watch those "Kids by the Dozens" specials on TLC, as well as knowing two families, one with 6 kids and one with 10, in RL, and having a 12-kid mom on my friends' list, and, well...I don't feel like I DO have a Large Family. I feel like 1-3 kids is a small family, 4-5 is medium, and then 6+ is "big".

I know Elise is going to get a big kick out of the shoes :)

[daveandmonika.livejournal.com]

Sometimes they did, but not like today's houses :-p

http://architecture.about.com/library/nbungalowplan-s-125.htm
(Note, this house does not have a bathroom or a dining room, and only one closet, but it does have 6 bedrooms)

[altarflame.livejournal.com]

Well, I know for a fact these people also piled 6 kids into the back of a station wagon routinely. Not that I'm endorsing THAT, just saying, it's no wonder they didn't think they needed closets :p

[daveandmonika.livejournal.com]

Were there even station wagons in 1908? seatbelts?

I think a lot of the mail order houses then were not the highest quality...things like not being designed for running water or electricity ... so why waste space on closets?

I know my dad's family all piled in the car every Sunday to go for a drive...and I know he and my mom first started to use seatbelts when they drove across Canada in 1978 (it was required there but not in the US) and it became a habit.

[mommydama.livejournal.com]

Oh my goodness those longies are KILLING ME!!!

Hey, I have a question for you. I'm trying to convince my sister to try cloth diapering. It needs to be easy and CHEAP. They are really weird about money. I convinced her that in the long run cloth diapering would save her money, but her husband doesn't want to shell out the bucks at the beginning. so it needs to be cheap. Anyway, I think if I could get the baby in cloth diapers and show her how easy it is then she would do it...for the money and for the world.

Anyhoo...what should I buy her? I was thinking about simple prefolds, snappis, and covers but I'm so out of the loop I have no idea what covers to buy. I want good ones that are easy (velcro) and will hold up to a washing machine. Are Bummis still the best for that? Give me some ideas here...

[treading.livejournal.com]

I don't know if you're hoping for other people to answer this too, but I've been cloth diapering for two years on no money, so maybe you'd like to hear what I've gotten by with. :-)

I was really lucky and got about 40 prefolds from another woman on Freecycle. Those were more than enough for the basic diapers... I think I probably could have gotten by with 30, no problem, washing every other day. For the first two months or so, though, he was too small for them, so we used some of the thin cotton diapers that are sold more widely in mainstream stores. I honestly don't know the brand, but they are one big sheet of thin cotton that you fold up.

I have used the same four snappies for two years--they hold up really well! One did get lost, though, and another was eaten by one of our dogs. (!!)

For covers, I have made do with 5 of each size of Bummis Whisper Wraps. I tried the fancier Imse Vimse covers for one size, the ones with the extra moisture band in the leg, and while they were much nicer in the first three months, they did not hold up nearly as well to washing, and the waterproofing started to fail pretty badly early on. The Bummis did much better, and only the ones that he was in for over a year started to leak.

While 5 covers was possible to work with, if I'd had the money I would definitely have gotten at least 8. Babies get the runs a lot. Enough said. ;-) There were plenty of times I had to do a wash load well before the pail filled up. And sometimes it would sneak up on me and I wouldn't have enough covers.

Oh, and for a diaper pail, I just used a five-gallon plastic bucket with a lid, no water. I'd soak the diapers in cold water (in the washer) for 20 min before washing, then do a hot load with a 1/4 of the recommended laundry soap for the size of load, since diapers lose their absorbency with too much detergent. I have gotten by with line-drying (we don't have a dryer).

I'd be interested to see what other people say, though, since I have very little experience with other brands, since we didn't have the money for trial and error. I was very determined to cloth diaper, and wouldn't have done differently, but every time I see how much disposables cost in the store I get a chance to feel thankful that we didn't have to go that route!

[altarflame.livejournal.com]

I don't know enough about her, I think...I mean, for someone who is still squeamish about cloth diapers in general, and expecting a hassle, I would do something like fuzzi bunz and stuffers. They're almost $20 apiece, yes, but
-you can leave them on as long as a disposable, which is a big swaying factor for people with multiple kids and used to Huggies
-they keep skin pretty dry, which can be HUGE for people used to Huggies (or whatever brand, you know what I mean)
-stuffed, they're ready to go by the changing table and come on and off like a disposable...I've learned that even when a mom is ok with folding prefolds and having a separate cover, usually the dad is not, and so then she ends up stuck with all the diapering duties...
-they have high resale value even after a year of use
-there are many vibrant colors to choose from

Fuzzi Bunz have recently revamped their tags and added gussets to their leg elastic, which is fine, but I have taken advantage of how that means ALL of the previously-just-fine "old style" brand new FB around the web are now on clearance. Naturalbabies.com is a good example of a wide array of old style FB for only $12 apiece, which is a steal.

If she is at all swayed by crunch factor or melted by aesthetics, I would go with wool covers. Browsing around Tinybirds or llamajama is freaking awesome. But, that is a lot of getting used to and still seems like a big hassle even to my sister, who has used my diapers on my kids for weeklong periods of my absence and thinks they're cute and all.

I definitely think bummis are still the ultra-reliable, simple, workhorse diaper cover. They have added a few styles that just kill me. You know forever they had the space one and the frog one, but then at some point they added this yellow Andy Pandy print, and a jungle print, both of which are cute. HOWEVER, I found a flower print one widely available, for Elise, that is one of the cutest things I've ever seen.

I personally don't see bummis as a good option, though, for kids beyond like 10-12 months old, depending, because the kids just undo the velcro themselves...at least mine do. Unless your sister is the type to ALWAYS have a diaper cover under some other form of clothing, which I realize I am not but some people are. Still, the bigger prefolds and many fitteds are hard to get good coverage with once the kids get bigger - there is a lot of tucking involved with a prefold and bummi, to avoid wicking.

My final answer is that you should spend like $200 on Fuzzi Bunz for her. Infant prefolds or doubled-up microfiber inserts are good, though the BEST insert I've ever tried, hands down, is bamboo. They are MORE ABSORBENT than hemp (can you believe that?!) but they don't hold onto smell at all, which we all know hemp sure as heck does...pricey, though ($8-12 each new). I keep two for overnight, that I got used along with a lot of FB. THEN, once your sister is used to cloth and can't believe it's really so easy - then, you reel her in and hook her with some longies ;)

I figured it out one day and I spent almost $4000 on Huggies and Little Swimmers for Ananda and Aaron. The combined $800 tops I shelled out for Isaac, Jake and Elise since then really pales in comparison.

[superflippy.livejournal.com]

Those occupancy laws sound ridiculous. I don't know whether this is an issue in Homestead, but I know that in some towns they pass occupancy laws like that to crack down on illegal immigrants, who often live with large extended families in small apartments. It probably never occurred to the politicians who passed those laws that they weren't being fair to large families. I bet if you wrote a letter to the editor about the topic, you could stir something up. (If you wanted to.)

[altarflame.livejournal.com]

I know it's an unpopular opinion, but I think they should let illegal immigrants live however they want to, so long as they aren't endangering anyone else. I mean, it's widely known down here that almost all of the farm labor is paid less than minimum wage, under the table. If they're good enough to provide our food and fuel our economy, we can back the hell up about complaining that they cram too many people into a house on the puny wages we pay them.

And, you are probably right.

[armistice.livejournal.com]

The city I live in has occupany ordinances, but they only apply to non-related people. It's a college town, so basically, they're trying to, uh. Make money for landlords? I don't know. I've heard that in Pittsburgh, you can have as many men as you want in a residence, but no more than three unrelated females. Otherwise, it's a brothel, and it's illegal.

The rules in Homestead sound completely unreasonable.

[iluvrob20.livejournal.com]

At least in the area of PA i lived in it was 8 unrelated females, so all the frats had houses and the sororities had to live in dorms (not that I cared, I wasn't a greek kind of girl). The whole thing was really stupid. I also think a lot of it is racist against minorities who tend to live in larger family groups in one home. I know in my area (DC) the passed a lot of anti-immigrant laws and threw in the occupancy thing at the same time.

[treading.livejournal.com]

I would be incredibly frustrated with those occupancy laws if I had a big family. I bet superflippy is right about the immigration thing. It was probably a political decision that didn't take into account who else it would affect. I bet it is especially hard on poor families who just can't afford that many bedrooms, period, no matter how they stretch it.

I don't comment often, but I just wanted to say how glad I've been for you! Just paying off all of your debt alone must be such a humongous relief! I'm of course sorry for the reason for this windfall, but very very glad for you that it is going to help all of you so much!

[altarflame.livejournal.com]

Thank you :)

[pikefish.livejournal.com]

omg! adorable!!!!!!!

[claddagh.livejournal.com]

The occupancy laws are sometimes fire code, but really are directed at non-nuclear families.

While I completely sympathize with your situation, I have lived in apartment complexes with large numbers of less related, adult people in the apartments and it really does impact quality of life.

As for the family of 4 stuff, it annoys me too. It has become two children are the max and the third is either an "oops" or your first two kids were the same sex. Kids are great, I don't see why people want to limit themselves to 1 or 2. That said, I only have 1 so far, but I am hoping to start working on a second.

[custard-kisses.livejournal.com]

Ahhh so cute, I love that cross over top in the fourth picture.
I've never really had a problem with the 'the world was build for a family of 4' thing, I mean I have a problem with it but there haven't been many situations that caused us angst. I think the most annoying one would be the family pass thing but that would put out even someone with only 3 or 4 children.

[altarflame.livejournal.com]

It really doesn't usually bother me, every now and then irritation just builds up I guess. I do understand most people nowadays have small families, and can even recognize that -along with delayed conception and childfree lifestyles - as a good thing for the earth overall.

The thing that bothers us, is hotels. We have no problem whatsoever at this stage of the game having one hotel room with two beds. We do after all go camping in a single (large) tent. Annie and Aaron in one bed, Elise between G and I in the other, and sleeping bags on the floor for Isaac and Jake. Or Isaac and Jake in the bed and A and A in sleeping bags - it's just sleeping, you know? For one freaking night. But people flip like we're crazy. We have, I admit, lied on more than one occassion.

Regarding hotels

[ferol163.livejournal.com]

Speaking as someone who's worked at a hotel for a long-assed time, I can say that those occupancy laws aren't there for people like you who are responsible and just have a bunch of little kids in the room. They are there because ADULTS are stupid and try to shove like sixteen people for a party in a room with two beds. OR they will have a birthday party for little kids at a hotel and try to get 15-20 of them in one room with two adults. It ends up being a gigantic hassle and mess for the facility when that happens.

Personally speaking, as long as someone is honest with me about the number of people in the room and they explain the situation, I NEVER say anything about family size or put the smack down on people with large families with small children in one room. It is really important for us though, to know how many people are in the room in case of emergency situations.

Oh, and those dresses? To die for. :)

[zulupetalz.livejournal.com]

Those are all going to look so cute on Elise. I've had my eye on that top from Tiny Bird for the longest time. I have to look away from all of this, it is making me want to shop really bad. Must. Avert. Eyes.

[altarflame.livejournal.com]

That website has been tormenting me for 3 kids now.

[failstoexist.livejournal.com]

I think as long as they'll LET you all on a family membership or something (and don't tell you you have too many people) then it does make sense-i mean, of course they're not going to make too many huge vans if they're not going to sell them...and of course they're not going to send a family of 7 on vacation for free if most families are families of 3-5 who would be happy to get the trip and cost them less in the long run to accomodate.

I agree the bedroom thing could be immigration related as well, which is maybe unfortunate...but having 7 people in one apartment is not easy, as I'm sure you learned in Boston-it can get loud and apartments are not always very kid-friendly, not to mention friendly to families with lots of kids. I understand what you're saying though, and it must feel kind of weird to be constantly reminded how out of the ordinary your family is.

[altarflame.livejournal.com]

I wasn't really making a case for changing the world to accomodate me, so much as griping tongue and cheek because though I love having 5 kids, it gets old ALWAYS being the exception in the wider world.

The noise-in-apartment thing was brutal in Boston, but it's never been an issue in an apartment I've lived in here - I really think the buildings are very different. Space wise, we actually did fine. Grant and I's bedroom, which just had he and I with Jake, was HUGE, and the room Ananda, Aaron and Isaac were sharing was bigger than the one they share here. There was a living room and a dining area - the only time we ever really felt cramped was in the kitchen. That was super tight. If it hadn't been for the whole hollow floors, thin walls, no other kids and grumpy older people neighbors thing, I really think we would have been happy there for a year or more until everyone was that much older.

[failstoexist.livejournal.com]

Oh, I know. just playing a bit of devil's advocate...

apartments I would think would be more for the neighbors/structure issue than the space necessarily...obviously there's more room to run around in a house, and you don't have to worry about neighbors-but that thin walled/echoey floor quality that apartments can have that mean you hear EVERYTHING your neighbor does isn't kid-friendly, especially multiple kids. but perhaps they're better built by you-most apartments I've seen in cities are not awesomely built and have a lot of those sound issues.

ps, those clothes are SUPER cute. you've got the best-dressed baby I've seen in a while!

[erinmdmd.livejournal.com]

BUT OMGWTFBBQ, Tina! You'll scar your kids for life if they EVER have to share anything, don't you know?? THINK OF THE CHILDRENNNNNN!!!


Obviously, I grew up warped and disturbed because there were 7 of us in a garage and basement less 1050sf house with three tiny bedrooms and one tiny bathroom. I even shared a room for a few years with two other people o_O

[monkeyscience.livejournal.com]

I am tired of the world being built only for families of 1-(MAYBE)3 children.

Amen, amen, AMEN! Who decided that a family consists of 3-5 people? WHO? It irritated the crap out of me as a kid, and it still irritates me as a (semi) . With little kids, it's zoo memberships and shopping carts. With my family now, it's stupid family plans for cell phones. Only 5 people allowed. WTH? That's not a family! Five completely unrelated people can get a 'family' plan, but 7 -related members of a nuclear family can't? Grrr...

Basically, I feel your pain and irritation. The littleearthangels shirt sounds AWESOME, though. :D

[frogmorest.livejournal.com]

I buy a ton of my hippie clothes from that mom (Phatcatpatch) that you just bought the apron dress from. In fact... the yellow with ladybugs print on the bottom of the dress is the same print used in one of my skirts!!! I just thought I'd share :) We're connected now :)

[altarflame.livejournal.com]

:)

When I saw she was a single mom hand making things, it made me want to buy a whole bunch more stuff from her.

[rockstargrrrlie.livejournal.com]

Wow, you have great taste in kid's clothes. Especially that tie-dyed dress. So cute. I'm constantly looking at people's longies because they are so cute and I'm nowhere near ready to have kids.


I'm happy to report that the register at my work asks for the kid's birthdays before making a sale (to send them a birthday coupon) and I believe it lists seven spaces. I've never had to use them all, but then again, I think most moms think I can only do one or two at a time.