Today, guest contributor Robin shares a review of cloth diapering covers and doublers from Bumkins. Read on for Robin’s review, as well as to learn how to be one of three winners to receive a diaper cover from Bumkins (entry closes October 15):

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From Robin:

“I have cloth diapered for over three years now -- first with my son and now with my one-year-old daughter -- but the thrill of trying out different cloth diapering products never seems to fade. I recently tested out the diaper covers and doublers from Bumkins and loved the products.

I should say that I use my cloth diapers pretty hard so I need products that can stand up to an active, messy one-year-old and a fair amount of laundering. The Bumkins diaper cover fits our needs so well. They are well made, keep my daughter dry and comfortable, and launder beautifully. The extra geeky perks: the cover is a trim enough fit so as not to overwhelm, while still being roomy enough to fit over each brand of fitted diaper (and of course my prefolds) I tried under it, the patterns are cute (including plenty of stylish neutrals if you want to use the covers across kids), and the encased elastic on the legs is a really nice detail. These covers are PVC, phthalate, and vinyl free.

As well as being active and a lover of messes, my daughter also fits the "heavy wetter" description to a tee so I’m always on the lookout for affordable and functional doublers/soakers. Bumkins bamboo boosters are a wonderful addition to my cloth diaper stash and I grab for them all the time. I love bamboo because it is a great choice for our environment and it also washes and dries up really nicely for cloth diapering. These "boosters" have great absorbency without adding a ton of bulk and they have stayed soft with my normal cloth diaper washing routine. I plan on picking up a few more packs so I can pair them up with everything I have.

In short, I really love having these Bumkins products in our cloth diapering rotation. We do a lot of laundry in our house (what parent of little ones doesn't?), but these covers and doublers have saved my daughter's outfits from leaks and accidents on more than one occasion.”

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THIS CONTEST IS NOW CLOSED
Congrats to winners Zanna, Bianca, and Tanya!
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Now, want to be one of three winners to receive a diaper cover from Bumkins? Here’s how:

Visit the Bumkins shop, then email contests@bostonmamas.com (with ‘Bumkins’ in the subject), and name another Bumkins product you’d love to try.

One entry permitted per person; US residents welcome to enter.

Entry period closes at midnight EST, Thursday, October 15, 2009.

*Three lucky winners (selected via Random.org) will receive a Bumkins diaper cover of their choice of size/print (subject to stock availability).

I got a new freelance gig! For the next six months, I'm going to be a contract project editor for a new experiment in citizen journalism at BlogHer. The topic? Parenting in a digital world. Here's my intro post, cross-posted from BlogHer.

You've seen the talk shows and heard the playgroup buzz: What theheck are we doing about the influence of social media, cell phones,games and other technology on our little angels?

Fear not! We're here to help! Over the next sixmonths, BlogHer is taking on a groundbreaking experiment in citizenjournalism with regard to parenting in the digital age. Our digitalparenting ambassadors will post analysis of breaking stories, trends,and the activities of BlogHer moms from a variety of angles. Inaddition, the ambassadors will blog insightful personal posts that shedlight on their own parenting within the matrix. We'll be rolling outessays, technology round-ups and general navel-gazing.

We'llcover geeky parenting, technology as it's embedded in our daily lives(as parents and as participants in the community), tech trendspotting,parenting headaches and triumphs caused by our devices and the socialmedia sphere, and the same great parenting writing you're used toseeing here. Parenting, after all, is still parenting, whether or notyou're doing it with your Blackberry attached.

I know I'm excited-- I've been a BlogHer Mommy & Family contributing editor for morethan three years now, and this topic has come up so many times for mepersonally. I'm thrilled to be working with the talented group ofwriters who'll be bringing you this important information.

In addition, BlogHer will host a Family Connections BlogHer groupto which all our digital parenting posts will be published. The easiestway to stay in the loop is to join the group. So what are you doing?Click on over and join!

We can't wait to hear your thoughts. Thisis a conversation, and we want to hear from YOU -- be your own beatreporter covering the ups and downs of parenting your cyberific kids.With my own daughter in kindergarten, I need your help navigating thedark waters. Come along for the ride, my friends.

So, if this topic interests you, join the Family Connections BlogHer group, and you'll get everything pushed to you. So easy. So digital-like.

And if it doesn't, it won't live here, so no worries.

We just can't stop messing with the closets.

This time I remembered to take a before photo.

It wasn't horrible, but the shelves were so deep we hadn't seen some of the items on the top shelf in two years and kept buying the same cleaning products over and over again.

 

A hodge-podge of extra supplies and who-knows-what.

I can't believe all this stuff was on the top and bottom shelves. Doesn't that seem impossible? But it was.

 

I put the towels in the piles they would go back into the shelves so I could, like, measure them and stuff.

Here's what the closet looked like with the shelves pulled out.

 

The shelves were two of these deep each. No wonder we couldn't ever reach anything.

 

Somebody Little reapportioned the boards for mixed media projects that I've assured her she can sell for great profit.

 

This time we used a different brand of shelves, but it was the same basic idea: Buy them as long as you can and cut them with bolt cutters down to size. This shelving is expensive (at least to me), and it's cheaper if you buy it longer and cut it down than buy the right size.

The stripes on the wall (which we still totally installed over without painting) represent the old shelves. I actually measured the piles of towels and stuff so the shelves would be based on what we were going to put on them rather than the other way around. We ended up with one fewer shelf as a result.

Beloved's idea to install mini shelves on the sides (note the feather duster at convenient Little Angel level) worked out great because the new shelves were at least five inches shallower than the old ones.

 

I did manage to get everything back into the closet without eliminating anything, even though the shelves are so much shallower. We weren't actually using the back five or so inches of each shelf because it was too hard to reach.

I can't figure out why every closet in our house is so deep. You can kind of see what I'm talking about from this photo. That white drawer thing is about two feet deep. I could stand inside this closet and brace myself against the back wall with my leg half-extended.

It'll be a lot easier now to tell the babysitter or the grandparents that all of the little angel's medicines are "in the linen closet on the second shelf on the door" rather than "buried eighteen bottles deep and maybe lost forever." Also, that rod at the top was my idea. I found it in the back of the old closet. I used it to hang the most frequently used cleaning products, and yes, I am fucking proud of that idea. Ahem.

 

We decided to celebrate by inviting over the neighbor girl and painting their faces with what was supposed to be glow-in-the-dark face paint. Those face-paint people are LYING LIARS FROM LIARSVILLE. It so doesn't glow. I even shown flashlights in their faces for a while to charge it up.

 

A young fairy off to save the world from evildoers.

 

This outfit was totally styled by the little angel herself, including the wings and the Home Depot apron. And the matching socks.

And so, another Sunday wrapped up at Chateau Travolta. Only 1,000 home improvement projects left to go.

As a one less car advocate and former marching band member (color guard, bass drum, and trumpet...though not all at the same time), I’m pretty tickled by the prospect of the Honk! Festival Parade leading to Oktoberfest in Harvard Square this Sunday, October 11 (12 – 6 pm; rain date October 12). After you “reclaim the streets for horns, bikes, and feet” enjoy the Square in full on party mode; Oktoberfest will be replete with entertainment, food, and vendors.

Oh how the paths open when you lose the training wheels! Tomorrow is National Take a Kid Mountain Biking Day at the Middlesex Fells. This free event runs from 9:30am – 1:30pm and will include rides lead by NEMBA, bike-related crafts, bike fixing services, lunch, and a bike raffle. This event is suitable for kids ages 8 and up who are able to ride without training wheels. Parents are welcome to ride along; helmets are required for all.
Image credit: FreeDigitalPhotos.net

My friend @StacyGratz is leaving us Kansas Citians and setting off for New York City. She lived there for many years and in some ways, it will be going home.

I wish her the best.

She's kickass at social media, and I will not be the only one sad to see her go, but as I sat there at her farewell happy hour, I couldn't help but be terribly excited for her.

I don't want to move to New York City, as much as I love Stacy and Alice and Liz and Isabel. I am rather content curled up in my corner of the Midwest watching winter approach surrounded by friends and family and Beloved and the little angel and Petunia Cookie Dough.

But I can imagine the excitement of a brand new beginning.

I tend to the melancholy, and I have to prop myself up each day by reframing my life in the positive. I struggle when I anticipate problems, because the anticipation is always, always worse than the problem at hand. When I enter the problem, or the adventure, I am taken over by adrenaline and a strange I-can-do-this that isn't present when I'm anticipating the adventure. In the throes of something new, I am finally living.

So I raised my glass tonight, and I toasted Stacy's new beginning. I am so excited for her and her adventures in the Big Apple.

When I got home from the happy hour, I plopped my girl in her bathtub, and we attempted to coax the remaining dangling tube from her ear and made cupcakes out of bubbles.

Me: "My friend Stacy is moving to New York City."

Her: "Brooklyn?" (She really said that. My book tour had a stop in Brooklyn.)

Me: "No, Manhattan."

Her: "All New York City bubbles have to go to Bubble City."

Me: "Do they have to take the subway?"

She's never been on a subway, though she's been on the El, but only above ground, so I rather think that doesn't count. Anyway, she had no idea what I was talking about.

Her: "Yes."

That's one of the myriad things I like about my girl. She's already learned to fake it until you make it. Because that, my friends, in New York City? Is the right answer.

Good luck, Stacy. Fake it until you make it, my friend. We'll miss you.

Today, parent educator Hetti Wohlgemuth admittedly engages a bit of a paradox and offers advice about coping with unwanted advice:

“‘Talk is cheap,’ or so they say. Apparently so is advice. You can get bundles of advice -- more than you'd ever want and more than you could ever use -- totally free. And much of it is contradictory, whether the advice is about clothing, food, sleep, or discipline. So what can we do with this advice?
Trust your instincts. ‘You know more than you think you know,’ says Dr. Spock on the first page of his tome on childcare. Spock may seem dated, but he makes good sense. Only you know your baby and only you know what feels right for you and your household. You can't walk in shoes that don't fit and you can't wear advice unless it's comfortable. As Spock says, ‘We know for a fact that the loving care that kind parents give their children is a hundred times more valuable than their knowing how to pin a diaper on just right.’

Don’t let excessive advice erode your confidence. In the face of excessive advice, it’s common to think, 'I must look like I don't know what I'm doing,' or, 'The parenting bar is very high,' or 'Maybe they do know better,’ or ‘Maybe there’s something to all of these should’s.’ Not so. Keep in mind that this is your baby now. Others had their chance and now it's your turn. Yes, you may stumble here and there, but each time you cross a new parenting threshold by marching to your own drum, confidence will grow.

Advice givers speak volumes…about their own need to offer advice. This may sound a little harsh, but the truth is, sometimes people offer advice because appearing knowledgeable makes them feel good; generally their interest is not in guiding you. And if you take the advice, you are affirming their parenting style and we, as humans, like to be affirmed. So, when you're listening to the volumes of advice, realize that the advice is not a free lunch, but more about feeding the giver.

Give advice a chance, some of the time. Although I've been pointing out negatives about advice, sometimes it is in fact given with you in mind. The best advice I ever got? "Don't fret about your weight. It took nine months to go up and it takes nine months to go back down." The second best advice I got? "Hire the occasional sitter. It's good for your mental health and your marriage." Perfect. I was planning on doing that anyway. The worst bits of advice we ever received (e.g., being accused of carrying our daughter too much and thus spoiling her) seemed rooted in the advice giver’s own issues. So listen carefully, and take the good advice to heart.

Sometimes silence really is golden. We expend a lot of mental energy (energy we don't have as busy parents of small children) wondering how to answer our advisors. Sometimes the best answer is no answer at all. We don't owe "the experts" anything. If you feel must respond, simply say 'thank you' and move on.”

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Image credit: FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Here’s a cool and unusual weekend pick: tomorrow (Aug 2) celebrate the positive messages of old school hip hop at the Peace 2008 Hip Hop Festival at City Hall Plaza in Boston. This free event runs from 4-8 pm and will feature performances by legendary hip hop group EPMD, Chubb Rock, and Das EFX. Local acts include Acrobatik, Static Noyze, Status Quo, Esoteric, and more.

Following PPLM Parent Education Program Manager Amy Cody’s post about engaging GLBTQ kids in conversations about sexual orientation and gender identity, we received a comment from reader Jen, asking about guidelines on having these conversations with straight kids. I am grateful to Amy for kindly providing follow up material on this topic:

From Amy Cody:

Children learn about sexual orientation at a young age from media, the playground, and friends. It’s far better for a parent and child to talk about issues like sexual orientation when the child is young and before she or he gets misinformation and is exposed to prejudice. Unfortunately, the words “gay,” “fag,” and “queer” remain three of the most common put-downs among youth from elementary school through adulthood. Talking with kids from a young age about sexual orientation will help them to deal with fears, prejudices, and the misinformation they will eventually be exposed to.

Heterosexual as well as homosexual youth can suffer the consequences of unchecked anti-homosexual bias and prejudice. William Pollack, author of Real Boys, has come to see anti-homosexual attitudes as compounding the inhibition heterosexual boys feel about expressing their feelings, treating each other warmly, and pursuing their creative lives for fear of being labeled a “fag.” Pollack points out that adolescents feel vulnerable to someday dropping out of favor, to being the one left out. When one group is shunned or stigmatized with impunity, every child’s sense of security is eroded.

If your child doesn’t bring up the topic of homosexuality, s/he might at least ask about a family that is different from yours - a family with one parent if she has two, or a family with two parents if she has one. Use this opportunity to teach about homosexuality by explaining about the different sorts of families people can have. For example:

“A gay man is a man who loves another man, just the way your mother and I love each other. A lesbian is a woman who loves another woman, in the same way. When two lesbian or gay grown-ups meets and fall in love, sometimes they start a family just like mommy and I did.” Ask your child if s/he understands, and expect that you will have to repeat the lesson over time before he can fully master it.

Always bear in mind that when you tell your child about homosexual people, you aren’t just delivering the facts. You are showing her how you feel about people and how you want your child to feel. Think of each little discussion as communicating how you would react if your child were to make fun of people because they are homosexual, or if your child were to someday tell you she is a lesbian herself. This is an opportunity to share your value that “in this family, we treat everyone with dignity and respect.” You’ll also be conveying your general beliefs about how to relate to people who are different from yourself. Even if she is heterosexual, the openness s/he sees in you will help your child turn to you with something she or he fears may disappoint you or diminish her in your eyes.

Recommended Websites and Books

What Does Gay Mean? How to Talk with Kids About Sexual Orientation and Prejudice by Lynn Ponton (author, child psychiatrist, and expert in teen issues). This online brochure offers resources, tips for talking across the developmental stages of preschool through teenagers, as well as general Q&A.

Everything You Never Wanted Your Kids to Know About Sex (But Were Afraid They'd Ask): The Secrets to Surviving Your Child's Sexual Development from Birth to the Teens by Justin Richardson & Mark Schuster

Sex and Sensibility: The Thinking Parent's Guide to Talking Sense About Sex by Deborah Roffman

Real Boys : Rescuing Our Sons from the Myths of Boyhood by William Pollack & Mary Pipher