5 months later

After mounting pressure from its massive fan base, I have decided to resurrect Nappies and Networks. Yes, after 5 months in "no-update" limbo, fresh life will be breathed into this blog.

You probably haven't been wondering why nappies and networks has been silent for 5 months, but I'm going to tell you anyway. In one word - prorities. Although I like blogging, it just isn't that important and I've had lots of other more important things to do. So have my priorities just changed? No, I just have 5 lunch-breaks to fill, and for some reason beyond my comprehension, my colleagues don't seem to want to eat with me every day of the week. So you are now my lunch time companion.

First of all, and this is a priority - we stopped washing our clothes with our nappies sometime in July. You learn these things by experience, but it seems even an extra rinse in the machine isn't enough to get rid of all of the wee from the rinse water. When summer came there were a few occasions where the odd whiff of nappy was detectable from my t-shirts, and that was enough for us to make a complete u-turn on the nappies and other clothes decision. After a couple of normal washes my t-shirts recovered from their excretion encounters and they're now totally wearable again. I doubt very much that anyone actually decided to do the same based on my advice, but on the odd chance someone did, they should now stop doing so.

We generally now only stick bibs, washable wipes and floor cleaning cloths in with the nappies, and we wait until we have as many nappies as possible before putting on a wash. The net effect of this is to make the nappy supply chain a little more lean, which some enterprise process managers would no doubt approve of, but the just-in-time approach is always risky and we've run out of dry nappies on a couple of occasions. Howver the back-up plan is to use a disposable, which isn't the end of the world, is it?

http://www.lga.gov.uk/lga/core/page.do?pageId=41857
http://www.prlog.org/10197577-the-real-dangers-of-disposable-nappies.html
http://www.huggies.com.au/ourproducts/TheEnvironment.asp

;-) No, it really isn't, but we think it's still good to minimise our use of disposable anything. (I bet they don't take into account www.usednappies.co.uk in their energy calculations... anyway...)

Here's what's happened since July, when I last posted on nappies and networks :

July : Sleep more, read more, blog less
August : Holiday with lovely people
September : Look for a different job and a nanny.
October : Start work and start nanny crisis 2.0.
November : End nanny crisis and start enjoying new job.

So yes, sadly I've given up the priviledged primary child-care role for another IT job. I'll blog on our experience of LB's new nanny at a later date.
For now I'll finish on the decision to stop being a full-time (or 80%) child-carer, and return to full-time paid work. I think these are the main factors in the decision :

i) It was what we always intended me to do, but the option of not going back to work was always there
ii) I think I'm actually better at solving IT problems than entertaining and caring for children all day. Kind of like comparing apples and watermelons, but I can say I definitely feel more competent at solving IT problems than caring for LB, when comparing myself to other people.
iii) It's good for LB to have exposure to other people, and other children. His new nanny is French and so he's now learning French during the day.
iv) We would have needed to make significant changes to our budget if I was to stop working permanently. Not a show-stopper, but definitely in the list.
v) I might have found it quite difficult being at home most of the time over a long period of time.

So the resurected Nappies and Networks has the same name but a new shape. Although it'll still be about nappies and networks, it's now from the perspective of a Dad out at work from 8am to 6.30pm Monday to Friday.