Live and Let Diaper

TRIGGER Warning: Babby talk, plus teh proselytizing zeal of recent convert evangelism.

Teh data is still coming in, but I think I've collected enough to be positive that cloth diapers are super awesome muchly moar so than ebil planet-killing disposables. Sorry to all youse folks who didn't go cloth, I don't mean to say that you are monsters who are destroying teh world that you are passing on to your babbies, but facts are facts.

But seriously, almost everything out there regarding cloth vs disposable that isn't produced by teh diaper-industrial complex is all fair and balanced namby-pamby, there are advantages and drawbacks to each and no one is going to make me say which is bettar. Well fuck that noise. Cloth is better. Sure each and every individual babby is an unique and will have their own particulars, but cloth's advantages of so high that it don't make no nevermind. In every case except teh extremest outliers, cloth >> disposable.

Okay, here we go with teh breakdown:

Ultra Ninja's nine and a half months old. In this time, she has gone through over 3500 diapers. Mostly because she absolutely despises being in a wet diaper. The first month we used disposables, also some disposables on extended trips like teh week at teh cottage. Let's say 3000 disposables have been displaced by our Fuzzi Bunz in the UN's first 3/4 of a year - so 4000 diapers not thrown away in the first year. These would have been mostly Size 1 through 3 (since we couldn't replace the Newborn size with cloth), which if you use teh mega huge super-jumbo packs you can probably get for about $0.20 each. That works out to eight hundred dollars.

We got out Fuzzi Bunz at under $20 a piece. You can usually swing this if you're getting all of them at teh same time. Thirty is a good basis, but we got ten more than that. That works out to eight hundred dollars.

But wait. What about teh extra laundry costs? True - we're doing a load of laundry almost every day. Well first note that these diapers don't go into the dryer as it can cause extra wear on their waterproofing. Even if you have an old top loader machine, you're looking at about a third of a kWh of electricity, 40 or so gallons of water and about $0.30 in gas to heat the water. In LEAFS SUCK we have time-of-use electricity billing, but even at peak prices this is under 4 cents in power. Our water rate is $2.50 for 1000 gallons - or 5 cents in water. Price per load of detergent is about a dime (a load of diapers only need a quarter load of detergent). Even rounding up and adding a bit extra - this is like, two hundred bucks a year. For us, water usage (and therefore natural gas for heating the water) is halved by our fancy front loader and we typically run over night at a 40% discount to electricity rates - so even less.

So roughing it out, our payback period for the cloth diapers is going to be somewhere around twelve to sixteen months. Savings from that point on are just gravy on top of knowing that we've avoided the disposal of thousands of diapers.

Anyways, those are teh numbers with a babby who hates being wet and needs to be changed a lot, but even if you're changing a lot fewer diapers than we are, you are going to do better with cloth before you get to Pull-Ups.

Speaking of gravy - we heard horror stories from moar experienced parents of teh dreaded POOP geyser. This is when you get babby shit shooting out the top of the back of the diaper. Loverly. Something we discovered is that these newfangled cloth diapers and their fancy elastics and adjustable fitting bits and pieces means no POOP geysers. Even teh runniest, gassiest, POOPiest of excretions remains contained. We have had all of one incidence of POOP leakage, and it was with a disposable. Actually it was yesterday - and that's why I'm writing this post now instead of at teh end of year 1.

And in closing - some pictures. To demonstrate that hey lack of POOP geyseriness isn't related to a bland diet.

Plus one moar just because she is so adorbs.

Why We Fight: War on Christmas Edition Part Deux

Firstly, I was totes not being counted in. Here is further photographic evidence of my child's above average IQ lack of drumming skillz.

Anyways, Ultra Ninja's first War on Christmas is playing out classically. See, teh troo meaning of X-mas isn't teh crass consumerism and teh comforts you get from material things. Here she is, finding no joy in her mountain of toys:

No, teh troo meaning of X-mas is being in constant agony and suffering and sharing the exquisite pain with your fambly. She's teething. Again. The middle two on teh bottom broke through a month ago and were separated by just a few days. Good times. They're now both fully out as you can see in this perfectly focused and crystal clear image:

Her third tooth broke through a couple days ago, and according to her pattern, it's matched partner is just at the surface right now. Looks like she'll be getting her two front teef for Christmas - and bugger-all else* unless she lets her parents have a minute or two of sleep.

*Just kidding. She's actually getting a pony - free-range, grass-fed and ready for the grill.

The Eye of the Barf Holder

Hey remember that awesome time I got baby puke in my ear? This time it was my eye. Now I can say I truly have lived a full life. Speaking of rock star like behaviour, she's probs not gonna be playing drums in her awesome megastar band.

World Toilet Day 2011

First, the obligatory sermonizing - this is from World Toilet Day Press Kit. The fraction of the world population without access to adequate sanitation is 40%. This is the combined population of all of North America and Europe, doubled. 2.6 billion people. Without toilets, these folks are stuck with "open defecation" which is exactly what it sounds like. This causes all sorts of illnesses and disease. Unsafe water, inadequate hygiene and insufficient hygiene are responsible for the deaths of two million children under the age of five every year.

WHO estimates that improved water, sanitation and hygiene could reduce the global disease burden by 9.1%. I admit that what got me first interested in World Toilet Day is that my highly developed style of humour is quite connected with toilets and POOP, but this is a serious actual thing. And it's more than just reducing disease - it's a serious quality of life issue. Even folks not at risk of dying from diarrhea stand to gain massively from better methods of dealing with their excreta.

Also too, this is one of those issues that should really speak to liberals and progressives. The most likely to be affected are the people with the fewest resources. The most at risk are children and women in patriarchal societies. The impact of reduced disease burden allows struggling communities in developing nations to dedicate more of their efforts to education or food production or a host of things that aren't lying down sick and dehydrated hoping not to die.

What can you do to help? Raising awareness is the first step. Without recognizing the issue, not much can be done. If you want to volunteer or make a donation, there's any number of organizations that are making efforts to address this issue.
-The folks behind World Toilet Day are here.
-Water Aid USA is another option.
-Here's UNICEF's list of partners in water and sanitation.

Okay. World Toilet Day is a serious, for real thing. Something that warrants serious, for real thinking. But despite all the seriousness, toilets are still funny, so here's my collection of amusing and interesting intarwebs POOP for World Toilet Day 2011:

Bill Gates gets World Toilet Day.

Sanitation for Occupy protests occupy this "reporter".

POOP War on Christmas.

Twenty five POOPS for FREEDOM!!!

Something for architects to think about.

Remember how SF wanted to name a waste treatment plant after W? Well, teh higher powers involved in toilet related issues decided to screw with his dad instead.

And of course, we are going to close out with a song.

UPDATE: Fixed a link

Ultra Hallowe'en

One of teh awesome things about babbies is Hallowe'en.  I picked out Ultra Ninja's costume before listening to teh story again.  I just remembered teh strong female lead using her cunning to overcome her enemy and *SPOILER* learn that she didn't need no boy to make her life complete *END SPOILER*.  Anyways, I didn't realize that it was such an ecological nightmare!  If I could go back and pick out a different costume - one that wasn't so violently adverse to Mother Earth - I would not have changed a thing.  The story for those of you who don't know it.

Anyways, here she is between her dragon and Prince Ronald:

Very Low Food Security

via this Mark D comment at teh Mothership.

There's already been a lot of good commentary on how horrible teh Julie Gunlock piece is so it's tough to add anything worthwhile. Well Imma try anyways.


Teh USDA page has a lot of useful descriptors and statistics regarding food insecurity. It is no wonder Gunlock didn't link it.

She is using teh stat for "very low food security" even though a substantial percentage of the "low food security" group report skipping or reducing the size of meals. What she describes as "unpleasant to be sure, but at its core, just a somewhat boring, irregular, and occasionally reduced diet" includes households where someone did not eat for an entire day. Sometimes several days a month, several months a year.

While it's true that in households with children, the adults shield teh children from hunger by going without food first - this factor is offset by the fact that households with children are more likely to suffer from food insecurity.

Regarding teh lazy bums ought to get a job so's they can afford food aspect of Gunlock's inhuman sociopathy, 85% of households with food-insecure children had at least one working adult, the majority being full-time workers.

Gunlock is offended that Sesame Workshop is creating a whole new muppet to address this minor issue which only affects a bare few million American children. This character was created specifically for this one television special. She claims the Sesame Street is "telling a fib" - but as far as can be determined from the available information and teh sneak preview clip, nothing of the kind occurs. Lily only claims to understand teh unpleasantness about "not knowing where your next meal is coming from" because her family is food insecure and has used food pantries before. Gunlock assumes that government programs and charitable organizations addressing hunger in America "will likely be absent" despite the fact that Lily specifically mentions school meal programs and that TEH ENTIRE SPECIAL IS BUILT AROUND A FOOD PANTRY BEING RUN ON SESAME STREET.

Of course, Gunlock doesn't really think her pre-schooler needs to learn about the welfare system in the U.S. Which is why this show IS AN ABOMINATION BEFORE GOD. NO ONE MUST LEARN OF ANYTHING THAT LITTLE GUNLOCK IS BEING KEPT IGNORANT OF.

It's amazing. There's this one-off Sesame Street special coming up and Julie Gunlock is offended and pissed off about it. Despite being exactly wrong about what is and is not in it. She is offended by what she imagines those dirty hippies at Sesame Workshop have cooked up in their dirty socialist puppet conspiracy. And that's the least offensive part of the column. That she's an ignorant idiot raging against an obviously irrelavent strawman pales in comparison to teh arguments she's using to tear it down. She is actually saying that millions of households experiencing very low food security - where adults are skipping meals for entire days - in teh RICHEST NATION IN THE WORLD - that is okay by her. That situation is a non-problem. Feature, not a bug. God bless those United States of America.

Tummy Time

Speaking of the Nanny State, babies. There's a lot of advice given to new parents, and a lot of the suggestions have reasoning and justification that is poorly understood or even completely irrelevant. In this latest filler post, I'm going to talk about back sleeping and tummy time. If you can make it to the end, there'll be Ultra Ninja stuff as reward.

One of the pervasive pieces of advice is that only the back is safest for sleeping infants. Since the "Back To Sleep" program was instituted in the early ninties, the fraction of babies sleeping face-up has increased dramatically, and the rate of SIDS cases has decreased just as dramarically. The connection between the two is still hypothetical and scientifically speaking, poorly developed - but that doesn't change the fact that it is empirical shown that only the back is safest for sleeping infants.

One of the drawbacks to all this back sleeping is delays in physical and social development, which completely vanish by the age of 18 months. Since there is no long-term negative effects of back sleeping, you would think that it gets left at that. But no, new parents apparently always need advice on what to do with their babies - and so we have tummy time.

Tummy time is supervised lying on your stomach time. Not kidding. You are supposed to place your infant on their stomachs and leave them there until they freak out. Up to 30 minutes a day starting in the first week of life. Keep going for as long as the baby can stand it. All to mitigate developmental delays whose effects are completely invisible by 18 months.

There's all sorts of resources now to help parents get their babies to tummy time longer. I've met parents who were traumatized by tummy time and have given up on it. And while it's great that they are no longer subjecting their infants to things that are guaranteed to make them cry, it kinda sucks that they all feel guilty about it. But that is the nature of how society treats new parents - as totally valid targets for judgement and scorn. Because making parents feel guilty and forcing them to second guess their every decision is what's best for baby. Or something.

Anyways, we lucked out (yet again) in that Ultra Ninja loves tummy time. No joke, we roll her onto her stomach to stop her from crying. So despite being a back sleeper, she's gotten a fair amount of tummy time and is pretty advanced in some aspects of physical development. This means that I already get to carry her around with her sitting on my shoulders. I do keep a hand on her just in case, since her grip comes and goes But she sits up there with no problems - looking around and laughing.

Which brings us to the quote of the day:

On the plus side, I can now scratch "baby vomit in the ear" off of my life list.

Here is a pic of UN being horribly tortured by being forced to lie on her stomach:

Mother's Day 2011

I like to think of myself as an expert on moms and AFAIK, teh only thing that moms love almost as much as me is cute videos of cute babbys.  Ultra Ninja has cuteness in overwhelming quantities, almost enough to offset the fact that she also inherited at least some of my dorkiness.  Here she is LARPing:

Looking Down on Creation

Now that I am a father, I find myself drifting rightwards and becoming more and more conservative. I'm even thinking of voting for the Communist Party in the next election.

Thnax all for the nice words. Although to be honest, my ecstatically delighted meter was already pretty much overloaded beforehand. I'm so overjoyed that only the impossibly beautiful voice of the tragically doomed can capture it.


I'm only just starting to catch up with what's been happening elsewhere in the world, but I'll be getting back to posting and commenting sometime soon. Even if it is just to spite the zombie.

It's a Girl

So anyways, that happened.

She's going to have to get used to camera flashes.

Also, BIONIC RIGHT HAND!