In our tiny house, each piece of baby gear takes up precious space—and we weren’t about to surrender a bit more for a bassinet. Our first child wouldn’t sleep anywhere but in our arms and we assumed the same for our second. It amazed me when my mom snuggled our second child into her infant car seat for a nap and explained that it’s the perfect portable bassinet.

Of course! It has a handle for easy carrying, it’s built to be rocked on hard surfaces, and it can be put up high away from our two year old when we’re worried about him “playing” with the baby.

At night we’ve used a vibrating papasan chair that we borrowed from generous friends but have found that normally she sleeps best snuggled into bed with us. During the day, however, the car seat is a great portable resting spot that didn’t cost a dime or take up any extra space.  Through my creative efforts to get a shower, I’ve found that the best spot place for her to get a long nap in the car seat as in the bathroom with the fan on as background noise.

Do you have any creative resting spots for baby? Have you ever used a car seat, a sock drawer or something even more outrageous? Do tell!

Iced tea is just about the perfect summertime drink–it’s refreshing and full of antioxidants. It’s also much more affordable than canned or bottled soft drinks and juices.

There are three basic ways to make it:

You’ll need two tea bags or two teaspoons of loose tea per cup of water.

Sun tea: Place tea and water in a large pitcher or jar and place in the hot sun for several hours. Pour over ice to serve and refrigerate the rest after removing tea bags or straining loose tea.

Refrigerator tea: Steep tea in water for at least 24 hours. Remove tea bags or strain through a sieve if using loose tea.  Serve over ice.

Brewed tea: Bring water to a rolling boil and add to tea. Let steep for three to five minutes, stirring once to distribute the flavor. Remove tea bags or strain loose tea through a sieve and let it cool to room temperature before  serving over ice.

I personally prefer to brew my iced tea. Yes, it uses more energy than the other methods, but the boiling water helps the tea reach its full flavor potential. If you are pregnant and worried about caffeine, read this March of Dimes article, which includes a chart that shows how much caffeine is in certain drinks. At 48 grams of caffeine per 8-ounce serving, you can have up to four glasses a day. (Pregnant women are advised to drink under 200 grams a day.)

Remember that it’s important to stay hydrated during pregnancy and those early days of parenthood, especially if you’re nursing. What are your favorite healthful, economical beverages? Let us know!

For more Works for Me Wednesday ideas, head on over to We are THAT Family.

Here’s another recycled post from our early blogging days at GBG.  With my second baby, I’ve found that the sling is just as necessary as with our first.  This time we’ve invested in a Kangaroo Korner’s all weather pouch sling and use it on a daily basis.  Let us know what your favorite sling is and how your baby likes it!

When I was pregnant, I purchased a used Baby Bjorn thinking it was a standard piece of equipment. I did not realize at the time that sleep deprivation would make me incapable of understanding complicated directions for a front pack. At one point I found myself trapped with Roscoe strapped to my chest asleep. I was exhausted but instead of flopping into bed, I sat on the couch for an hour until my husband got home from work–––afraid that I’d roll over on my baby and smother him while he was in Baby Bjorn bondage. Important disclaimer! Many a mother has found the Baby Bjorn to be a wonderful piece of equipment, so don’t let my ineptitude derail you from considering this perfectly legitimate option for baby wearing.

Finding a sling for Roscoe was actually a happy accident. My husband and I had resigned ourselves to the side effects of Roscoe’s colic––a constant ringing in our ears and the tendency to bounce up and down automatically at the sound of a squeal, even if it came from a fire truck. Then we visited a friend who convinced me to try her ring sling, a Maya Wrap. She whipped it over my head, tucked Roscoe inside, and had him sleeping in a matter of seconds.

Maya Wraps consist of a long strip of hand woven cloth made by a cooperative of Guatemalan women and looped through two large rings that cinch the baby in place. You can buy the fabric in colorful striped patterns but we were happy to be borrowing a solid cream-colored sling that blended with whatever we wore. The Maya Wrap also comes with an instructional video which greatly helps sleep deprived minds cope with the simple operating instructions.

After I started using the sling it occurred to me that during the nearly four months I spent living in Guatemala a decade ago, I saw countless babes tucked into slings on buses and soundly asleep while their parents bartered for mangos in the local street market. Its simple brilliance is now making it a hit with several American moms.

For Roscoe snoozing in the sling seemed to remind him of the womb. As a result, I could vacuum, write, shop, and even use the bathroom with him happily tucked against my chest. I brought him to work at just a few months old and was able to do most of my regular tasks with him snugly nestling. When my husband completed the Portland Marathon, Roscoe was nursing deep within the sling and I could take a finish line picture without worrying about flashing the unsuspecting spectators.

As Roscoe grew a bit and fall turned into winter, another dedicated friend let us use an adjustable fleece pouch sling. Once we had determined the size we wanted it at, it was snapped into place and was extremely easy to take on and off. They purchased the sling at Kangaroo Corner, which has several varieties of slings and recommendations on what to use for each age.

Another type of sling is a wrap—a very long piece of fabric that can be used to tie the baby on in all sorts of ways. After much research, Rebecca bought an Ellaroo wrap from this website, which sells many other types of wraps and slings and contains helpful pictures and detailed baby wearing instructions. Unfortunately, her squirmy baby did not enjoy being worn in this type of wrap for more than ten or fifteen minutes, so it was probably not the best use of money.

Here she enjoys a rare non-squirmy moment in the Ellaroo.

Since these slings can each be very expensive, it might be good to see whether baby likes them before purchasing. Rebecca sewed her own tube-style sling for only five dollars using the directions from this website. For her first few months of life, Audrey would settle down instantly once she was nestled into the sling.

After that ten-week period, the magical sling lost its powers and Rebecca’s baby refused to ever be worn again, so the calming results aren’t universal. The greenest, cheapest option is to find lots of kind friends and hope that they’ll let you borrow their baby slings, thereby saving the planet, saving a buck, and (hopefully) saving you some hours of screaming.

The rain is gone and the sun is out–where should we go, baby? With a winter newborn (and a broken ankle), I felt trapped indoors forever. If I ever have a second child, I’ll make sure it’s born in June, as Joy so wisely did. Walks around the neighborhood, jaunts to the park, camping trips, dips in a wading pool–what are your baby’s favorite summertime amusements?

I suffer from Black Thumb. I can’t seem to grow veggies! I’ve tried. Year one I had moderate success, despite starting too late in the season. Year two yielded a few pounds of green beans and maybe five tomatoes from five tomato plants. The next few years were a blur of blossom end rot, un-sprouted seeds, and one-inch carrots.

This was my garden about a month ago. It actually doesn’t look so bad here, but keep in mind that the raised bed in the background has virtually nothing in it but a few dying cukes and peppers.

This year in a new house with a new back yard, I vowed it would be different. I checked books out from the library and pored over my copy of the Vegetable Gardener’s Bible by Ed Smith. We made new raised beds, filled them with brand-new four-way soil recommended for veggie gardens, and planted everything according to the directions. It was sunny and I watered my garden faithfully. Why, then are the leaves from my pepper plants turning yellow? Why aren’t some of my plants any bigger now than they were a month ago? Why won’t the carrots, lettuce, and basil sprout?

My friend Ingrid came over to analyze the situation. She recommended amending some of the soil with compost and getting a drip irrigation system. Despite the fact that I’ve already poured too much money into this project, I’m going to take her advice.

The most disappointing thing, for me, is how much time and money I’ve wasted. Isn’t gardening supposed to save money? I am not a gardening failure all-around–I’ve managed to grow a nice organic lawn, maintain around sixty rose bushes and other shrubs and flowers. So what is my problem?

If you have any gardening advice or commiseration, please let me know! I need all the help I can get. It’s not too late to save my garden! (I hope.)

Note: I wrote this about a month ago and have somewhat revived my garden using the method I described above! So if you are a garden failure like me, keep trying. . . . And for more enthusiastic posts about home gardening, check out our organic gardening archives.

No mater how much we all care about the planet, it’s tough to spend ten bucks on diaper cream.  But does that mean you’re stuck with slathering petroleum-based products on your baby’s bottom?  Not necessarily!

My first big discovery while cloth diapering my second child has been olive oil.  In baby’s first few days it’s great to swab a bit on between diaper changes.  The oil ensures that the sticky meconium poops can be easily wiped away.  Later on, olive oil softens skin and creates a moisture barrier to prevent diaper rash.

Also, I just learned that those leftover tubes of lanolin from early breastfeeding work well as a natural diaper ointment. I had a huge tube of Lanosil that I was planning on tossing until I read the fine print.  How nice to know that it can be reused and prevent me from having to buy expensive diaper creams.

Do you have any other tips for diaper rash?  What has worked for your family? Please share  your solutions!

Running a website has not been without its challenges–the largest one being our embarrassing lack of computer skills. When we started up in 2007, our webmaster had to hold our hands through everything from pasting in our posts to loading up a picture. Have we become expert bloggers in the last year and a half? Well . . . we’re trying. To our credit, we have boosted our traffic considerably since those early days.

Here are our top five tips:

1. Title your posts with as many key words as possible. Webcrawlers scan your site for key words, which to them means titles and bolded phrases. In an early post about natural teething remedies, Joy thought up the clever title “Gnawing Worries.” My cousin told us to change it. No one who is hunting around for natural teething ideas is typing “gnawing worries” into Google. Joy changed the title to “Natural Teething Solutions to Soothe Gnawing Worries.”

2. Think of keywords when titling photos, too. Many people stumble upon your site through images. So instead of titling your picture “Mikey,” title it “smiling baby in a plastic bathtub from Target with a blue washcloth.”

3. Tag your posts with every keyword you can think of. My cousin (our webmaster) told us over and over to tag our posts. For the longest time, we thought she was talking about creating links to other sites! Once we figured it out, we vowed to add more tags. Sometimes we can think of up to fifty keywords or phrases to use for a single post.

4. Join or host a blog carnival. We get consistent traffic by participating in Works for Me Wednesday, hosted by We are THAT Family. It’s a great way to network with other bloggers, too. You could also try hosting your own blog carnival. Thrifty Green Thursday (on hiatus until fall) linked us to some like-minded bloggers and boosted our traffic, even though we often had no more than four participants at a time!

5. Network with other websites. Seek out websites with similar themes and add them to your blogroll. We resisted starting a blogroll for a few months; we wanted to look like an official site rather than a “blog.” However, we soon learned it was imperative to get known in the blogging community! If you link to other sites, they’ll link to yours, too.

If you are one of our fellow bloggers, we want to hear your thoughts, too. What are your blogging secrets? Keep them as elementary or as complicated as you want. We’ve stuck to the basics because of our admittedly limited computer know-how. Now that we’ve been at this a while, perhaps it’s time for us to graduate to the intermediate class.

These blogging tips worked for us! For more Works for Me Wednesday ideas, head on over to We are THAT Family.

This entry is from GBG’s first month of blogging, back in December of 2007.  Now that I’m in the middle of raising our second baby, it’s amazing how true those memories of sleep deprivation have become once again.  We’re still managing with just cloth this time but I’ll keep you posted on whether we face the disposable diaper dilemma with our second as well!

Sleep. Ahh sleep! I remember those nights when I snuggled into bed and enjoyed an unfettered slumber of more than eight hours without a second thought. If I had six hours of sleep or less, my day was spent barely coping with my shocking state of sleep deprivation. My how things have changed!

When our son Roscoe was first born, our biggest struggle was colic. There were hours of crying, often scheduled by our purple, screaming son to continue between the hours of 3:27 and 5:46am. We noticed that the whites of our eyes were permanently pink and we often found ourselves breaking into hysterical laughter for no reason whatsoever.  When Roscoe was asleep, we almost forgot how bad the constant crying was.  Here he is dreaming of plans to interrupt our sleep in the middle of the night.

Then, just as we overcame the colic, we moved into nighttime wetting. As dedicated cloth diaper users, we tried a variety of strategies including double diapering, fleece and wool liners, 10 p.m. diaper changes, and a variety of covers. Roscoe managed to pee through whatever obstacle we placed in front of him. If peeing were an Olympic event, that would be great—but it isn’t, and we were tired.

When we talked to our cloth diapering friends, they all told us their dirty little nighttime secret—disposables. Oh the horror! At first we continued with diaper and clothing changes in the wee hours of the night, but eventually our fatigue-addled wills gave in. That was months ago, and now Roscoe sleeps for most of the night wearing disposables.

We use seven disposables a week (which is seven more than we’d like) but we’re still concerned about some of the health factors related to disposable diapers. Click here to read about links between disposables and male infertility as well as an increased risk of developing asthma.The best tips seem to come from moms who are up to their elbows in diapers. What do you do to keep baby dry at night? Do you use G-diapers, double diaper, or use a cloth diaper product that seems to do the trick?  What works for you?

When a new baby enters the household, parents use twenty-five percent more energy than before. They keep houses warmer in the winter and cooler in the summer–”for the baby.” But it’s possible to keep you and your little one cool without turning your house into a refrigerator. First, read Joy’s article on passive cooling here. Then become a fan of fans.

Regular old box fans and ceiling fans can keep you cool by creating a nice breeze. According to PGE’s website, you can use fans along with your air conditioner and turn your thermostat up ten degrees without feeling too hot. You can also use a window fan in a north-facing windows to draw cool air in and another fan in a south-facing window to push the hot air out.

Attic fans can push that super-heated air out of your attic, making the living space feel much cooler. Find a solar-powered one and you won’t even waste energy while using it. If you have air conditioning, however, you do not need an attic fan.

Whole-house fans are installed in the ceiling and operate with the windows open. My brother and sister-in-law installed one themselves–and it really works. I watched the thermostat go down several degrees in just a few minutes after they turned it on. It works best when it’s cooler than 82 degrees outside. Use it in the mornings and evenings to keep your house cool.

Read Portland General Electric’s guidelines for cooling for even more detailed information on fans.

I love heaping bowls of cool ice cream on a hot summer’s day. But even more than that, I love not having to listen to my colicky baby scream for three consecutive hours.

When I realized that the dairy protein in my breast milk was probably responsible for my infant daughter’s intestinal discomfort, it became clear that I’d have to sacrifice Ben and Jerry’s. Or I could just go without sleep and sanity. Honestly, it was a bit of a tough choice.

After a few days to think about it, I realized that I could easily concoct my own version of non-dairy ice cream so that I could have my dessert and a happier daughter too.

It’s not low-fat or healthier in any way, but it tastes great and will help you avoid dairy if you are in a similar predicament as a nursing mother. This recipe is for a 1.5 quart ice cream maker but frozen desserts aren’t an exact science so feel free to tweak for a larger or smaller batch.

Non-Dairy Ice Cream Recipe

• 1 ½ cups coconut milk
• 2 cups almond or rice milk (avoid soy milk since it can also cause colic)
• ½ cup sugar
• 1 tsp vanilla
• ½ tsp salt

Throw everything in a large bowl and stir until sugar is dissolved. Then dump into an ice cream maker and churn until it reaches the desired thickness. Enjoy!

I also have to mention that a lovely choice for those wanting just to pick up a pint of vegan ice cream is Coconut Bliss.  It’s based right here in my hometown of Eugene, Oregon, and has become nationally known as a delicious alternative to dairy ice cream.  It’s sweetened with agave and comes in a great assortment of incredible flavors.

If you have any other ideas for dairy free, nut free, soy free treats for nursing mothers with colicky babies, please share!  I’ll soon post more on this topic but I’d love to hear your ideas as I’m starving with a fridge full of foods I can’t eat.