Out, damn'd Desitin! out, I say!

I'm paraphrasing Lady Macbeth to tell my faithful reader(s?) about that which occupies about 60 percent of my mind...diapers and diaper rash. Freeman has the phenomenally sensitive butt that his brother had at this age. Moreover, his little pooper soils his diapers with at least a dozen itty bitty squirts a day rather than a few substantial ones. Since we're using cloth, we also change quite a few extra peepee diapers. To keep his bottom shiny and happy, we use gobs of Desitin. Gobs. We put it on and then make an even thicker masque by adding in some cornstarch powder.

For the time being, Freeman's butt is beautiful, but the little grooves on my right index finger seem to be permanently stained white with Desitin...a parental twist on the yellow fingers characteristic of some smokers. I wash my hands dozens of times a day to no avail -- with a scrub brush even. Ah well...at least Sweetpea's butt is smooth as...well...a baby's butt. And seemingly more Desitin-stain resistant than my finger.

If cloth diapers bore you, read no further. Here's a review. We use a mix of disposable and cloth, but on the cloth front, I just gotta say that I am LOVE LOVE LOVING the bumGenius all-in-one cloth diapers. The materials in them don't take kindly to ointments, so I've actually been using them on Jack (who outgrew his tendency to rash). It is soooo cool that they adjust to fit both him and Freeman. Plus, the material really does wick moisture away almost as well as Huggies and Pampers. It's shocking to pull the inserts out after a heavy wetting night. They are soaked and super-heavy, but the moisture in the material against Jack's skin is barely perceptible. They seem like the perfect diaper for people who don't relish the idea of poopy diaper laundry, but whose kids have predictable poops. You could keep those types of kids in disposables around poop time, and cloth the rest of the time without your life changing that much. What a money saver. And they are super cute to boot. Jack thinks of them as his 'underwear', which I hope is a step towards the potty training against which he had been completely rebelling.

On Freeman we're using Kissaluvs, my favorite fitted, not-all-in-one cloth diaper. I use disposable diaper liners (which look much like a dryer sheet) to minimize their exposure to Desitin and to make for less poopy laundry. I don't trust the liners enough to keep the Desitin away from my more pricey bumGenius diapers, but they do a fine job with the Kissaluvs, which aren't as finicky about ointments in the first place. The Kissaluvs don't have a moisture wicking material, so that means changing with almost every pee, but with Freeman you pretty much get a poop with most pees anyway. What with my initial investment with Jack, some eBay and consignment finds over the last couple of years, and the kindness of family, I accumulated quite a stash of Kissaluvs. That means I don't have to do diaper laundry every day, which sure makes all the difference compared to our early days of doing cloth with Jack.

Back to Jack and underwear...a favorite game lately is dancing around in his 'yellow square underwears'. He pulls the zero and eight foam squares up around his waist and twirls around the house.