Baby King

Archive for the ‘diapers’ Category

Our Little Prince turned eighteen months old last week. That’s a year and a half of this awesome little person being in our life. We had our 18 month check-up and while the pediatrician said he looks like he is “filling out,” he’s still a tiny guy: height 30¼”, weight 19lbs 12oz. So in six months he’s grown about 2 inches and put on almost 1.5lbs. Somehow it seems more reassuring that he is growing when I look at it like that.

Here’s a bullet list of 18 things about LP at 18 month, interspersed with a whole bunch of pictures and videos.

• Lately he’s been putting words together with alarming regularity. We have “cold outside”, “school bus”, “Ernie eat”, “That’s a kitty”, and my favorite, “Mommy made apple pie.” He’s also hitting the “my/mine” stage full on.

• At daycare they’ve started sitting him on the toilet twice a day. So we got a little potty and LP really loves to “sit on the potty.” Hasn’t “used” it yet, but we’re getting the idea.
• He loves to help around the house. He’ll stir stuff in a pot, wash dishes, and sweep the floor.

• There were a ton of leaves in our front yard so I raked them into a pile and we played in the leaf pile for a while. Yes, he’s wearing shorts and a t-shirt. I’ll take my 100° summers to have 80° in December.

• He loves books, Star Wars/R2D2, Elmo, Cookie Monster, and Ernie. He also went nuts when we showed him some of the Aristocats because he could identify the animals and had to tell us about them.

• We are working on being the very best nerd-parents/totally messing LP up forever. He can say “die” and “dice” which is cute in general, but when he turns to me and says “mommy, die” it’s a little weird out of context. Although when he said “tante, die” while we were Facetiming with my sister it totally made my night!

• We’ve also taught him to clench his fists and yell “Khaaaaaaan” which is just super adorably cute. (Still working on getting video of that one).
• He’s still nursing a ton, although the “milk is asleep” from when he falls asleep until 2am is working out pretty well. Sometimes when he wakes up before 2am and I tell him that “milk is asleep” and he gives me this “No” wail that reminds me of Luke being told that Vader is his father.
• He’s also eating more. I try not to be worried when he’s not interested in food at dinner time, but it can’t always be helped. Then I remember that he eats well at daycare and he has a snack on the way home from daycare and also breastfeeds for a bit when we first get home.
• He still loves apples more than just about anything. He also likes sweet potato fries, sweet potato puffs, crackers, turkey (but not chicken as much), pasta, blueberries, and strawberries.

• LP can go up and down stairs. When he says “up the stairs” it kind of sounds like “apple juice.”
• On that note, he had a big tumble down the stairs the other day. I thought he was at the bottom of the stairs, I turned around, turned back and he was half way up them. Then he turned around to see me, and lost his footing. He rolled down about four stairs sideways before I got to him. Picked him up and assured him he was fine. Breastfeed him for a bit, and then we went down and up the stairs again to make sure he wasn’t afraid of them.
• He currently has four top teeth, two bottom teeth, and a third bottom tooth is part way in.

• He loves slides. At the playgrounds he’s figured out how to go up the stairs, over to the slide, and go down it.
• Like his father, he’s a “reaction junkie.” If I react to something he does and he finds my reaction funny, he’ll do it over and over again to try to get the same reaction. He loves to blow raspberries on my tummy. The other day he tickled my knee and when I squealed (I’m super ticklish) he did it again and again all night.
• His favorite game to play with us is “boo/hi.” He’ll hide behind something, such as the couch or a wall, and then jump out and say “hi” or “boo.” It’s so cute!
• We’re trying out All-in-Ones/Pocket diapers again because a. I’m tired of using disposables when we go out and b. he doesn’t need to be changed as often as when he was 3 months old and will tolerate a wet diaper more. So far so good. We’ve purchased a couple of the very nerdy diapers over on Seams Geeky, because who can resist Final Fantasy and glow-in-the-dark Tron diapers?
• I currently have four baby carriers in the house, but one I don’t use any more (the Moby) and one I’m borrowing from Austin Babywearers. There’s another one I’m lusting over. I may have a small problem. But he likes to be worn and I still like to wear him.

In closing, in case you are thinking about getting him anything for this holiday season, here’s his Amazon wishlist. Clothing is also always appreciated. He’s at that stage where he’s in between the 12 and 18 month sizes.

Our Little Prince turned 7 months right before NYE. At his Doctor’s appointment the day before, he weighed in at around 17lbs (they didn’t take his length).

I feel like LP is currently existing in a state of in-betweens, not-quites, and almosts.

He’s almost crawling. He has flipping both ways, getting on all fours, and moving from sitting to all fours and back down pat. He’s doing the rock back and forth and the push the his butt into the air (a la downward dog). He’s also really good at going backwards. Unfortunately, he really wants to go forward so this will eventually upset him. He hasn’t figured out that he could turn around and go backwards and get to where he wants.

LP is almost pulling-up, standing and walking. He can pull up with fingers and his daycare has said that he can pull-up in his crib there. But he’s not pulling up on furniture at home. When standing, he can stay up for a little while and sometimes even balance for a few seconds with one hand. And in this past week he’s actually taken a few steps forward when we hold his hands, which seriously surprised both Darius and me.

Because of this our LP is in between the Infant A and Infant B rooms at daycare. He’s still officially in Infant A, but he spends time in Infant B (with the crawling and walking children) getting use to that room and the teachers there.

LP is not quite eating solids. So far he’s not a fan of sweet potato. He likes avocado, but mostly as an item to play/make a mess with. He has gotten some in his mouth and seemed to enjoy it. He also likes to suck on apples, either ones I’m eating or if I put a chunk in a mesh baby feeder, but he’s not interested in apple sauce. He also takes sips of water from a cup if Darius is drinking, because he wants to be like daddy. We’re not worried. We’re letting him explore at his own pace.

LP is currently in-between clothing sizes, diaper cover sizes, and disposable diaper sizes. Hitting all of these at once is annoying me. The clothing he was wearing (0-6/3-6/6 month sized for the most part), fits fine with a small tug over disposables, but needs a few tugs and sometimes a bit of pulling to be put on over cloth diapers. The 6-9/9 month sized clothing is too long for his arms and legs, but fits torso and around cloth diapers. When it comes to pajamas, the 6 months are pulling on him, but he’s swimming in the 9s. As for our diaper covers, the Thirsties Duo Wrap size ones are starting to not fully cover the pre-folds and the sometimes the velcro pulls off a bit. So we got some of the size 2s (snaps) and snapped all the way down, they fully cover his pre-folds with a bit of extra room. Talking about diapers, the size 2s are getting small, but not too small, on him (he is getting a bit of a plumbers crack in them sometimes, but there is so much room in the size 3s that it’s ridiculous. So you can see why this is all very frustrating. I wish he’d just grow already so I can put away all of the smaller sizes.

Over the holidays, LP had his first big cold with a wet cough and a runny nose (of course he got it when he wasn’t at daycare). He had it when he went in for his shots, so the doctor listened to his lungs and declared it just a cold. However, driving 10 hours in a car with a baby who has a cold and got his shots the day before was not fun. We got through it though. And it was nice to be at my mother’s house where there were extra people around to help take care of LP and our sanity. Also, around that time LP and I developed thrush. We’re treating it and seem to be doing much better, even if he hates taking his medicine for it.

Lastly, here is my favorite picture that I’ve taken recently. I call it “I’m using this one now and I’m saving that one for later.”

Finally, my long-promised (mostly to myself) post about cloth diapers.

For the first few months of our Little Prince’s life, we used a diaper service for our cloth diapers. We were able to do so thanks to the generosity of our families. Diaper services are awesome! They give you a stack of diapers and at the end of the week they take away all of the nasty ones and give you clean ones! They also lent us a Snappi and some covers. We quickly learned that we needed more Snappis and covers and so we bought some of our own.

However, we soon realized that with daycare not willing to use cloth diapers (boo. This is the only thing I don’t like about his daycare) the diaper service was no longer worth it. So we (meaning my mom and I) started looking into different kinds/styles/etc of cloth diapers.

My first resource was these set of blogs from my ex-co-worker Laura. She goes into a lot of detail of different kinds of diapers and how to clean them and all of that.

We ultimately decided to stick with prefolds with a snappi and a cover. My favorite prefolds are from Green Mountain Diapers. They can be pretty expensive, and I was super thankful that my family was once again willing to pitch in and start us off with two dozen GMD yellows. As we were getting ready to move from the yellow to the reds (you know what size a prefold diaper is by its stitching), we got lucky as GMD had a seconds sale so I was able to get a dozen that way. Then I found another two dozen via Diaper Swappers. I couldn’t tell you why most of the seconds were seconds and the ones we got from Diaper Swappers were in amazingly excellent condition (I think only two or three had even a hit of stains). So now we have three dozen of the reds. We also have about 2 dozen regular infant sized chinese prefolds, which make FANTASTIC burp cloths and are pretty much all we use them for (well, that and putting them on the changing table in case LP decides to  pee or poop while being changed).

LP in a red GMD with a Snappi

Side not: yes, that is a Pee Pee Teepee in the background. I thought they were silly too…until I learned how far his stream can go. Now I think they are awesome.

I have found my favorite covers to be the Thirsties Duo Wraps. We bought the size 1s when LP was just born and because of the way they size up, he still fits into them. They come in cool colors and patterns (owl pattern, I have my eye on you!) and as long as you make sure everything is tucked inside, they almost never ever leak anything out of them. No, really. We’ve had poops that I’m sure would have been total blow-outs in disposables that leaked around or up and over the prefold and were caught by the cover.

LP in a shirt and yellow Thirsties diaper cover with the Happy Apple

For a diaper pail, we use a large Thirsties Wet Bag inside of a simple trashcan. We have two of them so that if one is in the wash, we still have another one. These wet bags will actually tumble all of the diapers out of them in our washing machine, so I don’t even have to touch the dirty diapers! We put a deo-disk at the bottom of the pail to help with the smell. It works ok. I’m thinking of finding an alternative solution.

For washing the diapers, we use Rockin’ Green. We have hard water so we use the Hard Rock “Rage Against the Raspberries” formula. We start out with one wash on cold with no detergent. Next we do a hot/sanitize wash with about 1 and a bit scoops of detergent and an extra rinse. Sometimes I do another rinse and spin after that just to make sure all of the detergent is out.  Then we dry them in the dryer on high/anti-bacterial. The only time we had a problem with LP’s butt reacting is when we forgot the extra rinse. I know some people like to hang dry their diapers, but I don’t have a line in my back yard and the dryer works just fine.

As for the disposables, we use Pampers Swaddlers at daycare and Pampers either Swaddlers or Baby Dry overnight. At first we were doing cloth overnight, but LP hated to be wet at all and so by going to disposables at night, we don’t have to get up and change him, especially since he’s pretty much stopped pooping overnight.

Lastly, I came up with this last night as I was trying to get a diaper on a wiggly post-bath baby and posted it on FaceBook. I called it the Fugue For Diapers:

I got the diaper here,
It goes over right over your rear
And it’ll help to keep your bum quite clear.
Can do, can do, this diaper it can do. Can do can do.

I got the Pampers, why
Cause it’ll keep ya dry
Though sometimes the stink can attract a fly.
No leaks, no leaks. All night with no leaks. No leaks, no leaks.