Battery Recycling

Baby equipment takes an army of batteries. We have all the used ones right now sitting around for recycling. I found a couple options for recycling. One great online tool was this site where you can plug in your zip code and get the nearest site:

http://earth911.org/recycling/battery-recycling/

And two retailers that seem to be participating in alkaline battery recycling programs are Walgreen's and IKEA. I think at Walgreen's you may have to ask what do with used batteries at the photo department and at IKEA the recycling bins are supposedly at the exit of the store.

We've been trying to get away from batteries altogether now that the swing is no longer a key tool in our baby arsenal. And sure enough they're pretty happy just pushing all the buttons without the sounds and lights. Hurrah!

This Mom and her kids / Sittin' in the car...

A little while back I wondered about what to do with two sleeping babes in the car. Now I've had even more practice with that, so my list of useful things to do is growing:

• If the gas tank is less than 1/3 full I go and gas up. The tank is always empty at the least convenient times.
• I've tried to figure out the most picturesque places I can go and write in the little journal I keep about their latest achievements. Pictured is the Berkeley Marina where I ended up the other day. Other possibilities are local parks, cemeteries, just going somewhere different than usual feels like a break.
• I also have found it's a great time to go through and clean out the photos from my digital camera. When I can remember to take pictures I do. I never seem to clear them off. So this has been a great time for that.

Lakeshore Learning online coupon discount code

Lakeshore Learning has great wooden and educational toys, like the one at right. If you are looking for some holiday gifts that fit that criteria maybe this coupon code will help...

The code is: 79246

It's for $5 off a $25 or more purchase, or $10 off a $50 or more purchase.

Expires 12/31.

Another online parenting support

I've added another site to the places I turn for online support. It's called mamasource and it is a really nice complement to the local twins group and the Berkeley Parents Network, which I also belong to. The advantages of mamasource are that you get same day replies to your queries and it is pretty thoroughly anonymous if there's a reason that matters to you. Mamasource has a national reach, which gives it a different flavor, though it does customize relevant local info, so you're not getting ads about a new baby shop 20 states away.

There's a daily digest that you can very easily reply and post to, and also info on local mom owned businesses!

Streamlining time on email

As the holiday season heats up and there's more demand on my time, I'm finding my To Do lists getting longer and I'm also misplacing them more. So I'm passing on this tip from my sister-in-law. It's worked great for me. I no longer need to make lists of people I need to respond to via email. Instead if I get a message I can't reply to right away, I star it - or some programs call it flagging a message. Then when you do have a few uninterrupted minutes you can log in and just look at all of your starred mail. It's a straightforward list of who you need to reply to, and especially with all the holiday shopping spam it narrows down your inbox to a manageable level.

Bottom's up...

I'm trying to get my girls to drink out of cups and someone had the great suggestion to teach them using our shot glasses. Shot glasses are better proportioned for their small mouths, plus there's less liquid to spill when they decide to turn the cups over to see what happens. It was great advice and is helping a lot.

Mixing breastmilk and shot glasses reminds me of a story I read in this really useful book - So That's What They're For!: The Definitive Breastfeeding Guide. The book relates how a lactation consultant was working with a breastfeeding mama. One of the woman's problems was that her pumped breastmilk just wouldn't freeze. It took the lactation consultant a while to get to the bottom of it, but I'll give you a hint - what's the other liquid that doesn't freeze in your freezer? You got it, vodka. I think of that story everytime I go out and have a drink these days.

The Plastics Question

Rubber Ducky,
you're the one...
with pthalates!

I was stopped yesterday while food shopping by two Cal Anthropology students. They were interviewing moms of young kids about their knowledge of pthalates and Bisphenol-A. I actually felt like I was back in school on one of those days that I coincidentally had done all the reading and the teacher decided to give a pop quiz. My good friend who works in maternal-child public health had just been talking to me about the plastics question earlier in the week.

My friend suggested I read this article in the Nation. It's about pthalates in toys... the component that seemingly makes plastics (like rubber duckies) soft. Pthalates are actually banned in Europe. Bisphenol-A (BPA) meanwhile is a concern in harder plastics like bottles. Clear bottles like Avent and Dr. Brown's have them, while murky ones like Medela and Born Free don't.

I've basically decided that plastics are convenient at times and I'm not going to banish them from my house, or invest in pricey products like Born Free. Instead, my ground rule is when it comes to kitchen wear I won't freeze or heat foods in plastics, but I do serve the girls out of plastics. And for toys, I'll happily accept hand me down hard plastic toys, but won't buy new ones.

Here's a recommendation on the baby bottle issue in particular from a Chicago Tribune article:

Until more is known about the real dangers of BPA, choose glass or supposedly safer-plastic baby bottles offered by Born Free (made with polyamide) or Medela (polypropylene) so bisphenol A can't leach into the milk. For sippy cups and water bottles, plastics labeled No. 1, No. 2 or No. 5 in the recycling triangle are considered safer. Try to keep your child from putting plastic toys -- especially those designed for older children -- in his mouth.

And always use glass, rather than plastic, to microwave food and liquid.

Putting the green in the green and red

As the holidays approach, this is a great list of gift ideas from the blog Green Parenting.

Green Parenting: Green, Socially Responsible Gift Giving

A quick list of some of my favorites:

• Membership to a local museum
• Adopt and track a sea turtle throughout the year at Seaturtle.org
• Help a rural community develop health or social services (or a number of other options) via Seva Foundation
• Send seedlings or windowbox gardening kits – seeds of change or windowbox.com
  

And potential ideas for kids to give to others:

• Compose. Songs, poems, stories, plays, portraits, dances…
• Work. Clean out somebody’s garage, cupboards, paint their porch, weed their garden…

They also have good ideas posted for toys and the like.

This mama walked into McDonalds...

This isn't a joke. And actually I didn't even walk. I went to the drive thru - ten gazillion times worse for the planet, I know. I remember doing a business story about how some cities to get in compliance with the Clean Air Act had to restrict the hours of their drive thrus.

But here's the dilemma for any parent, and times two for a twin parent. You're driving home and your babies fall asleep in their fixed car seats. You want them to keep sleeping, what do you do? I think I should probably stash a book in the car and just park in the street outside our building. Unfortunately our apartment's garage is kinda claustrophobic to me. Plus for some reason the girls always wake up right away in there.

Yesterday, though, I was hungry and tired and so I went and got myself a sundae in the drive thru and then went to a beautiful cemetery near our house and sat there eating it. It was a great quiet moment. I may get addicted. Before I do, any other suggestions for a pleasant, sane break with two sleeping babies in the car?

Mmmmmm... birthday cake

This is an egg-less, milk-less frosted Banana Cake that was a hit when I made it for a good friend's 1-year old. Because it doesn't have the egg whites and straight milk it should be fine for any solid foods baby who has started eating yogurt and wheat already. And who is allowed an occasional sugar treat. It made one 8" X 10" sheet cake and then one small loaf cake (sweets for later!).

I frosted the sheet cake with a version of cream cheese frosting and used the juice from some microwaved frozen blueberries to color the lettering.

Banana Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting

5 big, ripe bananas (about 2 cups)

2 cups plain yogurt
2 scant cups sugar
1/2 cup canola oil
1 tablespoon vanilla

1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt

4 cups flour (white whole wheat flour works fine here)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Spray an 8"X10" pan and a small loaf pan with non-stick spray.

In a big bowl smash up the bananas. Add the yogurt through vanilla (all the wet ingredients). Once that is all combined add the baking soda, baking powder and salt. Make sure it is well combined with wet ingredients, then add the flour.

Final step is to add 1 cup of frozen blueberries if you'd like them. Pour batter into the pans...

and bake for about 35 minutes, until golden brown on top and a fork inserted in the cake comes out almost clean of crumbs. (this picture makes them look more golden than they should be)
Then, make the frosting:

Cream Cheese Frosting
To cover one 8X10 sheet cake well, plus extra for writing

1 8-oz. brick cream cheese, at room temperature
2 tablespoons butter
1-1/2 cups powdered sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 tablespoon water

Combine the cream cheese, butter and powdered sugar in a bowl with a hand mixer. Add vanilla and water to smooth. Use most of it to frost the cooled banana cake.

If you want to write "Happy Birthday Little One" on the cake here's a way to make fruit dye. Just take a handful of frozen blueberries or raspberries and microwave them in a little water.

The water will turn blue or red and if you mix that into a little bit of the frosting you'll have purple or pink frosting.

You then just fold a piece of wax paper into quarters

and spoon the frosting down in one sealed off corner. I take some scissors and snip off the tiniest bit of that corner and you can write with your wax paper "pen."


Yum!

Ergo-MOM-ics, Part 3

For those with postpartum joint pain (especially in the hands like I had) these were some of the things that helped me heal:

1. I can't say this enough... try not to tote around the infant car seats. Those things are heavy and were killers for my wrists and finger joints. (but I know, it all seems worth it at the time if it keeps baby sleeping)

2. No pushing the umbrella stroller with one hand! While it's so tempting to do - if you need to hold/comfort a baby or talk on the phone while you're going down the street- I had some of my worst joint pain after trying to steer our double umbrella stroller one-handed.

3. And on the subject of strollers, I now am trying to push ours with the palms of my hands and keeping my fingers out straight. I found that I was really gripping the stroller handles hard which was not helping things.

4. Another thing I discovered while trying to give my hands a break... gmail has keyboard commands. If you have gmail and you enable that functionality then you can ease up on your mouse use, which I found helped a lot.

5. Comfy shoes. It's a real pain to lace up sneakers when you're trying to get out the door with two little ones, but fortunately there are some good for your foot/back slip on athletic shoes out there.

6. Ask for help carrying when possible. I know, yet another thing to ask for help with, but twin parents get a crash course in this kind of community building exercise the first year.

Ergo-MOM-ics, part 2

What could this image possibly have to do with... ?! Hang with me for a sec. An issue I've heard about from lots of new moms, especially twin moms, is joint pain. When my hands and wrists started aching, I tried to just suck it up for a while. But when I couldn't squeeze a tube of toothpaste I went to my doctor. That's because a friend of mine reminded me about that oxygen mask lecture on airplanes: "Parents should put theirs on first and then you can help your kids." I decided that was pretty smart and I should probably be taking better care of myself so that I could go on lifting and toting my babies, especially since they'll only get heavier.

After my doctor's visit and follow up research, I've basically concluded what this post below - from my favorite parent's listserve - says. So I'm just going to repost the info below. And tomorrow I'm going to try to blog about some of the little changes I made that seemed to help my joint pain a lot:

Most postpartum joint pain is caused by ligament laxity due to
the hormonal effects of pregnancy. Ligaments are responsible for
joint stability, and after pregnancy, do not adequately support
and stabilize your joints as you move.
Most postpartum women will feel this mostly through the hips and
pelvis, though it's not unusual for other weight bearing joints
to be affected.
The good news is that since you're already 6 mos. post
childbirth, you should begin to feel more knit together soon. In
the mean time, treat your joints with care. Avoid movements that
aggrevate your joints, don't try to stretch a joint to relieve
pain. Don't walk bearfooted, choose shoes with a conoured foot
bed. When getting in and out of bed, 'log roll' your body to one
side, then use your arms to help bring yoru body upright as your
swing your legs off the side of the bed.
When lifting your baby, squat, and brace your core muscles before
you lift. Nurse your baby in a supportive chair, with a neutral
spine, i.e., don't hunch over.
Take special care of your wrists. Avoid twisting movements, and
wear wrist braces if you experience pain or tingling at night. If
your wrist pain continues, or gets worse, get a referral to a PT
who specializes in repetitive stress injuries and/or postpartumissues. In some cases postpartum wrist pain can become chronic if
left untreated.
Helene Byrne, BeFit-Mom, author, ''Exercise After Pregnancy: How to Look and Feel Your Best''

Making craigslist buying easier

Part of the reason that I feel strongly about buying used and/or less for kids is not just for the immediate green cred. It's also about setting an example for kids from the earliest age. I know that buying used can be a real drag, though, since you have to constantly comb for the item you're looking for. So here's a way to make buying used a lot more convenient.

You can subscribe to something called an RSS feed from craigslist. That lets you type in your search terms, even the geographic area you're looking in and you get live updates when an item is posted that meets your search query.

All you do is go to the craigslist home page for your area. Say you're looking for a used Maclaren Volo in the east bay. Click on "baby and kids" and then type in "Maclaren Volo" and choose the east bay tab. You'd get a screen like this:


That screen above is hard to read, but the key item is the small orange highlighted link in the lower right-hand corner. Clicking on that gets you to the RSS feed for that particular query. Once you click on it you can choose how you'd like the information delivered. If you have a google account you can have the updated search info delivered to your customized homepage. Or you can choose "Live Bookmark" and that will create a special bookmark tab in your browser that you can pull down occasionally to see if the item you're looking for has been posted and is available.

Any other helpful hints to buying used out there? I'm eager for them...

A Year Without Shopping

I mostly get my news from the radio. This story seemed right up the alley of this blog. It's about a family that is on a "consumer fast" this year. They're going to pare back their purchases and get what they do need used. They have two kids, including one that was 9-months-old when they started their fast (which does have a few exceptions, like food and toilet paper).

This is the first part in a series -- apparently the show's host has been interviewing them over the course of this year and we'll find out what they learned from their experiment. It ran this weekend on the pub radio personal finance show Marketplace Money.

One of my biggest questions is how they dealt with the issue of buying gifts. Also, I'm curious if they found some great tricks for buying used. Tomorrow I'm going to post my own tip about how to use the RSS feed on craigslist. That allows you to get updates when something you're searching for has been posted for sale. Which means you don't have to constantly on craigslist searching for those hard to get items.

The Casual Conservationist

I just learned about this book: The Casual Conservationist.

It sounds like a great read. I'm going to put a hold on it at our library and look forward to posting some of my favorite tips and a mini-review in a later post. In the meantime, for those with older kids, you can download a game from the book's website. You have to create an account with your name and email to get it, but the end product is a .PDF kit with stickers and a chart, where you can give kids a reward for everything from "taking public transportation" to "turning off lights" and "saving paper towels."

5 foods that make a difference

This isn't about consuming less, but consuming differently. The NY Times health blog lists 5 foods that one pediatrician claims can have a big impact for you and the environment if you switch to organic.

The quick roundup:
1. Milk
2. Potatoes
3. Peanut Butter
4. Ketchup
5. Apples

Their full explanation:
http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/10/22/five-easy-ways-to-go-organic/

Little tissues for little noses

My little girls have the sniffles. Fortunately they don't seem too uncomfortable, but we end up going through lots of tissues as I try to keep their noses wiped and their germs separate. I know the most eco-friendly alternative is a handkerchief but I find that practically I mix them up and never have them handy and when they have active colds, I don't find it so sanitary. So because with babies most of the tissue goes unused I'm trying to tear a bunch in halves or quarters at the start of the day and put the pieces in a baggie that I can carry around in my pocket. It's not a huge resource savings, but it's something!

And on the subject of colds, not that they've taken the infant cold medicines off the shelves, here's an article from CNN and the Mayo Clinic about how to handle the common cold in infants.

Twinsight #6: What to do with a hoarding twin

Gimmee your ear!

We've been having a problem since about 6 or 7 months with one of our daughters stealing toys from her sis and hoarding them. Yup, she's the one who's grabbing her sister's face in the picture. She just adores her sister, but that seems to translate into her wanting and taking anything her sis has. Fortunately the one who has things taken is really laid back and doesn't get worked up about it. But I was concerned about what to do and asked for peoples' advice. Below are some of the different answers I got. They certainly helped me and hope they might be useful to you.

As far as what happened in our case, things have calmed down a bit from the initial stage. Either that or we've gotten used to it. I just try to make sure that they both always have something to play with. As they've gotten older I spend more time telling the hoarder "stop" and trying to get her to understand that. Interestingly, the more laid back sister has started to crawl first, maybe to get away from her sticky fingered sib?

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We have the same issue with my boy/girl twins that are 15 months old but this started about the same time as yours.

Ann "steals" Jake’s toys. Jake is pretty laid back so when he was younger it didn't bother him too much, but I would still separate them by distance (with me in between) so that Jake could play with his toys without Ann butting in. Ann has a shorter attention span so she gets bored with toys more easily so Jake can snatch them back. I’ve been glad he’s more laid back because he tops her by at least 5lbs.

As time has passed, Jake has become more assertive in keeping Ann from grabbing his toys so I would think yours might be the same. I will warn you that as they go through terrible teething that if someone grabs a toy from the other and their teeth hurt--watch out! They will grab back that toy back with a bite if I’m not fast enough.

I’ve also been a little concerned because they play pretty rough with each other, more than I’ve seen singletons play, but I have credited that towards being with each other from the start including kicking each other in the face pre-birth.

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My girls did this at that age too. And it was also Alma, who couldn't crawl, who was stealing all the toys. Bea, who crawled sooner, was always having everything stolen. I just let them have at it and didn't worry too much. As soon as their coordination shifted, this behavior changed. (Now at one they are equal opportunity thieves). I would just continue to feed toys to both so that they always have something. I think they like to watch each other move and act, so I guess I always felt like at that age, the "victim" was somewhat entertained by watching her sister take and manipulate an object.

I could see going a different route, but that's my two cents!

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We had a very similar experience at a young age. I would separate them for periods of time. We had a pack-n-play in our playroom and would alternate putting a kid in there with a bunch of toys and it worked pretty well. I would sometimes put them at different ends of the room when they weren't crawling very much.

It got really tough around 10 months when my son (the toy taker) was crawling very well and my daughter wasn't. I was really worried, too, that she would become conditioned to have things taken from her and that my reaction might reinforce the "victim" role. There were times when I'd intervene a lot and get toys back for her, but also taught herself to immediately start playing with a toy she didn't want, he'd take it, and she'd take back the toy she was playing with. I was amazed that before 1 yr. she had figured out that strategy.

When they were starting to get verbal (and were totally mobile) around a year, we worked a lot with our daughter to put out her hand and say "no!" when he was approaching her to take a toy. We also encouraged her to get the toy back from him, while simultaneously telling our son that taking toys wasn't okay, that he needed to ask, or trader her for something else she wanted. When they were about 18 months it got really bad -- he would snatch and
run with the toy and leave his sister in tears. We continued hardcore with the strategies mentioned above and started using the counting method with our son -- he had the count of 3 to return the toy to her or I would take it away.

It was a lot of work, but I'm happy to say that now at 2.5 there is very little escalated toy taking and it has continued to get better since they were about 22 months. They tend to work it out themselves (while I force myself to hold back) and I rarely have to intervene. When I do, I find that when it happens it is usually b/c our son is tired, needs a diaper change, or is hungry. I also found that when our son was about to take a developmental leap the toy snatching and biting (he started biting her around 7 or 8 months and it would go on for a few days every 2-3 months) increased.


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I can't remember exactly at that age but, oh yea, mine are definitely interested JUST because sister has something. At a young age I probably would just separate them, use distraction and redirection.

I know by 16 months old they knew how to ask, "share?", "my turn" and "trade?". I also taught the one who was getting bullied to say, "enough!" (you could use "stop" or "NO!" too) They mostly play well but sometimes I have to separate them or distract them. I also end up buying two of the same thing a lot of the time now, depending on what it is.

I think it would be ok to tell A, "no, B is playing with that, have THIS instead". It will probably take a lot of repetition.

Another thing I read in a twin book which I found helpful.. is not to worry too much about one being "dominant" over the other. That can and will change over time. You can give them the tools to stick up for themselves, certainly, but, let them "own" their own relationship.

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We have been dealing with the same issue since our girls were about 7 months also. They are now a little over 2 and nothing has changed all that much. Astrid still wants whatever Billie is playing with. We still do the same thing we did then. We gently ask Astrid to give the toy back to Billie and explain that Astrid was playing with it first. Now we have a rule that you have to wait until the first person is done playing with the toy.

Like you, we were worried that the more submissive daughter would never fight back. As she has gotten older, she definitely fights back for items she wants to keep playing with. However, in general I would have to say that Billie does not seem to care as much about "stuff". She is really into people while Astrid is definitely more interested in and attached to material objects. Looking back, this may be why Billie never really fought back.

Reusing baby food jars

Once twins start solid food, you start drowning in baby food containers. I reused them as much as possible for the food I made for the girls. Even so, I had way more jars than I needed and wanted to find something useful to do with them. If you find yourself in a similar situation, instead of throwing them in the recycling bin, contact your local children's arts program. I found many art centers are eager for baby food jars for painting and crafts projects. Ditto with neighborhood schools. FYI, if you happen to be here in the East Bay, I just found out that MOCHA - the Museum of Children's Art - will always accept your baby food jars.

A second saved

Here's a tip for making clean up after those initial solid food feedings easier. I put some Baby Aquaphor around the girls' mouths before their solid food feedings - at least for the first 3 months. This helped create a barrier so that they were less likely to get a rash from any acidy food that I'd then have to deal with. And the Aquaphor also helped make clean-up easier. When I'd go to wipe their mouths clean, the dirty food all just wiped off easily since it was on top of the layer of Aquaphor.