We took the grandmother to the beach for her birthday.  She really wanted to take a hike as a family, and she wanted some photos of her and the grandkids.  These are the photos I took that didn’t end up being 365 photos.

I love this photo. We were ate Devil’s Punchbowl, and we were out investigating the rocks in the area that have been carved over centuries by the ocean and the weather.  Did I mention we had the dog with us?  It was quite an active day.

The weather was beautiful, and we got a chance to play in and around the water. I tried to convince Jared to toss Cyprus in the air so that I could get a good photo.

He loved it so much that I ended up handing the camera to Jared to get a photo. Cyprus gets air when I toss him!

Daphne got to spend time with her grandmother. Honestly, I don’t think either of them could have been more happy about that!

The menfolk decided to head on up the mountain for a nice climbing challenge.

Did I mention it was an active day with the dog?

Daphne even humored her mom and let me horse around with her.

Of course I loved showing the beach to Cyprus.

And Yaya got to hang out with Cyprus for a bit even!

Didn’t I say it was a gorgeous day?

Don’t they look great together?

Happy Birthday Yaya

I made some special diapers for Cyprus that are wonderful.

We reverse engineered some one-size fitted diapers diapers.  The cool thing is that they can be used on a baby from newborn to potty training.  I adore these diapers because of their versatility.

I got some cute knit prints for my diapers.  my personal favorite is the car one in the front.

I also made some diapers out of cotton velour.  Man are these soft!

Here are some of the prints:

Giraffes

Vintage Cars

VW Bugs

Blue Birds

Construction

Robots

Dogs

These are really cool.  The diapers are made of bamboo velour , and the serging and the snaps match.  So soft and adorable.

Grey

Sky Blue

Yellow

Red

Teal

Blue

Green

Black

I made a bunch of these diapers because I knew how much I would like them.

Back when I was posting photos of diapers that I had made, I posted a set of photos showing some tie nappies that I had made.  They just looked like folded thing with ties on them back then, and I figured that it was time to bring them to light in a diapering post.

Tie Nappies are a wonderful diaper solution that I discovered a few months ago and decided to try out.  They seem like an all or nothing kind of solution.  The people that love them tend to love them and the people that hate them would never touch them.  I am in the lover category.  Seriously, where has this diaper been all my life?

There is only one company that makes tie diapers online, so when I got interested in them I got onto Diaper Swappers and bought a pair of them used from a Tie Nappy hater.  I then duplicated them by tracing them onto a pattern and using the patter to make some on my own.

The tie nappy is basically a long strip of fabric that you fold and tie onto your baby.  It is not like a prefold because the prefold is a pre-folded square and you have to move up in size when the baby gets older.  Tie Nappies are a one -size fits all kind of diaper because it can be folded to fit a growing baby.  You just make it longer or shorter when you are putting it on and it works perfectly.  The diaper is held on by ties, which is a benefit over diapers that have snaps or velcros.  Ties can be harder to figure out, so it is a good cloth solution to kids that are into gong diaperless without parental permission.

Tie Nappies are cool because they are inexpensive compared to other diapering solutions.  You only have to buy enough for one size, no buying new diapers as the baby gets older.  They are also completely natural and organic, or can be made organic.  They are also EXTREMELY easy to make.  They are the most easy of any diaper to make.  Anyone can do it.

This is a good photo description of how to put a tie nappy on a baby.

I have been using tie nappies as my night time solution.  Cyprus has been sleeping through the night, so I have not wanted to wake him in the night to change his diaper.  I needed something absorbent.  I use two premie prefolds (that I made) inside a tie nappy with a sleep sack as my night time solution.  It hasn’t even come CLOSE to leaking yet.  I think I have found a winner.

Besides, isn’t it adorable on him?

This is a photo with the sleep sack over the tie nappy.

Our friends Sam and Linnea got married last month. Jared was a groomsman in the wedding, Daphne was the flower girl and I was the photographer. We have all been good friends for a long time. Sam and Linnea are the godparents of our kids.

Since we were so involved in the wedding, we decided to go out for the rehearsal dinner and spend the night in a hotel. I took some photos of the kids there while I was testing out a new lighting system for my camera. I finally replaced a Whale Tail from Gary Fong that has been lost for over a year now.

Of course Daphne and Cyprus were being cute. She decided to help change his diaper, and it was totally adorable to watch–and photograph.

At least he is a good sport about all this.

And he is pretty bendable.

What a cutie pie.

Cyprus LOVES to stand up. His legs are incredibly strong.  He will stand and talk to his daddy for a long time.

He also loves when his daddy holds him.

I adore this photo.  Daphne is in her own world playing while Jared is working.

More daddy play time.

We had a blast at the wedding.  I am slowly working my way through the wedding photos, and I promise that I will share.

Wool has been the single  best diapering solution I have found.

When Daphne was almost a year old, I started to experiment with making wool diaper covers.  In fact, the first sewing project much less the first diaper I completed was a wool cover.  I used that cover for a long time.  Some other wool covers I made at the time are sitting on my wall of wool (yes I have one) waiting for Cyprus to grow into it.

I also made some wool covers for Cyprus.  I think that there is nothing more fun to make for a baby than sets of woolies.  I’m still knitting away making pants and a sweater for Cyprus because it is so much fun.

One night, I put Cyprus down on the bed while I was trying to finish up some housework, and I couldn’t resist the adorableness of a naked baby wearing a hand sewn, hand embroidered wool diaper cover.

I am loving the wool covers that I made.  I have never had them leak one single time.  I did have to handle some issues with the dyes not being totally colorfast, but I have fixed that now.  Let me tell you that woolies rock.

When Cyprus was first born, I was using newborn fitted diapers I made and some my friend Julie made for me. A fitted diaper is a diaper that you can snap or velcro on. It is “fitted” so it doesn’t have to be folded like a prefold. The drawback is that is is only the diaper part. It is not waterproof, so you have to put a cover over it. I was using the knitted soakers I made.

This system worked very well for me until Cyprus starting wetting more and more. Eventually, he was peeing straight through the diaper and through the cover within a matter of moments of the diaper being changed.  I was changing diapers and clothing (both his and mine) constantly.  That combined with the fact that his legs were quickly getting chubby convinced me that it was time to put the newborn diapers (including the covers) away for now and move on up.

I am currently using the small fitted diapers that I made. They are bigger, so they fit around his quickly chunking legs, and they were made with more absorbency in them. This has helped a lot to contain the heavy, fire-hose wetness that he seems to create. I also upgraded my covers so that I was using the felted wool covers I made. He outgrew the newborn ones I was using off and on, so we are using the small ones.

I had some small PUL pieces embroidered and made All-In-One (AIO) Diapers with them. I made 20 small AIO and 20 large AIO diapers with them. I am LOVING the AIO diapers. They are cute and trim. Besides a few leaking issues I was having at the beginning because the holes were not fully sealed from sewing the diapers, I have had NO other leaking problems at all. In fact, I am tempted to make some more AIO diapers just to rotate through the diaper bag.

I am very fickle about what diaper system I adore. For that reason, I made lots of different diapers in lots of different styles so that I could pick and choose what system I wanted to use when. It seems to be an effective method.

One thing is for certain, there is nothing more adorable than a baby in a nice trim side-snapping AIO.

Cyprus is a great sleeper.  I was blessed by that one fact.  When I put Daphne to bed around 7, he starts to get drowsy and wind down.  Eventually, he falls asleep too, and he doesn’t usually stir again at all until 3 or 4 in the morning.

One night, I took his diaper off him and decided to try to let him air out his bum a little bit.  I put a prefold over him in case he peed, but didn’t attach it on.  I continued to nurse him, and he promptly fell asleep.  I realized when I put him down to do some things to get ready for bed how silly he looked with a diaper only covering his bum.  It doesn’t look like the most comfortable position, but he seemed to like it just fine.  He didn’t stir again for many hours (though I did eventually put a diaper on him).

Speaking of that natural newborn curl…

I took this photo on the 4th of July.  He is wearing his 4th of July diaper.  It is white on the inside, blue on the outside and it has red snaps.  It also has an American flag embroidered on the bum.  Lucky baby.

Wool is an amazing and fantastic fabric to use as a diaper cover for a baby.  I have found it to be bullet-proof, meaning that it doesn’t leak, even during the wettest of nights.  Wool is able to absorb 30% of its weight in water before it even begins to feel wet.  There are many, many other fantastic properties, but I’ll go into that in another post.

One thing about wool covers is that they do require some care.  They don’t have to be washed with each use, which is a nice feature.  The trade off for that is the fact that they take some attention about once a month.  How do you know when it is time to care for the diaper?  It will either start to take on a bit of a urine smell or it will begin to leak.

This process is called lanolizing a diaper.  Lanolin is the waxy/oily substance that sheep produce from their skin.  If you have ever felt a raw fleecce off a sheep, you know that it has a greasy feel to it.  That grease is lanolin.  The beautiful thing is that lanolin does the same thing for sheep that we want it to do for our babies.  The lanolin prevents the wet from seeping into the wool so that the sheep can stay nice and dry.  In our case, the lanolin keeps the wet from soaking out of the diaper.

You can get lanolin from a pharmacy or a health food store.  You can use either solid or liquid, it doesn’t matter which.

Fill up a sink with enough warm (not super hot) water to cover your diaper cover.  It is possible to do mulitple diaper covers or longies in a batch, but I wouldn’t consider doing more than 4 at a time.  You want to make sure that the lanolin can get into the fibers of the garmet.

Put your diaper into the water and let it soak for about 15 minutes.  This lets the water get into the individual fibers so that when you introduce the lanolin it will be able to reach through the entire fabric.

Add a tablespoon (two if you are doing 4 covers) of wool wash to your sink of water and work it into the cover.  You want to get any urine or dirt out of the cover that is in there.  However, remember that felting takes place with heat, soap and agitation.  A gentle working in of the soap will clean the cover and do no damage, just make sure that the water is warm and not hot.

Drain the sink and then squeeze any excess water out of the cover.

Fill the sink back up (just enough to cover the diapers) with warm water and place the covers back into the sink.

Fill up a cup with water and microwave the water until it is boiling (if you want to avoid the microwave, you can just boil water and put it into a cup.

Add a teaspoon of wool wash to the water and mix it in.

Measure out a teaspoon of lanolin PER DIAPER COVER and add it to the mixture.

Mix in the lanolin.  This should form an emulsion, and the mixture should start to turn white.

Continue mixing until all lanolin has been added and the entire mixture is white.  Any lanolin that has not been emulsified into the mixture will not incorporate into the fibers of the cover.

Pour this mixture into your sink of water and covers.  Work the lanolin mixture into the diaper covers using your hands.  If there is more than one cover, make sure to work the lanolin into each of them and rearrange the order of the covers as you go.  You will feel the grease working into the fibers of the fabric.

Allow the covers to sit in the lanolin for at least 15 minutes.  I let mine sit overnight to ensure that they soak up as much lanolin as possible.

Wring any excess water out of the covers and then hang them out on a line to dry.  If it is winter, you can roll the covers up in dry towels to dry.  It should take about a day or two to get them all the way dry.

Repeat this process when your covers start to leak or take up smell.

It really is a very simple process that will keep the wool in your life happy.

I am going to start working on a diapering series on the blog to help educate people on diapering.  I have spent the last 2 years working intensively doing research and learning the ins and outs of many different methods of diapering.  I find that this is important information to share with other people, and I have made it a personal mission in life.

One of the major problems with diapering is that there is not a lot of information available online, especially when asking a search engine to tell you about cloth diapers.  Many companies have worked very hard with their money to get into the top spots in the serach engines.  So, rather than be able to educate yourself about the different types and styles of diapers, you are looking at products.

Many of the “secrets” of the cloth diapering world can only be reserached when you are already in the know.  For example, it is impossible to learn about using wool for diaper covers unless you know that wool can be used as a diaper cover.  It is ironic that you have to already be educated about many things in the cloth diapering world before you can do reserach and become educated.

I remember sitting down at my computer after deciding that I wanted to try cloth diapers.  I spent several hours at the computer trying to understand this new world in front of me.  I didn’t get very far, and I ended up making a decision about diapers that wasn’t the smartest.  I really had no other clue.  I spent a few hundred dollars on diapers that I didn’t know how to use or know that I was going to like.  Luckily, they held their resale value, and I was able to get use out of them and sell them for almost what I had paid for them.  In truth, they were total garbage.

So, as I go through this adventure of cloth diapering another baby, I am going to share my knowledge, skills and mistakes with you.  I made my entire stash of diapers after careful examination and research.  As I go through the series, I will post tutorials on how to make diapers for anyone that might find that useful.  Hopefully, we can all become more educated about the subject.  After all, cloth diapers are adorable, they help protect the environment, and they are simply the best solution for your baby’s health and future happiness.