Burp!

There are at least three gross things that I was not prepared for with Baby:

1.  Baby boogies.  For such a teeny nose, these are much bigger than I anticipated.  They keep coming out -- just like a magician's magic scarf.
2. Toe and finger lint.  Those little crevices collect oodles and oodles of lint.  Good news:  Now that she can suck her fingers, she's cleaning them on her own.  Toe sucking is imminent.
3. Behind the ears.  You know how you were always told to clean behind your ears as a kid?  Well, there's a reason for that.  First, it seems to get pretty dry back there, but one day I noticed a funky smell.  When I looked I saw that it was a bit inflamed and sort of, well, cheesy.  Ick.  My mother-in-law said that it's because milk dribbles behind her ears when she spits up and to take care of the chronic dryness, she suggested petroleum jelly.  We picked up some Burt's Bees Baby Jelly (minus the petroleum) and it's cleared up nicely.

And, of course, there's the poo, but I knew that was coming.  I did not realize, however, that it would be the consistency of soupy French's yellow mustard. 

And then there's the spit up.  The white, curdled, sour spit-up....blech. 

Before Baby I would have dry heaved at just the thought of spit-up, but now I've become so used to it that I'll even attempt to catch it in my palm if I see it coming and don't feel like having it dribble down our clothes.  Since that method is pretty gross, I had to make some burp cloths, which is what I did from 10:30 to midnight last night.

I was considering writing a tutorial, but I found one had already been done here and probably some other places.  I don't do any measuring when I make these, so I wouldn't be a good tutorialist anyway.  Anyway, I use prefold diapers to make these burp cloths and I just fit a piece of cotton or flannel to match the stitching along the middle section of the prefold, like so:

And then I press the edges in about 1/4", pin them, and topstitch them:

I made a few batches earlier this year and gave them to the girls that I met in my prenatal swimming and yoga classes:

And here's the collection I made last night: