June 2014 – Obermillers

Dreams

Once we become mothers we often have so many dreams revolving around our children. We dream they will grow up become doctors, astronauts, or in my case just enough to pee on the potty. Often times our lives and emotions become so wrapped up in our children we lose sight of ourselves. We forget that before we became mothers we were women with our own hopes and dreams.

This happened to me when I became a stay-at-home mom. I love my job as a mom and wouldn’t trade these precious years for anything, but I also have dreams. Moving to Europe (hopefully in the not too distance future) and traveling the world are big dreams, and I am accomplishing another as we speak. I am writing this blog and you are reading it. That is a dream being fulfilled.

Whether you are a working mom, city mom, or a stay at home mom, don’t forget to have dreams for yourself. These can be big dreams or little dreams, but the important thing is to make them happen and not let them just slip away.

Road Trip, Part 1: Unfamiliar Territory

We live in Washington state but grew up in Wisconsin. Consequently, all of our family and college friends are back there. We have always flown to see them a couple of times of year but now that Wellington is over two it is becoming quite expensive, especially in the summer months. We try to keep costs low on these shorter trips to save up for big vacations so we always try to find a really good airfare deal.

Well, with planning for Europe I had no time to research airline tickets. Instead, we will drive the 2,000 miles to the Dairy State. My husband has parental leave to use from when Isla was born, so we will be packing up the car and embarking on something we have never done, a road trip. We have never driven more three hours to a destination and doing this with two children is a daunting task. I actually find this more frightening than a four-week European vacation.

We are planning to make a few stops along the way to see Yellowstone and Mt. Rushmore but even with those breaks it will be a lot of straight driving! How to keep my strong willed daughter happy is a question I ponder daily. I keep hoping that a miracle will occur and she will become a content baby. Any ideas on ways to keep an eleven month old entertained?

Hoping they will be like this on the trip!

Cloth Diapering, Part 2: Do you have to touch poop?

Back in Cloth Diapering, Part 1 I shared what kind of cloth diapers we use. Today I’ll give a little more detail about how we use them.

So, do you have to touch poop? The answer is of course not! Many people are grossed out by the thought of cloth diapering and I was at the beginning, too. However, I think that handling gross things is in the job description of parenthood. I mean I catch spit up in my hand just to save an outfit! I can only tell you my experience of cloth diapering a boy now almost three (all potty trained) and ten month old baby girl. The first 8 months of Bean’s life his poop was mostly liquid (we waited till 6 months to feed him solids). When we change a diaper we take the prefold off and put it into a container (mini-garbage). When the container is full or we’ve run out of covers or prefolds, we start the three cycle wash. The first cycle is a cold wash using detergent we made ourselves using oxi-clean free, borax, baking soda, and washing soap. The next cycle is a hot wash with detergent again, and the final one is a cold water rinse. We found this combination the best for making sure the diapers are clean and smell-free. We let the covers air dry and then put the pre-folds in the dryer on very dry. This is how we wash Isla’s diapers; the first time around with Bean, we would soak them overnight in cold water, then do a cold rinse and a hot wash. We find the three cycle method (recommended to us by Cotton Babies) eliminates the ammonia smell that started to develop in wet diapers.

How often do we wash these diapers you might be wondering? We wash our diapers around twice a week. Isla seems to prefer pooping in clean diapers so we are going through them much faster than with Wellington. The poop usually just rolls off into the toilet, but sometimes (and I usually make my husband do this) the prefold has to be dunked in the water until the poop falls off. You can get a sprayer attachment for your toilet or inserts that you just take out and are able to throw or flush away. We are contemplating getting those for some of her more messy poops that we have to rinse off.

What do you do at night? Currently we put Isla in the toddler size and we use an infant pre-fold to help soak up the pee. The great thing about using the Flip OS is that we can make it bigger to fit all that on her. This approach seems to be working well right now.

How do you fold these bad boys? In the beginning we used many different folding techniques. I would suggest you search on the internet because there are some helpful videos. During more of the infant stages I found the Ninja fold worked the easiest with the snappi. With Wells we did the Angel fold and now wit Isla we fold the prefold into thirds and tuck it under the flaps so there is no need for a snappi. Folding the night time diapers is a bit more complicated. It is much bigger so we make the padding in the front bigger for some added absorption since we are doubling up.

That’s how we cloth diaper. It is different than the cloth diapering of our grandparents. It is more work but after a while I don’t even notice it. They look cute and are saving us a lot of money. Feel free to share your cloth diapering experience or ask any questions that may still be holding you back!

I am now on Pinterest! I hope you will come check out my different boards. I plan to put ones for the kids birthdays, nursery, recipe and a whole other boards on there. Bear with me as I learn the ropes, these two kids keep me quite busy!

For starting out, I’m generating ideas for Wellington’s 3rd birthday. I am going with a train theme as he is obsessed with them. I am going for a modern, vintage theme. We will see how it turns out but I am sure if there is just one picture of a train my son will be happy.

Follow Young Modern Mama’s board Wellington’s 3rd Birthday on Pinterest.

Cloth Diapering, Part 1: Cloth in a Disposable World

My husband and I were having dinner with a couple that had a baby almost a year before us. When they mentioned cloth diapering to us I thought there was no way we would do that. I thought that was something they did in the Victorian period, not in this 21^st century world. When our turn came to welcome our little bundle of joy into the world my husband brought it up to me. I dutifully rolled my eyes and said “if you do the research then I will think about it.” I never dreamed he would actually do it and give me facts to convince me that this is for us. You see the hubby knows how to convince me of an idea by appealing to my frugality. The cost to outfit a kid in disposable diapers is roughly around $3,000! What the what?! That might be fine if I only wanted one child but I want between four and six. That means it would cost our family between $12,000 to $18,000 to put our kids in diapers. With cloth diapers there is a larger upfront investment, but then you reuse them for many children. $400 was the number it would roughly cost to buy most of the supplies. We started out slow to test if this was really something we could commit to, as cloth diapering is definitely more work.

After months of researching cloth diapers we came to the conclusion of using prefolds inside of a Flip One Size cover. Our friends recommended the Thirsties brand. Those are not one size but are a better fit for the newborn age. Also, we have one Blueberry. All in all we have 9 covers, 50 infant (aka regular) prefolds, and 50 toddler (aka premium) size prefolds. In the end we were so glad we did it! The Thirsties, at least for a boy, didn’t work as well for us. We found that with newborn liquid poop we were having leaking issues. Also, our son was a chunky little guy and he grew out of them so fast! On the “flip” side, we are so happy with the Flip OS. They contain poop quite well, not 100% but what diaper does? Also, because our children gain weight so quickly they were able to use the the Flip OS almost from the beginning.

Flip One-Size - Albert — Flip One-Size – Albert

That’s not to say we never use disposable diapers. We do go on vacation and we use the disposables but we are always happy to come home to our cloth diapers because no matter what brand he is wearing he always seemed to explosively poop out of them! When we went on vacation this last time we put our Flip diaper covers over disposables and it contained the poop quite well. It was one of our genius moments. In the next post I will cover how often we do wash, nighttime diapers, and the transition from newborn to infant. Until then take a look how cute my little man looks in his cloth diaper. Somehow I don’t think the effect would be as precious with disposables. The orange gave Wellington a nice pop of color! Here he is at four months. We called him our little Buddha.

Since our daughter, Isla, was not quite as chunky, she used the Thirsties for a couple weeks as an infant. Here she is at one-day old while she cuddles with her auntie.