greenbaby

The whole time I was pregnant I proudly told anybody who asked (and sometimes people who didn’t ask) that my baby would not be using a pacifier. My philosophy was that a baby whose parents met her needs with cuddling, nursing and attention would not need a pacifier. A pacifier could turn into a crutch that might last into the baby’s second or third year.
That philosophy lasted all of one day.
The second night we were in the hospital after Sweet Pea was born a nurse came and got her to take a blood sample. When she came back to the room she was securely swaddled and had a pacifier in her mouth. She was asleep, and sucking at it blissfully. My immediate, groggy reaction was that I should take it out of her mouth. But she had kept me up all night crying and nursing, and Pookie was passed out on the pull out cot in the corner, and S.P. seemed so happy that I let her keep it. Since then, we’ve found a good balance with the pacifier. We definitely don’t use it to plug her up when she’s crying. Really, the only time we use it at home is to help her fall asleep after she’s been changed, fed and cuddled. Out and about, she sometimes uses it if she’s in a situation where she seems to feel unsure and need some comfort in addition to being held by Mom or Dad. And we also use it in the car when she’s crying and there really isn’t anything else we can do.
The best pacifier we found is the Natursutten Natural Rubber Pacifier. Danish in origin, this is a golden-colored pacifier molded all in one piece from natural rubber. Because the pacifier is all one piece, there are no cracks or crevices for dirt or bacteria to become lodged and it is easily disinfected by boiling it for five minutes. The natural rubber the pacifier is made from contains no parabens, PVC, phthalates, or BPA (bisphenol-A). The shield (the part that rests against the baby’s face) is a little larger than on other pacifiers in order to keep the baby from bending it enough to fit the whole thing in her mouth. An added advantage to this is that the baby can easily hold the pacifier herself and chew on it.
The only drawback to this pacifier is that natural rubber biodegrades over time, so the pacifier needs to be replaced every four to five weeks. This makes it a bit more expensive than other pacifiers, but in my opinion, it’s worth the price!

I have been reading a lot about attachment parenting lately. I found a book at the library called A Secure Base: Parent-Child Attachment and Healthy Human Development written by John Bowlby. The book was published in 1988 and Bowlby seems to have been one of the earliest proponents of attachment theory. What’s nice about this book is that it gets to the psychological roots of attachment theory. What’s a little difficult about this book is that it is basically a series of lectures that were delivered at various times to the psychological (?) community. It deals a lot with the technical aspects of attachment theory and the psychological results of poor parenting. It tends to address severely poor parenting, i.e. verbally or physically abusive parents or emotionally absent parents. It’s a little hard to apply some of this to my own parenting, but it’s great to get some concrete background on attachment theory.
For those of you who aren’t familiar with attachment parenting, here’s a little explanation in Bowlby’s words:
Attachment theory regards the propensity to make intimate emotional bonds to particular individuals as a basic component of human nature, already present in germinal form in the neonate and continuing through adult life into old age. During infancy and childhood bonds are with parents (or parent substitutes) who are looked to for protection, comfort, and support… Exploring the environment, including play and varied activities with peers, is seen as a third basic component and one antithetic to attachment behaviour. When an individual (of any age) is feeling secure he is likely to explore away from his attachment figure. When alarmed, anxious, tired, or unwell he feels an urge towards proximity. Thus we see the typical pattern of interaction between child and parent known as exploration from a secure base…
What’s got me a little concerned is that last night I read the following sentence:
Around the middle of the third year, however, a secure child begins to become confident enough to increase time and distance away - first to half-days and later to whole days. (Emphasis mine.)
Well, I’ve arranged our lives so that I can stay home with Sweet Pea for at least the first year of her life, and I’m working on ways to stay home with her beyond her first year, but there is a very real chance that I will need to work at least part time if not full time outside the home next year. Will S.P. be developmentally ready for this? Obviously I need to read more!

Well, it’s that time of year again. The tree is up in our living room (a small one on a table so the dogs can’t dismantle it), I’m slowly but surely baking the Christmas cookies, and this afternoon we’ll go to Walgreens to pick up pictures of Sweet Pea for the Christmas cards. Unfortunately, not only is Christmas one of the most joyous times of the year, but also one of the most wasteful. Gifts wrapped in shiny, glossy paper (very difficult to recycle) produce more waste than at any other time of the year. Add to that the plastic wrap from plates of Christmas cookies and the packaging from the presents themselves, and you have a recipe for a full garbage can.
There are a few simple ways you can cut down on the waste produced by your family this holiday season.
1) Bag it, don’t wrap it. “Save the paper!” is a familiar cry of mothers everywhere during birthday parties and on Christmas morning. While we may have made fun of our mothers’ frugality, they had the right idea. But wrapping paper, even when carefully folded and set aside, can only be reused a limited number of times before it shows a considerable amount of wear and tear. Not so for gift bags! They may cost a bit more up front, but can be used for years and still look new. Another favorite that I’ve just discovered this holiday season is gift boxes. These are boxes that come in different sizes and are made out of cardboard that is printed with decorative, colorful designs. They, too can be easily reused from year to year and they cost a bit less than gift bags.
2) Think reusable when packaging foods. When you bring in that plate of cookies to work or that platter of cheese to the party at your in-laws, use reusable containers to carry it. Put the cookies or the cheese in a tupperware or rubbermaid container (I like a set of glass bowls with plastic lids that I found at Crate and Barrel - they’re better for reheating food than their plastic counterparts). Bring along the platter and set it up in a few minutes when you get to where you’re going.
3) Cut back on packaging. Look for toys and other gifts that have little or no excess packaging. Happily, the more eco-friendly toys generally are not sold in packages or, if they are, they are fairly minimally packaged. Not only is this better for the environment, but it cuts down on that Christmas morning frustration of trying to get through layers of plastic and cardboard to the toy within!
Happy holidays!

Just made this today to celebrate the coming holidays! It’s from Beatrice Ojakangas’ The Great Scandinavian Baking Book.

Makes 3 loaves.

2 packages active dry yeast (4 1/2 tsp.)
1/2 cup warm water, 105-115 degrees F
2 cups buttermilk (if you don’t have buttermilk, use the same amount of fresh milk mixed with 2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice or vinegar)
3/4 cup dark corn syrup or light molasses
1/4 cup softened or melted butter
2 tablespoons grated orange peel
1 teaspoon each fennel seed and caraway seed
2 teaspoons salt
2 cups dark rye flour
1 cup whole wheat or graham flour
4 to 5 cups bread or unbleached all-purpose flour

1. In a large bowl, dissolve the yeast in the warm water and let stand 5 minutes. Heat the buttermilk to lukewarm and add to the yeast mixture. Stir in the syrup, butter, orange peel, fennel seed, caraway seed, salt and rye flour. Beat well. Stir in the whole wheat flour and beat again. Add the bread flour, a cup at a time, beating after each addition to keep smooth. When mixture will not readily absorb more flour, cover and let rest 15 minutes.

2. Turn dough out onto a lightly floured board and knead until smooth and satiny, about 10 minutes. Wash bowl, grease it, and add dough to the bowl. Turn to grease all sides. Cover and let rise until doubled, about 1 hour.

3. Lightly grease three 9-inch round cake pans or baking sheets. Lightly oil a work surface and turn dough out onto it. Divide into 3 parts and shape each into a round loaf. Place on the baking sheets with smooth sides up. Let rise, covered, in a warm place for about 45 minutes to 1 hour. Pierce loaves all over with a fork.

4. Preheat oven to 375 degrees F. Bake loaves for 40 minutes or until a wooden skewer inserted in the center comes out clean. Remove from oven and pans and cool on racks.

I hate junk mail. We recently took out a 13 week trial subscription to our local newspaper. We only get the Sunday paper, which is fine with us because we barely have time to read that. But every Sunday evening I separate out all the advertisements to put them in the recycling. The size of the paper is cut in half without those ads! I know that this is at least in part attributable to the fact that nobody reads the paper anymore. With news available online, most newspapers are suffering and their only recourse is to get more advertising revenue. But that is not an excuse for the amount of junk mail I’ve been receiving. I looked it up recently and found that Americans receive around four tons of junk mail every year, using around 100 million trees! But don’t despair. If you want to make an impact on the amount of paper junk mail, you’ll need to register for the Mail Preference Service offered by the Direct Marketing Association. You can find a mail-in form for this at www.privacyrights.org/Letters/jm1a.htm. Send the mail-in form, along with a one dollar check or money order to:
Mail Preference Service
Direct Marketing Association
PO Box 643
Carmel, NY 10512

You can also register online at www.dmachoice.org/dma/member/regist.action.

As a postscript, I just want to mention that I have no control over the ads that appear with my blog. Usually they are for organic baby items, etc., but for some reason this time they are along the lines of chatting with “sexy singles.” Not my choice, and I apologize!

I’d like to share a recipe that I tried as an appetizer at Thanksgiving. I liked it so much that I made it for a holiday potluck we went to last week as well! It’s a sundried tomato pesto and I served it with slices of french bread. It’s from Barbara Kingsolver’s book Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. It’s very easy - you basically put everything in a food processor and blend it up!

2 cups dried tomatoes
1 cup coarsely chopped walnuts
3/4 cup olive oil
1/3 cup grated Parmesan
1/4 cup dried basil
4 cloves garlic
2 tablespoons balsamic or other good vinegar
1/2 teaspoon salt

Puree all ingredients in a food processor until smooth. Add a little water if it seems too sticky, but it should remain thick enough to spread on a slice of bread.

Enjoy!

My mother in law gave us an advent basket for the holidays. This was very sweet and thoughtful of her and I really appreciate the time and effort she put into putting it all together. For those of you who don’t know, an advent basket is a basket filled with 25 small gifts. You open one gift each day until Christmas. The problem is that when you’re trying to find 25 small gifts, it’s easy to start buying things that are not really useful and (dare I say it?) even wasteful. Take yesterday’s gift. It was a cellophane package containing two inflatable vinyl balls, one shaped like Santa’s head and one shaped like Rudolph’s. Sure, they’re cute. But they’re vinyl. They smell of plastic, and as you may have read in an earlier post of mine, if you can smell plastic, that means it is off-gassing. In a way, I find it odd that my mother in law would give us these because she generally is quite the stickler for high quality toys. But like I said, she was just trying to fill that advent basket. So I’m left with a conundrum. I don’t want Sweet Pea playing with these plastic balls and I’d really prefer not to receive gifts like this in the future but I don’t know how to approach my mother in law about this or even if I should. My husband’s family has a different way of dealing with things than mine does. In my family we try to approach issues like this head on. I would have no problem asking my mother not to give us things like this. But my husband’s family tends to ignore these issues. They’re big into not “upsetting” each other. I know I can just give these balls to Goodwill, but I don’t like the idea of them having been bought for us in the first place because the more they are bought the more they will be produced and the production of cheap plastic toys is not something I want to be involved in. Grrr…
Who knew being a married adult and parent would be so difficult?

I have been having a bit of a crisis lately about the state of my future. The state of my future is… uncertain. As Mr. Whitman famously wrote, “Do I contradict myself? Very well, I contradict myself. I am large, I contain multitudes.” Or something to that effect.
People often, upon first meeting me, take me for a free spirit. I look a little like a hippie and often act the part. And hippies are carefree, right? Not so much this hippie. I like to have my ducks in a row so to speak. I like my house to be clean, I like to know what I’m making for dinner and I like to have some idea of what I’ll be doing one year from now. But at the same time, the fact that I have no idea what I’ll be doing a year from now is exciting. I do get an emotional rush from it. But it would probably be more exciting if Sweet Pea weren’t tied up in it. Because the idea that I might not be with her all day every day next year frankly leaves me devastated.
I’ve tried desperately to be brave about all this. I’m aware that children are put in daycare all the time and have quality relationships with their parents and grow up healthy and well-adjusted. So am I being selfish? That’s what I keep asking myself. I like to think that my wanting to stay home with S.P. is best for her. That the best thing for her is to have a consistent, loving caregiver (namely, me). But I know that Pookie’s attitude is that we can do best by S.P. if we maximize our income and are therefore able to provide for her financially. So is it selfish for me to want to, in effect, minimize our income and be with S.P. every day? A big part of me thinks that no, it isn’t. What does S.P. really need? Food. She gets plenty of that and it’s pretty good quality, too. Clothes. She has more than enough of those, what with gifts and hand me downs. Shelter. Maybe not the fanciest digs in the world, but check. Love. That’s the biggie. And I have more than enough of that to give her. It looks like I’m definitely leaning towards the stay at home angle. But in order to do that there is a minimum amount of money I need to earn.
Oh, I am just so tired of going over and over this from every possible angle…
If anybody has any tips, advice, input or prayers to pass along to me, I’d really appreciate it.

The other day my sister, D, was visiting. She was getting ready to leave when I realized that I should take the opportunity to throw a load of diapers in the washing machine while I had an extra set of hands. D agreed to watch Sweet Pea while I ran down to the basement, so I went down and started a load in the washer. I could not have been down in the basement for more than 5 minutes, but when I came back upstairs S.P. was beside herself. D was holding her and S.P. was screaming. It was a kind of crying I had never heard from her before. It reminded me of the way older children cry when they get really worked up and can’t catch their breath. D said, “I don’t know what happened! One minute she was fine - she was smiling at me! Then the next minute she started screaming.” We determined that in that instant between happy and upset, S.P. must have noticed that I was nowhere nearby. This happened two days after I would have returned to work had I followed my original plan.
Separation anxiety is a funny thing. On the one hand, mothers hate it because it makes it hard to do anything without the baby. On the other hand, I will admit that there is a certain satisfaction in knowing that you are the only one who can really calm your baby - that you are the only one your baby really wants. We will work on this separation anxiety. After all, eventually I would like to be able to drop S.P. off at the grandparents’ house and go to a movie with Pookie. But I am now more confident than ever that I am making the right choice in staying home and doing everything I can to make sure I am able to stay home as long as possible.

Sweet Pea and I have reached a compromise concerning naps. If you recall, I posted a while ago regarding our nap situation. Sweet Pea would only nap for more than 15 minutes in her swing. I didn’t like this for a number of reasons: 1) I’m not sure the constant swinging is good for her - I don’t want her to only be able to fall asleep while moving! 2) What happens when she outgrows the swing?! But I was persistent regarding napping in the crib and we are making progress.
Sweet Pea still takes her morning nap in the swing while I’m eating breakfast and doing my daily job search. But for the 2-3 other naps she takes during the day, she’s in the crib. When she falls asleep or is very drowsy, I just put her in the crib. If she fusses, I give her a pacifier and that usually calms her down so she can go back to sleep. I also put a receiving blanket over her. She likes to hold on to it and it helps keep her warm (we keep our house quite brisk in the winter). Playing lullabies also seems to help her sleep longer. Sometimes she falls asleep while I’m wearing her around the house, and that’s fine with me. I usually leave her in the carrier or sling and let her nap. As long as she is at least part of the time napping willingly in her crib, I’m not worried.