Petit Guili KokoBaby Diaper

Petit Guili Koko baby cloth diapers

It seems like you tend to see the same diapers over and over. I recently came across Petit Guili who sells Koko baby diapers! The Kokobaby diaper (or nappy) is made from bamboo-which means it is incredibly soft! I was sent this green nappy to try out.

Here is the back. How cute is the little bird on the bum?

The Kokobaby comes in three parts: the shell (or cover), the snap in liner which is the waterproof layer, and the insert. I was sent the cloth insert but they also sell a disposable inserts which would be great for Grandma's house or a vacation!

This is the shell (or cover). It is super soft and made out of bamboo. Typically I am not a huge fan of velcro/hook and loop but this was really strong and we had no issues with it coming undone. It is also a one size and fits from birth to potty training. Kokobaby also comes in three other colors: Cool blue, Energy red and Mandarine. 

Here is a close up of the waterproof liner. It easily snaps into the cover and wipes clean for simple messes. Even though it is the waterproof layer, it is also made of bamboo and a cotton waterproof PUL. There are deep gussets to prevent any of those blow out messes and everything stays contained. The great thing is you can just simply unsnap the liner and toss into your wetbag without getting dirty!

The cloth insert also has gussets sewn in. It is made of four layers of bamboo terry and an additional layer of waterproof bamboo. This is the ultimate leak protection combo! Not only is it super absorbent but it is incredibly soft. 

This is where the liner snaps into the cover. There are two snaps in the back and two in the front. 

Because of the four snaps, it is held in place securely and doesn't move around. 

All snapped in.

Here it is all put together. Even with all the layers this diaper was very trim.

Here is the velcro (or hook/loop) It was really strong and held  securely.

The only issue we had was getting it to fold over for washing. Once we got that figured out, it worked great!

Here is a picture of the snaps for rise setting. There are three rows of snaps which makes for four different settings. The snaps held great and provided a great fit.

I just love the little bird on the bum!

Here you can see how trim it is on the booty with all the layers. It also had a good fit around the legs and there was no leaking because of the double gusset protection.

The velcro is made so that it can overlap as needed. There wasn't a lot of bunching in the wet zone either which helped to keep the bulk down.

Overall we got a great fit on this diaper. It was trim and super soft. I love that you can switch out just the insert or use disposable ones if you prefer. It is also so convenient that you can simply wipe the liner or switch it out if dirty. By doing this, you can use the cover for up to four changes! Not only does that save you time and laundry but money as well. You can get your own Kokobaby diaper at Petit Guili.

Traveling with Cloth-Part 2

I shared a few months ago a post about traveling with cloth.  I had driven with our cloth diapers quite a few times, but had never flown with them.  So, I thought I'd just share a few thoughts on how that went!
A few weeks ago we flew down to Florida on vacation, and I brought along cloth diapers, along with cloth swim diapers.  And overall, it went great!!

little beach bum

I had no issues with the washer and dryer there, which was nice (often when I travel to MI with my diapers I need to strip them when I get home....not exactly sure if it's the water or the washer/dryer).  And I packed the perfect amount to be able to wash diapers every other day....didn't have extras, but could always make it to wash day.  The other benefit we have with using cloth is that my son's clothes fit :)  He's pretty thin, so the cloth bum keeps his pants up!!  So I didn't need to worry about which pants he wore while we were down there.
Now, there was a downside to bringing cloth--space.  Cloth diapers take up a lot of space!  If I had prefolds big enough to fit my son, I would have brought those since they're smaller, but I didn't.  So I brought pockets for daytime and a few fitteds for naptime and nighttime.  I packed everything flat, with the pockets unstuffed.  But they still took up a lot of space!  Luckily, we needed to check a bag anyway for suntan lotion and all that fun stuff.  So, we had the room, but I will say, they took up a significant portion of the suitcase.
The other place space was an issue was while we were actually flying and in the airport.  Cloth diapers just take up a lot more room than disposables!  Luckily my wet bag has a snapped handle, so I just snapped it onto our stroller and no one really noticed we had an extra "bag".  But I had a really hard time fitting three or four cloth diapers into our carry-on bag with all the other things we needed to keep an almost two-year old occupied on a flight!
One way I could have reduced the amount of space they took up was just to do laundry every day.  This would have pretty much cut the number of diapers in half.  I just didn't know if I'd have been able to keep up with doing laundry every day.  But that definitely would have reduced the amount of space the diapers took up.

So, overall, I'd say if you have the space, go for it!!  I loved having our cloth diapers down there and not having to buy disposables.  But, I also feel like, if you don't have the space, don't feel bad!  Disposables have their place, and at times, traveling is definitely one of them!
We're flying again this week for my sister's graduation, and unfortunately, there's just going to be no room for my diapers.  While its a bummer, I'm not going to feel bad buying disposables.  Sometimes you just have to do it!  I'll just be sure to bring Myles' belt so his pants don't fall down :)

Has anyone else had an experience like this??  Any tips for reducing the amount of space cloth diapers take up?

Traveling with Cloth

After such a fun month learning about different WAHMs, I thought I'd change gears a little bit and share about one of the "hot topics" of cloth diapers-traveling with cloth, and maybe learn some tips from all of you, as well!  We currently live in Richmond, VA, but all of our extended family is in Michigan, so we've traveled a lot with Myles.  And I've traveled both with and without cloth (although it does pain me a little to have to buy diapers that we'll just throw away!!).  Usually, the choice to bring cloth diapers depends on whether or not we have room either in the car or in our luggage if we're flying.
We took our first road trip when Myles was 6 weeks old (crazy, I know).  This is what the back of our car looked like (normally, you'd be able to see out the back):

Needless to say, on this first trip back, I didn't have room to take along my cloth diapers, so we just used disposables :)  

Since then, every time we've driven back to Michigan, I've made room in the car for my diapers.  Here are a few tips for road tripping with cloth diapers:

• make them accessible:  I know this seems obvious, but there have been times when my husband has packed the car and my diapers have ended up on the very bottom of the pile.  Needless to say, he had to move everything around to make get them to the top, in the freezing cold, at a rest stop. :)
• bring only what you need:  The first time I brought my diapers along, I packed pretty much all of my stash.  Looking back, I probably only needed about half of that.  Figure out how often you'll do laundry and how many diapers you go through in a day, bring a few extras and leave the rest at home!
• don't forget detergent:  If you're lucky, you may be able to find CD safe detergent wherever you're going, but to be safe, just bring your own.
• bring a quality wetbag:  You don't want smelly diapers in the back stinking up your whole car.

One thing I do miss when we travel is my diaper sprayer!!  Although I've tried using flushable liners, usually there is poop beyond where the liner goes, so I still have to shake the rest off into the toilet.  The easiest way to get rid of poop without a diaper sprayer is to first, remove the inserts.  That way they don't soak up a bunch of toilet water while you're "swishing" it in the toilet.  Next is to hold the diaper so that the fleece/inside of the diaper is facing out and you're holding the front/top and the back/top.  I always make sure that I have a wetbag handy and then just swish the diaper in the toilet water until the poop comes off!  I know, it sounds kind of gross, but as long as you're holding onto the top, you don't actually have to touch anything and it does get the diaper pretty clean.  However, I am always glad to come back home to my diaper sprayer :)

As far as packing up diapers for traveling in a car, I usually pack everything in laundry baskets, so I just packed most of Myles' clothes in the bottom of a basket and put his diapers on top.  All of his stuff was in one basket, so diapers were easy to get to (no opening/closing suitcases to get to diapers when we stopped), and when we got to our destination, I had all of his things together.

I think if you go prepared, traveling with cloth isn't bad.  I hated seeing how many disposables we'd go through in just a week of vacation, so I always appreciated having my cloth along.  The only issue we had was building up some "stink" problems while we were away, due to different water types and a different washer and dryer.  But usually you won't be gone too long, so it shouldn't be too much of a problem.

Now, in my opinion, flying with cloth diapers is a whole other story.  Usually when traveling by car, there's a little extra space.  But only having whatever extra space I can make in a suitcase is a completely new beast.  In a few weeks, we're flying to Florida for vacation, and I'm planning to bring my diapers (depending on whether or not there's a washer or dryer in the rental home).  

Since I've never flown with my diapers before, here's my "plan" for taking them along:

-bring the smallest/trimmest diapers we have (probably prefolds/covers, since they'll pack nice and small)

-take the bare minimum number of diapers and do extra laundry if needed

-un-stuff pocket diapers so I can fold them smaller

-buy flushable wipes (I love using cloth wipes at home, but to save space, I'll probably just buy the flushable wipes, so it'll be easy to just dump everything in the toilet).

We'll see how it goes!  How about all of you-have any of you flown with cloth diapers before?  Any tips on traveling with cloth?

Traveling Follow Up

Hello readers!

Wow!  Has it really been 3 weeks since I wrote and asked for tips on traveling with cloth diapers?!?  Thank heavens you are mamas and know how life can get!

Here's a summary:  Traveling with cloth isn't so bad! =)  The most helpful piece of advice was to use disposable liners...they were amazing!  I didn't have to swish a single diaper. =)  I used bamboo liners from BubuBibi and LOVED them.  They caught all of the poo and worked wonderfully.  Confession: I now use them at home when Ella normally has a stinky diaper.

The second best piece of advice was to use flushable wipes as well.  Then you can just toss everything into the toliet and call it a day. 


The trip itself was WONDERFUL!  We had a great time with my family.  One of the fun things for me was to show my aunt how different cloth diapers were from the ones she knew.  She was completely impressed and thought they were pretty cool. =)

Here's Ella playing in the *clean* diaper laundry - I had everything all neat and stacked...little ones really are great at destroying our work in the name of fun, aren't they?

Now I need some more feedback from you. What kinds of things would you like to see from us contributors?  Obviously reviews and giveaways are wonderful - and we try really hard to get those!  But what else?  Do you like craft ideas?  Yummy family friendly recipes?  Have a specific diaper related series in mind?  We'd love to hear your ideas!

And finally...drumroll please...the winner of the small wet bag is (remember?  For helping with travel tips?  It's been so long ago...)...

Vanessa Coker

I've emailed you - please email me back! =)

That's it for today.  Hopefully you're having a great day!

Hello blog friends!

Something very exciting is happening in our lives on Friday - my sweet one year old and I are flying to Denver, Co - for free!  I was given a free flight voucher from a dear friend of mine, so Ella and I are flying out to Denver so she can meet my aunt, uncle, and two cousins.  I can't wait!!!

My traveling buddy!

Here's the reason I can post this on the blog: I need your vacation friendly cloth diapering tips!  Have any of you flown with a child in cloth diapers?  Gone away from your diaper sprayer for 5 days?  What kind of wipes did you use?  Favorite diaper on the trip?  HELP!  Post a comment below and clue me into your most helpful traveling tip.

Then, in honor of my sweetness turning ONE last week, and because I'm grateful for your help - I'll be drawing a winner from the helpful comments and sending you a small wet bag for your own diaper bag.  I'll draw the winner next week Tuesday when we return from our adventures...hopefully all in one piece!

The birthday girl enjoying her birthday blueberry pancakes

Thanks in advance for your tips - I'll be sure to share what helps us!

Nickis Diapers - Best Bottoms Diapering System

Traveling with cloth will often times FREAK people out. They don't know how many diapers they will need or if they will have enough. They worry about having to wash them, store them, traveling with them in general. But I hope I can calm some nerves with this post. My little family recently went on a vacation to Chicago. We had a wonderful time. I will be honest and say that I did worry about not having enough diaper to last the whole trip...which was just kind of stupid to do because I have around 100 diapers! But anyways I wanted to make it as easy as possible so I went for easy while packing. Best Bottoms!

Nicki's Diapers sent me a Double Chocolate Best Bottoms cover and 2 stay dry inserts and an overnight insert to review just in time for our vacation. As you can see in the pictures below I have a good assortment of Best Bottoms diapers. I had previously done a review on Best Bottoms and I can honestly say I was hooked on them. They are great diapers.

What I brought with me was every Best Bottom diaper I had. This included:
6 covers, 2 medium overnight inserts, 1 large overnight insert, 6 hemp medium inserts, 3 stay dry medium inserts and about 15 large stay dry inserts. I also brought along some other diapers that I knew would be great for the long car trips and overnights if needed.
Now that I had my diapers ready to go it was time to get everything else I would need for the trip. I packed every wet back I had as well as a sample pack of detergent, 2 different butt creams (although they weren't needed), and I wasn't sure what I wanted to do about wipes so I (well my husband) decided against cloth wipes and I some how decided to bring flush-able toddler wipes....genius! Anyways.... Everything for cloth diapering went into one large basket and we had a smaller diaper bag for our day trips. Each night or time we were back at our hotel we would simply restock the diaper bag and were good to go.

While looking around for hotels I made sure to look for one that offered guest washer and dryers and the one we stayed at we did use once more so just that our diapers wouldn't sit all week in a wet bag and get stinky. We washed the diapers one time and hung them to dry around the room on hangers and racks and in front of a fan.

(My little man sporting his Best Bottoms diaper, baby legs and a mommy necklace!)

Our trip went quite well with the Best Bottoms diapering system. I would recommend this not only for trips but for every day use as well. Its quick and easy, and very affordable. You could get by with 4 covers and some inserts.

A quick look at the inserts. Each size is stitched with a different color for easily telling them apart!

One thing that was nice with the Best Bottoms system was that you only have to change out the inserts. Which take up less space. I could reuse the cover as long as it wasn't poopy. I did hand wash a couple of the covers at couple different times because poo got on them and then I just hung them on the shower curtain to dry. It worked out great. We also were able to bring a smaller diaper bag with us because the Best Bottoms take up less space than a pocket diaper or an AIO diaper!

I love the fit of this diaper on my son. I only have one velcro, the rest are snaps. I personally prefer the snaps of the velcro. I seem to get a better fit on my son with the snaps and its harder for him to take off!

Do you dare...

...to travel with cloth?

This past weekend I traveled with my hubby, sons and about 14 other people up north to go snowmobiling up to Mackinac Bridge. We were gone three full days. Before leaving for out mini-vacation I was asked a few different times by my mom as well as my sisters if I was going to buy disposables for the weekend. My two sisters were planning on staying at the cabin to watch the boys and their kids while the rest of us were out on the trails. I do remember me telling them I wasn't going to waste money on disposable diapers when I already had diapers! Besides, they were used to changing cloth anyways.

So to prepare for the weekend I had to do a couple of things.
-figure out how many diapers I would need.
-Wash my diapers at the last minute possible allowing me to have time to wash AND dry everything I was going to need.

Friday morning I collected and gathered all my dirty cloth diapers as well as wet bags. Everything went into the washing machine and I did my normal wash routine.

rinse in cold
wash in hot with detergent
do an extra rinse
put in dryer

Typically I always hang my covers and shells to help keep them in a nice condition. But I knew we would be traveling for 3-4 hours in the car depending on the roads and new they wouldn't ever dry while piled into a laundry basket so they went into the dryer as well on low heat.

After they were dry I found an empty laundry basket and started folding and stuffing and putting everything back together. Once I was done with that I had to figure out what to bring. I have quite the assortment of diapers and wanted to bring the diapers that work the best and were the easiest to use. I also made sure I brought night time diapers that I KNEW would work so I wouldn't have wet bedding to bring home.

Here is my basket of diapers that I was going to need for the weekend. Everything was all ready and set to go except for a few items that needed an extra 20 minutes in the dryer.

I also brought all of my wet bags with me. I have the Planet Wise wet/dry hanging bag which we used as the main dirty diaper bag. That was kept up stairs in our room along with the basket of diapers. For Saturday when I was gone snowmobiling I packed my diaper bag like normal with diapers, small wet bag, plastic baggies for dirty wipes and butt cream. I brought that downstairs for my sisters to use. This worked out great. When I got home they had just used the last two diapers from the bag and didn't need to go upstairs to get extras.

I used my large planet wise wet bag for the boys dirty clothes. This worked out great. I was able to put all the remaining diapers in to my diaper bag when packing up to leave and used the laundry basket for my husbands and mine's dirty clothes.

By the time we left I had about 5 diapers left which was perfect. Two of those diapers were prefolds. We ended up stopping halfway home for diaper changes because E-man was complaining his butt hurt. When we got home I had one Bummis Easy fit and the two prefolds left over. I was lucky to have brought the right amount of diapers with me but its really hard to figure out how many you are going to need.

If you are worried about how many diapers you are going to need when traveling, consider the following:
-How long will you be gone?
-Will you have access to a washing machine/dryer?
-How many times a day do you typically change diapers?

If you typically change your babies diaper 6 times a day and you are going to be gone for 4 days you will want to bring around 24 -30 diapers. You never know when your little one will get active BM's! If you have access to a washing machine you could easily do away with just bringing 12-15 diapers and washing every other day.

We did have a small washing machine an dryer at the cabin where we stayed in case I did happen to run out of diapers but luckily I didn't have to use it.


Here are a few pictures of our weekend getaway:

The beautiful cabin we stayed at for two night, 3 days

This was on the way home from Mackinac City. The trail came to this clearing in the woods and you could see so far away. My husband and I shared my parents 2up snowmobile and took turns driving.
This is our group that went for the ride. We all decided to stop for a potty break (the outhouse had ICE on the seat)! YIKES! There were 8 snowmobiles and 9 adults. I'm the first one on the red sled (my dads).
Have you traveled with cloth? How did you plan for it? How did it go?

Are you nervous about traveling with Cloth? What questions do you have about it that we can help you with?

Camping in Cloth

Each year my hubs and I go out to our church's family camp for the weekend. We love seeing old friends and previous pastors and their children that we grew up with. Last year we only had one baby and he was in disposables. You change and you toss. Pretty easy right? Well this year we have two boys, both in cloth diapers. I was pretty nervous to say the least. Our cottage has no toilet, and only a hose for running water outside of it. Which meant that I would have to take my toddlers poopy diapers to the bathroom a little distance away to dump and rinse.

Friday morning before leaving I washed all possible diapers and ran them over to my moms for a couple hours to get some sun on the line. After picking them back up I threw them in the dryer for a final drying. As soon as the buzz went off I started sorting and stuffing, folding and snapping everything into its place. I separated the diapers into two baskets, one for each boy and loaded them up (along with way to much other stuff) and took off.

The weekend went pretty well with changes and everything else going on. My Mother-in-law was really helpful with changing the boys and took more poopy diapers to the bathroom to rinse out than I did! We kept our large wet bag in our room and we also brought our small diaper pail and wet liner just in case we couldn't fit everything in the large wet bag. We ended up filling our large wet bag and 2 medium wet bags over the weekend and we had 8 diapers left, 4 for each boy for the next day to wear while I did the laundry. I really didn't think I would have enough diapers to last the whole weekend and was so surprised to find out that I have a pretty good stash!

I was really glad I brought everything with me because while out there a cousin of ours who was up from Kentucky stopped into visit and she is due with her first baby in September and is planning on doing cloth! I was so excited and invited her into view my stash. I gave her a general run down of all the different kinds of diapers and liners that are available. It was fun being able to share information about cloth diapering with her.

Overall, I have to say that this experience went really well for us and I'm glad that I did it.

My favorite diaper for camping was:
The Bumgenius Organic One Size All In One
This diaper was great for camping for a few reasons:
-fits both of our boys (2 months and 22 months)
-no frills attached a.k.a. simple, quick and easy
-great for when you go swimming and leave the boys with grandma and she pulls two diapers out of the basket meant for your toddler and puts one on the toddler and one on the newborn because it fits both boys!