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Monday’s Mama is Crunchy AF.

Published on October 9, 2017October 9, 2017 by Darlene Dee3 Comments

Introducing Rachel Barry from Pretty in Baby Food. You may already know her, as she is an AMAZING resource for all things Natural Parenting on both her own blog, Pretty in Baby Food, and the soon-to-be-released Guidance Guide website. You can also find her on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. She is full of knowledge AND often hosts giveaways. She is definitely worth your follow!

Seriously, you guys, if you wonder about anything baby wearing, cloth diapering, baby feeding, traveling with baby, or basically any 2017 mama concerns, Rachel Barry is YOUR GIRL. Don’t let her cute name fool you — Rachel Barry is not actually an anthropomorphic strawberry. Nor is she a character from Glee.

But she probably DOES spontaneously sing throughout her daily life because Rachel is mom to one beautiful and rambunctious toddler (and toddlers love songs). She is also currently pregnant with her second child. Rachel is a natural parenting and cloth diaper advocate. Her hobbies include dreaming of long walks on the beach while drinking her cold coffee during the day, writing while her daughter naps, and cruising. Her dislikes in life are doing the dishes, cleaning, and laundry. (Except diaper laundry. That’s her favorite. 😊)

Rachel answered a few questions for me here and OF COURSE she took the opportunity to school us some more. Thank you, Rachel!

1. What would you do with thirty whole minutes all to yourself IN A ROW every day?

Oh man! This is like the holy grail of alone time. I would probably make myself a cup of coffee, and read or write. (Sometimes I might use it to use the bathroom alone while also reading or writing. Ya know. TO see how my husband feels when he get’s to go to the bathroom. Haha!)

2. I love that you use cloth diapers. Why do YOU cloth diaper and what is your most favorite brand out there? (I know. That is two questions. I cheated.)

Haha! I cloth diaper because it saves my family money. In the first year alone of cloth diapering I have saved my family almost $1,000.00. The second reason I cloth diaper is to reduce trash. I was tired of lugging 4 bags of trash to the curb every trash day. By switching to cloth diapering I have been able to get it down to 2 bags of trash on trash day. Many people don’t know but disposable diapers can take up to 500 years to degrade in a landfill where as a cloth diaper when thrown out can take 6 months to a year depending on what fabric it is made out of.

As for my favorite brand that is a tough question to answer. As a blogger who reviews cloth diapers I have a lot of different brands of cloth diapers in my stash. I have specific cloth diapers for day time, nap time, and night time. I also have specific colors for when my football team plays, and certain holidays. I can say I prefer cloth diapers that are made of natural fibers such as cotton, hemp, or bamboo. 😉

3. It’s the PTA Bakesale: homemade, store bought, or NOPE?

I am not quite there yet, but I am more inclined to lean towards NOPE. (This might change depending on how involved my children want me to be.) Right now I would rather just donate money then bake something. With food allergies I would not want to leave anyone out or accidentally make something that someone was allergic too. If they wanted me to sell cloth diapers door to door to help raise money I would probably do that in a heart beat. Hahaha!

Rachel is super smart and very generous with her knowledge. Pop on over to Pretty in Baby Food and soak up her wisdom.

Pura and Simple.

Published on September 1, 2017 by Darlene Dee11 Comments

*Sponsored post.*

YOU GUYS I FOUND SOME SWEET NEW WATER BOTTLES.

Well, ok, I found them in my mailbox after asking the nice people at Tryazon to hook me up with their Pura Stainless party pack. I said please. They said yes. Sweet!

(Skip to the bottom if you already love Pura Stainless and just want the discount code. It’s fine. I won’t be mad. Much.)

I invited over some friends and their kids and we painted rocks and talked about water bottles. We talked about other things, too, but water bottles are fascinating, y’all.

(I may have mentioned my obsession to find the perfect water bottle before. But maybe you don’t know that this obsession extends to Mama size bottles too.)

I love the earth, and I love drinking water, and I have a ToddlerMonster that will spill any water with no lid. So I need perfect water bottles at home on the couch, by my bed at night, AND on-the-go.

The perfect water bottle will keep my water cold. The perfect water bottle will not have a weird taste. The perfect water bottle will not spill if knocked over. The perfect water bottle for the ToddlerMonster will not spill even if it is banged around in my backpack. The perfect water bottle is easy to clean. And the perfect water bottle is good for my health and kind to the earth.

I have found an almost perfect water bottle.

YOU GUYS OMG!

Before I declare complete perfection, I do need to tote Babystar’s straw-spout bottle around in the backpack/diaper bag for a bit to see if it leaks all over everything. I don’t think it will — I turned it upside down and shook it VERY HARD. I will update this post later with my very scientific results.

The Pura Stainless bottles definitely keep my water cold. I have been using the larger size insulated bottle for a week, and my water is just as cold at 4am as it is when I set it on my bedside at 10pm. And it’s STILL COLD in the morning.

The spout is silicon, even though most of the bottle is stainless steel. Silicon tastes like nothing. PERFECT!

Results are out on the long-term spilling situation on both the mama bear and the baby bear size. The outlook is good but further testing is needed. I want to tell you about them NOW though, not in three months.

All parts of the Pura stainless bottles are (top-rack) dishwasher safe! But more importantly to me, there are not many parts and they all come COMPLETELY APART. So there is no question of whether that is mold in that plastic bit that I cannot dismantle.

There is literally ZERO PLASTIC. None. It’s really freaking cool. The bottles are stainless steel and silicon. That’s it. 100% recyclable and good for my family and the entire planet.

BUT WAIT THERE’S MORE.

These bottles have a feature that I didn’t even know I wanted. But now I’m so mad that every company doesn’t do this. Every single component is compatible with the other. There are six sized bottles from 5oz to 28oz. There are five different types of tops: baby nipple, toddler sippy, straw top, capped drinking spout, and a silicon lid that closes the bottle completely to turn it into a storage bottle (which would be great for formula or those powder sports drink mixes). I can mix and match as much as I like. The thready bits are all the same size, so everything fits on everything. I LOVE THIS SO MUCH.

(Well, ok, the bottom part of the straw won’t reach the bottom of the larger bottles but I suspect there will be straw size options eventually. And you can technically still use the straw top on any size bottle but you have to tip it.)

I AM OFFICIALLY OBSESSED. Right now, I prefer this bottle to almost everything in my entire kitchen. Babystar is less impressed; she prefers her Unicorn Water but I think that’s only because there is a freaking unicorn on it. Toddler logic, y’all.

I gave away three of the five bottles that Pura Stainless sent via Tryazon because I AM SO NICE. I miss them. I kept the two that Babystar and I have been trying. Below is a size comparison, using my hand. Not a ruler because I am lazy. Those are the insulated bottles in 9oz and 22oz. I totally kept the insulated ones because I AM SO GREEDY. (Well, ok, I gave away one of the three insulated bottles they sent to me. See? NICE.)

Dear Pura Stainless, please make some sleeves with dinosaurs or unicorns or clever sayings (for the teenagers — and mostly me). Love, your latest social media stalker.

I wish I could have invited the whole internet to my rock painting party but I didn’t have that many rocks. I guess you could have brought your own. Whoops, my bad. But you can still use the party’s discount code for 20% off through September 3: Pura22206.

HIGHLY RECOMMEND.

MAYDAY MAYDAY: Have you tried Pura Stainless bottles? Do you have a different favorite water bottle? Am I the only reusable-bottle-obsessed mama on the internet??

RAISING BABYSTAR: $20,963.61

My Milkshake Brings all the Glares to the Park.

Published on August 3, 2017 by Darlene Dee37 Comments

This week is World Breastfeeding Week AND the beginning of National Breastfeeding Month. I guess it makes sense to double down on this one.

Ahhh, breastfeeding. The sweet nourishment of mother’s milk to the quietly nursing angelic baby barely visible from underneath the stylish and tasteful blanket draped gently over the modest lady’s shoulder.

FUCK THAT NOISE.

I am nursing a two year old ToddlerMonster. Well, not currently, because there is no way I could type and nurse a toddler. Or a baby. Or a newborn. Well, maybe I could type and nurse a newborn, if I was typing on my phone. Which is a big NO-NO.

(Never look at your phone while feeding your baby. Only look at your baby. In fact, never look at your phone or anything other than your baby ever or your baby will grow up to hate you. But don’t spoil your baby. But also, it is impossible to spoil your baby.)

When I was breastfeeding my newborn, a small number of horrible people glared at me for not covering myself. The baby was small and I was not. Her head was still smaller than ONE of my breasts. But it was summer and newborns like to eat constantly. And like most people, my newborn baby did not like anything covering her face while she ate. Even if she did, I had to hold her and hold her neck so she didn’t die and how on earth would I have kept a cover on a wiggly newborn baby? Plus, I was postnatal and hormonal and BURNING UP and I didn’t want any more layers on myself, either.

Luckily I was mostly too tired to care about the glares. And what would I have done about it, anyway? In hindsight, I maybe should have carried around World Health Organization brochures or something, but honestly, it’s not like I was going to stop feeding my baby and walk over to someone to confront them for giving me a nasty look. But it did make me feel awful, so thanks, jerks.

Ok, to be fair, MOST of the people I encountered either averted their eyes or gave me a knowing smile or even told me that I was doing a great thing.

At least, that was true while the little nurseling was still a LITTLE nurseling.

Last year, my older baby was still nursing frequently, and we were out in the world much more often. Strangers often asked her age and told me that I would stop nursing once she got teeth.

EVEN THOUGH OUR DOCTORS TELL US THAT BABIES SHOULD NOT HAVE COW’S MILK UNTIL AT LEAST AGE ONE. Was I supposed to switch my ten month old to formula so strangers could feel more comfortable being around us?

Next came the jokes about how I should stop before she could ask for it. First of all, that doesn’t even make sense. I was so HAPPY when she could ask me for milk. I taught her the sign for milk so that she could tell me what she needed even before she could say the word. Because do you know what sucks? Trying to figure out why a crying baby is crying TOTALLY SUCKS.

Now that my toddler is two, she not only asks for milk but demands it. Sometimes (often) while simultaneously trying to pull my shirt up, because she knows where mommy keeps the milk. I usually tell her that she can have milk when we get home, but if she has fallen on the playground or been trampled in the soft play room, she gets her milk right away. Because I am her mother and mama’s milk comforts her. She gets hugs and kisses and sometimes milk and that is fine so stop glaring at us or shielding your four-year-old son’s eyes because that makes YOU the weird one, by the way.

Last spring, as I nursed my almost two-year-old in the Lobby of Somewhere, a mother that I had never met before told me that I was doing a good job. She said my toddler looked so natural straddling my lap and nursing and she could tell that we were old pros. And then she called me a good mom. I know that the other judgmental strangers shouldn’t bother me but they do, so I am very thankful for that woman. I think of her whenever I face negativity for nursing my toddler; I think of her often.

I have heard and read that I am selfish and narcissistic, that I am ruining my toddler emotionally, and even that I am confusing her sexually.

SERIOUSLY?

I have some questions for the Haters: How would you like it if I made disgusting faces at your child when he was sucking his thumb? How about if I said very loudly, right next to your child, ‘little girls shouldn’t eat apples because only babies eat apples’? Or maybe I should use my sweetest voice to directly tell your two year old that he is too big to wear diapers and he should be a big boy and leave mommy alone.

It’s the same thing.

RAISING BABYSTAR: $20,361.20 (imagine if I was also buying formula!)

HEY BREASTFEEDING MAMAS: Have you encountered any static for nursing your little one? If so, how do you handle it? I don’t really want to be confrontational; I just want to feel comfortable feeding my child in the world.

Two Years in (and out of) Cloth Diapers.

Published on July 20, 2017July 20, 2017 by Darlene Dee25 Comments

I wrote about cloth diapering after a year in cloth already, and it is full of good information that is all still true.

All of the lessons I had learned still apply: diversify your stash, buy a diaper sprayer, resist the aftermarket (if you can and want to but at least be aware of it but maybe don’t completely resist the aftermarket because I will hopefully be selling some diapers within the year).

I still wish that I had used covers and flats for the HUGE money savings. Especially now that Babystar is wearing so many disposable diapers (yep) while the pretty easy-to-use all-in-ones sit quietly in the drawer.

Cloth diapering an infant is super easy and almost fun. The only downside is the extra laundry but I was doing laundry anyway. In fact, I barely had time to get dressed so there wasn’t really extra laundry, since I never changed my clothes. Infants have like one hundred diaper changes per day. (Ok, maybe fourteen-ish.) I enjoyed seeing my sweet newborn baby in cute cloth diapers and if there is any way at all to enjoy changing diapers, CARPE THAT DIEM.)

Cloth diapering a growing but relatively stationary baby is still pretty easy. Yes, the poop gets grosser, but the volume of poop is still reasonable. You know, for poop. And sure, it smells bad, but y’all, toddler poop smells REAL BAD.

Ok, I’m going to stop talking about poop now. Probably not forever, though.

The biggest challenge I’ve faced in cloth diapering my toddler is all of the tiny adventures every day. Between parks and libraries and soft play rooms (and Target), we go ALL of the places ALL of the time. Toddlers gotta GO, man. Babystar will just put on her shoes and head to the door talking about a ‘bye-bye.’ With no regard for pants.

When she was smaller, the diaper bag was mostly full of diapers. Cloth diapers and wet bags for the dirty ones take up a lot of space, AND REMEMBER, you have to carry the dirty diapers around with you at least until you get back to the car. (And they are heavier once they are used.) Now that she is a person with opinions and advanced nutritional requirements, the diaper bag is full of snacks and her water bottle and my water bottle and at least two changes of (bigger) clothes and sunscreen and bug spray and sunglasses and books and probably some toys that she MUST HAVE but will not play with and there isn’t much room left for the cloth diapers. (And the disposable diapers are SO LIGHT. But yes, they will sit in a landfill until the end of time so I still try hard to use the cloth at home and during our shorter adventures.)

I use a cute striped Steve Madden backpack as a diaper bag. It has a lot of pockets but it was NOT AT ALL made to be a diaper bag. It looks like it belongs on a trendy tween in 2008.

I bought an actual diaper bag long ago that I literally never use. It isn’t a backpack and I NEED my hands free. The actual diaper bag is cool in that it will hang on a stroller but Babystar refuses strollers with me: this is the hidden downside of baby wearing. So maybe the answer for me is a better backpack-style diaper bag? Does anyone have recommendations?

I haven’t added in the cost of diapers in awhile (but they are still on the list). We bought the giant Aldi pack for $10.89 and I ADORE that price. The diapers are fine, but they do not at all work for overnight use. As long as you change the diaper after each pee, they are fine. Just beware of blowouts. I usually buy Target brand Up and Up diapers. I had been buying them by the 28-pack but after a good look in the mirror, I started buying the larger boxes. It’s a great deal at $14.99 and the diapers work well for Babystar. We never have overnight leaks and blowouts are super rare. (I’ve bought two boxes since the beginning of June. I have a bunch left so I’m maybe doing better than I think with the cloth.)

I guess my only new lesson is to be prepared for the bulkiness. I know I need a better diaper bag and a better system. I am loathe to buy a crazy expensive diaper bag now that Babystar is already two, though. But a better system could be free! Maybe I can pack less in the diaper bag and have a wet bag full of more emergency rations in the car?

MAYDAY MAYDAY: Do you cloth diaper a toddler? What are your tips for diapering on-the-go?

RAISING BABYSTAR: $19,550.73

Clean Mama: the Greatest Gift of All!

Published on May 15, 2017May 14, 2017 by Darlene Dee3 Comments

Yesterday was Mother’s Day. I had a wonderful day which included an uninterrupted shower. I’m not saying that was my favorite part, but it might have been my favorite part.

(Ok, just kidding. I get to take uninterrupted showers at least once a week per my sentencing guidelines. Um, I mean, because my two older children are wonderful creatures that will distract Miss Babystar for twenty minutes so that I can wash my hair.)

While in the shower, I realized that I never added the Arbonne ABC Baby Soap to this list.

DON’T WORRY I’M NOT GOING TO TRY TO SELL YOU ANYTHING.

I know, I know, some people freak out and run screaming (or scrolling since we are all online here) when mamas say ‘Arbonne’ or ‘Lularoe’ or ‘DoTerra’ or ‘Shakeology’ or so many other trigger words. Those poor hustling mamas are just trying to do their thing. Even if their thing is sometimes annoying. You know what else is annoying? The fact that Target emails me every single day about SOMETHING and their Cartwheel app is stupid and difficult to use. But I still love Target and I still love my #momboss friends.

Ahem. Fun(ny) fact: I accidentally became an Arbonne consultant.

Yep. I ordered shampoo and conditioner and body wash and hand lotion and mascara (PS the Arbonne mascara is crap) from a friend at a party and then offered to HOST a party for her. Then, at MY party, my teenager wanted to try the entire freaking skin care line so I ordered a bunch more stuff for her. And me. And I ordered the baby soap for Babystar. In the weird pyramid scheme math, if I paid twenty bucks or something, I could get a save even more money and get a free thing AND get 35% off of my purchased for a whole year so DUH. Of course I did it. I did not realize what was going down* until our products arrived along with a box of ten catalogs and some cool samples (yay!) and a Welcome New Consultant folder. Whoops.

*I am sure my friend explained it to me but it was the end of the night and I had several glasses of prosecco.

I don’t even know how much it cost because I paid money for a discount (does that even make sense?) and I had to spend a minimum amount to get some ‘free’ stuff so I’m just going with the basic retail price which is $21.

Babystar still prefers to EAT the Honest Creamsicle** Soap. But she likes the Arbonne ABC soap because it barely lathers. Babystar hates bubbles. Well, she LOVES bubbles outside with a bubble wand that she drips all over and gets herself all sticky so that she needs a bath. She DESPISES any bubbles in said bath. She gets all mad at them and tries to pop them all saying, ‘no bubbles, no bubbles, no bubbles.’ Like she’s on some Baby Bathtime version of Press Your Luck.

**It’s actually called Orange-Vanilla-Something but it’s basically a Creamsicle.

RAISING BABYSTAR: $16,923.99