SortaCrunchy

Of Earth and Poetry

Happy Earth Day everyone!

What will you do to celebrate? 

Sometimes the idea of going green or saving the planet can be a little overwhelming.  Sometimes it seems too big, and it's much easier to just be content to let others make the changes.  (And I can be Queen of the It's Too Hard, so I am speaking primarily to myself here!)

But there are lots of little things we can all do to make little changes.  And you know what?  Lots of little changes can motivate you to make some big changes.

Here are some little changes we've been working on:

* Almost 100% kitchen cloth use instead of paper towels and paper napkins.  One roll of paper towels (that I use primarily for wiping up meat juice messes) lasts for weeks and weeks and weeks around here.

* Switched to  Country Save detergent.  It's the best stuff I've ever used - safe for cloth diapers and safe for the earth!

* FREECYCLE - we've been known to nearly fill a dumpster after a round of spring cleaning or pre-move decluttering.  Now I try to list any and everything we want to get rid of on Freecycle.  It is uhMAZing what people will be happy to take off your hands for you!

* And one BIG, HUGE change we are about to undertake - getting rid of the plastic water bottles!  Yes, ya'll, I think we are about to take the pledge.

Want some great ideas on how to celebrate Earth Day as a family?  Go visit Crunchy Domestic Goddess's Making Earth Day a Family Day for an excellent list of ideas.

*********************************************************************************

Now, on a slightly different note . . . did you know that April is National Poetry Month?  Yes, it is indeed.  I was wondering . . . would anyone want to join me in celebrating?  I thought maybe we could do a bloggy poetry read-along next Wednesday, April 30th.  You could share your favorite poem(s) either on your blog or in the comments.  Self-composed poetry would be welcome, as well as favorite poems from your favorite writers. 

Anyone? 

If there's enough interest, I might try to do the Mr. Linky thing, so let me know if you would want to play along!

Bit O' Crunchy, January 18th: CLOTH DIAPERING

So, raise your hand if you read Time magazine.

Really? Wow, more than I would have thought.

As you may have guessed, I don't get a chance to read it much. (If there's a magazine in my hands, it's either Texas Monthly or Better Homes.) But a friend pointed out a recent Time article on cloth diapering that I thought I would share here. It's a quick read if ya have a minute.

Most of you know I use cloth diapers - sorta. I started cloth diapering back when D was about eight months old or so. I was pretty religious about it with her until I got pregnant with AJ, and then my passion for most everything fizzled out as I focused on just surviving the first trimester with a toddler underfoot. By the time I recovered from those days of glory, D had outgrown most of her stash and I just knew potty learning was around the corner, so we went back to disposables for the remainder of her diaper days (which was, by the way, so much longer than I had anticipated).

Fast forward to sweet AJ's arrival and I was so excited to use those teeny, tiny, precious cloth diapers. For now, we use cloth at home and "sposies" out of the house. Because we were out of the house so much over the holidays, I used sposies exclusively on AJ for several weeks. Can I be honest? I was quite enjoying the tossability of it all. But then one day I looked at the bulging garbage bag of dirty diapers waiting to make it's way to the dump where it would spend who knows how many years not decomposing and some crunchy guilt started to creep over me.

So I have AJ back in cloth at home and am feeling much less guilt in that area of life. Oh, I still have plenty guilt leftover for other areas, but at least in the diapering department, I am feeling okay about things.

All of this is to say I am always available to talk cloth diapers. I have tried just about any and every kind being made today. If you click the "cloth diapering" label in my sidebar, you can read more . . . ad nauseum.

Wanna see what's covering wee one's buns these days? Here's a peek at the stash:

Top drawer: prefolds - lots of them. Indians, Chinese, and my faves - the yellow edges from Green Mountain Diaper. I pin ours to go under wool or trifold to lay in covers. None of that snappi business for us, but I know it works great for others.

Middle drawer, left to right: tons of fleece topped hemp doublers (thanks, Amanda!); front center, sustainable babyish flats; back center, standard cotton birdseye flats (folded in origami fold); right, various and sundry fitteds

Bottom drawer: all kinds of pockets and a few all-in-two's (again, thank you Amanda!)

And since it's winter, here are my current faves for wool longies: left - Harper pea pod recycled wool (but these are about to go up for sale! AJ's tummy is tooooooo round for these now), right - LOVE these custom wool interlock from JuJuBean Boutique at Hyena Cart!

Finally, my most prized possession in our stash - our knitted longies. I won these in a charity raffle back in the fall of 2006 and they are just heavenly.

Look at the artistry! Just stunning and soooooooooooooo cute on, too.

So that's that. Again, I always love to talk cloth. Share questions or comments with me or email me anytime!

Labels: baby, cloth diapering, general natural family living

Catchin' Up

Blog Business . . .

Finally! I had a little time to update my sidebar by taking down Barefoot Buys and adding the Delightful Hands section. Here you will find links to work-at-home-moms whom I either know "offline" or through the blogging community. Did I leave anyone out who wants to be on the list? Let me know!

I came across this really fun giveaway at Crunchy Domestic Goddess! This is the most darling idea . . . baby and toddler t-shirts with sparkly words spelled out in braille! The company is called Bitty Braile and their designs are clever and original. They also offer personalized shirts with the child's name spelled out in braile - perfect gift for the baby who has everything! If you want to enter this giveaway, too, pop over to Crunchy Domestic Goddess before November 5th.

Hey Jen! I found these two articles at Ask Moxie for you! Maybe they will help with your cloth diaper dilemma? I was going to do a pro-and-con list of each of the different systems, but it looks like Moxie has pretty much covered it all.

Finally, a big thank you for a couple of awards I've recently received:

My sweet friend Corey gave me the Community Blogger Award! Thanks, friend!

The community of bloggers I have come to know are an absolutely joy to me. Three bloggers I would like to pass this award on to are Deb of Mom of Three Girls, Kristen of Diary of a Shoe Addict, and Karla of Looking Towards Heaven. Thanks, ladies, for all you do to promote community in blogland!

The Wooden Porch was nice enough to pass on the Nice Matters Award to me. Thank you, mama!

It would be utterly impossible for me to choose just one or two to pass this award on to. All of my friends and readers are wonderfully, marvelously nice!!

That's all the blog business for now. Make sure you have asked me a question for my SortaCrunchy Q&A NaBloPoMo challenge!

Labels: blogging, cloth diapering, contests, NaBloPoMo

And so she made some lists . . .

Seth Godin recently wrote that "the mistake most blogs and books make: they are about the writer, not the reader."

Last month, I shared with you that I try to keep my audience in mind as I write and post here at SortaCrunchy.

But today I am going to be selfish and post some totally me-centered stuff just because I big fat want to. So feel free to skim on by if you feel so led, but I do want to say I am posting this publicly because I welcome advice and feedback and suggestions!

We are now staring down the barrel of less than one month until Little Sister's delivery. (Scheduled c-section date is September 5th.) As I panicked mulled this over yesterday, I found it very theraputic to make some lists. Helps me feel a little more, oh I don't know, centered? In control? It at leasts organizes my thoughts and helps me break free of this pervasive sense of denial which hounds me . . . denial that in less than one short calendar month, the SortaCrunchy family will be a Party of Four.

Humor me.

TO DO:

* wash and sort all of Little Sister's diapers
* figure out some kind of organizing solution for the cloth diapers that are slowly taking over the nursery (D's and LS's combined)
* find all the parts to my trusty hand pump and figure out what parts need to be replaced
* make appointment with our pediatrician to go over delayed vax schedule
* go over birth plan choices with my OB and clarify what hospital procedures will allow for (Can I have one arm unstrapped to hold her for a minute after she is delivered? Can she be with me in recovery? these kinds of things . . .)
* write thank you notes from LS's shower
* wash newborn clothes
* get a haircut
* pack hospital bag

TO BUY:

* more infant prefolds and small covers
* button-front pj's for Mama for the hospital and home
* at least one more decent nursing bra
* Lansinoh
* breast pads - cloth or disposable? Would love to hear feedback on what worked for you!
* more post-partum pads
* snacks for the hospital bag
* Mei Tai? Which one? I am to the point of having anxiety dreams over this one. Of course, I want an uber-cool, uber-chic BabyHawk, but the Budget Mistress within is balking at the price tag. But a Mei Tai will definitely take us through toddlerhood, isn't it worth the investment? But couldn't I find a fully functional Mei Tai for less somewhere? And so goes the circles of debate in my mind. DEFINITELY open to feedback on this one, mamas!

And so that's that. For now. Thanks for bearing with my all about Megan indulgence.

Labels: baby

Bit O' Crunchy, July 27th: CLOTH WIPES

Welcome, gentle readers, to the First Ever installment of Bit O' Crunchy! Thank you to everyone who voted and helped me decide on what to name my natural living spotlight of the week. Bit O'Crunchy won by the skin of its teeth - and this was much to my delight as it was always my favorite choice anyway.

This week, I want to talk about cloth wipes.

Lisa at Full Circle Baby helped me start my cloth diapering stash (and subsequent obsession) when D was about eight months old. She did an amazing job of introducing all things cloth to me, and I remember her saying in passing that not only did she use cloth diapers, she also used cloth wipes. It made sense, you see, to just be able to toss the used cloth wipes in with the used cloth dipes in the wet bag instead of having to fish used disposable wipes out of the diaper clean-up and throw them away in the trash. I thought, "hmmmmmm, yes, sounds like a good idea, but I am going to stay with my trusty Huggies wipes. Cloth wipes sound a bit . . . complicated."

Some months later, it occurred to me (as I was fishing a poopy-covered Huggies wipe out of a poopy-covered cloth diaper) that, indeed, there might be an easier way to do this. It was also around this time that I had begun to buy many of our diapers from Work At Home Moms who nearly always threw in a sweet little cloth wipe with the new dipe as a thank-you-for-ordering bonus. I gathered these sweet little wipes and found some recipes for homemade wipe solutions, and I haven't ever looked back. Even when I got pregnant and D was in sposie dipes much of the time, I still used our cloth wipes because I love them so much.

Here's the thing: which is more effective in cleaning up a spill on your kitchen counter - a soaking wet paper towel or a dampish-dry bar towel? I will reach for the bar towel every time. Think back to when your babe was a wee little one and you reached for a burp rag to wipe up that sweet little cherubic face after a feeding. Would you have rather grabbed a chemical-soaked "cloth-like" paper towel or a soft, cotton-y actual cloth?

Now, how and when do we use baby wipes? On the most tender of skin on our most tender of treasures to clean up some very unpleasant stuff. If you think about it, cloth wipes just make good common (crunchy) sense. Effective clean-up, no harsh chemicals, and nice and soft on a baby's bum!

Cloth wipes - what you need to know:

1) You can purchase fun and funky cloth wipes through many WAHM venues. Here's just a sampling:
Hyena Cart Stores - ClothDiaperMama, The Rosa Mariposa, goodmama (at The Muses congo)
Etsy Stores - Craft Monkey, countryclothcreations, slingsandsacks
Again, that is just a sample of the many, many WAHMs who carry cloth wipes.

2) Cloth wipes are easy to make yourself! If you aren't up for sewing, you can easily use bargain-priced baby washcloths.

3) Wipe solutions are also easy to make or can be purchased. If you make your own, you can customize it to your child's unique needs (sensitive skin, eczema, etc.).

4) Cloth wipes can be laundered with your cloth diapers. Even if yours isn't a cloth diapering home, you can still use cloth wipes. Just gather your wipes and run them through a cold rinse, hot wash with regular detergent, and hot cycle in the dryer (or hang on the line). Easy peasy!

5) I love cloth wipes for the same reason I love cloth diapers - good for the planet, good for the pocketbook, and good for baby's skin.

Bring on the questions and comments!

Labels: Bit O' Crunchy, cloth diapering, general natural family living

SortaWhat? Part Two

Wow, I will tell you what . . . There is nothing like being out of town for the better part of a week to allow a mama to see how much she does around the house on a daily basis! D and I got home Friday night and I am just now climbing out from under the piles of laundry and dust bunnies.

(And on that note, I am so terribly, TERRIBLY behind on my blog reading. Reading the blogs of both my friends and the amazing women whom I have "met" in the blogosphere is such an important part of my day. I am suffering from tremendous blogger guilt and frustration in not being able to read and comment as much as I would like to, and Google Reader is just taunting me by reminding me I have 100+ posts to peruse! Anyway, soon and very soon I will be back in the swing of things.)

So to continue the conversation on why I choose to identify myself as "sort of" crunchy (yep, Katherine, as in granola-y . . . mmmmmmm, granola . . .), I am just going to outline the natural family living (NFL for short, but not the kind of NFL your man wants you to appreciate) practices that are an important part of my life.

Natural Family Living Philosophies/Beliefs I practice:

* child-led weaning
I used to say "extended breastfeeding," but I have taken a step away from that term for now. Breastfeeding advocacy is very important to me, but at the same time, I want to emphasize that I believe in a mutual weaning process. I have friends online and in my community whose babies simply would have nothing more to do with the breast after nine months or six months or some age earlier than a year old. In these cases, the breastfeeding mother would have loved to have practiced "extended breastfeeding" (general term for breastfeeding past a year), but saw the need to balance her desire to breastfeed with her desire to respect and follow her baby's desires.

I found that Kellymom was a great place to start in researching common questions and concerns regarding breastfeeding past infancy.

* cloth diapering
I have a ton of posts about cloth diapering which you could easily access through my Blogger tags. When it comes down to it, I love cloth diapering because I think it is best for the environment, best for baby's skin, and definitely best in overall cuteness. :)

* babywearing
Although that particular "label" may be new to some, the art of wearing a baby is as old as time. You've no doubt seen mainstream versions of babywearing in the form of Baby Bjorn and New Native carriers, but those carriers are just the very tippy-top of the babywearing iceberg.

I had toyed with idea of buying a carrier before D was born; I had no idea the high-needs baby about to be delivered to me would make it a necessity rather than luxury to have some kind of device by which to keep her on me for the majority of the day. I have worn D in ring slings, pouch slings, Mei Teis (Asian Baby Carriers), and my personal favorite for toddlerhood - the Ergo.

TheBabywearer.Com offers a vast array of babywearing information. These articles say it all much better than I ever could!

* emphasis on whole foods (organic when possible)
I feel guilty even mentioning this because pregnancy triggers within me non-stop cravings for junk! and sugar! and junk! and comfort foods! and junk!

But in my normal, non-pregnant life, I try to make the healthiest cooking and eating choices available to me and my family. Last summer, The Coach and I went vegetarian for a while and really enjoyed the change. D is a born vegetarian (seriously, the only meat the child will eat is turkey lunch meat and corn dogs from Sonic *red-face*). We love to shop the local farmers' market and are thankful we don't live near enough to a Whole Foods Market to shop there because we manage to spend astronomical amounts of money on each visit to that holy mecca.

* shared sleep (co-sleeping)
EDITED - It wasn't until I went upstairs to lay down with D for a nap that I remembered that we also practice shared sleep!
We never intended to be co-sleepers, but again, it was one of those things that just sort of happened. Now I cannot wait for Little Sister to be here so we can snuggle a wee one between us in bed again. Big Sister sleeps in her crib full-time now (well, with the rare exception - like last night when a bad dream awakened her and her daddy said, "Just let her sleep with us . . ."), so I miss that snuggle time at night.

The Sears site has some great information (including VERY important safety tips) on co-sleeping.

* Attachment Parenting
One need not practice NFL in order to practice Attachment Parenting, but by and large, the same parents who are drawn to natural living also find they connect with the Attachment Parenting philosophy. I will not try to reinvent the wheel here on what AP is. A great deal of information is available at askdrsears.com including What Attachment Parenting Is and What It Is Not. Some time ago, I also shared how it came to be that Attachment Parenting chose me.

Natural Family Living Philosophies/Beliefs I Do Not Practice (or Why I Am Not One Hundred Percent Crunchy)

At this point in time, we believe we are led to send our children to public schools. There are many in the NFL community who choose to homeschool for a variety of reasons. The Coach and I feel a special call to have our children in public schools, but we are open to whatever God leads us to do at any given time for any of our children.

Also at this time, if we are blessed with a son, we will choose to have him circumcised. This is very unusual in the NFL community as a whole, but it is an issue about which The Coach holds strong feelings and I am at peace in following his leadership in this area.

D has been vaccinated on schedule. You will find many families who practice natural living choose not to vaccinate their children. After much discussion and thoughtful consideration, we feel vaccinating is a good choice for us at this time. The two of us are currently in negotiations over whether or not Little Sister will be vaxed on schedule. I would like to follow a delayed vax schedule, but that is not set in stone yet.

Finally, as I have recently talked about, I am choosing an elective repeat c-section for Little Sister's delivery. As much as I fully support and strongly believe in the beauty and power of a natural vaginal delivery, there are factors that complicate and muddy my situation that have turned what could be a black-and-white issue into a big gray area for me.

So there ya have it! A fairly concise picture of me straddling the fence between crunchy and mainstream. Thankfully I am not posting an actual picture of me straddling anything! My big ol' pregnant self does not need to be shown straddling anything at this moment in time.

That reminds me, I think I owe ya'll a belly shot . . . no fences. I promise.

Labels: babywearing, breastfeeding, cloth diapering, food, general natural family living

Something TINY happened!

I've already shared this scoop with my message board amigas, but I am so in love I can't keep quiet!

A few months ago, I loaned our baby swing to the wonderful and sweet mama who owns Full Circle Baby. Full Circle Baby is a darling brick and morter (and online) natural family living shop in the town just south of us, and Lisa helped me get my start in cloth diapering. Last week, she emailed to say they were done with the swing, and could she pay back the favor by passing on some of their newborn diapers? Um, YES!! This was, of course, so totally not necessary as it was no bother at all to let that swing out of the house to a home where it would be used and loved for a while.

Imagine my surprise and true delight when we were given all of THIS by sweet Lisa:

I mean, seriously.

Have you ever seen anything so sweet in your life?! (Well, okay, maybe a FEW things are sweeter, but not many!)

So I have been fondling and petting them and trying to imagine this little Sweet Thing swimming inside me actually wearing these. Oh, the delight!

And now, I am afraid, the shop-for-cloth bug has bitten me once again. I am using Super Woman amounts of self-control to not buy up every tiny little diaper and cover I see! Preparing for an in-town move next month has left our budget crying for mercy, so Mr. Post Man will have a few months of rest before the avalanche of fluffy mail makes its way south.

Oh yeah! I am 23 weeks today, and I think that I can now say I am six months pregnant. Does that sound right?

Labels: baby, cloth diapering

Coming soon!

I am so, so, so excited about two of our newest stash additions, I had to share it here. I hadn't totally made up my mind as to whether or not I would continue to do wool this fall/winter. Last year, I was so new to CDing and really relied on our pocket dipes for full-time CDing. Pockets do fit so well under clothes, but I was struggling because I am SO into our prefolds right now. Plus the fact that most all winter wool (like longies) is so expensive, I just didn't see a way to do wool in the winter. And it so rarely gets really cold here, that wool pants seem a bit excessive.

Then two wonderful things fell into my lap (a lap that, by the way, has been spending way too much time parked in front of the computer!). As I browsed around Hyena Cart, I kept coming across recycled wool longies that look so darling! Recycled wool is wool that has had a former life as someone's sweater and has since found a new reincarnation as pants for cloth diapered kiddos. I wasn't sure if recycled wool would be effective for us, but I read some threads at the HC Forum where some die-hard CDing mamas sang the praise of recycled wool, so I decided to give it a go.

I had the great fortune to come across Carson at Fuzzy Britches Diapering Duds while she was running a special - custom longies AND a free wet bag for $16! Considering the fact that most crocheted wool pants are going to start at $50 and knit wool pants are even more expensive, I was delighted to have found such an economical way to make the transition to cooler weather wool. After having snatched up a custom slot, I talked to Carson about what kind of applique we wanted to go with for both the wet bag and the longies. I browsed her gallery and found that I liked her idea for sun bursts, so I chose that for our wet bag. But I wanted something really unique to D for her longies, and after some agonizing mental deliberations, I asked Carson if she thought she could do a koala for my koala baby. Carson sent a sketch right away and it was PERFECT! I invite you to take a look at her gallery and click on the picture titled "koala1" where you will see the darling recycled longies that will soon be finding a new home in our stash! Woo hoo!

The next stash aquisition is nothing short of a miracle. Truly. As part of the Fiber Arts Avengers fundraising, a WAHM who makes Panda Pants fitteds teamed up with another CDing mama to put together a stunning set called Northern Lights. I happened to have just $3 left in my paypal account (after some heavy duty stash selling and buying), so I bought a ticket. And I WON!! Words can't express how shocked and excited I am about this.

You can definitely look forward to some Dacey pictures as we expand our expand our stash to include, for the first time, cool weather wool!

All the little things (cloth diapering accessories)

Well, friends, I am about to wrap up the big posts on cloth diapering. We have talked about each of the major cloth diapering systems, so I thought I would conclude with talking about some of the little accessories that have proved to be useful in making the switch to cloth.

If you are using prefolds, prefitteds (prefolds that have been "converted" into fitteds), or flats, you need to fasten them closed somehow. My (very strong) personal preference is to use Dritz pins. I tried and TRIED to get the very popular Snappi to work for us, to no avail. I don't know if I never got it good and stretched out or what . . . just didn't happen. And to tell you the truth, I don't like the way Snappis look. *dodging tomatoes flying at my head* My deepest apologies to loyal Snappi users . . . I just prefer the clean, classic look of a pinned prefold over one that has been Snappi'ed. Plus, D can unsnap a Fuzzi Bunz with no problem, so I feel quite sure she could pull a Snappi right off, and those Snappi claws are SHARP. I personally would rather risk pricking myself with a pin than take the chance that D could get a Snappi off and harm herself in some way. And she would - have no doubt. She hurts herself daily in ways I never dreamed possible!

Additionally, you need some way to store dirty dipes. This can be done in all sorts of ways. I suppose you could do the wet pail method, but I have no idea how that works, so I won't speak to that. Most CDers use a wet bag/dry pail system. The idea with a dry pail is to get some kind of tall diaper pail (or large trash can) and line it with a washable, reuseable liner. Something like a Wahmies Diaper Pail Liner would work nicely. Or you could go the hanging wet bag route which is what I do. There are, oh, a TON of WAHMs making wet bags these days. I mentioned earlier that we have one by Nappsacks, but I have heard good things about or like the looks of: The Good Mama, SMJAE, Trillium Baby, and Happy Tushies.

I mentioned in my comments on the last post that I adore using cloth wipes. Honestly, if something happened and we had to switch back to sposies full-time, I would never give up my cloth wipes. The difference in messy clean-up is phenomenal! Plus, the harsh chemicals in sposie wipes always upset D's delicate skin. I mostly just use water with our cloth wipes, although I do sometimes use a homemade wipes solution as well. There are a kajillion people who make wipes. You can either look at the Pin's Cloth Wipes reviews page or run a search at Hyena Cart to see who has some in-stock. OR, you can just make your own! Most of our wipes are just cut-up hemp fleece and flannel. Or some cheapie washclothes from your local Mart work fine, too.

Some people like to buy pre-made cloth wipe solution, and there are plenty of delicious ones to purchase if you want to. Again, the Pin's Wipes Solution Review page is a good place to start looking.

Finally (I think!), if you want to add wool covers, shorts, or longies to your stash, you will need special wool care. If you remember from the Wool is Cool page, the lanolin in wool is what helps it to be effective in diapering. So in caring for your wool cloth diapering pieces, you need a lanolin rich wash and most of the time you will also need some kind of additional lanolin product to put on the dry wool to keep it effective. My personal FAVE that I just love, love, love is the Sheep Soap from Ignite the Senses. Ours is the Lavender Mint scent. Yum! I like a wool wash bar because if you have an active child who can manage to get wool stained with things like sidewalk chalk, macaroni and cheese, and just plain ol' diry, the bar can be rubbed directly on the wool for maximum stain fighting power. We also have the Sheep Balm from ITS - I believe in some kind of Rose scent. Very nice, extremely effective. Sudz 'n Dudz and Naturally Luxe (formerly Monkey Sudz) are also popular choices for wool care products.

Questions? Comments?

Labels: cloth diapering

All together now! (All-in-one diapers)

Thanks Julie and Jill for the great discussion topics! This is one of the last posts I will do on cloth diapering systems and I am quite ready to talk about something else!

So finally, the last CDing system to discuss is the All in One/All in Two. A true is All in One is just that - a diaper where the cover and inner soaker and material make up the diaper altogether. Does that make sense? It's just one piece - like a disposable diaper. No stuffing, nothing to snap in on the inside. An All in Two, on the other hand, has a waterproof outer shell, an inner lining, then a soaker that snaps in to the inner lining. The theory behind the AI2 is that you can trade out soakers during the day so you can keep the same outer shell on longer. That's the theory, anyway. If you have a heavy wetter like D, I can assure this won't work. The soaker gets pretty soaked and then there is leakage on to the outer shell, rendering it unusable even with a clean soaker. But I have a dear friend (Amanda) who primarily uses AI2s because her sweet daughter is not the high volume pee-er that D is!

By way of disclaimer, I am going to say that this is my least favorite system of CDing. Yes, it is by far the easiest in terms of not having to do much to get the diaper on. If you have a partner or day care provider who is hesitant to use/change cloth diapers, I think AIOs/2s can be great. These are just not diapers that work for us . . . or maybe we just never have found the right one. Every true AIO I have tried takes far too long to dry. There is a lot of material sewn into a true AIO - there has to be for it to be effective. But this can be a drawback to true AIOs because the increased dryer drying time can be hard on the life of the PUL outer. And as I mentioned above, the AI2 design is a marvelous idea and I know it works gorgeously for many, just not for us. Also, I have found AIO/2s to be some of the most expensive on the market. Again, if you find an AI2 that you can snap clean soakers into, then that cuts down on the cost for sure.

Because we have had trouble with AIO/2s, I don't have a ton of recommendations to make. I will tell you some of the ones we have tried and others I have heard mamas rave about.

Wonder Works Magic All is one that we have tried. I really like the design of this diaper, but again, the long drying time was a concern to me. Plus, the elastic left red marks on D's chunko thighs. I know many mamas are very happy with these, though.
My friend Amanda is a huge fan of BeccaBottom All in Twos.
Bum-Ware are very popular diapers that can be either true AIO or an AI2.
We have tried Daisy Doodles and I wanted these to work SO bad for us! But alas, not meant to be. I think her design is outrageously trim and she uses the most darling fabrics.

In the world of "hard to get" WAHM made dipes, several come to mind:
Mudpie Babies are well-made and usually have darling embroidery.
If you want REALLY hard to find, Bottom Bumpers are among the most hyena of AIOs (actually an AI2).
An up-and-coming WAHM that I hear many raves about is . . . and such is life. Definitely someone to watch and stalk.

I will do one more "official" CDing entry. Thanks for hanging with me through this!

Don't forget to tell me your favorites to add to the We Love It list! Doesn't have to be cloth diapering stuff only. Just Natural Family Living books, products, or sites we want to share.

Labels: cloth diapering