You can do a lot of changing in 10 years.

Ten years ago I had just had Zach. I didn’t put much thought at all into parenting stuff, and I didn’t put any thought at all into labor. I didn’t put thought into breastfeeding or circumcision or vaccinations or co-sleeping or, well, anything. I had just been trying to get through my junior year of high school and praying that he stayed in until I was done with the school year and that, please Lord, my water wouldn’t break while I was at school.

After he was born we did breastfeeding and bed sharing. Zach was such a sweet and easy baby and he made my first year as a mom such a breeze. I never put thought into if were going to be breastfeeding or not. I was raised seeing my mom breastfeed my younger siblings and my aunt breastfeed my cousins; it’s what moms did, so, I did. He was exclusively breastfed until I returned to school in the fall, and continued breastfeeding until he was about one. My favorite time of the day was coming home from school and nursing him. It wasn’t until years and years later that someone pointed out how odd it was for a 17 year old high school student to go into breastfeeding so unquestionably and continue doing it for a year. He also continued to sleep in my bed until right before Ryan was born.

Flats and Handwashing Challenge–So you failed it.

I have to tell you, as much as I hated handwashing the diapers last year, I loved the flats and handwashing challenge. I loved using the flats, but most of all I loved the feeling of accomplishment when I finished it and could say “Hey, I did that, and it wasn’t that bad.” All year long I looked forward to doing it again this year. I still had most of our flats (John took a liking to the red ones for kitchen towels) and I even went and picked up a new package of white ones. I had the fold that works best for Mason perfected since flats were my go to diapers during the summer last year for playing in the hose and on diaper laundry day (so that they could just be handwashed the next day so that I didn’t get stuck with a dirty diaper sitting around until the next wash day).

Our morning in earthLINGZ diapers

find earthLINGZ on Facebook and Etsy

First off, let me say that I wasn’t given this diaper to review. Heck, I didn’t even buy it to review it. I bought it because I wanted it. I’m reviewing it because I just feel like I have to share my thoughts on it. Oh and trust me, I have thoughts.

A little about earthLINGZ (pulled right from their Facebook page)

earthLINGZ Cloth Diapers are a new breed of cloth diaper... The world's first ALL Fleece Hybrid Ai2! We strive to provide the world with an all around better solution to diapering. Our one size fits all diapers are 100% reusable, affordable, and fashion forward! We combine snuggly soft polyester fleece with soft and eco friendly organic hemp fleece to make for the ultimate in dryness protection, and absorbing power, all while keeping bulky-ness to a minimum.

Not sold on them yet? Well, lets look at a little more from them:

Flats & Hand Washing Challenge–Day 7

Thank you Lord, it’s Monday, and that means that the flats and handwashing challenge is done, DONE, DONE!

And not only is it done, but I made it through the whole week without giving up or quitting! There might have been of irrational hatred of the washing of the diapers towards the end, but I didn’t let that slow me down. This morning, before I even made my first cup of coffee, I carted yesterday’s diapers to the bathroom, tossed them into the tub and washed those suckers, and then hung them out to dry. Then I sat down, smiled, and put a pocket with a disposable liner (because it’s poop time since he chowed down on some avocado last night) on Mason’s naked butt, and did a happy sigh for knowing that I wouldn’t have to deal with another poopy flat.

Flats & Hand Washing Challenge–Day 6

Did you know, I have had Live Writer open, and blank for like 3ish hours now. I never thought I’d say this, but I’m getting kind of tired about blogging about diapers. It’s all “Oh! This and this and this has happened! But wait, no, diapers. Mother freaking hole diapers.”

*big breath and straighten spine*
Today and tomorrow, then we’re done!

 

Flats & Hand Washing Challenge–Day 5

New cover! And hey, there’s a t-shirt flat under that cuteness.

 

Flats & Hand Washing Challenge–Days 3 and 4

There was no post yesterday because yesterday sucked.

Flats & Hand Washing Challenge–Day 2/Part 1

Today’s blog prompt:
How did you Prepare?  List your supplies, where you bought them, how you made them, how much you paid, etc.
Well, to start I didn’t buy anything for this challenge, because well, I didn’t have any excess funds to buy stuff. I gathered up about 8 of my husbands old shirts and cut them up following the t-shirt diaper instructions on Dirt Diaper Laundry’s website. Then I hunted up all of our cotton receiving blankets (all three of them, lol). That’s about it. Cutting the shirts up was a remarkably quick thing. I was sure it would be tedious and time consuming, so they all sat in a pile in my living room for about two days. Then yesterday on the drive into drop John off for work I got them all cut up, so in about 40 minutes.

Second post today!

I promise, most days of the challenge won’t be sporting two blog posts, but I wanted to go ahead and put up the end of today’s video and… my boys have news as well.

The boys got awards today!

Zach got Most Improved and his class voted on awards and he got Most Compassionate, Most Likely to be Injured or Bruised, and History Lover. Ryan got an award for having the highest Math scores in his class.

I’m feeling super proud of my big boys at the moment.

Flats & Hand Washing Challenge–Day 1/Part 1

gDiapers… Take Two

I started my cloth diaper journey with gDiapers, and then moved on to other styles. I was having some issues with getting a good fit on Mason, plus I had started getting an influx of pockets and fitteds from friends, all this led to me writing off the gDiapers. Now don’t get me wrong. I was pretty sure the issues I was having were pretty much my fault. At the time I had two gDiaper covers and that was it. Those suckers took a beating – washing everyday and probably not in the most conducive manner to keeping them going as I was just starting out. The velcro was getting unsticky, and rolling, and digging in to Mason’s back, especially when in his car seat. While I decided not to use what we had anymore, I hadn’t fully given up on gDiapers and had been following them on Facebook and debating trying them again (along with several brands I haven’t yet tried) when our tax refund comes in.

Thanks to a reason I’ll be mentioning in a later post, I was gifted with a $50 gift certificate to gDiapers.com. I decided since Mason’s been growing and all his diaper fits have needed adjusting since he started walking (and since the boy has mastered undoing snaps and velcro…) that now would be the perfect time to try them again. I went in with the mindset that I really hoped they would work for us, because I really am digging the whole velcro being where Mason can’t reach it idea. Also, I’ve been moving away from pocket diapers during the day, and I knew from past experience that Mason’s fitteds, other inserts, and prefolds all work well with the gDiaper covers (known as the gPants).

I took my $50 gift certificate and bought two covers (genius blue and taupe) and some of their cloth liners. (more on liners at the end of the post). I got the email Thursday that it was all shipping and the package arrived yesterday morning. I quickly ran the covers through a wash and slapped one on Mason’s bottom just in time for his nap.

The blue cover did awesome all of yesterday during the day and evening. No leaks through naptime. No leaks or irritation through the long car seat ride to pick John up from work, or going to the bank, or going grocery shopping (meaning he was in that cover/fitted combo for roughly 4.5/5 hours – some of our pockets can’t cut it for the Friday craziness). It did not however make it dry all night – BUT – that one might not be the covers fault.

Over the time that we have been using cloth diapers I have found that Mason requires a very specific insert setup and type at night. It wasn’t until I was getting Mason set up for bed last night that I realized all of Mason’s bedtime inserts were in the dirty diapers that I forgot to wash that day. In all likelihood, a wet diaper failure was pretty much guaranteed. I plan to try the gDiapers again tonight with his nighttime inserts.

This morning I put Mason in the second cover, this time with just a prefold inside (as opposed to yesterday at nap and while out I used a fitted and insert) and it lasted great all morning, and he’s still in it – not with a prefold – right now while he is napping.

All together – I think I’m definitely liking the covers again, and so long as Mason doesn’t figure out how to take these off, I’ll be getting more (I love their colors!). Nighttime success or failure won’t really change my mind seeing as how I have the Sunbabies for nighttime use, and as it took forever to find out what actually would work on him overnight, I’m not really looking to change that.

Cloth liners – I can’t really give a good review on those since he hasn’t actually gone poo yet.

I was in no way asked or given anything for this review. I just figured since they were doing so well that I’d come on here and tell that my opinion on them has improved.

Like this post? Well, make sure that you go and vote for us on Top Mommy Blogs!

The super fun thing about cloth diapers.

Is not that they make super comfy dryer seats when clean and dry.

Though, admittedly, Bella and Mason do LOVE climbing in the dryer and sitting on the clean diapers… me, no, I don’t think I could ever love cloth diapers enough to sort of just chill on them. No. Ick. Even clean. I don’t just go and chill in the dryer on my undies.

No, the super-duper fun part of using cloth diapers is this…

When the wee one does a huge, massive gag worthy poop – talking about a poop that takes 8ish wipes to clean and two people to change him so that one person can hold his hands so he’s not trying to grab his boy parts that are covered in poo – that you really wish you could just throw everything and all of it away, but you can’t. And why can’t you? Oh yeah, because you use cloth diapers… and you don’t throw those away. Good for the environment my ***. The environment of my home suffered. Seriously. We’ve had four kids, and John has always helped with changing bottoms and even he was grossed out. His reaction “Oh God, can’t we just bag it all up and throw it OUT!?”

We now know that the combination of breast milk, lasagna, garlic bread, cheerios, and yogurt does NOT make for a delicate aroma when they come back out.

But the super fun part?

Before I remembered what all we had been eating I spent the whole time I was wiping Mason’s bottom, and then cleaning off the diaper wondering what the heck my boy had eaten that was so full of tomatoes. Then I remembered. And then I gagged a little.

Easy Not-So-Bland Chicken & Gravy

This is actually my grandmother’s recipe – before you go and start thinking I came up with it.

Yummm.

This is a simple, yet very yummy and not bland, recipe for making chicken and gravy in the crockpot and it takes literally 5 minutes to prepare.

Ingredients:

• 4 boneless skinless chicken breasts
• 1 can chicken gravy
• 1 can cream of chicken soup
• 1/2 cup of water
• 1 teaspoon ground black pepper
• 1 teaspoon onion powder
• 1/2 teaspoon rosemary
• 1/2 teaspoon thyme
• 1/2 teaspoon garlic powder

Directions:

• Combine everything except chicken in a small bowl (or in a 4 cup measuring cup if you’re like me).
• Pour half of mixture in crockpot.
• Add chicken.
• Pour other half on top of crockpot.
• Cook until chicken is done (low 6 hours, high 3 hours)

See. So simple, and so much more flavorful than the usual chicken and gravy that uses canned stuff for the gravy. And it is so easy. I didn’t even completely thaw out my chicken for it. I just grabbed my whole bag of chicken out of the freezer and threw it in the fridge over night, so everything was still half frozen.

And…

Yesterday we got in a new package of diapers from a good longtime friend from JustMommies. We now have a very modest and respectable little diaper stash going.

Just another cloth diaper post.

It really is addictive to blog about cloth, isn’t it? I never got before why the bloggers I follow who used cloth blogged about diapers so often, but I now totally get it. It’s like, you see how awesome they are, and you just feel compelled to share the wonderful news with everyone.

(Mason saying “good morning!” after waking from his morning nap)

I have two reasons to share a cloth post today.

The first, is well, um, ewwww. If reading about poop or pee squees you out feel free to skip.

Last night Mason went to bed early, about 6:30 early. I had just thrown all his dirty diapers – including cover – in the wash a little before. They were still washing and he was in the rare at home disposable. We’ve gone to cloth 100% at home, even nights, since he started sleeping through the night. Nights in disposables were making mornings filled with pee and poop. We found one of his fitteds with with a prefold under a Thirsties cover worked wonders and kept everything where it should be. Anyway, it wasn’t until I was going to bed that I realized that a. he was in a disposable and b. I never took the diapers out of the wash. I grabbed 2 disposables for night time changing (in hopes that I could change him without waking him) and prayed they would do.

One, he didn’t sleep. And two, the disposable were an epic fail.

He talked – very loudly – almost all night long. He woke not long after I got in bed so I moved him to the bed with me and prepared to nurse him back to sleep. (I changed him first – pee bomb #1) He just didn’t want to go back to sleep. He talked and talked and talked. And if we didn’t respond he talked louder and louder and louder until he was yelling – in a happy way mind you – and flailing about. At about 3 we gave up. We changed him again (disposable pee bomb #2 – because John never started the dryer like he said he would…) and just stuck him in his bed where he happily switched his attentions to the frog on the wall over his bed, not that we ended up getting much sleep that way either. At 7 John came in to wake me up since him and the boys were leaving. He looked in at Mason and said “Oh ****….” which Mason and his blankets and his bed were covered in. Mason apparently had pee bomb #3 AND a poopy blow out. His bed was covered in murky yellow liquid. It was gross. And took  f o r e v e r  to clean.

Moral of story – never let all diaper covers be wet in the wash at once, and if so, remember you have those busted and shot gdiaper covers you can put him in instead. (Which is what he went straight into once he was all bathed and clean and he napped in while his diapers finally went in the dryer.)

REASON #2 – In case you skipped the poop and pee reason.

A comparison of 48 hours of cloth to disposables. I showed the exact amount comparison, but don’t forget to mentally add 2-4 more disposable diapers for night time changes.

That’s diapers I don’t have to re-buy. Just for TWO days.