Traveling with Cloth/Our Trip to Cincinnati/Stripping (Diapers, You Perv)

A couple of weeks ago, we went up to Cincinnati (does it take anyone else multiple times to spell "Cincinnati?") for a few days and packed a ton of cloth diapers.

Since I didn't want dirty diapers sitting around and stinking up the joint, I put C in a disposable while I did a load of laundry. Strangely enough, it took me a few times to get the disposable on properly. I guess it's been a while.

Our first night we stayed at a (nice) traditional hotel.  Unfortunately, the one room deal was not really cutting it.  We brought a Pack and Play, and we had to put it right outside of the bathroom, which equaled the foot of the bed.

Oh, hello, MySpace-style photo. 

 

C slept well (thankfully, he slept well all trip), but since he's been sleeping in his own room since day 2 without a monitor, I had forgotten how much noise he makes in his sleep.  Sneezes, coughs, sighs, and grunts meant S and I didn't sleep well.  The bed was pretty uncomfortable too.  Lesson learned - there's only so much you can find out about a hotel on the interwebz.  S got up at 4am (!!!) to go look at other area hotels.  We ended up transferring to the Residence Inn in northern Cincinnati, and we LOVED it.  C had his own room, and it had its own ridiculously comfortable bed on the off-chance that S snored.  

The first day in our new digs, we went to the Newport Aquarium.  We took C through in his stroller, and he, to our amazement, was looking at everything.  

He had the cutest outfit for the day:

The next day, we went to the zoo, and S carried C around in a carrier.  He was such a trooper, and S and I felt like we nailed it parent-wise, because I fed him and we changed his cloth diaper in public without a hitch.  I used my Hooter Hiders to keep things discreet.  

Then it was off to the museum after a happy morning:

C wasn't a really big fan of the museum - I think there weren't enough moving things.  It was a pretty cool museum, though.  We went on a replica steam boat, and an old man dressed up in old-fashioned clothing came on it with us.  Well, I didn't realize he was a real person at first, since they had a lot of mannequins around.  So I had a really awkward moment where I tried to recover from jumping at the realization that he was alive, and I said "hello..." the same way Sophia does on this episode of the Golden Girls (around 21:00): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hpTkeqxoUNo

Then he decided to make conversation IN CHARACTER.  I'm terrible at that stuff.  He responded with some dated colloquialism when I asked him how he was.  And then he asked me if I were "going downriver."  Again, I'm terrible with that whole "it's 1865" stuff.  For goodness sake, I was just checking Facebook on my iPhone.  Get with it, dude.  Well I responded, "I'm not sure.  I'm not very good with directions."  Then booked it to the bow of the boat where S was.  Then S had to strike up a conversation with the guy while I just TRIED TO LIVE IN THE PRESENT.  This is why I don't talk to strangers.  The South would do well to learn that lesson.  

Now on to diapering on the trip.  It actually went really well, or at least that was my perspective right after we got home.  I brought all the small zippered wet bags we have (4 - 2 from Go Green Diapers - love these, especially for the price - and 2 from Swaddlebees, which are so cute.  We have the owls and the dinos).  I used those as smaller time bombs as opposed to one large bag with all the diapers fermenting together.  When we got home, I did a major wash using the sanitize cycle and extra pre- and post-rinsings.  And I thought all was well, and was thrilled that we didn't use disposables.

Now that we're a couple of weeks out, I'm still thrilled that we didn't need to use disposables, and honestly didn't feel like we needed to, but I should have washed the diapers mid-trip.  I think letting them sit and fester for several days gave them the ammonia stinkies, which made for a heck of a time getting rid of it via the stripping process, as it is commonly referred to in cloth diapering circles.  I tried soaking a load in ~1/4 cup of Bac-Out (which I love and spray on poopy diapers).  I only did it for a few hours, and the bottle recommends overnight.  That didn't seem to do it, so I tried overnight.  I wanted to sun the diapers, but my schedule and the weather didn't really work for that, so there went my tried-and-true method.  I finally did a bleach load of the inserts and diapers that are "approved" for it, like Bum Genius, and I'm hoping that's the ultimate fix.  So far so good.  Not such a fun process though.  Apparently I'm a terrible stripper, but you probably already knew that.