Cloth Diapering and Daycares

Submitted by natasha on Thu, 2010-08-05 03:46
Over the past few months, a lot of our mommy friends have made the transition from maternity leave to going back to work. Since So Green Baby is run out of our home, we will not be sending Tristan to daycare in the immediate future. He stays with me all day and has learned to "help" mommy (that's a blog entry on it's own right there).

While Tristan spends his days by my side or on an outing to visit his many many cousins, we have little friends who are starting out in daycare, or will be starting very soon. I've met a lot of cloth diapering families in the Town of Markham, and other parts of York Region, who have successfully found daycares that are willing to use reusable diapers. In fact, having never had to research this aspect of a daycare, I was quite surprised that there are so many CD-friendly establishments! Now I am kicking myself for not asking those families exactly which daycares those are! That would be valuable info to pass onto other families in the area!

The Real Diaper Industry Association (RDIA, of which we are a member) is compiling a database of such daycares and I'd like to add as much as possible from the York Region and Greater Toronto Area! Do you have a daycare that is CD-friendly? We'd love to know and will include it in the RDIA database and our cloth diaper wiki! If you haven't gone on the search for these daycares yet, why not inquire at the ones you're thinking about? The RDIA has also published a really handy tip sheet on how to approach your daycare about cloth diapering. Take a look at it here, and you'll be confident when approaching your provider!


Sneaky, sneaky ...

Submitted by shel on Fri, 2010-08-06 01:13

I have a lot of nieces. I have a couple of nephews too, but somewhere on this planet there's a family that's overrun with sons and nephews, wondering if there's a balance being struck somewhere to counter the surplus of head-bonking, monkey-climbing, keyboard-smashing little boys that's defining their future generation.

That would be us.

I had a conversation with my niece yesterday. She still sneaks over to her parents' room on occasion, finding some nook or crawl space where she can settle in undetected for the mere comfort that proximity affords her. She has her own room - it's filled with her stuff, and unmistakably bears her own personal touch - and she understands that she should be sleeping on her own but she does the ninja thing at night whenever, I presume, she gets spooked or lonely. Her parents are trying to address this, which led to this conversation:

Niece: Uncle Shel, I'm getting a hamster!

Me: Really?

Niece: Yes, if I sleep in my room for three more weeks, mommy and daddy will get me a hamster.

Me: That's awesome! But after the three weeks, are you going to NOT sleep in your room anymore?

A question which she mulled over for about three seconds before whispering:

Well, they can't return a hamster, right?

Now, I know that children will renege on any agreement you make with them, no matter how sincere they are at the time that the deal was brokered. Kids are kids, an experience is filed away and forgotten in as much time as it takes them to have the next one. It just didn't occur to me that she'd have an answer beyond a simple 'Yes' or 'No', much less one that's reasoned, rational and just a smidgen underhanded.

Lately, I can't help but treat the time I spend with my niece as a peek into the future, especially since Tristan has such a similar disposition. The idea that I'd basically been outsmarted by a seven year old version of my son, insofar as I'd underestimated her ability to project long term, was something to digest. I'd spent years performing due diligence as an uncle, instilling cynicism in my nephews and nieces by answering every question of theirs with a roundabout answer that required dispelling naivete to the point where they pretty much only believe about 20% of what I say, and now I figured I'd get to do the same with Tristan.

As I've learned, the fatal flaw in this plan is - apparently - the assumption of who's actually in need of the reality check.

 


Growing Up

Submitted by shel on Thu, 2010-08-19 00:30

When you're expecting - and I'm sure many mothers out there will attest to this phenomenon- you can typically expect an avalanche of well-intentioned, unsolicited advice. We seem to anoint ourselves experts as soon as the umbilical cord on our first born is cut, and then it becomes an imperative to impart as much counsel to as many pregnant women within earshot as possible. It’s an affliction that I’m certainly not exempt from; I've caught myself soliloquizing about sleep cycles and nursing routines to disinterested friends.

The main thing that people try to get across is how much your life will change. No more nice, quiet dinners. No more movie nights or impromptu excursions to concerts, festivals or the occasional fair. Life required much more planning, even more so than the one that you’d executed to get to this position of impending parenthood in the first place. What escapes most people - or at least, it's the bit of information that they forget to share - is how much of your own life you get to revisit when you become a parent. Watching Tristan play and interact, seeing him make connections as his imagination begins to develop and take flight, I can’t help but revisit the way our own lives were shaped by the way we played with dolls and somersaulted action figures across perilous caverns.

As a parent, your instinct is to give your child everything he needs while balancing the perils of over indulgence. Surveying the gifts acquired via Tristan's first birthday, Christmas and his own good fortune of having several older cousins is overwhelming. He has three toy autos; at 15 months I'm fairly sure that he hasn't quite grasped what they each represent. A dump truck looks different from a school bus which is bigger than a race car, but to him they're just toys with wheels which he can grasp with one hand, sit on the floor, and whisk it back and forth with nothing other than intuition as to what that toy does. I used to love Lego, when it was a mish mash of blocks that you used to stitch together the fantastic things that popped into your head. There were some specialized kits but as a kid you generally made that space ship once, then deconstructed the thing into something unrecognizable from what's on the box. I remember being absolutely delighted when an older cousin, having grudgingly replaced Lego with pursuits more suited to his age, handed over a giant plastic bag of assorted Lego blocks in the conventional colours of blue, black and red.
Now, Lego seems to have morphed into collector items. Pieces are so specialized that they only make sense for this Star Wars ship or that Indiana Jones fortress. By expanding the landscape of toys available to Tristan it's as if the opposite has been achieved; the glut of narrowly defined, single purpose toys appear poised to stunt his creative development rather than nurture it.
 
No doubt, these are different times. The very act of parenting has also morphed into something different than that practiced by our own parents. I remember roaming the streets around my grandmother's house in Jamaica with my cousins, my sister the chaperon at ten years old. We would occasionally test the limits of the one bicycle we had at the time by seeing how far we could go with four children balanced precariously on anything that wasn't rotating. Now, it's inconceivable to me that the children in my life would roam so freely on the streets unsupervised. In that way, I do feel like Tristan is getting cheated. The notion isn't to raise him in an identical fashion as my parents raised myself and my siblings; we've already diverted from that path in many ways simply as a function of being a parent today. But the ability to reflect on the things that made your own childhood memorable, whether it's making cardboard cars, dressing up your daredevil action figure in your sister's ken doll clothes or watching paper boats float away on a street side torrent caused by hurricane Gilbert - these are the moments you hope you can recapture and share with your little monster. The little things that matter, that's easily washed away in a sea of 6th-place-finish-2008-formula-one-dora-replica toy cars.

 


Come visit us at the Live Green Toronto Festival - August 28th! One day only!

Submitted by natasha on Mon, 2010-08-23 23:01

For those in the Greater Toronto Area, So Green Baby will have a booth at the Live Green Toronto Festival this year!  Come visit us at this downtown event!  It will be lots of fun! 

The details:

August 28, 2010 at Yonge-Dundas Square. 

The festival is a 2-day affair, but we will only be exhibiting on Saturday the 28th!

So Green Baby Booth:  #47 (we will be north of Shuter, towards Dundas!)

Saturday August 28th 11 am - 9 pm
Sunday August 29th 11 am - 5 pm

You’ll find everything from bees, worms and bikes, to green fashions, renewable energy, local foods and more.

And good green fun for the whole family!

 

We're not bringing our mini-store like our previous shows (there will be no "wall of dipes"), but instead will have a very small amount of our wares, a giveaway contest, and cloth diaper demonstrations! Got questions?  Just want to meet us? Come and have a chat about reusable diapers!

If you place an order this week and pick up from our booth on the 28th, you'll get a free gift!

Honestly, we're not sure exactly what it is at this point, but it's likely from a grab bag of items:

  • ...something bamboo, starts with "in" and ends with "sert"
  • ...or a sample of detergent
  • ...or soapnuts
  • ...or wipe solution sample
  • ...or something better - who knows?

There will be no electricity supplied, so we'll be doing things old school. All purchases that day will be cash and carry, so if you'll be in the area and would like us to bring a particular item for you, please let us know and we'll try our best to remember to bring it!

More details:


Notes from The Live Green Show

Submitted by shel on Tue, 2010-08-31 13:47

Evil Babies

 Had a lovely time at the Live Green Festival last weekend. Tasha fielded questions and met lots of wonderful and supportive people who were anywhere between knowing exactly what the difference between hemp and microfiber is, or simply discovering cloth as an alternative to disposables for the very first time. Typically, at these shows, I'm tasked with the manual labour aspect of setting up and pulling down the booth, as well as occupying Tristan's time while his mom does what she does best; make friends and talk to strangers.

We couldn't be more different when we compare this part of our personality. Tasha is outgoing, friendly and ridiculously easy to slip into conversation with. I, on the other hand, am not really any of these things. Fortunately for all you people, your interaction with me at these shows is generally limited to,

"Hi, would you like a magnet?"

This being a free street festival, on Yonge Street, in the heart of Toronto, demanded that interesting things be seen and various shenanigans be experienced and we were certainly not disappointed. Tasha fearlessly put the kibosh on a young gentleman seeking to liberate a few items from our booth, but one of the most interesting thing to me was the tirade that a woman launched on an unsuspecting business a couple spots down that carried baby products. She took issue with the very idea of having babies, convinced that they were the primary ill that plagued our resource starved planet. Babies were bad for the environment! Babies were bad for the planet!

This rant went on unabated, uncensored and unhinged for a little while, and the poor girls behind the booth could only shrug and look side to side for help. When the woman had finished her tirade, she made her way over to our booth and Tasha held her breath. But the woman stomped on by us with only a sideways glance, muttering to herself, "No babies, no babies for me."

Ok, so I get that this woman had a very strong opinion about procreation. The delivery of her views could use some work - possibly something that doesn't make her seem mildly unstable - and we could really just be inclined to dismiss this as the-one-woman-on-yonge-street-that-hates-people-having-babies. To some extent, she’s right. Babies (like people), require planetary resources to sustain them. Babies (like people) eat, consume, breathe, live and generate waste. Babies (like people) also grow, learn, evolve, lead, innovate and ensure the continued survival of our species. If the entire human population up and disappeared, then sure the planet would repair itself and replenish its resources but does this sound like a reasonable solution to anyone? Wouldn’t the more prudent thing be to advance the agenda of living green, adopting a sustainable lifestyle and yes, being responsible about the little monsters that we bring into our lives? You know, kind of like all the things that the Live Green show was put on to advocate.

When people like David Suzuki - the staunchest and most active crusader for environmental change - come under fire for being a hypocrite because he dared to have resource-hungry children of his own, it’s evident that this woman’s ideals aren’t unique. Overpopulation is an issue - just because Suzuki doesn’t harp on it incessantly doesn’t mean that he doesn’t acknowledge it (See The Duggars). Rather than wasting time trying to implement some archaic and medieval system of population control (can you imagine the indignation by the very same people who call him a hypocrite?), common sense green living proponents can instead focus on education and change that, hopefully, will work to enrich both our lives and that of the planet we live on.


Anyway, the show was fun and I thoroughly enjoyed seeing the little boy with the dinosaur hat, the small girl who steadfastly refused to abandon the Hello Kitty display doll that we had, and the precocious little girl who felt compelled to wait patiently to the side while Tasha finished up with a couple just so she could flip up her dress to show off her bumGenius diaper. We hope to see you all again next year!