About a week ago Holly put her foot down and told me "No diaper Mommy. Undies." She was determined. But it was a Tuesday morning and I did not have the heart to drop her off with 80 changes of cloths at the center. But I did let her wear her undies over her diaper. And when she came home that night she wore undies (accident free) for just over 2 hours.

Yesterday she spent from 3:00pm until 7:30pm in undies until she went to bed. Dry.

Today I started her off in them. I reminded her to use the potty if it had been a while. We went to Target. We went to Sears. We roamed the mall. And she remained dry (and successfully used the potty all that time) until around 1:30. She's had a few accidents since we've been home, but we just handle them. "That's OK! Let's get you dry undies". She's thrilled to be a big girl. I'm hoping she remains enthusiastic at school. There's more distractions, so I figure she'll have more accidents.

I guess we'll see :o)

So I sent email to the Dr on Friday to describe what we had done so far in the Holly Poop Story. Taken out all dairy including going to Soy formula for a full week (small improvement). Switched back to Milk based formula, but kept all other dairy out, and switched to bottled water (further small improvement)... Dr said - she agrees it's been too long, and to try lactose free formula again - this time giving it 2 - 3 weeks.

So I went shopping. Instead of soy, I came home with Lactose Free Formula. And more bottled water. It seems the two are doing a good job so far. We saw improvement with her very next bowel movement. We're hoping it continues. At the moment her little bum is down to two small red spots (which were very raw on Friday- not open sores, but oh so close). So maybe this is it - we're hoping!

Today is picture day for Holly at 'school' - she's wicked cute - I snapped a few pics after I got her dressed. Maybe I'll post them later (or maybe I'll make y'all wait in suspense....)

I traded with another Mom on DiaperPin for some 'TinkleTraps' - prefolds that are cut, have elastic added, tabs extended and an extra soaker in the middle. I fasten them with a snappi, and they need a cover, but they become prefolds that Steve will use ;o)

Here Holly Models them for us:







And I have pictures of costumes... but not uploaded yet... they'll hopefully make it tonight.

from the bum view...

Came across this article today. The whole article is pretty interesting - regardless of your stance or how 'green' or 'crunchy' you are.

The last page is where you'll find her information on landfills and what-not. She mentions the recommendation that fecal matter and urine not be disposed of in landfills... something I briefly touched on once before...

Now, I've been told that our town sends the trash to an incinerator - so no landfill gets the few disposables that we do use (that was NOT the case for the first child, and most of the 2nd's time in diapers)... but aren't some of these things then released into our air? I really don't know - I don't know much about incineration - maybe I should go find out :o)

I just got a call from the daycare center. They are OK with us using cloth on Holly there. Yay!!! We'll supply a diaper genie for them to deposit the soiled dipes in an we'll empty it each night. Oh Holly's bum will be so happy!!!

Now that Holly is 4 months old, it’s time for another Cloth Diaper Update…

Fuzzi Bunz - pocket
This is what most of our supply is and what we usually use. They are great for daytime, and now that she’s in Mediums there is less bulk since we don’t have to fold down the insert to shorten it. With Holly they have about a 3 hour limit. For nighttime I add a doubler and she usually makes it all night. Last night I added a doubler and a cloth, bamboo wipe for a tiny bit more absorpancy and she was dry at 7am when she woke up (that’s about 12 hours of diaper time right there). The FB’s hold in her infant/breastmilk explosive poop very well. When they leak, it’s only fluid – none of the yogurty looking yellow matter.

Happy Heiny's – pocket
I had 3 smalls, and I have 1 or 2 mediums. I love the fleece in these – they are so soft! I find that these only make it about 2 hours with her. I don’t know if these time spans are because she’s a heavy wetter, or if they are normal – I do know I like to change her every 2 – 3 hours anyway, and knowing which diapers she has on keeps me honest, or I get wet! They perform about the same with the explosive pooping sessions as the FB’s. Works great at night with a doubler too!

DryBees– pocket
- pretty much the same thing as the Happy Heiny’s. In fact, I generally have to look at the label to figure out which it is

BumGenious 2.0 AIO
These are cute and easy, but also have the 2 hour limit – the cloth on the tabs tends to wick moisture out after that. As long as I remember she’s in it and change her accordingly we do fine. These are nice and trim, just a little bulkier than a disposable. It’s this one (in pink) that she had on the day I changed her at daycare and all the teachers ooh’d and ahh’ed over it. Also great at night (w/ doubler of course)

BumGenious 2.0 One Size pocket
My opinion here is the same as the AIO above – it just uses an insert instead of having it built in. And there are snaps to change the ‘rise’ of the diaper in the front. I thought it might make the diaper bulkier, but it doesn’t seem to affect it at all.

Kissaluvs Contours w/ covers
I still love the kissaloves with a snappi under a Velcro closing wrap/cover – but it gets to be more work (entirely perception), and Steve won’t work with them. He’ll take one off, but he’ll put on one of the others. So they are my ‘backup’ diapers. When I end up with all the others either in the wash and not dry yet, or dirty, I fall back on these.

prefolds w/ coversThese work great, I’m just not patient enough to fold them. When I do I use a snappi like with the kissaluvs. I’m always amazed at how well they hold everything in.

The famous Puppy Diaper (starbunz) AIO
What can I say? It’s fabulous. It holds in everything. It keeps her dry. It’s SOOOO soft and comfy. And it’s adorable too. The inner padding is two strips that flap out and are only secured on one end, so they dry much faster than other all-in-ones. And it’s just stinking cute! I’m always bummed when I have to take it off.

Bumkins – AIO
These I’m not in love with. They work OK, probably comparable to the Heiny’s, but I don’t like the outer layer. They are cute as can be – I have a Dr Seuss print and another one that I don’t remember. It’s got a nylon/plasticy feel to it, and when all the other ones feel so nice on the outside I just don’t like it. The Velcro is also much stiffer and I feel like if it rubs against her legs she’ll get scratched.


I’m guessing I’ll have more to say next month – once the newly added food starts to take affect!!!

While browsing some cloth diapering products this morning I was reading a product description for disposable liners - for those not in the know, these are a paper product that you can use in a cloth diaper (or disposable for that matter) - when the baby poops on it, it is easier to pull the liner out (with attached poop) and flush! Voila! No big poop mess for the pail. In the description it says:

Also, suggest these to your disposable diapering friends to help them obey the law. It is illegal to put poop in the garbage pursuant to US Code Title 42 Chapter 82. It even says to put contents of soiled diapers in the toilet right on disposable diaper packaging. No kidding! Plus, flushable liners also keep the chemicals in the disposables one more layer away from baby.

Steve and I had never noticed the message on the package before - so I dug up a store brand package that we have hanging around from those days and sure enough it says:

IMPORTANT: Please be considerate and sanitary when disposing of soiled diapers. Rinse or shake baby soil into the toilet. .. .

But no mention of laws... And I couldn't find anything when I googled, so it's not a very well known law at least.

So now I need to ask - how many have noticed this message before???

So I volunteered at the school today - my weekly visit. It's fun! I spend two hours with the kids and I make a difference. It may be as small as pulling pages out of workbooks and collating them - but then Mrs. M doesn't have to stay til 6 to do it, so she's better for it, which means the kids benefit :o) It's important to always know why you do something...

At any rate - Kyle's week has been difficult, though he's hanging in there. Mrs. M is taking a 'flow with it' approach since she expected it. She had two specific things for me today though.

First, earlier in the week she had asked the kids to draw a picture of someone they care about. Kyle was wound up and laughing so she went to see him. He had drawn a stick figure with a lot of round things clumped together between his legs. "what's this" she asked, and K replied "someone on the potty making poopie". She remind him of the request to draw someone he cares about and ask if he cares about poop. He said no. So she asked why he drew it and he replied 'poop is funny'.

*sigh*

In a nice, simplistic view he has a point - poop *is* funny :o) but funny and appropriate are often completely different. So I'll be asking him pretty much the same question after showing him the picture - reinforcing that it's not appropriate. I'll probably use the 'private' argument. We'll see how that goes.

The other 'thing' isn't an object but information. This week Kyle has started declaring 'Mommy says I'm stupid'. OK I think everyone who reads this blog regularly would know that there is no way that would ever come out of my mouth. Not only is it just not true - he's actually incredibly bright - but my saying something like that would completely undermine all of the work we are doing with him in the first place. Thankfully, the school folks know this. She just wanted to pass it on, especially since he repeated it to other adults - who then asked her about it. sheesh Kyle, you know how to rock the boat! :o)

We knew he had the makings of a problem with self image. He started several months ago with 'Ryan is a better person than me. He doesn't get into trouble'. And last week was really rough when he couldn't participate as much as we'd have liked in the kids program - the tirade of 'I'm dumb, nobody likes me, I'm a bad kid, I'm boring' was turned up to full volume and frequency and it hasn't let up. I took the approach last week of - you are saying things that aren't nice about someone I love and it makes me sad. How would you feel if someone said these things about me to you? It seems to make the point, but it hasn't helped much. With ADD/ADHD there is an elevated risk of depression which is directly tied back to self image. I managed to chat briefly with our special ed contact on my way out of the school and she mentioned this again. We still don't have a diagnosis. Once I have the evaluations, I'll be putting in for an appointment with Kyle's pediatrician. Or maybe just touch base with her - she was going to talk to his Psychologist...

Next week is the first of probably 2 meetings at the school. This is where we determine if Kyle will need special services. We'll see how that plays out.

Yay we're home! The boys survived another 5+ hour flight :o) They did awesome the whole week - and we ran them ragged too! Kyle even slept until 9am today- of course he's still on PST so it's only 6am but whatever - Ry was up at 7. Hope he takes a nap!

so we immediately put the air conditioners in today. OK OK - STEVE put most of the air conditioners in. I worked really hard and created a window thing to replace the one we lost for our 'portable' air conditioner for the living room. Foam is a beautiful thing ;O) But it's much better in here now! I can just hear the electric bill jumping up and up though!

And the cats and the dogs survived without us - The dogs even got baths while we were away..... :o) weee!
Off to harrass the kids into lunch now....

Today is our last official day in CA - we fly out tomorrow to head for home. Then we have a long weekend to vacation from our vacation!

The boys had a great time at Legoland! It was definitely their highpoint of the week. They enjoyed California Adventure too - Disney's 2nd Theme Park here in CA. At CA Adventure we got to see Playhouse Disney Live!, the Muppets 3D Vission, and ride lots of bug rides. We also got to meet Princess Atta (A Bug's Life). I hear that Ryan visited with Kenai and Koda from Brother Bear too - I missed that one and Kyle was scared :)

Our 2nd day over in the park also included a romp back to Critter Country in Disneyland to visit with Pooh, Eeyore, and Tigger. Here Kyle gave hugs to Pooh and Eeyore - a nice thing to see!

So we leave tomorrow - saying goodbye to Grandpa Hap and Grammy Carol today. We won't be seeing them again for some time - it's hard to have a whole country between you. But it will be nice to be home again too.

We're here in California. Man I thought MA traffic was bad! Don't these people have offices to go to!!!! Geez. So we've been to the LA Zoo and to Disneyland. We bought 2 day Hopper passes - we originally thought we'd skip California Adventure, but it actually looks more interesting than I thought at first, so we'll probably hit that first on Monday when we go back. Neither of the boys wanted to get close to the characters. Or more like - both of the boys were terrified by the characters :o) we're hoping they'll be a little more adventurous Monday. We saw Mickey, waved at Minnie, saw Donald, Goofy, Pluto, Buzz Lightyear, Alice, The Mad Hatter, Cinderella, some random other princess, and the queen from Snow White. Then we spent some time in the pool at the hotel. I've decided Ryan is a fish. He loves the water!!!

Pics off of home page... www.familyfrisch.com Will post more as I collect them :)

Ryan tinkled and pooped on the potty today. In one sitting! Yay!
He was very proud of himself. Another small step in the Potty Training world.

Kyle requested a baby this morning. Pretty funny.
Mommy, can we have a baby?
(I was in the shower, so Steve fielded it)
Steve: why do you want a baby
K: well, I have a baby brother *points at Ryan* and I don't have a baby sister yet
Steve: (laughs)

So I talked to him -
Me: where would the baby sleep?
K: we can build a bed for her
Me: but where would we put it
K: here (motions with arm around the living room)
Me: umm, a baby can't sleep in the living room
K: oh. how about my room then?
Me: we can't fit another bed in your room
K: we can buy a little crib *indicates with hands about 3" wide*
Me: *chuckle* babies are bigger than that
K: how big are babies
Me: *indicate approximate baby size*
K: so we buy a crib that's this size *puts hands where mine are for size*

Me: Kyle, Mommy doesn't have a baby in my belly
Kyle: why not?
Me: I just don't - we may have another baby some day, but not right now.
Kyle: oh.

And so starts my morning. Weeee.

Yesterday was so nice out. And today. And tomorrow's supposed to be nice too... weee!
Me and the boys took a walk yesterday - Kyle riding his tricycle (he just won't give it up) and Ryan on his Push Rock N Roll thing, that I'm not pushing nearly as much as last year. He's excited that he can peddle a little now. Someone had a nice, wooden rocking horse with 'free' on it, so I grabbed it. Ryan loves it. Yes, it's really for toddlers, but he's the right size and will love it. It's mane is just all whacked out - like the nylon was washed and then dried into a melted frizzy mess... but he doesn't care.

I took some pics of the boys on the swings and in the tub.. you can check out a pic (yes ONE) and an animated set (totally awful animation - but fun) of Ry on the swings by clicking HOME on the left (or just clicking here in this sentence!). I threw a video up there of the boys in the tub too. Enjoy :o)

Soccer, Karate, Easter morning and train... all together


and the movie from first thing Easter Morning