The Big Lug

My desire to feed my family more organic and local foods is often in a battle with my lack of time and energy. Thankfully there is a huge industry dedicated to feeding off my mom guilt by developing thousands and thousands of organic convenience food products! As long as I can keep the job that pays the bills and causes me to be away from home  (thus the guilt in the first place – it’s the circle of life) then I can buy the few great organic products that I rely on daily.

Luckily these are carried at my regular grocery store so I do knot have to make a special trip to the whole foods.*

First off are these great nuggets by Ian’s. As much as I thought my kid would not end up eating nuggets all the time, I was wrong. And if you’ve seen or read any of the popular books or movies on our food industry you’re probably wary of the bigger brand name nuggets out there. Bonus to these is that they are delicious!

Two other staples on our pantry are Annie’s Organic Mac and Cheese and Health Valley cereal bars. Both of these are purchased weekly partially because they are our only organic options in our grocery store. However both happen to be tasty and though slightly more expensive than their non-organic versions, reasonably priced.

Sometimes I think this extra money and effort to buy these products may be a result of effective marketing on the part of the growing organic food industry and my subconscious desire to project a certain image as a parent. But even if that is the case o think it can only do more good than harm to participate in this growing movement towards eating organic.

*I love Whole Foods but I cannot go there without leaving with some kind of organic lip balm or a yoga mat or something.

Prepping the house for the new baby coming at the end of June is a little bit like a puzzle or a logic word problem. To move the baby into what was the nursery (currently our son’s room) we have to move our son into his new room (currently the guest room) and move everything out of the guest room into…oh right. There ISN’T ANYWHERE TO PUT THAT CRAP.

The guest room is actually just a room of random crap that doesn’t belong anywhere which happens to have a bed in it. The room also has our computer and printer and 2 bookshelves full of books and photos.

Our kitchen is big enough to house the computer equipment so  we went to Ikea and purchased a better desk suited for that area – enabling us to move the computer out of the guest room.

What to do with the old desk, chair, and printer table? Well we freecycled them. I love freecycle. Freecycle is a place where you post the crap you don’t want any longer and lo and behold people PICK IT UP from your PORCH without you doing anything! So awesome and so much better than throwing it out. Within 2 days our desk, chair, and small printer table were picked up and hopefully put to good use. But more importantly OUT OF OUR HOUSE!

Find your local Freecycle and start giving stuff away or getting it for free!

Is that bunny organic?
Let me tell you, there’s plenty to worry about when you become a parent. Don’t I know it. Will he fall down and split his lip on his bottom teeth? (Yes) Will he try to eat the newspaper? (Yes) WIll he poop today? (Hopefully) Will he like metal, or emo, or alt country? (Who knows) There are so many things to worry about, it boggles the mind.
Not to mention the fact that I’m a worrier – it’s part of my genetic code. Combine that with seeing An Inconvenient Truth, Catholic guilt, and a need to be hip and you’re bound to come up with “Green Parenting.”
I try hard to balance my desire to help save the Earth with living in reality. It’s not as easy as you’d think. I remember when I first heard about conservation and Earth Day in elementary school. It seemed simple then – don’t throw your styrofoam container out of your car window. Don’t buy Aqua Net. Recycle. It’s so much more complicated now. Carbon offsets? Compact fluorescents? SOLAR PANELS!
So, I’m more like a seafoam green parent. I didn’t do cloth diapers, or buy glass baby bottles, but I do try to do a little bit where I can. I have some Earth’s Best baby food in the cabinet. I bought a pack of Seventh Generation diapers. And we try to get as many things second had as possible. As you can imagine, my first step in trying to get green with Baby Lug was trying to find a good organic or green website.
Remember when Geocities first started? Well that’s what most organic or green parenting websites remind me of – as if there should be a repeated pattern of unicorns in the background and yellow Times New Roman text. They mostly seem to be crappy online stores disguised as informational websites. The one website I found that had helpful tips was Treehugger’s How to Green Your Baby Page. If anyone has any other great sites, please let me know! Meanwhile I’ll be trying to find out if baby bottle liners are recyclable and looking for a sale on Gerber Organic Baby Food!