One Plan for Cloth Diapering

If you're curious about cloth diapering, here's a blog post about one economical way to do it. I think it can be done for even less, but this blogger will give you a good idea of your savings over disposable diapers. (Don't forget the liners, which she doesn't mention.) Enjoy!

The Bigger Person

Jeff and I were talking at dinnertime about "being the bigger person" in a certain situation-you know, doing the right thing despite how the other person responds, etc. Jonathan, who listens to everything, said, "Well, Daddy is the biggest person in our family. He's a tiny bit bigger than you, Mommy, even though you're the same age. But it's kind of hard to tell."

I guess it should be easy for Jeff to "be the bigger person." :)

A Refreshing Visit

Lucas and Cherissa and their kiddos visited us last weekend as a part of their family road trip, and I'm finally posting the pictures that I have of our visit.

It was so great to spend time with them and see all of our kids enjoying each other. There is something wonderful about spending time with people who really know you and have known you well for a long time. We soaked in our time with these dear friends.

Maximus and Jonathan had been anticipating some heavy-duty Lego play, and they finally got to enjoy it! Here they are with hats and goggles, pretending to be Lego Space Police.

And here are all the kids enjoying the water table. It was barely warm enough, but the kids didn't mind a bit.

They loved it!

Cherissa and me

More water table time!

I found out that Grace is thrilled to be able to crawl around the patio, and doesn't put her discoveries into her mouth. Yay! She is dirty as can be, but thrilled to be outside. If you lived near us during Jonathan's babyhood, you might remember that he didn't like to get his hands dirty. Grace doesn't mind!

She got splashed in a big way. I'm not sure whether she was more mad about being cold or about being forced to come inside. I gave her a quick, warm, bath, and she was mad about being taken out of the tub, too.

But, she recovered quickly.

Dinner, minus Cherissa, who was taking the picture. It was as lively as you are imagining!

Grace got a reading lesson from Lucas.

I think that we were winding down for the evening at this point. I don't have any other pictures from the rest of the day, but we somehow convinced Lucas and Cherissa to spend the night with us. The boys slept in Jonathan's room, which they thought was fantastic, and we adults got to have time together once the kids were in bed. What a treat!

The moms and kids went to the park the next morning before Lucas and Cherissa had to get their family on the road.

I love the delight on the kids' faces. It was a delightful visit! Thank you for making us a stop, Lucas and Cherissa!

Milestone

Grace has figured out how to take bites off of the piece of bread, instead of needing me to pull off little pieces. Not bad for someone with two teeth. Appropriate, since her one real word (besides ba, da, and ma) is "bread." Picture a 14-month old saying, in a sweet, adoring voice, "bweh." Not adoration for the bread giver, but adoration for the bread itself. :)

The Climber

It looks like our girl wants to be the climber. As soon as she's strong enough, I imagine she's going to get herself into heaps of trouble.

I moved these little chairs shortly after this picture was taken. This half-wall overlooks the living room.

I don't even know what to say about this one...except that she loves the books and has no interest in eating the plants, so I'm thankful for that.

And yes, the Cozy Coupe's purpose is to help her climb out the window and up onto the ottoman. The Coupe will be going outside once the weather is a bit warmer anyway, so I don't have to worry about it...

Planning Summer Fun

For those of you with kids who are getting out of school or preschool, I thought you might enjoy this article on how to have some inexpensive fun this summer.

"I'm an Owl!"

Morning Hair with Daddy

The night before, I had given the kids baths right before bed, and I had also combed Grace's hair straight back.

Most mornings, Jeff and I go get the kids out of bed together, and he has usually already been out for an early-morning run. Here's what we found on this particular morning.

Her hair cracked us up. I couldn't get it to lay down completely until her next bath. It reminded me of this picture from last summer.

Still Smiling...

even after a big (deliberate) splash in the face from her brother. They both love the water table!

She Also Likes Glasses.

The Girl Who Yanks Out Hair Bows...

requests hats.

Hmm.

Well, I am a little embarrassed, but this seems to be an appropriate place for minor confessions, so here goes.

My son has a six-year molar. It's IN. I had no idea. Shouldn't I have noticed? Hmm. I guess I'll keep my eye out for the other three.

Horsey Ride

A friend of ours at church passed a rocking horse on to us because her grandchildren had outgrown it. Grace is enjoying it! Jeff caught this picture of her, and I love it.

Cars

Grace has discovered that she likes driving her brother's cars. She likes Chick Hicks in particular.

Brother and Sister

Getting them both to look at the camera at the same time was quite a challenge!

The Musical Instrument

Jonathan was pretty proud of this "instrument" he created out of the puzzle rack (empty because of the previous post) and utensils from the play kitchen.

A very serious demonstration.

The Price I Paid...

to get a little laundry folded.

Too Good Not to Share

From Jonathan, today:

"Napkins are helpful things. They might leave a couple stains, but I'm sure we'll take a bath later this week."

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"I'll have to check my mind to see if I remember how to do it."

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And, this conversation:

J: What's meconium?

Me: You mean, like, from the butterflies?

J: No, I mean that brown stuff you were eating.

Me: Ohhhhhhhh, that's Nutella.

The Cloth Diaper Post (Longest Post Ever, and Edited Already!)

You probably already know that we are a little odd, or unusual, or whatever, because we use cloth diapers. I have read that only 5% of babies in the U.S. are cloth diapered. Since most people don't cloth diaper, I get a lot of questions about it when friends realize that's what we do. I have intended for a very long time to post about this, and I'm finally getting around to it! (And if you don't want to read about poop or diapers, you can skip this post. :) ) Although it's not for everyone, cloth diapering has been very easy and not a big deal, at least for us.

My purpose in posting is not to persuade you that you should do this but just to answer questions about what we do. I'm sure I'll come back and edit my mistakes, so please bear with me. There are lots of moms more qualified to write about this, like Jamie, or Dana, or Leslie, or Dorothy, or Michele, or Aleasia, or...the list goes on. And, there are lots of easier and fancier and cuter ways to cloth diaper, but this is how I started, and it worked and was cheap, so I stuck with it.

Something I should mention, before I get into the details, is that technically, we're all supposed to empty solid waste from all diapers into the toilet, not the trash. I believe it's even illegal to put the solids in the trash, and disposable diaper packages used to include these instructions anyway. So, to me, since I needed to do the dumping no matter what, it wasn't that much more trouble to jump to cloth from disposables.

While I was expecting Jonathan, my friend Jamie, who had cloth diapered her three girls, gave me half a dozen Chinese prefold diapers, some liners, and a couple of Snappis. This is all I had when we got started. I was very nervous, and Jeff was very skeptical. When Jonathan was about six months old, I decided to give cloth diapering a try. I used cloth only in the daytime and washed my tiny stash of diapers each night. After a week or so, I realized it wasn't that bad! I bought a couple of dozen Chinese prefold (standard size) diapers on eBay as well as some more reusable liners, and I bought some vinyl pants at Wal-Mart, and off we went.

As Jeff says, "The liners are KEY!" I think these may be discontinued, but here's what I use. These are up against baby's skin. They look something like a dryer sheet, but they're very soft. They're washable. They keep the solid waste from sticking to the diaper. I never, ever swish a poopy diaper in the toilet like my mom had to. The contents dump easily into the toilet.

Here's what I lay down before diapering baby: a clean diaper and a clean liner.

Yes, this is a teddy bear. A much more willing model than my squirmy daughter. So I pull up the liner...

then fold the front of the diaper into thirds...

and bring it up to her tummy...

stretch out the corners...

The three ends of the Snappi have grippy teeth on them. I use the snappi to grip the diaper from one hip...

to the other.

Then pull the bottom of the Snappi down and grip, changing the "T" shape to a "Y."

Here's another fold that I have used a lot when the diapers are just a bit too big. It's called the bikini fold. I am not kidding. Pull up the liner, then twist the diaper once and pull it up to baby's tummy.

Snappi the same way. Easy.

Vinyl pants, or the cover of your choice, can go on top. The cover's job is not to contain drips, but to stop the diaper from touching baby's clothes. If a little of the diaper sticks out and touches clothing, the clothing will wick the moisture and you'll have a leak on your hands. I rarely have had this happen. Disposables leak for me all the time, but cloth hardly ever.

And here's how the diaper looks on a real baby bum, with big thanks to the bear.

We cloth diaper at night, too, but we need a doubler to make it all night. I just fold another diaper in thirds and lay it long-way in the middle of the diaper.

You might wonder about washing. There is a great article about it here. I have a five-gallon bucket in the nursery, and I put wet/soiled diapers in there until it's time to wash. My bucket holds about 20 diapers, and when it gets full, I wash.

First, I put everything except Snappis in the machine and run a rinse cycle. Then I wash the load in hot water using our regular detergent, with an extra rinse cycle at the end. Afterwards, I air-dry the liners and plastic pants but machine-dry the diapers. And that's it!

Also, I didn't start Jonathan on cloth until he was almost six months old, but I started Grace much earlier, when she was just a few weeks old. I bought infant size Chinese prefolds for that age. The only two sizes I have used are infant and standard.

And, I do use disposables sometimes. When we travel, it's not practical to bring cloth diapers, especially on flights. It is just too bulky for us to use up baggage space on cloth diapers, and if we're making a long road trip, our car doesn't have a ton of cargo space for that type of thing, either. But, we use cloth as much as we can, and we have the option to use disposables in a pinch.

I haven't started using cloth wipes because I have a big stash of disposable wipes that I got for nearly nothing. But, I have been considering making some cloth wipes out of Jeff's old undershirts. There is a good article on making your own liners and wipes here.

So, if you're still reading, I'm amazed, but I thought I'd write out the list of pros and cons to cloth diapers, as I see them:

Pros:

Cheap!

You can still supplement with disposables as needed

One purchase of 2-3 dozen standard diapers took Jonathan from age 6 mos. to potty training, and I'm using them again on Grace

Hardly ever leak

No guilt about landfills, chemicals, etc.

Cost is not a motivation for when to potty train

No midnight runs to the store

Minimal problems with diaper rash

Baby's pants never fall down :)

No worries about cost when I have a baby who poops 4-6 times daily (sorry, I tried to warn you about the poop factor)

Cons:

Diapers have to be changed a little more often

Some baby pants won't fit over cloth diapers (especially girl pants!)

They take slightly longer to change

A little tricky to teach other people to use

People think you're odd ;)

Please let me know if you have questions on cloth diapers you'd like me to post about!

Edit #1: If you do get curious about trying cloth sometime, I highly recommend finding a friend and borrowing a bit of her stuff to give it a try. Then you can try it without the financial commitment. If you don't have a nearby friend who uses cloth diapers, I would recommend buying just a very few items and washing them often until you're sure you want to go for it. And if you do decide to use cloth diapers, it's very easy to do so for under $100.

Remembering?

Grace: signs "milk."

Jonathan: She remembers when she was at the nursing age, I think.

A Typing Conversation

Jonathan wanted to type this morning. The green is what he typed and the red is what I typed. Hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

I have a big wheel;what I like:

I like cars/I like legos.

Whaaat do you like?

\whaaat do you like about this story?/

I have a sewing machine.

I like chocolate. I like kids. I like rain. I like red. I like naptime.

I like that you tell what you like in your story, and I also like that you used slashes around the last question in your story.

What else do you like?

What else do you want to ask? J

How doo you doo a happy face?J

Just Because They're Pretty...

and because they'll grow anywhere.

That Crazy Hair!

Our girl has straight hair that grows straight down, just like her brother. This has worked great with Jonathan. I won't confess how seldom I have to fix his hair since it lays down flat on its own (whether I like it or not.) With Grace, though, I'd like to let her hair grow out long with no bangs...and it hangs down in her eyes. She doesn't seem to care!

But, she won't keep anything in her hair. She yanks out just about everything. Occasionally, she'll keep a clip in her hair for a couple of minutes...

until she yanks it out, with a clump of hair, and hands it to me. And then asks me to put it back in. And then yanks it out. She pulls off headbands even more quickly. I haven't been able to figure out how to get one of those teeny rubber bands into her hair to make a teeny little ponytail.

I have a couple of infant headbands like this one from Gymboree that she'll keep in for awhile, mostly because they are super snug (maybe too small?) and she can't get them off very easily. Most of the time, he hair just hangs in her eyes. I'm afraid it will get worse before it gets better! Hair isn't all that important, but managing it is all new to me...