Flats Challenge, Day Six

The sixth day of the Flats and Handwashing Challenge is upon us! That means the second of these annual challenges hosted by Dirty Diaper Laundry has only one more day. On Monday, I could actually start washing my diapers by machine again and get my flat diapers out. If I wanted to, that is...

Today is Open Topic day, so I wanted to discuss in detail how I've been fitting Pippin into the challenge. Technically, he's not actually signed up. Partly because I was afraid I'd be forced to switch back to his cloth pull-ups before the end of the week, and mostly because I never did come up with a viable way to use flats on a chunky three-year-old potty-trainer. But I decided that the things which best fit the spirit of the challenge were plain old-fashioned briefs.

Yes, I probably could have stuffed pad-folded flats into them. Or I could have found a waterproof cover of some sort and used flats in that. But Pippin, at the start of the week, was handling every aspect of using the potty - except the part where he took the initiative to stop what he was doing and actually use it. I didn't want to frustrate him with a diaper that didn't slide up and on, and I thought expecting him to keep a flat stuffed into his underwear while taking it on and off was unrealistic. Besides, I hoped that soaking his pants every now and then would be a good incentive to start learning responsibility for recognizing when he needs to go potty.

This was a prominent feature of Day Two.

The second day was bad. Really bad. I'd just gotten the bucket washer filled and ready for washing when there was a massive Code Brown in the living room. I'd just put Pippin in new clean shorts, too - he'd been running around in just briefs after the morning's wet accident. Once I'd cleaned it up, everything went in the washer. And as soon as I'd finished that washload and took the clean diapers down to hang up, there was another Code Brown. At least that was on a hard surface. By the end of the day, I felt like this was a better use for my bucket...

...only I would have loaded Pippin into it other end first

You might have noticed that my Day Three diaper bag had a cloth pull-up in it. We took the kids over to see their grandparents for lunch and didn't dare risk a repeat of Day Two at their house. But he kept it completely dry, and so I haven't actually handwashed it as part of the challenge because, well, it's still clean.

Since then, we haven't had any more accidents.  Yay!  His grandparents didn't even use the pull-up we provided today when they babysat the kids.  I've put up a potty chart I found for free, and we'll see how that goes.  Keep your fingers crossed!

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