Meet my friend, Kate:

Last year, after ages of trying to conceive, she and her husband found out their chances were less than stellar. So they decided to try to adopt and began taking steps in that direction.

On January 20th they got the most wonderful phone call a couple can get. They are now “pregnant” with their baby boy due in mid April.

A boy!

You can follow their adoption/baby prep on their blog.

As you can see from the above picture… impending motherhood agrees with her. She’s positively glowing!!

Yesterday we held a baby shower in her honour. All manner of merriment for the baby and loads of great swag… so I think that equals “success”.

Parenting brings a lot of choices. Some are easy like what theme will you use for the baby’s room. Others are more difficult such as if you will attachment parent.

The right choices for you are the ones that feel right. Some parents choose to lightly spank while others do not. Some nurse while others use formula. Will you go baby backpack or baby sling?

Of course, parenting brings on a whole new language. Suddenly you need to know what a “binky” is! (For those not in the know, it’s a brand of pacifier.) Now I’ve been out of baby land for a number of years and there’s a whole new language of things that I can’t even begin to remember. After attending the shower yesterday, I had a whole lot of “WTH is THAT?” going on!

There’s so much more to get for babies now than ever before. And I thought I was lucky and spoiled back in the 90’s with all the new fangled things like the Boppi nursing pillow/baby pillow/seat and a little mobile to put on top of the quilt on the floor for baby to lay under!

That is nothing like today’s swag!

A huge new thing is the Diaper Cake. Who knew? As I said, I’ve been out of baby land for quite a while. I saw one recently and thought it was the coolest thing ever. I decided I just had to make one for Kate.

Usually these are made with disposable diapers, but Kate’s chosen to go the natural route. She wants to use cloth diapers. With the thought of “cloth” in mind, I ended up making her a huge cake with all manner of swag.

Look below:

Thoughts?

Here’s the “ingredients” of my cake along with how I put it together:

Bottom tier: 24 prefold diapers, rolled so they had a point showing and tied with curled ribbon. I placed them all on a huge platter. I also had one flat diaper rolled in there to fill a slight gap. I wrapped the tier in a ribbon.

I ended up having trouble getting my layers to turn out level, so I took a tip from my cake decorating. I folded a flat cloth diaper to settle the two layers. Worked like a charm! I also made a little “plate” with a cereal box.

Middle tier: In the center I rolled three more flat cloths. Around the outside I rolled up 10 onesies and 4 burp rags. They were also tied with curled ribbons and then the whole tier was wrapped in a large ribbon.

One folded flat diaper to level things out and another cereal box disc.

Top tier: in the center, under the bottle, I folded a flat diaper about a zillion times. Then I wrapped (with points again) 12 washcloths. The bottle went in the center popping out out of the top and the whole tier got wrapped in another wide ribbon.

Then came time to bling out my cake!

In the diapers I stuck 12 baby spoons. I wedged in a coupon (got it yesterday actually) for formula on the middle tier. Around the bottom tier I stuffed 12 pairs of baby socks with tissue and set them up like rosettes. The top two tiers had the same treatment done with four pairs of baby mittens. I clipped on a couple of pacifiers with paci-saver, shoved some extra nipples for the bottles, and I put a teether around the bottle on top.

When I got to the shower, one of the other party-throwers gave me a baby hat and matching socks to add to the cake. Now we had the baby covered from head to toe!

My favourite addition? Caramon made me four little origami onesies to use to decorate the cake!

It took me a week to get this looking just right and several trips to various stores!

If anyone is thinking about doing this, I’d like to warn you that there’s quite the undertaking!! But, in the end, totally worth it!

(For those wondering about cloth diapering… the flats are a giant piece of cloth. Nothing more than what looks like a huge cut of cheesecloth. The prefolds are several layers of cloth, with the center a little thicker. They are very absorbent. Even if you aren’t going to go cloth, I highly recommend a pack of these because they make the best spit rags on the planet. And then you can use them for rags around the house. They soak and soak and soak up stuff. If you think “what grandma used”… you get the gist. Grandma used them for a reason! They are simply fantastic and have a zillion uses! The benefit to these is they clean and dry very fast.)

I had so much fun making this and it was fantastic giving it to Kate!

And for a final picture — It’s not a party without Joe!

–Lady O