[Counting our Blessings]

Hi Ladies.
I've been lurking on here for a week or so and you have such great advice and some recipes I would love to try so I thought I'd introduce myself. I'm looking into some natural cleaning products to start with and would like to get into making our own soaps and lotions, as we go through a lot of it. Plus I like knowing what we are putting in and on our bodies.

My name is Mari and my DH is Andy. We have 7 kiddos, the oldest being 9 and we are expecting another one in May, about 11 weeks or so. It's coming crazy fast! We bought an old farm almost 2 years ago and have spent our whole time fixing it up, and we are thrilled to say the house is done! After living through remodeling for that long, we are so glad to be done. We gutted the house, so it was a serious venture. Our house is tiny, about 1400 square feet, so we are really creative with space. This last fall (2009) we butchered our steers and got 1400 lbs of meat, butchered our chickens and got 300 lbs of chicken, and had 400 lbs of veggies from our garden. We also have chickens laying eggs for us now, we get about 18 a day. We really knew nothing when we started, just gave it a whirl. We got tons of food, and had a blast. We give all the credit to God, who knows we really had no clue. We are also homeschoolers. We are usually up to trying new stuff and right now are researching putting in our own greenhouse, attaching it to the house to generate some of our own heat in the winter. So that's us in a nutshell, I hope I didn't bore you to much.


I also have a question for you all. Our little guy, who is 20 months, has had a persistant rash on his bum for about 6 weeks. I tried clearing it ourselves to no avail. So last week I took him into the doctor to see what it was and why it wouldn't clear up. 'It looked like he had 6-7 big white head pimples on his bum. The wierd thing is, they don't seem to be overly painful for him. The doctor diagnosied it as a staph infection and gave him some cream. We've been using it for 4 days and it hasn't touched it, or made much of an improvement. Our littlest man, who is 11 months, also has a different sort of rash on his bum, that looks like a burn mark I guess, it looks like the skin has been rubbed away. It started to heal on it's own and it's now back. I'm stumped as to what these could be and if they are related. We use cloth diapers and have 3 in them. The 2 year olds bum is fine. We line dry in the summer everything and I'm wondering if without the sun to disinfect them, if they could be harboring bacteria or something. I wash them in cold water and have never had a problem, and I line dry them in the basement. I switched the 20 month old and the 11 month old to disposibles for a couple of days and it didn't heal or make a difference. I should also add that we just use cloth wipes with water on them to clean their bums. Is this not enough? They are bathed 3 times a week, so I thought they would be getting clean enough.

I am stumped. Anyone have any suggestions?

I don't know how green this is, but for any booty rash on my kids I mix A&D ointment with athlete's foot cream, a pea sized amount of each at diaper changes. That covers chapped irritated skin and any yeast/fungus that might be lurking. I've never seen a rash last more than a day when I use that. If he's still on antibiotics he could have yeast bothering him now. Might not hurt to go to the health food store and get him some child strength probiotic. The stuff I used was a powder yet was kept refrigerated.
Baby's Jarro-Dophilus

I've heard people mention that they "strip" their cloth diapers by putting them in the dish washer. It might not hurt to blast them in the washer with really hot water and some vinegar, but I'm no cloth diaper expert. JM does have a CD board though...

And it sounds like you have plenty to contribute to the board to, for those of us hoping to get a little further into homesteading. I tried last spring, but nothing went right. Our 20 chickens died one at a time, one a few days after another. 1 of my goats got out and got hit by a car and the coyotes got in and got the other 3. The ears on my corn never got big, I only got enough green beans for 1 pot and something kept nibbling holes in my tomatoes. My grape vines dried up even though I watered them and DH accidentally ran over my blueberry bushes with the lawn tractor. My neighbors gave us a huge basket of green beans and I tried canning for the very first time and every single jar either broke, or the lid popped back up later. *Sigh* God must have spent all summer laughing his butt off at me. lol
Oh well, last summer wasn't a total waste. I planted a peach tree, 2 pear trees and 3 apple trees. 1 apple tree has half dead branches and half alive branches, we're waiting to see if it makes a comeback this spring. But all the other fruit trees have survived my apparent curse. And my mare had her (and my!) first foal last May and she's growing up a very beautiful little filly.
We'll probably try chickens again this year but I'm not in the mood to try goats. We only have 3 acres, and with 3 horses we don't have room for a steer. Today at Tractor Supply I bought 10 blueberry bushes and 4 Nanking cherry bushes. I told DH he'll be in deep crap if he runs over these. Haha

Welcome to the Green Mommies board! We're hoping to get more active in here. Feel free to post as much as you want and we'll try to keep things rolling too.

[lil duckies mama]

It almost sounds like a bad yeast infection. I have seen something like that once before and sadly I have not found anything green that helps in matters like that except letting LO run around with nothing on a few hours a day. Other than that try a yeast infection cream.

And yes for the diapers I would try stripping them completely. As PP said there is a board for that. However using Blue Dawn is all it takes to accomplish it

I am not sure how much more help I can be on you lil bum problem.

Welcome to the board through and hope you can contribute to our lovely board!