Friday, December 7, 2012

Happy Friday!

Happy Friday, y'all!  It's been a strange couple of weeks for us, but things are looking good for the next few weeks.  I can hardly believe Christmas is in like, 3 weeks. That's crazy. 

To celebrate the end of another week...here's the cutest baby in the universe belly laughing.  You're welcome, interwebs.




Here's another to keep us thankful for the non-snowy weather we're having in Minnesota this year...


Have a good weekend!!!!

Thursday, December 6, 2012

Catching Crap

This post is about diapers.  Specifically, cloth diapers (dun dun duuunnnn!).  I know, I know...you probably didn't think I was that kind of mom. And I'm not. At least, not really.  I'm not a crunchy, granola type, I promise. I am, however, the type who tries to save a little cash here and there.  I kind of have one foot on the whole cloth-diaper-make-your-own-baby-food-extended-breastfeeding-cosleeping bandwagon.  On the other hand...er, foot...I am all about making each day as easy as possible, for me, my husband AND our baby.  That means we use some disposable diapers, jarred baby food, and bottles when we need to. 

The totally great thing about modern cloth diapers is that they are SOOOO EASY!  And I don't even have any of the fancy schmancy diapers...yet.  That's right.  I splurged today.  Weird that I am excited to splurge on diapers.  Poop catchers. Baby britches. But I''ll get to that.  First...a rundown of our current diapering situation:

1.  Green Mountain Diaper prefolds. 


We have a few dozen of these, in the yellow edge and the red edge sizes.  They're fantastic.  You can fold them up and put them in a cover, you can pin or snappy them on under plastic or wool pants. Either way works really well and is very economical. They wash up really easily with the rest of our laundry. You can double them up for overnight or heavy wetters. They make fantastic burp cloths, dust wipes, and changing pads.  They are kind of all-purpose and I always have a few in my diaper bag.

2.  Thirsties diaper covers

This is not a picture of my son...but it shows off the cover really well.  It's just a simple cover that uses velcro.  You pop a pre-fold diaper inside - folded in thirds and just set in the cover - and you're done.  No pins or snappy.  Nothing fancy.  They are also very economical at about $12 each.  We have 4 right now, I think.  I only change the cover if the edging gets wet or if it gets dirty with a dirty diaper, otherwise, we rotate through and I just hang it up to dry and use it again.

3.  Wool shorties, from smallwonderwoolies on Etsy


It took me awhile to think that this would actually work.  See, Mitch has slept consistently through the night since he was 5 weeks old.  Lucky, I know...please don't hate me...I had nothing to do with it!!! We had to use disposables at night since Lord knows I wasn't about to wake him up just to change his drawers.  Amy at Amalah.com pointed me in the direction of wool, and I'll never turn back.  This is the one we have and it's made from recycled wool sweaters.  I lanolized ours with some leftover lanolin nipple cream and it's awesomesauce. I pin a prefold on him stuffed with a couple of Green Mountain doublers and we're set for like, 12 hours.

So that's the rundown.  We use disposables when we go shopping, or go to church, or out for dinner.  So we really use quite a few right now...and Mitch is outgrowing his prefolds, so they're getting harder and harder to pin on him...so we use more and more disposables at night until I have the time/funds to order a new batch of prefolds for him.

And then!  Amy recently tried gDiapers.  I had seen them in the stores and wasn't sure about them.  The liners are disposable, so I didn't think that would be much of a cost saver for us.  Well, I did some research and read Amy's posts about them (including her most recent one) and realized that I can use them like a normal cover, stuffing them with a prefold and some doublers, but ALSO use the disposable liners when we're out and about or at grandma's house...or when mom is feeling lazy. 

 And they are so darn cute!  I love the fancy stripes...and I really wish they still carried the cute chevron print.  I love that one.  So I ordered the Starter Kit that includes two gPants (the cover and what they call the pouch - which is a plastic snap in liner) and a pack of disposable liners.  We'll see how they go, and I'll let you all know!  I can't wait to take some cute pictures of Mitch's cute little cloth bum!