Okay-here are a couple of my newly finished projects:


A hat for a friend who just had her little girl 7 weeks early.


James' new slippers


Newborn gussetted wrap in BVille Dino print. You can't see them really, but this was my first set of gussets and I am pretty happy with them!

Cute!

Cool!
I just croched this for my best friends son:


Totally easy and turned out really cute!

That is super cute, Kawaii! Do you have a pattern for it?

Love the dino diaper, HWG! Again I am loving the boy patterns much more than the girl ones. Girls can like dinosaurs though, right? lol! I also really like the monster print but they don't have it in yardage at my Joann's, only cuts. I think I will need to make a few smaller covers for the new baby after seeing how big the owl one was on Olivia. Not sure I will have time for that though!

So after this weekend I decided we need cloth trainers. We went out to eat last night for my dad's birthday and every 2 minutes Olivia was saying she needed to pee. We must have made 8 trips to the bathroom, and having to take the diaper off and put it back on each time was such a pain! It would be much easier to just pull them up and down. We have some disposable pull ups that a friend gave that were left over from their kid and they've been working out, I just can't believe how expensive they are! So...anyone have any recommendations for cloth trainers?

HWG, Kawaii, wow, super cute!!!!!! HWG, super cute little hat, booties, and love the tiny diaper. Kawaii, I'd pay for that hat in Piper size. LOVE IT. Piper liked it too, and didn't quite understand it wasn't her in the photo, hahaha.

Labby, I didn't find the trainers useful at all. They were all big and bulky and Piper used them like diapers probably because they felt like diapers even though they were pullups. I had the Swaddlebees trainers, WAHM stuff, and Gerbers, which were trimmest but least absorbent of all. Oh, and Pullups too. The new Grovia trainers look neat... but seem like diapers and are pricey. In hindsight, I should have just moved to straight to underwear.

What may work is underwear with fleece pants--like from the etsy site I posted earlier. She double-lines the crotch of the fleece, so that would probably be as effective as trainers--and at $10 a pair of pants, cheaper than trainers.

labby, I did end up ordering the sock monkey diaper (with the striped leggings) from that etsy site, so when they come I'll take a picture of the insides. I hope they work well for nights like the wool has been.

We're going to try EC with RJ so I'm looking at maybe making some training pants for him. I'm leaning toward polar fleece outside and a a light snap-in soaker, like 3-4 layers of BFT. Should be pretty trim (then again it's fleece) with only a few absorbant layers. I might be better served making them out of knit for less bulk though. I'm thinking this will wait until summer though and we'll stick to diapers for now.

Thanks for the input, DG! That's exactly what I thought of trainers up to this point, but after our 8 trips to the bathroom during dinner last night I was starting to think otherwise. I was looking on KC and some of them I think would look/feel too much like diapers. I was looking at either the Blueberry ones or the Eco Posh ones. I'm not sure she's ready to go out in public in just undies yet. We went out to a store today and she wore a pull up and had it completely soaked by the time we got home. Every time I asked her if she needed to pee she said no. Fleece pants are an option, especially since it is now cold enough to warrant them. I'll have to look around and see if I can find some free patterns and maybe make a few pairs. I have a bunch of fleece laying around from previous projects.

So here's my funny diaper story of the day. After Olivia's bath I had a bamboo flat and cover set out to put on her (freshly washed with bac-out, hoping for no ammonia stink tomorrow!). Lately she's been refusing to let me do anything, so before I could even try to put it on she was pushing me away yelling "go away, daddy do it!" So I went back to washing dishes. Luckily he's been pretty good about putting these things on (I already had it folded), but the cover I had out was the owl one I just made. So I hear him say "I don't like this diaper at all" so I asked what was wrong with it. He said it just doesn't fit right. Well it fit fine when I used it the other night, so I came over to see what he was doing. You should have seen how he had this thing snapped! He had one side snapped correctly, but the other he had the wing snapped down at the middle of the diaper where the sockets are for making the rise smaller. I was like what in the world did you do and how in the world did you think that was right??? It's not the first time he's used that type of cover. Men, haha!

Yeah, it's a free pattern I found on ravelry. Here is the direct link to the pdf : http://www.slugsontherefrigerator.com/files/woolly-owl-hat-v2-1.pdf

I'll make Piper one if you're not wanting to crochet, DG. It was super easy though, so i'm sure you could get it done in a couple of nights.

I might have to try that hat. It's super cute!

Thanks for the pattern, Kawaii! I printed it out and am adding it to my list. I may get the materials and take it along to do during my hospital stay, lol!

So the good news is she woke up not smelling like ammonia this morning, yay! The bad news is she woke up screaming "poop" and "hurt" instead. DH changed her (since I'm no longer allowed to for some reason) and said she wasn't red, but the diaper cover must have been on too tight and it rubbed the inside of her thighs. She was wearing the owl cover I made with the PUL leg casings. I did worry that the PUL might be too rough on the skin, but she's worn it a few other times without a problem, so I think it may have just been on too tight. He ended up putting a disposable on her and she went back to sleep (until 7:15 - a new record I think!) When she got up she had pooped again and still had marks on her legs from the cover, poor thing. I have the pieces cut for another cover but this time I'm going to used the crushed panne for the casings since that should make them much softer against the skin.

I need to hurry up and get his new nighttime fitteds finished because I'm tired of finding him soaked in pee in the morning and having to wash his sheet, baby quilt (he lies on the quilt but the pee soaks through), and blanket every day. He has lately taken to sleeping on his stomach the majority of the night now instead of his side like he always used to. As a result, the top of his sposie somehow folds down a bit and all the pee leaks out the top. I think it's because the size 3's I just moved him into are still too big for him, so I can't get the waist snug enough and have it fit right. Such a PITA!!!!

I know that dilemma all too well, BG! Olivia was a big tummy sleeper too, although now that she has a regular mattress she tends to sleep more on her back/side. My aunt had given me these hospital grade mattress pad things that I ended up sewing ties on to and then put them on top of her sheet and tied them to the rails of the crib so it wouldn't bunch up. It was much easier to just take that off and throw in the wash then changing sheets every morning. I actually still use them under her fitted sheet now to protect the actual mattress pad since I only have one and it takes too long to wash and dry if she does soak through. I certainly could use more of those things! I thought about making some with PUL, but the whole time issue keeps cropping up, lol!

My mom made some flannel PUL (it's flannel laminated with PUL, weird) pads that I put under him, as well as those tie-down waterproof pads, but he moves around the crib so much that it's like I need the whole bed to be covered in plastic to make sure nothing got peed on but him. LOL

The pads I have are about the size of a crib mattress, so we were covered aside from about 3" at either end. She's a mover and shaker too!

So I have a really dumb question. I've been looking at longies and patterns and whatnot, and it seems people use these AS a cover???? Over prefolds and flats??? I know fleece is moisture resistant and all, but I wouldn't exactly call it waterproof, or am I totally wrong there? Anyone use them as a cover? Olivia is pretty soaked in the morning that I'm not sure longies alone would cut it. I want to try to take some measurements tonight after getting her nighttime diaper on and whip up a pattern to make some, but I think I will still need to use a PUL cover for nighttime use anyway. Her butt is so big at night that I don't want to take chances with an already sized pattern, so I'm going to try my hand at making one based on her measurements. Should be interesting, lol!

So then my thoughts shifted gears. I'm thinking of making a snap-in sling type lining for the longies made of fleece with a few absorbent layers (probably bamboo or maybe flannel) sewn on top. That way if she has an accident or catches herself in the midst of an accident it will be absorbed and we can just unsnap that and snap in a new one and reuse the pants as long as it wasn't a huge accident. What are other thoughts on that? Anyone ever see anything commercial like that? I guess it wouldn't be much different than just making training pants though. Hmm...

Kawaii! That is amazing! I am so all over it! Thanks for sharing the pattern.

Yes, Labby-Girls can like Dino's!! Just trim it in pink or something to make it a little girlie! I love the monster print too. I used the cut to make two newborn covers and they came out really cute.

You guys have me very nervous about heavy-wetters! James had plenty of poo explosions in his smaller days, but the pee-soaked thing has never happened! Yikes!

I second what DG said about the trainers. My girlfriends little girl who had been cloth diapered just used them like regular cloth diapers. I think babies that have been CD'ed can't really tell a difference. I bet a disposable-diapered baby would be really uncomfortable in peed-in cloth trainers, though. But, I get what you mean that it would be much easier than pulling up and down a diaper all those times!

I haven't used fleece as a diaper cover, but supposedly it's water repellent, similar to wool. I'll find out soon. I do know that the wool gets damp, and with fleece pjs she says dry outside, while cotton pjs will start to feel slightly damp too.

I was so happy I never had a heavy wetter--till nights, and in the whole of things, that's been fairly recent. I still wouldn't classify her as a heavy wetter--she's just a big kid with a big bladder. Soaking story: Saturday morning, she rolled over onto her comforter and peed. I hadn't changed her diaper all night, so it was already saturated. Leaked out of the diaper, through a huge and heavy comforter, through the sheets, and into the 1st mattress pad. 2 loads of laundry for one pee. Ha, the second mattress pad was dry--that would have made for 3 loads!!

Hmm, labby, I think that would work. The g-diapers kinda have something like the sling you describe, but it's a plastic thing. Same concept though. Next time you go to Babies R Us, check out one of the g-diapers.

Kawaii, I don't know how to crochet. Yet. That owl hat is cute enough that maybe it's just enough motivation to learn.

RJ doesn't get his bed all wet in fleece pajams even if the inside is wet. I prefer them for that reason.

Labby-check out the BV diaper book. It has a pattern for what they call a "snail shell". Very similar for the G-Diapers.

I have the BV book and that is an interesting design, although not quite what I had in mind for the longies although I guess kind of on the same track with the snap in feature. What I had in mind basically resembled big girl undies, just without the side seams. So that would snap in the front and back, making the "sling" type thing that would have the absorbent material on top so she could feel the wetness. Does that make any sense? Kind of like snap in undies if you will.

I got a pattern drawn up and cut with her measurements this morning, but then realized on my way to work that I didn't account for the seam allowance, doh! So I guess I will be redrawing it when I get home. I may try to sew up just some pants first and see how that goes before I mess with any sort of internal soaker.

I'm basically doing nothing at work these days, as it's really not worth getting started on something at this point. After today I have 10 1/2 working days left, one of which is our Christmas party, so figure more like 9 1/2. So of course I end up sitting on sites like Etsy all day dreaming of the things I could be doing sitting at home instead of here!