Saturday, August 20, 2005

You can take the girl out of Seattle, but you can't take the Seattle out of the girl

I would not necessarily classify myself as a crunchy mom, but rather a mom open to crunchiness. We come from a distinguished lineage of rednecks largely opposed to hippie-dom, with occasional exceptions. We here at the O'Neal estates, perhaps influenced a little bit by our time in Seattle (town motto: Where Hippies Come to Die) do have a few badges of crunch:

1) I breastfed Isaac for a year. I didn't do that because I am Earth-Mother, hear me roar! but because I am a biochemist and have studied a bit of human physiology and understood that Isaac would benefit enormously, nutritionally and immunologically, from a year of breastfeeding. The first six weeks were enormously hard, but I was supported at every step by the hubs and by my mom, who ardently tried to nurse me and who was fabulously successful at nursing my brother. At exactly a year, did I have longing visions of him as a five-year-old lifting up my shirt for a nip? No, I had fulfilled my major obligation, according to the pediatrician, and was happy to dislodge him from the boob, a move which happened for us gradually and without a second thought from him about what he was or was not missing.

2) We give Isaac his whole milk and yogurt in organic form. Blah blah blah hormones blah blah blah chemicals -- I figure, this isn't a hard thing to do, and it's probably a good bit healthier for him, so why not?

3) We try to recycle. In Seattle, this was so easy. Here, they make it almost prohibitive. Isaac and I visited a recycling drop-off last week, a scary number feet away from the Mopar plant and bazillions of power lines. Did you know you can recycle your cans, your newspaper, your mail, your corrugated cardboard there, but they have NO facilities whatsoever for recycling lighter-weight cardboard (say, cereal boxes) or yogurt cups?

In parenting, we don't automatically opt for the crunchy methods, but do what works for us. I was adamant that we would not cosleep with Isaac, but with breastfeeding it became so convenient that he slept with us (or with me) for about the first 6 months. But after that, he became a thrasher, and now he is banished to his crib, where he and we can all get better sleep. I was open to the concept of baby-wearing, and we desperately enjoyed the simpler days of the Bjorn, but Isaac is a husky fellow and my poor little bones could barely handle carrying him for 9 months, let alone all-day everyday beyond. At first, we considered doing the cloth diaper thing, but since we weren't staying at home, we would have needed a diaper service. They had a good one in Seattle that came highly recommended by crunchy friends, but we calculated it out and our beloved Target generic diapers were half that cost per month.

Enter the new and ambitious stay-at-home mom.

Thursday I had the most gawd-awful time. Now, I don't know where a lot of stuff is around town yet, but I trust my shopping instincts enough to know where to find the basics at the right price. KMart is literally 5 blocks away from our house. In a diaper emergency, Isaac and I spent a good 20 minutes looking all around this store for diapers and wipes, to find that they carried none. NONE. I was forced to go next door to a drug store and shell out $11 for a 30-pack of Pampers. This struck a major chord in me, because I aspire to be a miser. I remembered a recent experiment conducted by a fellow, completely un-crunchy blogger regarding cloth diapers. I remembered that I actually enjoy doing laundry. And I remembered that, more than anything, I love to shop online. So now two juicy-fresh FuzziBuns are headed our way, and we are going to take this cloth diaper lifestyle for a test-drive. Wish us luck.

4 Comments:

Blogger Erin said...

Good luck! I(even in my total uncrunchiness) LOVE IT! LOVE IT LOVE! Even Tom is getting into it. (except he has yet to change one)

12:47 PM  
Blogger Claire said...

Erin, I am so psyched. I just hope they get here before I run out of this batch of Pampers and am forced AGAIN to run to another overpriced paper diaper retailer before I get to test-drive my FuzziBuns.

Mom -- the FuzziBuns website says that they were invented by a mom from Louisiana -- they address the heat issue somewhere on their website. Not that his paper diapers are terribly breathable, anyway. But we are prepared, armed with our industrial-sized bottle of baby powder and our faithful tube of A&D. At the very least, it will be an interesting experiment.

6:59 PM  
Blogger Erin said...

...and have I mentioned... I heart them? ;)

4:02 AM  
Blogger Claire said...

oh, hahahahaha, erin. are you making fun of me? ;)

7:36 PM  

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