Reviews

Review – Fuzzi Bunz One Size (overview)

Posted by Michelle on Feb 8, 2009 in Cloth Diapering, Reviews | 14 comments

One of the new trends in cloth diapering seems to be the one size diaper. Instead of having to buy the next size up of cloth diapers, the idea behind cloth is that you can buy one diaper that will last from the time your baby is a newborn until they are older. Great concept but how is it in practice? I made it my job to find out.

Fuzzi Bunz is one of the best known brands of pocket cloth diapers and is a favorite among parents new to cloth diapering due to ease of use and availability. Fuzzi Bunz make up a bulk of my own cloth diaper stash and I own diapers in the older style as well as the current style. I consider them an essential part of my cloth diaper routine and are my favorite brand of pocket diapers.

When I found out that Fuzzi Bunz had come out with a new one size style, I knew I had to try them. And here it is… the one size Fuzzi Bunz!

From the outside, it looks just like another Fuzzi Bunz brand diaper and it is made of the same materials as their previous types.

Opening the diaper, it may be difficult to see what is different about the one size version but closer inspection reveals an adjustable elastic at the waistband and at the bottom and top of the legs.

Here’s an overview of the adjustable elastics pulled out for illustration purposes. The elastic has three button holes on each side, allowing a parent to either take in or let out various parts of the waist and rise as needed.

Adjustable elastics pulled out

The elastic ends tuck into the diaper for a more trim look which is nice — I’d rather not have elastics hanging out to possibly get gunked up with baby poop.

Though we received the diaper last week, this diaper hasn’t yet made it into our cloth diaper rotation since The Little Empress has been mostly sposie diapered due to being sick. (I prefer to cloth diaper but when juggling a sick baby, I’d rather not deal with sick-baby diaper laundry on top of it!) However, I’m happy to report that The Little Empress is feeling better now so check back next week for an update on our experience with the Fuzzi Bunz one size!

Help! The playard ate the family room!

Posted by Michelle on Dec 21, 2008 in Parenting, Reviews, shopping | 1 comment

It seems that with each passing day, The Little Empress’ curiosity about the world grows. And with it grows her eagerness for crawling and roaming. She MUST play/inspect/chew ANYTHING and EVERYTHING that catches her fancy and god help you if you try to stop her. Keeping up with the whirlwind that is TLE has been difficult and she fast outgrew the playspace we had prepared for her in her nursery.

Since we hosted a playgroup at our house last Wednesday, I moved her playmat downstairs and assembled it to give the babies a nice spot to play on. Of course, all the kids tended to play anywhere BUT the playmat. Still, everyone had a grand old time and rather than disassembling the mat and dragging it back upstairs, I kept it downstairs for TLE to play on. She LOVED it. She never stayed on the mat either but it was clear that she needed far more than the measly 4×4 assembly in her nursery allowed her. But the living room wasn’t the most ideal place for her to play. The living room isn’t that well baby proofed and having such a huge amount of space meant that Mommy was being run ragged.

After some research, I decided to buy two Little Playzone portable playards to put in the family room. That way, I could sit on the couch and work on my laptop or sit in the playard and play with TLE or at least know she was secure there while I worked in the adjoining kitchen.

It arrived today and holy cow, it is HUGE! I knew it would take up a majority of the family room. There’s barely any space for the couch and chair but that’s okay. I’ll gladly trade legroom for peace of mind, knowing TLE has a nice, padded play area to play in. She loves it and there’s enough room for both Mommy and Daddy to play in the yard with TLE with all of her toys.

Here’s a couple shots of just how BIG this thing is. The Hubster ™ likes it so much that he thinks we should get two more — one for our office and another for our bedroom so that we can have a nice play area for TLE while I’m sewing.

The Real Poop on Cloth Diapering

Posted by Michelle on Oct 28, 2008 in Cloth Diapering, Parenting, Reviews | 0 comments

Now that we’ve been cloth diapering in earnest for several weeks now, I thought I’d give a little updated feedback. Overall, I’m really happy to have made the decision to cloth diaper. It saves us money in the long run and keeps us from contributing to the tons sposies that go into the landfills every year. Plus, it is really cute and having a varied stash appeals to my innane need to put things in order.

But while I am happy overall, I do feel the need to share some real poop about cloth diapering…

Reviews: Mommy Necklaces

Posted by Michelle on Sep 29, 2008 in Reviews | 0 comments

Around 4 or 5 months old, The Little Empress developed the endearing annoying habit of scratching me with her fingernails as she nursed. I hoped that she would simply grow out of it. Weeks later, her habit had only gotten worse as she got even more distractible at the boob. My boobs were looking like they’d picked a fight with a feral cat and lost. The Hubster ™ was pretty alarmed at the high pitched screams that I’d let out whenever The Little Empress scratched me while she nursed. Telling a baby “no” that doesn’t understand language yet doesn’t help neither did grabbing her hand. If anything, she thought it was a game and tried even harder to scratch me.

At my wits end, I consulted some other nursing mothers who suggested getting a nursing necklace for her to twiddle while she nursed. I looked around online and boughtfrom MommyNecklaces.com which is a WAHM-run nursing necklace maker. It arrived about a week after I ordered it and we immediately began to use it.

The necklace I ordered (the Lemon Drop Necklace) is part of the “Posh Donut” designs and sells for $22.99. It is 20″ long and features and immovable smooth donut shaped bead. The Posh Donut designs are recommended for babies that like to grip. All in all, I’d say my daughter and I like this necklace quite a bit though not as a nursing necklace. At 20″ long, the necklace doesn’t dangle down far enough for my daughter to reach it easily so she still tends to grab at me (ouch!) while nursing. it is far more useful when I’m babywearing or carrying my daughter than when I’m nursing. She loves to grip onto it while she’s being carried either in my arms on in a baby carrier. She loves the donut portion most of all and teethes on that regularly.

I’m still on the fence as to whether or not I’ll buy more nursing necklaces. Nursing necklaces are a definitely a “nice to have” if you have a baby that loves to pinch and you’re at your wits end trying to nurse without feeling like a pincushion but are by no means a “must have”.

Ranging from $22.99 to $28.99, the nursing necklaces at Mommy Necklaces are nice but the price is a bit steep for income strapped SAHM-types like myself. If you’ve got extra income and a twiddler, I’d definitely recommend buying from Mommy Necklaces for their style and construction. My advice would be to be sure you’re getting a length that is appropriate for your baby.

Cloth Diaper Newbies – Prelude

Posted by Michelle on Sep 28, 2008 in Reviews | 0 comments

Cloth diapering was something I considered to be only for the truly crunchy mamas. Given that I have lived most of my life in the Bay Area, truly crunchy mamas to me are vegan, eco-loving PETA members who wear only all natural, organic hemp clothing and eschew shoes. Of which I saw plenty when I attended SFSU and worked in Berkeley. This is a gross generalization, of course. THEY are truly crunchy. Me? Not so much.

Anyway, when I first got pregnant, we were living in an apartment with a nasty coin operated laundry room. Cloth diapers were completely out of the question for our own sanity’s sake.

Six months and god knows how many diapers later, as a SAHM and wanting to cut our expenses, I decided to take another look at cloth diapering. I quickly discovered that cloth diapering has a similar alphabet soup as babywearing. AIO, AI2, BG, FB, UCPF, woolies…. what the hell?

I took some time to sort through the acronyms and crunch the numbers. I decided that I’d spend about a month’s worth of disposables for a few diapers to evaluate via DiaperSwappers and Banana Peel Diapers, a Bay Area-based WAHM AP online shop.

From the mamas on DiaperSwappers I got a small, once-used Fuzzi Bunz diaper as well as an unused
Bum Genius All-in-One. From Banana Peel Diapers, I got a starter set of Fuzzi Bunz – 2 small, 1 medium. After some more reading, I decided to also order a dozen prefolds with Thirsties diaper covers.

As of right now, I have four pairs of Fuzzi Bunz with inserts and the one Bum Genius. Reviews forthcoming! For now, check out The Little Empress modeling a pair of her Fuzzi Bunz.