The Diaper Diaries

Where to Shop: AKA, The End

2009-12-02T10:25:00.000-08:00

This is, sadly, my last planned entry here. :( Being a busy momma to two (soon to be three!), keeping my home, teaching my son, and doing all the other things that I love to do, not to mention keeping up with our family blog, this is proving to be too much. Plus, I'm at a place in my cloth diapering journey where my new experiences are kind of stalling out. I have a system I like, I have my brands I prefer, and I'm not in a position (financially) to be trying all sorts of new things just for kicks. Even though I'd like to.

I'm not shutting the blog down, but I'm definitely not planning on continuing to update. So if you've been reading or following in anticipation of having kids one day, but don't yet, you can still leave the bookmark in your computer to refer to later! :)

But I mentioned in my previous post that the 2 most common questions I hear regarding modern cloth diapers are (1) where did you hear about these?; and (2) where do you buy those? I've actually had people come to me, frustrated that Babies R Us was "out" of my kind of cloth diapers when they went. {smile}

You may be fortunate enough to live somewhere with a brick-and-mortar cloth diapering store. All this means is that you have an actual store building somewhere in your town or within a reasonable driving distance. I am not so fortunate; in fact, I don't know of anywhere in the state of GA that sells any cloth diapering stuff, save for a small midwifery practice, but they're far away from me and don't have a wide selection.

No, the truth is that if you're wanting to buy some fluff for your kids, you're going to be doing it online. The good news is that most cloth diaper e-tailers (like retailers, but online...get it?) offer shipping incentives for orders over a certain amount, ranging from as low as $49 to as high as $99. And really, when it comes to ordering cloth, you can reach that total in a hurry.

So where to? Here are some of my top choices for places to shop, order from, or even browse. IF YOU HAVE ANOTHER STORE THAT YOU LOVE, PLEASE SHARE IT IN A COMMENT!!

Nicki's Diapers. This store has my heart. I think most fluff mamas end up really preferring one place over another, and ND has pretty much always had everything that I have wanted to try in stock. They offer free shipping on orders over $75, and they actually have a new "15-Day Wash and Return" option, to allow you to try out cloth products. If you don't love them, you can return your stuff for store credit, and she offers lots more than just diapers!

Cotton Babies. This is another wonderful store, and I actually did the giveaway on here through them. They offer free economy shipping on all orders, every day.

Jillian's Drawers. I have never actually ordered anything from JD, but the thing that I've always loved about them is that they offer a VERY comprehensive try-it-out kit, which allows you to try cloth diapers at home for 21 days. If you decided not to stick with it, you can return everything and get all but $10 refunded.

Green Mountain Diapers. This is another site that I never actually ordered from, but I love their site! They have some really comprehensive and thorough information on prefolds, too, which is really helpful! And they have super simple, flat rate shipping.

Kelly's Closet. Kelly's Closet has a very wide selection of products and prints. She also offer an incentive program, where you earn points for every dollar spent, and your points add up toward store credit for you to get free diapers! You also get free shipping on orders over $99.

Nurtured Family. This is one of the first websites I ever looked at! They offer free shipping within the US on all orders over $75. They offer tons and tons and TONS of stuff besides cloth diapers!

Banana Peels Diapers. I haven't ordered anything from here. Yet. ;) This site contains all my current wish list items. They offer free shipping on orders over $50, which is one of the lowest places around!

And don't forget, if you're looking for gently used, pre-loved cloth diapers, you can always check out the forums on Diaper Swappers and the Diaper Pin.

And here's my big push:

Please check out Etsy and Hyena Cart's categories of online boutiques that feature handmade fluff, made in the USA by work-at-home-moms. You can help to support families like yours while making the switch to cloth. I have a lot of WAHM diapers, and I've loved all of it! And the prices are waaaay better, and it's fair trade to boot! (To get a list of Etsy shops that sell cloth diapers, go to this blog here, and there's a complete list on the left-hand side of the page.)

All these links should open in a new window.

I've enjoyed doing this blog while I did, but I kept on feeling bad that I wasn't updating as frequently as I thought I ought to. And really, there's just so many great places to find information out there! Thanks for sticking around, while we were both here. Cheers! :)

Website Directories: Part 1

2009-10-29T17:28:00.000-07:00

Whenever I'm changing my child's cloth diaper in public, among the most common questions I get are:

"Sooo....where do you buy those?"

And after I ramble for a few minutes, inevitably the question is:

"How on earth did you learn all this? How do you keep it all straight?"

Well, since my hope and the aim of my cloth blog is to help those parents who are new to cloth, and maybe just beginning their research, I thought I'd answer some of those questions as best as I can!

I think the logical first question is

How / Where do you learn about cloth diapers?

Well, to be honest with you, after a few short conversations with IRL friends who used cloth, I felt a little overwhelmed. So I honestly just sat down at my computer one day, and typed "cloth diapers" into Google.

I started by going through all the online store sites, making notes (and notes, and notes...pages and pages of notes) about the different kinds of cloth diapers, the brands for each type/style, price comparisons between stores, etc. It was tough. Although I feel like I now know a lot simply because of the way I researched, I honestly don't recommend doing it this way, because it can be so overwhelming that some parents may abandon the idea of cloth diapering altogether.

Now obviously, I started this blog to help people figure things out. I do my best to take the best advice I've found out there, and condense it, as well as share with you what I've learned along the way and my own little tips and tricks. However, if you want some more info than what I have here, or you're trying to find a balanced perspective to make your decisions, or you're looking for a dialogue, there are a few websites to help you figure this whole thing out (all links will open in a new window):

The Diaper Jungle - especially their Information Guide article directory, under the Cloth Diaper Articles tab on the home page. They also have a reviews page, and the BEST detergent comparison chart!

The Diaper Hyena - this site was created by a mom, just like me! They also offer reviews, a FAQs page, a folding 101 page, and a very thorough article index for articles on every topic you could imagine.

Diaper Pin - the #1 go-to site for reviews, in my opinion! They also have a FAQs page and forums for questions and discussions.

Diaper Swappers - one of the best forum sites for cloth diapering, once you get the "threads" thing all figured out (for some reason this site was confusing to me at first). You have to create an account, but then you can read (and post) discussions on cloth diapering issues. Sometimes it's just so helpful to read what other people are dealing with. You can also buy and sell used diapers here.

The Cloth Diaper Whisperer - a blog maintained by Kelly Wels, the owner of several online diaper stores, including Kelly's Closet. The blog is great, featuring new posts nearly every day from several different contributors about all kinds of cloth diaper-related issues, from beginners to professionals! Stop by and become a follower to automatically see the updates. One other nice thing about the Whisperer is that the posts are succint...unlike mine. ;)

Additonally, most online cloth diapering stores feature sections on why to choose cloth, how to care for it, cloth 101, etc. You can also check out "mom sites" like CafeMom, where you can join groups for cloth diapering and post discussions and questions.

Finally, one very important note about these sites, groups, and "forums." First and foremost, do yourself and everyone else in those forums and groups a huge favor:

DON'T GET ON THOSE CLOTH DIAPERING FORUMS AND POST SOMETHING LIKE "I'm really interested in switching to cloth diapers, but I'm totally new at this and have no idea where to start. Someone please help!!!"

IT WILL ONLY MAKE PEOPLE FRUSTRATED AND IRRITATED, AND CHANCES ARE NO ONE WILL RESPOND TO YOU EXCEPT TO SAY, "LOOK THROUGH OLD POSTS ON HERE."

The thing is, NONE of us knew anything about it when we first started, and you really need to do your research for yourself first. I'm not trying to be ugly, but most people on those forums don't want to spoon-feed anyone information. Take some initiative and plow through that stage of not knowing what the difference between a flat and a contour is. If you go on any of those forums and post a question like "What's the difference between a prefold and a fitted?" you're not likely to garner any kind response. :/

So that's my top choices of where to look for information. Of course, there are tons and tons out there, but these are just my few favorites. Please feel free to leave a comment with the URL to any other great resources you've found!

Diaper Stripping with Mineral-Heavy Water

2009-10-23T15:18:00.000-07:00

This post is not going to make me very popular with the super green and crunchy crowd.

I'm sort of green...sort of "chewy," not quite crunchy. I pursue a lot of "green" living, a lot of self-sustaining things like doing baking at home, and mixing up my own cleaning concoctions (minus all-purpose cleaner spray, I stick with BioKleen for that). We recycle, and use mostly dish rags and only occasionally paper towels, and I'm planning to sew some linen napkins for us to use during meals.

I've talked before about my love for Charlie's Soap, and I use it for all our clothes, although I have been thinking about trying making my own detergent.

But sometimes, I really think it's okay to reach for some help in the cleaning aisle at a mainstream store.

Back in my post about disinfecting, I mentioned that I spoke with Charlie himself. He spent a lot of time on the phone with me, answering my questions about disinfecting.

At the end of our conversation, I happened to mention that where water tends to "sit" in our house (like the sink drain, the shower head, etc.), I often saw a reddish build-up. He said, "Well, it sounds like you have a lot of iron in your water, and that can cause a mineral build-up on your diapers - that could be why you keep on having repelling problems. You could try washing them with CLR."

CLR?

Yes, THAT CLR.

I was skeptical, nervous, apprehensive...but it made sense. He said to try from 1/4 to 1/2 cup in a full wash load of *clean* diapers.

So last weekend I did it. I washed half of my clean stash with 1/4 cup of CLR and the regular amount of Charlie's Soap liquid detergent, and an extra rinse. I then did a hot wash cycle with 1 tbsp of Dawn original blue dish detergent, and a few extra rinses to get all the suds out.

I really think it made a difference! Even my Tiny Tush diapers, which haven't been functional in months, made it through some play time today. (However, I'm not rescinding my review of them, because the review was as much about the lack of customer service as it was about the diapers.)

If you feel like you're consistently having problems, especially with repelling, this could be worth a shot for you. I'm not going to make it part of our regular routine, but if I begin to notice a lot of the diapers repelling, then I'll bust it out again.

Remember, if you can see mineral build up in your sinks, then it's in your water. And it's in your washing machine. Even if you don't feel comfortable washing your diapers in it (although we truly are quite pleased with the results, and have no worries about residue due to the immediate subsequent Dawn strip and lots of rinses), you might want to think about running an empty wash load with some CLR in the water to help clean up your machine.

Giveaway winner ROUND TWO

2009-10-02T09:27:00.000-07:00

Sadly, the first winner of this giveaway didn't contact me within the allotted time. :( The good news about that is that I had to choose another winner!

This time, Random.org chose comment #12, K. Jones.

Congrats K. Jones! Shoot me an email at diaperdiaries (at) hotmail (dot) com by 10 pm Eastern tomorrow night, Saturday the 3rd to claim your prize or I'll have to choose another winner.

Kissaluvs Outlet Open!!!

2009-10-01T14:36:00.000-07:00

Hey fluff family! I got an email this afternoon letting me know that the Kissaluvs Outlet is now open! First come, first served on...(copied and pasted from the email)

Marvels Fitted Diapers in designer prints – mostly in the lovely Mocca print, and some Zoo-Blue, at incredible prices!

Kissa’s Fitted Cotton Fleece: in all three sizes – 0, 1 & 2.

Kissa’s Organic Fitted’s: in Size 1 only (super absorbent and organic fabrics).

Kissa’s Cotton Fleece Contours: both sizes, NB and M. Great for diapering on a budget.

Wipes: Organic, Premium Organic and Awesome Terry (pick your favorite or at Outlet prices you may want to get ‘em all!).

Doublers: both sizes- Boosters and Super Soakers (perfect for Size 1 & 2 diapers, pockets and g covers).

Diaper Lotion Potion Spray: New Formulation with No Alcohol, No Parabens and No Phthalates.

With every order of $50 or more, we will include FREE BONUS ITEMS. Simply pick from the list below and let us know in the comments field of your order, the item you prefer:

1. 6 Wipes (we choose from inventory)

2. 4 Doublers (specify Boosters or Super Soakers)

3. 1 Cotton Fleece Fitted Diaper (specify Size)

4. 2 Contour Diaper (specify Sizes)

5. 1 Diaper Lotion Potion Spray

We will try our best to give you the colors/prints you specify for all items, including Free Bonus items, but reserve the right to ship from inventory at hand.

FIRST COME, FIRST SERVE. Sale ends when we run out of stock.

So go shopping! Hurry, hurry, hurry! This sale stock never lasts long!!

Giveaway WINNER

2009-09-30T19:55:00.000-07:00

Okay, I nearly forgot about this because it's been one of THOSE days today. (Thanks to my best friend for texting me to remind me!)

According to the true random number generator on the main page of Random.org, the winner of the BumGenius Giveaway-Again is comment #19, Sarah Scipione!

Sarah authors two blogs. One is called Dear Boys, and is a chronicle of her life as a stay-at-home-mom. (And seriously, check out her self-and-baby portraits in this post here - Sarah, could you be any more beautiful??) Her other blog is called Try It, You'll Like It, and is a collection of kid-approved vegan recipes - how fun and creative!

So congrats to Sarah, and thanks to everyone who entered and shared their fluff fantasies with us. I would love, love, love to do more giveaways in the future, because it's always so neat to hear from people.

Sarah, shoot me an email* at diaperdiaries (at) hotmail (dot) com with your information, and we'll get your BG 3.0 Ribbit on its way to you!

* If I don't hear from Sarah by noon Eastern on Friday the 2nd, I'll pick another winner.

Give-away-again!

2009-09-26T19:00:00.000-07:00

For those of you who were around for my first giveaway...you get a second chance! Greta, the winner, has decided not to pursue cloth diapering. And she has generously offered to ship her (still brand new) choice to the winner of a new giveaway - Greta, you are so awesome!

When she won she chose the BumGenius One-Size 3.0 pocket diaper in Ribbit.

So, yes, the picture is huge, but you get the idea! Ribbit is kind of a grass green - great gender neutral color!

So leave a comment - ONE comment - telling us (just for fun) the most extravagant item on your fluffy wish list to enter the giveaway. I'll leave it open until 10 pm Eastern on Wednesday, September 30, and then I'll use a random number generator to pick a winner. Good luck!

(Oh, and just to get you started, my most extravagant wish is a GoodMama GoodNight fitted and a Dancing Bears fleece soaker. Is it wrong to drool over cloth diapers? I submit that it is not.)

Busy Little Bee!

2009-09-20T13:38:00.000-07:00

If you've read my series of reviews, then you know I have a tempestuous relationship with velcro and aplix. As in, I hate it.

I have several diapers that I love, except that the velcro is nappy and full of lint that I can't get out no matter how long I sit there picking. And somehow, even though the velcro is shot enough that the tabs won't stay closed, it's incredibly still sticky enough to attach itself to e-v-e-r-y-t-h-i-n-g else in the washing machine. And so a lot of my diapers look pretty awful from velcro snags from other dipes.

Do you see this??

Look at that velcro! It's so bad...it's just so bad. And this is after just one washing! I pick this junk out of the velcro every single time.

So I decided to do something about it! At first, I thought about replacing all the velcro with aplix. And then I thought about having to do it all again in another year, and quickly scrapped that idea. I really wanted a snap press, but I just couldn't justify the cost. But one day when I was browsing on KAMsnaps, I came across a snap plier set! For just $30 (NO tax, and NO shipping!), I got snap pliers and 200 complete snap sets. The customer service was friendly, and the shipping was really fast.

KAM recommends that you watch their instructional videos online. The first video was about 6 minutes long, and so easy to understand. I sat down at the computer with my pliers and worked through everything as the video showed it. I couldn't believe how easy this was. It truly is as simple as using a hole punch.

So today I sat down with my seam ripper and removed the velcro from one of our diapers in most desperate need of a makeover (DryBees Fleece overnights), and used another diaper with snaps as a template for snap spacing. Total time for diaper makeover was about 30 minutes!

Here's my set up: A tv-tray, a Law & Order:SVU marathon, some diapers, and my new snap pliers and snap sets. Sweetness! You can see the 'before' on the left, and the 'after' on the right. I'm so thrilled with how easy this was, and how great the diaper turned out!

This is a really easy way to rejuvenate older diapers, but if you're not into DIY, there are plenty of snap services available. Mama Momo offers reasonably priced snap services, and on Very Baby, there's a directory of WAHMs who likewise offer snap services.

Let me know if you try this out. I think if you do you'll be very pleased with the results.

Night-time Cloth Diapering

2009-09-11T16:32:00.000-07:00

A couple of posts ago, I had a question in a comment about what to do about night-time cloth diapering. The mother said that her baby would wake in the night, but would quickly return to sleep after a diaper change. Obviously, this is no good, both for the baby's sleep...and the mama's! And of course, you don't want to establish a routine of night-waking if it can be avoided.

This is fresh on my mind because I just got done putting my children to bed, and my kids are definitely "bubble bums" when they have their night-night fluff on! (My son has been potty trained for nearly a year, but still wears a "just in case" overnight. And on a separate note, he has suddenly started soaking his bed at naptime - the past 3 days in a row - and having tinkle accidents during the day. He has never done this before. Help? Sympathy? Advice? Commiseration? All is welcome.)

Anyway, I don't know if I have the be-all, end-all answers to night-time cloth troubles. But let me tell you that my kids can flat out SOAK THROUGH a diaper. When my son was 18 months old, he would "pee out" (my own gross little expression for soaking through a dipe) a Happy Heiny with both inserts during just a 2-hour nap. On a regular basis. So we had to find another solution. After multiple trials and errors, I feel like I've hit upon a couple of different approaches and hints that really work for us.

Tip #1: Main absorbent material in the diaper

I know there's a bit of debate about this, and frankly it may just be one of those things that comes down to opinion. But I have found that when comparing thicknesses of different fabrics, inch for inch, Chinese prefolds are much more absorbent than microfiber towels or soakers. Does that make sense? Let me try to explain it a different way:

So let's say that you have a premium infant prefold (blue edge), and you lay it out long and fold it into fourths. (In half, perpendicular to the seams, then in half again.) Let's say, for the sake of example, because I've never actually measured it, that this folded up prefold was 1" thick. If I had microfiber towels, and stacked them together to make 1" of thickness, it just wouldn't absorb as much, thereby giving us more time per diaper.

So all that to say, I use a prefold as the real meat and potatoes of stuffing a pocket diaper for nighttime. (And, if I haven't said it before, or if I've changed my mind since the last time I talked about it, I am definitely a fitteds girl during the day time, but use pockets for naps and overnights.)

For my 3 y/o's just in case diaper overnight, I use a toddler-size prefold. And it is such a badonka-diaper. But he doesn't seem to mind, because to him, it's just his nighttime routine. It would have to be a very rare occasion that this prefold didn't make it through the night. Like if we let him have an extra cup of water/juice/watered down sweet tea (welcome to the south Honey, pull up a chay-air) before supper, then he might wet a little more overnight.

Tip #2: Doubling up and using multiple materials

Have you ever wondered why hemp and bamboo diapers are a little pricier? One reason is because you get what you pay for! :) The other reason is probably the current cache of those types of materials, but that's another rant for another post.

For my daughter's nighttime diapers, I start out with a blue-edged prefold and fold it into fourths as I described above. Then I use a microfiber towel from the automotive section of Wal-Mart ($5 Bag of Rags), and fold it into thirds. I place this against the prefold on one side. Then I use a hemp/cotton blend soaker that came with my Cricketts Diapers on the other side. (And now might be as good a time as any to mention that these diapers are positively out of this world. They are truly amazing - I have no flowery words for these pure and simple fitted diapers. I've told you how much my kids wet, so the fact that I can afford to use the diapers without the additional soaker they come with should say a lot about them!)

So, now I have a stack of absorbent material: hemp on the bottom, prefold in the middle, then microfiber on top. And here's a little secret a lot of parents may not know about: The order matters! Microfiber and prefolds are fast absorbing, while hemp is long absorbing. So when I stuff the pocket, I put the materials in with the microfiber closest to her bum.

Tip #3: Wicking the moisture away from baby's skin

If a baby feels wet, they're naturally going to be uncomfortable. So it is essential that whether you use fitteds, pockets, or AIOs overnight, the layer next to your child's skin needs to be a kind of material that will wick moisture away, giving your child a more comfortably dry feeling. This will also help to cut down on the rashes that we sometimes see after our babes have a long, wet night in one diaper.

For most pockets, this isn't a problem. In most pocket diapers, the layer designed to be next to your child's skin is either polyester fleece or suedecloth. Both of these work great, although some parents may find that one is more effective over the other for their kids. Just try it out and see what works.

Now, if you're already using this kind of diaper, and it doesn't seem to be enough, you could also try using an additional wicking layer. The easiest and cheapest way to do this is with fleece. You may even have some un-needed polyester fleece baby blankets laying around that you could cut up. Just use an existing diaper as a template for shape and size, and cut out several liners. Fleece doesn't ravel, so you don't need to do anything to the edges! :) If you don't have any extra blankets, check the goodwill stores - or even your own closet - for an old fleece pullover. Then just place the fleece liner in between the diaper and your child's skin.

Tip #4: Outer layers and leaks

I know that this doesn't really apply to the original question, but I may as well include everything within my perspective on nighttime cloth solutions.

It seems 100% counterintuitive. I know it does. But trust me. Go with me on this one.

Fleece and wool covers and outers will provide an infinitely more leak-proof system than PUL ever can.

I don't understand it. I wish I did. But all I know is that when we switched to cloth diapers for my son, he would wake up with wet jammies and sheets every single morning until I ordered some DryBees Fleece Nighttime Pockets. Then we were wet free!! I did have to change him immediately, because if he sat down in his pj's and wet nighttime diaper, he'd have compression leaks. But that's really my own fault, of course.

I think it has something to do with how these fibers breathe a little bit naturally, so maybe the wet is evaporating...? Although that's a bit strange to think about.

You can get fleece pockets, like the DryBees, but you'll want to replace the velcro either with better Aplix or snaps. You can also get fleece covers for fitteds.

Unfortunately, I don't have any personal experience with wool...YET. :) I'm about to be brave and go for it when life calms down. Which will never happen. So, what I really mean is when I get my nerve up and get a chance to talk to some friends who use wool.

So there's my spiel about nighttime cloth. I hope you guys have found some of it helpful!

Diaper Sprayers

2009-09-01T11:35:00.000-07:00

I don't have a lot to say about diaper sprayers.

When I first started cloth diapering, I read about diaper sprayers and thought, "Oh wow - that's really cool!" And then my husband said, "Let's try cloth diapering without one. If you really feel like you need it, and you're definitely going to stick with cloth, then we can look into it."

And you know what? Before I knew it, washing out poopy diapers wasn't a really big deal. I got an extra pair of yellow kitchen gloves, and wrote "BATHROOM" in thick black permanent marker on them, and donned these whenever a diaper needed washing. I dumped, dunked, swished, and used the cloth wipes to wash out the poo. No big deal!

Really, truly. No big deal. If you have a regular toilet, this is plenty sufficient!

Then we got low-flow toilets. With a suuuuper low water level. Suddenly I was having to flush the toilet 5 and 6 times per poopy diaper. Not exactly a water saver, you know?

So I ordered a diaper sprayer. It changed my life.

Or at least my diaper laundry.

Seriously, I got along just fine without a diaper sprayer for a very long time, and the only reason I got it was because of our toilets. The water pressure is incredible, and I got one with an adjustable valve, so I don't have a problem with spraying poo-water all over the place when I wash out a diaper. And, I actually use the sprayer to rinse out all the dipeys, even just the wets, so we have less pailing work to do now. Sweet!

But I still wear my gloves. And use hand sanitizer when I take them off. (Shudder.)

Off-topic - apologies!

2009-08-08T20:47:00.000-07:00

Usually, I don't really talk about my family, or my other blog on here unless it's relevant.

And really, this isn't relevant, but it might help the tremendous headache I have right now. Because a few of you were already following both.

I decided to change my family blog's URL, but I didn't give people much notice. So I'm trying to get the word out without contacting every single person in my following list, every single person on my facebook friends list, every single person who has ever commented on my family blog...you get the picture.

But this update will show up for those of you who are followers on here or have my cloth blog in your blogroll. Do you see where I'm going with this?

Here is the new link for my family blog, Thread by Thread.

And if you aren't yet a reader of my family blog, but see something you like over there and want to stick around, go ahead and click that follow button.

And while you're at it, if you read this blog but aren't yet a follower, please click that little button! There's nothing to it, but the more followers I have, the greater the chances are that I'll keep writing on here. ;o) So go on and follow, and if you haven't yet, please leave a comment saying hi, telling me about your cloth experience and philosophy, or even asking questions and letting me know what you want to know more about. Whatever it may be, I love to hear from you guys.

Thanks y'all!

Do you have a cutie patootie?

2009-08-06T10:34:00.000-07:00

Does your cutie patootie have a fluffy bum? Do you love to show everyone how precious your diapers (and your kids) are?? Do you like to win free stuff???

Well, check this out!

The Real Diaper Association is holding a contest called the Real Diapers, Real Babies Photo Contest. All you have to do is fill out the form, and submit a photo of your precious little tater tots wearing a fluffy diaper. There are a few specific requirements and limitations on the photo, including size (in pixels). And please note - especially all you I ♥ Faces folks - that you may not photoshop effects onto the photo - the only editing that will be allowed is cropping, red-eye removal, and adjusting the contrast/brightness.

Anyway, back to the good stuff! You must submit your photo by no later than August 24th, 2009. Then members of the RDA can vote on the photos. You can generate buzz about your child's photo by asking friends to become members and vote (one vote per person). The top 12 photos will be used for a Real Diapers Calendar, the proceeds of which go toward cloth diaper advocacy and education, as well as promoting the use of cloth diapers in daycares - woohoo!

BUT, the big prize is this! The top winner will receive either a digital camcorder, or a $150 gift certificate to Kelly's Closet! The 2 runners-up will receive a $50 gift certificate to either Babies in Bloom or Mama Momo.

So get your favorite diapers washed and ready, and get your little ones in a happy mood to take some fabulous photos. And after you've submitted your own photo, go to the Real Diaper Association blog to check out other cutie patooties.

Good luck!

Giveaway!

2009-08-06T10:25:00.000-07:00

Hey fluff family!

Just wanted to let you all know about a great giveaway being hosted by Beth at Happily Domestic. Beth has a beautiful blog where she shares all about being a wife, mom, keeper of her home, daughter of God, homeschooler, and of course, cloth diapering!

Right now, Happily Domestic is hosting a giveaway for one of their family faves for diapers, a one-size Haute Pocket! It's easy to enter, and easy to get extra entries too. Please be sure to stop by, become a follower, and enter her giveaway. The contest runs through next Friday, the 14th, so you still have plenty of time!

Good luck!

Disinfecting

2009-07-28T12:21:00.000-07:00

I alluded a few posts back to an upcoming post about my new laundry routine, saying that you Charlie's Soap users would want to tune in. Well, today I have about a million things I should be doing, so it only makes sense that I have chosen to finally sit down and write about this! :o)

Really, I've been dragging my feet on blogging about this, because I was quite embarrassed that I had been a cloth diapering mom for a year and a half and never knew that I was leaving a huge step out of my system: DISINFECTING the diapers. I always thought that if they looked clean, and smelled clean, then they were clean. And that when they started to smell a little funky, it was time to strip them. End of story.

Well, I was wrong. At least twice a month, you should be doing something to disinfect your diapers. I actually called Charlie's Soap to ask them their recommendations. Would you like to know who I spoke to?

CHARLIE!!!!

Yes, Charlie himself answered the phone. He was so friendly and helpful. He said that there are several different ways you can choose to disinfect your diapers. Some people prefer to use hydrogen peroxide, but Charlie told me that the amount of hydrogen peroxide you would have to use to disinfect an entire washer full of diapers would probably bleach everything out. Some people use vinegar to disinfect, but again, the amount you would have to use to disinfect is, well, a LOT.

Honestly, a lot of folks aren't going to like this, but according to Charlie (and in accordance with my own common sense), the best way to disinfect your diapers is to use between .5 cup and 1 cup of bleach along with your regular laundering routine about twice a month.

I know, I know. You've heard bleach is bad for PUL, or elastic. Or you're worried it's going to fade the cute print fitteds you have. I was concerned about this too.

But the truth is, PUL and elastic don't have infinite lifespans anyway. And I don't care if my print diapers stay bright and brand new looking if they're riddled with funk that causes nasty rashes on my kids' bums.

You can also use an oxydizing "bleach," like Oxy-Clean Free powder laundry booster. Charlie didn't seem to think that this method was quite as effective as regular liquid bleach, but recognized it's a more acceptable option to many circles of parents.

I also asked him about using essential oils, and things like Grapefruit Seed Extract, to disinfect diapers. He admitted that he didn't know much about them, but he cautioned me that oftentimes, the people doling out advice on essential oils may not know as much as they claim to know. Additonally, you'd probably have to use a LOT of oil or extract to achieve disinfection in a washing machine full of water, and some have potential adverse side effects on very young babies, male babies, etc.

If you're using essential oils that come into contact with your children's skin, please let me encourage you to do some thorough research from unbiased sources. That is, don't glean all your information from a website that sells the stuff! And overlap your research from different places, seek out certified herbalists, and search specifically for cautions and warnings. I think many EOs are great, but when it comes to using them topically/medicinally, I treat them with as much respect and caution as I do over-the-counter drugs.

Anyway, don't be like me. Don't just think that they're clean because they look clean. Disinfect your diapers!

New Stuff!

2009-07-06T05:59:00.000-07:00

Okay, I'm sorry. Last post I had a teaser about laundry routines and Charlie's Soap, and I know I haven't delivered yet. I will get there. Keep using your Charlie's. I'll get to it. A friend (and DD follower) sent me a facebook message asking if she should not use Charlie's, and the short answer is this: Charlie's Soap is so awesome and wonderful, and the problem I need to address has nothing to do with them specifically. More, the problem is that CS gets diapers so clean that you may not realize that your diaper washing needs another step. That other step is disinfecting. I'm going to write all about it another day.

First, I want to tell you that Cotton Babies is extending their fourth of July shipping promo through tomorrow, July 7th. Just use the coupon code FIREWORKS to get free economy shipping on any order!

Second, I need - NEED - to tell you about a new fitted diaper that I want to try. I am all about fitted diapers, as you may have gathered. I use pretty much only fitteds and prefolds during the day, and then we use our pockets for naps and overnights. But I don't want a million different sizes of fitteds, so I'm always on the lookout for one-size fitteds.

Well Kissaluvs, the maker of my faaaavorite newborn fitted diaper, has come out with a one size (10 to 40 pounds) fitted diaper called the Marvel. It's constructed much like their sized fitted, with 3 body layers and a microfleece soaker, and comes in three precious prints. It's a little pricey at $24.95, but most one-size fitteds are. The only place I've found them so far is at Kelly's Closet, which happens to be one of my top places to shop anyway! Here's the page for the Marvels at KC.

Speaking of Kelly's Closet, I don't think I've ever written on here about The Cloth Diaper Whisperer, although I'm sure a lot of you are well aware. The owner of Kelly's Closet maintains a great and informative cloth diapering blog, and hosts fantastic giveaways every single Friday! Check it out! This week's giveaway, which will end on Friday, is for the new Kissaluvs Marvels.

Okay, I need to run. Happy Monday to everyone!

Boiling Update

2009-06-27T11:19:00.000-07:00

First, thank you to so many of you who responded positively to my post on natural birth control via the Fertility Awareness Method. I am so overwhelmed (in a good way) by the positive support and many questions I received here, in my private email, and on facebook. You guys are awesome! Let me encourage you to continue reading and researching - get the book, ask some questions, maybe even find a class at a hospital or women's health center that teaches the method.

Second, and the big news for today, is an update on my PUL post-diaper boiling. (drum roll, please)...............

IT STILL WORKS!!

I'm so excited that boiling all our stash got the diapers so clean that they could pass for new, and the PUL was entirely unaffected by the process. I'm sure that repeat boilings would not be good for it, but hopefully I won't have to go through that again. I have a post coming up about our new wash routine and WHY we have a new wash routine. (All you Charlie's Soap users will definitely need to tune in for that one.) But for now, Hubby has the kids at a family reunion, and I have a quiet house and lots of sewing to get through.

Happy weekend, my friends!

Natural Birth Control, the TCOYF Way

2009-06-23T11:39:00.000-07:00

Shifting gears a little bit right now. I'm excited that today is the day that I finally get my little one back in her fluff after a month in sposies; this month has been riddled with bacterial infections, fungal rashes, and more painful procedures than I care to recount. I have an upcoming post planned about my NEW system for caring for cloth, but today I want to talk about something that's really important to me.

Since birds of a feather tend to flock together, as it were, I think that it's a pretty safe bet that a lot of us cloth parents may be concerned about choosing natural alternatives to the things that most of us do anyway. From using cloth diapers to changing the products we use to clean our homes...to birth control.

There is just so much about the scientific mechanics of birth control that I do not know the ins and outs of, and I will be quite honest with you. I won't pretend to know things that I do not know. But I DO know that taking hormonal birth control pumps your body with artificial, synthetic hormones day in and day out, often for years (depending on personal usage). How could we ever have thought that this was good for us?

Let me give you a little background, and then I'll get back to what I do know about hormonal birth control methods (e.g., the pill, the patch, nuva-ring, mirena IUD, etc.).

If you have never figured out from my references here, or checked out our family blog that I also author, I am a "soul'ed out," through and through Christian, and unwaveringly pro-life. When my husband and I were engaged and I began considering the prospect of employing birth control, I simply felt uneasy in my spirit at the thought of taking "the pill," but didn't really know why. Against my better intuition, I took it anyway, starting a few months before our wedding and continued to do so through the first 6 months of our marriage.

Let me just say it would be an understatement to say it made me crazy. In case you didn't know, Ob/Gyn nurses call Ortho-Tricyclen "Ortho-Try-Psycho" for a reason.

So I began reading and researching about Natural Family Planning. I was just looking for a better and more natural way, but the things I now KNOW about birth control really disturb me. This is the one thing that convinced me, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that I will never pursue hormonal birth control methods again:

The birth control pill works in 1 primary way and 2 secondary ways: (1) prevents ovulation; (2) thickens cervical mucus to prevent sperm from passing through; and (3) alters the endometrium, aka the uterine lining, to prevent the implantation of a fertilized egg in case the first 2 methods fail.

(Go read this information firsthand from the Ortho-Tricyclen-Lo website, or the Ortho-Evra (patch) website. It's right there in the "how it works" sections.)

I believe that life begins at conception. If I am taking a birth control pill that could possibly "prevent the implantation of" (aka "abort") a fertilized egg, then this medication is in serious conflict with my beliefs on the sanctity of life.

Now, Dr. Husband's position on this issue is that you could never, ever verify that a "period" is a result of a failed implantation of a fertilized egg. But my position is that you could never verify that it wasn't, and I do not believe that it's worth the risk.

So, let's just get the most well-known NFP joke out of the way, shall we?

What do you call people who practice natural family planning? Parents.

Ha. Ha. Ha. ;o)

Seriously guys, there's a better way. It's not the archaic, ineffective rhythm method, and it's not a lot of work. It's called the Fertility Awareness Method, and you can learn all about it in this wonderful, easy-to-read, and often humorous book, Taking Charge of Your Fertility by Toni Weschler.

The Fertility Awareness Method is an easy to learn system of charting both physical symptoms, such as cervical fluid and position (if you're so inclined, haha, pun very much intended), and your waking temperature.

Through utilizing FAM, you will learn how your body actually works, and no longer be mystified by the changes your hormonal fluctuations render on your body each month (and the resultant fluid variations most women undoubtedly already notice).

FAM, when practiced and applied correctly is around 98% effective at preventing or prolonging pregnancy, so it's comparable to most birth control pills, and actually MORE effective than barrier methods (such as condoms, diaphragms, etc.).

And when you're ready to begin or expand your family, FAM will help you to optimize the time in your cycle in which you are able to conceive, which will likely help to reduce the stress many couples feel when they trust in the erroneous notion that all women are supposed to have 28 day cycles and ovulate on day 14, when so many of us don't!! (And if you're trying and trying on days 12, 13, and 14, and then getting frustrated for the rest of the month...and you actually ovulate on day 19 or 20, what do you think your odds are of getting pregnant?)

In addition to shedding light on common issues, charting your symptoms may also help you to work alongside your Ob/Gyn to discover and diagnose problems, like a too-short luteal phase or even endometriosis. (I, for one, cried and cried when I read this book, and discovered that I don't have endo as I had feared; the biggest symptom that gave me great concern is actually so common that it happens to over half of women!)

Charting isn't a tremendous chore, but if you think you won't want to keep up with it, there's a free online help: Fertility Friend. There you can log all your information in, and it keeps track of it for you. Then, if you ever need or want to, you could just print out your charts and carry them into your Ob/Gyn's office for a consultation.

So, in addition to the issues that I encourage you to soberly consider regarding sanctity of life, let's recap on birth control pills vs. Fertility Awareness Method:

Birth Control: headaches, weight gain, nausea, depression, mood swings, chronic migraines, blood clots, heart attacks, breakthrough bleeding, and negative changes in sexual desire. For all this you pay between $2000 and $4000 out of pocket (after insurance, if you have any) over a 10-year span, and possibly face months of waiting to conceive after stopping the pill while you wait for your body to begin "working" again. And its efficacy of around 98% is only guaranteed if you take it at the exact same time every day.

Fertility Awareness Method: take about 1 minute each morning to take and record temperature, 5 to 10 seconds to check cervical fluid before using the restroom 2 or 3 times a day, 5 minutes to write everything down each day. For this you spend about $10 on a good basal body temperature thermometer, and incalculably negligible pennies a year on pencils and paper to keep track of your charts (or use the free Fertility Friend). Its efficacy of around 98% is guaranteed when you follow all rules and principles, and you are free from the "Am I?" worry and anxiety that panics women daily.

Hope this gives some new folks something to think about. I'd love to hear from you guys on this issue, but please, let's keep the comment discussions friendly!

**Update July 2010: Husband and I no longer personally employ the use of barrier methods of prevention during my fertile times. I am happy to talk to people about why if they are curious - just shoot me an email through my family blog. :)

** Updated: Friends, I am loving reading your comments and questions! Several have asked and wondered if FAM would be a good fit for them due to irregular cycles, or not seeing temp shifts after temping for one month. If you have a similar question, please read through the comments; both my friend Jessica and I have responded to these queries. FAM is an excellent tool for those of us with irregular cycles, and the book explains why so much more perfectly than I can, so I also encourage you to find this book! It's a really quick read, and it will truly open your eyes! :o)

Sale at MonkeyBuns!

2009-06-13T11:16:00.000-07:00

Hey fluff family!

I just got an email from Elissa over at MonkeyBuns letting me know that she's having a SURPRISE sale today and tomorrow: 10% off of everything, no coupon code required!

If you remember my reviews, my MonkeyBuns fitteds diapers and covers were some of my favorite diapers for my daughter's first 8 or 9 months. (At that point, my son was potty trained, and my daughter was able to start wearing her big brother's diapers, which is why I didn't order more MB in bigger sizes.)

If you've been wanting to try out some fitted diapers, and love the idea of supporting a WAHM, please take advantage of this weekend's MonkeyBuns sale!!

(You can also find Elissa at her eBay shop for MonkeyBuns diapers.)

Sale at Cotton Babies! (and update on my daughter)

2009-06-12T05:27:00.000-07:00

I meant to get this out yesterday, but between all the laying around and not getting dressed until 5 minutes before my daughter's appointment (for UTI and rash-related issues once again, sigh), I just couldn't seem to get on the computer. As a result, there's not much left.

BUT, if you have a girly girl, and you love pink diapers, and you love bumGenius, Cotton Babies has them on sale for only $14.95!!

Happy shopping!

~~~

I haven't written on here in a while, because I kind of feel like a cloth impostor: my sweet little girl has been in paper diapers (sposies) for almost a month, because she's had the most heinous and unbelievable diaper rash for about the same length of time. We'll get it marginally cleared up, and then her bottom breaks out all over again. Fiery red, lumpy, bumpy, scaly, weeping, bleeding, pin-prick dotted, and pustules. We have tried literally everything under the sun, including letting her go diaper free during her waking hours (and just cleaning up after her, oh how I wish I had had an EC-friendly baby potty while at my in-law's) for 2 or 3 days.

Finally, yesterday, Dr. Husband recommended that we take her back in to let her own pediatrician take a look at her. Dr. M took a urine sample and decided to put the Little Lady on oral antibiotics and a topical antifungal (nystatin powder, because we already tried the nystatin ointment and it made literally no impact on the rash in 3 days). So we'll see how this goes. If it doesn't clear up pretty quickly, the ped is sending us to a pediatric dermatologist.

Anyway, because of all the ointments and creams and oils we've been applying, and because I've been concerned about contaminating her diapers with an infection on her skin, I've kept her in paper for the past few weeks. My precious mother-in-law is always so generous and bought us a big box at Sam's, so we still have plenty left to ride out this trial.

It's been sort of nice to have a rest from fluff washing and folding, but I really am ready to get her back in cloth, so hopefully this issue will be behind (haha) us soon!

Demos and Stash Shots

2009-06-04T12:30:00.001-07:00

Earlier this week, I had some friends over for a diaper demo. Now, I love to do diaper demos! What a helpful thing it would have been for me to pursue a demo from a cloth-diapering parent when I was doing my research. I really love to talk to other parents who are curious, interested, researching, or preparing for the plunge of changing to cloth, because to read about this stuff online and to see it in person are 2 totally separate things. And, it seems like a lot of parents talk about cloth diapering in really vague terms, and say things like, "Oh, I don't really know. We just decided that we wanted to use cloth and so we did." And I was left thinking, "What?!? That's all there was to it? What about styles of diapering? Brands? How do you take care of them? What do you do with the dirty diapers until you wash them??" and a million other questions. For those who are reading who are currently cloth users, I really encourage you to spread the word! Talk to other parents about cloth diapering, and offer to do a home demo for them. You might be surprised how interested people become.

(A cloth demo is just having someone over - or going to their home, or a neutral location if there's a big crowd - to talk them through the fundamentals of cloth diapering. The basic ways to do it, how to care for them, what a day in the life of a fluffy parent is like, etc. There's no exact science, as one of my friends can tell you; this poor soul was subjected to my first attempt at a demo, and I'm afraid I confused more than I helped. But it's not hard, folks. And you're welcome to use any material I've typed up here, because I'm not here for me - I'm here for YOU! :o)

Anyway, partly in preparation to do my demo, and partly because I had to boil all of our diapers when my daughter had an awful rash, I was able to get my entire stash in one place. MY ENTIRE STASH. I have all the diapers split up into newborn/small stuff that my daughter wore in the beginning (because remember, I didn't switch until my son was 18 months), and the diapers that she wears and that my son wears at night now. Hoo boy.

I want to share my stashes with you, but please remember to do as I say, and not as I do. I have a lot more diapers than I realized I did. And really, we have more than we need, but I have a hard time letting go of things, so nothing is up for sale at this time. YOU DO NOT NEED AS LARGE A STASH AS I HAVE IN ORDER TO CLOTH DIAPER YOUR KIDS! But if you're a little nuts, like I am, then you might want to. ;o) I am not going to link each product, because that would take me forEVER. If you use the customized google search box on this page, you can find most of these products. If you try that, and can't locate something, contact me and I'll get you hooked up with where you can find that particular product.

So here's the newborn to about 8 or 9 months stash:

1 - Bummis Super Whisper Wrap
2 - WAHM cover
3 - Imse-Vimse organic cotton cover
4 - MonkeyBuns newborn/small covers (2)
5 - Proraps newborn covers (2)
6 - Bummis Super Brite cover
7 - Imse Vimse cover
8 - Proraps small covers (4)
9 - MonkeyBuns small/medium covers (2)
10 - Newborn Indian Prefolds (10)
11 - Standard Infant Chinese Prefolds (10)
12 - Kissaluvs fitteds size 1 (3)
13 - Thirsties Fab Fitted, size small
14 - MonkeyBuns small/medium fitteds (5)
15 - MonkeyBuns all-in-one
16 - DryBees AIO
17 - Thirsties AIO pocket
18 - FuzziBunz perfect size pocket
19 - MonkeyBuns nb/small fitteds (8)
20 - Kissaluvs fitted size 0 (12)

(So in total: 20 prefolds, 29 fitteds, 15 covers, 4 AIO/pockets.)

And here's the stash we currently live on, since she has outgrown everything above:

1 - Proraps cover, medium (2)
2 - WonderWraps one-size cover
3 - Thirsties covers, medium and large (3)
4 - Regular CPF (6)
5 - Premium CPF (6)
6 - Infant premium CPF (12)
7-9 - Assorted pocket diapers, all empty in this photo; bumGenius, Happy Heinys, Mommy's Touch (12)
10 - DryBees Fleece nighttime diaper (2, only 1 pictured)
11 - Toddler CPF (4, only 2 pictured)
12 - BubuBebe multi-size fitted (2)
13 - KiwiPie one-size fitted (2)
14 - CuddleBuns one-size fitted (2)
15 - Crickett's Diapers Hemp fitted (4)

(In total: 28 prefolds, 10 fitteds, 14 pockets.)

And that's not to mention all our various and sundry inserts, doublers, microfiber towels, and cloth wipes. Which were not folded. But I took a picture anyway. There's quite a lot. When it's all folded, all the stuffin' material completely fills up one drawer in a nursery-sized chest of drawers.

So there we go! Our diaper stash. Now go find someone to do a diaper demo for!

Boiling Diapers

2009-05-29T10:12:00.000-07:00

Here and there, I've had questions from folks about boiling diapers, whether for stripping or prepping. And I've seen on my sitemeter that some people are stopping by here because they googled "how do i boil my diapers?" and my blog comes up.

Well.

I've been boiling diapers today. This is hot, hard work! It's exhausting! Let me give you some background as to why I did it, how I did it, and why I don't really think you need to do it.

About 2 or so weeks ago, my daughter started having a really strange diaper rash. It looked like big nasty zits, or mouth ulcers. I noticed that it started on one side, and transferred to the other side, where her skin was pressed together when her legs were closed. We were suspicious of it being bacterial, but it cleared up with the use of a barrier cream and some rice paper liners.

Then it came back. And cleared up again. And came back AGAIN. With a vengeance. Fiery red. Bleeding. Open weeping places. And the pimply things again. I was pretty certain it was bacterial, so we switched to sposies, and started using an antibiotic ointment (neosporin, or bacitracin if you've got it) along with a barrier cream, and lots and lots of clear water baths and naked time.

She is finally cleared up, but the thought of there being anything lingering in her diapers that could cause her to break out again had me determined that I needed to do something drastic.

Enter the stockpot.

So all morning, during the little one's naptime, with my son parked firmly in front of PBS Kids, I boiled our pockets, prefolds, fitteds, inserts, doublers, covers, and even our wipes. Even with our very large 3-gallon stockpot, you can only do so much at a time. So I set up a kind of assembly line:

On the right front eye of the stove, I had the stockpot with boiling water. On the left front eye, I had a slightly smaller stockpot with a colander resting in the top of it. On the back left eye, I constantly had a kettle of water coming to a boil. Sitting just beside the stove, I had a tall chair with my hanging diaper pail stretched over the back of it, with a mixing bowl set beneath (my hanging pail isn't super water-tight).

I would cook the diapers for about 5 to 10 minutes after the water returned to a boil, then remove them with tongs to drain in the colander. While they sat and drained, I would start the next "batch" of diapers cooking. Then, when the the diapers that were boiling were ready to come out, I would remove the drained diapers from the colander to the hanging pail, which was drip-drip-dripping into the bowl beneath. As needed, I would refill my stockpot with boiling water from the kettle, and refill the kettle so I would have hot water ready for me the next time I needed to refill my pot.

Once I finished boiling about half our stash (8 or so "batches"), I put it in the washing machine for one of our regular diaper wash cycles with Charlie's Soap. I still have a little less than half of our stash to boil, and then I can wash them and I'll be done!

Whew.

Now, those suckers are clean. So clean they could pass for new. And I'm glad that I can start putting my baby girl in her fluff again with a mind fully at ease.

But all that said, for the time and the work involved, I really wouldn't recommend boiling your diapers unless you have a really compelling reason, as I feel we did.

There were a few things that made me apprehensive about boiling. One, I was worried my snaps would melt. (They didn't.) My other big concern was that it would compromise the PUL on my covers and pockets. The jury's still out on that one, as the first half of our stash is drying as I type this. I'll be sure to add a postscript to let you know how it goes.

In the meantime, though, just stick with the regular wash routine and machine stripping!

Pocket Diaper Reviews

2009-05-28T12:01:00.000-07:00

Augh! At long last I return to my product reviews! I've previously reviewed the prefolds, fitteds, and covers that I've tried and/or use. Now I'm excited to get down to the main staple and workhorse of most of the cloth families that I know: the pocket diaper. Remember, a pocket diaper is a feel-dry liner sewn to a waterproof outer layer with one end open, leaving a pocket that you stuff to customize your child's absorbency needs.

** You're going to see very clearly in this post, just in case I've never said this before, I'm just a real mom. I have no affiliations with any companies or products, and no loyalties except to the products that I've fallen in love with.

Tiny Tush Elite One-Size Pockets - 1.75 thumbs down

Let's just get this one out of the way, shall we? I'm not even linking to their site.

I started out loving these diapers: a one-size with snaps, which - for some reason completely unbeknownst to me - was hard to come by when I first switched to cloth diapers. They were well constructed, a perfect fit, and hard-working diapers. For about 8 months. Then I started having problems.

At first, I thought my son was overflowing these diapers, which I tried to correct by stuffing with more/different materials. But his clothes still ended up wet. I did some research and contacted the diaper company, and they advised me to strip the diapers. They started "working" again! For about 2 weeks. Repeat. Ad nauseum. And I was nauseated with hand-stripping diapers once a month just so we could keep using them. My kids' clothes (by this time my son was potty trained, and my daughter was in the diapers), would end up wet, but the stuffing of the pocket was basically bone dry, which indicated a problem with repelling.

So I contacted the diaper company again, who told me to strip them. I informed them that I already had, about 100 times in as many different ways. I told them that I was using a cloth-safe laundry detergent, no softeners, no rash creams or vaseline, and let us not forget the clincher: I WAS NOT HAVING PROBLEMS WITH ANY OF MY OTHER BRANDS OF DIAPERS. Their "answer" was that they had never had any complaints before, and they didn't have anything else to offer me.

Now. Apart from the fact that these diapers failed within a year of correct use, I cannot support a company with such deplorable customer service. Any company, particularly one with proclaimed integrity, should have offered to replace the diapers. At the very least, they should have offered to let me send my dipes in so they could take a look at them for themselves. After too many emails and unreturned phone calls, I decided to abandon ship. I will NEVER buy from them again, and I recommend that you do not buy from them either. There are too many other companies out there who actually care about their customers for you to waste your time on Tiny Tush products.

However, they do still get .25 thumbs not down (but still not up), because I'm using the diapers (and selling a few, in anyone is interested) for cloth swim diapers.

On to better things...

Mommy's Touch Easy Clean One Size Pocket - 1.5 thumbs up!

The only reason these don't get 2 thumbs up is because I just don't reach for them that often. They're really great: well constructed, great fit, work really well. I've never had any problems with this diaper. There are tons of beautiful colors and prints to choose from. (Why am I not obsessed with this diaper?? I really can't figure it out.)

These are called "Easy Clean" because the pocket is open at the front and the back, which means you don't have to "unstuff" your diapers before putting them in the washing machine; the insert/stuffing will agitate out during your prewash cycle. Pretty cool, huh? (I still unstuff mine, because I'm just in the habit of it with my other diapers.)

The only thing I don't love-love-love about this diaper is that the wing/tab part is kind of wide. Not that big a deal. If you're in favor of snaps, these are a great choice! They also come in velcro/touchtape...but why?

Haute Pockets Traditional One Size Pocket - 1 thumb up

These diapers come in really pretty colors, and the company changes their color selection often, so there's always something new to choose from. The diapers are well constructed, and the fleece lining is some of the softest I've ever felt. There isn't a huge deficit with these diapers, but we just didn't love ours. (But hopefully Jenney does!)

My only real complaint with these diapers is that I feel they're cut smaller and trimmer than other one-size diapers, and as a result, my son grew out of this diaper (which was supposed to fit up to 35 lbs) long before he hit 30 pounds. If you've ever checked out our family blog, you know that my kids are anything but small and trim!

Hautes are also available with either snap or velcro closure.

BumGenius! One Size Pocket - 2 thumbs up

What can I say? Even people who don't cloth diaper have heard of bumGenius. These are some of the most well known modern cloth diapers. Superior construction and fit, gorgeous colors in soft and bright shades, and a super-soft, no-pill suedecloth lining.

A few cons: these are not sized quite as large as other one-size pockets, and the pocket itself is not overly generous. So you can't stuff it tons and tons. But the big thing is, the velcro issue! BumGenius uses some of the highest quality Aplix/touchtape velcro, but even that will eventually wear down and wear out.

Happy Heiny's One Size Pocket - 2 thumbs up

Happy Heiny's are, to me, just as well known as bumGenius diapers. Lots of colors and cute prints, and a very generous fit. Even my 41-pound son can still fit in one of these when it's stuffed with a toddler prefold and a hemp doubler. Pretty impressive!

A few cons: the fleece pills in just 2 or 3 washes. And, the velcro, once again! Velcro is made for convenience, not longevity. Happy Heiny's now offers their one-size diaper with snaps, but I don't have one. It appears to be a bit different in construction, based on the photos I've seen.

Happy Heiny's also makes sized diapers, but I haven't tried them.

FuzziBunz Perfect Size Pocket - 1 thumb up

FuzziBunz are another well-known name in the world of fluff. Maybe they were some of the modern cloth pioneers, maybe there's a cachet with having a FuzziBunz, maybe just because the name is so cute. But honestly, I don't see what all the hoopla is about these diapers.

Yes, they're well-made. They have lovely colors. They work great, and clean well. Easy on, easy off. Easy to take care of. But I think it's sort of like how I didn't see Jerry Maguire until about a year after everyone else did, and I had just heard for a year how it was the greatest movie ever, so when I finally saw it, my reaction was a very underwhelmed, "...Ehhh."

Also, though, now that they make a one-size FuzziBunz, why would you ever want to buy an entire set of pocket diapers in 3 (or 4) separate size groups, spending 3 or 4 times as much money in the long run?

DryBees Fleece Nighttime Pocket - 1.5 thumbs up

When we switched my son to cloth at 18 months, he was a nighttime super soaker, so I definitely had to give this diaper a try! Fleece breathes naturally and really is a wonderful overnight solution. These are sized diapers, and my son (who, as I said earlier, is 41 lbs), has been in the large size from month 19 to now one month before his 3rd birthday. They have a very generous pocket with ample room for super-stuffing. They fit great, and are our mainstay night diaper.

BUT...

DryBees uses perhaps the lowest quality of velcro available, except what you can buy in the scrapbooking section at WalMart. Actually, the incredibly poor quality of the velcro on these diapers has been a major contributing factor to the early destruction of the velcro and Aplix on our other diapers. Big. Fat. Boo. When I remember, I safety pin the tabs down before I wash them so they won't tear up the other diapers.

So there ya go! My pocket reviews! I also use and love some all-in-one pockets, but I'm going to include those with the all-in-one reviews.

AS ALWAYS WITH REVIEWS!!! If you use/love/hate any products that I haven't included here, if you use/love/hate products that I have reviewed but you disagree, please leave a comment with your experience so that we all can benefit from a balanced perspective! :o)

Free Shipping at Kelly's Closet!

2009-05-20T07:35:00.000-07:00

Today and tomorrow (May 20 and 21) ONLY, get free shipping on all orders $35 or more at Kelly's Closet. This is a steal!!! Usually free shipping doesn't kick in until orders of $99 or more at KC.

Just enter coupon code FACEMAY at checkout.

Kelly's Closet has become one of my favorite diaper shop e-tailers. She has a lot of different products available in one place, and quite a few things that I've never found anywhere else, like KiwiPie fitted diapers. Their customer service is always friendly and prompt, and they even have a live-chat option where you can ask questions to a customer service rep in real time - fabulous feature, especially for newbies!

They also have sewing patterns for sale, if you're so inclined to make your own fluff. For expectant moms, Kelly's Closet has a gift registry option that will allow you to create a cloth wishlist. And of course, there's a whole lot to shop for other than diapers!

Take advantage of the 2-day shipping sale - happy shopping!

Giveaway!

2009-05-17T14:09:00.000-07:00

Okay, so I'm here to let you know about another giveaway!

My bloggy friend is hosting a giveaway for a fabulous revolutionary pocket-style diaper. Be sure to enter and take a moment to browse around her blog. She's a super-cool, creative, crafty, crunchy (or chewy?) Mama to Baby C. Good luck!

Help?

2009-05-16T16:34:00.000-07:00

Okay, my fluff friends. I need some help from the Elimination Communication crowd.

My daughter has decided that she is done with pooping in diapers.

We are now 6 for 6 on pooping in the bath, and tonight when she got out of the tub, in the FIVE MINUTES of naked playtime I was letting her have, she squatted down and pooped on the floor.

I've tried helping her to "squat" on the toilet seat by supporting her under her arms with her feet on the seat, but she kind of freaks out.

I'd like to take this opportunity by the horns, but I just don't know that much about EC. I've known since she was just a few months old that she would be physically capable and mentally inclined to potty train young, but I just don't know what I'm doing here. I've potty trained a toddler, but this is kind of foreign territory to me.

Any helpful tips?

Winner!

2009-05-11T09:01:00.000-07:00

My very first giveaway is now over, and I must say, the winner will be excitedly eating her words. According to the random number generator, the winner is...

GRETA!!!

Greta, you now get to choose ONE pocket diaper:

1 BumGenius 3.0 One-Size pocket diaper
1 Happy Heiny sized pocket diaper
1 Thirsties sized Pocket/All-in-One diaper

Just send me an email at diaperdiaries@hotmail.com with your choice of diaper, size (if applicable), and color. Oh, and your address.

Congrats, Greta!

Sale at MonkeyBuns!

2009-05-07T06:07:00.000-07:00

Here we go - another sale!

One of my most favorite work-at-home-moms, the creator of MonkeyBuns Diapers, is offering a Mother's Day special of 10% off all orders of $50 or more! Just enter coupon code MONDAY at check out. The sale goes from today, 5.7.09, through Mother's Day Sunday, 5.10.09.

And don't forget about entering the pocket diaper giveaway right here!

Kissaluvs Outlet Sale!

2009-05-05T20:31:00.000-07:00

Okay, my fluff family! I've promised you before that I will do my best to pass along sale and clearance info from the newsletters I get from the cloth sites that I subscribe to, so here you go!

Tomorrow, 5.6.09, the Kissaluvs Outlet Store will open! They say they'll have great prices on fitted diapers, contour diapers, wipes, and more. They'll even throw in a bonus freebie with every purchase! It could be a doubler, wipes, or even the diaper lotion potion spray.

Until tomorrow, the link will direct you to their bundle-package deals, but beginning on May 6th, the link will take you directly to the Kissaluvs Outlet Store.

If any of you remember my reviews on Kissaluvs diapers, they received a hearty 2 thumbs up from me. Many veteran cloth mamas and daddies will tell you that if you could have only one diaper in your stash for a newborn, the Kissaluvs fitted size 0 would be it! I really loved these for my newborn, and I even got some size 1s for after she grew out of the 0s.

Anyway, I wanted to pass the word along. Please come back and leave a comment to let us know what you snag!

And don't forget about the giveaway - open through Mother's Day!

Crunchy Cooking: Granola time!

2009-05-01T13:28:00.000-07:00

Here we go with another edition of crunchy cooking at the Diaper Diaries! Please don't forget about my giveaway - entries are open through Mother's Day, Sunday May 10th!

Granola is delicious and basically good for you. It's high in fiber, and you can boost the nutritional content by adding different things to it. It's great for breakfast, as cereal with either milk or yogurt. Actually, granola and dried cranberries in milk is probably one of mine and Husband's all-time favorite cereals. Granola is a fun topping for ice cream or frozen yogurt, and it's delicious to just eat a few handfuls by themselves as a snack. Obviously, my recipe is for "loose" granola rather than bars. I've yet to try a good granola bar recipe at home, they always taste raw in the center to me.

Here we go! Get out your wet and dry ingredients: lowfat sweetened condensed milk, canola oil (I use canola rather than vegetable oil, which is produced from soybeans, which I try very hard to keep out of my family's diet), vanilla flavoring; oats, sliced almonds, and sunflower kernels. I also put in three optional dry ingredients: powdered milk, toasted wheat germ, and flax seed. (Now remember, this is a post about a healthy recipe, so pay no attention to the pizza box in the background. It's um....an optical illusion.)

Start by whisking - either by hand or in an electric mixer - 1 cup of oil with sweetened condensed milk. It's much faster to do it with a mixer, but I have only a stand mixer and don't feel like washing it for something as small as this. I usually use one can of lowfat milk, and one can of regular, just to keep the granola from drying too quickly in the oven, but you could probably use 2 cans of lowfat if you stay close to your oven the whole time. When you begin to whisk, the oil and milk will resist incorporating...

...but be patient, and go slowly, or you will slop oil over the sides of your bowl! Soon it will come together and look smooth. At this point, whisk in vanilla (if desired, it's optional). I just use "some" vanilla. When I pour it in, it looks like it's about a tablespoon.

In a separate large bowl, mix half of your dry ingredients: one half of a large can of old-fashioned (NOT QUICK!!) oats, half a bag of sliced raw (not toasted) almonds, half a bag of sunflower kernels. Make sure you buy the bag (6 oz) of sunflower kernels, and not the 7.25 oz jar, because the jarred kernels are tossed in a spice mixture for tasty snacking and salad topping. Here is my super high-tech way of estimating half a bag: I flatten it out, put my hand about halfway down, and then pour out the nuts to where my hand is.

You can also add your optional dry ingredients at this time if you wish. I use powdered milk for vitamins A and D, calcium, and potassium. I use wheat germ for vitamin E and folic acid, and flax seed for extra fiber and omega 3 fatty acids. I just use a scant 1/4 cup of each.

Mix half your dry ingredients together, pour half of your milk mixture over oat mixture and toss to mix well.

Grease and flour (or spray ^ with cooking/baking spray) 2 to 3 large cookie sheets or jelly roll pans. Has everyone heard this tip before? When you're using spray, open your dishwasher and place pans on the inside of the dishwasher door, so that the excess spray goes inside the dishwasher instead all over your counter or stovetop. Although don't do this if the dishes in your dishwasher are clean. Remember, I wouldn't tell you something like that unless I had done it.

How large your pans are will determine how many you need. I use 3. Be careful! If you use 3 pans, the granola will not be as deep in the pans, and may brown much more quickly!

Anyway, after you've mixed half your granola, put into prepared pans.

Repeat with remaining half of dry ingredients. This is what a scant 1/4 cup looks like, by the way.

Mix dry, toss with milk mixture, put into remaining prepared pans. Put pans into preheated oven (anywhere from 225* to 300* F), and bake for up to 3 hours, tossing every 30 minutes.

If you're baking the granola at 225* F, which I recommend, your total baking time will end up being around 3 hours. Baking it lower and slower allows the oats and nuts to really cook, and baking low and slow brings out a delicious nutty flavor in the sunflower kernels that lends a peanut-buttery flavor to the granola. If you're in a hurry, you can bake it at a higher temp, but I would stir it every 20 minutes instead, and your total bake time will end up being more like 2 hours. When you stir and toss it, rotate your pans around in your oven, because all ovens have hot spots!

Anyway, 2 or 3 hours is a long time to wait for something to cook. So you could clean the kitchen and be really productive...

Or you could be less so.

For tossing the granola, I like to use a heat-resistant rubber scoopula (concave spatula). It's gentle on my pans, and effective at scooping, stirring, and redistributing the granola around. You want to scrape the granola from the outside of the pan to the inside, pushing what was inside out to the edges. Toss it well, and check for browning. Return the pans to the oven. Find something else to do.

This does not make the time go faster.

Still waiting, two hours in.

Last half hour! I think it's going to be ready this time!

Mmmmm, see how rich and brown this looks compared to the picture of when I was stirring it?

The top right pan actually got a little too done, but it still tastes great. When you have multiple pans in the oven, it may be that one pan is ready to come out before the others. You'll know when it's done. Pay attention to your nose, too, because right when it's ready, you'll kind of suddenly smell the sunflower kernels.

Let cool completely, and then put into storage of your choice. I usually use this tupperware thing, which will hold an entire batch of granola, but it's home to Little Lady's "oh-oh's" right now.

So instead, I put half the granola right back in the oatmeal canister, and half into a clean, reusable animal cracker jar. You could also use gallon ziploc bags. Enjoy!

Granola (one more time, so you don't have to sift through everything):

1 large can old-fashioned oats
1 6 oz bag sliced raw almonds
1 6 oz bag sunflower kernels
about 1/2 c EACH powdered milk, wheat germ, and flax seed, optional
2 cans sweetened, condensed milk
1 cup oil
about 1 tbsp vanilla, optional

Whisk oil, milk, and vanilla if using. In separate large bowl, mix half of dry ingredients, and toss with half of milk mixture. Pour into greased and floured jelly roll pans. Repeat with remaining half. Bake at 225-300 F for up to 3 hours, tossing every 30 minutes.

Make it your own! If you like cinnamon, add some cinnamon. Or nutmeg. You could experiment with different flavor extracts and oils. I wonder if cocount oil would be really tasty...? Or in what proportion to put peanut butter into the wet ingredients? Let me know what you do to make the granola a perfect fit for you!

(One of my good friends told me she used coconut oil in place of vegetable oil, a bit of orange zest, and almond extract in place of the vanilla - yum central! She also added dried cranberries into the cooked and cooled granola. Please be sure to leave a comment and share with us some delicious variations on how you made the granola your own!)

WOO-HOO! My first giveaway!

2009-04-27T22:15:00.001-07:00

To whom it may concern:

THANK YOU SO MUCH for the gift certificate to Cotton Babies! Cotton Babies is one of my favorite sites to shop for cloth diapers and diapering accessories. They always have a wide variety of awesome diapers in stock, and they're a great resource for lots of cool non-diapering goodies. With competitive prices, they have everything from diapers, to maternity fashion, toddler toys, and baby clothes. They even have baby carriers and wraps, strollers, and haute diaper bags for fashion-minded mamas.

Go take a look around! Cotton Babies is a super cool e-store that has all the things you need - and some things you probably didn't even know you needed - for your growing belly AND your growing babies!

EDIT!!

I've been wanting to do a giveaway on here for a long time, and now I have the perfect opportunity to do it!

I want to give away ONE pocket diaper, and the best part is, the winner gets to choose 1 of 3 pocket diapers:

1 BumGenius 3.0 One-Size pocket diaper
1 Happy Heiny sized pocket diaper
1 Thirsties sized Pocket/All-in-One diaper

So one winner, and you get your choice of style of diaper, any colors that are available, and the size you need!

If you want to enter, just leave a comment! I'll leave comments open from today until May 10 - a free new diaper equals a VERY happy Mother's Day! :o)

At midnight eastern time on Mother's Day, I'll use a random number generator to choose one winner! Happy commenting!

Thanks to all who entered - the giveaway "closed" early because I just couldn't stay up any later tonight. I'll post the winner tomorrow!

Stash Purging

2009-04-22T11:10:00.000-07:00

Jenney made a good point in her comment on the last post: why don't I show you guys some of the diapers I'm getting rid of? Since none of them have sold yet, I'm happy to post them here! I will receive Paypal and can get you my Paypal email address (it's not the one associated with this blog) if you want to purchase something.

The prices I've listed are for all items in each "listing." I really don't want to split things, because of the cost of shipping. If you want only one item, I'll have to check into shipping costs before I can give you the price for a single diaper. If you choose more than one lot (listing) then I'll knock $2 off the total price. Just leave a comment or email me if you see something you'd like to have!

Okay, first up is 3 EUC Swaddlebee Pockets, size Medium, no inserts. I'm asking $25 PPD within the lower 48.

All 3 are a pale baby pink. I bought these at a consignment sale and they are in pristine condition. Unfortunately, at the sale all bags are taped shut, so when I got them home and took them out of the bag, I saw that there was no way these trim diapers would fit my chub-a-lub baby. I don't have a photo of these, because they got tossed in a tub of stuff for me to sell in a later consignment sale, and that tub got tossed in the attic. But if anyone is interested, I'll get Hubs to bring the tote down for me and post a pic.

Next are 3 GUC Tiny Tush Elite One-size pockets, no inserts. I'm asking $18 PPD within the lower 48. 2 sage, 1 peach, see pic below.

Now, I need to get to my reviews on pockets. I loved these diapers at first. They were my hands-down favorites. But then I started having some problems with them repelling. I contacted the company directly, and they were less than helpful. They recommended stripping (which I tried a dozen times in as many different ways, all in accordance with their recommendations), all to no avail. Now, keep in mind that throughout my ordeal with the TT, I was having NO PROBLEMS with any of my other brands. I told the company owner this, and all she said was, "Well, we've never had any complaints before." I really felt like screaming, "You have one now! Do something about it!" A diaper company - no matter how small - with any integrity, accountability, and business sense should ALWAYS offer to replace a diaper, or at the very very least let you send it to them so they can inspect it and see if they can rectify the problem for you. But Tiny Tush did NONE of that. So as a company, BOO. Big fat boo.

I wasn't able to get my diapers functional through multiple stripping methods, but will surrender them to a mama who thinks she may be able to get them wearable again. OR, I kept a few to use as swim diapers, as they're still perfectly acceptable for that. (And if you read the fine print on the rules for babies in public pools, like at the YMCA, most pools specify that babies should be in tight-fitting swim "pants" - translation, diaper - rather than disposable swim diapers.)

You can see above that all diapers are unsnapped. See below for pictures of the 3 snap settings, so in total Tiny Tush diapers have 4 different size settings. (Sigh). You simply cannot know what a disappointment it was to have these diapers fail so dismally.

Next up are 3 EUC Haute Pocket one-size pocket diapers, no inserts. I'm asking $25 PPD within the lower 48. One chocolate/olive (center), one pale minty green (left), and one pale seaglass (right). (I can't remember the company names for the colors, and they change their available colors all the time.) See pic below.

Hautes are great diapers, but I think that they are kind of "love 'em or hate'em" diapers. I didn't hate them, but they just didn't work for us. They are a smaller one-size, so my son grew out of those much more quickly than he did his BGs or HHs. (Remember, my kids are chubby, so if you have a trimmer baby, these may work for you a lot longer.)

Next is a cryin' shame. I have 2 EEEUC MotherEase one-size bamboo fitteds. I'm asking $22 PPD within the lower 48.

These are awesome, awesome, awesome diapers. But they just don't really work for us. They're bamboo, so they're super absorbent, but I just never reach for them. Each one has probably been worn only 3 or 4 times. I thought about cutting them up and sewing them into soakers, but I decided to pass them along to a family who will love them the way they deserve to be loved!

Okay, folks. There ya go! Just contact me if you're interested in any of these.

Shhh...

2009-04-22T05:06:00.000-07:00

Please don't tell my husband yet: I ordered 5 more fitteds and 2 new covers last night. *Eep!* I'm waiting to tell him until after my craigslist sales clear of the diapers we don't use anymore.

I know I'm lame. I need to post, and I've had every intention to. It's been a busy "life" week. If you're interested in more than just diapers, come on over to my family blog to see what our lives are all about.

...wait, what?

2009-04-17T21:21:00.000-07:00

As I was washing dishes tonight (gag, cleaning the kitchen is my single least favorite house chore), I had a really fantastic idea for a cloth post that I could do after everyone else went to bed. It must have been witty, because I was chuckling to myself like a crazy woman.

Before I posted, though, I was excited to enjoy some downtime with my man. I usually write in the witching hours when everyone else is abed, because I'm a night owl. Do you like my 18th century slang for sleeping?

Anyway, my hubby and I had planned on watching "FireProof." But we chose to have a disagreement instead. Hey, I'm just being honest. And ironic.

Then we watched some tv (too late to start a movie, especially when Dear Hubs is generally passed out cold on the couch by 10pm). Then I updated and worked on our family blog (while Hubs slept on the sofa). Emailed a few friends. Signed into this blog account, got ready to write...

And could not remember what I was planning to write about.

Completely out of my head. Gone.

Man, it's really feast or famine over here, isn't it? I post a whole bunch in a short period of time, and then I'm silent for a few weeks (or months). But I'm no Kelly, I don't have any team writers (yet, hint hint!), and I've still got normal life going on. Please bear with me! :o)

(Hubs just woke up and stumbled to our room, mumbling something that I'm guessing was "Good night, please come to bed soon.")

Anyway, I've been checking my sitemeter referrals to see how many folks are visiting and where everybody is clicking in from. Mostly, it's either Passionate Homemaking or from googling "how many diapers does a newborn need" or "yearly cost of diapers." Still and all, I'm excited that people are visiting me here. Please spread the word to your friends, whether they use cloth or not!

Okay, so here's what I've got on tap for The Diaper Diaries:

First, I'm taking away the table of contents and going back and labeling all the posts, and then I'll put up a label directory. I think that will be more user and search friendly than what I have now.

Second, I may delete/rework some of the older posts that have a lot of information in them to consolidate the info that "belongs" together.

Third, I recently tried out 5 - FIVE - cool new fitteds that I'm pretty much in love with, so I need to add the reviews of those to the Fitteds Reviews post.

Fourth, for posting, I've got to finish out my series on reviews, with posts on pockets, all-in-ones, miscellaneous diaper products, and create a directory of where to buy diapers online and rate the sites I've purchased from.

Finally, for regulars and visitors alike, please let me hear from you! If you read the reviews and discover that there's no information on a diaper you completely love (or hate), please comment and tell us about it! If you have info on stripping, stains, stuffing, sewing, or even a hilarious epic poopie story, please tell us! This will be so much fun "interactive" if you guys participate.

I'm off from blogging (here) for the weekend, but please chime in and I'll have some new stuff for you next week. Cheers!

Crunchy Cooking: Homemade Fruit Roll-Ups

2009-04-02T12:18:00.000-07:00

So, as many of my mommy friends and relatives may know, I made all of the kids' baby food. It was such a rewarding (and money-saving) experience and something I really enjoyed doing. I also attribute my son's love of a wide variety of foods to his baby food - from the very beginning, he was tasting REAL food. I used the book "Super Baby Food" by Ruth Yaron as my primary resource. My sister-in-law used both this book and the website Wholesome Baby Food. There does appear to be a little bit of conflict between the WBF website and the SBF book about what ages to introduce certain foods; I always say when in doubt wait, but consult with your child's pediatrician if you're unsure.

Anyway, "Super Baby Food" is so much more than baby food! There are tons and tons of toddler and family recipes, as well as great arts and crafts ideas. My big man and I like to make yummy homemade granola bars; M helps stir.

But our big favorite snack right now is fruit leather, or homemade fruit rollups. M has always loved fruit - better than cookies, even - and I was looking for a new and fun snack for him, as well as a different way for him to eat his fruit. It is such an EASY snack to make, and he enjoys watching and helping. I love knowing that he's eating real fruit, without preservatives, dyes, artificial flavoring, or high fructose corn syrup. And M...well, he just loves eating it! So here you go, instructions and photos for how to make this delicious Super Toddler snack for your own little crumb crushers at home.

You can start with fresh, frozen, or canned fruit. If you start with fresh: wash, peel (if necessary), cook (if necessary or desired), and process in blender until completely smooth and free of lumps. If you start with canned: wash thoroughly all cans or jars before opening (you never know what dust or yuckiness, including pesticides from the grocery store, could be lurking on the lip of the can), strain liquid out, reserving if you wish, place fruit in blender and process until smooth.

Here's why I use frozen: it's cheapest by volume, always in season, already washed, peeled, and cooked (when necessary). Simply let the fruit thaw completely, either by sitting out at room temperature, or by thawing in 30-second increments in the microwave. Using a slotted spoon, strain the fruit into your blender, reserving the juice (if desired; juice can be used to drink, mix with other juices, or make a homemade fruit syrup or jelly).

Look how much juice I have! I'll combine this 1 cup of blueberry juice with 2 cups of sugar on the stovetop, boiling very low until all sugar is dissolved and juice has thickened into a syrup. Yummy on pancakes - homemade blueberry syrup!

Anyway, if you want to sweeten your fruit leather, now is the time to do it. I heated up a few tablespoons of juice in the microwave and dissolved 2 teaspoons of sugar in it. I sweeten fruits that have been frozen, because the ascorbic acid (citric acid, which is basically just lemon juice) used to preserve color in frozen fruits makes them a bit tart. After you have dissolved the sugar, add this into your puree and process again to incorporate thoroughly.

Pour puree into your prepared pans. Use large pans, like 10x15 cookie sheets or jelly roll pans, and either grease with shortening or cover with plastic wrap. I like to use plastic wrap, because you can flip the leather to dry on the other side, shortening your drying time. I used the mondo-huge bag of blueberries from Kroger and it made 2 pans' worth of puree/leather!

Place into preheated 275*F oven for 30-35 minutes (I promise it won't melt the plastic wrap, I freaked out over it the first time too). (**EDIT: Several people have told me that their plastic wrap/Saran wrap did actually melt in the oven. DO NOT use cheap/store brand lightweight plastic wrap if you choose to use some; I use a heavy-weight professional grade plastic wrap from Sam's, so that's all I have in the house. As a plus, it's much easier to work with. You could probably also use parchment paper if you don't like plastic wrap. But don't forget, you don't have to use anything if you don't want to.) Then turn the oven off and let sit for 8-10 hours, or overnight. If you cook every night like I do, it's best to get this ready so you can pop it in the oven as soon as supper comes out. (There are other ways to dry your fruit leather, but they all involve leaving the oven door slightly open while on. Between the little ones around, and the fumes from our gas oven, this is just not an option for us. If anyone would like those directions, post a comment/question and I'll post them for you.)

Now, how long it takes to dry out completely will depend a lot on the humidity. Where we are, I put the leather in the oven on Friday night, and it wasn't ready to be cut until Monday afternoon. But because I had lined my pans with plastic wrap, I was able to take it out on Sunday night and flip it over onto waxed paper, and put it back in the oven. (When I needed the oven during the drying process, I just took the leather out and then replaced it once the oven was empty and turned off again.)

Finally! Ready to cut! Here are all my tools: a cutting board, cookie/pastry/biscuit cutters in cute shapes, a knife to score the fruit leather around the cutters when necessary, a rolling pin to press down on the top of the cutters (to save my fingers!), an airtight container to store the leather in, wax paper to layer between the cut pieces, scissors to cut the wax paper.

** I just got done making another batch of fruit leather, and found the EASIEST way to cut it - a pizza cutter! So fast and easy, and a lot easier on my hands. I just cut it all into squares this time, since M is really into squares right now anyway.

Cut into cute shapes - never miss an educational opportunity! :o) M and I talk about the shapes he's eating. Even if you don't have cutters, you can use a sharp paring knife to free-hand basic shapes. Be conservative and waste as little as possible (although I do eat all the scraps as I'm cutting the shapes, mmmmm). Be even more conservative, and reuse the wax paper the leather rested on to cut and layer between your fruit leather pieces! Now, if you have an older child who wants his fruit leather that he carries in his lunch to school to look like "real" fruit rollups, just cut it into larger squares or rectangles and roll up, either with plastic wrap/wax paper, or just roll it up by itself.

Enjoy!

Hope y'all enjoy getting crafty in your kitchens!

On prepping natural fibers...

2009-04-01T10:28:00.000-07:00

Coincidentally, yesterday I got 2 new fitted diapers in the mail, and I also had some questions about washing different materials and fibers together. It has been my personal experience that all diaper fabrics can be washed together once they're prepped properly. (But then, I don't have any bamboo products, and some bamboo mamas say they wash their bamboo dipes separately. I'd love some input on this.)

At any rate, any diaper, insert, soaker, doubler, liner, wipe, what-have-you needs to be washed before you put it on your child. But prefolds, and many fitteds, need to be prepped first.

Prepping is just washing and drying something several times to get it up to its maximum absorbency. For prefolds, I have in the past done a wash-wash-dry, wash-wash-dry, and then started using them. Some people say you can do the initial preps in with other loads of laundry (i.e., clothes or towels), but if you use liquid fabric softener I wouldn't do this. Most of the times that I've prepped in the past, I've had enough diapers requiring the process to just do them all together.

Now, natural, unbleached fibers (hemp, cotton, bamboo) will require a bit more prepping, because the fibers still contain raw plant oils on them. New, unbleached diaper products should NOT EVER be washed with a load of diapers that you already have in use. You gotta prep them separately. But if you only have 2 or 3 to do, you don't want to run a whole load just for the new ones.

I have a shortcut! (I bet you knew that was coming, didn't you?)

Soak the diapers in cold water, overnight. Drain water and wring the diapers out. Soak in cold water again for several hours. Wring out, then toss in a load of regular laundry, with no fabric softener. Tumble dry on high heat, no dryer sheets. Do the soak again, if necessary, and then wash in a load with your diapers. Tumble dry. They should be ready to go! If they still feel "slick," or water still pools up on them, I would do another long cold soak, hot wash with no detergent, and tumble dry.

The main purpose of prepping is to get diapers up to their maximum absorbency. But if you're like me, you're thinking, "Well, they're just going to be peeing in them. I'll be washing them 2 or 3 times a week once they're in a regular rotation. Do I really need to wash and dry them 6 or 8 times to prep them before he/she starts peeing on them?" My answer is no! Soaking is a great shortcut.

Since yesterday/today I have just 2 new ones, I'm doing the soak in our very small bathroom sink. I took a picture the first time I filled the sink up to show you exactly why you need to prep natural fibers!

See how the water is just pooling and running off the new, unbleached cotton-hemp blend? That's what you're working to prevent...except with urine, and your baby's clothes. :o) You can see that it's not soaking into this diaper yet at all. I had to fill the sink, and press and squeeze the diapers for a minute or two to get them to soak the water in. And this morning when I drained the water off, I could actually see fibers floating in the water, and the water had a yellowish cast to it. (You could also do cold soaks until your water remains clear.)

Happy prepping!

Cloth Confessions

2009-03-31T10:29:00.000-07:00

1. When I change my little girl's diapers, I just drop them over the baby gate on the bathroom floor, and then I go set her down with her brother and toys and go back to wash the diaper out and put it away. But sometimes, I let the dirty diapers sit right where I drop them on the bathroom floor. All. Day. Long. And I just go in and wash them all out and put them in their respective hanging pails or wet pails after everyone is in bed. And the days that I do this, yes, my whole (small, ranch) house smells kind of gross.

2. More often than not, I don't fold the clean diaper laundry anymore. It just sits in a laundry basket in the living room or my daughter's room, and when it's time to change a dipey I fish through the basket and find what I need. This is kind of a pain because I can't really keep track of what I have to pull from for her, but for some reason, a lot of times I just don't want to take 20 minutes to fold up a basket of laundry. (Wow, that's embarrassing.) So then what ends up happening is that 2 or 3 times a month, I have an over-flowing basket of inserts, microfiber towels, cloth wipes, plus all the fitteds and pockets, and it takes me 45 minutes to fold it all.

3. It's really hard for me to remember that cloth is still the exception and not the rule when women hang over my shoulder in public restrooms while I'm changing a diaper. It's hard to give a patient and graceful answer to all the same questions that I hear time and time again!

4. But, at the same time, I secretly hope every time we're out and a diaper is visible or a change is needed that I'll get a chance to share some cloth love with a stranger. :o)

5. I get really frustrated that our church nursery won't change a cloth diaper, but our gym nursery will. (Yes, I use sposies for church, because at this time we don't feel led to pursue family corporate worship during the services, and 1 or 2 diapers per 3 services a week doesn't break us, but it's still more than I would be going through if our church would permit cloth.)

6. I don't really have a fluff addiction like a lot of CD parents do. Once I get comfortable with my stash, I don't even think about ordering more diapers. In fact, I'm so practical about things that it's hard for me to buy super cute, gender specific diapers. I have bought hardly any pink and purple little diapers and covers for my sweet little girl!

Okay, this last one is hard for me to share with you...

7. I love cloth diapering. I do, I really do. I mean, I write an entire blog about it. I have shared, educated, encouraged, and done multiple cloth demos just to get other parents to see the manifold wisdom of cloth. I love it. Except sometimes...

I hate it.

Sometimes, the laundry seems to multiply. And I can't get - or stay - caught up with the diapers, let alone our clothing, sheets, and towels. Sometimes I don't feel like folding, stuffing, snappi-ing, wrapping, covering, and finding clothes big enough to fit over a bulky bottom. Sometimes I dread washing out a nasty poopy diaper. Or getting ready to run errands, and taking up half the diaper bag with spare fluffies.

Sometimes, I keep the baby in sposies all day on Sunday, even after we get home from church. And when there's a stomach bug involved, you better believe I'm using sposies. Sometimes if I'm headed somewhere that would require a trip to the laundromat to wash the diapers, well then...you guessed it.

And the thing is, I don't really feel bad about it. I think it's okay - and I think it's important that I tell you guys that it's okay - to NOT love using cloth diapers 100% of the time. And there's no need to get all legalistic about it. If I'm having a rotten, no good, very bad day, and I feel like using fluffs - and washing them - is just more than I can handle that day, then I have given myself permission to not use them. Yes, it costs a little bit of money. But seriously, $4 worth of paper diapers for me to keep my sanity, and love and care for my family and home without a sense of grudge and drudgery? Totally worth it. And really, having given myself the freedom to do this every once in a while when I feel like I need to makes me feel like I want to FAR less frequently. So then, the 1 or 2 days a month that I just feel like stripping all my diapers and listing them on Craigslist, it's easy for me to just kind of buckle down and suck it up and push on with the cloth dipeys, knowing that if and when I have a really rough day, the fluffs can stay on the shelf and I can stay "Happy Mama."

Because besides - 99% of the time, I love it!

So what about you guys? Let me hear your cloth confessions!

New Series: Crunchy cooking: Homemade Wheat Bread

2009-03-29T15:01:00.000-07:00

** I don't know if I've mentioned on here or not, but I also have a family blog that we keep private, just for friends and family members. But I occasionally post things on the family blog that I have to wonder if my fellow-cloth mamas might be interested in? Things about frugality, natural living, more sustainable and less grocery-store dependent homes and kitchens, etc. So over the next few days I'm going to share some of those things. Because let's face it - cloth may have brought us together, but there's so much more to us as parents and families than just what goes on the babies' bums!! I hope you guys enjoy my new short series on Crunchy Cooking, starting today with homemade wheat bread.

If I had to try and pinpoint why I stopped buying bread at the grocery store, I'm not sure I could come up with one single, solid, definitive reason. Partly just because I enjoy baking; a great deal because I've become more label-conscious, and I just don't know much about all the preservatives in a lot of store-bought food; more recently because I think that $3 for a loaf of bread is reprehensible. Also, bought bread doesn't have a tremendous amount of flavor to me, unless you buy the $5 loaves. No, thank you.

I don't use a bread machine for our bread. For me, the enjoyment of making bread at home is, well, making it! I started baking all our bread while I was pregnant with Little Miss R, and I used a recipe from Cook's Illustrated that Big M and Little M liked a LOT, but I was never wild about it. (I did like, however, that it was a super quick rise recipe and made 2 loaves at a time.) Right before she was born, I made a bunch of loaves and froze them so that I wouldn't have to bake bread for a while. Well, something went wrong with those batches, and we ended up tossing all the bread. (Groan.) We went back to store-bought bread.

Then, in January, Deb from Smitten Kitchen posted this recipe. I think I made it that very same day. (That, by the way, is one of the huge perks of keeping a well-stocked pantry! I often impulsively decide to prepare a dessert to go with dinner, or need to make something to carry to a group function, or make a meal to carry to a family or friend. It's so wonderful to not have to run to the grocery store to buy 1 or 2 things.) Oh, my goodness. This bread. Is. Perfect. Seriously. The first time I made it, I was a little frustrated at the rise times, and that for all the work it made only one loaf. So over the past 3 months, I've tweaked and played with the recipe and got it to a more desirable and manageable recipe for me. I'm going to blog it the way I make it (produces 2 loaves), but please remember this is not my recipe! Follow the link above for the original recipe and credit.

(A few disclaimers: First, I know this is not the uber-healthy homemade bread that a lot of people are looking for. I use more bread (white) flour than wheat, I don't soak my grains, or use any add-ins like flax, wheat germ, or kefir. But it's tasty. And I know exactly what I'm putting in it. Second, this is not a "Bread 101" or "Bread for beginners" kind of post. All I know about baking bread is what I know from my own limited experience. And I tried - and failed - a lot at bread before it got to be second nature. You just have to be willing to try! Although I will share my little tips and tricks that I've picked up along the way and use. And, I don't know any of the fancy stuff about bread and gluten bonds, and the difference between weighed flour and flour measured by the cup or anything. You don't need to know this stuff, so don't get intimidated by cookbooks, magazines, and websites who talk all about it!)

Okay, so here's the cast of characters:

Salt, honey, shortening, active dry or rapid rise yeast (you can get it in envelopes, but I go through so much that I buy it by the jar), powdered milk, whole wheat flour, bread/high gluten flour, and warm water. (Not pictured, white granulated sugar, although you could probably use brown sugar instead, or eliminate it completely by increasing the honey portion by 50%.)

Whenever I cook or bake, I like to pre-measure everything so that once I'm ready to start mixing I can just grab stuff. It makes the process go more smoothly - especially if you have something that needs to be mixed or added right away - and it kind of makes you feel like you're on a cooking show! ;o) So, start out with 3 rounded (not heaping, not level) teaspoons of yeast. I like using rapid rise yeast because I'm sort of impatient with rising, but it's handy to have plain ol' active dry in the house too.

If you use jarred yeast, you're supposed to keep it refrigerated after opening. (Frankly, even if you purchase the envelopes, I recommend storing them in the fridge to prolong the life of the yeast.) So, go on and measure out your yeast into a small, shallow saucer (^) so that it can come to room temperature.

In a separate small bowl (^), measure out 4 T (tablespoons) of solid shortening and 2 T of honey. You can buy solid shortening by the stick, but it's cheaper to buy a tub, and I go through a bit of it between bread, biscuits, and other baking that I do. You can use any flavor of honey you prefer, but I just stick with clover.

Get out your flours. It's important to stir the flour to aerate it before measuring. Mama, don't freak out, but the most effective way is to stir it with a knife. See above (^); this is a brand new bag of flour. You can even see the imprint of where the sealed bag pressed on the flour. It's densely packed. But after you aerate it...

It's looser and looks fluffier. I don't think these pictures do it justice, because I'm not a skilled photographer and can't take photos the right way. So trust me on this one!

Into a large mixing bowl or the bowl of an electric mixer, measure out your dry ingredients. Start with the flour first...

By dipping your measuring cup into your aerated flour...

And leveling off the top with a knife. You need 5 C of bread flour, 3 teaspoons of salt, 1 T of granulated sugar, 6 T of powdered milk, 3 C of whole wheat flour, and the 3 teaspoons of yeast you premeasured before.

Here's the mixing bowl, full of all the ingredients! Now, I layer the dry ingredients in the order I listed them above. This is because when I used to use a bread machine, the directions said to never put the salt against the yeast because it can "deactivate" it somehow. And sometimes, I measure out all my ingredients and don't start mixing up the bread right away. It probably doesn't matter, but that's just how I do it.

Next, you'll need 2.5 C of warm water. I know it's a little anal retentive, but I use my digital kitchen thermometer and take the temperature of the water. That way, I know that the water is not so cool that it fails to activate the yeast, and not so hot that it kills it. For the approximately 10 seconds that it takes, it gives me a tremendous amount of security! The labels on your yeast jar or envelope should tell you the temperature to use, but pretty generally, anything between 110*F and 130*F is good.

See? 120.9*F. Just right! I start with hot water right out of the tap, take the temp, and then warm it in the microwave from there. Go slowly - you can always keep heating it, but if it gets too hot then you have to start all over or wait for it to cool.

Okay, so I use my stand mixer for the initial mix, but you can also just do it by hand in a large mixing bowl. If you're using a mixer, fit it with a paddle attachment, and turn it on low (for those of you with a KitchenAid mixer, I never turn it above "stir" for this bread) to mix the dry ingredients together. If you're doing it by hand, then the only alternate direction you need is "stir." :o)

Add your shortening and honey, still mixing on low (i.e., "stir").

In a slow and steady stream, add your warm water (^). Can you see how thin a thread of water I'm pouring out in the above pic? This is how slowly I add the entire 2.5 C. Adding the water slowly prevents lumpy clumps of wet flour in your dough - yuck. You're probably going to want to lock down the head of your mixer (if that's an option for you) so it doesn't start bumping around. The dough will slowly begin to come together and leave the sides of the bowl.

After you have added all water, if any flour remains dry on the bottom of the bowl, sprinkle in additional water.

Can you see that little bit of dry flour (^)? I think I added about .5-1 teaspoon of water.

Mix just until dough comes together. It will be lumpy and sticky, but soft and pliable. Scrape the dough off the mixer paddle, and dump dough out onto floured (either wheat or bread flour) surface...

(In the above pic (^), that's not something nasty on the counter at the bottom of the pic, it's a nick in the laminate counter top. Just wanted to make sure you know I didn't knead a bug into our bread!)

Sprinkle the top with more flour...

Dust your hands with flour...

And let's get started! I tried my hardest to take pictures of the kneading process, but it's tough to take pictures one-handed by yourself. But, nevertheless, here's my little "Kneading for Novices"! Kneading scares a lot of people, but it is really, really simple; it's basically just pushing, folding, and rotating the dough to mix and incorporate all ingredients well. It starts out sticky, and it takes some time and patience, but by the time the dough is ready to rise, it should no longer be sticking to your hands or the counter. There is no one single right way to knead, but here's what I do:

Start by (^) pushing the dough away from you.

Grab the elongated "point" you just pushed out (^), and pick it up...

...Folding it on top (^) of the rest of the lump. Rotate your dough about 60-90* clockwise or counter-clockwise...

...And repeat! That's it! That's all there is to it! Do this about 1,000 times - haha, just kidding. Kneading for this particular recipe takes around 10 to 12 minutes. Just keep sprinkling flour on top of the dough, your kneading surface, or your hands as needed. Remember, the dough should be tacky, but not sticky. Pliable, but not goopy and NOT tough. If your dough is tough while you're kneading it...well, frankly, I would probably just chunk it and start over. People who know more about bread than I do might know a way to redeem it, though.

The above photo (^) is about 5 or 6 minutes into kneading. You can already see how it's looking smoother, but it's not quite there yet.

Okay, so the above photo (^) was about 12 minutes after I began kneading. You can see it's significantly smoother (however, wheat dough will never look as smooth as white bread dough). So what do you do if you think it's ready, but you're not positive? You can do a windowpane test! Pull off a golf-ball sized hunk of dough...

And gently stretch it, holding it up to the light. You should be able to see light through the dough (^) before it tears, like a window! If it tears before thinning, then the dough is not ready, and needs more kneading. If it passes the windowpane test, you're ready to let it rise. Reincorporate your windowpane test hunk of dough, and gently shape your dough into a round. Place in a lightly oiled or sprayed large bowl, cover with plastic wrap or a damp towel...

...And put it somewhere to let it rise until doubled. I usually rise things on the stovetop for a few reasons. First, because I'm ridiculously impatient, and I cheat-rise things by placing them on the stovetop with the oven turned on to create a warm and cozy environment. Second, the stovetop is not my countertop and workspace, so things are out of the way!

Now, the original recipe over at Smitten Kitchen calls for instant yeast, but I used rapid rise. I also used slightly more yeast than the recipe calls for. So even though the original recipe says to let rise for nearly 2 hours, when I checked on my dough last night, it was nearly doubled after just 14 minutes! So I...

...tossed it in the fridge (^) to slow down the rising...

...And tossed the kiddos in the bathtub so I could get them to bed.

Anyway, so once the kids were in bed, I checked on my dough again. Well...

...It had risen far more than double (^). No sweat. The second rise is the one to be careful on. Anyway, dump your risen dough out onto a lightly floured surface again. (I'll be honest - I don't even clean the countertop from the kneading to this step.) Separate your dough into 2 halves...

...and press - by hand - each half into a rectangle about 6 inches wide by 10 inches long (^). Perfection is not key here! You can also use a rolling pin if you like, but it's not necessary, and why wash something if you don't need to?

Start rolling the rectangle up (^) by starting at the short end. When you get to the end, roll it over so that the seam side is up...

...and pinch (^) the seam closed...

...and I also like to pull the ends over to the seam side (^) and pinch all that together too.

Place rolled up loaf, seam side down (^), into lightly oiled or sprayed bread loaf pan.

Repeat with remaining half of dough. Lightly mist the top of each loaf with cooking spray, or rub gently with oil...

...cover loosely (^) and let rise.

Be careful on this second rise - if dough rises too much, then either during or immediately after baking, it can fall. This is both unattractive and un-delicious. I generally let them rise until they've crested over the edge of the pan, or maybe even a little more.

See above (^): the dough has risen just a little over an inch above the lip of the pan. Time to go into the oven! Preheat your oven to 350*F (or you can preheat it during the second rise so that as soon as the dough rises to perfection you can get it in the oven right away).

Bake the bread at 350*F, rotating your pans frequently to avoid the hot spots in your oven. I generally rotate each individual pan and/or swap the pans around every 15 minutes. But then, I'm the Type-A poster child. :o) Either way, total bake is between 45 minutes and an hour.

Look at those lovely loaves! But are they done? There are a few ways to check! First, you can dump a loaf out into an oven-mitted hand, and knock on the bottom. It should sound/feel hollow. I know this sounds ambiguous, but you'll know it when you hear it.

The other way is by temperature! Grab your digital kitchen thermometer...

...and take the bread's baby temperature (ahem, in the bottom). Finished bread should register between 190* and 205*F.

Dump loaves out onto wire cooling racks to let cool. I like to use a little trick I picked up from Big M's mom and rub some butter - REAL butter, unsalted - on the outside of the loaf.

I use about 3 T per loaf (^). This just softens the crust, which is really great if you're planning to use the bread for sandwiches, especially for kids. Take especial care to rub the butter into the corners and any spots that feel particularly...crusty.

Let the bread cool completely before slicing to prevent gumminess. Then slice each loaf. I pre-slice the loaves because then it's already done, and you can just grab a piece (or 2) whenever you want it! I like to slice the bread as thin as possible, because homemade bread tends to be a little denser than store-bought bread, and thinner slices are just more pleasant for sandwiches.

Slicing is kind of tough to get used to, but I'm getting better at it (^)! The key is using a really good quality knife specifically intended for bread slicing. I love my Cutco 9.75" slicer that I got from my best bud's husband Isaac.

So, slice both loaves. I put one loaf into the freezer, and we keep one loaf out at room temperature for munching on for the next few days. For the loaf that goes into the freezer...

I separate the loaf into 2 halves, and bag each half separately (^). This is mostly because an entire loaf won't fit into a standard gallon-size storage bag.

The loaf that we're going to eat also goes into 2 storage bags, and then into our bread box (^)! That's the remains of a loaf of banana bread beside it, yum. I don't like putting bread in the fridge, because it makes it hard and tough. If you don't think you'll use an entire loaf before it gets moldy or stale, then freeze half of it, and just leave half out at room temperature.

Ta-da! So that's it! I really hope that you give bread-baking a try. It's not nearly as time-consuming or difficult as a lot of people tend to think that it is. (In case you didn't pick up on it, I mixed and kneaded the dough AND photographed the entire process while the kids were eating supper and playing!) And if you have only ever eaten store-bought bread and you try this, let me warn you that you may not love it at first. We're so accustomed to the ways things taste (and feel, the texture is quite different) that it takes a while for our tastes to adjust. But give it a shot - I bet you'll enjoy it! (Remember, if you want to make a single loaf or check the original recipe or instructions, head on over to the recipe on the Smitten Kitchen.

2-Loaf Wheat Bread

5 cups high gluten/bread flour
3 cups whole wheat flour
1 tablespoon granulated sugar
3 teaspoons salt
6 tablespoons powdered milk
3 rounded teaspoons active dry or rapid rise yeast
4 tablespoons solid shortening
2 tablespoons honey
2.5 cups warm water

In large mixing bowl or the bowl of a stand mixer, combine all dry ingredients. Add shortening and honey, and then slowly add warm water. Mix until just combined, dribbling in additional water if necessary.

Place dough on surface dusted with bread or wheat flour, and knead for 10-12 minutes or until passes windowpane test, adding flour to surface, dough, and hands as needed. Place dough in lightly oiled, large bowl and turn to coat. Cover loosely and let sit to rise until doubled.

Place risen dough on lightly floured surface. Divide dough into 2 halves. Press each half into rectangle, and roll up, closing seams. Place dough, seam side down, into 2 lightly oiled bread loaf pans. Cover loosely and let rise until dough crests top of pans.

Place loaf pans in 350*F preheated oven, and bake for 45 to 60 minutes, rotating as needed.

Remove loaves immediately to wire cooling racks. Rub loaves with unsalted butter to soften crust (optional), and let cool completely.

Slice, store, enjoy!

What is repelling?

2009-03-28T15:01:00.000-07:00

Repelling, like wicking, is another term that I felt like I was seeing lots of places when I first began doing my diaper research. I didn't really quite understand what it meant, and I never found what I thought to be an adequate and comprehensive explanation of it. So I'll give it the ol' college try!

Repelling is when a diaper - usually a fleece lining of a pocket, in my experience - develops a build-up, residue, or coating that causes urine to just run off instead of absorb or pass through the way it's intended. Think about how tents or camping jackets are sometimes described as having repelling or repellant properties. Good for tents, bad for diapers!

Let me give you a specific example. I've had several pockets (all the same brand) develop a repelling issue. What would happen is that I would notice that my daughter's onesie or pants were wet at the leg or top of the stomach of her diaper. I would be bewildered and think, "How on earth did she already pee out that insert?" and go to change her. I would take the diaper off, and the insert in the pocket was entirely or nearly bone dry. The fleece had some kind of build up or defect that caused the urine to run off, either out her thigh (if she was playing) or her tummy (if sleeping), rather than soak through the fleece to the absorbant insert.

So what causes repelling? Well, repelling can be traced back to several different things.

The first is easy to determine if it's your particular problem: Using commercial diaper rash creams (desitin, aquaphor, triple paste, etc) on cloth diapers without using a barrier (disposable rice paper liner, silk or fleece liners that you must wash separately from your other diaper laundry) will cause a build up on your diapers. Here's why: most diaper rash creams contain petroleum or petrolatum. The function of this is to create a waterproof barrier between your child's skin and the urine to prevent further irritation to a rash. So, of course it stands to reason that it will leave the same waterproofing barrier on your diapers! Check out this post I wrote a long time ago about using rash creams with cloth nappies, and alternative ways to heal a diaper rash.

The other main thing that can cause repelling is a build-up on the diapers caused by using (usually) a mainstream laundry detergent.

Something else that can cause build-up is using - gasp! - not enough of the right kind of detergent. I'm sure that if you've done any amount of research you've probably read to use detergent sparingly. And that's true! I use 2 tablespoons of liquid Charlie's Soap per large load of diapers; 2 Tbsp is not much! But I've read about people recommending using a little as one teaspoon of an appropriate kind of detergent per extra-large wash load. Diapers simply will not get clean that way!! And you're left with incompletely clean diapers, with urine and fecal residue, as well as dead skin cells and natural skin oils, not to mention any residue of baby lotions or oils.

Fortunately, if you have a repelling issue with your diapers, the solution is pretty simple: strip those suckers! And do it quickly, because the residue can affect "healthy" diapers if you continue to wash all diapers together. Check out the "Special Occasion Cleaning" section of this post for stripping instructions if you have a top-loading washing machine. Check out this post for stripping advice if you have a front-loader, and the corresponding comments.

If you still have problems, you can try hand-stripping clean diapers in the bathroom sink. Get a bristle brush (like the kind you use to clean a bathtub or dishes, but I don't recommend just grabbing one out of the kitchen! At least, if you do that, don't put it back), and some rubber gloves. The gloves are so that you can use hot, hot, hot water! Heat it on the stove if you need to. Scrub vigorously the top and inside of the fleece lining on the offending pocket diapers*, using the brush and a grease-cutting dish soap (Dawn). Rinse in cold water until all bubble are gone, and water poured on the fleece passes through rather than pooling on top. Repeat the scrub and rinse if necessary. Then launder as usual.

** Remember, if you begin noticing a problem with a diaper - or several - but are having a hard time remembering which diapers, make a very small but distinguishable mark with a permanent marker on the tag, or put a safety pin through the tag of the offending diapers as soon as you take the diaper off the child. That way, you can keep track over the next few days to see if it's just 1 or 2 diapers of the same color, or many diapers in your stash!

What is wicking?

2009-03-25T15:01:00.000-07:00

This is a term that simply mystified me when I was first doing my research! Wicking, to me, meant something maybe possibly to do with candle making...? What on earth did 'wicking' mean when referring to diapers?

Frankly, even now, it's tough for me to think about defining "wicking" without using the word itself! But I'll give it my best shot.

Okay, wicking is when moisture seeps through the PUL or soaks onto the binding around diapers, and then wets the childs clothes. Now, I know you're probably thinking, "But PUL is supposed to be waterproof! How can the moisture seep through it?" Well...

PUL is not 100% waterproof. It's just not. And there are different weights of PUL, although I don't know enough about the differences. (Any WAHMs out there want to weigh in?) Sometimes if you're shopping on Etsy or Hyena Cart, you may see a diaper advertised as "2 mil PUL" or something, and that has to do with the weight/waterproofness of the PUL.

For example, the PUL on Haute Pockets is not terribly weighty. My son (when he was still in diapers, which he's not now, thank the Lord!) couldn't wear Hautes for very long because they wicked straight through. Covers, in my experience tend to be far weightier in PUL than pockets.

My hanging diaper pail (which is a Fuzzi Bunz/Mother of Eden) wicks moisture also. Obviously, it's a hanging bag, but when it's heavy with lots of dipeys, the snaps just can't hold it on the doorknob anymore, so it sits on the bathroom floor. And it wicks a bit of moisture on the floor. Not standing water (ew, urine) or anything, but it's enough that you can see a wet spot. Sort of like if you dropped a wet, wrung out washcloth on a tile floor. Nothing a Clorox wipe can't fix!

We also experience wicking problems with some pocket diapers where the fleece rolls out, like on Happy Heinys. That's really only when I leave a diaper on too long, though. I also have a few WAHM covers that I really love, except that they have a cotton-poly leg binding that tends to wick wetness onto my daughter's clothing. But as long as I have her diaper and cover on straight, and be sure not to let her sit too long - or nap - in those particular covers it's not a big deal.

So that's wicking. I hope I explained it clearly enough. And obviously, the explanation kind of spells out why it's a problem! For the most part, wicking is only a problem if you're not changing the child's diaper often enough! Stripping diapers will not help with a wicking problem. :o)

However, if you're experiencing wicking consistently with a pocket diaper, and you usually hang the pockets to dry, you might be able to "recharge" (for lack of a better word) the PUL by drying the diapers in the dryer on the hottest air possible for about 20 or 30 minutes. (You could also autoclave them if you have access to one, hahaha. Just kidding! Who has access to an autoclave?) Anyway, if you're still having problems after hot drying the diapers, particularly if it's only 1 or 2 diapers out of an entire lot*, then I recommend contacting the source where you purchased the diaper in the first place as well as contacting the manufacturer directly to see if they have any more specific advice, or can offer you to exchange the diaper.

** If you begin noticing a problem with a diaper - or several - but are having a hard time remembering which diapers, make a very small but distinguishable mark with a permanent marker on the tag, or put a safety pin through the tag of the offending diapers as soon as you take the diaper off the child. That way, you can keep track over the next few days to see if it's just 1 or 2 diapers of the same color, or many diapers in your stash!

What a deal!

2009-03-20T12:16:00.000-07:00

This morning I got an email from Kissaluvs * about a special spring deal they've got going on right now! When you order a Bundle of Joy Starter Pack directly from the manufacturer website, you get a free Bummis Super Whisper Wrap cover! You don't get to choose the color of your cover, but you can order your starter pack in neutral, boy, or girl colors - woo-hoo! (And I feel pretty confident that if you order the boy colors, they're not going to send you a pink cover, you know?)

BUT WAIT - THERE'S MORE!!

From March 20-25, enter the code "SPRING" in the comments section of your order to get free shipping! Happy shopping, all you cloth nappy parents!

** Okay, if I've never said this before, go to every single diaper manufacturer website and diaper e-store and sign up for their newsletter emails. You'll get email alerts about sales, clearances, etc. I'll post the alerts I get, but I've only signed up for emails from brands I prefer for my kids and e-stores where I shop regularly, so I can't cover everywhere! For Kissaluvs, they actually have an e-outlet sale every once in a while when you can purchase brand new factory seconds for a huge discount. Set up a separate email account if you don't want all the dipey emails clogging up your regular mailbox, but it's totally worth it!

Why cloth?

2009-03-19T19:54:00.000-07:00

When I was about three months pregnant with my daughter and my son was 16 months old, I suddenly began to think about the overwhelming cost of keeping two children in disposable diapers. “How will we ever be able to afford that on our budget??” I frantically wondered. So I turned back to something I had briefly mused on while pregnant with our son: cloth diapering. I was amazed to learn how many more reasons to cloth diaper there are than just concerns for your budget!

There are three main reasons that people choose to cloth diaper: environmental concerns about the abundant waste caused by disposable diapers, the potential for adverse effects on a child’s health (including excessive or perpetual diaper rash) from using disposable diapers, and the tremendous expense of disposable diapers.

Environmental Factors

I’ve read some arguments that the water and energy used to clean cloth diapers makes them not all that much “greener” than disposable diapers. Funny thing is, when you read the fine print on these statements, I frequently discover that it was released by a parent company of a disposable diaper manufacturer! In fact, disposable diapers use 37% more water and 70% more energy per diaper change (in production) than cloth diapers, whether the cloth diapers are laundered at home or by a service! Click here for more details and fact credits.

It is estimated that disposable diapers make up about 3% of the total non-biodegradable contents of landfills. This may not sound like an awful lot to many of you, but the stunning number is this: conservative estimates say that disposable diapers make up over 70% of the non-biodegradable waste contributed to landfills since 1970. If you use exclusively disposable diapers, by the time your child is completely potty-trained, you will have tossed approximately 10,000 diapers, disposable swim pants, and training pants into your trash can! And, chances are pretty good that most people using disposable diapers are tossing the poo along with the diaper – I know I did when I was using sposies. The only place we’re instructed to dump solid wastes in the toilet is in the teeny-tiny fine print on the side of the plastic diaper package, and who ever reads that? Unfortunately, if you’re not emptying solid waste before disposing of the diaper, as soon as the diapers hit the landfill, so does the human waste, and from there it gets into ground water supply. Click here for more details and facts.

Health Factors

It’s hard in some respects to separate the environmental factors from the health factors, because so many of the reasons that diapers are not good for the earth are the same reasons they’re not good for your babies’ bums!

Disposable diapers contain PVCs and SAPs (super absorbent polymers; these are the gel crystals you’ve likely seen when a sposie has “exploded” on your baby). SAPs were removed from tampons during the 1980s because of their link to toxic shock syndrome, but are still used in disposable diapers. Both of these chemicals have been banned in the European market, but are still used in the United States. Disposable diapers also contain significant traces of dioxin, a carcinogen, as a result of the bleaching process. Dioxin winds up not only in the diapers, but also in the environment! Click here for more info on dioxin and other potential health risks associated with disposable diapering.

(Frankly, sposies come out of the package less than 1 inch thick...and yet a child can wear it for 12 hours overnight without leaking everywhere. Come on, y'all - we should be suspicious about this!)

Additionally, disposable diapers have been linked to male infertility and testicular cancer. Click here to read more. And on a less serious note, children who wear exclusively disposable diapers experience far more diaper rash than children who are cloth diapered. Now for some kids, this could simply be due to an irritant in the sposies. For example, my kids canNOT wear any sposies except Huggies, because any other brand of sposies will have their bottoms in flames within one diaper wear. But, for most children, sposies are more closely associated with diaper rash because they just hold so much, and most kids wear a single diaper for far longer than they should.

Finally, please take a moment and read these two wonderful articles. I found that I simply could not do them justice by summing them up. This article has a wealth of cited information regarding how disposable diapers are manufactured. This article gives detailed information about possible adverse health effects of disposable diapering, not only on the babies who wear them, but also on the people who work in the plants that produce them.

Budget

Now, I’ve heard my fair share of people dispute the validity of the environmental and health concerns. I, for one, say that if there’s even a chance that using sposies could adversely affect my children’s health, not to mention the planet which God has given into our care to steward, then I am willing to try the alternative!

However, people can-NOT argue that using cloth diapers will save you money. When you first begin to look at purchasing cloth diapers, you may think, “These are so expensive! There’s no way this is going to save me money!” But cloth diapering is 100% a front-loaded investment, meaning that after you purchase your “stash,” you no longer need to spend any money (other than detergent) to maintain your system!

Let’s go back to what I said earlier, about how the average sposie-diapered child will go through approximately 10,000 diapers/swim pants/training pants by the time they’re fully potty-trained. Disposable diapers, on average, cost approximately $0.24 per diaper. This translates to around $2,400 (per child) you will have spent on something that ends up almost immediately in the garbage, and that doesn’t even include the cost of disposable wipes and special liners for the diaper pail.

Another breakdown comes from my own experience. When my son was still in diapers (fully daytime potty trained before he was even 2 and ½, thank you cloth diapering!), I was spending approximately $13 per month on the increased utility bills plus the cost of detergent to have my children in cloth diapers full time. Had I still been using disposables, I would have been spending about $105 a month on diapers alone, not counting the cost of wipes. So for us, disposables = $105+/month, cloth = $13/month. Now, I’m not a math whiz, but you just can’t argue with that! Who couldn’t use an extra $92 each month?

Here is an AWESOME math breakdown that shows the cost of diapering your child with different "systems" versus the cost of diapering your child in disposables.

Finally, the average age that a cloth-diapered child will potty train is placed somewhere between 18 and 24 months. A child in disposable diapers will, on average, not potty train until 36 months! And anyone who has spent time in second and third world countries where cloth is used exclusively will tell you that mothers start potty training their children – successfully! – as soon as they begin walking. On a similar note, many cloth diapering mothers practice elimination communication with great success!

So there you have it! The big reasons to choose cloth over disposables. In this age, most of us probably never even thought twice about using sposies, but there is such a better option out there! And, I won't even play - my biggest reason for choosing cloth was the money, honey. But as I said before, when I began my research, I discovered more and more information about disposables than I was comfortable with. And don't forget - CLOTH DIPEYS ARE ABOUT A MILLION TIMES CUTER THAN PLAIN OL' PLASTIC SPOSIES!

Guest Post!

2009-03-19T15:41:00.000-07:00

Today and tomorrow I'm guest posting on one of my favorite websites, Passionate Homemaking, while the author adjusts to life with her newest little one! Some of you may have wandered over here from there in the first place, but I have no way to know since my SiteMeter is apparently not working.

Anyway, Lindsay at Passionate Homemaking is a believer who loves the Lord, and delights in serving her family in ways that are healthful, frugal, and honor our Creator. I figured some of the frugal, green, and crunchy-minded people who might stumble across this blog would be interested in that!

Here is the permalink for the first part of the post, where I discuss why to use cloth.

Here is the permalink for the second part of the post, where I give a VERY general and broad overview of cloth diapering. Perfect for newbies, beginners, and just starting to research!

Troubleshooting tips

2009-03-19T09:42:00.000-07:00

Today I got a question from a mom who was having some problems with her BG diapers and her front loading washing machine. To read her original post detailing her wash routine, click here.

Here are the tips I shared with her, but I think that there are others who might benefit from hearing them! :o)

- First, 14 diapers and their inserts is a LOT of diapers to wash at once in a FL machine, because it doesn't use as much water. You could try washing a load with fewer diapers, but still using the highest water setting.

- Let's talk about a routine wash: you should do one cold rinse first (to get the waste out); one long hot wash with a cloth diaper safe detergent; 2 cold rinses. Either line/sun dry, or tumble dry. NEVER, EVER, EVER use liquid fabric softener or dryer sheets!!

- You might also try a wet pail system for a while. That way, the diapers are never sitting soiled (and it eliminates your time-consuming task of scrubbing them in the laundry sink!). If I'm lazy one day and let diapers sit unrinsed on the bathroom floor until my kids are in bed, those diapers will invariably have stains on them! I have been safely wet-pailing my PUL pockets (including BG diapers) with no problems with wicking for at least 6 months now.

- For stains, take a clean, wet diaper, and saturate the stain with lemon juice, and then place in the sun until dry. Repeat as necessary until the stain is gone, and then launder the diaper as usual.

- As far as lingering smells, you could try stripping them, which is hard in a FL machine. Try turning your water heater up as high as it will go for one hour, and then run a long wash cycle on hot with NO detergent. (Don't forget to turn the water heater back down after the first wash cycle.)

- A quick note about vinegar: vinegar will soften and help freshen the smell of *clean* diapers. If your diapers have a lingering odor and need to be stripped, vinegar can actually make the smell worse. Remember, clean diapers (and the washing machine after cleaning them) should smell like nothing at all, except maybe wet fabric! ;o)

- For detergent, I love and recommend Charlie's Soap, and it is HE safe. You can purchase it at Whole Foods, Trader Joe's, EarthFare, or mom-and-pop natural foods stores. If no stores sell it locally for you, you can always order it online. I have never used Country Save personally, but I would probably stay away from the Oxy, because it likely has enzymes in it, which leave a residue on the diapers that will bind with the urine, causing unpleasant odors when the diapers are wetted, and creating a funky skunky buildup.

I'm still here!!

2009-03-17T20:26:00.000-07:00

My deepest apologies for the 5 month hiatus! Since my last post, I've been potty-training a toddler, my daughter had a terrible UTI and several resultant procedures, then it was Christmas and New Year's...frankly in between all the normal life (and not so normal things that pop up from time to time) I simply forgot to post for a while!

I'll get back to my reviews soon to wrap up that series by reviewing my pockets and AIOs. After which...I'm gonna need some direction from the cloth diapering families and newbies as to what to blog about next! I feel like I'm running out of ideas for the things I've learned along the way, so any specific questions would be really helpful!

One less diaper to wash out!

2008-10-30T17:05:00.001-07:00

Yay, my 2.5 y/o went to the potty tonight!

At supper, I gave him a small plastic tumbler instead of his sippy cup. (I know, I know, it's way overdue.) Anyway, he kept on talking about how he was a big boy, and I started talking about all the fun things that big boys get to do. Of course, we came around to talking about how big boys don't wear diapers!

He looked at me skeptically, until I told him that his good friend N, who we played with at the park this morning, doesn't wear diapers anymore. He thought for a minute, and then said, "Mama, 'member at the playground, N went to the potty." Now, N is a little bit younger than M, but he has a 4 y/o (I think) sister - who's obviously been pottying forever - and my friend practiced part-time EC with them.

But then - and I do feel a little guilty about this, really I do - I asked M, "Do you want to be a big boy like your friend N and go potty after supper?" and he got all excited and said, "Yes ma'am!"

So we went and I sat him on the real toilet, backwards facing the tank ("like a cowboy riding horses," I told him) since we don't have a toddler seat for the regular potty, and he's so big for his age that on the baby potty he can either go #1 OR #2, but not both at the same time! And he sat there. And sat. And sat. And sat. I asked him, "Baby, do you need to go poopy?" and he nodded, but I think he was having a hard time figuring out how to bear down while sitting, since he usually does it standing up.

So I went and got a book, came back and turned the water faucet on to a trickle and read to him. Before I knew it, he was going, both wet and poop. And he went. And went. And went. And...let's just say it was epic. He picked an awesome poo to go on the potty, hahaha!

Up till this point, I've had M in fleece-lined pockets, so he doesn't feel the wet. I don't think I'll get underwear for him just yet, because I don't mind washing diapers, but I do NOT want to wash clothes and sheets every single day! But I have about a baker's dozen regular, premium, and toddler prefolds, so I think I'll go to WalMart and get some of the cheap, Gerber "rubber pants" and try him in prefolds. That way, he can feel the wet, but I won't be washing clothes! And a good girlfriend of mine just ordered a bunch of cheap cloth training pants, so if she gives me a good report I'll try those out! (If she gives me a bad report, I'll pass it along to you, I promise!)

I'm really excited and encouraged. I know that this is not the end of the road, it's definitely just the beginning! But for tonight, at least, I have one less epic poopie diaper to wash out!

** EDIT TO UPDATE ON POTTY TRAINING

My son was fully daytime potty trained in less than 2 weeks! I never bought anything special or different in the way of training pants. We practiced Naked Potty Training (NPT), where we let M run around in a shirt all day, still wearing diapers for his afternoon nap and overnight. The idea behind that is that children who wear diapers have been "trained" to release when they feel something against their skin, so they learn the muscle control better when releasing isn't automatic. Also, if they begin to tinkle a little (which happened with us only once) they immediately realize it when their toes get wet. ;o)

Now, I think that this happening for us so fast was the result of a Perfect Storm (in a good way) of the optimal conditions: emotional and mental readiness, physiological readiness, naked potty training, and just the right healthy amount of peer pressure. And don't get too jealous just yet - I already know that not many children potty train this easily, so I'm prepared for our daughter to positively do me in when it's time to train her!

If you try it out and your kid isn't getting it, don't sweat it! Don't push them! And, whatever you do, DO NOT make it a disciplinary issue; you'll just cause more problems for your child and yourself down the road. The wonderful thing about using cloth is that if your child just isn't ready to potty train just yet, at least you aren't buying tons of diapers!

Anyway, NPT was awesome for us. We stayed home as much as we could, and he still wore a very thin diaper when we went to church or to run errands. By the end of the first week, M was taking naps in pockets without inserts. By the end of the second week, he was letting us know himself when he needed to go and was wearing underwear all day and even for naps. By the end of the third week, I thought nothing at all of taking him out to run errands in underwear! He had maybe a total of 3 accidents, whether we were at home or out.

He still wears diapers overnight, and most mornings he wakes up dry as a bone. Sometimes he wakes up in the middle of the night and calls me (he's not allowed to get out of his big-boy bed without asking permission) so he can go pee, and then he goes straight back to bed. Although, sometimes he soaks his dipey. I know he's physiologically capable of keeping it dry, so now I'm thinking I may get some of the Gerber Wal-Mart training pants and covers. I don't want to spend a ton of money on expensive training pants, since they're basically just a diaper and we already have a bunch of those! We'll see how it goes, and I'll keep you updated.

Diaper Covers

2008-10-27T20:34:00.000-07:00

Okay, back to reviews. Remember, diaper covers are a waterproof cover that you put over a prefold, flat, or fitted diaper. They may be PUL, fleece, or wool. They may have snap, velcro, Aplix, or even tie (yes, ties!) closures. Of course, I'm only reviewing products I've personally used, and I've only ever used PUL covers. I just wanted to let you know that there are other options out there!

Bummis Super Whisper Wrap - two thumbs up!

I really like this cover. I had one in the newborn size for when Miss R was born. This is a really trim cover, so when she's been at the upper end of the weight range for the cover size, not a whole lot goes under it well except a prefold. But, when she's been at the lower end of the weight range for the cover size, I'm able to fit a good fitted and - for a short time - even a doubler fully inside the cover. One of the things that I really love about this cover is that it's an Aplix-closure cover, so I know I can trust the closure both when it's on my baby, but more importantly I can trust those laundry tabs in the washing machine! The website describes it as having "built-in leg gussets," but the newborn size does NOT have leg gussets. This is obviously not an issue for teeny tiny immobile babies

* It's important to note that Bummis makes several different kinds of covers. I also have the Bummis Super Brite cover (in pink, naturally, for my little girl, who can still wear the small at 6.5 months), and in my opinion, it's basically the exact same cover as the SWW. The Aplix tabs are a bit longer, and it has leg gussets, which I love for naps, because my sweetie pie is a side sleeper.

Proraps - two thumbs WAY up!

One of the best covers out there! These covers are total workhorses, and definitely the best value for the money. $7.25 for a cover!! Are you kidding me?? They are not nearly as cute as some other covers that are available (available only in white and pastel green, blue, or pink), but they are fantastic! The newborn size has a great umbilical notch to protect that tender belly button stump, and all sizes have leg gussets. Leg gussets will help protect against leaks in a mobile baby, but they also help you ensure a good cover when you're using doublers. I just can't say enough good things about these covers! They're velcro-closure, but it's a good strong velcro. The only downside is that they don't have laundry tabs, but I just close the cover up and turn it inside out to launder it.

Now, they're cheap to begin with, so they're a great way to round out your stash or help build it up if you're on a budget. BUT, just because I love you (whoever you are, if you're reading this) so much, I'm going to let you in on a little secret: You can order seconds and overstock directly from the company for even cheaper! They don't always have all sizes available, but it never hurts to call and see: 1.800.397.8594.

Bumkins - one and a half thumbs down :o(

Words cannot express how much I wanted to love these covers. Bumkins are, by far, the cutest covers I have ever seen. They have about 30 (literally) different prints, and they have licensed Dr Seuss prints which are totally adorable. The construction of the covers is top notch: Aplix, extra wide tabs, laundry tabs, leg gussets, front inside flap, back air vent. What's not to love??

The fit. Plain and simple. These covers are just built for trimmer babies with skinnier thighs, and that description definitely does not apply to my babes. One of my good girlfriends who cloth diapers LOVES these covers, but her babies are much trimmer than mine and they have pretty, slender thighs like their beautiful mama. I so wanted these covers to work for us, but they just didn't. That's the only reason for their negative rating from me.

** However, Bumkins also makes bibs, and they are - hands-down - the BEST bibs that you can buy! They're made of the same waterproof PUL as the covers, so clothes don't get wet or food mess on them. They have a pocket to catch bigger crumbs, and they come in a sleeved version. Does it get any better than that? Oh yeah - you just wash them in the sink along with the dishes, and they come in most of the same cute prints as the covers. Sweet! They're available on most sites that sell Bumkins diaper covers, and I've also seen them at Babies-R-Us stores.

ImseVimse - one and a half thumbs up

I actually have used 2 different varieties of ImseVimse covers: the bumpy and the organic cotton. I like them both a lot! We had the organic cotton cover in the newborn size. The cotton outer is so soft, and the available prints are sweet and very European-looking as far as diaper prints go! This cover was very generously sized and so Miss R was able to wear it for quite a while. We now are using the bumpy cover in size small. Soft, generously sized, but only available in plain white.

I love about these covers that the tabs are super wide, but because of that you have to be careful that no velcro is hanging over the top of the cover, waiting to scratch your baby's delicate tummy. They have awesome, ample leg gussets and super soft binding, so everywhere the cover touches skin is soft and gentle. No laundry tabs, so I just close it and turn it inside out to launder (same as the Proraps). Here's the thing that really bothers me about these covers, and it's such a non-issue, but it just bugs me: the white material has turned a kind of whitish neon-yellow after multiple launderings. I don't have any idea why, because no other diaper, cover, or pocket I own has ever done this except my ImseVimses. It doesn't affect its function, and it wouldn't keep me from buying them again in the future, but it just bothers me.

MonkeyBuns covers - two thumbs way up!

Once again, I love MonkeyBuns! She offers a wide variety of solid colors for her PUL covers, and she even has cute, custom appliques she can apply to the bottom. I love that they are super generously sized, so I'm able to use the covers across a wide span of growth and sizes. I've gotten them with velcro and with snap closures. Normally, I'm not a huge fan of snaps on covers for some reason, but she applies a double row of snaps to help ensure a snug and leak proof fit. The velcro she uses isn't the highest quality, so the tabs started curling after about 2 months of use, but they still held well during wearing. However, despite my best efforts to pick every single speck of lint out of the tabs before and after each wash, lower quality velcro just WILL NOT stay closed during a wash cycle, yet it will stick on everything else. Nevertheless, I love her covers! And for my next newborn (God willing), I'm sure I will order more of her diapers. And I'll probably end up getting velcro closures for newborn covers again, because it just offers a more customizable fit. If I need to, I can always replace the velcro.

Thirsties Covers - two thumbs way up!

As with the fitted diapers, I am so in love with Thirsties! They are generously sized (so keep that in mind when ordering). They have fabulous, ample leg gussets. The tabs are the BEST! Not only are they Aplix (so you can trust them for the wear and for the wash), but they have laundry tabs - hooray! AND, one of my favorite features that so few diapering products have: you can overlap the tabs when you're closing up the diaper. Let me explain: across the front of the diaper cover is the "soft" part of the Aplix, and the tabs are the "scratchy" part so they'll stick when you close it up. But one of the tabs is "soft" on the back of it, so you can overlap the other tab's "scratchy" if your baby is on the lower end of the weight range for the size! Best idea ever, and I don't understand why more companies don't include this feature.

Also, Thirsties come in a veritable rainbow of colors - solids only, but the colors are vibrant and rich and gorgeous. I love them! And apparently, they've recently revamped the already fabulous Thirsties cover, so as my insider tip to you, go here to WildFlower Diapers to purchase the old style at a reduced price!

So there you have it! The majority of my stash of covers is Proraps or MonkeyBuns, because of the prices. Anyone else out there use another brand you'd like to tell us about?

Feedback?

2008-10-26T15:26:00.000-07:00

Hey there!

I'm still trying to work out product reviews, but I have a bit of housekeeping business to tend to first. But since you're here, please leave me a comment and let me know that you're here. If no one is reading, I'm stopping!

When you comment, please let me know if you currently cloth diaper (how many kids, their ages, whether or not you EC, etc) or if you're just gathering information for a possible switch, or even if you're just generally interested or curious. If you're a CDing mama who feels like you have some insight or different opinions that people might be interested in, I'd love to share your thoughts on here! And if you're still just gathering information, please please please let me know if you have any specific questions regarding CD in general, certain brands, prices, pros and cons, etc.

I have my comment settings so that anyone can leave a comment without having a blog of your own or anything, so you comment anonymously but I'd love to know who you are! If you'd rather not comment the information, you can email me at diaperdiaries@hotmail.com

Thanks!

PS - This feedback request does NOT have an expiration date! Whenever you come across this entry, please let me know you were here and if/how I can better help you!

Fitted Diapers

2008-10-22T19:22:00.000-07:00

Remember, fitted diapers go on like a sposie. They usually have either snaps or velcro closures, and elastic around the waist and thighs. Fitted diapers require a cover. Here are the ones I've used.

Kissaluvs Fitteds (KL): 2 thumbs up!

Some of my best-loved fitteds! I have used both the size 0 and the size 1 on Miss R. KLs are a wonderful soft sherpa fleece diaper and are super absorbent. The KLOs are extremely adjustable in size, so I was always able to get a snug but comfortable fit around the belly and thighs. Miss R wore them from the day she came home from the hospital until she outgrew the rise at around 3 or 4 months. Even at that time, I could still snap a comfortable fit for her tummy and thighs, but the rise was just too short to provide reliable protection. She's now in KL1s and I really like them. At 6 months, she can wear a KL1 for about 1.5 hours while she's awake and playing before she needs a change. Because the sherpa fleece doesn't wick moisture away from the skin, providing that "stay dry feeling," I don't use these for naps or long car rides. The prices on these have gone up just since Miss R was born. They now cost around $11 for unbleached and $13 for colors. I think they're a great value for the money.

MonkeyBuns Deluxe Fitteds: 2 thumbs way up!

These might be my favorite diapers. I happened across these wonderful WAHM diapers on Ebay and fell in love with the prints and colors she offered. The prices blew me away and I took a chance. Oh. My. Goodness. So soft, so cute, and SO absorbent. One of the things I love about MonkeyBuns is how wonderful Elissa is to work with. Not only is she friendly and fast, but she also offers tons of adorable prints and you can pick and choose your own customized lot of diapers. She also lets you choose whether or not to upgrade to a fleece or suedecloth lining (cost of upgrade is $1 per diaper), and whether you prefer snaps or velcro closures. So much to choose from!

Now of course, nothing is perfect, so here are the few things I don't love or would change about the MBs. There was a HUGE leap between the newborn/small size and the medium size, and I was expecting more of an overlap. The velcro she uses isn't the highest quality, so the tabs started to curl up after a month of washes and the laundry tabs didn't stay closed super well in the wash. (No problem there, just choose snap closures.) Finally, she prewashes her fabric, but I think she may use a commercial laundry detergent, because Miss R's diapers started stinking within a week of our first use and I had to strip them almost right away.

Still and all, best value for the product! You can order them through her Ebay store, or directly from her website.

Snugglebottoms: one thumb up

(Sigh.) I wanted to love these diapers so much. A friend alerted me to them at Baby Bunz & Co. Starting at $20 for 6, the price is to die for. They're basically flannel prefolds that have been sewn into fitteds. They're available with or without velcro closures; when you purchase the ones without velcro you just use a diaper pin or Snappi to fasten it closed under the cover. I checked The Diaper Pin and reviews indicated that people who bought the style without velcro were overall happier with the product than those who bought the style with velcro. Plus the ones without velcro were cheaper, so that's what I chose. They're pretty soft and absorbent, but because they started out as prefolds, they're not as trim as other fitteds. Also, flannel has a very tight weave, so the Snappi won't grab ahold. If you're comfortable using diaper pins, this isn't an issue, but I'm just not. So for now, I'm still using these under covers without any kind of closure, but I realized tonight that I have a bunch of extra velcro in my sewing stuff, so I may sew some tabs on them.

Motherease Bamboo One-Size Fitteds: one thumb way up...so far

A sweet friend gifted two of these to me. I was absolutely stunned at how soft they are, and how absorbent the bamboo is! Because they're a one-size diaper (their website says they adjust from 8 to 35 lbs), they're still a little bulky on Miss R, which is what gives them the "so far" in the rating. Because of that, I have to put the largest covers she has over them since she's still relatively small. Other than that, these dipes are a dream! They are very adjustable in the snaps and even have a fold-down waist to accommodate younger, smaller babies. They're a little pricey at around $14, but you definitely get what you pay for with these diapers. I also like that the company is very eco-friendly, but that's just the crunchy in me talking. ;o)

Thirsties Fab Fitteds: 2 thumbs waaaay up!

If a diaper were competing for top spot against my MonkeyBuns, this one is the only one that might be able to beat them. These diapers are incredibly soft and lined with something that feels like a magical cross between fleece and suedecloth. They're fluffy and absorbent, yet trim at the same time. Thirsties uses Aplix brand velcro for its closure, which is the highest quality style of velcro available, so the laundry tabs are super reliable. Plus they come in 7 luscious and vibrant colors (and also plain white). At around $14 apiece, they're pricey to me. That's why I have only 1! But when I come across some spare change in the budget, I'll try to order a few more. I love this diaper! (** The sizing is quite generous, so if your child is on the border between 2 sizes and is built like mine, you might think about ordering down.)

And there you have it! My two Lincolns about the fitted diapers we've tried out. I welcome your thoughts and opinions about these and/or any other brands!

Prefold Diapers

2008-10-22T18:59:00.000-07:00

Hmm, I had to start with the hardest one to qualify right? I consider prefolds to be a "generic" item, since if you're shopping on cloth diaper etailer websites and searching only for DSQ prefolds, they're all pretty much the same. I've included where I bought mine just FYI, but it doesn't really matter that much.

Quick Prefold Glossary
prepping: washing new prefolds; unbleached require more prepping than bleached because of the natural oils still present in the fibers, but can be soaked overnight to cut down on prep washes; wash on hot with or without detergent in a wash-wash-dry pattern for a total of at least 6 washes; this IS neccesary in order for diapers to absorb wets
quilting: when you buy new prefolds, they look flat and not at all like you imagine prefolds to look; once you've prepped them, they bunch up, shrink up to their size, and become softer and more absorbent; see the pics in my folding tutorial in this post to see what a quilted up prefold looks like

Unbleached Chinese Prefolds (UBCPF)

I love UBCPFs. They are total workhorses. Super absorbent and really sturdy serging. They quilt up quite nicely after the initial prep, and they only get softer with each wash. I chose unbleached because they haven't gone through loads and loads of chemical bleaching processes. I also figured that...well, they're diapers, and the bright white bleached ones would acquire some rather unattractive stains after a while. Some people say that UB are softer than bleached, but I don't really think that's so. I have bought infant, standard infant, regular, premium, and toddler-sized UBCPFs from Nicki's Diapers, Tiny Tush, and Green Mountain Diapers. The diapers are all the same in quality, but if you're new to cloth diapering, Green Mountain has, in my opinion, the most helpful and comprehensive guide to all the different sizes.

Bleached Chinese Prefolds (CPFs)

I also bought a few bleached CPFs because one day during my diaper sewing excitement (I have turned several prefolds into fitteds), I had the cute idea to dye some prefolds before I sewed them up! The principles of dyeing fabric a vibrant color are the same as dyeing your hair a crazy color: you gotta bleach it first. So I ordered a few bleached CPFs and prepped them. They quilted up really nicely and are very soft. I truly can't feel any difference between them and the unbleached. But I have never used them as diapers and (shame, shame) still haven't gotten around to dyeing them, so I can't answer to how well that process would go. If you think you want to try it out, you need to get high quality fabric dye from somewhere like Hancock or Joann's. The Rit stuff you get at WalMart just won't cut it. I think I got the bleached CPFs from Jillian's Drawers.

Bleached Indian Prefolds (IPFs)

I have a dozen bleached IPFs in size 'newborn'. The only reason I went with the bleached IPFs is because that's the only way I could find the newborn size prefold. They are super soft and teeeeny tiny! I never really used them as prefolds for Miss R, but I used them frequently as doublers in pockets or with fitteds for her longer sleep periods until her wetting needs outgrew them when she was around 2 or 3 months old. I got my bleached IPFs from Nicki's Diapers.

And now, what you've all been waiting for...

2008-10-22T18:49:00.001-07:00

product reviews!

I know I'm only one mom, but don't we all want to know what real moms think of baby products before we buy them? Please keep in mind that opinions are SO subjective, so something that I loved you may end up hating, and vice versa. I'm going to break up my reviews by styles of diapers first and then go from there. For all brand name diapers, you should be able to find them at most of the CD etailers I've linked on the right-hand side of the blog. The only time I'll link a store is for private label, WAHM, or "generic" products (like prefolds).

The things that affect my opinion of a product are its durability, the strength of the elastic, snaps, and velcro, the company's quality of customer service, and the fit for my children. To help you out as far as fit preferences go, both my babes have had - as babies - pretty average tummies: not super skinny, but no buddha bellies either. They both had (and Miss R still has) a very average rise, and maybe slightly chunkier thighs. My toddler is now slender to average in his tummy, has a bit of a booty, and has some serious hams for thighs.

Okay, so that's my product review intro and disclaimer. Now obviously, I can only comment on products I've personally used. If you ever want to read reviews about a product that I don't feature, or you're interested in a second opinion, head on over to The Diaper Pin to read what other mamas have to say.

On pre-loved diapers...

2008-10-21T20:43:00.000-07:00

Okay, so we all want to save a little coin. One of the wonderful things about cloth diapering - besides saving some SERIOUS money - is that the diapers retain their value quite well, so you can sell them once you're done with them. This has an obvious benefit for you once you're all through with the diapering stage of your parenting days, but if you're just getting started, well, then how can it affect you now?

BUY SECOND HAND DIAPERS!

** Second hand diapers are not the same thing as "seconds." Second hand means that you will be the second parent to own them and put them on a bum. "Seconds" refers to second-rate manufactured new. Sometimes diapers are qualified as seconds because the wrong kind of elastic was used, one leg casing snaps up smaller than the other leg, the snaps are not spaced evenly, etc. But often, it's for something as small and insignificant as uneven stitching. In any case, even though they usually don't come with extras like inserts for pockets, seconds - when you can find them - are a STEAL. If you come across some in a brand you love, buy as many as you can afford to help round out your stash. Many diaper websites have an email list you can sign up for that will notify you when they have a large enough stock of seconds to put on sale. You can also visit www.fuzzibunzseconds.net to find a good selection of exclusively FB seconds.

I know a lot of people are kind of ooky about putting "used" (ahem, I prefer "pre-loved") diapers on their child. To be honest with you, I kind of was at first too. But remember, you can always, always, always strip your diapers. You can also boil them, although some diaper manufacturers don't really recommend it. Or you can add 1/8 cup of regular bleach to a full load of diapers.

It helps if you can buy pre-loved diapers from someone you know, or diapers that you can look at before you commit to purchase them, like at consignment sales. I got some wonderful Kissaluvs fitteds for Miss R at a baby and kids consignment sale in town a month or so ago. Or if you're shopping on Diaper Swappers, you can probably ask around other members for how reputable a seller is. Unfortunately, Ebay outlawed selling used diapers a few years ago, but I often find listings on Craigslist.

When you're buying pre-loved diapers online, be sure to look for labels like "EUC" or "EEUC" that will let you know that the diapers are in tip-top shape. This means that they shouldn't have any stains or smells, and no excessive pilling or obvious wear and tear. VGUC would, to me, mean that they may have some obvious wear and tear or pilling, but no stains and still had a lot of life in them. Beware of anything just labeled "UC." The diapers may be so worn that the elastic, velcro, or snaps have outlived their usefulness, or the diapers may have been ill-cared-for so long that even stripping them wouldn't make a tremendous impact.

That's my .02 about pre-loved dipeys. I definitely love mine!

Alphabet Soup

2008-10-21T19:42:00.000-07:00

Okay, if you're on the front end of looking into cloth diapers, the acronyms might just be driving you up the wall! I'm going to try to break down the most common ones for you (and the ones I'm most likely to use). If you don't understand a "definition", just click the hyperlink. If the "definition" is a product brand, the hyperlink will take you to an online retailer where you can purchase that item.

AIO - All in One diapers
AI2 - All in two diapers
Aplix - not an acronym, brand name of high quality velcro designed to withstand the rigors that cloth diapers will face over their lifespan
BG/BGs - BumGenius brand diapers
BN - brand new
BSWW - Bummis Super Whisper Wrap brand covers
CD - cloth diapers
CPF - Chinese prefold diapers
DD - disposable diaper (also "sposies")
DS - Diaper Swappers
DSQ/DSQCPF/DSQIPF - diaper service quality, Chinese prefolds or Indian prefolds
EBF - exclusively breast fed, used to refer to how well diapers hold in super runny breastmilk poo
EC - elimination communication
Etsy - not an acronym, Etsy is an online forum for people to sell handcrafted items
EEUC - extremely excellent used condition (when shopping for pre-loved diapers)
EUC - excellent used condition
FB - FuzziBunz brand diapers
Fluff/fluffy - not an acronym; just a nickname for a cloth diaper
FS - for sale (may see on DS)
FSOT - for sale or trade (may see on DS)
FT - for trade (may see on DS)
GUC - good used condition
HH - Happy Heiny brand diapers
HP - Haute Pocket brand diapers
IPF - Indian prefold diapers
ISO - in search of (may see on DS)
KL/KLs - Kissaluvs brand diapers
KLO, KL1, KL2 - Kissaluvs fitted diapers, the number denotes the size
Nappy/nappi - not an acronym; just another nickname for a cloth diaper
NB - newborn, refers to size of diapers
OB - organic bamboo
OBV- organic bamboo velour
OC - organic cotton
OCV - organic cotton velour
OS - one size diapers, adjustable usually from 7 to 35 pounds
OT - off-topic; you'll see this on Diaper Swappers and occasionally on this blog!
OV - organic velour
PP - Paypal, used to let shoppers know what form of payment a seller will accept; seen on DS, etsy, and hyena cart
PPD - postage paid, when shopping for pre-loved or WAHM diapers means that price includes shipping
PUL - polyurethane laminate, the water"proof" layer of AIOs, pockets, or covers
RME - Revolution Money Exchange, a payment method like paypal, used to let shoppers know what form of payment a seller will accept; seen on DS, etsy, and hyena cart
SAHD/SAHM - stay at home dad or mom
TT - Tiny Tush brand diapers
UBCPF - unbleached Chinese prefold
UBIPF - unbleached Indian prefold
UC - used condition (when shopping for pre-loved diapers); may have stains or need stripping once you receive them
VGUC - very good used condition
WAHM - work at home mom, in diapering refers to a diaper made by a mom and not a company

Endorsement...

2008-10-19T21:37:00.000-07:00

...for detergent!

I HEART CHARLIE'S SOAP!

Seriously, this is by far my favorite detergent to use on cloth diapers. I paid $18.99 for the 128-load bottle of liquid laundry soap at EarthFare. So, if I use 1 oz of detergent per wash load every other day (15 loads per month), this $19 bottle will last me about 8 and 1/2 months! $2.24 a month! Or, $0.15 per load! Holy cow!

(While I'm at it, let me throw in here that when we started using cloth full time, our utilities bills went up a combined total of about $10 per month, or $0.67 per load. So with the utilities and detergent that's a grand total of $0.82 per load, or $12.30 per month to fully cloth diaper two 100% diapered children. So, after initial investments to purchase the diapers, we spend less than $13 a month to keep them in cloth. So when it comes to money, yes, you do spend a little more on maintenance for cloth, but I don't know anyone with even 1 child in disposable diapers who's spending less than $13 a month on them!)

The diapers smell fresher, look brighter, and require less rinsing because Charlie's Soap is extremely low-sudsing. Woo-hoo! Charlie's Soap makes a wide variety of cleaning products, so maybe I'll check those out too. They also make a powder laundry detergent, but I prefer liquid in general anyway. Also, as I've said before, some CDing mamas have speculated that powder crystals that may not fully dissolve in the wash water can become lodged in microfiber inserts, causing skin irritation and yucky smells, so I tend to think that liquid is a better choice for diaper laundering.

Not really about diapers...

2008-08-22T11:45:00.000-07:00

...but it's totally related.

Guys, please stop reading.

Family members, please stop reading if this will ook you out.

Only ladies left, right?

Awesome, let's proceed.

So in thinking about the excessive cost and wastefulness of disposable diapers, it's only natural to begin thinking about femenine hygiene products. I mean, how much money will you end up spending on tampons, pads, and panty liners throughout the course of the menstruation phase of your life? Let's just say that you start at age 13 (although many girls start younger), and complete menopause when you are 55 (although for many women, it's older). That's 42 years! 504 months! 504 cycles! Let's say you spend an average of $7/month for tampons and pads. For these modest estimates, you're looking at $3528, plus tax and inflation, so by the time we're finally done, it could be closer to $5000.

What if you have children? Let's say you have 3 children, and don't begin cycling again until each of your children is 9 months old (due to breastfeeding, hormonal changes, whatever). That's 18 months of no cycles per 3 children, or 54 fewer cycles. You're still looking at $3150 before taxes and inflation.

All of this is to say nothing of the waste! We all probably flush tampons, but we're not supposed to. And pads are about as biodegradable in a landfill as disposable diapers are. Don't even get me started on the chemicals and bleaches used to process these things, which you are then either putting immediately next to or even inside your body. And we do all these things without even thinking twice about them, because I did for years, too.

Well, no more for me!

I just got my Diva Cup in the mail today and I am so excited! I read my directions, washed it, and started using it right away. (I'm not a weirdo, I'm having my cycle right now.) It was so easy to use and it's totally comfortable! I don't even feel it, just like a tampon.

I love that all I have to do is empty it into the toilet, wash it, and re-insert throughout my period. It eliminates the unnecessary waste from tampons and their applicators and pads. It's far healthier than products which strip all the natural moisture out of you, and it has practically zero incidence of adverse health issues, like toxic shock syndrome. Also, at just $32.50, it cost less than 5 months' worth of disposable products, and I can use it until menopause.

Some women use cloth menstrual pads instead, which is fine for women who prefer external protection. I personally don't, so the cup is the route I chose. I still use disposable panty liners as a back-up, but will probably eventually switch to a cloth one that can be laundered with the diapers.

Anyway, I'm pumped! I never even knew this was an option before I started using cloth diapers, so I figured that there might be a lot of women who will be interested, but likewise wouldn't even think twice about it.

*** EDIT TO ADD: I found a website that sells the diva cup for much cheaper. I wish I had found this website before I purchased mine, but it would thrill me to know that I saved some other ladies some money. Check out www.luckyvitamin.com.

Do I really have to...?

2008-08-19T20:30:00.000-07:00

...use special laundry detergent?

Well, yes. Here's the reason: most commercial laundry detergents that we commonly use on our clothing are loaded with all sorts of brighteners and enzymes. These chemicals leave residue on your clothing, which is what makes them look super clean and smell nice after laundering. The problem with using this type of detergent on diapers is that it, well, leaves residue. Initially, the diapers will smell lovely, like Gain or Tide. But as the residue builds up, your diapers may become less absorbent. Even worse, the enzymes that make clothing smell nice make urine-wetted diapers smell abominable. Almost to the point of being intolerable. Seriously. When M's diapers started getting build-up, even the wets smelled like poopy diapers. So. Very. Disgusting.

My favorite detergent for cloth diapers is Allen's Naturally. I tend to think it's better to use liquid than powder, especially if you have microfiber inserts; powder detergent may not fully dissolve and the granules can become lodged in between fibers, irritating your baby's skin. I am currently not using Allen's, because no one sells it locally, and the shipping on it is very expensive since the bottles are heavy. I'm using Planet instead, because I can buy it at EarthFare or Kroger here in town. When I run out, I plan on trying out Charlie's Soap. Here is a great detergent chart.

...avoid using diaper rash creams on my cloth diapers?

Yes and no. This seems to be a point of major contention among cloth diapering mothers. Some people tend to think the major issue is that some creams may stain cloth diapers, which is true, but I kind of figure, "Isn't my child pooping in these things? Who's so fired up about stains?"

So the real issue is that most diaper rash creams are designed to coat your child's skin, preventing it from being in constant contact with moisture. That is, they are designed to repel moisture. Doesn't it stand to reason, then, that the creams will also coat the cloth diaper and cause it to repel? This is not something you want happening with the one thing whose sole job it is to prevent pee from getting everywhere.

Some moms say it's okay to use rash creams that don't contain petroleum or petrolatum (i.e., Vaseline, Aquaphor). Burt's Bees Baby Bee rash cream, for example, does not contain either of those two ingredients. But I figure, I'd rather be safe than sorry, so any time one of my children absolutely needs rash cream, I use a disposable liner in between their skin and the cloth diaper. For the record, my favorite rash remedies are Triple Paste or Resinol with a little cornstarch powder or Caldesene powder sprinkled on top. (** Use Caldesene very sparingly on all babies, and especially girls, as it is talc based; prolonged exposure to talc in females has been associated with cervical, ovarian, and uterine cancers.)

However, I try really hard to avoid using medicinal rash treatments at all. The very best things for a rash are plain water, dry air, and sunshine. When R started to show a pretty bad case coming on a short time ago, I bathed her bottom in clean water and let her air dry. I then put a plain prefold on her without a cover and put a "wet pad" under her. As soon as she went, I changed her; we kept this up as long as she was awake. When it's warm enough (and you have a private enough place to do it in), letting your baby's rash be exposed to sunlight is one of the most healing things you can do for it. Also, if you're breastfeeding, breastmilk is good for anything that ails baby; hand express a bit, rub into rash area and let air dry.

...strip my diapers?

Absolutely not. Because it requires a great deal of water and a pretty serious chunk of time, I never strip my diapers unless they really truly need it. Diapers only need stripping when they have super excessive build up, or odors that just won't seem to go away after less extreme attempts to get them clean and fresh. When diapers are thoroughly clean, coming out of the dryer they should smell like nothing at all.

As I've said before, I occasionally use 1/8 cup of bleach in the wash cycle along with the detergent to help get my diapers smelling cleaner and fresher. This is such a personal thing to so many moms, as many have quite strong feelings about chlorine. You could also try using Bac-Out directly on the diapers before pailing.

I just bought some SportWash today in the camping/hunting section of WalMart. It's been highly recommended by other cloth diapering mamas due to its ability to get rid of stinkies. The bottle also claims to rejuvenate waterproofing, which is an added bonus. The bottle was about $5 and gets you 18 loads. Some people may use it every single time, but I'm going to stick with my normal wash routine and just use it once or twice a month to get the diapers super clean. I couldn't believe how fresh it got my diapers after just one wash today!

...go whole-hog with cloth diapers?

Heck no. Some people say cloth or bust.

I think your feelings on this are going to vary a whole lot with your original reasons for choosing cloth. Are you hardcore crunchy and organic, and refuse to allow a single unnatural chemical or fiber every touch your baby ever ever ever? Well, then you probably won't have an "in-case" package of sposies in your child's closet. Like I do.

I switched to cloth for partly green reasons, but mostly to save money. I use sposies on the kids at church, because our church nursery is so crowded (and I think they may have issues with thinking that cloth diapers are somehow unsanitary) that they just won't change my child's cloth diaper. Part of it is that they don't know how, too. Sure, I could carry them to church in cloth and have them page me when one of my kiddoes needs a new nappy, but the whole point of having childcare is so that I can worship unhindered. Using 6-8 sposies a week per child (Sunday am and pm, Wednesday morning Bible study) isn't going to break the bank for us.

Also, sometimes I don't get to the laundry in time, and it will be 30 minutes before bedtime and the kids have no clean nighttime diapers. Paper diapers it is! Or like when M had a stomach bug a few months back. I mean, come on people. Diarrhea. Every 2 hours. For three days. I literally couldn't keep up with the laundry, plus I was having to feed my newborn right after washing out poopy diapers in the toilet 12 times a day. There is not enough Germ-X in the world...

...buy expensive diapers?

NO. No. How can I be more emphatic while typing? No, you don't have to spend a fortune on fancy diapers. You certainly could buy a stash of expensive Blueberry pockets at $33 apiece. Or you could go to WalMart, buy 2 or 3 packages of Gerber prefolds, 2 packages of vinyl diaper covers in each size, and a package of pins and cloth diaper your child for less than $40 total.

You can make your own diapers, if you're crafty. Any fabric will do! Go to the thrift store on half-off day and stock up on old flannel men's shirts, t-shirts, towels and washcloths. Sew them into prefolds, or even into just plain long soaker pads to place into diaper covers.

I will never understand people who say they don't have the money to cloth diaper; they just don't realize the full cost of using disposables full time! Most times, these people have only looked at FuzziBunz, BumGenius, and Happy Heinys and just feel like they can't afford to start. Cloth diapering is a front-loaded investment, so it's scary in the beginning, but pays off in huge ways over time.

Laundry Day

2008-08-10T19:16:00.000-07:00

As I said before in my post about how many cloth diapers you need, I do laundry every other day. With two little ones in diapers, that adds up to quite a bit by the time I get to the laundry room! So here are my answers to laundering-related issues.

So what do you do with the dirty diapers until you wash them?
Okay, what I do with the dirty diapers has changed a lot in the past week. You really just have to play around and see what works for you. We have what is called a hanging diaper pail by Fuzzi Bunz. It just hangs on the doorknob to the linen closet right beside the toilet, so it's actually quite convenient. Some people have actual pails, but I don't have space for one. You could use a diaper champ or diaper genie with or without a plastic bag in it. You can also use a lidded trash can. However, be advised that plastic absorbs smells! If you're going to get an actual pail, I highly recommend getting a stainless steel trash can.

Now, up until about a week ago, I was just rinsing out all the diapers and dropping them in the pail until laundry day. Most of the time the pail didn't smell, but it got to where the diapers smelled kind of funky, even right after washing. Some people don't experience this problem. I would definitely advise starting out by using the dry pailing method, and if you don't have any issues, don't worry about it. If you do start having skunky diapers, then you could try this.

But, since I started having problems with smelly dipes, I have switched to a mostly wet pail system. I'm using our washing machine tub as my wet pail; I fill it up 3/4 of the way and add 1/4 cup baking soda. You can buy special diaper pails, potty pails, or lidded trash cans to use as a wet pail if you wish. But, you will need to take some serious precautions if you have a wet pail in the house! Children and pets can drown in extremely shallow water! Keep your wet pail closed with a locking lid, and keep the door closed - and locked when possible - to prevent any kids or pets from getting into the area where the wet pail is kept. That's the main reason I'm using my washing machine tub as a wet pail - our laundry room is in the carport, so it's outside of the house altogether, plus I keep the lid closed and the laundry room door closed.

So after each diaper change, I take all the elements of the diaper apart - cover off, inserts out, etc. Anything that has a PUL coating gets rinsed out in the potty and stored in the hanging diaper pail in the bathroom. All non-PUL-coated materials (prefolds, fitteds, microfiber inserts) go straight outside to the washing machine tub, no pre-rinsing necessary for wets. Poopy diapers, of course, get washed out in the potty as detailed in the diaper changing entry.

There is an on-going debate about whether or not to soak PUL materials. Some people say it will compromise the waterproofing capabilities, others say no. I'm kind of afraid to so I don't, but I know people who do it with absolutely no problems.

What about when you go out of the house?
We cloth diaper about 99% of the time, whether we're at home, running errands, going for day trips, or even traveling on vacation. As long as there's a washing machine, I use cloth. I have what is called a wet bag with a zipper to put in my diaper bag. It's actually made of the same waterproof material as the diapers, so I just stick the dirty dipes in there till I get home or to my destination. No wet stuff or stinky in the diaper bag.

What about routine washing?
I wash every other day, and as I've said before, it's quite a load by that time between the two of them! Everyone develops their own wash routine over time, and mine is constantly evolving to achieve the cleanest diapers possible. Here's my current routine:

Carry the hanging diaper pail out to the washing machine, dump contents on top of soaking diapers and inserts. Push to submerge and soak for 20 minutes. Spin out tub and follow with another cold rinse.
Hot wash with 1/2 the recommended amount of an enzyme-free laundry detergent, like Allen's Naturally, Planet, or Charlie's Soap. Allen's is my favorite, but no one sells it locally and the shipping is expensive since the bottles are quite heavy, so now I'm using Planet (4 tbsp per diaper load).
Two cold rinses to make sure all the detergent rinses out.
I hang them to dry when weather permits and I have the time, otherwise I dry them in the dryer with a few clean, dry towels to help cut down on drying time.

Special Occasion Cleaning

Probably about every 6 to 8 weeks I "strip" my diapers to get them really super clean. You can do this as a regimen, or wait until you start to have skunky diapers. Here's how I strip my diapers:

Start with diapers clean, but not necessarily dry. Boil a huge stockpot of water and pour over diapers as the wash tub is filling with hot water.
Add anywhere from 2 tsp to 1 tbsp of Dawn original dish washing detergent. This helps to cut grease build up on the diapers from your child's skin, lotions and oils, and give them a fresher scent.
Rinse on cold rinses until you no longer see bubbles in the rinse water. This could take as many as 5 or 6 rinses! Make sure you're using cold water for your rinses.

Alternately, some people don't do this (for a wide variety of reasons), and I certainly DO NOT recommend doing it more often than I say here, but I also use 1/8 cup of regular bleach in a regular wash routine with my diapers once every 8 weeks. I kind of do it halfway in between stripping to buy myself a little more time before I have to strip them again.

If you have stains that won't seem to go anywhere, try wetting the diaper, putting lemon juice on the stain, and placing it in direct sunlight until dry. Repeat as necessary until stain is completely eradicated.

For that matter, sun drying is an extremely energy efficient and effective way to brighten the look and freshen up the smell of all diapers. I strongly advise that you sun-dry your diapers whenever possible.

Time for a change...

2008-08-10T18:53:00.001-07:00

What about diaper changes?

I use cloth wipes since I'm already washing stuff anyway. You can certainly buy cloth wipes from the same websites where you purchase your diapers, but there's no need. You could go to WalMart and buy two 12-packs of baby washcloths. I used some old receiving blankets - everyone always has too many of those anyway! For some, I just used the flannel in a single layer, and for others I used one layer of flannel and an old baby washcloth - cut and serge the edges or zigzag stitch as close to the edge as possible for a single layer wipe; for a double layer wipe just sew the edges together. To make it look even more finished, you can sew it with the right sides together for all but about 2 inches of one side, turn it right side out, then topstitch around all edges, folding the unsewn portion of edge inward.

I make my own wipes solution using 3-4 cups boiled and cooled water, 2 tbsp baby oil, 2 tbsp antibacterial soap, and 2 tbsp rubbing alcohol. I mix it in a one liter water bottle and pour over wipes in an empty sposie wipe tub, or store in a spritzer bottle and spray directly on baby's bottom, using dry wipes to clean up at changes. Store any unused wipe solution in the fridge. You can also use 3-4 drops of essential oils to make it smell soooo yummy - my favorite is lavendar oil - but they are a bit expensive.

I like storing my wipes wet in an old sposie tub, because then they're all ready. However, I do have a small spritzer bottle I found in the travel section of...guess where! WalMart! When I'm leaving the house to go run errands or hang out with a friend, then I carry some wipes dry in an old travel sposie wipes case (the flat kind), and the tiny spritzer bottle. But after you use the wipe, you just toss it in the pail with the diaper.

That's all well and good, but I mean, what about the poo?

Definitely the least delightful part of cloth diapering. When a baby is exclusively breastfed, you can actually just dump the diaper - poo and all - in the washing machine without rinsing first. Breastmilk poo is 100% water soluble. Formula poo - at least in R's case - is like peanut butter and paint. Not so much fun.

Solid food poo is usually pretty easy to just dump in the potty. For the sticky ones, I dump what I can into the potty, pull the insert out (if it's a pocket), and then dunk the diaper in the potty and use the cloth wipe from the diaper change to kind of wash out the poo. (Hooray for yellow rubber gloves!) Some people use a rubber kitchen spatula to scrape off the diapers, but you certainly wouldn't want that spatula to end up back in the kitchen drawer by mistake! If you choose to use one, you could store it by standing it upright in the toilet brush holder. Some people swear by diaper sprayers, but we don't have one. They're definitely a perk, not an essential, unless you have low-water level low-flow toilets. Then they might be necesary.

However, we do have and use rice paper liners, also called flushable liners. Also a perk, and not an essential item. But I love them. All you have to do is pick the liner up and drop it - poo and all - into the toilet; it all flushes down. (If you have an older toilet that isn't super powerful, or live in a home with older plumbing, you might better let it sit for 5 minutes or so before flushing.) They're really convenient for poos, and also for the rare occasions that I need to use a rash ointment on the kiddoes. (You shouldn't use petroleum based creams or ointments with cloth diapers, because it will coat the diaper and reduce the absorbency.) You can see in the pic below that they're kind of transparent. It kind of looks like tissue paper, but it's actually quite strong. Some people have tried to sub out toilet paper or gift wrapping tissue paper, but that stuff will just fall apart as soon as the child pees.

How many diapers do I need, and how much is this going to cost?

2008-08-10T12:05:00.000-07:00

This is just not a simple question. First of all, how many children do you have in diapers? How old are they? - newborns go through many more diapers in a day than a 2 year old does. It also may be determined by what style you choose to go with: if you have an 18-month old light wetter who goes through 6 sposies during the day and just one at night, and you wanted to order BumGenius or Happy Heinys pocket diapers, you could order as few as 8 or 9 and do laundry every day. If you have a heavy wetter, you'll definitely need to plan to change your child's cloth diapers more frequently than you would change a sposie, even with a high-quality pocket. Then, of course, if you want to do EC (elimination communication), then you'll probably want to go with prefolds and plan to have enough to change your child's diaper every single time s/he wets.

Well, for me, the decision of how many diapers to purchase came down to how often I wanted to be doing laundry. You can buy a ton and do laundry less often, but keep in mind that if you have more than 16 to 18 diapers in your washing machine, they won't get as clean. I do laundry every other day, and it's quite a load by then! Here's some sample stashes, to give you an idea. You certainly don't need as many as I have, and of course there are people who have more. I know of one woman who washes diapers once a week, but on her diaper laundry day, she does three separate loads in that one single day. That's just what works for her, but I imagine that with 2 kids in diapers, she must have to have quite a large number to make that schedule work!

I switched my son to cloth at 18 months. I started out with 5 daytime pockets and 1 nighttime pocket. With my heavy wetter, it wasn't even enough to get through one whole day! I had to use sposies to bridge the laundry gap. Once I decided I wanted to stick with it, I ordered 8 more days and 1 more night and was able to go down to laundry every other day as long as I was carefully watching my stash to make sure I wouldn't run out. Then my sweet mother-in-law bought us 5 more, so going every other day was no sweat. So for an easy every other day routine with a heavy wetter, I had a total of 18 daytime diapers and 2 nighttimes. Like I said, though, he's a heavy heavy wetter, and it's not uncommon for him to poop 4 or times a day, so we change him pretty frequently. (Now he's grown out of 4 of those, so we have just 14, but still not a problem to launder every other day.)

For my daughter, I planned to cloth diaper her from the beginning. I knew I would wait until her umbilical stump fell off, because you're not supposed to cover it with a diaper or let urine touch it, because it could become infected. Also, things rubbing across it can irritate it. Anyway, my stash for her that fit her when she was a newborn was INSANE: 13 kissaluvs fitteds size 0, 10 each newborn, standard infant, and infant prefolds (total of 30), and 6 MonkeyBuns fitteds; also 8 or so covers/wraps. Needless to say, I never even came close to running out by laundry day! Now that she's older, I'm still using the infant and standard infant prefolds, and I have a combination of 3 different brands of fitteds, also a few pockets and AIO hybrids that I use for naps and nighttime (total of 20 prefolds, 8 fitteds, 2 pockets, 2 AIO hybrids).

A good rule of thumb if you're going to go the PF/flat/contour/fitted route is that you'll need 2 to 3 covers for every 10 to 12 diapers. Covers don't need to be washed after each use unless they get poo on them, just wipe them out with a wipe and let them air dry. I usually rotate between 2 covers all day, then toss them in the pail at night.

Using prefolds and covers is by far the cheapest way to cloth diaper. I don't have a great money breakdown, but I can link one here and tell you that you WILL save money over using sposies! The average yearly cost for disposable diapers and wipes is $1000 per child! Take into consideration that the average child in sposies does not potty train until somewhere between 36 and 48 months, and you could be looking at close to $4000 PER CHILD!! Conversely, you could order a prefold package for just $250 and cloth diaper your child from womb to potty. Even if you decided to go exclusively with a name-brand pocket, like BumGenius One-size (7 to 35 lbs), and wanted 18 total to wash every other day (or even less frequently), you could order them in a bundle deal and spend just $300! Buy a 3-pack of receiving blankets from WalMart, cut them into wipe-sized squares and make your own wipes solution at home to save even more money. However, it's a front-loaded investment, so it may not initially feel like you're saving a lot. And CDing is like just about anything else - if you want to spend a lot of money, you sure can find things to spend it on.

Another way that PFs save you even more money is because especially if you get DSQ PFs, they literally last forever. The trouble with pockets and AIOs is that eventually, the PUL will break down and not be waterproof anymore. If you have a younger child in diapers, or you're planning to have more, replacing every pocket and/or AIO will be quite expensive. The average pocket is around $18, and the average AIO is around $22. But if you're only replacing 4 or 5 covers (at anywhere from $7 to $18) in each size, that's obviously a lot less money. Fitteds will last a long time too, but probably eventually the elastic would wear out, the snaps might break or not hold as tight, or if you have fitteds with velcro closures the velcro wears out.

So, to wrap it up, how many do you need and how much is it going to cost? Sorry, but there's no short answer there. How many you buy will be determined by the style of diapering you choose, how many children you have in diapers and how heavy a wetter each of your kids is. How much will it cost? Depends on what style, brand and how many you decide to buy. The best thing I can advise you to do is to determine first how much money you can spend, then start looking around and writing down prices of different diapers. I had a huge grid worked out that showed how many prefolds and covers, how many fitteds and covers, and how many pockets I could buy for a predetermined amount of money. (Sorry, I don't have it anymore, or I would happily share it here.) Then I figured out how often I would need to launder with each mock stash, and decided from there. I will say that I thought I would prefer one-size pockets, so that was my first purchase. However, after diapering for a while, I felt more confident and wished I had gotten either prefolds or fitteds instead.

Diapering Styles

2008-08-07T23:10:00.000-07:00

There are, in my opinion, four main diapering methods: prefolds with covers, fitteds with covers, pockets, and all-in-ones (AIOs). I do them all, so I feel like I have a good perspective on all of them. (Some people also use flats or contours, I don't but I'll do my best to explain what I know of them.)

Prefold Diapers

Now, when I say "prefold" I'm referring to the diaper service quality (DSQ) Chinese or Indian prefolds (CPF/IPF) that you can purchase online or from natural parenting stores. They come in lots of different sizes, dimensions, and thicknesses (newborn, infant, standard infant, regular, premium, toddler). The Gerber cloth diapers at WalMart and Babies R Us will work, but they're not nearly as absorbent, nor will they last as long. To the best of my knowledge, a flat diaper is just like a prefold, but I've never tried one because they don't look as absorbent. Maybe they're trimmer? And a contour diaper is a PF or flat that is shaped like a sposie, so it doesn't require folding but does (in most cases) require pinning. Prefolds are easy to use, easy to pack to take along with you, and CHEAP. The downside is that they're not terribly absorbant when used by themselves, so you'll end up changing diapers more frequently. Another benefit to prefolds, though, is that children can feel when they're wet, so if you use exclusively prefolds, your child may pottytrain younger! (Who wouldn't love that?)

Anyway, the actual folding is really not that difficult, although it takes a little practice. You absolutely don't have to use pins unless you just want to. I use a snappi instead; click here to see the full manufacturer's directions for the snappi. There are really only 3 ways that I use a prefold: the bikini twist, the diva fold, and the no fold method. I have illustrated instructions for each using my son's favorite teddy bear, his "Mama Bear," so named because I made it for him. (I know it's kind of janky looking, but it was my first time using a sewing pattern ever, so please make fun of it to yourself.)

Folding techniques

The bikini twist is great for smaller babies or mobile babies because it cuts down on the bulkiness between their legs. Start out with the prefold (PF) under baby's bottom with the edge in back lined up with baby's navel. Twist the bottom portion (going towards baby's feet) over once. Pull up over belly, fold down top edge if necessary (not pictured). Snappi or pin. Tuck in edges at thighs. All finished! Put a cover on.

The diva fold is great for more active babies, because you can actually do it with the baby on their back or tummy (ideal for when babies are wanting to crawl away, at least you don't have to keep flipping them over). Start with the PF under baby's bottom (or tummy) with the edge lined up with the navel. Pull bottom edge up, tuck top corners around baby's back. Pull bottom corners around and snappi or pin. Tuck edges in, push as far in as possible to give extra absorbency in the middle. All finished! Put a cover on.

The no fold is great, even if it is a slight misnomer. With this method, there's no pinning or snappi-ing involved, and you can also pre-stuff your diapers for daddy, parents, babysitters, etc. Start by folding the PF into thirds the tall way. Place into cover seam side down, tuck PF under the front flap of the cover as shown (not all covers have a front flap, but most of mine do for the express purpose of the no-fold method). Slide stuffed cover under baby's bottom, close and fasten just like a disposable (sposie).

Fitted Diapers

Next cheapest is the fitteds and covers method. Fitted diapers come sized (based on weight and/or baby's measurements), adjustable, and one-size adjustable (OS). They also come in a variety of materials. You can buy prefolds that have been sewn into fitteds, or you can sew them yourself. These are relatively cheap, and you have the same downside of needing to change more frequently. There are also bamboo and sherpa, which are quite absorbent, but don't provide a "stay-dry" feeling. Then, of course, there are fitteds that are lined with polyester fleece or suedecloth, both of which will draw moisture away from baby's skin, providing a stay-dry feeling.

For newborn diapers, I used mostly Kissaluvs size 0, which are pretty adjustable. Here's a pic - you can see in the first one how many snaps it has, the fold-down for the umbilical stump, the diaper snapped to the absolute smallest setting beside my hand for size comparison, and then snapped on the largest setting. She wore these from day one until she was about 3 months old.

I also use - and love - a work at home mom (WAHM) fitted diaper. The company name is MonkeyBuns diapers and I found her on eBay. I kind of took a chance, since I didn't know anything about them, but it really paid off! (For the record, she makes fitteds, covers, all-in-ones, and - I think - all-in-twos.) She offers the option of sewing a suedecloth or fleece lining. She also offers both velcro and snap closure; this fitted has snaps and a fleece lining.
All prefolds and fitteds require a cover of some kind. (I use primarily PFs and fitteds on my younger baby, although I have a few pockets and AIOs that I use for her long nap and overnights.) I use only PUL covers (poly-urethane laminate), but lots of moms use wool since it's a more natural fabric and ironically, it breathes better. Here is a pic of a simple, cheap Prorap cover.

Pockets

Next is pockets. One major advantage to using pockets is that you can pre-stuff them (I do it when I'm folding the clean diaper laundry), and then they're ready to go on just like a sposie during the diaper changes. The biggest disadvantage is that you have to stuff the darn things! Pockets come sized and in OS. I use exclusively OS pockets on my son at this time, since that was all we purchased when we made the switch to cloth when he was 18 months old. Regardless, a pocket diaper consists of a water"proof" outer layer, such as PUL or heavy duty fleece, a feel-dry inner layer of microfleece or suedecloth, and a pocket in between for stuffing with absorbent material. You can stuff a pocket with anything - soakers and inserts designed especially for that purpose, a prefold, even an old dishtowel if it's laundry day and you're in a crunch! Most specially made inserts are made of microfiber. You can pick up what's called a "bag of rags" in the automotive department of WalMart for about $5; it has a dozen microfiber towels/rags in varying sizes. I stuff most of my son's pockets with PFs since it was cheaper to buy pockets without inserts, but the picture below is with brand name inserts. Here you can see the empty pocket in the diaper, the inserts I use, the pocket stuffed, and the diaper ready to go on. This is a Happy Heinys one-size (OS) diaper; it's adjustable from 7 to 35 pounds, give or take based on a child's build.
Here's an empty Haute Pocket diaper so you can see how the adjustability works. Here it is laid out, then snapped down to the shortest rise setting, then all closed up. With the rise unsnapped, it fits my two year-old. With it all closed up, like in the last picture, it fits my four-month old. Pretty cool, huh?

All-in-Ones

Next are the All-in-One (AIO) diapers; these are sized diapers. Some companies make a one-size AIO, but I can't even imagine how that would work. It seems like it would be really bulky on a smaller baby! Anyway, an AIO is just what it sounds like - the absorbent material and waterproof layer all in one piece! The obvious advantage here is ease of use; these are handy to have to put in the diaper bag when you're headed out for a playdate, or to leave behind with grandparents or babysitters. The biggest con of an AIO is the drying time - they take forEVER to dry! There are actually a few subcategories here under the AIO umbrella; there are true AIOs, AI2s, and AIO pockets, also known as AIO hybrids.

A true AIO is just like my original description. Here is a DryBees AIOs.

An AI2 is an AIO that has an additional soaker sewn on the top layer of the diaper at one end, so it's like a flap. This gives you extra absorbency without additional drying time. I don't have any, though, so no pic.

An AIO pocket or hybrid is a diaper that can be used as is, it is a true AIO with a sewn in soaker, but it also has a pocket for additional stuffing and absorbency. Here is a Thirsties AIO Pocket, hopefully you can see the sewn in soaker inside the pocket.

What do you do about nighttime?
My kids are both long sleepers and heavy wetters. You can buy special diapers and inserts specifically for nighttime use. For my 2 y/o I use a DryBees fleece nighttime pocket diaper; the fleece breathes, which remarkably keeps him pretty dry. And the pocket is very generously sized, so we just stuff the diapers with more stuff. :o) I use a toddler-sized prefold, and occasionally toss in a microfiber insert along with it. Here is my son's big fluffy nighttime bottom.

Welcome and Why I'm here

2008-08-06T11:57:00.000-07:00

I originally wrote an entry on my family blog about the general basics of cloth diapering. There was a really positive response, and I quickly realized how much there was to know! It can be a really overwhelming undertaking when you first begin to do your research. There's so much to know, all the terminology and abbreviations, different styles (what's the difference between a flat and a contour?!?), how many will I need?, how do I wash them once I get them? Aaugghh! It's enough to drive a woman crazy!

So here I am, just a stay at home mom who navigated it all by herself and wants to help you now! I'm a busy lady, so it will take me a while to get through all the things that I feel like are important, so please be patient with me, but feel free to ask questions too!