Sassy Pants

Well, we've done it... We've crossed into the realm of... crazy? silly? stinky? Well... you decide... we have switched to... cloth diapers... Now, rewind a smidge... when I found out I was pregnant I started planning everything. Car seats, fancy highchairs, baby food making, baby-wearing, swaddling, attachment parenting, nursing... I had it all pretty much decided by the time we announced we were expecting. Never ever had I considered cloth diapering, which until this point represented those white "burp cloths" wrapped and pinned around baby's bottom with plasticky, scratchy looking pants over it.

Then, my cool, cutting edge kid sister pulled out the cloth diapering and it started to make sense and didn't look like the disgusting mess that I always envisioned. It looked way more comfortable for baby (I mean who really wants pad-like material on their bottoms 24/7?)

According to my sister it is also more fun. In her words, "it is like using a plastic sack (disposable) compared to carrying things in a cute bag (cloth)..." Well I can't pass up using a cute bag, and when I started seeing my sister have positive experiences with her cloth diapering, I thought it would be an option for us with our next kids.

Look at this sassy-pants

Now let me just say, I am certainly not green... I'd say I'm more of an aqua... I recycle the obvious stuff, but I'm not going to cancel a trip to Jordan Creek or stop using aerosol hair spray if you know what I mean. So, it's not a green thing for me... (although if being green means not emptying the stinky diaper pail, I'm up for that). In crunching the numbers, despite the fact that we are really thrifty with our diaper purchases, we discovered switching to cloth if only for our final two kids would save us about $1,700, and switching now with Irelyn would save us at least $300 on her alone, including the cost of the cloth diapers. I couldn't argue with that... So we took the plunge and today we embarked in the world of cloth diapering, and I've go to say it is really not as bad as I expected. With only one day down I know that we potentially have a lot of yucky stuff and adjustment to get through, but at this point I can say that I think we are going to like it!

Little diaper model