Zenbit: Santa Down Under

I've been suffering from a serious lack of Christmas spirit, so I dug up this picture. It is not as good as the flip-flop Christmas tree, but it makes me smile. (Here's another Christmas-related Zenbit).

Location: Burleigh Heads, Australia
Date: January 17, 2006

I'm the Reason Our Planet is Doomed

Here is a story that I think explains why we can't just rely on people's good nature to save us from climate change and other environmental problems:

As you might have guessed from the post about our car buying dilemma, Hubby and I are fairly concerned about the environment. We try to consider the environmental impacts of all of our decisions. So, when I was pregnant with Pumpkin, I did some research about diapers. We knew that we'd have to us disposable diapers at day care, but we could use something else at home if that made the most sense. I found an analysis from some academics in Ohio (which of course I cannot find now) that convinced me that in my drought-plagued location, cloth diapers aren't necessarily the best choice. As any new parent can tell you, babies go through a lot of diapers, and that's a lot of laundry, which translates to a lot of water- especially when Pumpkin was little and we lived in an apartment with an old, inefficient shared washer.

My research led me to gDiapers, which I still think are ingenious. They consist of cute cloth "little g" pants, a plastic liner that snaps into the pants, and an insert that you press into the plastic liner. The system works great. They seem to be comfortable for the baby. Pumpkin refuses to wear them anymore- she says they are "too tight"- but I think that is due to her aversion to change more than any actual problem with the diapers. They contain the "poop-splosions" of babyhood far better than disposables. I almost always have to wash the plastic liner after a big poop (but this rinses out easily, and can be washed in with the rest of our laundry), but only rarely have to wash the little g pants. And I can't remember a single time with either Pumpkin or Petunia when the outfit over the diapers got dirty. With disposables, I have to change Petunia out of a poopy outfit several times a week. My only functional quibble is that the baby fusses when wet earlier than with disposables. However, since the wet diapers can be composted (really!) that isn't necessarily a deal-breaker. The poopy diapers are meant to be flushed: you tear open the insert, dump it into the toilet, and swoosh it around with a long plastic stick they give you with your starter kit. This is far easier and less messy than it sounds, and I've never had a problem with the diaper flushing, either here at the house or in our old apartment.

So... why am I struggling to get through the one pack of 40 small size inserts that I bought before Petunia was born? She is about to outgrow the small size, and I still have about 5 inserts left to use. Given the fact that Petunia easily goes through 7-8 diapers in a day, that pack should have lasted about a week. Petunia is 11 weeks old. So one time out of 11, I do the "right" thing. The rest of the time, I put her in a disposable diaper. I do this because I am lazy. The extra work required to use the gDiapers is minimal- I have to "load" the insert into the lined little g pant. When the diaper is used, I have to either flush it or compost it. But that extra little bit of effort over wrapping the diaper around itself and dumping it in the diaper pail is apparently too much for me. Hubby, who is arguably more environmentally conscious than I am, will almost never reach for a gDiaper. Two environmentally sensitive adults who know full well that our actions are suboptimal in terms of the environment can't be bothered to add a a few extra (easy) steps to the diapering routine.

And that is why our planet is doomed.

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I will, however, dig the medium size little g pants out of storage and order some appropriately sized inserts. If we get moving and buy the low water use, dual flush toilets we've picked out, I should be able to report back on whether we have any difficulty flushing the inserts with a 1.6 gallon toilet.

The Vagaries of Toddler Speech

I've got a "real" post brewing for the next time Petunia lets me put her down (maybe sometime in 2010?) but in the meantime... can anyone explain to me why Pumpkin calls the thieving fox in Dora "Swifer" but when she asks me to put Naima (her favorite song on Dreamland, her favorite bedtime CD) on loop, she tells me to make it "repeep"?

What I Learned Today

Some things I learned today:

• If I were a stay at home mom, I would eventually scream at Pumpkin "NO! I will not read that book again! I have JUST NOW read it to you five times in a row!"
• If I were a stay at home mom, there would be far more Dora in my life than I am comfortable having.
  
• Petunia may be too easy going for her own good.
  

At about 10:30, just as I was finally getting myself and Petunia dressed for the day, Pumpkin's day care called and told me that she had a fever. Petunia never did get dressed for the day- we drove up to day care to pick up Pumpkin.

When we got to day care, they told me that they were watching a movie because it was raining. (They couldn't play outside... this is San Diego. No one has decent rain gear for their kids.) Given Pumpkin's issues with their last rainy day movie, they let her pick the movie this time. They probably figured she would pick something she has at home and all would be fine. Of course, she doesn't have any Disney-type movies at home, so she picked the one that she was most curious about- Finding Nemo. She is always pointing at little orange fishes and calling the Nemo. She must have been pretty excited to see a whole movie about Nemo. Unfortunately, it apparently has a shark named Bruce who eats two Nemos and an octopus, and that's not very nice! She had to snuggle with one of her teachers, who noticed she was feeling a bit hot, so took her temperature and discovered a fever.

I shrugged, and decided that I'd try to explain about the movies another day (basically, if there is a plot, it is too scary for Pumpkin). I drove her home, listening to her version of the Nemo movie the entire way. I told her we could watch one of her favorite Noodlebug DVDs when we got home. So, we put the DVD in as soon as we got in the door, and I got out the thermometer to see if I needed to give Pumpkin any Tylenol. I got a normal reading. I tried several times during the day, and she always read normal.

All things considered, the day went well. But I never want to read Big Dog...Little Dog again, and oh my, am I tired. Poor Petunia spent a lot of time laying in her baby gym, smiling and "talking" and either being ignored or being smothered by her adoring big sister, until finally it was time for her usual late afternoon nurse-fest, which is when I had to break out the Dora.

Mommy Needs to Recharge

I just gave Pumpkin her bath. She behaved beautifully (an unusual event these days) and objectively, watching her play story time with her bath toys- she put the alligators in time out for biting the bear and the froggie- was pretty darn cute. But I was nowhere near as engaged and playful as I'd have liked to be. By bath time, I'm like Petunia's swing when its batteries are running down. I'm going through the motions, but without the bells and whistles that make it fun. After a full day of caring for Petunia, my mothering battery is running low.

I've been trying to figure out how to recharge that battery during my last few weeks of my maternity leave. (I return to work part time in January, and then full time in February. Working recharges my mothering battery- which is one reason why I'm a happy working mom.) When Pumpkin was this age, my solution was long, hot showers with nice smelling shower gel. Pumpkin would sit in her bouncy chair, and miraculously be fairly content. Sometimes, she would even fall asleep. This practice is getting harder to justify as my region sinks deeper into drought. Also, the bathroom in our house is not big enough to allow me to bring Petunia into it in her bouncy chair and close the door, and the hot shower is less rejuvenating with a cold draft blowing in from the hall.

I've tried to consider my almost daily walks with Petunia to be "battery recharge" time, but I'm not fooling myself. I take those walks to ensure Petunia gets her afternoon nap when she needs it, and to try to make it possible for me to squeeze back into my pre-pregnancy pants.

Blogging helps, but frankly it takes too long. I can't always squeeze in the time when I need it the most. Similarly, I can't quite see how to make room for a regular yoga class yet, although I'm sure that will come with time. Petunia is sleeping really well, but the flip side of that seems to be that she wants to nurse every hour when she's awake, making it hard to schedule an exercise class.

Does anyone have any ideas? What do you do to recharge your batteries? So far, I've been eating cookies, a practice that I'm going to have to stop (or at least scale back) if I don't want to have to buy a completely new wardrobe for my return to work next month.