A Beautiful Kind of Life: Dresses and Diapers

While Henry was in Maryland, he took it upon himself to do a little shopping for our girls. In one of our many phone conversations, he mentioned that he had gotten “a few” things for them, so I expected maybe some little t-shirts or onesies and a stuffed animal or two. Instead, I got this:

Yes, he bought all of that, by himself! 1) He’s pretty good at picking cute girl clothes – I’m quite impressed. 2) I’m surprised he had the patience to find two of everything! 3) I’m beyond touched and so very thankful for him. Despite him being nervous about raising two girls at the same time (think teenage girl drama x2), this proves that he is also really excited about raising two girls at the same time. This also proves that he understands a girl’s need to have a huge wardrobe – I’m glad he got on board with that early. ;)

Thank you my love for loving our girls so much! <3

Sometime back, I wrote a little bit about us wanting to cloth diaper the girls, but I really didn't know much about cloth diapers other than that they’re expensive up front but would save us money in the long run. This past weekend, Henry and I attended a Cloth 101 class at a local all-natural parenting store in Plano – Nappy Shoppe. Everybody is so nice and so helpful, I’d venture to say we L-O-V-E it there.

So our class – it was a quick, one-hour intro to the different types of cloth diapers including their cost differences, usage differences, how to care for them, etc. I’m not going to lie, it was a little bit overwhelming towards the end… for me. Henry on the other hand felt way more comfortable about our decision to cloth diaper and even convinced me to try it from the start. We had originally agreed that we’d use disposable diapers the first few weeks until we got the hang of having two babies around, and they got past the meconium (read: black, tarry poop) stage.

The diapers themselves don’t scare me, it was the segment on washing/caring for them that kind of got me nervous. Obviously that’s the point of cloth diapers – you wash them so you can reuse them. I just didn't realize that you can’t use fabric softener on them (not a big deal – I wash Annie & Lilly’s blankets and pillows sans softener), but you also can’t use fabric softener on the rest of your clothes/laundry either – say wah!? Well you can, but because the softener leaves behind a residue in your machine that affects the absorbency of the diapers, you’d have to prep your washing machine (by running a full cycle with white vinegar) before every diaper load to strip all the left-behind-chemicals. And that my friends, sounds like a lot of work. So instead, it’s recommended to just ditch fabric softener altogether. This is the scary part – I LOVE fabric softener! Because I love soft clothes, and soft towels that smell so wonderful are absolutely amazing! Don’t worry though, this doesn't mean we’re destined for rough towels and stiff jeans. It just means I have to find an alternative to softening and odorizing our laundry. How you say? Wool balls and essential oils! You just add a couple drops of the oil to the wool balls (if you like scented fabric softener – if not, then you can skip the oil) and then toss the balls into the dryer with your laundry and let them work their magic! They’re kind of a cool, all natural (non-chemical) alternative to drying and softening your laundry and they keep you from having to prep your washer and dryer every time you have to do a diaper load.

The other “problem” we thought we had was our high efficiency washing machine. The key to getting cloth diapers nice and clean is getting them to swish around in lots of water. Enter our problem – HE machines don’t use lots of water, that’s the point. Not to worry though – the lovely ladies at the Nappy Shoppe let us in on a little secret: Since HE washers draw in water based on the weight of the current load, place a soaking wet beach towel in the washing machine to trick it into thinking there’s more in it and thus draws in more water. Ta-daaa!

So after thinking about it, I don’t think it’s going to be harder to wash cloth diapers, just different. Different from what most people do and different from what we’re used to. But different isn't always bad!

And since you were gracious enough to read all of those words up there, now I will share some pictures of the fun things we bought while at the Nappy Shoppe!