Breakfast all week will be crockpot oats–made with almond milk, brown sugar, cinnamon and raisins.
Lunches will be sandwiches, leftovers, fruit, and veggies with hummus.

Monday: Quinoa & steamed veggies/chickpeas
Tuesday: Honey-lime chicken, wild rice, steamed veggies
Wednesday: Taco bake (cornbread crust, topped with beef, beans, sweet potato, onion, fresh tomato & lettuce)
Thursday: Leftover taco bake
Friday: Brinner (omelets & pancakes)

What are you eating this week? Will you join me in eating from your pantry?

One thing I love most about these cookies is that they’re not too sweet. They’re not quite savory either, but they’re not sweet. Except the chocolate

1 cup Earth Balance
3/4 cup sugar
1/2 cup (packed) brown sugar
3 T. water
2 (heaping) T. ground flax seed
2 eggs
2 t. vanilla
2 cups flour
1 t. baking soda
1 t. salt
3 cups oats (quick-cooking or old fashioned)
1 cup chocolate chips
4 (heaping) T. brewer’s yeast

Combine the water and flax in a small bowl, stir, and let sit 3-5 minutes. Cream the Earth Balance and sugars in a mixer (or with a hand mixer) until light and fluffy. Add eggs and vanilla, beating well. Add flax water, beat well. Combine flour, salt, baking soda and brewer’s yeast in small bowl, stir to combine. Add flour mixture to wet ingredients and mix well. Add oats and stir well. Mixture is probably getting VERY thick at this point. Fold in chocolate chips. Spoon out onto a greased cookie sheet or silpat, and bake for 12 minutes at 350. Cookies can be put 1″ apart; they don’t spread much. Makes 60 small cookies.

Today’s prompt is “an impactful book in my life.”

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle was the first book I can remember that made a big enough impact on me that I actually changed my perspective after I finished reading it. Until I read AVM, I was interested in eating better, but I didn’t have a strong perspective on how to go about it. AVM helped me define my perspective to focus strongly on eating locally and sustainably.

Now, we don’t eat meat every day. We think about what we’re putting into our bodies. While we don’t always eat organic, grass-fed meats, we try. We also try to eat sustainably farmed fish and local produce. Our 2012 CSA will help focus our efforts further. We’re trying to get to the point where we feel good about all the food we bring into our home, and the food we’re feeding Ethan. He’s getting his nutritional needs met through me now, but sometime within the next two months, he’ll start eating with us at the table. We want to feel great about the food choices we make on his behalf. Eating locally and sustainably is helping us leave that legacy for his benefit.

In thinking about the future, Eric and I sat down with a financial planner for some advice and advance planning. We’re not done with the process, but we feel like we have a handle on where we need to go from here. I’d like to share our process with you, and tell you about some of the choices we’ve made. I’m going to save retirement saving and budgeting for another post on another day, focusing here on the protections we’re putting in place for Ethan.

We feel lucky to have a financial planner we trust–he’s in the family, so using him was a no-brainer for us. If we didn’t, I think we would have been a little more clueless about the process. He told us we needed to think about life insurance, short- and long-term disability insurance, and making sure we have wills written that we keep up-to-date.

I’ll be honest. We haven’t gotten our wills written yet. And we haven’t gotten long-term disability insurance yet. But we’ve priced out both, and we’ve identified the attorney we’ll be using to write our wills. Working for the bar association, I feel very lucky that I can ask coworkers and volunteers for recommendations. (A shameless plug for one of the programs I run–if you need a referral in North Carolina, click here to visit the Lawyer Referral Service website where you can get a free referral.) Also, in the interest of full disclosure, I get short-term disability insurance through my work. Eric doesn’t have any yet.

The big piece of the puzzle that we’ve figured out is life insurance. It was our #1 priority because we know we don’t have many liquid assets that could provide for Ethan if something happened to us (in fact, with student loans and our mortgage, we have a very negative net worth right now). In looking at how much to buy, we looked at our debt load, and also looked at how much income we would need to replace if one of us were to pass. Ideally, if that were to happen, we would like to be able to have the surviving spouse have enough to live on without the deceased spouse’s income, and have enough to pay for Ethan’s living expenses and college expenses.

We ended up deciding on $500,000 policies for each of us, and I have a second policy through my work that provides a multiple of my annual salary if I die. This number will be totally unique for each person–this number works for us, but it may not work for you. We were pleasantly surprised to find that this size policy doesn’t cost much at all. Our financial planner was able to get us quotes from several reputable companies, and we were able to choose the one we were most comfortable using.

So, you might be asking, how does this apply to you? Well, if you have a financial planner, start with him or her. Make an appointment and discuss what steps you need to take to protect yourself. If you don’t have a financial planner, you have two options–the friends and family option, or the online search option. I always check with friends and family if I’m looking for a vendor, because I always hope that they can point me in the direction of someone they have a working relationship with, and who they trust. If this fails (which it sometimes does), then I turn to the web. There are far more options available now than ever before, and I’m able to subjectively evaluate each company or vendor before contacting them.

Inside Her Eyes has an awesome sponsor, Aptus Insurance, who has published the “New Parents Personal Finance Guide.” This is a great tool that walks readers through eight financial categories to think about and take action on. Aptus can also give you multiple, competitive life insurance quotes if you need them. If you need a financial planner, ours may be able to help or direct you in the direction of someone local to you. You can reach Andrew through his LinkedIn profile here.

I hope each of us will never have a use for life insurance, disability insurance, or our wills. But chances are good (unfortunately) that we may–so make sure you’re thinking about the future, even though it feels grim to do so. Knowing that Ethan will be be financially taken care of should something happen to either one of us gives Eric and I a little peace of mind.

Disclosure: Aptus Insurance is a financial sponsor of this blog. My opinions have not been influenced by this relationship.

Newborn stage:

Prefolds: Cottonbabies unbleached Indian Cotton prefolds (Infant size)

Fitteds: Kissaluvs Kissa’s Cotton Fleece Fitteds (Size 0) and Thirsties Fab Fitteds (Size 1). If you want to get into fun custom-made diapers, check out Green Humbug’s newborn diapers.

Covers: Thirsties Duo Wrap (Size 1), Bummi’s Super Brite (Newborn size)

Pockets/AIO’s: Bum Genius Newborn

Older Infant stage:

Prefolds: Econobum (one-size)

Fitteds: This is where it gets fun. One-size fitteds start fitting now, and this is where all the fun prints and you-choose-the-prints come in. Twinkie Tush, Green Humbug, SustainableBabyish, and Blueberries/Swaddlebees all make really awesome diapers. Green Humbug has one of the best deals on the market, and her diapers are high quality. You can also send your own fabric to her for use in your diapers–which makes them totally customizable!

Covers: Thirsties Duo Wrap (Size 1 to 18 lbs, Size 2 after 18 lbs), Babee Greens cashmere longies (for fall/winter), Kissa’s by Kissaluvs wool soaker.

Pockets/AIO’s: BumGenius 4.0′s (pockets, one-size), Blueberries (minky pockets and bamboo pockets, one-size), and BumGenius elementals (AIO, one-size).

For an adequate starter stash, here’s what I’d do:

2 dozen prefolds–infant size

6 fitteds (Green Humbug newborn and Kissaluvs fleece size 0)
6 one-size fitteds (mix of Twinkie Tush and Green Humbug)

6 BumGenius newborn AIO’s
18 pockets/AIO’s–one size

6 Bummis super brite velcro covers–newborn size
4 Thirsties duo wrap snap covers-size 1
2 Thirsties duo wrap snap covers-size 2
2 wool soakers or longies

2 snappis
2 pail liners
2 medium-sized wet bags
1 hanging wet bag
1 tube CJ’s BUTTer (for diaper bag), 1 jar CJ’s BUTTer (for changing table)

This will give you 3 dozen diapers that fit newborns up through 12lbs or so, and 2 dozen that fit older babies.

Before you use cloth diapers, they need to be prepped. Prepping diapers ranges from SUPER easy to easy and time-consuming. Here’s what we do:
-Natural fibers (prefolds, bamboo, hemp): Wash twice, dry once. Repeat 3-4 times. Prefolds should be fluffy and soft once fully prepped.
-Other fibers (most pockets, anything lined with microfleece, all microfiber inserts): Wash and dry 1-2 times. Easiest!

Once you start using cloth, caring for them is fairly simple once you come up with a detergent that works for you and a good wash routine.

The detergent you use is important. Make sure your diaper detergent is cloth-diaper safe. Some commonly used cloth diaper-safe detergents include ALL Free & Clear, Rockin’ Green, and Charlie’s Soap. You can also make your own REALLY inexpensively. This is what we do. In the four months we’ve been using it (washing at least every other day), we’ve used about 3/4 of a quart. The recipe makes about 4 dry gallons. You can imagine we’ll be using the same batch until Ethan’s potty trained! The recipe we use is here. If you’re using a detergent not specific to cloth diapers (such as ALL Free & Clear), use 1/2 to 1/4 of the recommended amount. Cloth diapers only require a TINY bit of detergent. Too much will cause a residue buildup on the diapers, which will negatively impact their absorbency and effectiveness. It’s always better to start with too little and increase if you end up with smelly diapers, than to start with too much and have to strip your diapers because they’ve started repelling liquid.

The wash routine we use seems to be fairly consistent with other cloth diapering moms. We have a front loader, so if you use a top loader, this may vary. Our wash routine is warm wash/cold rinse on the heavy setting, then repeat a second time. Then we toss the inserts (and any prefolds) in the dryer, and hang our diaper covers, pocket diaper outers, and fitted diapers. If we’re in a rush, I’ll throw everything in on low until the inserts are dry, and just hang the fitteds to finish drying. A quick note: fitteds and AIO’s take a bit longer to dry than inserts, prefolds and shells do.

Now, you might be wondering what to do about stains. Really, stains are inevitable. Diapers are poop catchers, and poop, well, stains from time to time. The easiest and best way to treat poop stains is to wash like normal (on warm, not hot), and then sun the diapers. Put them in the sunniest spot in your house or on your deck, and wait it out. It may take a second wash/sun cycle, but you’ll be amazed at how fresh and new they look after a proper sunning.

Another thing that deserves a special mention is diaper creams. Diaper creams with zinc oxide, along with many commercially-sold diaper creams, aren’t safe to use with cloth diapers. The harsh chemicals in these creams causes cloth diapers to repel, and they also stain cloth (and these stains can’t be sunned out!) So–make sure the cream you’re using is safe for cloth. Or use a fleece or disposable liner if you need to use a “serious” cream. My favorite diaper creams that are entirely cloth diaper safe include:
CJ’s BUTTer (This is our go-to. It’s amazing and has so many uses in addition to diaper cream!)
Earth Mama Angel Baby Bottom Balm
Motherlove Diaper Rash & Thrush

The next thing you need to think about is where to store your dirty diapers. You have two main options–a diaper pail or a zippered wetbag. We use a stainless step trashcan (13 gal) lined with a planetwise large diaper pail liner. When it’s full, it’s about a full load of diapers–so everything in the can gets thrown into the wash. We have two pail liners–one for the wash, and one to use at any given time. The other option is a hanging wetbag. This is the option we choose for overnight travel–it contains wetness and smell, and is totally portable. However, for daily use it’s slightly less convenient since you have to zipper the bag shut each time. You’ll also want wetbags for your diaper bag–we use planetwise bags. The small holds one pocket diaper or two prefolds, while the medium size holds 3-4 pocket diapers. We generally keep a medium in the diaper bag for outings shorter than a full day since it lasts us about 8 hours.

Next up: an entire post about my favorites!

First, the four types of diapers. They are: prefolds, fitteds, pockets, and all-in-one’s. Fitted, pockets and all-in-ones come in seriously awesome prints and colors. There are tons of brands, so please ask me if you have questions about a particular brand–if I’ve used it (and we have at least 11 brands in our stash), I’ll give you an honest review.

Prefold diapers are the type of diaper you might imagine from old-school cloth diapering days. They’ve come a long way, but they’re still a flat piece of fabric (now with many layers) that you fold around your baby’s bum and fasten somehow. Prefolds require a waterproof cover over them so they don’t leak. Prefolds are the most inexpensive diapering option, generally.

Fitted diapers are shaped like a traditional diaper, and fasten with either snaps or velcro (which is called hook and loop or aplix in the cloth diapering world). The catch with fitted diapers is that you need to put a waterproof cover over them so babies don’t pee through them, since they don’t have an included waterproof layer. Fitted diapers can be sized (measured by weight of the baby, and generally in sizes XS, S, M, L), or one-size-fits-most. Not to confuse you, but there are also a few fitted diapers without closures–so you have to use a fastener on them like you would a prefold.

Pocket diapers, along with All-in-One (AIO) diapers are the easiest to learn how to use. Pockets have a waterproof exterior shell, which is attached to a VERY soft inner lining. There’s a space in between the lining and the shell for a second piece of fabric called an insert. Real original, huh? These inserts are generally made from microfiber, but can be made from natural fibers like hemp and bamboo for added absorbency too. A benefit to pocket diapers is that you can add extra inserts for extra absorbency. Pocket diapers fasten with snaps or velcro. They tend to be one-size-fits-most, which means they will fit babies from 10-11 lbs all the way up through potty training. Most pocket diapers claim to start at 8lbs, but it takes babies a little while to beef up enough to fit these diapers.

AIO‘s are similar to pocket diapers, but they’re the absolute easiest to use. All of the absorbency is built right into the diaper–no fastening, no stuffing, etc. All you do is put the diaper on your baby, snap or velcro, and go!

When talking about diaper covers, there are essentially two kinds–those made with PUL (waterproof plastic) and those made of wool. PUL covers contain wetness by their waterproof-ness. They can have snap closures or velcro. Wool does exactly the opposite. Wool allows diapers to breathe, and wicks moisture from the diaper out into the air–where it evaporates. During the day, we use PUL covers if we’re using a fitted or prefold, and at night, we use wool. For us, wool keeps Ethan more comfortable while he’s going for a longer stretch between diaper changes.

To keep prefolds (and fitteds that need closures) closed, snappis are the choice closure system. They’re easy to use, and readily available where cloth diapers are sold. They have sharp little teeth and clip on to hold diapers shut.

Now that I’ve told you about the different types of diapers, I’ll tell you about (and link to) our diaper stash. Click the links to see what we use. We currently have:
Newborn size: 24 prefolds, 6 PUL covers, 12 AIO’s (size XS).
Infant/Toddler sizes: 30 prefolds, 6 covers, 20 pockets (Bum Genius & Blueberries), 7 fitteds (Blueberries, SustainableBabyish, Thirsties, Twinkie Tush and Green Humbug), 2 wool covers (Babee Greens and Kissa’s).

Speculating for our hypothetical next baby, I would change up the newborn stash to include: 24 prefolds, 12 fitteds, 6 covers, 12 AIO’s (size newborn). I found that when we were out and about, fitteds were easier to manage than prefolds. For us, the AIO’s that we have didn’t fit properly until Ethan’s legs had filled out a little–so for the first six weeks, they didn’t work for us. I would change up our infant/toddler stash to get rid of all the prefolds, and have our existing pockets, and maybe 12 fitteds (including 2-3 specifically for overnights).

Breastfed newborns go through 10-12 diapers a day for the first few months, and 8 or so a day after the first few months. Because diaper wash is done every other day (give or take), having enough diapers to get you through three days is advisable so that you aren’t feeling pressured to do diaper wash every day. I’ll cover diaper wash in part 3, don’t fear! So no matter what types of diapers you end up choosing, think about 30-36 newborn sized diapers and 24-30 infant/toddler sized diapers. Also make sure you think about expandable absorbencies, since babies tend to pee more as they get older and drink more at a time.

I hope you have a better understanding of the types of cloth diapers after reading this! Part three will include a discussion about washing diapers, caring for diapers, wet bags, and storing diapers–both clean and soiled. I may also touch on wipes and how to find steals if you’re lucky Good night!

First things first. Why cloth?

We chose cloth for several reasons–what I call the 4 C’s–cost, chemicals, crap, and convenience.

Cost was a primary reason (if not the single biggest reason) we started looking at cloth. Given that the average baby will have his or her diaper changed 6,000-8,000 times from birth to potty training, that adds up to a cost of $2,000-$3,000 per baby. Disposable wipes add about $500 more to that cost. Cloth ranges in price, but can be as inexpensive as $350 (and as much as…well, a lot if you’re an addict). That cost will get you enough diapers to use for your baby’s diapering lifetime. And the next. And the next…. To date, we have spent about $650 on diapers, and have a complete newborn stash as well as a complete infant-toddler stash. When I buy diapers now, it’s just because I love the way they look, or want to try a new brand for performance. Before I started buying random “fun” diapers, I had spent $410 on a complete newborn and infant-toddler stash. So it can absolutely be done on the cheap.

Chemicals–or the lack thereof–was a second important reason we chose cloth. The manufacturing process used to make disposable diapers produces really toxic chemicals like dioxin, and disposable diapers themselves contain other chemicals–things like TBT and sodium polyacrylate. TBT causes hormonal problems in humans and animals, while sodium polyacrylate was formerly found in tampons…until it was shown to cause toxic shock syndrome. We are choosing not to expose Ethan to unnecessary chemicals–so cloth seemed like a natural choice here.

Crap, or rather, keeping crap out of landfills. We’re choosing to not contribute to the 18 BILLION diapers thrown into landfills every year. Disposable diapers are the third largest component in landfills (behind newspaper and beverage containers), and despite being easy to dispose of, take hundreds of years to degrade in a landfill. We’re choosing to keep our 6,000-8,000 diapers OUT of the landfill.

Convenience was key for us. We wanted and needed a diapering solution that was convenient. Something that was easily transported in a car and on a plane, something that was as easy to understand as disposable diapers–both for us as new parents, as for Ethan’s caregivers. We’ve used a mix of diaper types (see Part 2 in this series for what the different types are), and have come up with a convenient system that works so well for us that we would never consider changing to anything else. Part 3 will talk about laundry, caring for your diapers, and traveling with your diapers. You’ll soon see that it’s really convenient, with today’s diapering options, to use cloth.

Breakfast: Oatmeal, cereal with peanut butter toast, homemade granola bars

Sunday: Cheeseburger Pizza (well, hamburger pizza on my half) with leftover chicken noodle soup.

Monday: Teriyaki Honey Chicken with brown rice and chicken noodle soup (Making another for the freezer)

Tuesday: Leftover Teriyaki Honey Chicken with rice and sweet potato fries

Wednesday: Cilantro & Lime Chicken with steamed veggies (Making another for the freezer)

Thursday: Sloppy Joe, Sweet Potato Fries

Friday: Leftover sloppy joe and sweet potato fries

Saturday: Eating out, Eric’s parents in town

Sunday: Eating out, Eric’s parents in town

We’re also going to make some Slow Cooker Thai Chicken for the freezer. Shouldn’t have too much to prep in advance of next week once those few meals are in the freezer.

What are you cooking this week?