Adventures in Cloth Diapering

Homemakin'

2012-01-24T15:07:00.000-06:00

We are back online after our move over the Christmas/New Year break! The move was hectic, especially as it was over the holidays, and it was also challenging because we moved to a smaller place. We were, however, able to fit everything in. We left lots of books in boxes to be stored in closets, and stacked our closets to their limits with all our extra stuff. I've been amazed at the spaces I was able to come up with for storage. Our little two bedroom duplex is cozy, though, and has plenty of room for us. The kids and I are comfortable being here all day, and that's what matters the most. The kitchen has very little counter space, but it's large enough to hold our table and the hutch, which helps both with the lack of cabinet space, and the lack of counter top. It's a bit easier for me to get lots of cooking done because the kids can be right in the kitchen with me, doing their own things at the table while I work. All their drawing/painting/coloring things are kept in the hutch, so I can quickly pull things out for them to keep them occupied. We were fully adjusted to the new space by the time Jared had to start the semester - his FINAL semester (God willing). :)

Now that Jared's back to university, we have more of a routine going. Well, in theory we have a routine....we should be officially starting that tomorrow, at the very latest. :) One of my resolutions is more serious home cooking, and yesterday was a landmark for me. I made my first ever turkey, and my oh my, was it delicious! Jared and I both agreed it was one of the juiciest turkeys we've ever had, and the gravy was to die for, too.! I was so happy about it! And, now we have lots of meat left over for turkey pot pie, or enchiladas, or skillet turkey tettrazini - whatever we want! Woohoo! What I also did, was make turkey broth. I picked all the meat off, then threw all the turkey bones (and carcass) into my slow cooker. I chopped up and tossed in carrots, celery, onions and garlic, and added some pepper and apple cider vinegar. I cooked it on low overnight, and oh my goodness, it's so yummy! It's taking a short stint in the freezer at the moment so I can easily take the fat off the top, and then I'll salt it and save it for soups and stews. I feel like quite the Susie Homemaker today! Lol. I wasn't really thinking last night as I was cleaning up, and I threw away all the left-over turkey bits I'd used to make the gravy. If I'd thrown that in the slow cooker as well, I can only imagine how much dreamier the broth would taste. *sigh* There's always a next time, I just gotta find some turkey on sale....

I know this is my first post in over a month, but I'm hoping to keep up several times a week now. I've just recently left facebook as a way to save my sanity, and also to cultivate my family time and be able to share it more fully here. As we enter this final stage of Jared's doctorate, I'm getting more and more excited about the adventures to come, as we really set sail with his career, our family and our life goals. So exciting!! In the mean time, I'll be writing about life on the home front, as we live it now.

St. John Bosco, pray for us!!

When can I do it all???

2011-12-16T22:17:00.000-06:00

I have so many things I want to do right now....planning, organizing, sorting, reading, etc. I feel like I'm so behind! I'm certainly behind on keeping a blog. :)

Jared brought home prize money from Montreal, so I was finally able to make some book and Montessori purchases. I'm so excited about this, and so excited to get things sorted and organized so I can get the kids going on stuff, but I feel like I can never find the time right now! I tend to want to have it all perfectly planned out as far as organization, storage, and how, when and where I'll implement things. The trouble is, I never have the time to just sit down and figure that out, or at least when I do get to sit down, everything I "need" to get done seems like work, and all I want to do is sit. This just means that all the great things I've got stay put away! When I finally just got out the paints for Sophia one day, she had a blast, and I didn't have anything worked out about it. When she was done, I quickly organized it, and put it away. Ba-da-boom, done! I really just need to do that with everything else, but it seems like all the other things require so much more time....

Also, I feel like I'm never able to research more ideas for things to do with the kids, especially Montessori activities. I feel very limited in creative ability - I like to write, and I can do that creatively, but all things crafty are beyond my scope, unless every little thing is plotted out for me, with detailed descriptions. :) That is something I would like to spend more time on, just so I can be more of a "natural" (or learned natural, rather) at coming up with my own Montessori or crafting ideas.

I guess I'm mostly just feeling a bit overwhelmed by all the fabulous things that I'm just now discovering. I have so many books around (at least 30 from the library) that I want to devour this very moment. I find I keep renewing and renewing them because I'm never finding the time to read them. And yet, I do find time to do lots of reading sometimes. Probably I've overwhelmed myself by checking out or borrowing every single book I want to read, all at the same time! I also have so many things online I'd like to be reading - particularly blogs and articles full of wonderful ideas. And, I want to start doing more family traditions, especially following the liturgical year. There's also the marvelous book, Nourishing Traditions, that I'd like to dive into so I can get started on...well, nourishing food traditions.

To top it all off, we'll be moving into a much smaller (and cheaper!) place in the next week, so that really throws a wrench in the organizing and storage department. Patience is something I am ENDlessly working on. I want to do it, and I want to do it/have it all set NOW. *sigh*

Sophia's really coming into her own, and is at a great age where she can do so many things, and just devours anything we give her...I just want to offer her more! And, if I'm more organized about it, I could get a lot of my own things done, that I'm always wanting to do, while she's doing her own fun things.

At least tonight Jared took the kids to his parents' house, but I stayed home. I really needed the time to myself; it's been so crazy around here, and will continue to be crazy until January 1st. I feel like the craziness never ends. I need to sort through things, pack, and figure out what won't fit (because we're moving to a smaller place), so I can start getting rid of (or selling) things. I also need to start reading so I can get a bunch of these books back to the library....

AND, Christmas is next weekend!!! I feel like I haven't even enjoyed Advent!!

Oh, geez, when and how to fit it all in.....

Diapering extras and caring for your cloth diapers

2011-09-20T21:08:00.000-05:00

I'd like to add a few more things about diapers before I retire this subject for a while and focus on the rest of our life! :)

Some extra things that are wonderful to have in the old diaper stash are diaper doublers and fleece liners. Doublers are wonderful for night time (and nap time if you have an extremely heavy wetter). The doublers I use are the Stay-Dry Hemp Fleece Doublers (found at Babyworks.com). I like to call them miracle workers. My children tend to be the wettest in the morning. If I don't use a doubler for his morning nap, Dominic almost always leaks out of his Best Bottoms. These particular doublers have a fleece lining on top, which wicks moisture away from baby's bottom, leaving him feeling dry while his diaper is wet. Although I want my kids to feel the wetness of their diapers (hoping this discomfort will encourage them at potty-training age), I prefer them to be comfortable at nap/night time so that we all get a little more sleep. :) You can buy fleece liners by themselves if you don't want the added bulk of a doubler, or if you already use a fantastic diaper that doesn't need any more absorbency oomph, but could use that "staying dry" power.

I know I mentioned cloth wipes before, but I'll mention them again. They are amazing! They will change your life! They are easy to use! They are amazing! Whoops, getting redundant. :) Seriously, though, cloth wipes will make your whole cloth diaper change that much easier. I generally only need one at a time, unless the diaper is particularly offensive, in which case I'll use two, and sometimes three. I am disposable-wipe deficient, so I tend to use about 5-8 disposable wipes on a poopy diaper. Cloth wipes are a quick rinse with a diaper sprayer.

I want to say something about 100% cotton diapers. If they're made well, they rock! The Cloth-eez prefolds we have from Green Mountain Diapers are the most amazing prefolds I've ever experienced - so absorbent! Cloth-eez has fitted diapers (called Work Horse diapers on the Web site) made out of the same stuff as the prefolds. I will definitely be buying those for the next baby. Green Mountain Diapers is a fantastic Web site, with lots of great info on diapering.

If you have hard water in your house, you may have issues with odor building up on your diapers. Hard water doesn't rinse as well as soft water, as we discovered in our current place. I couldn't figure out why my diapers still smelled funny, even after I had washed them JUST as I was supposed to, JUST like when we lived in Michigan (with soft water) and had no odor issues. There are different ways to soften your water, such as adding Calgon Water Softener to the wash. You can also add vinegar to the first rinse to help break down the detergent build-up, helping it to rinse out.Whatever the case, when you have diapers made from synthetic materials, THEY WILL RETAIN ODOR. It's infuriating. Polyester is the worst, I swear! (Like in the microfiber terry used to make your pocket diaper insert.) So, if you use 100% cotton, it changes everything. They rinse cleaner/easier, and odor build-up is basically a non-issue. Just another reason why I love Cloth-eez diapers at Green Mountain Diapers. Those diapers never smell when they come out of my dryer!

When laundering, be sure to NEVER bleach your covers - it will ruin their waterproof-ness. Don't put your PUL covers in the dryer - it will also lead to the eventual ruin of their waterproofing properties. :) If you rinse your cloth diapers with a sprayer, there is no need to soak them in a pail before washing. Simply rinse, wring, and throw them in a dry pail. When we first began we soaked our prefolds. Looking back I think, why? But, live and learn.

Oh, and be sure to use proper detergent! You can look online for all the recommendations, but you don't want to use detergents with all the added fancy stuff, because those will cause build-up, odor/soap retention, and rashes. Ouch!

Here are a few Web sites I really enjoy: Babyworks.com, Nickisdiapers.com, GreenMountainDiapers.com, SweetBottomsBaby.com, and DiaperPin.com (this one is essential for reviews of every possible diaper, cover and accessory out there).

Well, that's about all I have to say on diapers for now. PLEASE post any comments or questions you might have - I think everyone who cloth diapers is always interested in hearing what everyone else uses or has used, and their positive or negative experiences with varying products.

Diapers - a more thorough look. :)

2011-09-20T20:05:00.001-05:00

We've experimented with multiple kinds of cloth diapers since Sophia was born over three years ago. I mentioned before that we began with Chinese prefolds and Bummis Whisper Wraps. This system just didn't work for us. They leaked, and I'm not sure if it was just the covers or the diapers, but it was maddening. I had several different types of diapers that my sister-in-law had sent me, so I tried all of those. I spent hours on the phone with Babyworks trying to trouble shoot my diaper issues. In the end, after trying several things, we went with Bum Genius 3.0 pocket diapers. Now, these diapers are fairly expensive, but we only needed 18 of them because they're a one-size diaper. Very handy! We had to buy special detergent, but that one bottle lasted us the life of the diapers (two and a half years!). So, considering all costs, still WAY cheaper than disposables, not to mention much better for the environment.

When Sophia was 11 months old I was pregnant with Dominic. I knew I couldn't use her diapers for him, so I started researching again. As much as I had loved my Bum Geniuses, the velcro was just awful. After one year it was fading, catching everything in the dryer, shrinking, and not fastening. I decided to go for snaps this time. I ordered three of Kissaluvs organic hemp/cotton fitted diapers. With these I ordered to wool covers from Royal Buns. Both the diapers and the covers were/are excellent. The Kissaluvs are super absorbent, and the wool covers, of course, are amazing.

Let me just quickly tell you about wool covers. Wool is naturally antibacterial/antimicrobial, meaning it doesn't harbor bacteria or retain odors. Because of this, it only has to be washed once or twice per month. PER MONTH!!! That is, if it doesn't get soiled. Yes, you must generally hand wash. However, you put it in the sink with a little water and lanolized wool detergent, squeeze it a couple of times, and then let it soak for at least 15 minutes. Take it out, squish it with a towel, and lay it out to dry. Not very complicated, and honestly not too time consuming. Wool is the most amazing thing to use at night; with a good wool cover you are basically guaranteed a leak-free night, even with just a so-so diaper. In the morning, if the cover is damp inside and smells of urine, flip it inside-out, lay it out to dry, and by the evening, no wetness, no odor! It is AMAZING. If you do smell urine at the end of the day, it's time to wash the cover. Also, wool diaper covers are not like commercial wool. Commercial wool tends to be itchy and generally irritating, but wool diaper covers are untreated and soft, soft, soft. This also means they are incredibly breathable (read: not hot), so they can be worn in winter AND summer.

So, the Kissaluvs organic fitteds and Royal Buns wool covers were/are fabulous. I use them still, and love them.

When Dominic was born we used the Kissaluvs fitted diapers in size zero, along with a Marvel one-size cover. This was also an awesome system. Those diapers are the most amazing newborn diapers I have ever experienced. The explosive breastfeeding poop never even escaped the diaper!! Now, they are not the most absorbent diaper, which gave us some frustrations at night. However, if I had had a newborn wool cover, it would have been fantastic. The Marvel one-size covers are great, but when you have a newborn baby who nurses every two hours, you have lots of very wet diapers, so it's difficult to find a better cover than wool for night time. So, in the future, I will buy a couple of newborn-sized wool covers to go with my Kissas.

When he outgrew the size 0 Kissaluvs, we switched to an entirely different system - Best Bottoms. I sold my Marvel covers (which I'm still sort of kicking myself for) to help cover costs. However, Best Bottoms is a pretty economical system - you can find them at Nickisdiapers.com. I like my Best Bottoms, but we had issues with sizing and night time leaking for a good 8-10 months. During this time I bought a bamboo fitted diaper, a Gen-Y Universal cover, a Kawaii bamboo pocket diaper, and Cloth-eez prefolds from Green Mountain Diapers.

The Bumbo bamboo fitted diaper is pretty cute and absorbent, but also has a pretty convoluted fold-up snapping system. Paired with the Gen-Y cover, though, it is pretty awesome. Also, the Cloth-eez prefolds from Green Mountain diapers are AMAZING. They are wonderfully absorbent. They're 100% cotton, which means they don't retain odors. (More on this later.)

The Kawaii pocket diaper is also one of my favorites. It is an inexpensive pocket diaper (compaired to others), but is super cute, and really absorbent! I might consider buying a few more of these in the future. The one we have is a bamboo one with a soft, gray outer cover. So cute!! You will be amazed at how well these work, especially for the price!

So, I used all these other things to get us through the nights until Dominic was done nursing at night and therefore didn't get nearly as wet in his diaper. I still use the Kawaii regularly and the prefolds with the Gen-Y cover, but the Bumbo bamboo diaper is out of circuit because the snaps are impossible to deal with on a squirmy toddler boy.

This post is certainly long enough - more later. :)

Finally conquering the blog scene...and working on peace

2011-09-10T22:44:00.003-05:00

Well, I have a new look to the blog...finally. It took me quite a while to get a feel for how to set everything up so it would look both cool and symmetrical. That was actually quite a pain to do, setting up the symmetry. Anyhow, I'm at peace with it now, and excited about the new look! :)

This week I've been trying really hard to deal with anger and impatience, especially with my sweet kiddos. Life is stressful right now as Jared's busy, busy, busy with the semester in full swing, and I'm "semi" preparing us for a move - to a new place - that will be happening in December. We really love this house that we're in and its location in Lawrence, but the rent is ridiculous, so we're embracing frugality and moving into a two-bedroom place...somewhere.

Anyhow, I struggle, as I'm sure many people do, with impatience. Too often I snap at the kids when it's really not about them, it's about me. So frustrating. I've been reading lots of great stuff about using gentleness in the home, especially regarding learning (from homeschooling to simply reading aloud with the kids), and that is certainly helping me deal with and try to conquer my impatience. I've been reading lots of John Holt (this obviously has more to do with education than anything else), but it really transfers to how I handle the kids, as well. He was a smart man, that John Holt. Along the line of education, I've also been reading Suzie Andres' two books: Homeschooling with Gentleness, and A Little Way of Homeschooling. Excellent, excellent books, full of endless encouragement. I've also been reading lots of St. Therese, and I'm trying to get into An Introduction to The Devout Life, by St. Francis de Sales.

I'm part of a fantastic Catholic Unschooling group on Yahoo, and one of the women there wrote about doing a "study in anger," trying to control her own anger so that her family and home would have more peace. It inspired me, and so here I am, working on that very thing. :) I'm also reading Parenting with Love and Logic, which is a pretty great parenting book, I think, and all about keeping the peace, mutual respect, etc.

I've noticed for myself that if we can keep the house in general good order so there's basically just light picking up to do, I'm more at peace. If I'm up before everyone, I'm more at peace. If I've prepared breakfast ahead (by way of baking the night before, or just have things prepped for fast cooking), I'm more at peace. And, most importantly, if I set aside some personal prayer time, or at least pray with Jared for a while, my whole day goes better, and I am more focused on my kids, my temperament, and am more able (or willing?) to look to God for help. So why, then, do I not keep this up consistently? I like to blame it on the fact that Jared's not around as much, so I'm more tired, less able to plan ahead, etc. Hmmm, seems like an easy cop-out. :) As you can see, I am still a work in progress. *sigh* I turn to a prayer from St. John of the Cross:

"O blessed Jesus, give me stillness of soul in You. Let Your mighty calmness reign in me. Rule me, O You, King of Gentleness, King of Peace."

Our Cloth Diaper Experience - an Overview

2011-09-01T21:18:00.003-05:00

At first I wrote a HUGE post on this....but it was just too much in one post, so here are some *quick* essentials from my point-of-view. I'll do more detailed posts later.

Sophia wearing her cloth diapers at about 15-16 months old

Diaper pail - a MUST. Ours is the Economy Diaper Pail from Babyworks.com. It locks in odors, it's large, and it's super easy to clean. Either I poor in a little Bac-Out and water, wipe and rinse, or I'll just rinse it out with water and set it out in the sun for a bit. I know lots of people who use wet bags for this job, but I prefer the pail - it never leaks!

Diaper sprayer - the Potty Pail. We started with the mini shower sprayer sold through Babyworks, but our current place has hard water, and it killed that sprayer (actually two). We now have the Potty Pail, and oh. my. gosh. It's fab. The pail means less spill, and no bending over (a God send when you're pregnant!). Also, it can double as a utility sink as there's a hole in the bottom and a stopper on a chain if you need it. The actual sprayer component is great, too. It's the most powerful sprayer we've seen. You can order the pail and sprayer separately - so if you choose to forego the pail, I highly recommend the sprayer on it's own.

Wet Bag - a must for travelling. We use Planet Wise. It's pretty good, although it will leak at the zipper if it gets too full, and it does smell if there's a poopy diaper in there. As far as I can see it's the most recommended brand, which is why I got it, but I'm always keeping an ear open for a better one.

Wipes - Kissaluvs terry wipes. I LOVE our cloth wipes. Every time I use a disposable wipe, I curse myself as I have to use SO MANY to clean up a mess. With a massively poopy diapers, I'll use two cloth wipes at most. I would easily use five or six disposable wipes on the same diaper. Maybe it's just me - maybe I just have a disposable wipe deficiency. I also have a small wet bag so I can carry wet cloth wipes around in the diaper bag.

Diapers and covers - AAAGGHH!! :) We've used several, so I'll try and keep this as short as possible. In the beginning we were going for inexpensive, so I chose Bummis Super Whisper Wraps and Chinese pre-folds from Babyworks. This system did not work for us - it was a lot of work, and we had lots of leaking with the Bummis. After doing a trial with different fitteds, pockets and all-in-ones, we chose Bum Genius 3.0. These were FABULOUS until the velcro wore out. Also, after two years they were wearing thin and started leaking. I ordered two wool covers from Royal Buns to put over the Bum Genius at night - what a life saver!!

When Dominic was born we had Kissaluvs fitteds in size 0, with a Marvel one-size cover. Excellent, excellent newborn system. Those diapers are amazing - the poop never even escaped the diaper (read: the cover was never soiled)! When he outgrew those we switched to Best Bottoms from Nicki's Diapers. They are SUPER trim, and fairly absorbent, although we had issues when Dominic was younger with sizing and leaking - we no longer have these issues. He's 17 months now, and we haven't had a leak since before he was 10 months old.

We've tried several different things, and I'm SO INTERESTED in other cloth diapering systems....so I'll write more soon. :)

The real point of this blog....

2011-07-30T15:16:00.000-05:00

Although the title of this blog is "Adventures in Cloth Diapering," that will most likely not be the main focus. We do cloth diaper, and because the next 15 years or so will probably be filled with infants/toddlers in diapers, I've chosen this title. I intend, however, to cover all areas of our life on this blog, all things that are of the moment and important to me, so no worries for those of you seeking information on cloth - I'll have it!! My husband and I are discussing the possibility of a family blog, but for now this is my domain - I'm thrilled to actually be "out there" posting on a blog. :) Please be patient with me as I learn the quirks of this - I have no experience with blogs/Web pages, and am sort of a slow learner when it comes to all things technological. I'll try to keep things interesting, but for me, this is mostly a public journal - it's simply fulfilling my desire to share my thoughts and experiences with the world, while getting some real feedback on the various things I ponder. While I hope to have many active followers/readers, I'm here for me right now. Hope that makes sense! All right, more to come later....

A beginner, be gentle!

2011-07-27T16:10:00.000-05:00

I have stayed away from blogging for so long that I sort of think there should be a party for this. :) I've always thought, who wants to read about such randomness, but then I realized that lots of people look for lots of various things on so many different blogs. So, here goes! Hopefully I can figure out all these quirks of setting this thing up. It'll be a while before it looks like what I want it to. I have no idea how regular I'll be with this. I've spent the last year and a half revelling in being a stay-at-home mom, and I'm JUST NOW beginning to come up with a daily schedule that will help me get in all the things I'd like to accomplish. If I had a live-in babysitter, so much more would get done....I'm enteretaining offers. :) Anyhow, you can see a bit about me in my profile, so I won't go into all that here. Suffice it to say, I'm a happy person, and excited to be "blogging!"