Crazy Crazy Crazy

Yep. I'm completely off my rocker.

I always take on too much.

I'm teaching a workshop starting this Friday. Do I really have time to prepare myself for it? Kind of. Especially if I give up on the sewing, knitting, crocheting, and hunting stuff down bit for the next couple of days. But I'm all obsessive. Seriously. Once I get something that I want to do in my head it's impossible for me to do anything else.

I've been so completely obsessive about everything related to cloth diapering for the past month. I have diapers on the brain. The washing, the sewing, the notions, the pins, the detergent.... etc... It's bonkers folks.

And wool soakers are the bomb. Seriously. I spent a week obsessively collecting wool sweaters from every thrift store in the area. I put them in bags in the spare room until I actually have time to do something with them. Then the other night, went out at 10pm to shake them out in the yard because I read somewhere that you should do that to shake off any moth larva. Seriously. Obsessed. But couldn't stand the thought of ruining the great finds I made before I can make them into soakers... shorties and longies and skirties and wraps and just plain soakers...

I spent a week going from store to store hunting down Kool-Aid packets to dye yarn. I'm crocheting and knitting soakers from virgin uncolored wool... and I can't just leave them white. There is only one store in the area that sells blue kool-aid packets.

There is only one small store in the area that sells diaper pins.

There is no store anywhere around here that sells diaper pail deodorizer disks. Or wool wash in any form other that Woolite - which you can't use to wash your wool soakers.

I have continually searched for a good laundry detergent... none of the stores in the area carry anything...And I just can't but it online... the shipping costs about as much as the detergent. Apparently you can use any detergent - just a much smaller amount. But of course Baby sister has developed a monstrous rash. Which her "mild" diaper rash from disposables was part of the reason I went for cloth...there is so much conflicting info online! It's crazy.

Obsessive I tell ya. But I suppose there are worse things to be obsessed about.

Busy as a Bee ;)

Just popping in to say I haven't gone anywhere... I'm still around, just busy as heck!

Busy with my new obsession of sewing diapers and such...

Busy with household crap... grrr ;)

Busy with remodeling stuff -- yanking up old carpeting (to reveal beautiful wooden floors!!), having a little roofing done...

It's all chaotic around here!!

And Lazy Baby is doing some more teething... Baby Sister is up to much shenanigans... and unbelievably Little Man has become more needy and demanding. But that's what happens when attention is diverted elsewhere...

And they are all taking turns being the one not going to sleep at night! Grrr ;)

Anyway... and have you noticed - what the heck is up with all the spam comments - especially on older posts?? How annoying!!! Time consuming to go delete them... What's the solution?? Putting the catchpa back on? I hate having to do that. Double Grrr.

Why I May Be Seeing a Little Green!

And I'm not talking about "green with envy." And I'm not talking about the special power attributed to green M&Ms. Yes, I'm talking about the "earth friendly" type of green here.

Long story, but I know you will all bear with me. In the end, it is me preparing to sew cloth diapers, training pants and overnighters... I've got some pretty good reasons.

Several weeks ago, a pull up got stuffed in with the dirty clothes. Do you have any idea how absorbent these things are?? It threw my washer out of balance in a serious way. I ran to check the washer and at first there was this unrecognizable huge white thing that looked like a pillow. I didn't remember putting a pillow in the wash... Seriously the thing was the size of a pillow!!! As soon as I touched it, it exploded a bunch of gel beads all over my clothes in the wash. Eewwww. I had to re-wash the clothes a couple of times. I was totally grossed out. They may be that absorbent, but we all know that 2 big boy pees will more likely than not soak through clothes and furniture.

After that happened I started seriously thinking about what the hell is next to my babies' skin. I mean it can't be good. So I started looking up cloth diapering info and patterns and such. Then I mentioned to my husband my plans to sew up some cloth diapers. He asked whether we could afford the disposables. Thinking that we were in some kind of financial trouble. And to be truthful, we both know how lazy I am... so the time investment required for the clean up of cloth diapers is a little beyond what I am usually willing to put in. So he said that as long as we can afford it we should use the disposables. And at first I agreed after looking up some of the washing instructions...because it does seem like quite a bit of work...

So I started really looking for a reason to justify sewing diapers. Mostly because they look like some fun sewing ;) but, also the pull up incident has been in the back of my mind... and the fact that Baby Sister has had a very mild continuous diaper rash for about the past 6 mos. It's not bad at all, just a few dots in her diaper area.

Little Man has been completely potty trained for a quite a few months now, but I still put a pull up on him at night, just in case. And that is a serious waste. Out of 10 days he might wet overnight once or twice. So 80-90% of his pull ups go unused. Sometimes I save them and put them on him a second night, but not usually, it just doesn't seem quite clean...

So, in lieu of all out sewing diapers, I thought I would sew up some overnight pull up types for little man. Then I thought, why stop there? Why not do up some potty training pants for Baby Sister while I'm at it?? And some extra absorbent ones for her overnight.

Then the big chain store that I buy my generic diapers from did something awful. They changed their diapers!! Not only did they make them hoards thinner (like paper!), but they made them smaller. And it took that change for me to realize that a while back they cut the number of diapers in a box by 10!!! I used to get 80 size 5s for 13.97 - then it was 70 for 14.97. At the moment I pay about $100 a month for diapers and pull ups for 3 kids. That's really not bad all told. But if I have to switch to name brand diapers... that's going to impact our budget. I'm guessing that the changes in the diapers will affect our budget too - as I will be going through twice as many diapers...and have to move up a size for both the little ones who are still in diapers, which means less diapers in a box... Grrrr.

So the deal with the diapers pretty much cemented my plans on going cloth.

But seriously...I still have to wonder about the health of disposable diapers. Of course that has weighed into my decision. I spent yesterday thinking about all the possible/prolonged health issues, not only with diapers, but with the combination of products that we are using with our babies... about 4 years ago there was some study that claimed some formulas could impact fertility...the BPA (which can affect fertility) in plastics (bottles, feeding dishes, sippy cups). And god knows what is really in the disposable diapers. I read somewhere an implication about fertility issues with whatever is in the disposables (but don't know how reliable the source was). I totally want grandkids.

Yes, I obsess much. And I'm probably just being completely paranoid and overly dramatic.

Now I just have to convince my husband and myself that I can deal with the mess of cloth diapers :)

And of course I have to get off my lazy ass and sew some! ;)