Since I started cloth diapering, I got to thinking more about the toys I give D to play with and buy her. I looked around her room one day and saw a lot of plastic with flashy lights. I'm trying to move more of her toys to wood.
In comes Melissa and Doug! They offer cute, quality wooden toys at very reasonable prices. And the best part is you can find them anywhere! I have a Toys R Us, Two Targets and Two Walmarts along with G Wilikers and Treehouse Toys (the local toystores) all within 30 minutes of my house. Also Carters carries a few Melissa and Doug toys in their stores too!
I love giving their wood puzzles as gifts. Great quality and there are a whole bunch of different ones to choose from! My nephew got this Pirate Ship as part of his christmas present.
D is a music lover and when I stumbled across Melissa and Doug's Learn-to-Play Piano I fell in love. We have a little laugh and learn piano but it sings songs when you push a key and she likes it a lot but I thought she needed the next step up.
We love this piano! Gramma surprised us by ordering it for us and it showed up not two days later. D was napping though, so I opened the box expecting at least SOME assembly and to my surprise nothing was required of me other than cutting the cellophane. Now the blue bar with the letters that you see in the picture is just a piece of cardboard, so I took that off to save for when an older kid comes to play. It also came with a little songbook that you can use with the cardboard bar to play songs!
Danica loved it! She likes banging on the keys and then banging on the top to hear the different noises. It sounds almost like a music box, which I like a lot better than the recorded noises of her electronic piano. It's a bit smaller than I thought it would be but D seems to have no problem with it. She will go into her room on her own and sit down and play a song.
Good for older kids too! We had my neice and nephew over (9 and 12) and they were playing around with it too! I'm glad that D will be able to use it for quite a few years. I have no concerns that it won't hold up that long, it is VERY sturdy! I don't think D will be able to break it.
My absolutely favorite part though, is that it has no batteries, no electronics, it's a quality piece and it requires imagination and toddler-power to make it go. Not saying that all electronics are bad, we have our fair share of talking phones and cameras and other various things. It's just refreshing every once in awhile to not hear pre-recorded songs over and over and over. To enjoy in D making her own music!
To learn more about Melissa and Doug visit their website at
http://melissaanddoug.com/ Browse around a bit, see what catches your eye.
I remember as a kid my little sister had her "blankie" a ratty old pink handmade blanket. She dragged that thing around until 4th grade. My mom finally broke down and cut off a little corner but tossed the rest of it. To this day my (now 19 years old) sister is mad about that.
I've heard from my in-laws, specifically my brother in law that my husband was a pacifier or "suce" baby. He had his Suce til he was 3 or 4.
I was never overly attached to anything, but when I had D it was always in the back of my mind. She didn't take to her suce and she never seemed overly attached to blankies. She began loving suces when she was teething but even then was fine without them.
But a couple weeks ago we discovered her "lovie" or I call it her "cuddly".
It's a towel. Her towel to be exact. She drags it around the house with her, and cuddles with it on the couch. She even crawled into her toybox with her sippy cup and her cuddly. I guess there could be worse things out there, at least it's not a potholder or a diaper or something! I'll hopefully be able to trade her cuddly out for a darker colored towel because right now I'm washing it every night.
Naptime has always been hard for us, even with disposables there were times when I would go in to find D soaked from her belly downwards. At night there were times where we had to change her two or three times a night just so she wouldn't get soaked and cold. Our first couple naptimes with cloth went the same as disposables. So I switched back for naptime. I felt bad doing it but it kept her dry for the 4 hour naps. Yesterday though I was determined to make naptime work, I double stuffed our Haute Diaper with trifolded prefolds and D looked like she couldn't close her legs! But she looked like she would stay dry enough. So I crossed my fingers and went to run some errands. I came back to a report of not ONLY a dry baby, but Hubby figured out how to clean off the poopy diaper all by himself and pulled out the inserts. I was a very happy lady! SO happy I just had to share! And because I love posts with pictures, There's a picture with a happy dry baby on her car-rocker with her monkey.
Something I learned about cloth diapering that I didn't know before I started myself. Not all detergent is cloth diaper safe!
The wonderful people over at
Diaper Jungle rated the commercial cloth diaper detergents on the market. Now I couldn't find anything at my local stores so I went searching online and came across
Lulu's in the Fluff! I saw they had some wonderful reviews and ordered a bag myself to try prepping my diapers with.
First thing that threw me was the scent. It smelled great! I probably inhaled some of the dust when I took a big sniff. I couldn't wait to get started. I prepped my diapers with hot wash with no detergent then hot wash with Lulu's with a cold rinse then dryer on low, then back to the washer. I did this about 10 times.
Eh, make that 11 times!
Now I normally use dreft on D's clothes, and you can smell it when you take them out of the dryer, with the diapers I couldn't smell anything! It was disappointing until I went back onto the internet and learned that it didn't smell like a scent because it's clean rinsing. Which is a good thing! You don't want detergent mucking up your diapers and making them less absorbent. So Lulu's is a nice clean-rinsing detergent. Perfect for diapers! Now I started off with Lulu's so I didn't have a chance to do a "Glamour sleep" which is when you let your diapers soak in Lulu's to pull out all the gunk. But we did have a very poopy diaper, I threw it in the wash with Lulu's (after plopping the solid into the toilet) and crossed my fingers, it was a doozy, and I hadn't had to wash a bad diaper like that yet. but lo and behold it came right out of the wash smelling of well, nothing but clean!
After all the prepping and washing I still haven't made a noticeable dent into my bag of Lulu's. I'm sure I'll be using this one for a long time. I can't wait to try out their other scents though, Dimpled Booty (a citrus-y scent) and Zippity Doo Dah (a Grassy Lemony scent)! They also have an unscented option. You can buy Lulu's at these
retailers.
I'm currently in love with Lulu's I don't feel the need to go experimenting. As the saying goes, if it ain't broke don't fix it! Lulu's smells great, works great and you get your bang for your buck, what more can you ask for?
I'm still getting the hang of blogging, so everyone bear with me. But I've seen Wordless Wednesday about, where you post a picture of your little one.
We moved a couple months ago to our condo, and it has a nice big pool to play in! Which is good for all the little (and big) fish in our family. So here is hubby and D waving to me from the water.
Posted by
Steph
,
11:33 AM
So we leaped into prefolds! Or stumbled. We tried them out with a flip and a Bumkins cover. I'm sorry to say we didn't really take to them. I've had a lot of problems with fit and bunching. I've had a lot of wonderful support on Facebook and Babycenter to keep me going! I think we figured it out, changing D every 1.5 hours and using the bigger Diaper Rite prefolds I bought offline. I've also started putting the prefolds on D and then wrapping the cover around her, which seems to work better than tucking them into the cover. So a little stumbling block but we're back on track!
I think we're going to go towards pocket diapers instead of prefolds with covers. For a couple reasons. D gets rashes on her tushy easy and the fleecey insides of the pockets I think would be better for her bum. Also I like the ease of use on pockets, no need to worry about bunching. But until we do I'm going to work with my prefolds. I'm determined to make cloth diapering work for us, and it really bummed me out when we hit that brick wall. But as I type, the little monster is pretending to put lotion on dada in her cute flip!
Now Flip vs. Bumkins.
I like the flip because of the snaps, it's onesize and the material is stretchy so I feel it holds the prefold closer to her bottom. I don't like it because the leg holes aren't customizable so I feel that would be tough on smaller babies or thinner-legged babies.
Bumkins ADORABLE prints! The material is plasticky, more like the old school rubber pants, which I don't personally like, but feels more waterproof. It has leg gussets, which makes me feel a little better about blowouts. I don't like the velcro but thats because I have a curious toddler. It's also sized, which I feel makes a better fit overall.
They both have their pros and cons, I like them both, but the Bumkins adorable print has to be put under pants or D will rip it right off!
So we continue on our journey into cloth diapering...
I'm starting this up a little late, but we're doing it. We're taking the plunge. We're switching to cloth diapers!
I didn't know a thing about them when I had D. I thought it was all pins and laundry all day. And at the time, I didn't have my own washer/dryer. So the thought never crossed my mind to try Cloth. BOY was I wrong! I started perusing the internet, and cloth was everywhere! Then, my hangup was the cost. 20 bucks a diaper! No way! Now I've discovered how much they can actually save us, which of course, appeals to hubby. The wonderful folks at http://www.diaperdecisions.com/cost_of_cloth_diapers.htm broke it down real simple for us. If you use disposable diapers birth through potty training, on average it will cost you $2,577! vs. the pocket diapers birth through potty training was only $1677.66 They also took into account the energy bill from doing laundry! And you can maximize savings by going cheaper. Prefold diapers and covers you're only running up a tab of about $381.
Wow.
I decided about a month ago to make the switch. Little D gets BAD diaper rashes, and I think it's from our disposables. She also doesn't quite fit right in any of them. I wish I could say I was doing this for the environment, but in all honesty we're doing it for her little tushy and to save our wallet a little bit.
So where to start? I did some research, then more research and then read a few blogs, and read some more. There are a bunch of different options. Prefolds with a cover, which are "old school" the flat square you fold and fasten with a waterproof cover over it. Fitteds with a cover, which look more like a normal diaper you fasten then cover with a waterproof cover. We have Pockets which have a little pocket to stuff in an absorbant insert, but other than that you just plop on and fasten with snaps or velcro (depends on the diaper). And All in Ones, which are, as the name says. All in one. You use it like a disposable, one use, then clean. They all have pros and cons which I wont go into here, but I think I'll try them all by the time I'm done. The most common advice I have seen is TRY EVERYTHING! There is not one miracle diaper that fits every baby through every stage and prevents leaks. I'm taking that advice to heart. So on here, I'll document our adventures through starting cloth, and toddler-hood.
Posted by
Steph
,
2:35 PM
I think I've told everyone about our new step, to get rid of the disposables! It was still a mild surprise when Gramma showed up with a Haute Pocket Diaper she found perusing in a store. She also brought 12 unbleached Indian Prefolds as stuffers. I prepped with Rockin Green detergent sample I had, and couldn't wait to try it out. This was our FIRST cloth diaper test. I love how soft it was on the inside, and outside too! It also dried in a second compared to the prefolds. I actually laid it outside because I was told it would help increase the life of the diaper to line-dry. I don't have a line yet. Still trying to work around the condo rules, but I laid it on the arm of a chair, and it dried very quickly.
After nap yesterday I put it on her, and loved it! Very easy to put on a wiggly toddler. The velcro was better than a disposable's sticky tabs, and I pre-stuffed the pocket so all I had to do was put it on her.
She poked at it a little bit, but other than that it was playtime as normal. I actually liked the little bubble butt it gave her, but the prefold was definitely bulkier than the insert it came with. I had to go, but hubby reported to me that it wasn't very soaked when he took it off her, and it was "easy".
I'm a little worried about velcro diapers. She has been known to rip off disposables mid-naptime. So we almost always put something on her bottom over her diaper. The velcro on this diaper is definitely tougher, so it'll be harder for D to rip it off, time will tell on this one, and I have a few with velcro. I definitely love the quality of this diaper, the nice fit, and it's a good price! At the local store the Haute diaper, with a newborn-size insert and a larger insert it was 12.95. You also can snap the two inserts together for more absorbancy for nighttime. I think next time we use the Haute we will try it for bedtime. I am very confident in it.
Definitely a keeper!
