A Few Less Diapers

If you have been around our family since we have had Cap you already know we do infant potty training. This is also called Elimination Communication or what we call EC. I will not go into great detail about this since I already have in the past. I am pretty sure you can search it on our blog and all sorts of old post will come up. We are HUGE fans of this method and had Cap in full time undies at 12 months old (not that we didn't have some misses after that, especially in Kenya!)

We started EC'ing with Cap at 4 weeks old. We started with Tuolumne at 6 weeks and 2 days old. Later with her since I was busy with the Great Nap and Bryce obviously had other stuff going on besides potty training a newborn! We started pretty leisurely with it, but had 1 catch every day for 4 or 5 days straight. Then we had a couple of days where we had a couple of catches each day.

Then she started staying dry from about 8 or 8:30pm until 2:00am. I always said I would NOT EC at night! The thought of breastfeeding and taking a kid potty in the middle of the night did not sound at all appealing to me. But waiting for your kid to pee and poop in a diaper so you can change it and go back to sleep seemed more silly to me than putting your less than 2 month old on the potty at 2 am. Make sense?

Here are a few things to note about you Tuolumne:
- you give lots of cues you need to go unlike Cap who went more on timing
- if you are in a good deep sleep, you will always wake up dry
- if you are squirming and uncomfortable while sleeping you will be wet
- you like getting kisses after you go in the potty
- sometimes you take awhile to go, Cap would go quick

We still clean lots of diapers, and she doesn't go every time she is on the potty! We are just in the beginning stages of communicating with each other. As a bonus, even though our cloth diapering system is easy, I still love having 1 less diaper to clean!

This boy did it!

We finally were able to celebrate having a dry night this week! We have been so close for so long, but we did it! Cap was so excited. For the last month we have talked about what kind of donut he wanted. Somewhere along the way 1 donut became 2! So he wanted a black one and a pink one! He was thrilled to pick them out. There were no pink ones but there were pink sprinkles on the black "chocolate" covered one. He had the whole donut in the pick and about half of my chocolate with creme one too. What a morning we had:) Sugar is crack...period. But it was well worth the treat.

He woke up the next morning dry too, but we just did a small piece of chocolate instead of donuts. We will slowly move on to other "treats" to keep reinforcing what a great job he is doing staying dry.

Our naps on the other hand have been pretty poor. We do crib rest time no matter what! He has an opportunity every day to take a nap. He stays in there a long time too, any where from 1 1/2 to 2 hours. He just talks and talks the entire time! It is pretty entertaining, but I have to listen the whole time he is in there in case he ask to go potty. Not so restful for me. I don't know what to do. I don't think there is anything I can do. On those days I put him to bed at 6:30 which I must say is nice, but I just wish he would nap. I think we just need some warm sunshine and some hard days playing outside. Apparently, CO has no springtime.....sigh.

I guess one day we will wake up and it will just be summer! Looking forward to that day for sure!

Another One of Those EC Updates

Quick Time Line:
4 weeks old: started infant potty training, started doing pee's in the potty immediately.....not hard to do with an infant who pee's all the time:)

5 months: doing lots of pee's in potty along with some, but not all poo's

7 months: all poo's in potty unless there was a random nap poop, lots of pee's but still lots of wet diapers

10 months: started to sign potty to us

12 months: started to notice we never had misses while out of the house. so we started full time undies except for sleeping. he began to only have 1 accident a day.

14.5 months: had our first clean and dry day!!!!

till 18 months: we did lots of traveling and moving and tons of different time zones. started not telling us, getting distracted easily and having misses. i started wondering what to do and getting a little frustrated, which didn't help.

19 months: i let it go and started to relax about it, he immediately got better and stopped having misses. later in the month he stopped peeing during naps. thank goodness!

21 months: started holding it for 3-4 hours. occasionally over 5 hours. does not like to poop in public AT ALL! he will hold his poop all day if he has to.


Cap just got over some sort of stomach bug. Throw up for 1 day and diarrhea for a week. I have always been glad we did infant potty training. I mean, I have hardly cleaned poop diapers since he was 7 months old. But this week with all the diarrhea I have been especially thankful! I have been so proud of Cap and how he has been telling us when he needs to go and hardly having any misses these days. We are still using a diaper at night. But a lot of the time he is barely wet. I am in no hurry for night time dryness because I don't want to get up in the night if he needs to go potty. Terrible I know! It will come when it comes though!

Not much of a Christmas post I know. I have been writing this over the last week or so just haven't had time to finish until now!

Merry Christmas and hope everyone is enjoying some down time!

Cloth on Your Babies Bum

There are a million cloth diaper systems out there. After finding out we were pregnant with Cap my search began for the right cloth system out there for our family. As I read and read and read online, I eventually came across some info about Infant Potty Training. I am so thankful I did, because it helped me decide on which diapers to go with. 

We stuck to 100% cotton. They make a lot of cloth systems that will pull away the moisture just like a pamper would. We didn't want that. When Cap wet or soiled himself, we wanted him to know it from the beginning. We didn't want him to loose the feeling of relieving himself. We wanted to go with his natural instincts, so we chose cotton. 

It also was a very simple and cost effective decision. Other diapers can cost you $20 per diaper. In the long run, even $20 a diaper is still better than a 2-3 year pamper system. Our diapers estimated to be $30/dozen so $2.50 each. Then we bought 9 covers total (2 different sizes) for about $13 each. It was a great way to do it, and all the way below I break down what we spent total on our diapering system.

We ordered everything we needed from Green Mountain Diapers which you can find online. I will tell you right now, it is an overwhelming site, but very thorough. She has experience and has tried just about it all out there. It is a great resource but don't get overloaded. After reading her suggestions and comments under the things she sales, I was able to make some decisions on what we would use. Every thing I list below can be found on her site. If you have trouble locating it, let me know and I will send a direct link. 

Cloth-eez Prefold Diapers:
We used unbleached and started with 2 dozen and went to 3 dozen shortly after. We mostly did wash every other day with the diapers. There was a time when we had 2 dozen where we did it one morning on day 1 and at night on day 2. So every day in a half kind of. That much wash is only for a season. I had a friend who waited longer sometimes 4-5 days and she just soaked them in water. Soaking is NOT necessary otherwise. We did that WAY later on because we weren't dirtying as much so we just didn't need to wash them, but they smelt so bad so soaking them in plain water helped. 

I would suggest ordering at least 2 dozen in the next size up so you have some ready when they grow out of them. You will be surprised how sometimes they just wake up and something doesn't fit!   

Thirsties Duo Snap Covers:

This in my opinion would be reason enough to use cloth diapers! The covers are so cute. Cap never wore shorts his first summer, and rarely wore pants in the winter. I made him some fleece leg warmers instead. It is WAY easier to EC when you don't have to take off pants, shorts, unbutton outfits, etc. Even on some of his onsies, we would cut the bottoms off and make into shirts. 

Anyways, getting back on track we used the Thristies Duo Snap Covers. I am not a fan of velcro. It sticks to things in the wash and your baby will easily undo velcro one day with possibly dirty diaper! 

They come in 2 sizes. Cap didn't need size 2 until he was 4 months, but he was a big baby. He moved to the medium prefolds then and we used them till the end. Never needed a size bigger since we did early potty training.  

We had 5 covers of size 1. May be 4 on the size 2. Occasionally they will get a little dirty on the elastic edge, but we would just rinse it in the sink and reuse. We only washed covers once a week. These are also nice to have a couple of the next size up on. We needed them when we hit the medium prefolds.  

Wipes:

We used the 2 sided wipes. LOVED LOVED LOVED THESE!!! We never even used a wipe until Kenya when Cap was 14 months old and holy cow what a difference. With these you don't feel like you are touching poop or like your finger is going to pop through at any moment! If you are going to wash some diapers, you might as well wash the wipes too. This will also help keep all the yucky stuff off your sweet babies bum that the wet wipes are covered in. Babies skin can be very sensitive. 

Kissaluvs Diaper Lotion Potion Spray: 

We just sprayed the bum rather than any of the other suggestions and it worked great with us. We used the spray bottles she suggest as well. You mix this stuff with witch hazel, and she said to use less potion than what the bottle calls for. We did what she says and it worked perfect. Not to mention, we only bought one bottle, and still have tons left. Of course, it helped we did most of our poo's in the potty by 7 months old.

Fasteners:

We used the snappis fasteners. Those do eventually break so good to have backups. We didn't know this:) We had some big safety pins made for cloth diapers, but we never once used them. The snappis were just so quick and easy.

The Pail Diaper Sprayer: 

A MUST have in my opinion. We used a gift card. It was our splurge but we LOVED it. They make these whole pail systems, but I don't think they are necessary. The sprayer is awesome though.  

Wet Bags:

You need several of these unless you plan on going through a lot of plastic bags, which in my opinion would kind of go against one of the main reasons of cloth diapering:) You will want a couple of big ones and several diaper bag size ones. In NC, it takes a FULL day to dry out after washing which is why you need multiple bags. Here in CO, things dry must faster, but I would still recommend 2 big ones, and 2-3 small ones. 

We used a Fuzzibunz Large bag that my sweet sister in law gave us when Cap was born. I really could have used 2 of these. Then we had a medium size and a small size of the Thirsties zip bags that we loved!! I would suggest the medium sized ones for your diaper bags. The small was too small but I had ordered it first.

Total Cost Estimate of what we spent:
1 dozen newborn prefolds              $24
3 dozen small prefolds                 $84
2 dozen medium prefolds               $64
5 dozen wipes                            $55
Lotion Potion                             $8
Spray Bottles                            $3
Diaper Sprayer                          $50 (have seen now for $35)
Large Wet Bag                          $20
Medium Wet Bag                        $15
Small Wet Bag                          $12

Total                                $335

We used gift/baby shower money for most of this. We have very sweet family and friends!!! No matter how you pay for your cloth system, you will be saving TONS of money in the long run!!!

Okay, I know this was probably overwhelming but don't let it be! We didn't do pampers until Kenya and we were so glad we didn't! We enjoyed our cloth ones MUCH MORE!!!

Let me know if you have any questions. 

Some EC Start Up Tips

I stood in line with 100s of other people (mostly women) this afternoon for the Just Between Friends Sale. We were in line for over an hour and all we bought were 3 small items. Crazy I know, but sometimes you have time not so much money:) However, I stood in the line with some great ladies. We talked away the wait. During the wait I asked Cap if he needed to go potty..."no"....it had been 2 hours, but I trust him now with letting me know when he needs to go. One of the ladies next to me heard me ask him if he needed to go. She couldn't believe he was only 18 months old and potty trained. This has been the typical reaction of people since the beginning of our EC journey. Than there are a million questions that follow.

I was hoping just to write a short EC Start Up post. Just wanting to list the basics of how this works and how to get started. There are some sites out there, but they can be hard to find. And also hard to find good ones. But in the course of 2 years, which is when I first started looking online, it has changed and grown in popularity. More people are choosing cloth for their babies bums, which tends to lead to earlier potty training, and while shopping for cloth items it is easy to stumble across Infant Potty Training info.

EC stands for Elimination Communication. Also called EC or infant potty training. EC is the natural alternative to diaper dependence. Half of the babies in the world are potty trained by 12 months of age, yet the average age of an American baby is 3 years old. With EC, you are simply helping your baby follow his natural instincts not to soil or wet himself, loved ones, or his space (crib, car seat, carrier, etc.).

Misconceptions:
There are many misconceptions for this lifestyle, and I say lifestyle because it does become part of your every day routine. Changing diapers are a lifestyle  so can EC'ing.

It does not consume all your time. You don't have to sit around staring at your baby waiting for that miraculous cue or sign letting you know it's time. I guess if you wanted to do that and you had the time then go for it??? But I would guess that you and your little one/ones need some time away and some space to explore.

You will not have a house covered in pee or poop. I will admit, we have had a couple of misses on the floor, pees and poops (somehow we had just as many while in Kenya:) but you aren't living in waste. Hard to say much more on that without knowing how this works.

You don't have to EC full time. We chose to never EC at night. Our sleep was important to us, and Cap started sleeping through the night at 2 1/2 months old. There were some times he wasn't sleeping through the night and for us, EC'ing was more of an interruption than what we wanted it to be. You can do this full, part, or the occasional time. No matter what your family choses to do, the communication you gain from EC'ing, saving a diaper, wiping a bum, etc will be worth it!

It is not impossible! You need to remember that half of the world is doing it. We laughed so hard when we first heard about this. The name alone is hilarious. The more we read about it, the more it made sense.

How to get started:
I found 3 basic ways that lead to your baby going potty. Some say 4.
1) Babies signals. Just like your he lets you know when he is hungry, wants to be held, sleepy, he is also letting you know when he needs to relieve himself. This can vary from child to child. Some get squirmy, some will stop playing and start getting upset out of no where, some will even latch off while nursing to let you know he needs to potty. The best way to find out, is to spend a couple of hours one day, learning what your baby tends to do right before he wets himself. This was easy for us since we used 100% cotton pre-folds ( which is what I highly recommend, another post).

2) Natural Timing. There are times you can pretty much count on your baby going potty. It is not natural to go to the bathroom where your 'space' is. Babies won't naturally pee or poop while in the following: crib, car seat, baby carrier, while sleeping, while being held. So when your baby just wakes up, put him over a potty. When he just gets out of a car seat, let him potty, etc. Babies also need to go before/ during/ after eating. Cap would rarely need to go during nursing, but shortly after he would need to go. If your baby is wet, still give the opportunity to go more in a potty. To this day, if Cap happens to have a miss in his undies, he still will go more in the potty if I let him. Natural timing is what worked best for us.

3) Your own instincts. Sometimes I would be holding Cap and all of a sudden I would feel a wetness on me. I would check, I was dry, and then I would put Cap on the potty and he would go. Sometimes you just feel like it is time or that he needs to go. Don't ignore your intuition. Trust it. If he doesn't go, don't take it the wrong way. Trust yourself and your gut!

Hopefully this was helpful to someone out there. Would love for you to comment if it was! Please feel free to ask questions as there is a ton to this thing!!! We had Cap in full time undies minus naps and night time at 12 months. I could have done it sooner if I would have trusted myself a little more. I have definitely had some rough moments in the process where I had to take a step back and refocus the purpose of us doing EC with our son. Overall, I would highly recommend this to anyone.

Here is another good site for some great info. I would have read her book if this would have been out earlier. Since I haven't read it, I can't say much about it, but it looks extremely helpful! It could have helped us through some hard potty pauses since I didn't have any great resources at the time.
http://ecsimplified.com/

Enjoy!

Cheyenne Mountain Zoo = Awesomeness

Bryce's sister and kiddos just left after being able to spend a week here in the Springs. We have not seen them since June of last year! Way too long when you have little ones. They grow way to fast. Our niece is way past toddler and now in Kindergarten. Our nephew was barely walking and now climbing and running all over the place! So nice to have cousins!!! 

We did lots of fun stuff while here including going to our local zoo. It was a blast! We were so early we got to watch the giraffes come outside which was awesome. The giraffes are just great because there heads are eyeish level with you depending on your size of course. You can feed them lettuce too! They are a hit! The kids loved it and so did us 5 adults too:) 

This is Cap pointing to the Giraffes coming out of the building heading our way.

They get so close to you!

 I don't think this girl was so exciting about sharing her space!

The 7 of us with Bryce taking pictures watching all the giraffes come out.

Then you got to feed them. Cap like doing this too. Very brave I thought.

We could almost be in Africa:)

We fed some chickens thanks to Papa. I think this is always one of Caps favorites

because it reminds him of N.C. and the farm. 

A little bit of water time which he loved and would have done longer!

Potty time in the trees. Cute little bum.

some goat petting

and a little bit of some cousin pics...not easy just so you know!!!

This is something that is a must do with kids around here. You can pack in your lunch and drinks for the day or you can eat at their lodge which is pretty good food with a great variety. We got there early when they first opened and finished up right after lunch. Perfect timing for us though you could spend all day there pretty easily.

Did I mention how awesome Cap has done with staying dry?? I thought with the cousins being here he would be having lots of accidents because of all the stimulation and not wanting to stop and go, but not the case at all. Not only is he staying dry but he is telling us he needs to go instead of us telling him its time. Even if we aren't in the same room he will come get us and tell us. Just very proud of him. We still have some misses here and there, but they are getting farther and farther apart. We haven't figured out how to stay dry during naptime yet, but may be just time will get us there.

Enjoy,

No accidents!

Today marks the first complete, but still not including nap times, day without a single miss going potty. We have been doing full time undies for almost 3 weeks now, minus sleep time. We have 1 miss a day and it typically happens between 7am and 9am. Doesn't seem to matter what we do we just seem to have our accident during that time. Oddly enough Cap rarely has an accident away from home. I think being away from our home will be good to hopefully get out of our 1 miss a day habit. Just thought I would post the fun news! I LOVE doing full time undies. It makes going potty 10 times faster! Have a good one!

Cows and Poop

I find myself not blogging when I don't have any new pictures to post. I haven't really had the camera out lately for some reason. Thought I would give a little dairy and EC update for those anxious and curious readers out there who are interested.

First up, the cow. We have been almost dairy free since January 1 now. At first it was an attempt for me to breath better and take away some allergies. There are many more reasons for it now. The best and fastest way to understand it more would be to watch a documentary called "Forks over Knives". You can stream it on netflix for those of you who do that. Off the website it briefly states, "Forks over Knives presents evidence that a whole food plant-based diet can prevent, and in many cases, reverse degenerative diseases." Cutting dairy is just a start for us.

We have always considered ourselves "freegans". You know, if it is meat and free we will eat it, if it is veggies and free we will eat it too. Now it looks as if we will eventually be primarily vegans, but it is a process. I also don't think we will stop eating meat or dairy products entirely. But it will not be a normal thing in our pantry or fridge. We eat dairy right now once a week on a pizza. I just can't give pizza up. Cutting dairy was hard for the first few weeks. It made me a little crazy actually. But now the only time I really miss it, is when we eat noodles. I just love parmesan cheese. Other than that, we have found good substitutes where we can and have just given up the rest entirely.

Now on to EC. My last update was about how awesome Cap is doing with letting us know he needs to go potty. Well...then he had the runs for a few weeks and now we are all out of whack. I realized I have been spoiled with a baby who did all of his poo's in a pot since he was 7 months old. It has been over 4 months since I have had to clean this many poop diapers!!! BUT, we are getting back into the swing of things. We are just being way more intentional and back to leading him more with it instead of waiting for him to tell us. Poor guy has just had a funny body this month that's all. He is feeling much better, actually he has been hilarious lately. Still has a terrible cough that is lingering inside of him.

I feel like I have more updates.........oh, we are becoming more productive in my household as of a few days ago. We are trying to stay up later and wake up earlier to add more hours to our day. Let me tell you, this is not easy for me. Ask my parents, I just need a lot of sleep. During the winter is the worst for me. I love to go to bed between 8-9 and wake up at 7. Ridiculous I know. Summer is way different, but still require more sleep than most. So now we have been waking up at 6 so we have roughly an hour before Cap wakes up. That hour is worth it for me. I can journal and read before the day starts rather than doing it in the middle of this and that. It is also nice to determine when I wake up rather than getting woke up by Cap at various times. Puts me in a better mood! We shall see how this last!

These are a couple of pictures when Cap and I drove on the Blue Ridge Parkway and went for a short hike/ rather walk. It was gross and cold, but still beautiful in the blue ridge mountains. Enjoy!

EC Update

We tap our head when it is time for Cap to go to the potty. We started this may be a month or so ago. The sign for toilet is way to difficult for a 10 month old so I created one to replace it. We have really started to make a big deal about going potty and asking if he needs to go. Even getting excited when he goes even though he has been doing this for some time now. We think it has helped the screaming during the whole 60 seconds he has to lay on his back while I take off and put back on his diaper. ( the kid does not like to stop) Our main goal, however, was that he could sign to us when he needs to go instead of me trying to time it right every day.

He started using his sign immediately, but like all the other signs he knows so far, sometimes potty doesn't mean potty:) 95 percent of the time he would sign potty, we would take him even though we didn't think he needed to go. Some times he would go, other times he wouldn't. We wanted him to know that when he signs for it, we will take him. In the last 24 hours, he has signed every time he needed to go! This is HUGE! I am not counting on this being "it", you know, the big break through. But it is still big news for us. He would stop whatever it was he was doing, look at me, tap his head (sometimes say "oh"), and then I would put him on the pot and he would go. Crazy!!! One time he did it, and I really didn't think he needed to go (I was just wanting to finish what I was doing) and sure enough, right in his pants once he knew I wasn't taking him.

To say we are sold on EC is an understatement. We have seen the benefits since Cap was 4 weeks old. Anyone else reading this have their own EC experience? Have any questions or interest trying it out?

Well, no pic right now. Just a brief update!

Sleeping Baby

Back to back updates. I am impressed. Of course, I posted my last one days after I wrote it.

Since after Cap's first night in the pack n play he has done awesome. I should say we all have! He has never been that hard to put to sleep. We put him down when he is drowsy and he falls asleep on his own. This last week has been exceptional though. We haven't gotten up more than once a night since Friday. We change him, feed him, and then he is back sleeping and dreaming. He still makes all sorts of noise, but now we just turn the monitor low and that way it is easier for us to keep sleeping. He gets extra noisy when he wants us to come get him, but still doesn't cry or anything in the middle of the night which we love.

We chose to use 100% cotton cloth diapers because we were wanting to EC. Cap hates being wet or dirty. Using the cloth we have it doesn't remove his wetness from his body like other diapers. I feel like it helps teach him early on about relieving himself and that is what makes him so uncomfortable when his clothes are still on and it really helps me to pay attention to his cues and body language so that he doesn't have to be uncomfortable. We are simply learning to communicate with each other. Communication doesn't just come in words as we know. Cap and I talk to each other all day long. It just may not look or sound the same as me and you doing it:)

So far EC is going pretty good. When we are at home and ready for it we can catch a few a day. I can always count on him peeing right after naps. He typically gives me all the signs for when he is about to poo. I haven't been so good about his poo's though. I need to be more prepared beforehand during the times of day he typically goes. We have still managed to catch some in the potty though. As always, 1 less diaper is a good thing especially when it is a poo one! It is not all about catching pees and poos, but more about us communicating once again. I will update our progress as we go. I am about to get more creative on having potties more readily accessible throughout our day when we are not home.

I keep telling myself to blog about something other than Cap!! Ha! For this moment, he is 98% of what goes on in my day!

what a burly look right?

1 less diaper

We are using a cloth diaper system with Cap and have been since he was 30 hours old. We love it! I am surprised how easy it is and how much money we save. He looks a lot cuter in his diaper covers than he did in those pampers.

We are also planning on EC'ing (elimination communication). Sounds hilarious I know. When we first heard about EC and started to read more about it, I thought it was so funny. BUT it just made since to me. It is basically learning your babies elimination cues and signs and using a toilet of some sort when you think it is time instead of going in a diaper. It takes a huge step out of potty training later on because you haven't trained them to use a diaper. Cap does not like to be wet or dirty and I am very thankful for that even though we are changing him all the time. Who out there would want to sit in your own urine or poo?? EC'ing isn't something new. Most grandparents have done this method and there are a lot of different countries doing the same thing.

All that to say that we have officially began to work on our EC'ing. Today, we went for a walk and Cap slept the whole time. When we got back he started to wake up and I had read most of the time babies won't go to the bathroom while they are sleeping but will immediately after waking up. So I took his diaper off as we all sat on the edge of the porch and waited. It worked!!

This is big for two reasons.

1. This is the beginning of his peeing outside. What guy wouldn't choose a tree over a toilet? Well, I don't know many anyways.

2. 1 less diaper! This may seem weird but I have had 2 dreams that he has used the toilet. May be it is just all the diapers I am around all the time, who knows??

Anyways, wanted to share the news because I couldn't be more proud of my son right now. It was awesome!! Sorry no pics...