Toddler just says no to cloth diapers

My son is addicted to disposable diapers.

Now, he is two and a half, so it's typical for him to be opinionated, I realize. But I wish he'd chosen something else. Then again, he has chosen plenty of things. So I guess I just wish this wasn't one of them.

I'm no cloth diapering guru, but we have been using Fuzzi Bunz for most of his life, and most of the time. When he spent so much time nursing at night, though, around 10 months old, he started leaking and waking up cold. Changing a tired baby's entire double-layered outfit (and sometimes the sheets) at 3 a.m. during the winter was driving me batty, as if I wasn't already sleep-deprived enough from being sole food and teething comfort support all night.

So that's when we went to disposables at night. We even had to do Pampers for a while as the Seventh Generation just weren't cutting it. We are back to chlorine-free but haven't gone back to cloth, even though we probably could. I figure we'll soon be much more vigilant about making opportunities to pee on the potty. We've got #2 down, for the most part, and I think once we're all ready for the other, we'll know, and then we'll go back to cloth at night and peeing first thing.

When I saw these new Earth's Best diapers at Babies R Us for cheaper than Seventh Generation or even the Whole Foods brand, they are my new go-to disposables for night, travel and whenever I forgot to hang the diapers to dry in time to take one with us on an outing. And they are the first diapers in his memory that have any kind of design on them.

So now, added to our list of daily battles is the issue of the "night diaper." That's what he calls them, and that's what he wants. All. The. Time. Well, except when he wants underwear, or shorts without underwear. We've had some good experiments and some not-so-good experiments, enough to make it clear to me neither (none) of us is ready to fully take the plunge, so to speak.

I try not to make an issue out of the diaper thing; I put the Fuzzi Bunz on him when he's brushing his teeth or washing his hands or looking at a book, or, if he notices it's not one of the coveted "night diapers," I make a game of having him help me with the snaps. When all else fails, I try a raspberry on the belly and hope he won't grab a fistful of hair in protest of my denying him his special yellow logo. It's not like he ever ate any jarred baby food, so there's no product recognition. (I did offer it a few times after my own purees were rejected. He preferred celery. I'm not kidding.)

Still, I guess the design is something fun to look at, and I have to realize that the issue of brand recognition is not going to go away. But I'm still hoping to keep it simple as long as possible. Oh, except that I did buy him some dinosaur underwear (two of the three in the pack were plain!), and then we went to get more white at another store. This photo exposes me as having one Pooh plate, too. I guess I'm a little less subtle than I think.

Well, we can still just call it the "bear" and the ice cream truck the "music truck" and the Earth's Best the "night diapers." Let's hope I'm not just leading him on the quick route to generic prescription drugs.

Finding My Tribe - Holistic Moms Conference

This weekend I attended the Holistic Moms Network national conference. Just like at the Green Festival, I had a hard time restraining myself against free stuff (some swag in a bag, some free magazines -- won't someone else just have to lug them back?) and against buying stuff (pictured in the second photo). Better to support WAHMs and independently-owned businesses than not, right? The irony of accummulating more and more is not lost on me, even as I hand over my credit card.

Some stuff I bought for friends, and other items and books I intend to review in coming weeks here or on my holistic health-minded blog, Inexact Science: Raising Healthy Families.

I hope to write more about what I learned at the conference in the future. The short version is that it was definitely nice to feel like I was at home in my style of mothering, though without my son there with me and without a plan for another baby in the near future (don't think my body or my mind is ready yet), some of it did feel a bit of another era, especially all the babywearing and birth stuff.

But then there were also moms who had young ones and were there with their own businesses, making me feel like a loser that I'm kind of just coming up for air and starting to enter the world of writing and working. And yet, a few folks did remark on the distance I came, so perhaps I should give myself credit for the fact that I drove five hours and left my son with my sister for the day to get to the conference. (He had a blast, by the way).

My arms are getting a little tired from the pull, on one hand, to work and, on the other to be a calm, intentionally-living SAHM.

Two in a Bed

I never read the book Three in a Bed, but I read plenty of other articles on co-sleeping and lots of the Sears library, and I've been to plenty of meetings of Attachment Parenting International and La Leche League, where we've talked about the family bed and night feedings. When my son was a baby, I could not fathom how anyone could want their child in a separate room.

But in the last few months, I forgot how much I initially loved sharing sleep. First I started sleeping in the spare bedroom on our old queen bed because our new latex mattress was making my back ache. Then I continued in part because my son seemed to sleep better and allow himself to be soothed by my husband if I wasn't there. I found myself saying the words I never thought I'd utter: Yeah, he sleeps through the night. This meant that he didn't wake to nurse and didn't wake to upset -- he just learned to go back to sleep.

And I learned to sleep well, too. It felt like I was living alone in a dorm room. For a while I would read poetry before shutting out the light and enjoying the expanse of the bed all to myself with no worries that I was going to wake up a boy -- my little one, or my sensitive sleeper husband. I think part of the reason my son got so used to nursing at every light waking was my desire to keep everything quiet so LJ wouldn't be too grumpy in the morning. That guy has a high sleep need, and it had better be quality sleep. So I stuffed E's little mouth with a breast before he had much of a chance to learn to self-soothe.

So it was heaven to be able to be apart from my son and yet know my husband could soothe him easily. Little E would toddle into the other room in the morning and snuggle with me, often falling back asleep after nursing. We all finally got solid sleep.

E slept alone most nights on vacation this summer, and I started to think about giving him his own room. Then the nap protesting started, and I figured he'd do better with space that was his own to quietly play/read/be rather than give him the whole upstairs to run around. The teacher at our Waldorf school agreed that he needed his own space.

At first, he seemed fine with it, talking about being a big boy in a big bed and in his own room -- and also about the "puppy" (huge stuffed dog) from my childhood that now takes up probably a full 10% of the room's surface area, a third of what is not covered by the full futon. But he does seem to be having some adjustment issues, and he's not the only one.

Last night I met my husband at a restaurant so that I could attend a meeting and he could bring the boy home. I said goodbye to them at 6:30 p.m. E fell asleep on the way home, as I'd predicted. When I finally came to bed at 12:30 a.m., I missed my boy a little. When I woke at 4:30 a.m. needing to pee, I missed him more. I knew he might wake soon since he'd gone to sleep early without a full last nursing, and it's no fun to try to get back to sleep worrying you're going to have to get up. (We are trying to keep him staying in his room as opposed to coming into our room, where he'll just wake LJ up. Eventually I'll probably still go in there but not nurse him in bed.)

I crawled into his bed, trying to give him some space. Within a few seconds, he gravitated toward me, his hands feeling around for my face. "Mommy..." he exhaled. "I want to nurse." I gave him a sip of almond milk and told him it was time to snuggle and sleep. This he accepted, but he nestled in close. We both slept for another two hours before he woke to nurse and start the day.

It's now 11:40 p.m. on another no-nap day. I don't know when I'll get to bed or what I'll do when I go upstairs. I'm behind on several projects having had almost zero solo weekday time in the past two weeks since he won't rest and I'm trying to be consistent that we stay quiet in his room. But I had log on (after over a week of no posting!) to make sure I documented how pulled I was by my son now that I know he's all alone in there. After so many frustrating afternoons with him not resting and in fact getting mad and aggressive with me, it's nice to feel how strong this desire for closeness and connection still is.

Man, I love him.

A bed of his own

We moved the bed today. Our two-and-a-half-year-old son is sleeping in his own room. There still has yet to be purchased the twin bed that will better fit in his tiny 8x10' (with no closet) bedroom, but at least the futon has moved. One change at a time, right? That's what I feel like I've read from Elizabeth Pantley in her No-Cry Sleep Solution books, and it's what our Waldorf school teacher told us (though Rudolph Steiner might say my son has outlived his need to nurse, and I don't buy it. See Anthroposophical Medicine, Breastfeeding and Weaning)

The futon mattress is still on the floor, so we haven't yet gained the feeling of containment a real bed might offer. He was around and playing when we moved things around - changing table out, prep smaller dresser to go in, etc. We did this after the nap was a no-go and then had a birthday party to attend, so he was super tired and happy to fall asleep tonight after only a few minutes on boob #2.

LJ and I haven't exactly hammered out the details about what will happen when the boy wakes in the morning and wants to nurse. I think we will let him come into our bed as he's used to doing around 5 or 6 to nurse and fall back asleep. Or I could go in there to keep him thinking he stays in his room. I usually can't fall back asleep until he's done anyway. Not sure I how nurse-slept so seamlessly for so long in the early days.

My hope is that at least we can get the boy to stay in one room for afternoon quiet time even if he won't really nap. And I think he'll enjoy having his own space in general.

We're goint on four and a half hours now, knock on wood. A typical night would see him sleep for about another six with possibly another hour or so after that. That means I should go to bed!

Product placement

"Thomas train!"

Where?

I thought my kid was having delusions, but there, in back of the shopping cart at Babies R Us, were two pieces of cardboard from someone else's Thomas toy. My son insisted on taking them with us when we left.

We don't have trains. For his first birthday, my sister and her kids gave E one blue Thomas, which I hid for months until I remembered to ask her when she got it relative to the recall. Her son's trains are the highlight of my son's visits to my mom's house, where I get the distinct impression that my mom feels sorry for my son not having a train set at home.

Even if we did have the room for a train table, which we don't, I doubt I'd want to go there. For one thing, branded stuff like that is not at all in line with ideas about play and child's brains that you hear about in Waldorf education, which I'm thinking is a path I want to pursue, at least to some degree. That doesn't mean my son doesn't recognize the Geico gecko from commercials that come on during weekend sporting events. Thankfully off the Yoga Kids kick I wrote about a while back, he enjoys see a little TV here and there with his dad. They've watched on PBS animal show together and a bunch of sports. So far, that seems manageable.

But as we round the corner into getting closer to three than to two, I'm still leery of starting down some road with infinite possibilities for products. I didn't mind E looking at the Plan toys catalog (until we lost it), but once he gets that concept of being able to ask for things that he sees representations of, well, I'd just rather avoid too much of those representations. It does seem to me to narrow the possibilities for play, but then again, there's something about connecting and familiarity that must develop some part of the brain, right? I guess I'd rather he get that from seeing the same faces of people and doing the same activities with some rhythm, but I have a ways to go to provide the latter.

I have no problem with him playing trains at other people's homes, and I think it's kind of cool that there's this special activity he associates with my parents and brother at my folks' home. It's a treat, something to look forward to.

I don't love that he sleeps on Thomas sheets when he's there or that he loved the battery-powered train he played with while visiting my sister so much that it got caught in his curls next to his ear. But he's a toddler who's supposed to be into stuff, and it's fun to see the joy of recognition, the flash of excitement.

I just don't want stuff to rule his world. As evidenced by a recent analysis of my MasterCard bill, I've got that covered for the whole family.

Social eating doesn't have to suck

It's amazing to me how great it feels to cook with people who eat the way you do.

I went to another one of Monica Corrado's cooking classes last night. I've taken a series with her on the using basics of Nourishing Traditions for feeding toddlers (and the whole family) as well as a series on flower essences and essential oils for healing. Last night's class was on gluten-free baking. The breads and muffins were delicious, and I learned a lot. It's so nice to feel reassured that all the effort I put into getting farm food and to sticking to this diet really do make a difference.

Classes are educational, but the community feeling is the most important thing you can't get from a book.

Off with our heads

"Where's Mommy's head? Oh, I found it."

My son enjoys playing with the magnet a friend made for us 10 years ago after we appeared as Homer and Marge Simpson at her Halloween Party. But a few months ago, he put the craft-store magnet to the test and found that it was not difficult to rip his parents' heads off.

As if we needed any help with that.

E's dad and I do not exactly exemplify the kind of mindful, intentional life we value. LJ is great about getting good gas mileage, so I know he's paying very close attention to the way he drives - spending time in neutral (we have an automatic), not accelerating when he's going to have to stop. I admire this and try to follow his example, but it's easy to get out of the habit, just like it's easy to forget to sit up straight with my abs supporting my back. I can get on a roll but then get lost in NPR or Music Together and realize I'm racing to a red light with slumped shoulders.

Lately we are just about at each other's throats over the house and our finances. After seven years in our home, we're trying to purge as though we were moving. This is necessary and cathartic but also time-consuming, and challenging to do with a 2.5-year-old. We have also found ourselves at odds over money. We do not go on lavish vacations or buy expensive jewelry or technology, but we do spend a lot on good quality food and alternative health care. And kid clothes, and some toys, and classes, and childcare. And sippy cups.

So somehow we've started spending a lot more than we did 2.5 years ago -- even 1.5 years ago when the kid was only eating from his mama (who was so tired she needed lots of acpuncture and other support to keep her thyroid and depression in check). And by "somehow" I mean we both have analyzed our spending individually but haven't worked on a budget and protocol that makes sense for both of us for right now and for our future. In this economy, our failure to watch our lead foots is, as my husband says, "stupid." I'm offended to be insulted, but he's right.

I don't know how long it's going to take, but we have to get this stuff out of our basement or happily into storage spaces. I've been Freecycling and Craigslisting like crazy. The soft vinyl bags LJ barked at me for buying months ago are indeed yucky, not only for the off-gassing they did but also because the soft flexibility I bought them for (to ostensibly fit better in a small space) is frustrating. They don't stack or smoosh - they are just kind of messy. It's just like our lack of clear-cut boundaries and guidelines for ourselves.

My last post was almost a month ago, "Gardening at Night," in which I wrote about what a difference it made to spend 15 minutes as a family weeding in our front yard. Once all the grass was gone, the liriope started to flower. It was like the plant could finally breathe, finally had the nutrients it needed. We'll have to get back in there and weed again soon, I know. It doesn't end.

I'm hoping we can work toward moving our physical and financial lives into the land of purple flowers.