Here comes the sunscreen

I have a good friend who works in maternal-child health and environmental toxicities for the state. She read up on sunscreens made with the least possible harmful substances and then went out and bought me this brand... Hawaiian Tropics Baby Faces. Yup, turns out it's not Aveeno or California Baby or anything like that.

In addition to being a good sunscreen, the bottle shape is great. A small bottle just kind of clicks into the large one like a puzzle (my husband the chemical engineer said "I wonder what kind of processing plant it takes to produce this!").

I take the travel size everywhere - of course I also learned last year to refill a bunch of the small bottles we have that used to be full of hotel shampoo with sunscreen and stash them in the car, every stroller we own and the diaper bag. Somehow on the hottest days I was always caught without sunscreen and that can ruin a perfectly good day at the park.

Baby and toddler proof your dining room

Before kids we had a pretty low-maintenance (I thought) eating area... an old but pleasant teak table and chairs with upholstered seats. We used place mats to protect the table and had a sisal rug on the floor.

Turns out this was possibly the worst possible combo with messy babies and toddlers. The texture of sisal rugs traps all kinds of food that's thrown on the floor and forget about cleaning up spills. Meanwhile the unfinished teak was susceptible to water and heat damage. And there appeared to be nothing the girls liked more than reaching up and pulling down the place mats. Ditto for lots of tablecloths we tried. And since room is scarce for two highchairs, we had booster seats strapped onto two of our chairs which wasn't doing wonders for the upholstered seats. Here's how we stumbled through making the daily dining space kid proofed and also not terrible looking:

First we had to come up with a table covering before the teak top got irreparably ruined. We ended up getting some Mexican-style oilcloth (below). It cleans up REALLY easily, plus the back has a sort of stickiness to it so that it stays in place fairly well. At first I used binder clips clip it all together under the table so the girls couldn't pull it off. But now I just let it hang loose and with a fairly generous overhang it hasn't been a problem at all.

Next issue was the upholstered seats. First I tried an old flannel backed tablecloth that I had lying around and cut it in half. Then I wrapped the seats bottoms up with it like a present and secured it with duct tape. After a while the tape failed and it ended up looking pretty terrible. And with all the folds and the textured vinyl material it just didn't clean up very well.

So I finally went and got some smooth plastic tablecloth material that they sell by the yard at the local longs. It was clear with cute frogs on it. This time I took the 30 minutes to actually take the seat bottoms off and use thumbtacks to properly to put this easy clean material on top of the existing upholstery. Voila! See pic at left, but I think it looks great and it has worked really well.

when we couldn't stand it anymore we'd post it on Final challenge was the rug. I kind of let it go and just let it get dirtier and dirtier assuming that freecycle and then figure out what to do next. I tried using a smaller cotton rug under the girls' chairs but even though that could go in the wash it was a pain to wash and dry it all the time.

The answer has come in the form of Home Depot. They sell industrial grade carpet in sizes of 6X8 and 9X12. This stuff isn't the most gorgeous thing ever, but it's indestructible, can be hosed off and I smelled all the options they had there and I couldn't detect any nasty smells. When the grand total for my nice multi-hued 6X8 rug came to $23 bucks at the register, the sales woman asked "that's a great deal, where did you find it? are there more back there? I want to get one."

It was a long process, but we're finally in a state where the girls can feed themselves and the food can fly everywhere and I can just sit back and let them learn and make a mess and not stress about the clean up.

Green product IQ

There is a lot of info out there about making green consumer choices. But a friend is working on a new site that is supposed to help people on the go make quick decisions about one product over another - very mobile device friendly for people who are literally standing in front of two brands of baby shampoo in the store and want the skinny on their green cred. Anyway, he just sent along a link to a quiz that they've set up to pique interest. I scored 5 out of 11. Give it a whirl if you'd like.

Lessons of a part-time working mom in a creative field

Keeping up your creative side is a challenge being a mom, especially daunting if it's a required part of your job. As a new twin mom it's pretty tough because keeping everyone happy often means finding ROUTINES that work and sticking with them. I spent some time the other day thinking about what has helped me the most with keeping up my creative side when working and when mom-ing. This is what I came up with:

+ Seek out other part-time moms to hang out with at least once in a while. I found myself overly critical of myself when I was always with just SAHM or else moms who worked outside their house full-time. Even though it was my own issues hearing what they were up to made me feel I wasn't giving either enough attention to my girls or enough creativity to my job. I know it was silly, but hey, post-partum/nursing hormones and being sleep-deprived doesn't really lead to being even-keeled. So checking in with other part-timers is great.

+ When you have time to read again, find a book that talks about the various stages of parenting. Yes, I mean all the way through the empty nest. I kind of stumbled on one at the library and took it home and, admittedly, just skimmed it but,man, it makes me feel better when I feel like I'm just not going to get through the next few hours. Helps me give me some concrete image of the distant future to keep it all in perspective.

+ Get rid of as much technology as possible on the days you're not working. It took me a little while to figure this out, but throwing myself into watching the girls on the days that I did - i.e. no email except during their naps and avoiding the phone - helped improve my performance in both realms. I will admit to trying to write an email about a story idea to my editor with unhappy kids in the background and no one won in those cases.

+ See this time as an opportunity to learn what you really love about your job and try to just focus on that as much as possible.

+ Keep up your creativity when you're not working OR watching the babies. For instance, date night should always be somewhere new and different. When you're exhausted going somewhere familiar sounds so appealing. But I've found even though I'm usually initially annoyed with my husband for insisting on going to a new neighborhood or town for dinner when we do get away from the apartment, I'm always really glad for the new perspective.