Pages

Wednesday, August 29, 2012

Big Boy Underwear

My son is two and half, and he's getting to that age where people start to ask if he's potty trained. And it certainly doesn't help that he has the build of a 4 year old (thanks to some tall genes from both Mama AND Daddy!).

I decided long ago that our next baby would be in cloth diapers and that whenever Alex was ready to potty train, he'd be in cloth trainers. I absolutely refuse to buy Pull-ups or any other related 'generic' brand of this glorified diaper. I honestly can't justify spending that much money on it, I'd rather do more laundry (which wouldn't cost me much anyways since I make my own laundry soap).

But I digress, so when looking for cloth trainers I wanted something that was padded. Didn't have to be super duper padded, but enough extra layers to hold a little accident.

I came across this tutorial on Pinterest:
For full tutorial click here
And I thought to myself that this option could work for my son. Now Heather from It's a Long Story has used cloth diapers with her daughter, so she has a one up on us. From what I understand this a pretty good advantage when transitioning to potty training, hence why we're doing this next baby. But I figured it was worth a shot and I'm hoping that Alex will learn pretty quick.

Anyways, I went to Joanns and bought my fabrics. You only need 1/4 yard of the PUL which is roughly $3.75 (a full yard is $14.99) and then I found two remnants of 100% cotton flannel, and if you shop at Joann's then you know that all their remnants are 50% off. So in the end the fabric didn't cost me much.

I found the training pants at Walmart and Target, and they both had the same price. I think $7.69 for 3 pairs of the white, and they come in 2T and 3T. I ended up buying 6 pairs so my overall cost jumped up a bit but I wanted to make sure to have several pairs ready to go in case of emergency changes. If these work out I plan to buy more, I have plenty of PUL and flannel leftover to make at least 6 more pairs if not more.

So anyways, without further ado here's my boy version of Heather's DIY training pants:

I think they came out pretty cute. But don't look too too close at the stitching, it didn't exactly line up in several pairs. Oops. Oh well, not like it matters it's underwear after all.

Heather used white flannel but I found this solid green and a green stripe in the remnant bin so that's what I used. Personally, I think it matches the dinosaur PUL perfectly. So cute! :)

Now here's hoping that my son will learn to use the potty by age 3! :)


Linking up here:
See Vanessa Craft

3 comments:

  1. I saw Heather's tutorial as well and wanted to give this a try. I found your link in her comment section. My son is 27months old and in 4T clothes ... so I know how it feels when people see your kid and think "why is that preschooler still in diapers?" :)

    Did you cut four separate pieces of flannel for the inner lining? And have you used these yet?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Liz,

    Long story short: no, we haven't used them yet. I've tried them on my son but that's as far as I've gotten. He's been really stubborn and uninterested in potty training. Lately, I've been talking to him more about going potty and wearing big boy underwear, I think it's working a bit to get him "persuaded" to try the potty. ;) So I'm hoping that by the end of this year he'll be potty trained, but we're leaving it up to him. I don't want to force him.

    And I'm so glad I'm not the only mama with tall kids! :) Everyone always asks how old he is, and can't believe it when I tell him. haha

    As far as the whole process, I followed the tutorial exactly. What I did was draw the template on the flannel, then folded it up a few times to get 4 pieces. Pin it all together then cut out and sew to the underwear. Although I think next time I'll do fewer layers of flannel, the underwear is already padded nicely. So I'll probably end up having some underwear with more layers of flannel than others, which may be good for whenever he does night time potty training.

    Hope I helped! :)

    Ashley

    ReplyDelete