Strange Machines

2 of these Tiddlywinks sweeties are on their way to us now. I couldn’t help getting these for the kids. Kitten will love dressing Meow and cuddling Breeze.

My beautiful Bratsack is here! I’m instantly in love. Gonna go look out for more. If you want one, look for them at http://www.bratsacks.com.

Mine is the big kid sized one 12″ by 10″ which is perfect as a small backpack for daily use. It comes prewashed and good to go. Will go fill it up now!

This beautiful doll and lovely hand drawn card arrived from Chal-Baby from South Africa for Kitten today!

It was from her Godma in Malaysia who remembered her first birthday. Kitten absolutely loves her!

What I love about Etsy is it brings all these talented artisans from around the world together to sell their craft. Here is one of them.

And Kitten says a huge thank you to Godma and she misses you so much!

In principle, the naturalbluecloud wool shortie was supposed to be the solution to all the leaking problems but really, I had ordered a size too big after the other wool covers appeared to have shrunk a little from washing.

I’d ordered L but my skinny boy was swimming in the waist, although the legs were sort of fine. They gently enveloped his leg rather than clasped it with a vise-like grip.

So after 2 days of leaks, first from the waist – my solution: tuck the wool into his waist – then from the legs (where he firmly insisted it leaked although I felt nothing, but there was drippage down from the leg side when I felt about) – I had used the XL Loveybums instead of the L that night.

Tonight, we tried on Twig & Vine’s exquisitely soft bamboo fleece diaper (definitely the best I’ve ever used on the kids) in L, in between the fleece a brandless hemp insert from Whoopeekiddies, on top of that, a L Loveybums organic cloth diaper with another hemp insert, an XL Loveybums wool cover over and a naturalbluecloud wool shortie over that.

hemp insert in bamboo diaper -> hemp insert over cotton diaper -> wool cover -> wool shortie

Overload! At 3am Wolf woke and told me he’d leaked. Same leak, just down the inside of his pant leg, and thankfully nothing on the bed. I checked the multiple layers and only the first layer of hemp had been mildly soaked and a bit of the side of the Loveybums diaper. It was only one pee.

So I realised my mistake. I should have concentrated on TIGHT, not THICK. I took out the wet hemp insert, removed the dry one too. Used a fresh bamboo insert inside the Twig & Vine bamboo diaper, closed that. Took out a fresh L Loveybums diaper. Put that over the bamboo diaper, wool cover + wool shortie. Thinner, but definitely tighter.

Looks like this from baby’s bottom:

bamboo diaper with bamboo insert -> cotton cover -> wool cover -> wool shortie

The wool is supposed to absorb the extra fluid so I should really let it do its job than overstuffing the diapers which causes a huge gap between skin and diaper, and that is exactly where it leaks.

Let’s see how it goes in the morning.

I guess cloth diapering, especially with new diapers, takes some trial and error in getting the right diapering configuration. And during the trial, remember to get your baby to sleep on a rubber mat or there’ll be lots of laundry to do.

I’ve decided to move Wolf to using cloth+wool during the day so I needed to order some larger sizes for him and we needed a safer leak-proof solution for the night and ordered an organic wool shortie for him.

Here is Twig & Vine’s Organic Bamboo and Hemp Fitted Diaper. We ordered 4, 1 in L (which incidentally is XL under Loveybums’ sizing chart – with this in mind, always check the measurements rather than rely on weight or assume all sizes are the same) and 3 in M.

And we also ordered an organic O-Wool wool shortie (aka soaker) from blue cloud. Love that it is lanolized and ready to use.

I couldn’t resist blue cloud‘s heavenly organic hemp blankie for Kitten. After a day of mulling and polling my friends, I chose the natural over the wine.

I had such a wonderful buying experience from both sellers.

They were kind enough to answer my many questions (I can be quite long-winded – they were very patient and nice about it – a smiley face goes a long way). Both took the time to help me check shipping rates and offered the most cost-savings option before I ordered, which is important for us international buyers (as I type this, the USD is about 1.5x the Singapore dollar). Most importantly, they were very cheery and sweet and so lovely to deal with. They have a customer for life in me.

I’ll have to admit I am a little addicted already. I found myself scouring Loveybums if they have any seconds I could get and was relentlessly clicking through Whoopeekiddies to look at the BumGeniuses (and very very heavenly hemp wash cloths, supposedly cloth wipes but I stuff them in my cleavage to soak up excess sweat when I carry Kitten and emergency burp cloth).

Then I realised this was the perfect time to try different diapers. I had enough diapers for 1.5 days really, and seriously needed another night cloth diaper for Wolf because it was his diaper that I had to wash and dry daily so he could wear it again the next night and another wool cover because his Loveybums XL cloth diaper seems to keep peeking out of the XL wool cover. Not good cos it caused one leak already.

I found some wonderfully soft bamboo hemp diapers from the awesome Twig & Vine I plan to order soon when some money comes in. I like that the elastic at the back and legs are not sewed as crunched up tight as the ones on the Loveybums ones which cause Kitten to have red marks in those areas when I carry her in the Ergo. Don’t the Twig & Vine diapers look heavenly?

That brings my count to:

1 NB/S organic cloth diaper (which might retire soon)
5 M organic cloth diaper
2 L organic cloth diaper
1 XL organic cloth diaper
4 organic wool cover (1 for each size)
7 BumGeniuses
To order another 4 bamboo hemp diapers (still deciding on the sizes but most likely 2L + 2XL)

Total: 20 diapers for 2 kids (half the stash is shareable)

That should tide us through washing once in 2 days + air drying the laundry rather than using the dryer every day. Our electricity bill has gone up $50 since we started cloth diapering but we save that $50 too on not buying disposables.

Hemp is tons more absorbent than cotton and bamboo is somewhere in between. I was thrilled that a single insert (hemp or bamboo+cotton) is sufficient stuffing for the kids overnight and by day they don’t need any stuffing.

Why organic? I figure if we go cloth, we go all the way. It is better for the planet and for our kids. The process of making cotton and even bamboo fabrics is pretty darned harmful to our planet, so supporting the organic textiles industry is the way to go.

DH says that cloth diapering and laundering indulge my OCD tendency to clean. Well, it should feel good to be good to our children and our planet, no?