My Mommy Book

Do you ever flip through magazines, find great stuff, mark the page, and never look back?

I know that I do that, and it's because of this that I have begun my own Mommy Book. Basically, this is a three ring binder where I will store all of the interesting magazine finds that I happen upon while perusing my favorite magazines--Parents/Parenting. I am currently sectioning my book into the following categories:

• Important food articles/information
• Recipes (baby food and family)
• Cool baby products that I want to buy
• Easy, at-home exercises (especially to lose baby weight)
• and interesting articles that I might want to read again

I have already made three recipes, and I must say that they turned out awesome! I'm getting really excited about setting a good example of healthy eating habits for John Warren.

Fluffy Bums

I often hear, "So, how are the cloth diapers going?" I get this a lot because when I was about two months pregnant, I decided that I wanted to use cloth diapers instead of disposable ones. Initially, I thought it would be real money saver, and that was the main reason I wanted to start using them. It can be as expensive or inexpensive as you make it, but most of the costs are before the baby is born, so you do have fewer expenses after the baby's birth. Good pocket diapers can run 17-27 dollars each. A pack of prefolds (6) might cost around 25 dollars (the larger the diaper, the more it costs). BUT you also have to have a cover for them. I prefer the Thirsties covers, and they cost about 12 dollars per cover. If you wash every other day, you would want to have about 24 diapers and about 6 or 7 covers.

Now that I'm actually changing JW's diapers, I feel that cloth was such a great choice because I actually feel good about what I'm putting on his bum. He came home with a diaper rash, and he would pee so much that the little crystals from the disposable would be all over his bottom, so at one week old, I started using cloth. It took a while to get rid of the rash, but it finally cleared up, and we haven't looked back since!

Here is where the cloth magic takes place!

Pocket diapers usually have a fleece lining and come with absorbent inserts. The lining keeps the wetness away from the baby's bum, so he/she feels dryer longer. You can add inserts to make it more absorbent, and many are one size fits all, so you can use from birth to potty training!

I prefer to use prefolds and covers. My favorite brand is Bummis Organic Cloth and Thirsties covers (but pictured is a Flip cover). You can simply fold the diaper into thirds and place it in the middle of the cover. Put the cover with diaper on the baby and you are done! If the baby doesn't get the cover dirty, you can reuse it several times before needing to wash it!

A snappi is the plastic thing you see on the diaper. You can use these if you want to use the cloth diaper in a more traditional way. The snappi works instead of diaper pins. You simply place it on the left and right side, like you would a pin, and then pull the middle down!

You don't need a lot of accessories, but you will need a pail, a pail liner, and a wet bag or wet/dry bag. The pail is where you will put the dirty diapers until you wash them. The wet/dry bag is what you will take with you when you are out of the house. The dry part will store the clean diapers while the wet part stores the dirty ones. Since John Warren is exclusively breastfed, there is not need to rinse his diapers before throwing them in the washer!

Because John Warren's bum is sensitive, I have chosen to also use cloth wipes. I simply fill the squirt bottle with a little warm water before changing him. I dampen the wipe and clean my baby!

Using cloth is super easy! I would not do it any other way. Not only is it better for my baby's bum, but it is also great for the environment. The following is taken from the Thirstie's website, and will help you see how using cloth diapers helps our planet, is good for baby, and saves you money.

"the savings Your baby will go through an astonishing 6000 diaper changes from birth to potty. Choosing disposable diapers and wipes will add up to an average of $2500. In contrast, by purchasing Thirsties Cloth Diapers and wipes, a family will actually save up to $2000! Translating this saving into earnings, one can assume you will spend a total of 115 hours laundering your reusable diapers. In this scenario, you will actually earn in savings an hourly wage of $15 an hour in the time spent laundering your baby's reusable diapers!

baby's 1st carbon footsteps Sixty times more solid waste and twenty times more raw materials, like crude oil and wood pulp, are used in the manufacturing of disposable diapers. In fact, 25 million trees are consumed and manufactured into baby diapers each year! As the third largest contributor to our landfills, all the toss-away diapers of today will still remain in tact 500 years from now.

for the health of it Less than one half of 1% of people follow the fine print guidelines on their disposable diaper package: "IMPORTANT: Shake baby soil into toilet." Raw sewage that is tossed into our landfills contaminates our water supply and breeds viruses and bacteria that are then spread to humans by insects.

for the health of your baby Disposable diapers contain various toxins such as Tributyltin, Sodium Polyacrylate, and trace amounts of Dioxin. Your baby's delicate skin functions as a sponge and what we put on it goes in it. Harmful toxins can be avoided by choosing Thirsties Cloth Diapers and accessories. Disposables are also a strong contributor to baby diaper rash. Before the use of rubber pants and plastic diapers diaper rash was almost unheard of. Diaper rashes can be caused by many reasons, but the most common cause is excessive moisture against the skin. Many of Thirsties products are topped with a high tech sports fleece that actually wicks moisture away from your baby's bum and acts as a barrier to the wetness."

If you are interested in cloth diapers, there are so many website that can teach you all about it! Ordering online is so easy, and many chain retail stores like Babies R Us and Target are selling name brand cloth diapers on their websites! Here are a few great website for cloth diapering!

http://www.thirstiesbaby.com/

http://www.bumgenius.com/

http://www.softandcozybaby.com/

http://www.growinggreenbums.com/

Crunch, Crunch, Crunch

Crunch, crunch, crunch...welcome to my blog--MS Crunchy Momma! Although my own momma has been pressuring me to start a blog for what feels like FOREVER, it was only recently that I was inspired by my friend Jessi Allen's blog, Little Blog of Mine, to actually start my own. I love following Jessi's blog and reading about her projects and her little "dude." This got me thinking about my own little man and how much fun it would be to have a blog dedicated, but not solely, to him. Like Jessi, I hope to be able to post a little of this and a little of that...oh, and a lot of John Warren!

I chose to name my blog MS Crunchy Momma because I am a crunchy momma; I'm a breastfeeding, cloth diapering, baby wearing, co-sleeping Mississippi momma! All of these descriptors are used to describe a crunchy momma (minus Mississippi). Some might think of crunchy mommas as the new hippies, the term crunchy coming from the granola that hippies would make, but I don't like to think of myself as a hippie momma. I have chosen to breastfeed, cloth diaper, baby wear, and co-sleep because I feel these things are best for my baby. I hope to use my blog to share my crunchy ways and experiences with everyone.

One might ask, "How did you become a crunchy momma?" It is not something that just happened overnight but instead was a nine month development, and I should really give most of the credit to the Internet and to my mom. During my pregnancy, I was addicted to babycenter where I learned about cloth diapers and baby wearing. My mom, who might have been considered a semi-crunchy momma during her day, encouraged me to breastfeed by helping me contact my local La Leche League and passed down her old babywearing sling. When I was about three months pregnant, we took a trip to Destin where I visited my first cloth diaper store Growing Green Bums, and my mom and I bought my first cloth diapers. A few moths later, she accompanied me and my husband to Baltimore where she bought me my first sling at another cloth diaper store Soft and Cozy Baby. As you can tell, my mom has been a great crunchy advocate, and I am so thankful for her support!