The diaper story

Mark is off to the Jets game this evening.  Well, ok, for him it's not the Jets game.  It's the Boston Bruins game.  Though, yes, they are playing the Jets tonight in Winnipeg.  I'm pretty sure he's going to be the only one wearing yellow.  I sure hope he doesn't get mauled!  He told me his dad would protect him. haha I sure hope that works for him!

In the meantime here I am.  I was hoping to watch the game on TV but, alas!, we don't get the TSN Jets anymore!  I suppose I'll have to be content to watch highlights a bit later.  

Presently Adalyn is sleeping and I'm working on baking some caramel popcorn.  At least I'm attempting.  :)  I wanted to try a new snack for Christmas this year, something a little lighter than all the chocolate I normally lean towards.  So far it looks good, but it's not in the oven yet.  I'm waiting for the oven to cool down from some banana loaf I just baked.  Popcorn has to bake in a fairly cool oven for about an hour.  

A little while ago I mentioned on facebook that I was boiling diapers on the stove.  This elicited quite a response, much more so than I expected.  I thought I might follow up on that statement and explain myself a little better and hopefully encourage someone else who may be using cloth diapers.  

Cloth diapering really isn't as difficult as it seems.  In fact I love it!  There are a lot of benefits which I won't go into, however there was one benefit I was wrong about.  Perhaps I was a little ignorant in the matter, but I figured the soft cotton diaper must be way better for a babies bottom than the plastic, synthetic (or whatever they're made out of) pampers and that I wouldn't have to deal with as much diaper rash using cloth.  Well, I was wrong.  All you cloth diapering experts will think me silly, but I had to learn from experience.  I am using just a very plain, simple flannel diaper.  Nothing fancy at all, just a couple layers of flannel shaped like a diaper with velcro to attach it around the waist.  I didn't realize that because cloth diapers don't take the wetness away from the babies bottom, diaper rash can be more of an issue.   

Well, when Adalyn first began to get splotchy and red I was horrified because I thought I was dealing with ammonia.  I had heard about this one so I immediately assumed this must be my problem too.  The rash got a lot better when I had her in disposables for a day or two so I knew it was something in my diapers.  I started reading and discovered that another cause of rash is build up from detergents.  I figured this may also be my problem as I was just using Purex detergent with all the extra things.  Brighteners, softeners and fragrance which are not helpful when washing diapers.  They are in fact a hindrance.   My reading sources suggested stripping the diapers.  This would get rid of everything foreign on the diaper.  Ammonia included.  One way to strip diapers is to soak them in boiling water for a while and then wash them really really well.  So I went to the store and bought some all natural detergent and proceeded to go through the process of cleaning them up.  The final step was washing them in my new detergent and rinsing them a million times.  

Needless to say after I had done all that work, Adalyn's rash still was not healing!  It would get really bad every time I put her back in her cloth diapers.  I was frustrated and didn't know what to do.  Someone had given me some baby Arbonne samples and included in that sample package was some rash cream.  I'm not sure why I hadn't pulled it out sooner, but I discovered that stuff is amazing!  It really works.  The other diaper rash creams don't work like that stuff.  I was much encouraged after using it.  Then I also found out that if you put a piece of fleece between the diaper and your babies bottom it helps to keep them dry.  So I went to the store and bought some fleece cut it into strips and it's been working fabulous!  Adalyn's diaper rash is gone and staying away!  Yay!  Perhaps in the end it was a combination of all my solutions that solved my problem, but whatever it was I'm glad it worked. So that's my diaper story.  Sorry to all who are bored by now....

On a completely different note, we need some advice.  Mark and I want to paint our house, but we don't know what color to paint.  Here's our main room.  Ideas welcome!   We were wondering if we should paint the cabinets and doors white, but that's a very brave thing to do and we're not sure we're that brave. haha  I'm so excited to give this place a face lift, but I'm just not good at picking colors.