vegetables.

anyone who has a kid knows that getting her to eat vegetables is a near impossibility. i mean, seriously; try convincing a baby that vegetables, even though they taste like grass, are really, really good for her. she's not going to buy your reasoning. trust me; i've tried. instead of tossing them down her gullet like the rest of us health-conscious eaters, she casually flings them to the floor, or spreads them around her tray to make it look like she ate a few, OR, and this is my favorite, she eats one and then gags and coughs like she just ate a sardine covered in cayenne pepper. vegetables were a constant frustration for my husband and i, until a friend of mine posted on facebook a genius solution to vegetables: fruit smoothies. this woman deserves a nobel prize in my opinion; she's brilliant. thanks to her suggestion, our baby eats her vegetables and sometimes even begs for more. 

so here's how you do it: pick one or two vegetables, like peas, spinach, or squash and steam them until they are soft and can be easily pureed. next, pick a couple fruits, like banana, mango, peach, or blueberries and dump them in with the steamed veggies. finally, add some plain or vanilla yogurt (preferably organic--stoneyfield is a good brand) and puree. it's so easy and there are so many combinations you can come up with. you can even substitute yogurt for coconut milk or juice or milk (again, choose organic milk). because our baby doesn't grasp the concept of a straw or cup all that well, we add a little bit of gerber oatmeal cereal to thicken the puree and spoon feed it to her. also, i like to make a bunch of purees ahead of time and freeze them so i have a variety to choose from whenever i need them. this evening, i spent 20 minutes or so making a couple trays of purees. for one of the mixtures, i combined spinach, banana, blueberry and vanilla yogurt. it came out looking like tar, but tasting like marshmallow fluff (according to my husband). the frozen smoothy cubes make nice snacks, too. we put the cubes in a munchkin "fresh food feeder" and let her go to town. it's also a miracle treat for teething. 

satisfied customer.

perhaps needless to say, i totally recommend giving it a try. according to my child, anything tastes good when it's mixed with banana. 

p.s. i don't know about anyone else, but we can't always afford organic alternatives. rather than break the bank, we investigated which foods we should try to buy organic and which foods are fine to buy non-organic. the general rule for fruits and vegetables is if it has a thick peel or husk, don't buy organic, but there are a couple exceptions to the rule. here's the official list we came up with (i keep this list handy so that i can consult it when making my grocery lists): 

BUY ORGANIC

milk             eggs

potatoes       spinach

grapes          pears

apples          peaches

celery          cherries

nectarines    poultry

beef             bell peppers 

pork             strawberries 

carrots 

BUY NON-ORGANIC

asparagus      sweet peas

avocado        cauliflower

corn               kiwi

bananas         broccoli

mangoes

papaya

onions

pineapples

cloth diapers, people!

i'm stepping up on my soap box for this post. i think every parent should seriously consider using cloth diapers. my parents used cloth. my husband's parents used cloth. i'm going to hazard a guess that a lot of kids born before 1990 wore cloth. it was just the way of things in those days. my mom said disposables existed, but she didn't trust them to hold a minute's worth of mouse pee let alone the gallons of pee my sister and i managed to expel each hour. and just because disposable diapers exist now and are relatively leak proof doesn't mean we're obligated to use them. sure, they're easy. they're convenient. they're no hassle. and 80% of american families use them. but we're also a lazy, lazy generation. our computers pay our bills for us. our mail comes to our laptops, so we don't even need to walk out to the mailbox at the end of the driveway. remote starters on our cars, electric toothbrushes, and retractable dog leashes have pretty much eliminated the need for physical movement throughout our daily lives. the reason we use disposable diapers is not because they're leak proof, but because we have it in our minds that cloth diapers are too much work. so clear away all your preconceptions and read the facts:


ENVIRONMENT
disposable diapers are terrible for the environment. they sit in land fills for 500 years and release chemicals into the soil. our kid goes through ~7 diapers a day, 49 per week, 196 per month, 2,548 per year, and 7,644 by the time she achieves potty-trained status. that is a ton of diapers that would sit in a landfill for 500 years. you may argue it takes energy (water and electricity) to wash cloth diapers, but the energy required for washing cloth diapers is a fraction of the energy and resources needed for disposable diapers. each year, manufacture of disposables requires 1 million metric tons of wood pulp and 75,000 metric tons of plastic. 


HEALTH

beyond the environmental impact, researchers don't really know what effect the dyes, sodium polyacrylate (the super absorbent gel), and dioxin, which is a by-product of bleaching paper, have on baby's bum. sodium polyacrylate has been linked to toxic shock syndrome (TSS) and allergic reactions. dyes and dioxin can damage the central nervous system, kidneys and liver. diaper rash is way more common with disposables, but this varies according to skin sensitivity. studies show that the gas emissions from one disposable diaper caused asthma-like symptoms in mice. tolune, xylene, ethylbenzene, styrene, and isopropylbenzene are chemicals that produce gas emissions from disposable diapers. i have no idea what any of these chemicals are, but i know they're not in my daughter's cotton diapers.  

MONEY

everyone likes to save money. if the environment and health arguments weren't persuasive, maybe money will sway you. cloth diapers are an up front investment. diaper covers are about $8-12 each (we own 8 or 9, but really we could get away with 4-6). the actual prefold diapers cost us approximately $20 per dozen. if you go the all-in-one or pocket diaper route, you could pay anywhere from $12-$25 per diaper and you'd need about 18. so like i said, it's an investment up front. but after you buy the diapers, you don't have to worry about buying any more. no more midnight runs to the grocery for a $10 pack of diapers. no more budgeting each month for $100 worth of diapers and wipes. studies vary on the exact numbers, but all agree using cloth diapers, laundered at home, is significantly cheaper than purchasing disposables. you can even drop costs even more by eliminating the use of a dryer and hanging them on a line; cloth diapers last longer that way, too. 

SO EASY!

if you don't believe me, watch this cbs news video segment: http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=7131550n

we've been cloth diapering for 12 months and it is so easy. we have a variety of cloth diapers, but, for the most part, we stick to prefolds and inserts during the day and fuzzibuns at night. we stack the diapers after washing and have them ready to grab when we need a clean one; it's just as easy as grabbing a disposable. and washing is a piece of cake, too. we just dump the pal in the washer and run it through 2 full cycles (one with detergent) and then pop them in the dryer. occasionally, we'll add vinegar and baking soda to the load to eliminate any residual odors. 

POOP

most people i talk to are most concerned about poop. they don't want to touch poop. they don't want poop in their washing machine. they don't want to wash diapers in a toilet. etc. but let me put it to you this way, do you put your poo in your trash can? do you store your poo in a diaper genie? my guess is no and if you do, the health department might have something to say about it. poo belongs in the toilet, not stinking up your baby's nursery or sitting in your kitchen garbage bin. poo also does not belong in landfills, where it can spread bacteria and viruses to scavenging animals and the world at large. poop during the first 6 months of a breast-fed baby's life is a piece of cake. most moms don't even rinse this poop from diapers; there's really no need. and poop post-solid food is smelly and often triggers a gag reflex, but you just shake it out in the toilet, maybe even give it a little dunk in the water or, as we do, use a handy dandy sprayer, and toss it in the pal. and no, your washer isn't going to have skid marks. your subsequently laundered clothes will not come out smelling of poop. the diapers will go through 2-3 hot wash cycles effectively killing any germs and removing any traces of poop from your washer. 

ECO-FRIENDLY ALTERNATIVES

seventh generation, earth's best and gdiapers make eco-friendly alternatives to pampers, huggies and other store brands. these eco-friendly diapers are chlorine and bleach free, made with recycled and renewable resources, and gdiapers are flushable (so no landfills!). a package of these eco-friendly diapers runs about $2 more than pampers or huggies, but if you're going to insist on sticking with disposable, spend the extra $2 to give our environment a fighting chance and keep your baby's bum free of myriad chemicals. 

there is so much more information out there than what i've provided here. please, if you're the parent of a kid in diapers, consider going the cloth route or, at the very least, the eco-friendly route! cloth diapers are not just for hippy parents and the environmentally conscious. 

the corner.

it has been nearly forever since my last post. unfortunately, the blog was relegated to the corner of my mind,  as are most other things that don't expressly involve baby, husband, school, misc. family/friends, and home duties. and these days, even school is banished to that same corner. just the other day, another law school mom and i were talking about parenting in law school with other non-parent students. one student shook her head and said, "i just don't understand how you can do it, law school and a baby. it would just be too much for me." and my fellow law school mom responded, "you quickly discover law school is not the center of the universe. in fact, it's not even remotely close to the center of the universe." and she is so right. law school is pluto; it's not even a planet and it's barely in my radar. my little girl is turning one in t-minus 5 days (holy cow!). time flies with this girl. i'm not going to spend my days analyzing every syllable of my case books when i've got something far more monumental, epic even, with which to fill the hours of my day. so there my school work sits in the corner along with all the other stuff that really isn't uber important, like this blog.  today, though, i'm dusting off the blog because it has been far too long and baby's great granddad requested a new blog post eons ago and i promised it to him.

since august, baby has ditched the plaster pants, thank GOD! what an ordeal and so glad that period of our life is behind us. her hip is one hundred percent fixed and she's crawling and standing and "couch walking" and into EVERYTHING like most kids her age. husband took his comp exams and passed all of them--whoot! whoot!--and now he's just waiting on news about funding before we all pack our bags and move to the great country of mexico for a year. and i am, slowly but surely, plugging away at my classes. one of my classes this semester will hopefully inspire a few blog posts: law and gender. gender roles are a hot topic in our home, especially now that we're trying to raise a daughter liberated from gender stereotypes and prejudices. but this is a topic for another day. so that pretty much brings us up to date in a very brief nutshell. and now it's time for the blog to go back to the corner of my mind for a few days until i have another minute to write. i promise it won't be another six months before i write again.