Cloth diapers: back at it… maybe?

Wikimedia Commons

One thing I’ve learned over the last three years? Cloth diapering is not for everyone… and even if it IS for you, sometimes it’s just not feasible.

With our oldest, after a chemical burn from Pampers, our daycare center director actually suggested we try cloth. They’d seen it all, she said – and with a few additional steps it would be sanitary enough for daycare. I shopped around for different disposables… no way I was going to do cloth (even though the thought had been firmly planted in my brain… I just couldn’t seem to keep it out of my mind). I was never able to find anything that fit or kept the messes in the way I wanted, so I did some research on cloth and thought I’d give it a try.

This, by the way, was at a time when I did laundry every two weeks… tops. Yes, we all had enough clothes to get us two weeks just fine!

My first trial was with gDiapers. I found out pretty quick that my daughter was a very heavy wetter, and these were not a good option for us, at least not with the cloth inserts marketed for use with the diapers. I’m not super handy with a sewing machine, nor do I know anything about fabric, so  making my own was out of the question at the time.

I ended up finding someone through our local Craigslist who helped me out by showing me a bunch of different kinds of diapers. I made the switch to SoftBums, and thought things were going to be great. I loved them,  my daughter seemed to like them… but daycare did not. Every day I would arrive to a bag with 2-3 different very wet outfits, and my daughter in one of the spare daycare outfits. I never had leak issues at home, but the modifications needed for daycare either made the diapers too difficult to get on properly, or were the cause of the leaking altogether.

I pretty much stopped cloth diapering after that, because it was obvious it was not a good thing for daycare, and doing it only at home wasn’t getting me enough diapers to wash every day, or even every other day… and WOW do those things stink if you wait more than two days to wash!

Throughout the next year and a half, I tried a few different brands, but basically ended up selling off my stash and deciding cloth diapering just wasn’t for us. The funny thing was though, info about the chemicals in disposables keeps popping up randomly every time I get ok with them… and in between, the smell drives me nuts!

Now, however – I work from home. I have a wonderful nanny who isn’t opposed to trying out cloth. We live in a different home with main floor laundry and a shiny new washer/dryer set. I also tend to do laundry every other day, minimum. Most of the time I do at least a load a day. Oh yeah, and now you can use Tide on cloth diapers (probably always could, but the word was that you shouldn’t).

After doing a bit of side work and getting paid in $150 of gift cards, I’ve decided to do a bit of a cloth diaper trial with my son. I did a ton of research and purchased $157 (slightly over budget!) worth of diapers from Amazon and eBay, and I’m actually pretty excited to get them tomorrow! Here’s what I ordered:

– GroVia Hybrid
– Best Bottom Shell/overnight inserts
– Tiny Tush Elite 2.0
– Bummis TotsBots Easy Fit
– Thirsties Duo All-in-One
– Ones & Twos All-in-One
– BabyKicks Basic pocket diaper

I also have a couple Charlie Banana one-size pocket diapers left over from before, and purchased a BumGenius Freetime and Swaddlebees Simplex diaper a couple months ago – so overall I have 10 different kinds to try out. I’m not sure if I’ll have enough info for a review of each one separately, but I’m hoping to at least post about some of the things I was trying to find out about these diapers while doing my research – things you can find if you get to see the diapers before buying (not always an easy thing to do with cloth diapers).

What will you do today?

What we do today makes a difference in tomorrow. Yeah, it sounds a bit corny and even cliché – but I really believe it’s true – from every-day-little-things to the big-you’re-a-hero kinds of acts.

We saw a lot of those hero acts yesterday in Boston. That’s all I really want to say about what happened yesterday – it was terrible but a lot of good showed through the bad, and that’s what we should focus on. Let law enforcement focus on getting whoever did this, and our courts can focus on bringing justice.

Just as important as those hero acts are the little things we do every day. I’m reminded of this daily with my children – slip up once with a word you don’t want them repeating, and you’ll be hearing it for a week or so until the novelty dies down! This is just a trivial example; however, small things add up. It’s a heavy weight of responsibility as a parent!

We can see examples everywhere of people focusing on themselves. Drive down any highway and you’re likely to see someone texting or distracted in some other way while they’re driving. Social media tends to be filled with people making status updates complaining about something. Commercials on television are constantly trying to convince us to buy a product to make us look better, smell better, do-something-better.

So before I get lost in thinking about how horrible it seems  humanity is becoming… I want to make a point to every day think of at least ONE thing I can do to make tomorrow (or even today) better for someone else – and I want to involve my children in it so they learn to do the same thing. One thing shouldn’t be too hard, right?

What will you do today?

The Wonder Weeks

Have you ever come across a book or web site that sheds light on some aspect of your life? I found that in The Wonder Weeks. In my case, it turned out to be an iPhone (iPod) app, but there’s also a web site and a book you can get if those are your preferred methods of getting information.

The Wonder Weeks

What is The Wonder Weeks? Well, it’s a great source of information about what your baby goes through developmentally in the first year of life, and can explain why somethings things seem to be going so smoothly and then all the sudden your baby is super fussy, clingy, and won’t sleep well for a few days. Not all growth spurts are physical – this app details the mental growth spurts, or leaps, that happen in the first year.

As an example, my son is currently 13.5 weeks old. This app bases the leaps off of the age your baby would be if they were born on their due date, so that would put my son at 10.5 weeks. As I’ve been following the app, I’ve noticed instead of being 3 weeks behind, he’s hitting these leaps about 2 weeks behind – so I’m going to go with 11.5 weeks – we’ll see if he continues to follow that pattern.

So what does that mean for him right now? That means he’s coming up on the leap called “Smooth Transitions“- and the best description of this comes from the Wonder Weeks web site: “Your baby’s world is becoming a more organized place as he discovers the constant, flowing changes around him.” Physically, his movements are becoming less jerk-y/robotic looking, and more fluid and purposeful. He’s also noticing changes in things – like changes in voice pitch, or the lightness and dimness of different rooms.

I’ve been so fascinated to follow along with this app with my two girls and now again starting over with my son because it’s been so accurate at showing what’s coming next, what to expect behavior-wise, and also giving tips on what activities can help them with these transitions. I’ve recommended the app to many of my friends with new babies, and the feedback has been super positive, so I wanted to share it here too!

No canned tomatoes… so, then what?

Since canned tomatoes are one of the products that has the highest amounts of BPA (due to the acidity of the tomatoes, more lining is necessary on the cans), they were one of the first things I got rid of out of my cupboard. As someone who didn’t have a ton of experience in the kitchen, but tended to use a lot of canned tomatoes in what I did cook, this was without a doubt the hardest part about getting rid of BPA for me.

Just as an example, here are a few of the “staple” meals in our house before I began this journey:

– Chili (stewed tomatoes)
– Goulash (diced tomatoes &  tomato paste)
– Spanish rice-a-roni (diced tomatoes)

So, what are the options if you don’t use canned tomatoes?

Fresh tomatoes – this would be ideal, right? Garden fresh (or grocery store fresh) tomatoes for all meals requiring tomatoes. Except… who has time to blanch, skin, and slice tomatoes before making a meal that would otherwise only take 15-20 minutes to make?  This was not an ideal solution for me – I tend to decide what I’m cooking about 5 minutes before start. Besides, fresh tomatoes aren’t always the best year-round.

BPA-free cans – Muir Glen, a General Mills family product, announced in 2010 that they’d be switching to BPA-free cans for their tomatoes “at the next harvest.” In 2011 I came across an article that pointed to these being in stores. I apparently don’t shop at stores that carry this brand, as the only time I’ve ever seen them was when I was working at the General Mills headquarters and I stopped by their on-site store. One thing that makes me nervous about these is that they still have to be lined with something due to the acidity of the tomatoes. Muir Glen/General Mills, as far as I know, haven’t provided info on what they’re lining the cans with now.

Alternate commercial packaging – jarred tomatoes and tomatoes in cartons (or Tetra Pak) are the two options I found here. Both are surprisingly hard to come by. In fact, I have never seen either option at Target or Walmart. I did find tomatoes in cartons on Amazon from Pomi. The downside to these is that they’re expensive, and they don’t come in the traditional sizing that canned tomatoes are in, so you have to plan a bit when following a recipe. I also haven’t been able to find them locally. The company seems pretty committed to providing a quality, BPA-free tomato product, and so far they’ve got an A+ in my  book.

Stewed tomatoes

Home canned (jarred) tomatoes – my mom and I canned about 40lbs of tomatoes this past fall. My mom has canned many times, but this was my first time participating as an adult. It wasn’t the most awesome experience ever, but it also wasn’t horrible, and I’ll be doing it again this fall – hopefully with home-grown tomatoes. We made stewed tomatoes and tomato soup. Besides the time and effort needed for this, a downside again is that the jars aren’t the typical sizes called for in recipes. I am aware that the lids of these jars contain BPA, but since I personally canned them, I know that the tomatoes didn’t touch the lids. There are BPA-free lids that can be used, but from the research I’ve done, I want to be a bit more experienced with canning before I use them.

Frozen tomatoes – this is an option I need to explore a bit more. Though my freezers are currently close to capacity (some organization would likely help!), the convenience of having tomatoes in the freezer might even be worth adding another freezer.

So – there are definitely options if you decide to get rid of the cans in your home. As you can see from my descriptions, I use several options together – sometimes certain options work better for a recipe than others. It’s all pretty much trial and error – hopefully this post will eliminate some of the error for others!

Stir Fry Disaster

Last night I decided to try a stir fry. I’d been eyeing up the Spring Stir Fried Chicken recipe on SkinnyTaste.com since I saw it, and even though I’ve never done it (and didn’t own a wok until Saturday), I figured it was worth a try.

Overall the dish turned out to taste pretty good, but it wasn’t a pleasant cooking experience, and once again I’ve been reminded that the answer to “How hard could it be?” is sometimes “actually… harder than it looks!”

Before I describe what happened, let me preface by saying I followed the recipe to the letter (other than I doubled the ingredients – wanted some leftovers for lunches!)

My first “oh crap” moment was when I added the oil to the pan before frying the chicken. It was snapping and popping all over the place – I couldn’t get within 3 feet of the stove because the oil was exploding everywhere!

Fast forward to frying the veggies – same deal with the oil, only this time, because there was leftover chicken fragments in the pan still, not only was oil exploding everywhere, but everything started to smoke. I was worried that I’d set off the fire alarms, or worse – have a grease fire on my hands.

In the end, the stove and surrounding counter, floor and walls were splattered with grease, the house was a bit smoky, but we had an enjoyable meal. After poking around on the internet I’ve come to the conclusion that one of the following things (or a combination) was my problem:

– The wok was too thin (can we say cheap?)
– The wok was too hot
– The wok was not hot enough?
– I used the wrong kind of oil (again, followed the recipe)
– Stir frying is too complicated for me

I’m going to settle on the last option – we may not be eating a lot of stir fries in the future (at least not home cooked stir fries)!

BPA: Not welcome here…

I’ve mentioned that overall I’m not into the all-natural trend. However, because I’ve chosen to try to eliminate as much BPA from our lives as possible, a lot of times my only option for certain BPA-free things is to go with all-natural options, or to simply make things myself.

Why have I specifically chosen BPA as the chemical that I’m trying to eliminate from our diets?

Well, according to Wikipedia, BPA, or bisphenol-A, is thought to be an endocrine disruptor – in effect it acts like a hormone in the body (specifically estrogen). There aren’t really any concrete studies that show this to be true, at least not for humans, but in the animal testing that’s been done, several icky effects of elevated BPA levels have been noted:

– Links between high levels of BPA and obesity
– Interference with brain cell connections vital to memory, learning, and mood
– Increases dopamine activity, which makes one more likely to have ADD, ADHD
– Heightened sensitivity to drugs of abuse
– Increased risk of breast cancer and prostate cancer

Wikipedia.org

There are plenty of other items on the list, but the above are the scariest/most concerning to me. Almost daily we can find a news story about the obesity epidemic in our nation, as can we find an article about cancer.

Do I think BPA is the sole cause of these things? Likely not. But if I can reduce the chances of my family having to experience any of those negative effects, I will – and it’s really not that difficult, thankfully!

So, what are the biggest sources of BPA in our diets/lives?

– Plastic containers, specifically reusable containers (microwave dishes, storage containers, etc).
– Soda cans. Yep… just another reason to kick that soda habit!
– Canned foods, especially tomatoes and green beans

For someone like me, who initially wasn’t interested in cooking beyond what I could prepare from a package (and who also really enjoys her soda!), seeing that list almost made me want to cry. My cupboards were stocked with canned foods – especially tomatoes; we usually had several 12-packs of soda on hand; and plastic microwave dishes were all we had.

To be honest, my journey into learning to cook more, and be more “domesticated,” stemmed mostly from my research and desire to eliminate/greatly reduce the BPA in our lives. And it really hasn’t been so bad. Yes, we still use plastic containers, but typically heat up our food with our Corelle dishes. I have all but eliminated canned food – and I’ve found that once you switch to freezer or fresh (or a combo, which is necessary here in the winter) – canned food has a distinctively metallic taste (gross!) anyway. As for soda? Well… I still like it too much to give it up, so I’ve tried to switch to bottled as much as I am able – though cans still show up in our house from  time to time.

Some of the harder things have been finding a substitute for canned food items that aren’t available fresh all year. Pumpkin? Try finding a pumpkin in a grocery store in Minnesota in the winter or spring. Tomatoes? Yeah, you can find them all year round, but they aren’t always so great (looks- or taste-wise). How about the Thanksgiving staple of cranberry sauce – the jellied kind that comes out of the can with the lines still molded into it? Well, after an experience trying to make my own – I did some research and was SO happy to find that the linings of cranberry cans DO NOT contain BPA (yay!)

As I continue on this search for BPA-free items, I’ve found that we end up reducing our exposure to other non-desirable things in food as well. Soy (a phytoestrogen possibly linked to breast cancer), MSG, food dyes, preservatives, etc… a lot of those things are gone or nearly eliminated from our diets. I’ll detail some of my choices for replacements and some of my struggles in making or obtaining BPA-free replacements in future posts.

The Honest Company Family Essentials

Overall I’m not really into the 100% natural trend that’s out there right now, but there are a few things that I definitely search for all-natural or “more natural than the rest.” I really wanted to try Jessica Alba’s The Honest Company diapers, and while I was at it, I decided to sign up for the trial of the Family Essentials bundle as well. I ended up getting the bundle for about 3 months before I cancelled the subscription, so I tried several of the products.

My main reason for cancelling was I’m kind of a spur-of-the-moment/last-minute type of person – so running out of dish soap or hand soap means I have to run to the store and buy more NOW… and you can’t do that with these products. They’re also a bit expensive if the all-natural movement isn’t your thing.

Anyway, some of the products were good and some we didn’t like as much, so here’s a rundown of what we tried and what we thought:

Honest.com

Healing Balm

This wasn’t my go-to product when we purchased it because I’m a big fan of MotherLove products, and we’ve been using them for our diaper rash needs. However, recently my oldest had a pretty nasty cold. She was obsessive about having her nose wiped, and thus ended up with super chapped cheeks, upper lip and nostrils. This was the only thing she would let us put on her face, and it did a pretty good job. Could the MotherLove products have done the same thing? Probably, but this did a great job, and is much easier to find in the diaper bag than the small tubs of MotherLove balm. I don’t think I’d start up a subscription again just to get this, but the tube will last quite awhile anyway.

Shampoo & Conditioner

I really wanted to like these – they have a kind of orange dreamsicle smell to them that reminded me of the Schwann’s orange sherbet push-ups we used to get as kids. Unfortunately, I felt like the shampoo was overly drying and the conditioner wasn’t able to make up for that. My hair felt brittle after using it, and I wasn’t sure about using it on my girls after feeling that. As of right now the bottles are sitting in the bathroom cubpoards not being used.

Body Lotion

I wasn’t a huge fan of this, but I’m not sure I’m qualified to review because I really dislike lotion overall. The smell was fine, I just don’t like the feel of having lotion on my skin – so I don’t use it and I don’t put it on my kids either. I have given away one bottle of this, and have one more in storage.

Hand Soap

This is probably my favorite product of the bundle. I love the lemongrass smell! It also doesn’t have that slimy feel in our soft water that a lot of soaps tend to have. Again, I don’t think I’d restart the subscription for just this – but maybe I would and just fill my whole lineup with the soap, and then cancel after one month? Who knows… we’re almost out of what we have right now!

Hand Sanitizer

Neither my husband nor I like this at all. It’s very slimy feeling and takes longer than other hand sanitizers to dry on your hands. We also weren’t fans of the smell, but I can’t quite identify what the smell is that we don’t like.

Dish Soap

This one I’m pretty neutral on. We don’t wash a ton of dishes by hand (my rebellion from a childhood of not having a dishwasher… everything goes in the dishwasher here!) – but when we have, I’ve noticed the bubbles don’t stick around too long. Regardless, it seemed to get the job done, and the smell wasn’t overpowering like a lot of other dish soaps we’ve had.

Overall, these Honest Company products are pretty good, and as I mentioned before, the customer service is great!

Mmmm… Spaghetti (squash)

Last summer we subscribed to a CSA (community supported agriculture), and every week we received a box with fresh, locally grown vegetables. While we’ve decided that we won’t be doing it again this year, we learned quite a bit from the experience. For example – it IS possible to have too much eggplant and kale!

Forest & Kim Starr / Wikipedia

One of my favorite new vegetables (I guess technically it’s a fruit, but we’re going to go with vegetable here) is the spaghetti squash. I’d never heard of it before, and actually didn’t even know what it was when we got it. I was skeptical about it, and was leery of tasting it the first time – but it turns out that it’s a great addition to our diets, and I’ve been buying almost one a week from the grocery store since the beginning of this year.

According to Wikipedia, the spaghetti squash contains folic acid, potassium, vitamin A and beta carotene, along with lots of other nutrients. One cup averages about 42 calories, and it’s super filling!

Preparing the spaghetti squash is similar to other squashes, but when you scrape the squash out of the rind, it comes out in rounded strands. I’ll post a picture after I scrape out my latest batch.

The hardest thing about dealing with spaghetti squash is that it’s ridiculously hard to cut, especially if you don’t have a sharp knife, or even the right type of knife. I did a little research, and found that it’s possible to cook it without cutting it first, but it takes quite a bit longer. I usually bake mine for at least an hour when cut in half, so I wasn’t really interested in upping the cooking time (in my life, anything that takes longer than an hour to cook is a rare thing on our plates!).

I found the easiest way for me to cut the squash is to cut it in half the short way first. I then scoop out the seeds, and cut the halves one more time. It shortens the cooking time slightly, but most of all I don’t feel like I’m going to chop my hand off in the process (and it doesn’t take just as long to cut as it does to bake).

My favorite way to eat the squash is just with a bit of Classico alfredo (four cheese or roasted red pepper) sauce mixed into it. I never would have thought of putting a cheese sauce on squash, but it tastes great and it’s better for you than pasta!

I’ve started to research how to store this so I’m not baking one up every week. Freezing seems to be the best route – I’ll update when I try it and when I use the first frozen batch!

Consistency is key

Remember how I said parenting is like a science experiment? I had a failed experiment with our youngest.

Currently he’s 12 weeks old, and it’s been a rough 12 weeks, but much of our troubles stem from what I believe comes down to a lack of being consistent with him.

With our girls, I was always insistent that we have a routine – schedules are important, but having routines is what makes being flexible with your schedule possible. Sleep was such an important thing; I remember not doing anything that required us to be outside of the house after 7pm for our oldest’s first year, because she had to be in bed (we both worked outside the house at the time, so she had to be up by 7am the next morning for us to get her to daycare).

We followed that fairly close with our second, but her schedule during the day was much more all over the place, mostly because she was never in a daycare center that had 8+ infants who HAD to be on a schedule for the place to function.

With our son, I was so focused on getting him past the day/night confusion that’s so common in newborns (but I don’t think he ever had it, which is ironic) – I kept him up for long periods of time, I kept him in the living room while his sisters were screaming and running around playing… he was basically overtired and overstimulated.

When I finally came to the realization that I’d overdone it with the awake times, it was a nightmare to try to get him back on track – in fact, I’m not 100% convinced he’s there yet, but we’re closer than we were 4 weeks ago! I got back to using the wake time chart that I’d followed with the girls and started really watching for those sleepy cues… and most importantly, I got him out of our bed (the key to my sanity, I swear!).

The hardest part for me about being consistent is that it really takes effort sometimes. Many babies sleep in their carseats, so sleep isn’t typically an issue while running errands – but our son (and both of our girls) hates the carseat. So I have to really think about my day and plan my trips around naptimes, instead of having naptimes be during trips.

As much as I’d like to think I’ll chalk this up as a major lesson learned and tell myself that we’ll never have this trouble again, I know that I’ll need to revisit the “consistency is key” concept over and over throughout the years.

Honest Company Diapers

One of my first reviews is of The Honest Company diapers. I want to focus on this product because one of my big searches right now is for the perfect diaper – and I’m not really convinced it actually exists!

The Honest Company currently has three ways to purchase diapers, but none of them are local yet:  

– Purchase online from their web site
– Purchase online from Zulily.com
– Get a subscription for diapers and wipes bundle, from the company web site

The cheapest route is to get a subscription, but cheap is a relative term here, as these diapers are rather expensive. If you compare to other “natural” diapers, they’re a pretty good deal, but if you’re comparing to store brand these are at least twice as expensive. It’s difficult to determine the exact price per diaper if you’re using the subscription service because the wipes are included, and there isn’t a breakdown of how much of the $79.95/month goes towards wipes and how much goes towards the diapers.

As far as whether or not the diapers work? For us they worked great. We tried out size 1 and size 3, and never had leaks with either size. We even put the size 3 on my oldest (she’s a few pounds over the weight guidelines) and had no issues. The biggest bonus for me was that these diapers didn’t have that icky chemical smell when they were wet.

The downside with these, for us, was that they were just too expensive. Even during the time that we had the subscription, the package size decreased while the price stayed the same – so the price is even a bit higher than when I had initially calculated it. In fact, the main reason I cancelled our subscription was the fact that they downsized both the wipes and the diaper packages – and unless you were paying close attention, you might have missed that fact. I don’t believe they were trying to be dishonest, but they weren’t exactly transparent about it either.

One other thing that I didn’t like about the subscription part of this was that it was just way too many diapers. My youngest is our first to have grown very quickly, and we ended up not needing about half of the 200 diapers we were sent in size 1. This of course isn’t the fault of the company – my baby just grew fast! However, he’s not a big guy, and I’m thinking most people’s babies grow pretty fast, so I have to wonder if other people are having the same experience with the early sizes.

On the plus side – the company is really great about customer service. If you have enough diapers that you won’t need a shipment the next month, they’ll let you delay a month.

Oh… and the prints are their diapers are SUPER cute!

We also took part in their Family Essentials bundle – I’ll write a review of that later!