Thursday, June 23, 2011

Girlie Milestones and Cloth Diapering

The girls are growing up! We knew they would. That's what babies do. They're already smiling! Last week they found their voices and have been squealing in delight and even taking a few short laughs, putting their hands together. This week they have both become more adept at reaching for objects including my hair (ouch!), eachothers hands, my ear plugs, and their binkies. They are also enjoying playing with the toys on their playmats.

Alongside the twins, I have been becoming more comfortable with cloth diapering. With my BumGenious 4.0s, my Fuzzibunz and my generic dipes (that I can't remember the name of but I got as a present at my baby shower) from my girl Kallie B., (the dame who got me into cloth diapering in the first place), I am now on my way to a greener existence as a mom. I have a system! I forget how big my stash is, I expect it's around 60 diapers.

In case you non-cloth diaper moms are wondering, I do a rinse in cold water in my machine, then do a hot/cold wash with Rockin Green detergent with a double rinse. Then I throw everything into my dryer and tumble dry on low. I'm going to bring my drying rack upstairs so I can put my cleaned poopy dipes in the sun to bleach them (I understand from different blogs that this works quite handily). Oh, and just in case you were wondering...I put disposable liners in my dipes so I can remove the majority of a poop and throw it away, preventing massive poopage in the girls' dipes. Let me tell yah, I can't wait until they are large enough to have formed stools instead of liquid poo.

Let's talk diaper pails. I have three diaper pails downstairs, and one upstairs in the nursery for overnight changes. The first downstairs pail (in my dining room turned baby central) is my older model, Diaper Champ for disposable things like wipes or dirty liners or the occasional (shhhhh, don't tell......) disposable diaper. (This is an exact replica of the pail I keep upstairs for overnight changes. It holds all things disposable.) The second baby central pail is my cloth diaper pail by Diaper Decor, and it holds pee-pee diapers. I purchased two, reusable/washable liners from Kissaluvs that have this cute little cloth tab inside that you can douse with essential oil so that it helps keep odors away.

I know what you're thinking. If we have a place for number one, there must be a place for number two. When I change a poopy dipe, it goes into my third pail, which is an old bucket from a discount store with a handle on it. It's portable so I can take it down to the utility sink to thoroughly rinse poopy dipes in cold water. Then I wring them out and hang them over the side until after the girls are in bed, when I throw a load of dipes in the washing machine. I have just started researching cloth wipes and home-made spray so that I can do away with disposable wipes.

Now with my snap pliers via KamSnaps.com from my SIL Ru, I can snap the inserts to the cloth diapers and wash them together, keeping them together so that I don't have to pair them up everytime I do laundry. Now all I have to do is stuff the diapers. Yay! Timesaver. I just LOVE timesaving devices, don't you? Note: I haven't acutally attempted to use the snapper device yet. I plan on watching the YouTube video to try and figure it out.

And now duty calls...the twins are crying for their supper.