Minutes later I glanced in her direction and saw her pulling at the velcro tabs on her diaper!  AH!  I yelled “NO Maggie!!” to no avail.  Before Colin and I were able to take the three steps across the restaurant to her side to stop her, she had taken her diaper off, looked at us mischievously, accidentally stepped in the mess inside the diaper, then got two steps into running away from us.  Colin and I worked quickly together to keep her from spreading her footprints any further, to quietly wrap up the used diaper, and to get her and the carpet cleaned up.  Of course, as I cleaned Maggie off with the wipes she had to scream her protests–she never likes having her diaper changed and no one likes to be held captive.  Colin took care of the carpet and I insisted convincingly enough to Maggie that she leave her diaper alone that she kept it on long enough to get to the car.

See why I’m glad that the restaurant was nearly empty?  I don’t think anyone noticed the nasty escapade.

Yesterday Degen took a cue from his sister, and both of them took their diapers off all day any time they weren’t wearing pants and their diapers got the least bit wet.  At least today Maggie is wearing a onsie that snaps at the bottom, plus pants, and she doesn’t have the skills to remove all of that clothing yet.  Oh!  Degen just sauntered over to me with no diaper on right now.  And he’d HAD pants on!  Great…

I tried putting Degen’s nearly unused underpants on Maggie yesterday, hoping that this is a sign that it’s time to potty train.  She loved it, but had no idea what I was talking about when I told her to let me know when she needs to go potty so she could keep them dry.  She just thought it was fun that she kept getting new underpants to wear.  And Degen flatly refuses to have anything to do with the toilet or underpants, despite his love of Cars and Nemo and the other characters on his underwear.

At least we’re getting funny stories out of all this.

Maggie loves to color, or “lolor” as she says it, and I need to hide all my ball-point pens because she keeps writing on herself.  Just now, I gave her a pen and paper and said “Only on paper, Maggie.”  She grinned, colored on the paper, stuck her leg out from under her dress, looked at me with an impish smile, and started drawing on knee.  Cute?  Yes.  But how do I get her to stop!  And how do I keep from grinning back at her?

First, Wal-Mart really does have the cheapest prices for diapers (even on the name brands), at least around here.  And it's not just by a few cents–usually they beat everyone out by a dollar or two.  Costco is also a pretty good choice, but still not as inexpensive as Wal-Mart and you have to buy in huge quantities.  So, keep that in mind when you start shopping.

Next, I think that disposable swimming diapers are great for the pool, but that there needs to be more competition in that segment of the market.  Right now Huggies has a corner on the market (maybe they have a patent or something that prevents competition).  You probably don't want to buy them from Amazon since it's about $10 less to buy them at your local grocery store if you count shipping and such, but the link above will take you to some reviews that may be useful.  I haven't tried the washable or reusable swimming diapers, so let me know what you think of them if you've used them.

Probably the most important factor in buying disposable diapers is size.  Go by the baby weight range printed on the package since they vary a little bit from brand to brand.  I've found that the smaller the size, the less effective generic brands are.  In other words, if your baby is a newborn the fancy Huggies Supremes will prevent leaks and work better than the generic brand, but once your kid is a size 3 or so the brand won't matter a whole lot.  Some brands have gathered, elasticized areas around the legs to keep things fitting closely, and that seems to be helpful in preventing leakage, especially when your baby is still small and it's hard to find diapers small enough. 

The next factor to consider is the tabs at the top of the diaper that hook it all up to stay on the baby.  I like the tabs that have some sort of elastic in them to make them stretchy.  This keeps you from tearing the tabs off when you're hurrying to put the diaper on a wiggly baby, and the manufacturers say it makes it more comfortable for the baby (my babies never complained either way).  The tabs used to all be just tape that sticks to the diaper (which made it almost impossible to un-tape and re-position the tab if you put it in the wrong place or didn't make it tight enough, etc.), but most tabs now have a velcro-like hook system that makes it easy to re-position.  Some tabs have both the velcro stuff and the tape, which is fine too.  Just make sure you don't get the tape-only kind. 

I'm not convinced that those brands that advertise having an "extra-absorbent core" are really any better than the ones that don't.  They seem to be pretty close to the same absorbency, and you want to be able to tell when it's time to change the diaper anyway.  If it absorbs too much, you'll have a kid running around with a heavy, saggy diaper before you or they notice that they're wet.

When you buy diapers, the quantity you should buy is tricky because you don't know how fast your baby will grow, but you want to buy the largest quantity (for the quantity discount) without buying more diapers than you can use.  The younger they are, the faster they grow.  Maggie went from Newborn, to size 1, to size 2, to size 3 by the time she was 3 months old, to give you an idea.  My babies were about average weight at birth (7 lbs 11 oz for Degen and 7 lbs 12 oz for Maggie) and they were both out of newborn diapers in about three weeks.  The rule of thumb for number of diapers used per day on a newborn is 6-10, so plan for somewhere in there and then adjust to your baby's needs.  My kids stayed in size 1 until they were about 6 weeks old, then size 2 until about 3 or 3 1/2 months old.  Then there's the size three plateau, which lasts until about 12 months.  Degen is 25 months and still in size 4.  So, there's an approximate guide (every kid is different) to how to plan your diaper purchasing.

My husband likes to buy diapers based on the cartoon printed on the front of the diaper, especially now that we have two kids in diapers (only a size apart now!) and have to somehow differentiate.  One kid gets Sesame Street, the other Blue's Clues or Lion King or Care Bears.  You get the idea.  It is nice when you have multiple kids in diapers to buy two different brands for the sake of fast identification.  Also, Degen is now at the age where he's starting to care about cartoon characters and like certain animals, so he's slightly more cooperative when I say "let's put on your lion diaper now" than if I say "let's put a diaper on." 

Speaking of diapers and cartoon characters, I've got updates to our potty training efforts that I described earlier here.  We bought some Cars underpants with Degen at the store the other day and he's pretty pleased with them.  More than wearing them, he likes to carry them around with him, though.  He's made quite a bit of progress in the potty training area even though he doesn't like to wear underpants very often yet. 

We bought a new Safety First 3-in-1 potty chair and step stool for Degen and we use it as an adapter for the toilet seat and a step stool.  Every night before he takes a bath he stands on the stool and goes "wet" in the toilet and now he even sits on the toilet, though the times he's gone "poo poo" I think have been pretty much coincidences.  He's getting the idea as we go along, though.  He likes to sit there and then wipe himself (there's nothing to wipe most of the time, but it's good practice).  Then he gets to the favorite part where he gets to flush the toilet and say "bye-bye poo poo!"  Then we move the stool to the sink so he can wash his hands with his special foaming soap. 

My biggest problems in all this so far have been getting him to sit on the toilet seat adapter (which is solved now–he just needed time to get used to seeing it there and then try it a couple of times in a calm atmosphere when I wasn't being pushy), not getting upset about the toilet paper being unrolled, and not getting impatient when he wants to spend more time playing with the potty.  I think we're doing pretty well if those are our biggest problems!