Misguided Assumptions

Last week we went on a Road Trip.

We traveled three hours east, spent three hours there, then traveled 6 hours south west of there, hung out in the van for another 3 hours, and then finally checked into the motel. The trip back mirrored the trip there, and all of this I knew ahead of time. I knew these would be 12 hours of in the van days. I knew this was going to be the case, and so I planned accordingly, or so I thought.

It turns out I made some misguided assumptions in packing.

I assumed that the prolonged stretches in the car would probably lead to more "fluffy fail" than we run into at home. Knowing I wouldn't have easy access to a washer, as I mentioned before, I decided to bring 3 GroBaby shells and some biosoakers. Have I mentioned the biosoakers work pretty well, but like disposables, when they fail, they fail big? Quick rundown- with cloth diapers, when they fail, it's a slow creeping fail of moisture wicking out, due to oversaturation and then slowly transferring to the clothes, and such fluffy fail is often discovered by picking a baby up and thinking, "hm, you feel ever so slightly moister than I expected." With disposables and hybrid systems, failure is sudden and complete. When absorbing powers run out, so does the pee.

So, knowing there might be unusually long stretches between diaper changes, and knowing how utterly and completely biosoakers fail when they do fail (I'm not saying they're prone to failure, they actually hold quite a bit,) I decided that we'd likely be going through at least two outfits a day, and pjs at night.

Calculating at a rate of 2 day outfits and one sleeper, leaving Monday morning at 5am and returning late Friday night, this would work out to 13 total changes of clothing.

What I neglected to mention is I'm one of those practical and lazy moms. If Snapdragon is dry and clean at bedtime, has a fresh fluffy on, and is comfortable, I am not going to make him change into a sleeper. He can sleep in his overalls if he's dry and happy. It doesn't bother me.

So we drive all day Monday without fluffy incident, and he sleeps in that outfit. In the morning, he strips off his diaper and whizzes on the floor. Well, he also whizzed on that outfit, so he got to change. The outfit into which he changed stayed dry until what turned out to be an over vigorous sippy cup shaking incident, and I only ended up changing his pantalones, because we were in a hurry to get to somewhere.

The next day there are no incidents and he goes all day, and all of the following night in the same outfit. Did I say all day and night? Yeah. Most of the next morning too, at which point he was playing in the bathroom while I took a bath (okay, we were playing "splashy splashy" and peekaboo...) and he got wet, so it was time to change again. By this point it is Thursday, and we're on outfit 3.5 since leaving the house on Monday morning, and it occurs to me, I way overpacked.

The rest of the trip progressed with the same pattern, and I now have a weeks worth of outfits put together and ready to go in his little backpack. I suppose I can save myself the trouble of going to the dresser for a while.

Do you overpack, or is it just me?

Scrub a Dub

Scrub a dub, a boy in a tub sink...

Yep, that's a bottle of toxic behind his shoulder, so no wonder he doesn't look exactly thrilled. Okay, truth? He's irritated because I took his cup away from him for a second. But yes, that's what I have been, on occasion, scrubbing my boy with. I just don't know what to use that doesn't contain nasty chemicals.

I have washed him with baking soda, I have washed him with water. I have washed him with way diluted cloth wipes solution by WeeEssentials (which is to date my favorite). But we have this ridiculous J&J crap, and I am not good at wasting things, and I keep going back to it.

So I'm asking, what are you using to wash your baby that is safe and leaves them smelling like something other than... well... butt? Because I'd like to replace the yellow peril with something a little less, well, evil.

Snapdragon Sez: Showered With Love

So today my mom got one of those crazy ideas again, and if you thought the fauxhawk was the height of her crazihood, I sadly must inform you that you are wrong.Today she decided that I needed a shower. Not a sponge bath. Not a little babytub splish. No. A shower in the full flown big boy white cubicle of watery doom. I don't plan on growing up Shinto, so I really don't know where she gets these ideas.
Do you even know what a shower is? There's this silver thing in the wall, and it squirts hot water on you. Well, not hot, but its kinda like when you're not wearing your fluffy and you pee. The wall pees on you. And she thinks this is a good thing!
The crazy idea doesn't stop there. Next thing I know, she was rubbing this slippery sudsy stuff on me, then holding me in the direct line of the wall pee! I voiced my objections the only way I knew how: unrepentent and unreserved wailing, but then something miraculous happened. I found out I could eat while in this shower. That was kinda nice. She also started singing this little song, "Rinsey, rinsey little princey, mama's got you in her arms/ Rinsey, rincey little princey, mama's got you, nothing harms/ Shower, shower, quarter hour, makes the baby smell so good/shower, shower, quarter hour, smell so nice just like you should..." I kinda liked that too. I'm a real sucker for music. Tatas and music. Turns out that after I calmed down a bit, the warm water kinda tickles. I sorta liked it, actually. So here's my official view. Showers are okay, so long as there's a crazy mama to hold you. Then its all kinda wonderful.


Mama adds- Yes, I know fifteen minutes is a long shower, but there were two of us, I used barely there amounts of water to keep tye pressure low, and a rushed shower is a bad way to introduce a bab boy to the joys of cleanliness.