The Great Cloth Diaper Change!

Saturday was a big fluffy event!! The Great Cloth Diaper Change. I was beyond excited to attend and proud I could be part of the event and to making a record for the Guinness Book of Records.


In case you didn't know, the Great Cloth Diaper Change is a worldwide event to promote awareness about cloth diapers and also get together with other parents who cloth diaper their babies. It was the original idea of Judy Aagard of Tiny Tots Diaper Service & Baby Boutique to have a big event to educate people about cloth diapers and contribute to the Guinness Book of Records.  Judy is awesome. She was willing to pay for an ASL interpreter so I could attend the event. I met her when we first arrived. She is very nice, and I remembered it was also her husband Tim who helped DH and I learn how to fold prefolds with a snappi and cover when I was pregnant with RaeRae. 
I absolutely loved seeing other parents baby-wearing, nursing in public, and showing off different fluff. We were part of history this day. 
There were some pretty neat door prizes as well: a stroller, diaper bags, Grovias...just to name a few. Everything Birth, Inc. also donated a sample sized of Baby Bum Butter, one of my favorite diapering accessories. 
Out of the 95 people we had registered for our location, 88 actually showed up and were qualified diaper changers. There were also swag bags for the first 100 participants, but everyone ended up getting one anyways. I changed RaeRae into an owls GroVia All-in-2 and submitted our picture to GroVia for a contest. The contest was for the first 1000 pictures emailed to them, showing you used a GroVia diaper at the Great Cloth Diaper Change.
RaeRae was very mobile. I let her walk around a bit since we were close to the front and had some room. There was a ramp behind the stage for wheelchair accessibility that she walked across over and over. I think she was among the most mobile of all the babies in the room, as a lot of babies were under age of 1 or close.
Next year I am not sure if we will be attending as participants because RaeRae could be potty-trained by then! We will see! But I want to attend again just for the fun of it and bring more friends along. 
Enjoy these pictures from our day!

Walking around with Mama's keys

Being all cute

Who's that Mama?

She saw a boy! Thought this was cute.

Waiting for the event! Keeping her busy.

And we're done!

Me and RaeRae in her GroVia Ai2.

GroVia AIO I won!

Toddler friendly crafts/activities?

I'm on the hunt for toddler-friend crafts/activities to do at home. We have fingerpaint and paper plus foam brushes for RaeRae to use but she doesn't like it too much. We also have stickers that she likes to try to put on paper. But I'm looking for more. I'm looking for other bloggers/blog posts with ideas for activities. I'll look to Pinterest too and post what we do here. If you have any leads or suggestions, please share!

For preggos! Check out this giveaway

 
My friend Danielle at Happenings of Harper Household blog has a review/giveaway for Fly Belly Maternity clothing! Go check it out here!

Wanna win a stroller? Here's how.

Just sharing this giveaway with you all at Baby Gizmo!

It's for a Stroll-Air My Duo Double Stroller.

Click here to enter today!

Dealing with yeast...

I've had a few people ask about thrush lately so I'd thought I'd share my experience and some tips to help dealing with it. 


Yeast is yucky. We all have yeast. We get yeast infections when the yeasties beasties get out of control. This means the bad bacteria outnumbers the good bacteria. That's partly why probiotics are encouraged. They help with our good bacteria and help with preventing illnesses. Since we started taking probiotics, our yeast problems have been at bay. But sometimes I forget to take probiotics and I notice a different in how I feel and my daughter's bum occasionally. 

What does thrush look like? There can be white patches on the insides of baby's cheeks and tongue. They are different from milk stains in that yeast patches don't rub off or wash away. They can look almost like milk curds a little bit on the cheeks. Nipples may be extra pink or red with white spots or no spots. They can look shiny and feel itchy, burn, and be painful during nursing or pumping.


We had our first bout of thrush when RaeRae was 3 weeks old. THREE WEEKS! I think it was mostly my fault because I got lazy with changing my nursing pads. Tip: change your nursing pads often. My nipples were soooo itchy and it hurt to nurse. RaeRae didn't have any white spots in her mouth though so I didn't know if it was thrush or not. But after talking with the lactation consultant, we determined it was likely thrush. RaeRae got a prescription for Nystatin, a yellow semi-thick liquidy substance that we had to swab inside her mouth using a q-tip. 
I had to air out my nipples each time after nursing then rub in a layer of over-the-counter Lotrimin cream. Lotrimin is an antifungal cream made of Clotrimazole. I rubbed it on my nipples and areoloas until I couldn't see it anymore. Then I put lanolin on to help with the pain. It went away within a week.

We had our next yeast battle when RaeRae was about 6 or 7 months. However, it didn't start on her mouth. It started on her bum. She had a rash that wouldn't go away with CJ's butter so after asking some friends for advice and talking with RaeRae's doctor, I learned it was a yeast rash. Ugh--I was so annoyed. I felt stressed because I knew I had to wash her diapers, all of them, to kill the yeasties beasties. I learned Tea Tree Oil (TTO) is a no-no in killing yeast in diapers because you need a certain dilution of TTO and then the yeast can become resistant. So I use Grapefruit Seed Extract instead. I bought it at a local vitamin shop. It helped to kill the yeast, along with turning up my hot water to hot-hot. See here for another blog post on cleaning yeast from cloth diapers. I would put 4-5 drops of Grapefruit Seed Extract in with my wash, and sometimes with my rinse cycle. 

We had it off and on for three months from September 2011 to November 2011. Then again this past February for a few weeks. The February case was so bad that we needed liquid Diflucan. 


Dealing with the thrush, some tips:

• Treat both you and baby. You can keep passing the yeast to each other at each nursing session. It can take a week up two weeks to fully go away.
• Baby: Nystatin from doctor for a week. If really bad, we have had to use liquid Diflucan twice for RaeRae's stubborn yeast. 
• Try coconut oil on your nipples after each nursing session.
• Lotrimin cream on baby's bum and your nipples. 
• Air time for baby's bum if she/he has yeast on the bum too. (Get those cloth diapers clean!! We use Grovia Biosoakers or Earth's Best disposables if a really bad yeast rash on her bum).
• Avoid or lessen your sugar intake (yeast thrives on sugar).
• Boil pacis or bottle nipples after each use. If you pump, you will need to sanitize the parts that touch your nipples or baby's mouth too.
• Wash your nursing bras in hot water each day (can use grapefuit seed extract if you want).
• Wipe down baby's mouth with a wet washcloth after each nursing or feeding session so milk does not linger and feed the thrush (this was partly my problem as RaeRae would nurse to sleep, feeding the thrush; also a good habit to help prevent teeth decay).
• Up your probiotics or eat more yogurt.
•  Gentian Violet is another over-the-counter remedy for treating nipple thrush but it gets messy. We've tried it twice and I don't like it. You can google for more info. If you do use it, make sure it's the 1 percent solution as the 2 percent solution can be a bit too strong. 
• Hang in there! Keep nursing! 

Feel free to email me or message me if any questions! I've dealt with this enough to have all of these tips. 

Toddler tantrums and more

RaeRae turned 14 months old on Friday. 14 months! She has been walking for about a month now, and practically running at times! She has such a cute little walk too. She looks like she's walking really fast and her little bum shakes while she has her arms out in the air in front of her and her head up high. If I knew how to put videos on my blog, I'd put one here to show you.

4/6/12: 14 months! Eating out at our favorite place: Chipotle!

She's growing every day. To date, these are the signs she knows:

1. Mama (1-handshape on lower chin)
2. Daddy (1-handshape on forehead)
3. All-done (sticks both arms up in the air)
4. More (1-handshape for right hand and 5-handshape on left hand and makes the movement)
5. Eat (1-handshape on mouth)
6. Milk (uses two hands to sign milk)
7. Baby (5-handshapes for both hands and waves her arms and body like she's rocking a baby, but hands aren't touching)
8. Cat (1-handshape on cheek with right movement)
9. Dog (5-handshape on right leg--she will sign "dog" whenever she sees a dog--whether outside, in a book, a picture, or if we are watching 101 Dalmatians)
10. Bird (looks like she's making the letter "F" but the movement for bird, not on the mouth area but in the air)
11. Duck (same location she signs for bird but with all fingers)
12. Cow (5-handshape in a waving motion over her head)
13. Caterpillar (5-handshape in the air, moving like a caterpillar does)
14. Thank-you (does it slowly)
15. Bed (5-handshape on ear; knows exactly what it means too)
16. Waves bye-bye to mean bye-bye/see you later
17. Some other signs she has copied from us but consistently on her own her: bear, water, car...from what I can remember. She seems to pick up signs each day.

Spoken words she says/knows (from what my husband has told me):

1.  Mama
2. Dada
3. Thank-you ("dank-ooo')
4. Hi (More like "ayeeeeeee")
5. Nana (for my mom)
6. Bapa (for my grandpa)
7. Papa (for my dad; sometimes can sound like Bapa too)
8. Uh-oh

As for behaviors and things she knows,

1. She can squat and stand up from a sitting position
2. The door goes open and shut
3. Caps to my chapstick goes on and off
4. The button on the air filter can be pressed to turn on and off
5. Fake crying to get attention
6. Sticker goes on paper
7. Spoons and forks are for getting food and eating (and also throwing on the floor...oh joy)
8. Knows how to drink water from my water bottle by sucking it up through the straw
9. Baby bottle feeds the baby on its mouth
10. Eggs go in the Easter basket (from recent Easter egg hunts)
11. Knows how to turn the pages to books and signs what she sees in the pictures if she knows the signs
12. Socks and shoes go on the feet (even though she can't put them on herself yet)
13. Toothbrush goes in the mouth (and does not like it one bit, only if she does it herself will she tolerate it)
14.  I'm sure there's more but this list is from what I can clearly think of. 

And of course the biggest one: toddler tantrums!! If I take away something she can't play with or do something she doesn't like, she will throw a huge fit. She will sit down on the floor on purpose, shake her legs, and scream. I'm still learning on what best works for us in these situations. But lately I've just let her cry it out or I will distract her with something else. I'll occasionally tell her something like "I know you want to play with [this object/toy] right now, but it isn't safe. Let's find something else."  What do you do? What works or doesn't work for you when your toddler throws a tantrum?

ALL DONE MAMA! Not so happy.

Hubby and I were talking the other day and I told him, "We took all those classes when I was pregnant on how to take care of a baby, but now we have a toddler. We didn't take any classes for that, so I'd like to research on what's out there that could help us." He agreed. I'm currently about to begin the book "The Happiest Toddler on the Block" by Harvey Karp and Paula Spencer. 


Enjoy these pics of RaeRae from the last month or so!

Natural House Cleaning Products

This morning while going through blog emails in my inbox, I came across a post by Tots and Me on Natural House Cleaning Products. I was excited to read about this review because I always wanted to learn more about eco-friendly cleaning products for the home. I've seen some products on EcoMom but never really checked it out and wanted to learn more about them.


Please go read Tots and Me's blog post here. She did an excellent review on three products and there's a giveaway over there too!!