The biz is busy!

Well, I haven't written for quite a while since I have been working on my new business venture Baby Sprout Naturals (http://www.babysproutnaturals.com/category_s/42.htm). When Alex was about 3 months old I started learning about cloth diapering and I became HOOKED! We switched him to cloth diapers at 4 months of age and he is almost 13 month old now.

So I've started on my new mission, to sell natural baby product like cloth diapers, organic clothing and other items that are non-toxic and earth friendly. There are so many children with diseases these days that I personally feel are preventable, such as, allergies, asthma and even autism!! Our society and all the manufacturing companies have lost site of what their products can do to harm our environment and us!

We need to be much more critical in the selection of products we choose to buy on a day to day basis. Pesticides, unnatural and man made chemicals, even vaccinations should be looked at closely and with a critical eye. Should we be using these things? In the long run, will they cause us more harm?

I hope my business does well. It is my dream and I hope it comes true. Right now Nick and I are business trying to market the e-store and hopefully within a year it will really be rolling. Then someday I can open a storefront. That would be amazing!! But it may be too late by then if Wally mart and Targ et start carring better products. Whow to the small businessman who sits in the shadows of the large conglomerates!

Breast Milk Cures!!

OK, you are probably totally skeptical to think that breastmilk cures anything but a baby's hunger pains. But this stuff is AMAZING!!

1. Pink eye - otherwise known as conjunctivitis. Just a few drops keeps the bacteria from attaching to the eye (I dunno exactly I'm not a chemist). Repeat until gone and then I'd do for about 24 hours afterwards just to make sure. I tried it for pink eye on my 9 month old and it worked like a charm!

2. Decongestant - again a few drops in the nose can help a lil baby breath clearer

3. Earache - I haven't tried this one but next time my son gets an ear infection this is the first thing I'm gonna try!

Don't take my word for it. Try it! It just might work!

Cost of Cloth - SAVINGS!

OK - here is an update to my other post on cloth diapering. I guess the savings is even greater than I thought!!! 

Here is the scoop!

Disposable Cost Breakdown

Average 30 cents per diaper x 8 diapers average per day = $875 year (not including tax and gas)

Average 3 years in diapers (my son is almost 5 and he still wears pull ups) = $2600.00

Cloth Diapers (bumGenius!) Breakdown

Average $20 per diaper (best kind out there, One size fits newborn to 35 lbs and this includes tax) x 24 diapers (a good set to have for one child) = $480.00

What About Washing?

Glad you asked - I found on another blog site for cloth diapers that it costs about $1.50 per wash and you'll do about 3 per week or less which calculates to $235 per year x 3 years = $705

Add Cloth Diapers + Washing = $1185 

($2600 - $1185 = $1415 SAVINGS in 3 years!!!!)

That's about a $471 savings per YEAR!!  

Now if you resell your used diapers (you can totally do this on ebay or craigs list) you can still get at least 50% of your money back - that's another $240 savings!  Or use them for siblings. One size fits all so you don't have to buy different sizes.

Aren't Convinced?

Would you buy a cute outfit for your baby for $20? He/she might wear it for 2-4 months MAX! Your baby will wear these diapers for 3+ years!!!  How can you beat that? They can be passed down to your other children for even MORE savings! Or sell them, like you would used clothing. 

Cloth Diaper PROS:

• Less or no leakage. I have yet to have an "overflow" of #2, whereas I it happened all the time with disposables.

• Really Cute! You can let your baby run around in them and it's not like they are in yucky diapers, they are in undies!!

• Less diaper rashes - you change the baby when he/she is wet whereas the disposables disguise the wetness and you leave your child in them longer leading to rashes.

• No harsh chemicals on baby's skin!

• Convenient! No more of a hassle than disposables - I promise!

Environmental Factor

You will be saving the landfill and the environment 8700+ diapers!!  It takes 500 years for a diaper to decompose, and that is in the most optimal conditions; when exposed to sunlight and air. And did you know that it is against the law to dispose of feces in the landfill?  It can contaminate the ground or water with viruses and diseases. Who knew?

Cloth Diapers 101

Cloth Diaper Brands

Cloth Diapering Step by Step

I'm gonna sell!  

The site is not live yet but I am working hard 

and it should be live and ready for business very soon!

Check out my website here and watch the birth of Baby Sprout!

www.babysproutnaturals.com

Baby Wearing!

This looks like my new hobby. Found this website with adorable baby slings and videos on how to actually wear your baby.

Click here for the videos.

And here are the slings.

Click here for a link to how to make your own.

More info to come....

Baby Crib Shoes

I had to write this quick entry on making your own baby crib shoes. They are so expensive and they grow out of them so fast. This is a fun and relatively easy way to make your own shoes! Check out this link!

Baby Shoes

Cloth Diapering Step-by-Step

You can have a great product and the best intentions but if you cannot make it work - well, it just won't work. This is how I tackled my pursuit of cloth diapering. I needed to create a "system" that would make it efficient and as easy as possible. Knowing me, if it's a huge headache, I'll stop and go back to what's easy or what I know. There is so much to learn about cloth diapering these days - NO THIS IS NOT YOUR MOM'S DIAPERS!!! There is terminology to learn and different options to weigh. You won't learn this by watching what your parents have done and you cannot just walk to the nearest Walmart or Target and buy a starter kit. Why? Well that's another subject. Personally it reeks of a conspiracy. Maybe the disposable diaper companies are paying off all the discount stores to NOT carry cloth. But I tell you NOW, cloth is the BEST!!!!

The System (My System)
What I mean by system is how you will streamline, diapering, rinsing, storing, cleaning and folding. At daycare, grandma/grandpa, vacations etc. Let me try to sum it up here. I use bunGenius diapers so this is specific to pocket diapers.

1. Purchasing: Check out my other blog on Cloth Diaper Brands. It includes information on terminology and links to how to fold to put on your baby as well as links to websites that sell Cloth Diapers.

2. Rinsing: There is a spray hose that Cotton babies sells that attaches to the toilet. You only need to rinse the poopy diapers.The breast fed baby poop rinses off pretty easily but you will still see a yellow stain until they are washed. No biggy. We installed one and it works good. I still end up using the shower more often though, with the nozel on hard because the hot water seems to rinse the poop off better. Not sure your bathroom setup but either the toilet or the shower will work.

3. Where does the diaper go then - Bucket or Diaper Pale? Get a diaper pale or a trash can with a lid and put it wherever you plan on rinsing the diapers. That way you don't have to carry them off to the laundry room until you are ready. Keep a diaper pale or a trash can with a lid by the changing table too and when you change a pee-pee diaper it just goes in the pale. I always remove the insert first so it's ready to wash. The pee-pee trash bucket doesn't smell as long as the lid is closed. You can get tablets that go in the diaper pale that help eliminate the odor and when you go to wash they go in with the diapers and actually help clean them too. There are also "wet bags" sold in different sizes that you can line the diaper pale with. It can go into the wash along with the diapers and saves money over plastic.

4. Washing: For one child in cloth we wash diapers about every other day. Now that we have twice as many diapers we will probably wash every 3rd day. I put it on "whitest whites" setting on our machine with an extra rinse cylce. It washes them in hot with a cold water rinse. I use one scoop of Oxyclean for babies (without perfumes or dyes) and I think it's Tide Free and Clear - also without perfumes/dyes or additives. DON'T USE FABRIC SOFTENER!! I also use Dreft stain remover spray on the poopy yellow ones. There is a product I still need to buy called Bac-out. It removes the bacteria on the diapers that may cause them to smell and is environmentally safe. You can use vinegar in the wash as well, to remove the smell - distilled white vinegar I've been told smells the least and it doesn't make your diapers smell. If you have a super good machine with the super hot temperature that kills the bacteria and sanitizes the diapers then that is great too. We could have gotten that model for a few $100 more but didn't think we'd need it.

5. Drying: Our machine takes forever to dry but that's because our dryer vent hose has a million angles and my husband is going to fix that this weekend. Normally the pocket diapers dry pretty quickly because you've removed the insert. That is why I don't like the all in ones - they are so thick they take forever to dry. I've also read that hanging the diapers to dry in the sun removes stains as well. So far there is no stain that I haven't been able to remove so these diapers clean up well!! And they stay looking new too.

6. Stuffing: I stuff the diapers and fold them up when I do the rest of the laundry so they are ready when I need them. Don't want to be stuffing when I have a squirmy baby on the changing table!

7. Daycare and Grandma/Grandpa: Bring a diaper bag with up to 5 diapers (per child) depending on how long they will have them. Tell them to just put the dirty ones in a plastic bag and you can rinse them if need be when you get them. Show them how they work if they haven't ever done them before - they are super easy. No more difficult than disposables if you've stuffed them already.

8. Liners: They make disposable/biodegradable liners on a role like toilet paper that you can line the diaper with if you want to. That way when they poop you just remove the liner with the poop and avoid having to rinse. I didn't see this working well with breastmilk-poop because it is so runny. But when he is on solids and has a more solid poop this will probably be nice and I may be able to avoid rinsing all together!!! It's $8 or less for a roll.

DO NOT:
Use diaper rash ointment! I guess it is difficult to get that out of the diapers. I found something somewhere for diaper rash that is ok with cloth and I don't remember what it is. I have used diaper rash ointment sparingly and with a liner a couple of times and that worked ok. Just as long as it doesn't get on the cloth.

I hope all this helps!

Sculpting Life (OOAK baby sculpting)

So I started a new hobby in November. Ever since that email went around a few years ago about Camille Allen the marzipan baby sculptor, I've wanted to try my hand at sculpting a realistic baby doll. Not out of marzipan - Camille Allen did hers out of polymer clay.

Alex was born in July and every day I was dreading the fact he was growing up so fast. Those tiny fingers and adorable grabby toes!!! The little face with such cute little lips, I wanted to capture his adorable baby qualities by doing a sculpture of him. After researching the craft of One of a Kind (OOAK) baby sculpting and trying out one doll, I set forth making a full size baby sculpture from a kit I purchased online.

The kit came with 3 blocks of clay, cloth body, wig, glass eyes and a DVD by Pat Moulton - that's it.








And here is the finished result:

Here is the real deal - Alex. The model and inspiration for the doll.

To be perfectly honest, the doll ended up kinda creepy! It's just too realistic. When I told Pat about it she said that is common with open-eyed babies so the next one I do will probably be a sleepy baby and maybe 1/2 scale. This one took a TON of clay. And I had issues with cracking at the corners of the eyes and mouth. But you can barely tell, I filled the cracks with clay and used a heat gun to set, then sanded and painted. The doll could probably use a little more paint too. I guess the Genesis paints fade a little after they are dry and I didn't want to overdo it and put too much on. It's all a learning process. And thanks so much to Pat Moulton for giving me pointers and encouragement when I needed it!!!

How did I do?

Elisa's Newest Addition

For anybody who knows Elisa she is having baby boy #2 sometime in May (I think). It almost seems like yesterday when she was preparing for Andrew to enter the world. She will soon have her hands full with 2 little munchkins. If you'd like to help her out there are still a few things that she needs for baby boy #2.

Since these items are not necessarily found in any local store like Target or Walmart it makes it difficult to create a registry. I've tried to find the least expensive items on the internet and include a link for your convenience. If there isn't a link yet, please check back again later or email me and I'll let you know where to get it. I'll update this list regularly.

Elisa's Baby List

• BumGenius Cloth diapers (You can get the 2.0 model on sale at www.cottonbabies.com for $14.95 each - may sound expensive but these are really the best!! If everyone buys just one she could have a supply for Andrew as well (they are one size fits all) and save a ton of $$ on those awful disposables!
  
• Natural pacifiers (2 of each size) - www.thesoftlanding.com/narunapacoso.html
  
• Long sleeved onesies in various sizes - done
  
• Zooper hook on chair for eating out - Amazon
  
• Glass baby bottles - www.newbornfree.com, naturalbaby.stores.yahoo.net/realglasbabb.html
  
• Bibs that have a snap not velcro!
• Natural wooden baby toys/rattles
• Toilet seat to put on our toilet - done
  
• Sleep positioner (the one with rolls on either side so they stay on their back) - done
  
• Bebe sounds Angel Care movement sensor with sound monitor
• Graco quattro duo stroller in "ionic"
• Graco Snugride infant seat in platinum
• 12X12 Baby Days album by aimeej (amazon)
• PJ's without fire retardant (cotton only)

Let me know if/when you buy something from the list (send me an email or I think you can add a comment to this post) and I will mark it so we don't have too much of a good thing.

Thanks everybody!

Cloth Diaper Brands

Chinese Prefolds - Cost about $1.00 - 1.50 each
Most like the old style diapers but prefolded and stiched so there are 4 layers of fabric on both sides and 6 layers in the middle. These still need to be folded up to be put on the baby and held together with pins, a snappy, or a diaper cover. These end up being really bulky on the baby but they soak up a lot of pee! They come in bleached and unbleached.

How to fold: www.greenmountaindiapers.com/howto.htm#How

Diapers Covers - Cost about $10.00 each (Thirsties, Bummies, etc.)
Needed for any cloth diaper that does not have a waterproof outer liner. Use with Chinese prefolds.

I prefer the Thirsties as they have an additional gusset as well as elastic on the legs to keep everything contained. They come in cute prints too.


Fitted Diapers/All in Ones - Cost about $14.00 - $20.00. (Motherease, Kushies, Bummies, Imzi Vimzi, BumGenius, etc.)
All in Ones which means everything is sewn together and contoured to fit the baby. Usually you secure these with snaps or velcro. Some of these brands require a cover like Motherease, Bummies and the cotton or hemp products. BumGenius All in Ones (AIOs) have a waterproof exterior so they don't need a wrap. The AIOs usually take a lot longer to dry.

Pocket Diapers - Cost about $14.00 - $22.00. (BumGenius, FuzziBunz, Happy Heiny, Swaddlebees etc.)
These are similar to the Fitted except they have a pocket you stuff with a liner or 2 or 3, however many you think you need for your baby. These are great because you can "custom stuff". And since they are pockets and you can remove the liner, they was easy and dry much faster than the AIOs.

WHERE TO BUY?
Here is a good question for all you out there. Why can't you just walk down to the drugstore or department store and just buy these things off the shelf? I'm telling you - there is a conspiracy it seems. Don't be fooled! It may take more work in the beginning to get started on cloth but it is soooo worth it!!!

These are just some of the online sites that sell cloth diapers.
www.cottonbabies.com
www.softclothbunz.com
www.nickisdiapers.com

This is just a taste of the information you may need to start your cloth diapering journey. Here is a great resource for even more info: www.diaperpin.com included, howtos, product reviews, forums, dictionary and sales.

Cloth Diapering 101 - The best brand!

So are you still interested in doing cloth diapers? We love it. Overwhelmed with all the different options and don't know where or what to buy? Here is the skinny!! Of course this is our opinion and others may find they do things differently or use a different diaper system.

THE COST BREAKDOWN $$$
One child uses approximately 8 diapers per day give or take - that's 20cents per disposable diaper = $1.60 per day. 3 years of disposables = $1747.20
3 years of cloth (22 cloth pocket diapers at $14.95 each) = $328.90
3 year cost savings: $1418.30 ($472.77 per year average)
So in 205 days you break even. Thats just short of seven months. If you use them on 2 kids you save $$ even quicker!!! Plus the added benefit of not putting those awful disposables on your baby and in the landfill for 500 years. I wish I had done this with our first child but I don't think they had these fancy cloth out then.

PLUS!! you can resell your diapers on ebay after you are done for 50 - 70% of what you paid. Let's say 50% so you sell them for $7.00 each. That's another $154 dollars you save.

OUR FAVORITE CLOTH DIAPER!!!
We tried Fuzzibunz, Motherease, Thirsties, Chinese prefold, and Bummies, and ended up buying the more expensive kind - BumGenius OS. These pockets are so far the absolute best because:

1. They are one size fits all so you can use them from birth to 35 lbs or on 2 children - you don't have to have multiple sizes.
2. They are pocket diapers so they wash easily/ dry pretty fast and you can stuff them as much as you need to, more for naps and nighttime and less for daytime
3. They use velcro so they are easy to put on with a squirmy baby (don't get the diapers with the snaps - it's almost impossible when they are around 4 months and won't stop squirming on the changing table!)
4. The velcro also helps with fitting them right on the baby - tighter for a thinner child, looser if they are chubby.
5. The inner liner is some kind of fabric that wicks away moisture so when the liner is soaked the baby stays dry. Haven't had any diaper rash so far and I did with disposables.
6. Rarely leak - never had a poop leak so far and I had poop leaks all the time with disposables.
7. They are REALLY cute.
8. They are so much better for the environment and for the baby. No harsh chemicals on the babies skin.

For more information about the different cloth diapers check out my blog - Cloth Diaper Brands.

Trends for 2008

There seem to be a definite trend emerging for me this year. Forget resolutions. They never work. They just set me up for disappointment. If I accomplish something NOT on my "to do" list then I feel like I've accomplished more than expected - for some reason that feels good. Yeah, I'm a doer and it seems like this year I'm getting a few things done that I've wanted to do for a long time.

So far it's only the 2nd week of January and I've; posted old cell phones on ebay to sell, designed a prototype cloth diaper (didn't work great but it's sure cute), transitioned to cloth diapers (fun AND messy!), made some blankets and outfits for the boys as well as a pair of shoes for Alex, finished sculpting my first realistic baby doll, and made real progress in getting our house and our lives organized. Yeah, I'm obsessive about it. How to do things quicker, easier and more efficiently. Laundry is still a bear but at least I don't dread it like I use to.

My creativity has really peaked. I can't wait to go home and make stuff. We'll see what comes next. I'm hankering to make some outfits. Maybe I'll do a jacket, or purse.

Alex loves his baths!

Haven't blogged in a long time so I thought I'd put in a quick link to recent Alex pics:

http://nicholaslapolla.smugmug.com/gallery/4135934#241316491

Can't believe he is almost 6 months already!