The Color Fuschia

There's a fly in the house. Watching Thumper try to track it as it flew was fairly amusing. But then he spent several minutes waving and saying, "Hi! Hi, pie! Hi! Hi!" when it landed and "Bye! Bye bye! Bye, pie!" when it took off again. God, I love that kid.

So anyway, I told Aerie I would have to blog about how sexist she is. She said I'd have to include her "in my defense" point, though.

Yesterday, Thumper and I went to Austin Baby!, which is the hippiest of stores in the hippiest of Austin neighborhoods. It makes me feel a little funny inside. I mean, not only am I a man invading a nurturing and supportive maternity/breastfeeding outpost, but I'm driving in from the suburbs to do it. I don't feel warmly welcomed there, at least not until I make it clear I'm there to spend hundreds of dollars on cloth diapers. Again.

But I went back instead of shopping online for one reason: they buy used cloth diapers. Seriously. I didn't know this last time I went there, when we upgraded from Bum Genius to Fuzzi Bunz.

Can I just mention here that Fuzzi Bunz kick Bum Genius's ass? We bought Bum Genius One-Size thinking it would keep us from having to upsize as the boy grew. Nice idea, but the velcro stopped sticking and the gussets stretched out. The Fuzzi Bunz snaps have not torn out, the gussets haven't stretched. If you're comparison shopping, Fuzzi Bunz definitely wins because of their durability.

Anyway, Austin Baby! told me they'd buy back the used Bum Genius. Even with stains. Even with stretched out gussets. Even with velcro that wouldn't stick. I think we got $4 each for them. Talk about genius! I guess there are much more skillful and committed parents out there who buy the used diapers and replace the worn-out bits. More power to them, but I ain't that guy. It takes me an hour to thread the needle on the sewing machine.

I was going to buy 24 of the Medium Fuzzi Bunz at the time because that's how many Bum Genius we'd had, but they only had enough in stock for 20 if I excluded the pink ones. I felt guilty about it, but 20 instead of 24 saved us money, too, and you'll notice that I did not in the beginning make any claim of not being sexist myself. And in my defense, I did keep the lavender ones.

So when Thumper outgrew his Medium Fuzzi Bunz, I washed and packed them all up, put him in a disposable, and drove him to Hippie Central. And they bought them back! At $6 each! The new Large Fuzzi Bunz were $16.95 when bought in a lot larger than a dozen, so that $6 is a 35% discount. And no shipping costs. Since cheapness counts, it was definitely worth being a stranger in a strange land.

But how does this make Aerie sexist? The store only had 11 Large Fuzzi Bunz in stock. I wanted 20. All but one of the 11 were solid colors, with the 11th having a fuchsia floral print, which I rejected on moral grounds. There were 3 Bubble Gum, 1 Baby Pink, 1 Lavender, and the rest were Red, Sage, Butter, and White. I briefly considered rejecting the Bubble Gum and Baby Pink for not being "boy colors," but I reasoned that it would be annoying enough to get through the week with 10 diapers, let alone only 6. Plus I didn't want the lady behind the counter thinking I was a stereotypical sexist homophobe who's oppressively locking his child into prescribed gender roles and who's afraid he'll turn his boy gay if he sticks a pink diaper on his ass. Plus, they mostly don't show outside of clothes, especially when he's wearing a onesie. So I took them all.

When Aerie got home from work, she saw the diapers sitting in the laundry room waiting to be washed before wearing. She made me promise not to put the pink ones on him when we're out in public. Then she reconsidered and asked me to take the Bubble Gum and Baby Pink ones back. Then she reconsidered and added the Lavender, too. Because they're not boy colors. Can you believe that? We'll have to use more disposables this way for them to remain unused so I can trade them for different colors out of the new stock next week. So there you go. She's sexist. AND an anti-environmentalist.

In her defense, she insisted I mention that she hates pink, even for herself. She wore only black for a large portion of her adolescence. And admittedly, the Bubble Gum is pretty ugly. It's a lot closer to fuchsia than it looks in the picture. And while we did have Lavenders in the Mediums, she always disliked them. Too close to pink, I guess.