kim through
   the looking glass

Yep, you read that right!

As a community, we decided a while ago to purchase a hive so that we can begin to harvest our own honey. I’ve been busy reading bee books and looking up bee keepers’ associations and generally learning about bees.

Yesterday, we got news that the bees would be here Wednesday or Thursday. Today, we hurried along and set up the hive, doing some last-minute research.

And then we got a call that the bees were here and they suggested picking them up tonight.

So Crystle and I took off to Better Bee Supplies in Cambridge to pick up some supplies and our “nuc” - beekeeping language for a nucleus of bees, which contains 3 lbs of bees (around 10 000 bees).

We drove them home (in the trunk - Gil was in the back!) and once here decided to hive them right away instead of waiting until morning. Graham and I suited up an armed with our hive tool and a spray bottle of sugar-water headed to the hive with a cardboard box full of 10 000 bees.

It was more than a little nerve-wracking!

Graham was great - he placed the full frames into the hive like a pro - he used to have bees as a kid - with only work gloves. He was stung only once - the sugar-water was very effective at calming the bees!

So - success! Our colony can now grow and begin to produce honey! I’ll check on the hive in a week (hopefully with a bee-keeping friend!) and make sure the queen is laying eggs and that the foragers are bringing in honey.

Exciting! And a little bit terrifying!

I was recommended the book Diaper Free: The Gentle Wisdom of Natural Infant Hygiene (Ingrid Bauer) by a number of parents on an email list in which I participate. At first the idea of Natural Infant Hygiene (NIH), or Elimincation Communication (EC) as it is often called, totally grossed me out - after all, aren’t babies and diapers part and parcel?

I figured it couldn’t hurt to read the book and maybe it would give me some interesting things to try with Gwen, so I picked it up from my library and dove into it. People, I love this book!

The idea behind NIH is that babies are born with the ability to consciously relax their bodies and urinate or defecate just like an older child or adult, but that we train them to use a diaper instead. From pages 98-99:

“Elimination Communication begins with the baby’s awareness of subtle sensations, which indicate the filling of the bladder. The baby may then signal the parent, or the parent may anticipate the need through timing or intuition. The parent holds the child over a receptacle and make a familiar sound. The child then voluntarily relaxes and releases the urine before the bladder has become uncomfortably full. Over time, as muscles strengthen and conscious control increases, the baby is able to retain and hold in larger quantities of urine for longer periods of time if necessary. This occurs gradually with no particular focus or effort as a natural and inevitable consequence. About the time the sphincter muscles fully develop, the diaper-free baby achieves consistent continence.”

Bauer then goes on to contrast this with conventional potty training, in which a child has learned to pee in its diaper only when the bladder is very full and it cannot hold any more urine. When we then ask that child to begin using a toilet or potty to urinate in, he or she must contract the sphincter muscles and make it to the potty or toilet to release the urine. These kids just literally don’t sense the subtler signals that their bladder is sending to their brain in order to pee voluntarily before the bladder is full until much later than the toilet learning has begun.

I think one of the most interesting things I learned in this book is about the differences between the Western world’s concept of ‘toilet readiness’ - that a child cannot possibly toilet train before at least 18 months because they don’t have the ability - and the Eastern world’s belief that children are quite able to communicate effectively about their elimination needs. I enjoyed this quote a whole lot - from pages 70-71:

“One of the most glaring problems with the concept of toilet training readiness is its heavy ethnocentric focus. The “readiness” theory can only even begin to be considered viable if one pretends that the vast majority of the non-Western world does not exist … Millions of mothers around the globe know that babies are “ready” and aware from birth. The empirical evidence is overwhelming and stretches back for eons. Why has the experience of the majority of the world’s mothers and babies been ignored for so long? Are only modern North American and European babies subject to this maturational lag?”

The book then describes the suspicious timing of the release of scientific literature to promote the ‘toilet readiness’ theory by Dr. Brazelton during the year the first disposable diapers - Pampers - were released. Not to mention that Dr. Brazelton happened to sit for a time on the Pampers Parenting Institute Pediatric Roundtable. Coincidence? I happen to think not!

The book is filled with stories and instructions as to how best support your child’s elimination - whether you start at birth, after a few months, or start later with a toddler. I’m planning to start pretty early with Love Bug - we’ll see how it goes!

Here are some other resources for learning about NIH:

• borntopotty.com
• diaperfreebaby.org
• tribalbaby.org - Learn about Elimination Communication
• Free to EC! My Journey to Elimination Communication

I think I just upped my crunchiness factor again!

While Dave and Lindsey (my brother-in-law and his girlfriend) were staying with us recently, Lindsey and I were discussing crafty projects we could make for Christmas presents. We discussed handkerchiefs, market bags, reusable vegetable bags for in the fridge, sandwich wraps, and snack bags.

We didn’t get around to any of it before Christmas … mostly because she was gone through November and December! (She was, however, still good enough to be crafty in her Christmas presents!)

When she arrived again in January, we happened to go on a trip to Ottawa Street - Hamilton’s fabric and antique district. While there, I purchased some cotton as well as some rip-stop nylon.

These things are easy and fun to make! I won’t even BEGIN to pretend that I’m a decent sewer - in fact, I would definitely consider myself to be a novice. So if you’re concerned you won’t be able to figure this out, I say you can!

The first thing I made was a reusable sandwich wrap. I did a bunch of research online and found that I liked Toward Sustainability’s Homemade Sandwich Wrap the best. However, I didn’t like the idea of plastic actually in contact with my food (after all, if I didn’t care about it, why would I bother making these?). I knew I had a couple of options for waterproof layers - vinyl (um … I don’t like to wrap my sandwiches in reproductive toxins, you?), PUL (not sure about how food-safe it is, and it wasn’t readily available), oilcloth (I’d love to use this stuff if it still exists!), and nylon. In order to keep the waterproof layer away from the food entirely, I decided to use two layers of cotton sandwiching (pardon the pun!) what I opted for - rip-stop nylon.

So I kinda followed the directions and kind of made it up. I quickly realized that I couldn’t just sew it closed and turn it inside out, since it was three layers and not two, so I ended up just folding over the edges of the three pieces of cloth, pinning them together and hemming them. Next time, I’m going to try the two cotton pieces with right sides facing, and then the nylon on top … I *think* that should work for turning it inside-out so that there’s no fraying fabric on the outside!

The second item I made was a reusable snack bag. I again researched a bunch of patterns and settled on the we wilsons’ Reusable Snack Bag Tutorial. I followed this one pretty much exactly, except I again sandwiched the nylon between two layers of cotton so that the food would be touching only cotton. It took a bit of finagling, but I figured it out - maybe the next one I make I’ll take pictures as I go!

The next set I made was much … nicer. As always happens with projects, I think, I knew what I was doing and what the problems might be (although I still hadn’t figured out that I can probably flip the wrap inside-out) and I made the snack bag much bigger - it’s about 6″ by 6″ total, I think. The plaid one is perfect for quick snacks for Gwen, but a bit impractical for adult-sized snacks.

This set was given to Lindsey for her birthday (and in the picture, you can see how the wrapped sandwich would sit).

I bought a bunch of material and am hoping to sew up a few more sandwich wraps and snack bags for Brad as well as some fun snack bags for Gwen and I to use on our outings - it’s MUCH easier to give her a snack bag to eat on the run than a container!

And in case you’re wondering, I’ve washed Brad’s sandwich wraps and snack bag just in my dish water and let them air dry. They both can often just be shaken free of crumbs and used again right away, but if they’re soiled (for example, by an egg salad sandwich!), the food comes right off the cotton with a little swish and wipe

From vegan hope’s every thing wrong with society can be found on the Today Show …

“If you want to become healthy – start with this: Eat nothing there is a commercial for. That’s right, watch about 2 hours of TV in the morning, whatever you see a commercial for, stop eating, and I can promise you that you will start on a good road to health. Likewise, start eating things that you do not see commercials for – when is the last time you saw a commercial for kale or blueberries?”

It’s funny. Ever since method came out, I’ve been a die-hard customer. I even did a review a few years ago. And you know what? I still love their products! I love their liquid soap and their bathroom cleaner and their hardwood cleaner.

But now that I don’t shop at Shopper’s Drug Mart as often, and it’s one of the only store that carries the line, I’m finding it hard to buy.

And the other day, as I was shopping at my local health food store, I noticed some bar soaps. And since we were out of handsoap, I thought about it. And dismissed the idea and started looking for a liquid soap.

And then I thought about it some more.

Was I sticking with method because they’re trendy and cool? Does buying a handsoap that comes in a plastic bottle that I have to recycle afterward make sense when I could pick up a bar soap with NO PACKAGING at all?

So I went back to the display of Soap Works bar soap and picked up two - Bee Pollen for the bathroom, and Pumice for the kitchen. And you know what? I’ve enjoyed using these soaps. They smell yummy and don’t dry out my hands. And I love that I brought home soap without having to throw anything away!

Now, I need to find to soap dishes that I really like …

I can’t believe I forgot to blog about this.

gDiapers is offering a new way to stock up on their orange & white gPants - a 6-pack of Everyday G’s.

And for a limited time (until July 31st), you can use my code ‘g1494Schellingerhoudt‘ at check-out to get them for only $30! That’s $40 off!

It’s not every day you come across a deal this sweet! Let me know if you take advantage of it!

Well, it’s been a few weeks since I decided to drastically cut down how much meat my family consumes. It’s going very well! I’ve been making a lot of the same dishes, except I’ll substitute a can of chick peas or some beans for the meat. Brad and I haven’t noticed that we’re more hungry (thank goodness! I was quite worried about that!), so I think the change is sustainable. Gwen won’t eat meat anyways, so it’s no biggie for her.

Well, I took the plunge shortly after my birthday, March 7, and I updated a few weeks later.

I think it’s high time I updated again!

It’s now been 2.5 months since I’ve used shampoo on my hair. Wow. When I say it like that it seems pretty incredible, eh? Read the rest of this entry »

This summer, we’ve done a lot of planning for ways to grow our own fruits and veggies and taken many steps toward becoming much more self-sustaining. Our housemates have a large vegetable garden in the back and although they have offered for us to partake of the veggies/fruits grown therein, I didn’t feel up to doing that much gardening just yet … I don’t really know much about it and when the planning was happening, I didn’t feel up to helping even with that, since it was at a rough Gwen-time.

Read the rest of this entry »

My local healthfood store has a sign up reminding patrons that it’s Fair Trade Month. More specifically, this Saturday, May 9, is World Fair Trade Day.

So I ask my readers - do you pay attention to fair trade labels?

Which products do you buy fair trade? Why?

For us, I buy bananas, cocoa/chocolate, and sugar exclusively fair trade because they’re all cash crops that ensure that developing countries stay just that - developing. Each of these products use up the resources of the country to provide for our western way of life while those resources could easily be used to provide nutritious food for the inhabitants. Sadly, our trade system has exploited developing countries to the point that they rely basically on the cash derived from selling all their resources to developed countries and have to import most of their food. If I drank coffee, that would be another one on my list.

(p.s. Does anyone else think the words ‘fair’ and ‘trade’ look funny when you’ve read them that many times?)