I remember J's house being oppressively spooky. They lived, like most of the shopkeepers there, on the second floor above their place of business. You entered the building after hours the same way you did when the supermarket was open - through the triple bolted, double locked, metal grilled front door. Then, it was a race to the back of the supermarket through shadowy, dark aisles stocked with cans of mackerel and loaves of hardough bread, to the echo-ey stairwell adjoined to a pitch black hallway that also lead the other way to the packing and storage area.

Once upstairs, harsh lighting from a few overhead tungsten bulbs welcomed you, but all that illumination did was create hard border lines that trailed off into unlit areas riddled with boxes of non-perishable goods and lazily stacked artifacts from eras before our own (people really didn't discard things back then). The atmosphere of the place made the sounds of the maj-jongg tiles - the raucous sounds as they shuffled, and the intermittent clacking as the game proceeded - appear sinister against the backdrop of the odd car passing by or the shrill bark of stray dog somewhere in the distance. Even the sounds of children at play was swallowed up by the spookiness of the building. Throughout my entire childhood, I've only slept over there once. Growing up, sleepovers at friends and cousins were weekend events that were greatly anticipated but somehow, at J's house, we only ever managed one overnight occasion. My sister and I - we were probably around 11 and 9 respectively at the time - had committed to spending the night there with some trepidation but we enjoyed playing with our cousins and feigning courage by hiding in unused rooms that we were convinced were haunted by anything ranging from the one legged man with the wooden stump, to the creepy demon hand with the long fingernails.

When nighttime rolled around and we'd all gotten into bed - a couple of double beds pushed together to accomodate four kids (L was only four or five at the time and had already gone to sleep in another room), I was wide awake staring at the ceiling petrified from the sounds of the house and the darkness that beckoned just at the doorway entrance to the room. After J and J had fallen asleep, their quiet snores doing little to dispel the unease I'd felt, I was still frozen in the same position with the blanket up to my chin, eyes wide open. After some time, my sister N asked, "Are you scared?" "No," I replied. Then, "Yes." "Don't be, we're all here." "I can't sleep." "Just close your eyes ok?" So I did, and my 11 year old sister stayed awake and occasionally gently brushed my forehead until the darkness of the room was replaced with the one created by my own heavy eyelids.

Now that we're expecting our second green baby, I've found myself reflecting more and more on sibling relationships. With Tristan, as a first time parent we had no practical experiences to revisit, or to project . As the youngest of four, I couldn't relate to him being (however briefly) an only child. I'd never been a parent before either, so that was all new too. With our second baby on the way now, I've discovered that there are a host of things that I can draw on now that are relevant to this new monster's life.

However, the most important thing for parents seems to be the fretting over how the family dynamic will change, especially with the relationship between your first child and his new baby brother or sister. Will he resent the baby for the time that's taken away in attention from him (of course)? Will he resent YOU for what's now a perceived split in love and affection (undoubtedly)? How do you, as a parent, ensure that your children all feel loved and fulfilled and that you can go through your days without feeling the guilt of neglect at the end of it?

It's evident even now. While Tasha's been pregnant for the last four months, the whole experience has been decidedly different than the first time around. With Tristan, we were doe-eyed and attentive to every little nuance of every detail of every single week that went by. With our second little monster, not so much. Our days are so taken up by just maintaining our little family unit that there's been hardly anytime to take a breather and tell our new baby that everything's going to be alright come May.

We're not sure how Tristan will react to a new baby in the house - probably very much like every other toddler has after having a sibling thrust unawares upon him. That is, initially, rather poorly. But really, worrying excessively about this kind of thing seems to be a wasted exercise. The landscape consisting of my friends and family is littered with sibling drama and strife, but there are far too many combinations of circumstances to draw any kind of helpful data from when it comes to predicting how my own children will interact with each other. Instead, I'll keep it as simple as I possibly can; admittedly this is just a mantra at the moment because I have no idea what 'simple' really means in this case. At the moment, to me, it means not worrying about what it means to have one child versus two, or even two versus three. It means being devoted and spending as much time as possible with them either individually or together. It means carrying on with the business of parenting as if nothing's changed because really, within a couple of months of the arrival of our second monster it really will be as if nothing's changed; we wont remeber what life was like before with only one monster to care for, just as we've effectively forgotten what it was like when it was just the two of us.

And sometimes it means remembering what siblings do for each other, and TO each other, and eagerly sitting around waiting for your own kids to figure out their own ways to torment, love and care for each other.

Recently, I came across a study that indicated a threshold for household annual income where maximum life satisfaction (all other things being equal) is optimal. Anything over that, the study states, does little or nothing to contribute to your overall happiness or well being.

1. Using cloth diapers removes contact of chemicals against your baby’s most delicate parts. Here’s a snippet from T. Washko from diaperjungle.com:


“Perhaps they know it would be unfavorable for them to tell consumers that they are in fact buying polyethylene and polypropylene plastic with bleached paper pulp, AGM (a gelling substance), petrolatum, stearyl alcohol, cellulose tissue, elastic, and perfume. Instead they would rather consumers subscribe to the ideas they present on national television...that you are diapering your baby with materials as soft and inviting as cashmere.”

2. Using cloth diapers promotes early potty training - This probably has as much to do with the general parenting philosophy of cloth diapering parents and potty training, but there are a few factors that help with the acceleration of potty training including the simple fact that your little monster can feel when he’s wet himself and, therefore, complain loudly and vociferously about it. We practice EC here at the So Green Baby household with Tristan and, contrary to authoritative studies by learned individuals that lament the stress put upon a baby because of this practice, we decided to stick with what apparently has been working since pre-industrial times and so far we have a very happy, healthy and well adjusted 1 year old.
 
3. Using cloth diapers helps you maintain your weekly garbage output at pre-baby levels - Before Tristan was born, we were concerned that our garbage production would go up as a family unit. This would be one of the most visible ways to see your impact, as you basically count the number of bags you’re putting out every two weeks. So far, we’re still putting out one or two bags on garbage day.
 
4. Using cloth diapers will help you leave some land for your grandkids to play on - Where did you think those disposable diapers were going? Here are some stats from realdiaperassociation.org:

Over 92% of all single-use diapers end up in a landfill.
In 1988, nearly $300 million dollars were spent annually just to discard disposable diapers, whereas cotton diapers are reused 50 to 200 times before being turned into rags.
No one knows how long it takes for a disposable diaper to decompose, but it is estimated to be about 250-500 years, long after your children, grandchildren and great, great, great grandchildren will be gone.
Disposable diapers are the third largest single consumer item in landfills, and represent about 4% of solid waste.  In a house with a child in diapers, disposables make up 50% of household waste.

I must admit, a part of me wrestled with the idea of having a baby only to have him inherit and have to live with the vast number of problems we’ve dummied up in our lifetime, but then ... well, did anybody see Idiocracy?
 
5. Using cloth diapers lets you stick it to big corporations whose agenda is simply to get you to buy, and buy some more.
 
6. Using cloth diapers gives you yet another way to bond with your baby - This was a bit unexpected but the throwaway nature of disposable diapers vs. the investment that you have to make for cloth diapering creates another activity that you can bond with your little monster over. It’s another little thing that uniquely draws you into the whole child-raising process.
 
7. Using cloth diapers helps save on paying for disposables - There’s an initial investment which may seem high, but then you’re not rushing out to Walmart every two weeks to pickup a new batch of Pampers. There’s definitely a pay off over the long term, especially if you have more than one child.
 
8. Using cloth diapers  lets you dress your baby up in ridiculously cute and stylish prints - Anybody see that Huggies jean diaper commercial? Right, me either. Not really relevant when you can put your kid in cowprint, robots and monkeys.
 
9. Using cloth diapers ensures that you don’t give a damn that your little monster peed into that clean diaper you just put on him. It’s a good feeling to not have to envision dollar signs being flushed away with every disposable that you toss into the garbage - your cloth diaper goes right into the diaper pail for wash and reuse. Additionally, you never feel the urge to just let that diaper sit for a little bit longer because you have an inexhaustible stash of cloth that you can change him with as frequently as you need to (hello prefolds).
 
10. Using cloth diapers  is easy! You do that research to understand the nuances involved in selecting a TV - LED, 3D, HD, refresh rates and so on, right? Cloth diapers are way less complicated and intimidating, and contain hardly any coltan. The main refrain I hear dismissing cloth as a viable alternative usually centers around washing but really, once you become a parent your life revolves around bowel movements and baby puke. Handling these things becomes an everyday fact of life and, as Tasha puts it, it's pushing the buttons on the washing machine a couple more times a week.

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.