Summer is here and this is a holiday weekend in the US, thousands and thousands of grills will be fired up, tons of charcoal and lighter fluid will be used and the number of resources consumed will be staggering.
uGO has a product that can help green your grilling, the FlameDisk. Read the rest of this entry »
If your life has not been touched by a child with autism, you friend’s probably has. Autism rates are on the rise leaving parents, doctors, and scientists scrambling to find a reason.
It’s summer vacation, and one thing parents often hear from children used to being stimulated by school all year is, “I’m bored!”. Personally, I am never bored, so I have little compassion when I hear my daughter issue this utterance, but I have found a new book that I think will help her overcome the doldrums. Let’s Go Outside!: Outdoor Activities and Projects to Get You and Your Kids Closer to Nature is a great resource for bored children.
Just as I have little understanding of boredom, I also never find myself needing an activity while experiencing nature beyond hiking and observing; however, children are a different breed. They sometimes need help focusing their energy. Author Jennifer Ward provides 52 outdoor activities. From “Playground for Poets” to “Five Fine Forts”, the summer boredom crisis is solved (and these activities are limited to warm summer months). Furthermore, these games and projects are designed for children ages 8-12. Here’s an example: Read the rest of this entry »
Every 21 minutes a baby is stillborn in the US; 70 babies each day.
Scared? Get a medical device to track your baby’s kicks. This piece of electronic junk product records the number of kicks per day. And if your baby sometimes kicks noticeably less, you can totally freak out and head to the OB for an unnecessary appointment. Whee!
With marketing like
Help Mothers protect their unborn babies!
what’s not to love about the kickTrak?! I mean, besides using scare tactics to sell more useless stuff?
With summer now in full swing, our kid’s exposure to the sun is at its highest, and the stores are full of many different products purporting to protect children from sun damage. But how can you be sure that the sunscreen that you choose is actually effective without being harmful to them? The Environmental Working Group’s (EWG) new sunscreen rankings can help you decide. Read the rest of this entry »
My family loves to cook together; we all love to pretend do be chefs and put on “cooking shows.” If you drive by my house at any given time don’t be surprised to see us lying in the grass, flipping through recipe magazines or reading a cookbook. The girls have been asking me to make “Nutty Jumbles” for a while. We eat a lot of nuts in our home for snack time and this is a fun way to spice up the same-old, same-old snack. I am careful with the amount of sugar we eat as a family but I figure if I’m lucky enough to have two little kids that will eat so many healthy things, they deserve some sugar… “just an itty bit,” as my daughter would say.
I am about to embark on an east coast odyssey, of sorts. I am taking my 2 and 4 year old girls from northern New England to the greater Washington D.C. area. By myself.
Yep, 10-12 hours on the road with two energetic, vocal, independent minded and sometimes surly (and whiny) little people strapped in. Wish me luck.
It really can’t be worse than the time my youngest decided to go on a 20 hour nursing strike while on this very same drive (any nursing mother can imagine the suffering–), can it?
In any case, I am packing today and thinking about how to green up road trips. Here are some of the ideas I came up with that might be helpful if you too are taking a road trip this summer, and want to be a little more green than in your younger (and more wasteful) days.
Read the rest of this entry »
For almost two years we’ve been eating vegetarian or vegan twice a week and seafood twice a week. I guess you could consider us part-time vegetarians. Eating this way keeps us from overloading our diets with too much meat or dairy and cuts down on our grocery bill. It forces us to eat more fresh produce and to shop locally so the produce actually has flavor.
It is extremely eco-friendly to eat vegetarian twice a week; eating meat takes a toll on the environment big time. The beef, poultry and pork industrial farms notoriously contribute to water pollution, use large amounts of fossil fuels and generate prodigious amounts of greenhouse gases. The United Nations has actually issued a call for citizens of the world to go vegetarian one day a week to curb global warming.
My girls love fresh veggies and fruit on their own, but I also like to puree it and add it to other meals. I’m not trying to hide it but it’s another great way to add more essential vitamins to their diet. When my girls were babies I made their baby food and always used organic ingredients. Their teeth came in quickly and they moved onto solids sooner than later, so both times I ended up with extra bags of frozen cubed baby food. I started adding the pureed butternut squash into their grilled cheese for lunch and whole grain pancakes for breakfast. During that time two cookbooks were released dedicated to adding pureed fruits and veggies to favorite recipes!
After the Air France plane crash a month ago, search parties were not likely optimistic looking for survivors of the Yemenia Air flight that went down in the Indian Ocean.
But they found one. Bahia Bakari, 14, is so far the only survivor known. She can barely swim, but survived in the choppy waters in the dark and among bodies. Amazingly, she had no serious injuries, but reportedly had cuts to her face and a fractured collarbone.
Physically she is fine… She clung to a piece of debris.
She was conscious and speaking but described in the Sydney Morning Herald as “fragile”.
Guilt. Augh, the guilt.
Many of us practice some form of natural parenting. Many of us choose breastmilk, cosleeping, babywearing, and whole foods for our babies and families.
But lately, I’ve noticed that something is lacking with a few vocal members of the attachment parenting community. Empathy. Yep, that’s putting yourself in another’s shoes.
You don’t have to agree. You don’t have to sanction. But it’d be nice if some APs would understand that it’s not as easy as popping a baby on a breast or in your bed. Life is not the same for everyone out there. Our experiences are different. Our reactions are different.
And until the Attachment Parenting community isolates the elitists, it will be hard to gain ground.
Eco Child’s Play
News, information, and opinions on natural, green parenting to help your family live a more healthy, eco-friendly life
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