Hi everyone!  Sorry about the lack of posts recently.  We’ve been on vacation, and I took a break from the computer while we were away.  We spent several days with my husband’s parents at their sunny winter home.  They live in an RV park in the southwest during the cold months, and it was great to see palm trees and wear shorts!  But it’s great to be home again too.

While we were away, we used disposable diapers for our son.  Before we left, we bought a package of 7th Generation diapers at the co-op where we now do all of our shopping.  They were definitely more expensive there ($20 for a pack of 35 diapers) than they would have been at a baby store, but we were in a hurry that day, and wanted to make just one stop.  We considered taking our cloth diapers along and washing them while we were there, but decided to just take the easy route this once.  It’s the first time we’ve ever bought disposable diapers for our son, and he’s 22 months old, so we gave ourselves a pass.

The first thing I noticed about the disposables is that they hold a lot more liquid than the cloth diapers.  I typically change our son about once every two hours, but I found that even after three or four hours a disposable diaper would still feel completely dry on the inside.  So the package we bought lasted for the whole trip, and we even have a few leftovers that we’ll give to a friend.

It was nice to have the convenience of disposables on our trip.  But I must say, I’m thrilled to be home and have our little guy back in his regular mama-made diapers.  For starters, the 7th Generation diapers still use the same crystalline absorbency technology that other disposable diapers use.  I like the fact that they don’t use bleach to whiten the diapers (they’re a light brown color), but I do feel better with plain old cloth on my baby’s behind… even if it isn’t as absorbent.  And no matter how convenient the disposables were, they didn’t come close to dispelling the guilt I felt about the bag full of diapers that we sent to the landfill this morning before we left.  There is no way I would be able to do that for two straight years.

I’ve always liked our homemade cloth diapers.  We’ve spent barely any money on them, they’re a cinch to use and keep clean, and I have no concerns about what’s in them.  And each week we just dump a tiny amount of trash into our outdoor bin (still using that same garbage bag we were using in January!)  Now that I’ve tried disposables too, I’m still just as sold on my cloth diapers.

My husband and I each bought life insurance policies several years before our son was born.  We put them in a drawer and pretty much forgot about them ever since.  The payments are automatically deducted from our bank account, and there isn’t really anything else to think about.  And now that our son is almost 21 months old, we’ve finally gotten around to adding him as the contingent beneficiary on our policies.  Yes, I know… 21 months.  We are especially on top of things.

Anyway, now that we’ve checked that task off of the to-do list, we’re thinking that it’s high time we wrote wills and appointed a guardian for our son in case both of us were to die.  Not the most pleasant thing to ponder, but I know we should do it.  A friend of mine is pregnant at the moment, and she and her husband are in the process of doing the same thing, before the baby is even born.  Her super-responsible habits are inspiring me.

My husband and I are both close to our families, and there’s no drama or issues on either side.  I know that we don’t have to worry about things like wills being contested or anything like that.  But I suppose we should actually get it all down on paper, just to be sure.  Our situation isn’t particularly complicated – we own a home, have IRAs and a few other savings accounts.  But we also own our own business, which I guess could complicate things a bit.

I’m wondering if any of you have ever used will software?  I know that we could get a lawyer to do it for us, but my frugal nature (combined with the fact that I am 100% sure that all of our family would support our wishes, even if they were written on a napkin) means that I’m looking into less expensive options too.  Any thoughts are appreciated!

I just discovered a great new blog that I’m really enjoying.  Nature Mommy is written by Deborah Schneider, and is packed full of ideas about sustainable, eco- and budget-friendly parenting.  She and her husband are prospective foster-adoptive parents, and her blog is a great read for both current and future parents.

One of her posts, second-hand vs. sustainable, really resonated with me.  Sustainable, eco-friendly living is very high on the list of priorities for my husband and me.  We work hard to minimize our impact on the planet, and we definitely fall into the second-hand camp in the debate Deborah described.  The way I see it, any time we buy something second-hand, we’re contributing to a good cause (we mostly shop at Goodwill and Habitat for Humanity thrift stores) and we’re also completely eliminating the need for new products to be manufactured for our use.  In addition, we’re able to stretch our family’s budget much farther than it would have gone if we opted to buy things new.

Another great post on Deborah’s blog is about the baby gear she’s purchased, mostly used.  Our son is 20 months old, and our family budget has changed very little since he was born.  I see so many reports that warn parents about how their costs will go up dramatically when they have a child.  And I see plenty of my own friends – some of whom do not have a lot of money – spending big bucks on matching nursery furniture, coordinated bedding sets, disposable diapers, fancy toys… I feel sad for them, especially the ones who are struggling financially.  For us, the two major expenses since having our son have been his health insurance premiums (about $100/month) and his college savings account (another $100/month).  The health insurance is absolutely essential in my opinion.  The college fund is great if you can swing it, but plenty of kids get through college on scholarships and part time jobs, and a child is not going to be ruined because his parents couldn’t afford to pay for all or part of his education (we don’t plan to pay for all of it, but $100/month for 18 years will make a dent in his tuition bills someday).  Other than those two things, we’ve spent very little on our son.  We purchased a carseat and an organic crib mattress new, pretty much everything else has come from thrift stores and hand me downs.  Our son plays with jars of spices, pots and pans, wooden spoons, and large quantities of plain wooden second-hand blocks.  His crib sheets came from a thrift store, as do all of his clothes, and his curtains were made from second-hand sheets.  My mother and I made all of his diapers from old flannel sheets, t-shirts, and fleece sweatshirts.  We have probably spent less than $100 on diapering for 20 months, and the second-hand, high-efficiency, front-loading washing machine we got last summer has cut down dramatically on how much water it takes to keep the diapers clean.

Our frugal parenting is great for our our budget, but it’s also great for the environment, as we’re not contributing to a demand for new stuff, most of which would only be used for a short time, given how quickly children grow.  If you have a minute, I recommend taking a peek at Deborah’s blog and being inspired to live a life that is easier on your wallet and our world.

Last week, I decided to make a Christmas gift for a friend’s daughter.  The little girl is about the same age as our son, and we get the two of them together every month or so.  They’ve evolved from looking at each other, to poking each other in the eye, to running around the playground and taking turns on the slides. 

I wanted to make her some wooden blocks, and a bag to put them in.  The project ideas came to me while I was out on a walk with the dog, and the whole thing was very simple.  For the bag, I used fabric from a huge mu-mu that I wore to a costume party (and got at a thrift store).  As an outfit, it was pretty horrible, but as fabric for a little girl’s bag, it’s fabulous.  I lined it with flannel from those sheets that I bought last year to make diapers (those sheets just keep on going – I’ve used them for a whole bunch of projects, and they aren’t even close to gone yet).  For the handle and the velcro tabs on the bag, I used a waistband from a pair of jeans that my husband didn’t wear anymore.  Here’s the finished bag, filled with blocks:

For the blocks, I bought two sizes of wooden dowel, and the rest are just made from scraps of wood (mostly 2×4s) that we had in the garage.  My cuts aren’t the straightest, but it gives stuff you build with the blocks a bit of a Dr. Seuss feel, which I think is pretty cool.  I didn’t measure anything, I just cut the wood randomly, so the blocks are all different sizes.  The most time-consuming part of the whole project was sanding the blocks, but even that was fun.  I sat on the back patio sanding blocks while my husband worked in the yard and our son played in the grass with the dog.  Here are pictures of the blocks:

I finished the blocks on Black Friday, which I thought was appropriate.  Sitting outside sanding blocks of wood was a lot more fun than standing in line at a store somewhere.  I spent $8 on the dowels, but everything else for this project was from scraps of wood and fabric that we already had. 

I got an email from a reader today, asking what sort of things our toddler does with his time, particularly since we don’t have a TV.  I thought I’d share some of what we do, in case other readers are looking for ways to occupy a small child without TV or expensive toys.

I’m very lucky in that my husband and both work from home.  When our son was born, I cut back to only about three or four hours of work for our business each day – the rest of my time is devoted to our son and our household.  My husband has his office set up in our basement, and we keep the stairs blocked off so that our son stays on the main level with me during the day.  We have childproofed the kitchen/living room/dining room area, and put childproof covers on the doorknobs leading into the other rooms.  That way he’s always in the same area with me during the day.  When I go outside to water the garden or hang up laundry, he goes with me, and entertains himself by playing in the dirt, gathering stones, stacking flower pots… we have a 3/4 acre backyard, so there’s always plenty for him to do out there.

In the house, we keep it pretty simple, which means he gets ample time to use his imagination.  He loves to play with my pots and pans.  He will entertain himself for long stretches to time by taking every pan and lid out of the cupboard, and carrying them one by one into the living room, where he sets them on the coffee table.  Then he gathers whatever containers he can find, and pretends to pour or shake “ingredients” into the pans.  Then he gets some utensils (I let him have save ones like spatulas and wooden spoons) and stirs his imaginary soup.  I guess he’s spent plenty of time watching me cook!

We have a fairly large collection of board books, thanks to my friends at the library where I used to work (they had a book shower for me before our son was born).  He likes to climb up into the recliner and “read” his books.  He’s always thrilled if we join him, but he’s also happy to just flip the pages and look at the pictures.

Every day, unless the weather is really horrendous, I take our son and our dog for a walk, usually for about an hour.  Sometimes we use the stroller, sometimes the Moby Wrap.  Our son loves to point out cars and dogs and airplanes – pretty much anything that moves.  We also go to the playground if the weather is nice.

We keep a box of toys in the living room, and he likes to dump them out and make up games to play.  They are all simple toys, mostly gifts from his grandparents, and a few wooden toys that we’ve picked up at thrift stores.  We also made a play area down in the basement in my husband’s office, using one of those super long sectional baby gate/cage things (my husband found it in a dumpster, and it’s in perfect shape).  We keep another box of toys down there, and in the evenings while I do yoga, my husband takes our son down to his play area in the basement, and they hang out together.  They are both happy for long periods of time just tossing a ball back and forth, so they do that a lot.

We keep a third box of naptime toys in our son’s room, in the closet.  Every day, when I put him down for his nap, I put the naptime toys in the crib with him.  He plays with them for a few minutes before he falls asleep.  Since we started this trick a few months ago, we haven’t had any fuss at all during naptime (he used to cry or need to be nursed to sleep for his nap).  The naptime toys are just toys that I gathered up from his other boxes – nothing special, but because he doesn’t see them all day, he’s interested in them when he does see them.

Our son has never watched TV.  We had one until he was about 11 months old, but we never turned it on while he was awake, so as far as he knew, it was just a black box.  Now that we don’t have one at all, his days are automatically taken up with other things.   He’s never seen commercials, so there’s no desire on his part to have any new toys or gizmos. Nothing we have is fancy, but our son is happy pretty much all of the time.  Thus, we’re going on the “if it ain’t broke…” theory.

We don’t have our son enrolled in any sort of programs or structured activities.  We go to the library, but I haven’t enrolled him in story time yet, mainly because we go at different times every week, whenever I can fit it in around the rest of my schedule.  We see other kids at the playground, and I get together every now and then with a friend who has a toddler, for a playdate.  My honest opinion is that kids just need love, lots of laughter, toys that let them use their imagination (stuff from the recycle bin works just fine), and a secure environment.  I’m not a fan of structured activities for preschool age kids.  I also like to keep our life as low-stress as possible, and not trying to juggle a bunch of  outside commitments for a toddler helps to keep it that way.

That’s our life with our son.  It’s simple, very inexpensive (mostly free), low-stress, and lots of fun.  I often find myself on the floor, driving “cars” (blocks) around the carpet, making vroom-vroom sounds, and realizing that nothing could make me or my son any happier.

I noticed a couple weeks ago that our son was starting to ourgrow most of his hand-me-down shoes.  His toes have gotten to the end of his size 5s, so I knew it was time for a trip to the thrift store.  I decided to get him two pairs of size 6 shoes, as I figured that would last him until he needs a bigger size. 

It only took me a few minutes to find exactly what I needed.  I found a pair of Stride Rite shoes (super cool, with little surf boards all over them – my husband said he’d like a pair in his size) and a pair of Lands End shoes, both size 6, and both with almost no wear at all (no toe imprints inside, no wear showing on the soles).  I also found a pair of size 6 winter boots – just in time, since we’re supposed to get a foot of snow over the next two days. 

As a bonus, I came across a miniature catcher’s mitt, which my husband thought was my best score of the day.  He got out his own glove and started playing a toddler version of catch with our son as soon as I got home.

All together, I spent $12.  For two pairs of shoes, boots, and a mitt.  I knew that Lands End and Stride Rite are good brands, but just out of curiosity I checked their websites to see what sort of a deal I got.  Most of the shoes on the Stride Rite site were in the $40 – $55 range, and the Lands End shoes were about $30.

In keeping with my mission to declutter our house, I dropped off a carload of donations at the thrift store.  The catcher’s mitt wasn’t on my list, but it was just too awesome to pass up.

If you’re not already shopping in thrift stores, you gotta start!

If you’ve been reading my blog for a while, you know that I’m not fond of toxic chemicals in our house or yard.  We grow all of our veggies using organic methods, clean the house with baking soda and vinegar, and avoid food additives like preservatives and food colorings.  So it should come as no surprise that we don’t want our son wearing pajamas treated with flame retardant chemicals.

I know other parents who feel the same way, and their solution has been to go out and buy new cotton pajamas that say “wear snug f’itting – not flame resistant” on the tag.  I have found a few pairs of these at thrift stores, and our son has been wearing them this summer.  But he’s starting to outgrow them now, and winter is coming.  I know that I could go back to the thrift stores and search through the pajamas to find more that aren’t treated with flame retardants.  But I’m trying to avoid shopping in general – we already have too much stuff, and I don’t want to add anything else.  I’ve been sorting through our stuff and weeding out clutter, and it feels great.  We live ten miles from the thrift stores now, as opposed to where we used to live, which was half a mile from two great thrift stores.  This is great for my efforts to save money, get by with less, and avoid consumerism in all its forms – including buying used stuff that we really don’t need.

So our son is now wearing sweatpants and sweatshirts to bed.  We have several that will fit him all winter.  They were hand me downs and items that I purchased at thrift stores before we moved, and they make perfect pajamas.  I pair them with warm socks, and he’s all set for the night.  Thrift stores are frugal, but making do with what we already have is even more frugal, and it serves a secondary purpose of keeping the clutter in our house to a minimum.

Thanks for all the feedback on my last post about children and food.  We’ll see how things go as our son gets older, but for now we’ll just assume that he’ll be somewhat like his parents.  My husband and I will eat anything that is put in front of us (trust me – I ate pig intestines when I lived in Africa).  I don’t buy or cook meat anymore for ethical reasons, but if I’m at someone else’s house and they serve it, I will eat it.  Not liking something and not eating it are two different things.  Obviously when I go to the store I purchase foods I like (but that involves one of just about everything from the produce department), and our meals tend to be things that we prefer.  But if we’re at someone else’s house or at an ethnic restaurant, we’ll eat whatever we’re served.  That’s what we’re trying to instill in our son.  I assume that he’ll grow up with various food preferences.  And I assume that once he’s cooking for himself and his own family, he’ll prepare the foods he likes.  But my goals are to make sure that he’s exposed to a very wide range of foods, and to make sure that he knows it is absolutely unacceptable to make his own food preferences known if someone else is preparing the food.

Since learning begins in the home, we feel that it’s important that he learn that when his parents are doing the cooking, he needs to eat what’s put in front of him.  My mother encouraged all of her children to help her in the kitchen, and would let us prepare meals, from choosing the menu to shopping and cooking (none of my three siblings are picky eaters either).  We will start doing that with our son as soon as he’s old enough.  Since we’re planning to start growing most of our own food once we move, we’ll involve him in that as soon as he’s able.  If he’s grown the food in his own garden, he’ll probably be much more likely to appreciate it on the plate.

I read studies before I was pregnant that indicated that what a mother eats while she’s pregnant can have an influence on a child’s tastes.  I gave up sugar before I got pregnant (and we still don’t eat it now), and boosted my already high veggie intake.  I started making green smoothies while I was pregnant, and our son pretty much always finishes his whole bowl of green smoothie.  We don’t eat processed food or conventional dessert in our house, so our son hasn’t been exposed to sweets, and he’s never had fast food (I do serve plenty of fruit, and make desserts out of things like dates and nuts blended together).  All of this makes it easier for us to feed him a wide range of foods, including lots of veggies.

This is obviously a personal preference issue.  For some parents, it might not be as big a deal.  It’s very important to us that our son grow up willing to try new foods and able to eat anywhere with anyone without being a fussy eater.  So we’re working towards that goal.  We’ll see how it goes, but so far so good!

When our son was born, I knew that I wanted to raise a child who would eat whatever was put in front of him. For nearly six months, he was just breast fed. When we first introduced “solids” we started with pureed veggies and water, which I froze in ice cube containers and defrosted as we needed them. I think carrots and green beans were his first non-milk foods. We started gradually, introducing single foods and watching to make sure that he didn’t have any strange reactions. Everything looked good, and within a month we had made the switch to using a little food grinder and just giving him whatever we were eating.

After a few more months we were able to just cut or mash our food into tiny pieces rather than using the grinder. These days we just cut his food into pieces and let him feed it to himself. I still spoon feed him things like oatmeal and green smoothies every day, but he’s able to feed most food to himself now with his fingers.  This evening we had a salad with avocado, tomato, spinach, arugula, onion, and fennel in balsamic vinegar.  He ate every bite that we put on his highchair tray.

People have started to notice what a good eater our son is.  They comment on how he eats so many vegetables without putting up a fuss.   There’s really no secret here, but since we do get so many comments about it, and since I hear so many parents talking about how they wish their kids would eat more vegetables, I figured I’d share what we’ve learned.

First, we took the frugal route when it came to baby food.  We’ve never purchased formula or any sort of prepackaged baby food.  Our son still nurses about three times a day, and everything else he eats is just whatever we’re eating.  This has a few advantages:  it’s a lot cheaper than buying individual jars or boxes of baby food, there’s no packaging waste to deal with, and we’ve automatically exposed our son to a wide variety of foods.  He loves things like curry, which we probably wouldn’t have found if we had gone the jarred foods route.  I’ve heard a lot of people saying that they want to make baby food rather than buying jarred food, but that they don’t have time.  I think these people are over-thinking the whole situation.  You don’t have to go all out baby-gourmet here!  There’s no need for special baby food cook books or anything like that.  A simple baby food grinder will turn just about anything into instant baby food.  (Of couse all of this is assuming that the parents eat reasonably well themselves.  If they’re surviving on Big Macs and Ho Hos, the jarred baby food is a much better bet!)

As far as getting our son to eat vegetables (and whatever else we put in front of him), we just decided early on that there would be no substitute meals.  Either he would eat what we served for a meal, or he wouldn’t eat.  And the uneaten meal would go in the fridge and reappear a few hours later.  Children are pretty smart critters.  If they refuse to eat what you serve, and you offer an alternate meal, they will develop a pretty good strategy for eating whatever they like.

I think that a lot of parents start out assuming that their child won’t like vegetables, and assuming that they have to prepare or buy special meals for their child.  I say that we should all start with the assumption that our children will LOVE vegetables (and whatever else we feed them), and then make it happen.  It’s easier than you think, and actually a lot easier than the alternative (which in some families involves separate meals for the kids for years… no thanks!)

Our son is 13 months old, and so far he’s a great eater.  I can’t predict the future as far as his preferences go, but I do know that there will never be alternative meals in our house.  And I’ve noticed that children raised in that sort of environment don’t tend to become picky eaters.  We’ll help our son start gardening as soon as he’s able, and encourage him to be involved in grocery shopping and cooking from an early age.  Hopefully the eating habits we’re instilling now will stick with him as time goes by.

Last night I decided that we needed some new pajamas for our son.  He’ll be one in a couple weeks, and this is the first time we’ve ever had to go clothes shopping for him.  This is due to the generosity of a friend who gave me her son’s hand me downs (which were given to her as hand me downs – we’re really into recycling around here), and to the fact that I believe that it doesn’t matter what babies wear as long as they are comfortable (thus you’ll never find me at the mall looking for cute outfits for him).  Anyway, after nearly a year, we had run out of pjs that fit.  So we headed to our two neighborhood thrift stores today, on a pj mission. 

I found lots of pajamas (including two piece sets that have not been treated with flame retardants, one of which had never been worn).  In addition to the pajamas for our son, we found all sorts of other goodies.  We spent a total of $46 between the two stores.  Here’s a look at our loot:

Two pair of zip-up pjs, a sleep sack, and a cute little shirt.

A Columbia jacket for me, two pair of shorts for my husband, a big saucepan for our solar oven, a yoga band, a garlic storage container (I currently store all of my produce in one huge bowl on the counter.  So my garlic snuggles with my mangos.  Now the garlic will have it’s own little home), and a Hip Hammock.  The Hip Hammock was only $3.50, and I tried it out in the store before I bought it.  I still love my Moby Wrap when we’re walking long distances, but it’s not the easiest thing to put on.  The Hip Hammock took about 5 seconds to get on, and our son happily rode around in it while we finished our shopping.  I checked it out online when I got home and found that some had been recalled a few years ago, but this one is a newer model that hasn’t had any problems.  Not bad for $3.50!

And more stuff for the little guy:  Two sun hats, a pair of swim trunks, two more sets of pjs, a really cool jacket that I think is handmade (it doesn’t have any tags or logos in it.  It’s amazingly well made), a pair of little guy slippers, a soft book with all sorts of little person-friendly activities that our son didn’t put down the whole time we were in the store, and a sweatshirt.

All of that for $46.  Have I ever mentioned how much I love thrift stores?  I can’t imagine ever shopping anywhere else.  Even if we made twice as money as we do now, I think I would always see it as a waste of money to buy things brand new.  Not only are there bargains around every corner when you shop second hand, but I love the idea that you never know what you’ll find when you go thrifting.  It’s always an adventure.