A new home made laundry soap

A few months ago I posted about our homemade laundry soap.

You can see that post here:

Laundry soap

 

Well, we finally ran out so it was time to make more. Momma wasn't a huge fan of the paste like consistency of our first soap, plus once we got towards the bottom of the jar we were have to stick our entire hand in the jar which made for quite the mess and wasted soap.

 

This time around I hunted down a recipe for a powder detergent to try instead. I found one that had the exact same ingredients:

 

1 bar Fels Naptha

1 Cup Borax

1 Cup Washing Soda

 

 

I will admit that the process on this one was a bit tedious.

 

You have to grate the Fels Naptha up extremely fine. Luckily my hand grater has the little tiny grate in it. It took me about 7 or so minutes to grate the entire bar.

 

 After you finish grating it, you add your other ingredients to it and mix it up. I would suggest a whisk for this process as it helps to mix all the ingredients together nicely.

 Once you have it all mixed up you just add it to a jar with a lid of your choice.  

 Once I had it in the jar I shook it up just a little bit. You use 1 tablespoon per load same as the other soap.

 

My oldest has sensitive skin so we were having to use Tide Free and Clear for his laundry. I decided to give the home made stuff a try just using a small amount on his clothes with an extra rinse. So far he hasn't had any breakouts and I have washed his clothes in it multiple times. We still have to buy the Tide for Baby K's clothes though. Soon enough I will try to convert his clothes to using the homemade stuff instead as well.

 

 

Have you given any homemade detergents a try? What did you think of them? Feel free to share in the comments!

Post Circumcision

We are coming up on the one week mark since Kayson's Circumcision.

He has healed well and has had an extremely great recovery. I expected a lot of crying and discomfort but he has seemed to be his same old self.

 

One HUGE downside to this experience is the fact that we can not cloth diaper for two weeks. I guess it isn't really a matter of CAN'T, more of a don't want to risk ruining our diapers because of the Vaseline that has to go on him.

 

After having used cloth his whole little life seeing him in 'sposies is so strange! I really don't think it is something I'd be able to get used to. Worse than that though, is the smell of the disposable diapers. Maybe I'm crazy but I definitely feel as though they have a smell and it isn't one I enjoy.

 

Does anyone else think disposables have a smell?

Controversial subjects

There are vast amounts of articles out there on the subject and

in all honesty I feel like no matter which view you take on it, you will find ample evidence to back you up.

 

I always TRY to approach things with a to each their own attitude. I also try very hard not to judge, but I am human. On this subject though I never looked to much into it. With Gage I was a young first time mom so I did a lot of things that some would deem "wrong". I didn't even know that not having him circumcised was really an option and even had I known it was an option, I'm not sure I would have not had it done.

 

I'm sure that many "green" or "crunchy" mommas out there are probably cringing at the fact that I admitted that. I gave up allowing myself to feel bad for decisions I have made as a mom though. There is no rule book or instruction manual, we all do the best we can and hope our children don't come out worse for the wear. (Does that even make sense?)

 

With Kayson, I did take the time to read into it a bit. I actually came across one blog from a mother who's first child was and the rest were not. This mother expressed her regret over her decision with her first born. She also expressed fear of that her first son would hate her for it.

 

 From my PERSONAL stand point, I didn't/don't want my boys to feel like one was given more or better of anything. I want them to feel as though they are equal in every way.  I didn't want the boys to be bathing together at some point, as brothers do, and for one of them to notice the difference. I didn't want them to question whether we loved one more than the other. While these may seem silly fears, children notice things and take things certain ways. Kayson was born with a slight issue with his penis, one that if not corrected could cause issue for him later in life. Therefore not having it done wasn't an option anyway. 

 

Circumcision was just one more thing that our boys would have the same. I will NOT fear one of them feeling less loved than the other. I will NOT have regrets.

 

Because of the issues he had we had to wait until he was four months old to have it done. He had to be put to sleep and given anesthesia. As moms we were of course terrified but his doctors and nurses were so amazing. After the surgery yesterday his doctor told us that it was a little bit worse than they had originally been able to see with out the operation. Luckily everything was fixed and he is fine. He has had some slight fussiness but hasn't seemed to bothered by the whole experience. He has been just as happy as ever and is still that same smiley boy he was before. I am glad that now we can put this behind us and not stress or worry about it anymore.

 

I feel like this post bounced around a lot and may not make much sense. Katie and I are both exhausted after spending 6 hours in the hospital yesterday so you'll have to forgive my scattered thinking.

 



Your Approval Is Not Needed.

So this post is going to be a more serious one. There will be no pictures but I hope that won't stop you from sticking around.

 

Yesterday here in Las Vegas, a news story aired regarding three recent cases of infants dying in their sleep. This newscast literally bashed co-sleeping. There was no sugar coating as it went into the "ABC's of baby sleeping". I don't think I have been this appalled by something in a long time and as horrible as the newscast itself was, what unfolded after that was worse. Katie and I co-sleep with our youngest. We have since day 1. We are always careful and she wakes at the slightest stir or sound. I also know that when I have to move at night I physically wake up and roll myself over in one spot without moving side to side. We have a cal-king bed. This post is not a post of me defending ourselves though because I do not feel that I need to.

 

The reason that I felt the need to write this is because a person we considered to be a friend decided to spread the hate, so to speak. I KNOW THERE ARE TWO SIDES TO EVERY STORY AND THIS IS MINE. Take it how you will but I need to get this off my chest. After sharing the news story on her personal page with some ridiculous caption that honestly slips my mind now we left it alone for a short period of time but eventually Katie needed to say something.

 

Do not get me wrong, EVERYONE IS ENTITLED TO THEIR OPINIONS ON ANYTHING and we are never in a shortage of judgmental opinions about our household. We are a lesbian couple raising two beautiful boys. Our boys share the same father and know that he is their father. With our first I was unable to breastfeed and there is plenty of scrutiny thrown my way for that. With our second child we have decided to "go green", we cloth diaper, I am making homemade soaps and the like, we co-sleep, we are currently awaiting our amber necklace. All things we did not do the first time around. So as you can see, there are plenty of things to judge my household on.

 

 Moving on though, here is where the trouble began, this is EXACTLY what Katie said: 

If done right by a responsible adult cosleeping can be amazing, Kayson has slept in bed with Gail and I since the day we got home from the hospital. Its idiots who do it wrong that gives cosleeping a bad rep. Cosleeping also just about eliminates the risk if sids. I would not have it any other way and I know that the safest place for my son is right next to me. If one of the parents is on drugs or drinking of course precautions need to be made but the people that don't put their baby first put their baby at risk.

I do not personally see anything wrong or attacking in that response. Do you? From there this person decided it would be a good idea to ramble off a bunch of nonsense:

 I would rather play safe then sorry. i calue my childrens life. we used a bassinet next to our bed. 4 inches away can safe a life safesleep.tn.gov Babies should sleep ALONE, on their BACK and in a CRIB. (ABC's) High school child ed...Early ed in college. They also taught us this and every child hood class i took.

 

Now the way those things were posted seemed to me like an attack. Like this person honestly tried to say that we don't value the lives of our children. NOTHING could be farther from the truth! These things were literally sent in five different posts. I responded with:

Oh but we don't Value our childrens lives? Wonderful.

 

From there it turned into some back tracking about how every parent values their child differently. Personally, I think that's a joke. Then I was told that I don't think anyone is allowed an opinion. That's not true. And I always have to be mad blah blah blah. So before I could say anything else on the matter Katie and I were deleted. So I sent what I had been typing up to comment in a message. I was then called insane. Which has its own comical humor behind it, followed by being blocked. I was dumbfounded to say the least. Someone who claimed to love our family and claimed to be a friend honestly reacted this way.

 

So on to why I felt the need to post this here. This sat with me last night and then all day today. To be honest I am proud of how I handled the situation because I have a temper and yesterday I was not having the best day to begin with. I was ready for a fight. I did not fight and I did not call names either. I was calm and then blew it off. The fact that it has sat in my mind and in my heart for 24 hours now though has allowed me to reflect and sitting here doing that prior to writing this it popped into my head that no ones approval is needed. I do not need to please anyone or live up to some ridiculous guidelines. 

 

It all comes down to the fact that fear mongers are going to do whatever they can to spread fear. You can have an opinion on ANY topic either FOR or AGAINST and you will be able to find ample "scientific" evidence to back that up. In the end what matters are your instincts as a parent and doing what is best for you and your child. NO ONE ELSE'S APPROVAL IS NEEDED!

 

That "friendship" is one that will NEVER be rekindled and to be completely honest, I am not even remotely upset about that. My life up until our first was born revolved around pleasing others. I put others comfort and happiness before mine. After seeing Big Brothers smiling face and realizing that I had someone who depended on me, I knew that my happiness needed to be put first, or second to only his. I know that there is no handbook on parenting but our boys are beautiful, healthy and Big Brother is one smart cookie and he's only 3. These boys are my life, my love, my world and nothing will ever change that.

 

So I guess what all this boils down to is that I am so glad to be at a place in my life where I don't need any one's approval or opinion.

 

Fun new match up and home made laundry soap!

Going green with baby is pairing up with Domestic Dingbat for an awesome dual family "granola" Facebook partnership!

 

You can find her adventures with Honey Badger Baby here:

http://www.domesticdingbat.blogspot.com/

 

and you can find us both sharing our adventures on a more regular basis here:

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Going-Green-With-Baby/195221390647600

 

We aren't entirely sure on what direction we plan on taking our page but tune in for the adventures that will unfold!

 

 

Now, home made laundry soap!

 

I am sure we have all seen those fun little recipes being passed around on Facebook. I myself have shared quite a few of them. One I came across recently was for some home made laundry "sauce". I will link the recipe below for you to check out on your own.

 

What caught my attention right away was that the post boasts 128 loads of laundry for the cost of $1.76 once it is broken down. Who wouldn't want to try it at that cost?

 

 

 So these are the ingredients needed plus water. Amazing right? Four ingredients and not one of them is overly expensive! The Fels-Naptha was $0.79 and then the Washing Soda and Borax were roughly $4.00 each. Honestly not bad at all.

 I was highly skeptical as I was following the instructions and started realizing a few things. First this soap is literally the consistency of mayonnaise and two you place it directly in the drum of your washing machine, we have a front loader.

 

 

I put my skepticism aside, though and set to making it. I was worried about doing something wrong of course especially after reading about errors that the creator had come across. It could end up to gritty, it could be to runny, if stored improperly it could combust! So many could happens! Now I won't lie and tell you that the recipe was an easy one because it was definitely not, but so far we are liking the outcome.

 

For our first wash with the new soap we wanted to put it to the ultimate test. We took a bunch of towels that had been used to clean up various dog "messes" as well as a few others that Big Brother had left sitting around that had begun to smell. Placed the load in the drum and added the soap right on top of the clothes like directed and added an extra rinse cycle, just in case. (Big Brother and I have sensitive skin and he has been prone to breaking out with certain soaps.)

 

After the towels had finished washing and drying it was time to judge the result. Our towels no longer smelled like they had cleaned up dog messes. The didn't smell particularly like anything really. There was no perfume-y fragrance either they just smelled...clean. We have of course continued to use the soap on our laundry, excluding Baby K's of course. If you are looking to try to make a detergent of your own and don't mind the strange consistency of this one I'd say give it a try.

Keep an eye out for when we try out a recipe for DIY cloth diaper detergent!

 

As promised here is the link to the blog with the recipe:

http://www.budget101.com/myo-household-items/whipped-cream-super-laundry-soap-3993.html

 

Hope you found this useful and I hope you will follow us daily on our Facebook page. Also don't forget to check out Honey Badger Babies adventure over at Domestic Dingbat!

 

 

Long time no post!

I have been seriously slacking on all of my blogs recently!

 

Adjusting to a new baby and the lack of sleep that can come with it has really dwindled my motivation! That coupled with the fact that I am trying to get my photography business up and running has made me feel like I am losing my mind to be honest.

 

Baby K has grown quite a bit in his short 11 week existence. He is now up to almost 14 lbs. and quite the squirmy thing. Since he has grown so much we had to move up in diaper sizes so we decided that since we know we are in love with CD (cloth diapering) we would invest in a set of our own this time on top of borrowing from our amazing, wonderful, sharing friend. Double the prefolds!

 

Buying our own prefolds meant that we had to prep them ourselves as well. I can honestly say that I was looking forward to our order arriving so I could do this. I boiled the prefolds with a touch of dawn dish soap before throwing them in the washer in order to boil away any materials that would cause them not to absorb waste. I also want to add that luckily Baby K is strictly breast fed which means his poopy is water soluble, this makes cleaning his diapers VERY easy! We just throw them in our washing machine and wash them first on a cold cycle and then on a hot cycle. No need to pre-treat.

 

 

On top of getting to buy our first set of prefolds, we are also getting to try out some new covers. My absolute FAVORITE cover of ever right now is the FLIP cover. It is honestly, in my opinion, the coolest most genius invention EVER! It is a one size diaper cover that has what seems like a million snaps so it grows with your little one. I am seriously in love with it.

 

We also bought a couple of one size pocket diapers to try out. While I genuinely love the idea of them, I am not as big of a fan of them in practice. The whole notion of having to pull the insert out before washing them as opposed to taking his cover off and removing his prefold seems so much more difficult. I am not sure why because in the steps are pretty much the same. Regardless I am not really a fan of them. I will stick to our flips and slip ons for now.

 

 

Enough about diapers for now! We are also lucky enough to be able to try out a few different baby carriers thanks to our amazing friend. She loaned us her woven wrap that is now to small for her to use. She also made us our very own ring sling.  I never thought I would say this but I love baby wearing also. It isn't a constant in our home because K does not always want to cooperate but I do it as much as he will allow. I am just starting to look into making our own woven wrap as well as one for the water because we take him in the shower with us and a wrap would make that experience much more enjoyable I think.

 

Momma "wearing" Baby K

Mommy "wearing" Baby K

 

Well I am sure you have read more than you really wanted to at this point so I will cut it off here! Thanks so much for reading!

 Oh! I almost forgot, Happy world breastfeeding week!

 

 

Cloth Diapering Update

It has been almost two weeks since my first post so we have had plenty of time to adjust to the cloth diapering world! Let me just tell you, I love it more each day!

 

Our little K is now out of newborn sizes and into smalls, which is great since he is 5 weeks old! As I said in the last post, we are very fortunate to have a wonderful friend who is willing to let us borrow some of her diapering tools.

 

She let us use a few dozen of her newborn pre folds, a few snappi fasteners and a few of her PUL covers.

 

As I said previously, Gdiapering just wasn't for us but I know a few people who have had great success and love using the Gdiaper system so I feel like if you are unsure about the cloth diapering adventure Gdiapers would be the place to start.

 

 

That being said, I am so glad that we chose to make an attempt at going full cloth.

 

Not only are we cloth diapering full time now, I recently took on the adventure to make my own cloth wipes. I AM IN LOVE! I only recently had my mom around to teach me to use the sewing machine that has been collecting dust for over a year now and I am so thrilled! My first adventure into sewing was to make my own wetbags. They weren't the best thing ever but up until they fell apart they served their purpose.

 

Cute right?

 

For my second project I decided to make cloth wipes. These turned out so cute and I love using them!

I took two receiving blankets, cut them into squares and then sewed them together. It was quick and easy!

 

 

I also tried out cutting a t shirt into wipes, I do not like that option as much as I like the wipes I made. The t shirt wipes were very thin and a little flimsy where as the ones that I made, are much thicker and sturdier.

 As far as wipe solutions go, we have yet to make one that we absolutely love. The first one that I tried had:

1 tablespoon baby oil

1 tablespoon baby soap

1 tablespoon baby lotion

1 cup water

So far that concoction is our favorite and it looked like this.

 

The one that we most recently tried out was

1/2 Cup baby oil

1/2 Cup baby wash

2 Cup water.

 

This one seemed to have too much wash and too much oil in it for our liking. The one that I am dying to try is a coconut oil solution which has

1 Cup water

1 Tablespoon Coconut oil

1 Tablespoon Dr. Bronners liquid castile soap

 

The reason that I haven't yet is that I couldn't find the castile soap at my grocery store. I will be looking for it at Walmart and another grocery store very soon though. I am really not liking the baby oil solutions. I will be sure to post an update once I use that solution. Below is the link to some other baby wipe solutions:

 

http://ecocrazymom.com/homemade-cloth-wipe-solutions-recipes/

 

If you have one that you tried and liked comment below to let me know!

 

I will try to have a new update here in a few days and definitely won't let it get to almost two weeks away!

 

Thank you for reading and taking this journey with me!

 

Post #1

Hello all!

 

I suppose I should take this first post as a chance to introduce myself and my family!

 

 

This is my fiancé, our three year old and myself when she was pregnant with our second son. He is finally here and will be a month old in a week! How time flies, but I guess as moms we know that all to well right?

 

 

So this blog will detail our adventures in the world of cloth diapering. With our first son we just went the "normal" route. Disposable everything! Also with our first, whom I carried, I was unable to breast feed which was quite hard on me. With baby number two we are trying the cloth route as well as taking some more "granola", as I like to call it, approaches to motherhood. Fortunately my partner is producing plenty of milk and having no issues breast feeding. We aren't even having to supplement with formula. Whew!

 

Luckily our three year old is almost fully potty trained so we are really only having to deal with diapers on one.

 

We are very fortunate to have a friend who has been cloth diapering and strictly breastfeeding her now 6 month old to give us advice and even loan us some of her cloth diapers for us to try out. At first we were going to go the Gdiaper route and start by using the disposable inserts, so only partial cloth diapering. We quickly learned we weren't to fond of them which really bummed me out. We have now been strictly cloth diapering for three days and can honestly say that we are loving it! I don't know what I was so afraid of!

 

 

So, to recap, we started out wanting to go partial cloth just using disposable inserts. Ended up not liking that at all and have now become huge fans and supporters of full cloth diapering. So far so good right?

 

 

This friend of mine also using cloth wipes so we are now going to venture into that new territory. I am looking forward to it. Once I fix my sewing machine I am going to make a ton of wipes and get the things needed for the wipe solution. Is it normal to get this excited about diapers and wipes?

 

 

Once I have my things in order I will be using this blog space to post all about our "granola adventures"! I hope you will follow along on our journey!