We're done with diapers! (... for now.)

No, eLeMeNO-Pee is not leaving the diaper business.

But my household--and washing machine--is, at least until March.

That's right! Two weeks ago, just half a year after my first go at potty-training (or potty-learning, or elimination education, or... you get it) our 3.5-year old, we decided to give it a whirl with Little Bit #2, who turned two at the end of October... and it stuck. (Hooray!!!)

Before you ask, I do attribute this greatly to cloth diapering.

Let me explain:

When my oldest was born, we used disposable diapers, gifted to us at our baby shower, for the first three months. When we ran out, we were purchasing them ourselves, and I was not exactly a coupon queen in those days. (Let's face it: I'm still not great at finding deals. Some of us have the gift, and some of us have to find other ways to pinch the pennies.) The expense broke us down: I researched cloth, and we made an investment. Every diaper in that original stash was stay-dry, and the Little Dude really just never seemed to notice that he was wet until I switched him to prefolds right before he potty-trained at nearing 3.5.

Enter #2, who was accidentally born at home (I know, I know--who does that?) and diaperless for several hours after her birth. We finally diapered her once we were admitted to the hospital and she was bathed. Her very first cloth diaper? A prefold and tiny-but-still-probably-too-big-but-I-just-couldn't-help-it-it-was-so-durn-CAYUTE Weehuggers cover (RIP, Weehuggers). 

Apologies. Humor me as I reminisce. That fresh baby is now two... and potty-trained!

If you've ever been wearing cotton and gotten caught in a thunderstorm, you know that it's anything but stay-dry. That has got to feel a little ooky, you know? As my milk supply was established and her little kidneys and bladder got going with the flow of life on the outside, Homegirl was crying to be changed roughly every fifteen to forty minutes, all day long.

That never changed much, even as she got older and began wearing stay-dry pockets and AIOs. By her first birthday, she was removing diapers as soon as she'd wet them. What I mean is: the pee was still hot. She didn't care where we were. Home, church, the park, Kroger (yup). I bought one of the last remaining Baby Bjorn Little Potties (RIP, Little Potty) for a ridiculously gouged price from an Amazon seller because she couldn't reach to sit on the combo-potty-and-step-stool we already had, and she started telling me when she needed to use it when she was fourteen months old. She got sick a few months later and quit using it altogether; she even quit worrying about demanding dry diapers for a few weeks. Oh, well, I thought. There went that.

But the news that we were expecting twins kicked me into high gear. Three in diapers would have meant more-than-once-a-day diaper laundry because of the load size--remember, she was diva-begging to be changed immediately every time she was wet, and she remained from Day One a light, but frequent, wetter. Her last day in diapers, she used 11 of them. All her favorites. The two Cupcake FuzziBunz Elites from the Diaper Talk series, the limited edition Strawberry Delight FuzziBunz print from last summer, her Tootie Frootie, Cherrylicious, and Starburst Tots Bots EasyFits (v2), her Lovelace bumGenius Freetime, her Spearmint FuzziBunz medium, her Glacier Blue and Goddess Pink gDiapers--all of these were in the mix. I wondered if she'd be willing to give them up even though she was clearly developmentally ready.

So how did we do it?

We used the Three-Day Potty Training eBook. My mom and dad graciously offered to take her older brother for the duration of the three days, and we thanked him and praised him often for being part of the 'potty-training team.' Then we just... did it. By. The. Book. No swerving, no departures, no variations (with one exception--we could not throw our cloth diapers in the trash can! But we did pack them up; I let her make one pile for one sister and another pile for the other). My rigid 'rule-follower' tendencies paid off!

Our Elf on the Shelf helped, too.

Although there were no accidents by the end of Day Two, there was a little anxiety about 'going #2.' Our Elf helped us out there, too, but in the end, what cured her was some good, old-fashioned Daddy Magic. He sent my exhausted self out of the house for the day on what was technically Day Four (but on Day One, she managed to not go #2 at all, so it was still Day Three in some respects), and when I came home, after a day of coaching and praise, her anxiety had melted away.

And that's it. She's done. 100%, overnight, during her naps, in the car, #1 and #2. Our (still-growing!) stash of cloth diapers is packed nicely into some tote bags in our master closet, ready for the spring arrival of our twin girls, and, yes, I'm already planning which especially adorable newborn diapers will accompany us to the birth center to be used during their first few hours. But I just get to look at them now, to unpack, admire, and then repack them. I don't have to wash them! Temporarily done with diapers for the first time in nearly four years. Whew! It feels good.

So that brings me to a final bit of news: This is my last blog post until some as-yet unknown point when I begin a new contract. My contract closes at the end of this month, so at that point I will be on an indefinite hiatus from managing social media for eLeMeNO-Pee as my family focuses on preparing for the birth of these babies and the subsequent adjustments to our household life that their arrival will necessitate.

Who's going to be doing the blogging? This is the exciting part: Our consultants! Please stick around and keep reading, because our consultants are bursting with insights, humor, tales of parenting triumphs and parenting mishaps, CD education, passion for their communities, and their own unique voices. I can't wait to see what they have to add to our blog!

Thank you for this year of following along while I figured this blogging thing out. It's been incredible--humbling, an honor, and a real treat--to watch us gain readers and 'shares' and 'likes' and '+1s' in only our first year to have a blog. I can only hope that when I return, I can fill the shoes of all the brilliant Cloth Diaper Ladies who will be keeping this show running.

Until next time, friends!

There's freedom in going cloth!

Yup, what the title says. Cloth is freedom.

(Is this too predictable? It seemed careless to publish a new post on Independence Day and not acknowledge the whole 'freedom' motif. What good American wants to read about laundry routines or 'prefolds vs. pockets' when it's the Fourth of July? Freedom is where it's at.)

Recently a French feminist philosopher wrote a high-profile book deriding American mothering trends of the last decade, which are finally having some influence in France. In her book and in the subsequent magazine articles surrounding its release, Elisabeth Badinter criticizes the modern cloth diaper consumer movement, claiming that both cloth diapers and breastfeeding enslave women to the 'environmental cause' and to their own biology.

But by and large, cloth diapering families disagree with her assessments, at least about cloth. Cloth diapering--and going paperless in the kitchen!--provides certain freedoms that can't be gained by using the disposable alternatives. Many of these benefits and freedoms are obvious to families who have already incorporated cloth diaper laundry into their day-to-day routines, but if you're on the fence and just can't imagine how cloth can fit into your lifestyle, this little list may help tip the scales:

1) Cloth frees up money. In fact, this is probably the #1 reason that anybody chooses cloth. Even a "fancy" stash will save you considerably. Compare an $800 (very high!) estimate for an upfront investment in a large stash of "fancy" diapers to the "slow leak" effect that $2800 will have on your bank account over three years of diapering one child.

2) Cloth frees up time (and even more money). This one may have you thinking, "What?!" But it's true. Hear me out: unless you're super on-the-ball about scheduling disposable diaper deliveries (and you always remember to change your standing order when your baby moves up to the next size), you're going to be running out to the store to buy a pack of diapers from time to time.

If you're an Admirably Frugal Couponing Mom (TM), you're going to be hunting for a coupon, printing or clipping it, and trying to find a store with a sale to match it up with. Then you're going to see what other sales they're running in case you can also get a good deal on toilet paper and paper towels, so that you can make a large enough purchase to earn lots of rewards points. You pull out your coupon binder and find the appropriate coupons while the kids take turns trying to shove each other out of the car attached to the front of the buggy and the baby screeches and wriggles and claws at your chest in his sling. You stock up on all these paper goods while they're on sale, because that's smart shopping, and there goes $40. You manage to bribe the kids to stop shoving with the promise of ice cream, and you buy the sale brand neopolitan. That's another $3. You scored a pretty good deal and saved well over what you'd have paid at regular retail, but you could have spent nothing and spared the time it took to prepare for and accomplish the shopping trip.

And if you're like me and not-so-on-the-ball, you're going to be running out to Wal-mart at 9 pm, leaving a sleeping baby with your husband. You're going to be in such a hurry to get the errand done before the next feeding that you forget what coupons are altogether. You're going to remember that you haven't eaten since breakfast, when you ate your toddler's wasted toast crusts, so you pick up Subway while you're inside. You stop by another couple of aisles in the baby section and choose at least one gimicky item that you don't need because it has a cute owl on it and, frankly, you're enjoying being out by yourself for a little while. THEN you pick out a package of diapers, which you'll pay full retail price for. On your way to check out, you dig through the DVD bin for a couple $5 flicks to pop in during the upcoming six-week growth spurt. Then you toss a few potted plants into your cart. And a rump roast. And those cake donuts that were marked down in the bakery at the end of the day. Then a treadmill and running shoes. And before you know it, you've spent $400 (enough to purchase a very nice stash of cloth) at Wal-mart. How do they always do that to us?*

Cloth diapers, on the other (what is this, the third?) hand? It's just laundry. It's another household chore to put on your big kids' chore chart, another basket to live out of when life gets hectic.

3) Cloth diapers contribute to chemical-independence. This is an obvious one. If you're reading a cloth diaper blog, you probably know about some of the sketchy stuff in disposable diapers, like dioxin and the superabsorbent polymer known as sodium polyacrylate, aka "sposie beads," aka the cause of tampon-induced Toxic Shock Syndrome in the 1980s. Going chemical-free is a daunting task, but more and more families are taking it on. Cloth diapers and clean-rinsing, cloth diaper-safe laundry detergents are an obvious first step in giving the gift of a chemical-free babyhood.

4) Cloth frees up your baby's fashion options. You know what? Cloth diapers are cuter than much of the clothing available for babies. The color palettes and prints offered by the major manufacturers are fashionable and often not as "baby-ish" as your average baby bodysuit. I know I've always preferred to let my daughter's cute diaper peek out from beneath a dress rather than worrying about keeping track of bloomers, and in the summertime, both of my babies have worn a t-shirt and diaper until they were 2. Not only was it adorable, but it was a great way to introduce cloth everywhere we went!

5) Cloth frees us from landfill-dependence. Or, as one of my friends puts it, "It frees you from the guilt of having to throw crap away all the time. Literally!" Our kitchen was already paper-free when we began cloth diapering. We found that once we began, we were only having to take our trash to the road every other week! This felt nice and provided a boost of confidence. Now that we recycle and compost, we rarely have trash to contribute to a landfill. While we're not as green as some people, it feels good to be able to say we're not adding to the waste. These are the kinds of habits that we hope to impart to our children as they grow. And you know what? It wasn't that hard. It feels like we took a few baby steps, like switching to cloth diapers, and suddenly we were there!

6) Cloth frees you from diapers sooner. At least this has been the experience of many. And while we all know that my oldest (cloth diapered from six months) child waited until he was 3.5 to potty-train, my younger child, who has been in cloth diapers since the morning she was born, has been using a training potty every now and then since she was 14 months old and is acutely aware of when she is wetting, probably because she was able to connect the sensation of urinating to the feeling of wetness in her cotton prefolds even as a small baby. I plan to attempt hardcore potty-learning before her second birthday.

The American Experiment was one of independence--and also inspiration. Be inspired this Fourth to take advantage of our FREE shipping (and, yes, it can be combined with the FREE FuzziBunz deal!). Make a choice to bring your family some freedom! You won't regret it.

*This story never happened to me. Please. A treadmill?

Adventures in pottying (...finally)!

Oh. My. Goodness. Y'all.

Oh, my goodness!

The Little Dude who, for the last year, has held up five fingers and told me he would start using the potty when he was "this many," who told everyone he knew that he would "never sit on the potty" as long as his "superstar diaper and planets diaper and Rudolph diaper" still fit him, even though his "plain old diapers" (the trusty FuzziBunz mediums we've used since he was six months old--his entire cloth-diapered life) were finally starting to get too tight... this is the kid who coolly announced yesterday afternoon that it was time for him to use the potty! Oh, you know. NBD. It's just time, Mom. Can't you tell?

I was nervous. I am nervous.

But with four successes and one small accident before the bedtime diaper yesterday, we were off to an excellent start!

Today we're heading to the store to buy... more underwear! For the duration of the errand, Little Dude will be wearing a FuzziBunz Trickle-Free Trainer. However, we are probably going to have to navigate the world of public restrooms... if not today, soon.

Here's how it's going today:

8:50 am - Little Dude is on the potty, trying to go before we embark on our underwear-retrieving errand. He's playing the Potty Time with Elmo app (.99) on our iPad.

Success!

9:30 am - We're at Target to pick out cool superhero underwear. Little Dude tried to sit on the toilet here, but he was afraid of the loud flushes and the hugeness of everything. Uh oh.

10:15 am - We're home! And our Trickle-Free Trainers are dry! LD tried pottying, but nothing happened. Time for a quick snack, and then we'll try to sit on the potty again.

10:55 am - Still no accidents! We're sitting again. I am seriously impressed with his momentum. Maybe there is something to be said for waiting until 3.5?

1:24 pm - I've lost track of the number of attempts, but we've still had no accidents. I've been wanting to test the capacity of the FuzziBunz trainers, but we haven't had to yet!

2:39 pm - Still no accidents, but not much going, either. I've noticed he's not keeping his beloved water bottle with him, and he's yet to do a #2 today... But I'm trying to focus on the positive. No accidents!

2:47 pm - He just ran to the potty! His underoos have the slightest, smallest little dot of wetness. He's sitting now! Aaaand... success!

Here's what I've learned about potty-training so far:

1) My diaper sprayer is key. Because of his age and height, we're using a potty ring on our regular toilet, but it still gets a little messy. The sprayer has been perfect for cleaning it off between uses. I can only imagine how much more useful it is if you and your child prefer a potty.

2) Waiting this long may not have been a bad thing. I've put myself on a guilt-trip for the past year, because all my friends had potty-trained two-year olds, and my Little Dude didn't even seem to be aware of when he was wet, much less when he was going to wet his diaper. But his track record so far suggests to me that waiting until he initiated this process was the right move for us, even if he initiated a little later than his buddies.

3) Natural fibers help. Last week, I pulled out some old prefolds and asked him to tell me when they felt wet. It didn't take long before he was well aware of the sensation of wetness! However, when I tried this a year ago, he still didn't pay enough attention to know when he was wet. Maturity has a lot to do with it.

4) Apps help, too. What can I say? Back in the late 1980s, I sat on my potty with a stack of books beside me. But my kid is a technology kid. Weeks ago, I promised him a few potty-related iPad apps if he'd start sitting on the potty. They've worked like a charm to get him to go sit. And, while real-life sticker charts don't seem to matter much to him, the virtual ones on the potty apps thrill him to no end.

5) Little Dude likes cool underoos just as much as he liked his cool diapers. This means I'm just letting him change them after every time he potties, even though they're staying dry. He talks eagerly about the next pair of underwear he's going to put on, and he organizes them into Marvel and DC comic heroes. Kind of strange? Yes. That's my Little Dude. And it's working to motivate him!

6) This is actually kind of bonding. We're at home for the most part, and I'm hanging out with him quite a bit while he sits on the toilet so that he'll be willing to sit for a while. I have to pay a lot of attention to his habits to see if I think he's holding anything. I dreaded this part, but it's been nice to be so in sync!

We'll see how it goes as we continue! So far, so good. What I really need is your advice for how to patiently and gently help him to deal with his fear of public restrooms so that we can get this show on the road full-time. What worked for your children? Please advise! This is new territory for this mama!