At That Very Moment: Diapers and Bribes

It's true. I bribe my son, who just turned 2. Yeah yeah, I have read enough parenting books to know better. My thought pattern on this is rather simple though. Do whatever works. I do it quite often, but the majority of the time the bribe involves food. For example last night at supper we had Shepard's Pie. I thought I had this one in the bag because even at two, N is a carboholic (yes, my parenting books also say not to label your children, blah blah blah...at least I read them). Shepard's pie should have been a shoe in because of the potatoes on top which should have disguised everything else beneath it. Notice I said should have. N is smarter than a layer of mashed potatoes. I think he could smell the carrots from the other room. Shepard's pie = no go. However, Shepard's Pie with the promise of a piece of homemade dinner roll after each bite equals an empty dinner plate. Funny, I felt like I won the battle, but we all know who won. The two year old who got exactly what he wanted, his carbs. Fast forward to lunch today. Kraft dinner. Not my favorite at all, but with 90'ish boxes in the barge room, it's going to have to grow on me. R tried to convince me that he was going to make it gourmet with mushroom soup and cheese baked in the oven. I just wanted to have another 2 boxes gone and to keep the soup and cheese in our stash of supplies so we opted out. Just plain 'ol KD it was. N didn't want any of it of course because he's got the memo about the insane amount of KD we have to consume this year. So back to bribing I go. Cheerios, works like a charm. It does seem a bit mixed up that the bribe isn't going the other way, but nope, this was our bribe.

This did not result in an empty plate, but at least he had a bit for lunch - even if it was KD and Cheerios. Yes Mom, I gave him some yogurt too, no bribe required.

Now - lets talk diapers. I've had this conversation with a few people now. I had great intentions of switching to cloth diapers when we moved here because....I'm cheap. I'd love to say it's because I'd be helping the environment or because ....I don't know, all the other good reasons people use cloth. Honestly, I couldn't find any good reasons. I tried, I really did. I gave it a go, and thought I might actually like it. I liked the "idea" of it. It felt old fashioned to me and I liked that feeling. I didn't like the reality. The reality was, it was a lot of extra work that I knew wasn't necessary. We use about 4 disposable a day. Switch to cloth, 8 diapers, at least 2 sets of cloths because I was too slow catching the wet diaper, a stinky room where we stashed the dirty diapers and the ammonia smell, well that was over the top. After a bunch of research I found out that this was common, I just had to do some extra work to strip the diapers which would have to be done once per month. Of course the easy way to do it is to add Dawn dish soap to the laundry and rinse the diapers a few times to make sure the soap was all out and that should be the end of the ammonia for a month or so, unless your child's urine was toxic. I didn't get that far into the research because obviously I know nothing about my son is toxic, not even his pee! : ) Please, as if anyone would admit that their kids pee is toxic. Anyhow - there's no Dawn dish soap to be had in Paulatuk, it's not in one our 6 aisles at the grocery store. So the next suggestion was to use bleach. Yup, so I did that. Rinsed the diapers about 5 times to make sure the bleach was all out and thought I had this ammonia smell conquered. Not so fast. It faded, but it wasn't gone. Rinsing the diapers 5 times was a pain in the behind, but also remember we get our water trucked to the house here. Town water and sewer in non-existent here, so both are trucked services. On top of all this - N was getting a rash on his tush. I was done. Kudos to everyone who uses cloth but it certainly wasn't my thing. I guess I have an old fashioned heart with the mind of modern convenience. It likely would have been smarter of me to make sure I had some disposable diapers. As of this morning I had 8 left. I'm sure I could have dug up 3 or 4 more in random bags that I had used at one point or another as diaper bags, but I didn't have enough to get us to being potty trained.

Then the plane came!!!

Let me just clearly state that I am NOT a hoarder!!! Diapers in town are $140.00/box. That is over $100.00/box more than I paid in Yellowknife. As much cloth diapers and I do not mesh, I would have sucked it up to save that extra money. That is just ridiculous and I would never be able to wrap my head around paying that. So today I am very grateful that the RCMP plane was scheduled to come to town and I was able to get some disposable diapers delivered to the YK hanger in time to make the plane. I'm not sure where I'm going to stash all this goodness, but I'll find a place.