Holy Huggies.

My little stats info page recently told me that someone found my blog because they searched the key words "corn poop diet." Now, I'm not sure what this corn poop diet entails (or why I am a search result candidate for this topic since, uh, I don't do diets), but a corn poop diet sounds like no fun to me. (But now that I've mentioned "corn poop diet" approximately four times in the opening paragraph, I'm sure this blog will get the most hits for people interested in this diet. I'M SORRY YOU CORN POOP DIET LOVERS, I KNOW NOTHING.)

But that lovely visual does provide me with a nice segue into a Very Big Important Green Healthy Decision made around here today! Which is...... *drumroll* ..... we are going to begin cloth diapering Sam (and Second Baby) very soon.

Please erase all images of those white pieces of cloth and safety pins from your minds. That is from the dark ages. Also, how would I even BEGIN to try to erase corn poop out of a WHITE cloth diaper??? The skid marks in that thing would be horrendous to say the least.

We came to this decision in a roundabout sort of way. I think we all know by now that Sam is allergic to something if it even looks at him the wrong way. So the chemicals in disposable diapers have really been taking a toll on his sweet little hiney. At first I chalked it up to his eczema or a diaper rash, but nothing is clearing up and we had to make a decision.

I've been researching cloth diapers for a while now (WOW there is a ton of information out there in internetland) and have a close friend who cloth diapers. While I am no crunchy granola hippie, we do strive to be as "green" as possible. We recycle (literally everything), I try to reuse things whenever I can, we buy lots of things secondhand, and we make a very real effort not to waste. But when it came to diapers, I just felt like going the cloth diapering route was too overwhelming. And to be honest, if I had considered it when Sam was first born, my brain probably would have exploded from the thought. It would have been WAY. TOO. MUCH. But we've had our heads above water now for quite a while. Long enough to remember how to work a calculator and holy huggies there is a lot of money being thrown in the trash. Literally. Which is totally separate from the recycling bin, no matter how similar they might look.

Lemme break it down for ya. (All of my estimates are VERY conservative, so that the savings we see will be on the lower end.)

We currently buy Target brand disposable diapers. Sam is in size 3's, which retail at $13 for 96 diapers. That is (approximately) $0.14 per diaper.
We guesstimate that we change him AT LEAST six times per day, but usually more. So that is $0.84 per day.
Each month, we spend $25(+) in diapers.
Every year, we shell out well over $300 in disposable diapers.
Note that the average little boy doesn't potty train til he's around three years old? (And Sam will probably wait a little longer just to push the envelope.) We're talking well over a grand in the trash.

That's a lot of money. Not to mention that we are responsible for sending AT LEAST 2,100 corn-poop filled diapers to a landfill somewhere every year (and if that corn isn't breaking down in your digestive tract, imagine how long it takes to melt through a diaper and plant itself in the earth again).

We know that this will not be as easy as tossing a stinky diaper in a pail and never thinking about it again. But we also know that with the developments in cloth diapering, we will not be reduced to swirling poopy cloth diapers in a toilet trying to get that last corn kernel out. (Too graphic? Ok I think I've hit my corn poop talk quota anyway.)

When I first looked up the cloth diapers I had read the best reviews about (the bumGenius 4.0), I had to pick my jaw up off the floor because ONE of these little cloth confections was selling for $20. (breathe, breathe, breathe, they're reusable, this will eventually SAVE you money, breathe, breathe, breathe) My cloth diapering friend referred me to the website where she purchased her bumGeniuses and luckily, THEY WERE ON SALE. And then? I FOUND A COUPON CODE. So I got those little suckers for $11.36 each. Still pricey, but after purchasing eighteen (seemed to be the golden number to get you through), it was still under what we would pay for disposable diapers in just one year. So actually... we're saving on Sam's second year of diapering by at least $100, the third year of diapering (if there is one- positive thoughts!) will be free, and all subsequent children will be "free" and have no corn-induced impact on landfills worldwide! Score one for the parents, who only took fifteen months to figure this one out!

I considered not writing about this until after we got the diapers in the mail and had used them successfully, but after seeing the corn poop stats thing and knowing that this will most likely NOT go off without a hitch, I figured I'd get it out now. There will likely be a lot of hiccups on this new, green road we're on, and the least I could do is share it with YOU.