Today is election day which means there is lots of poo-slingin going on. In lieu of writing a political diatribe, I’m going to instead update you on our experience with cloth diapers.

Penny has been in her BumGenius 3.0s for about three months now, seeing as we started her at three weeks of age. And I can’t say enough great things about them. The biggest misconceptions about cloth diapers are that 1) they will stink to high heaven along with lots of poo handlin’ and 2) All! That! Laundry! I’m here to set those misconceptions straight.

If there’s anything I’m thoroughly impressed with in the cloth diapering realm, it’s just how clean these diapers get in the wash. I am washing them according to the manufacturer’s recommendations using a front-loading washing machine, Charlie’s Soap, and once-a-month bleach treatment. About twice a month, I opt to dry my inserts outside in the sun to bleach out any discoloration that has started to set in. The rest of the time, they go in the dryer. After three months of use, my diapers still look brand new.

There is seriously no smell on the diapers after washing them. None. And then during a diaper change, I can avoid getting poo on my hands just as easily if not more than when using disposables. In fact, Matt loves cloth diapers so much that he finds changing disposable diapers to be really gross. I imagine this is because of how absorbent cloth diapers are. Also a kid in a dirty disposable stinks from a mile away, whereas it’s often hard to tell if Penny has soiled her cloth diaper because of odor and moisture absorbency.

As for the laundry aspect, I admit that I might be biased about this one since I love doing laundry, love my laundry appliances, and love my laundry room. But I really do not find an extra load of laundry every other day to be a big chore. Especially when you get as much of a kick out of cloth diapers as I do. Stuffing and folding Penny’s diapers is fun, nay even therapeutic, after a long day. I can imagine that doing the diaper wash for more than one kid would be disheartening, although if I’m honest with you, I think changing the diapers of more than one kid in and of itself would be disheartening. I do not believe I am called to that particular challenge, Lord willing.

I have become such a lover of cloth diapers that I recently switched over to cloth wipes. It’s really a smarter choice when you’re cloth diapering so that you don’t constantly have to be throwing away half of your dirty items while storing the other half. I wash my wipes in with my diapers and mix up my own solution of baby wash and water to moisten the wipes. I hate the word “moisten.” It takes me about 2 minutes every other day, I can fold them to pop up automatically in my hand-me-down dispenser, and Penny’s butt isn’t slarved with all sorts of unrecognizable chemicals – just baby wash and water.

Which brings me to the best part of cloth diapering… her butt. Seriously, her butt is in mint condition. (My mother-in-law even noticed which made me awfully proud!) She gets the occasional rash because I no longer change her diaper at night (and she can wear a cloth diaper all night without any leaking! That’s the power of BG!) which easily clears up without ointment from spending a day in clean cloth dipes. On occasion we will use Grandma El’s butt cream to clear up rashes even faster, and it doesn’t damage your dipes like most other butt creams do.

I thought I would switch Penny to disposables when we are out on errands, but thanks to marvellous wetbags and very compact BumGenius Flips, I only keep cloth dipes in my diaper bag now. Penny’s babysitter is even willing to do cloth diapers, so I won’t need to stock up on disposables before going out on date night.

If you’re not a believer yet, perhaps this will seal the deal. In the past four months I have spent a total of $50 on diapering items. That includes the disposables she was in up through week 3, one package of disposables when we were traveling in September, and disposable wipes up through last week when I switched to cloth wipes.

Which means, if all goes as planned, I won’t spend another dime on diapers until I pick up some disposables for our cruise in February.

So if you are considering cloth diapers, let me assure you that these are NOT your mama’s diapers anymore!

This week is National Breastfeeding Week which is a celebration of nursing and its health benefits for mother and child. Completely unrelated to NBW, I had two separate conversations about breastfeeding yesterday with two friends who couldn’t be farther apart on the issue. It made me happy that I have such diverse friends who aren’t afraid to discuss hot topics.

Both of these people asked me how breastfeeding with Penny was going, and whether or not I liked it. Frankly, I went into motherhood pretty blase about breastfeeding, and I continue to be blase about it. I choose to breastfeed because A) Penny took to it really easily, B) I like the research behind breastmilk building a stronger immune system, and C) it’s cheaper (probably my most compelling reason, honestly)!

I’m all about people who are breastfeeding advocates, and completely understand why they are. I’m also all about women who choose to formula feed because of the many logical reasons they choose to. For me, it’s all about the cash money.

The more I started to think about it, the more I realized most of my mothering decisions so far have had to do with my thrifty New England spirit. For instance, I’m cloth diapering because I love how it is better for the environment, but I’m also doing it because the average home spends $50-75 a month on disposable diapers. Because of my very generous friends, all 16 of my cloth diapers were given to me, without me spending a dime on diapering. I’ve realized I need to pick up a few more, but with some giftcards that I’ve been given, I think I might only wind up shelling out $20 or so to round out my supply. Pretty incredible when you think that Penny can wear these same diapers until she’s potty trained. And then I can reuse them for future kids. When you add it up, that’s a hefty savings!

(I did have a higher water bill in July, probably from doing a load of diapers every day. Which is all the more reason for me to get more diapers since 14 dirty dipes is only a half load in my washing machine.)

Well if I’m not a hyper breastfeeding advocate, why am I a hyper natural childbirthing advocate? A lot of this, again, comes down to money. We just got the bills from my C-section and hospital stay which added up to a whopping $30,000. Fortunately, because of Matt’s fairly comprehensive employer-sponsored healthcare we only have to pay about 15% of the total bill for my care, Penny’s nursery stay and her EKGs. But $30,000 as opposed to $2,000 for a natural delivery? Why would anyone choose the former if they didn’t have to?

What it all comes down to is that Penny (who is currently wearing some cute, and free! hand-me-downs) won’t be carrying a cell phone in Elementary school not because I have issues with it (although I do), but because I’m too cheap to buy her one. And perhaps all the money that I’ll save by handling her poopy cloth diapers for all those years will make it possible to build that Frank Lloyd Wright-inspired house in the Tennessee countryside that I was sketching out earlier today.

What’s the driving factor behind your parenting decisions? Whatever will keep your kid from life behind bars? Whatever prevents you from being blamed in 10 years of therapy once they’re adults? Or are you just cheap like me?

I wonder how many kid-related posts I’ll need to write before my previous audience completely disappears into thin air? Sorry guys. But I guess you had nine months to prepare for this.

This week we decided to start Penny in cloth diapers. Her disgusting umbilical stump finally fell off late last week, which was one of the things we were waiting for. The other reason we waited was to use up as many of the disposables that we had been given as we possibly could. We have a small stash left for going out and traveling, but with that running low it was time to bite the bullet.

Yesterday was Penny’s first day exclusively in cloth. We started her in pre-folds with covers, but she quickly wet through those. Then we tried her in the BumGenius 3.0 pocket diapers which were a success! Today being the second day, we’ve figured out just how tightly to secure them as well as how to best position them to prevent leaks. And I gotta say, I’m pretty impressed. (I also will say that she developed a small diaper rash over the weekend which quickly disappeared as soon as we put her in cloth. Take THAT, disposables!)

I have a supply of about 14 or so BumGenius pocket dipes, and each day I go through about 10-11, which means doing a load of laundry every day. I think I might pick up another 4-6 which would allow me to do diaper wash every other day – you wouldn’t really want to push it longer than that. The other issue we need to solve is to find a suitable lidded trash can to keep my wetbag in. I searched high and low while pregnant and landed on one trash can that really is better as just a trash can. So I’m sending Matt on the search for a better container. This is a task that he will shine at.

Overall, I have to say that cloth diapers are really nice and seem very doable. Yesterday we ran a few errands (to the jeweler! to have my engagement ring reset! FINALLY!), and Penny was in cloth the whole time. I had my small wetbag with me and didn’t wind up needing to change her. I plan to keep her in cloth for most around-town errands and only put her in disposables while we’re doing major traveling. Even Matt is totally on board with these diapers and doesn’t find them to be any more challenging than the others.

Now I just need to go through her clothes to figure out what will fit over her huge butt! Goodbye newborn onesies.

I was blown away when I was selected to be a recipient of handmade Etsy gifts from the folks over at Etsy Baby Shower. Essentially what happens is that a bunch of generous shop owners gift expecting mamas with their hand-crafted baby wares as of way of congratulating them. My sister tipped me off to it, and my due date with Penny (as well as my obsessive love for all things Etsy) qualified me to be one of the lucky mamas!

I’ve had such a fun time emailing back and forth with the various shop owners who sent me beautiful gifts. Once again, I was thoroughly impressed with how many talented and crafty people are out there, and I love that Etsy gives them a wider audience and hopefully more business. So this week, I wanted to show you the beautiful new gifts for Penny and tell you a little more about the shops behind them.

From Daily Daguerreotype

Tessa from T & T Crafts sent over these adorable blue and green booties with fun non-skid soles. Of course I died when I saw the colors and the little green rosettes, but I also loved that Penelope will have a bit more traction while zipping around on our wood floors. As if I’ll even be able to put her down for a second. I can’t wait to see these babies on her wee little feet!

Tessa sells a wide variety of crafts including homemade soap, reusable produce bags, and dog collars, not to mention her sustainable baby wares – cloth dipes and wipes! You know that makes my green heart squee with joy!

Check out her shop if you’re looking for a fun and eco-friendly gift for that person in your life who loves all things hand-crafted! And thanks so much, Tessa (and Etsy Baby Shower!), for your generous gift!

I know Earth Day was last Thursday, but I was busy destroying the earth by polluting it with gas and driving across the nation. Obama claims he’s going to expand the rail system, and as soon as he does, you better believe that I will be purchasing train tickets willy nilly and singlehandedly keeping Tennessee on the map.

Regardless of where you stand on global warming and whether or not zoos are immoral, I certainly hope we can all come together to understand the need we have as stewards of this earth to take better care of it. If there is one group of people I cannot even put on a fake smile and BS for five minutes, it’s those who are careless with our resources and do not have a healthy respect for the environment. If that’s you, take this as my steely glare in your general direction.

On a more positive note, I’ve been excited by some of the changes we’ve made in our lifestyle over the past year to become more environmentally friendly. We’ve introduced plant-based cleaning products to our life, reusable microfiber cloths, recycling more than ever before, and are about to enter the phase of our life which revolves around cloth diapering, glass bottling, and rockin some sweet hand-me-downs. I’ll also admit that we have instituted an “if it’s yellow, let it mellow” flush policy during the nights because I’m just going to the bathroom so daggone much. I’d like to think that our water usage has gone down because of it.

In a week and a half I’ll be picking up our very first box of CSA produce from a local farm here in Tennessee. We’re excited to be supporting local farmers but also to be trying new veggies that we probably have never eaten before. I’m sure you’ll hear more about the CSA when I’m reaching out to you for radish recipes. We also have plans to start composting, and will enjoy lowered fuel costs this summer as Matt will be riding  his motorcycle in the nice weather instead of driving.

I have some goals for the upcoming year to continue living on fewer natural resources, including using our AC less, lowering our heat in the winter, and trying to cook using fewer pots and pans and running my dishwasher less frequently. We’re also excited about continuing to find great local vendors to support instead of always heading to the big box retailers, and little changes like these can make a big difference.

What greener goals do you have? If we all made just one little change this year, I think the world would be a much better place.

What is even cuter than a tiny baby bird trying to fly for the very first time? I’ll tell you what. CLOTH DIAPERS.

From Daily Daguerreotype

These arrived in the mail last week from Marissa and Deneese and I’ve been folding and refolding and stuffing and unstuffing them since then. Because I’m not going to get enough of that when Penelope arrives and is yellow slime pooing them twelve times daily.

Even Matt is smitten. When he held up the little orange diaper, unsnapped it and saw how small it adjusts for newborns he exclaimed, “I am SO HAPPY she’s being born in the summer time! Just think of how cute she’ll be squealing around in just this little orange diaper!”

Ok, I amend my previous statement. The only thing cuter than a tiny baby bird trying to fly for the first time, is going to be my daughter squealing around with a big ole cloth diaper on her booty. NOM NOM NOM!!!!!!!