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I am a firm believer that nothing but the purest ingredients should go into and onto a baby’s body. The I Dream Baby line available from buygreen.com is natural and mostly organic, giving parents the peace of mind that they are not using products on their little ones that contain known carcinogens. You don’t have to be a baby to enjoy these products!

Wildcrafted and Handmade in Northern California

The I Dream Baby gift set comes with one bottle of baby wash and shampoo (7 oz.), one bottle of baby lotion (7 oz), and one bottle of baby oil (3 oz). The products contain a “thoughtful, soothing blend of organic, wildcrafted or sustainably grown therapeutic grade essential oils.” These blends smell so good, and the bottles are recyclable aluminum, which makes this plastic avoiding mother happy. Read more »

My mother just turned 65 and, wise woman that she is, requested no presents. She did however, request that we all go down to the Starlight Lounge and dance our fool butts off! She is a woman who has her priorities straight: people are fun, stuff is…well, it’s just stuff.

This past week, I went into a Wal-Mart for the first time in about two years and I thought my head was going to explode just from the sheer volume of stuff and the incessant beeping of the registers! As I looked around all I could see was next year’s landfill! I was pretty close; in The Story of Stuff you will find the shocking statistic that 99% of the stuff we buy, we toss out.

Like any other bad behavior that is perpetuated generationally, we adults not only have to be come aware of, and change, our own habits, but find effective means to help our children not repeat our mistakes.

Older kids, 12 and up, may enjoy the Story of Stuff and be thoughtful about the implications. Younger children may just end up feeling helpless. I’ve mentioned Eco-phobia before and feel it necessary to reiterate that we risk making children numb to issues if they get too much bad news too soon. I thought it was great the the Story of Stuff blog links to kid-produced You Tube responses!

The reality is, $15 BILLION dollars is spent by marketers to turn your child into a good consumer. Read more »

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As Clayton Cornell wrote on gas2.0, new research has shown that diesel fuel, besides being a hazard for lungs, is also hazardous for growing brains.

This is bad news for an especially susceptible population—children—who spend significant amounts of time in diesel buses. Twenty-four million children ride in diesel school buses each day, amounting to about one half-hour per child. Research has also shown that the level of diesel exhaust inside school buses is substantially higher than outside.

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Win FREE Baby Stuff at Baby-to-Bee! Free Diapers, Coupons, Samples, Free Subscriptions to Top Baby Magazines, Gift Vouchers, Health Advice, and Other FREE Offers!

Growing Family Club wants to provide you with discounts, coupons and samples on the things you and your baby need. Your free membership also entitles you to receive several “milestone gifts”. These age-specific gifts are useful and relevant items designed to make your parenting experience ever more rewarding.

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Beans and rice are the staples of a vegetarian diet. This recipe is a kid pleaser, and super simple and quick if you use canned beans. Don’t forget to use Eden Foods canned beans to avoid BPA leaching, and of course, always use organic ingredients. This is another great recipe modified from The Garden of Vegan.

Beans and Rice

In a medium sized saucepan, combine:

• 1 cup brown rice
  
• 1 1/2 cups water
  
• 1 can of beans (pinto, black, kidney, mixed, etc.)
• 2 chopped cloves of garlic
• 1/2 tsp. black pepper
• 1 tsp. salt
• 1 chopped carrot Read more »
  

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Ina May Gaskin is the most famous midwife in the United States. As one of of the founding members of the intentional community the Farm, Ina May and the Farm Midwives have thirty years of statistics that demonstrate the safety and benefits of natural childbirth. For example, only 1.4% of births attended by the Farm Midwives have required a Cesarean section compared to the national average of about 25%. Ina May has long been respected for advocating women’s rights, as well as changing people’s perceptions about natural childbirth. Instead of an agonizing ordeal, Ina May believes that childbirth can be an orgasmic experience.

When I first became pregnant 16 years ago, a pregnancy that ended in a miscarriage, I read Ina May’s first book Spiritual Midwifery. Not only was this book full of information on natural pregnancy and childbirth, but it was packed with images and stories of labor, in which the parents saw psychedelic colors and experienced orgasms. I thought that these hippies had done too many drugs and were just having flashbacks, but by the time I read her second book Ina May’s Guide to Childbirth before the birth of my second child, I decided to try out some of the visualizations described in the birth stories.  As MSNBC  explains,

She promoted the idea that a woman’s state of mind will influence how easy her birth is and encouraged unorthodox ways to improve the woman’s experience, like encouraging her to make out with her husband during labor.

Although I didn’t have quite the experience Ina May espouses, my son was born in a third of the time of my daughter. Instead of grimacing in pain as I did during my first labor, I visualized a flower opening as the hard contractions bore down upon me.  Shortly after, my son was born in water into his daddy’s arms.

Ina May is working on a movie titled “The Orgasmic Birth”.  As she describes,

A midwife’s work means something: It prepares the woman to go through childbirth in a way that’s transformative and empowering. The empowerment and self respect she learns in labor is passed on to the child in a loving relationship.

I highly recommend her books to anyone about to give birth.  Even if you don’t experience an orgasm during labor, at least you will have a positive experience that will start your relationship off right with your child.

Image source: Crunchy Domestic Goddess

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Well, the video is a little hokey, and the band a little odd, but this is one of my preschool students’ favorite songs.  We sing it a lot! The Banana Slug String Band’s songs are filled with messages of conservation and connectedness to nature, like “Dirt Made My Lunch”. Read more »

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Like many of us, the more you learn about vaccines the more you run up against the perplexing question: To Vaccinate or Not to Vaccinate. Like me you may have decided to vaccinate but, not on schedule and not multiple vaccines at one time.

Now that the measles, mumps and rubella vaccines are combined into one shot, the MMR vaccine, avoiding those mega doses of vaccinations in one visit is a little harder. You can however, with a little ingenuity have the shot for each disease administered separately.

Read more »

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© Alex Brosa | Dreamstime.com

For some reason, coworkers and others sometimes ask me for advice on parenting. Maybe it’s because I am old and this gives me the illusion of having a clue, which I don’t, or maybe it’s because my child has at least survived these early years. While I hate to give out unsolicited advice (okay, except for cooking) I figured if I just wrote down a few of these fantastic parental insights, it might be helpful to others.

Great Tips to Prepare for Parenthood:

1. Repeat after me: When you have just fed your infant, do not hold her way above your head and look up, wide-eyed and open-mouth smiling. Don’t think about this one too much. Just trust me.
2. Consider upgrading your kitchen to feature a cement floor with a center drain and handy hose on the wall. It makes a unique statement about your new lifestyle. Save water by washing the table, chairs, floor and child all at once!
3. If you are compulsively neat or prompt, congratulations, your deprogramming is about to begin. Soon, you will be normal without all that therapy expense. Again, you’ll need the money you save.
4. Take a box of cereal and dump it all over the back seats and floor of your car. Try and adjust to this. For an extra helper, have your spouse hide a partially full sippy cup of milk somewhere in the vehicle. You’ll figure out where it is in a week or so.
5. Borrow toys, blocks and crayons from a friend with kids. Scatter these items all over your floor before bed. Set your alarm for 3 a.m. Get up and attempt to navigate the minefield in the dark. Hint: shuffle your feet.
   Read more »

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My Bag and Me!, written by Karen Farmer and illustrated by Gary Currant, is a cute rhyming board book about the benefits of using reusable shopping bags. The little boy in the story has his own shopping bag he takes to the store. He also reminds his mother to do the same.

Then it’s off to the checkout where we’ve all been before. I hand over My Bag and say, “Paper and plastic no more!” We feel really good when our shopping is done. We’ve saved so many bags by using this one!

My Bag and Me! comes with a reusable, small shopping bag. My only criticism is that the bag is made from Tyvek, a Dupont product. Dupont doesn’t exactly have a clean environmental record, and Tyvek is not as long lasting or washable as a cloth shopping bag. Furthermore, the bag and book both claim to be 100% recyclable, although I’ve never seen Tyvek accepted at a recycling center, and neither bag nor book are made from post consumer content.

500 billion paper and plastic bags are used each year globally!  These “free” bags actually cost $4 billion dollars a year, and thus consumers pay the price for them in other ways.  It is also staggering to consider that it takes 1,000 years for a plastic bag to decompose, and we have all seen the litter they create. Read more »

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It’s official: There’s a full fledge Great Copy Machine Epidemic in our children’s schools. American schools are asked to help combat the epidemic by joining a national day of action to stop global warming on April 17th. To participate, schools need to put their school photocopiers under quarantine and pledge not to make or use any photocopies on that day. To participate:

1. Put together a team of the most creative, fun-loving, eco-conscious students and friends that you can find.

2. Perform a proper medical inspection to “diagnose” your copy machine and determine what disease you believe is making it chew up paper at such an enormous rate. Unfortunately, creating paper uses lots of energy, so it creates lots of CO2 that’s contributing to global warming and making the planet sick.

3. Send an email to the copy crisis team at copycrisisteam (@) gmail (dot) com confirming that your school photocopier has been struck by the disease, and include the name of your school, town, state, and the number of teachers and students who are being affected by it. Read more »

Finger painting was one of my favorite past times as a child, and I looked forward to the days at school when I could squish my fingers into gooey colors. Now, eco-minded parents concerned about their children’s health can chose eco-friendly fingerpaints made by Livos, a long time trusted company in my family for oils and varnishes. All natural and sensory fun, what could be better?

Salis Fingerpaints come in six colors: yellow, red, black, green, blue, and white. These paints can be mixed to form more colors giving children hands-on experience with color theory. They can also be diluted with water to be applied with a paintbrush, if your child is the type that doesn’t like to get his/her fingers dirty. Salis Fingerpaints can be used on stone, wood, unglazed clay, paper, cardboard, salt dough, etc.

These hemp-based vegan paints are made from water, mineral pigments, hemp oil, methyl cellulose, extract of gentian roots, and preserved with food/pharmaceutical grade substances. Read more »

1.) Follow the same consistent routine each day so your children know what to expect.
2.) Get up before your kids do to exercise or have a quiet cup of coffee.
3.) Get showered and dressed before your kids wake up.
4.) Set out your kids’ clothes the night before so there’s no arguing about what to wear.
5.) Pack your children’s lunches and backpacks the night before.
6.) Let children do as much as they can by themselves — get dressed, brush their hair or pour themselves cereal. This can help them feel independent while also freeing you up to do other things.
7.) Keep breakfast simple and portable.

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The first birthday is a major milestone. In the months to come, you may continue to refer to him or her as “the baby,” but your child is officially a toddler — or she will be as soon as she takes those first wobbly steps. This newfound mobility, more than anything else, will forever change her relationship with you and the world at large.

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Editor’s note: The following post was written by Matty Byloos of Green Eggs and Planet:

An easy to read green blog, dedicated to providing insight and answers to many questions regarding the environment, nutrition, wellness, health, yoga, fitness, meditation and more. It is our mission at Green Eggs and Planet to create a comprehensive conversation about a holistic program for healthy living, complete mindfulness and greater understanding of life’s most crucial concerns.

Tips on Healthy Snacks for Kids or Adults

Mmmm…snack time.

I was sitting in an Organic Spa in Southern California a few days ago, waiting for my TLC. While in the waiting/relaxation room I was privy to a spread that flipped my mind upside down, rolled it up in multiple flavors (including dark, dark chocolate, fresh coconut milk and even some of the most amazing organic grape tomatoes I have ever ripped into) and threw it down onto a massage table for dessert. As I lie there, and I do mean lie, I drifted into a land of the perfect snack ideas, and what better time to share?

How about a list of the Top 10 healthy snacks, coming from a subjectively objective opinion? Bottom line, health is priority #1, and TASTE is priority #1.5! If you’re into online shopping, consider sources such as Sunfood Nutrition and The Raw Bakery— both offering many of the snacks listed below, as well as other healthy options to quiet a growling tum.

How to Snack Healthy When Eating Organic or Vegan

Goji Berries


You can find them certified organic, perfectly dried, packed into stay-fresh packages and ready for your consumption.

They may very well be the “authority” in regards to the superfoods, loaded with antioxidants, vitamins, minerals and yes, TASTE! They’re perfect for that mid-afternoon slump, or to keep popping while you’re out on a hike. Read more »

Kaboost Lightweight Portable Chair Booster Seat
Boost your little one’s booty to just the right height on any four-legged chair you may encounter with this spring-loaded device that is amazingly stable and also very portable. Not only will your child be able to sit in any seat, the product is available in a variety of colors to match any home or space.

Elmo Live
He’s baaaack. Elmo is more alive than we’ve ever seen him! With Elmo now walking, talking, laughing and expressing his every emotion, it’s like he’s jumped out of the TV and right into your kid’s life. Snatch Elmo Live up when he hits the shelves in October as he’s sure to gain the same hype as his predecessor, Tickle Me Elmo.

Read more »

Cavities and Your Kids

It may be possible to make a safe vaccine against the type of bacteria best known for causing ”strep throat” and rheumatic fever, U.S.-based researchers reported on Thursday.

The little piece of the bacteria that causes serious disease can be altered slightly into a form that may work as a vaccine, the team at the University of California, San Diego, reported.

Group A streptococcal infections affect more than 600 million people each year and kill 400,000 globally. Most infections cause throat inflammation known as “strep throat,” which is easily treated with antibiotics.

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Practical tips for keeping baby’s brand-new teeth healthy.

Now that your baby’s teeth are on their way in, it’s time to start taking care of them. Even though this set will only be around for a short time, their health essential to your baby’s gums and those future permanent teeth.

Read more »

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This post reflects on the fourth week of my seven-part “Healthy Children, Healthy Planet” curriculum, a fantastic discussion group by the Northwest Earth Institute.

So far, our Healthy Children, Healthy Planet discussion group has tackled family dinners. We’ve tackled consumer-free holidays. We’ve tackled the over-programming of children’s activities. We’ve tackled advertisements, and whether parents deserve a Bill of Rights, and what kind of moments can be used to pass down values. This week, the conversation turned to everyone’s favorite enemy: junk food.

Ah, junk food. It’s true what they say: we have become a junk food nation. We are a nation of processed food, of food in boxes, of omnipresent vending machines, of gas stations that stop selling gas, because the real money is in snacks. Read more »

Comfort may be key in maternity fashion, but you don’t have to toss aside your own personal style while making room for your pouch. Modern maternity has come a long way, and there’s something for everyone, thanks to the recent parent parade of Hollywood trendsetters. Empire-waist tops and voluminous dresses have never been hotter, and nonpregnant women are wearing these silhouettes on a steady basis! With a few key investment items and pieces from your own wardrobe, these maternity months can be some of your most stylish!

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Do you take your kids to the park? Sign them up for soccer or softball? Parents who care about their children’s health likely encourage outdoor play and possibly, participation in organized sports. In the spring, as we begin to shop for soccer cleats and baseball mitts; it is wise to investigate how your schools and municipalities manage their green spaces.

Pesticide exposure is a serious health risk to children. And while limiting, or better still, eliminating ingested pesticides is important, consider the direct exposure your children may get while they play upon that green, green grass. Read more »

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British researchers who tried to show why overweight mothers tend to have overweight children said on Monday they had filled in one small piece of the puzzle.

Their reassuring finding: women who are too heavy when pregnant are probably not somehow driving the obesity epidemic by programming their children to be fat.

But there is a strong link between overweight mothers and overweight children that still needs to be explained, Debbie Lawlor of Britain’s University of Bristol and colleagues said

Lawlor’s team looked at the developmental overnutrition hypothesis — the idea that if a woman is overweight during pregnancy, the higher levels of sugar and fatty acids in her blood would affect the developing fetus, dooming or at least predisposing the child to poor appetite control and a slower metabolism.

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From Reuters:

Mothers who stop smoking while pregnant tend to have cheerier, more adaptable babies, British researchers reported on Wednesday.

Babies of women who continued to smoke while pregnant were notably grumpy, and the researchers believe that mothers who can muster the effort to kick the habit are also caring more for their babies in other ways.

Babies of non-smokers also more temperamental than babies born to quitters, the researchers found — which they said suggested that mothers who suspend smoking are doing something special.

Tobacco can affect the growth of a fetus and has been shown to also affect children if they breathe in their mothers’ secondhand smoke.

Read more »