I’m intrigued by wool diaper covers and soakers, though I admit I’ve never tried them on my own baby. They are considerably more expensive than cotton or man-made material diapers, but they boast anti-bacterial and absorbent properties. Also, almost all the wool diapers I’ve seen use only the softest yarn, so they’re comfortable against your baby’s skin.

Here are a few wool options:

Kissa’s wool lover diaper cover ($36)

Imse Vimse wool diaper cover ($26)

Baby Beehinds wool wrap diaper cover ($23.50)

Little Beetle little-to-big organic wool diaper cover ($38.95)

Sustainablebabyish knit wool diaper cover ($46.50)

Swaddlebees merino wool diaper cover ($29.95)

Have any of you tried any of these brands? What did you think? Worth the extra expense? Or, if you’re crafty, have you tried making your own wool soakers out of old sweaters? Let us know!

Not necessarily! Rebecca did just fine without one. But if you deem that you do need one, choose something of heirloom quality and avoid my sad (and somewhat squeaky) experience.

Both of my colicky children left me heavily dependent on the rocking chair, especially in the wee hours of the night.   In my desire to recycle and save money, I bought one used chair, and then replaced it with another secondhand piece in desperation. Both ended up being incredibly uncomfortable and screechy as they awkwardly attempted to glide to and fro. Finally, our neighbor handed his down to us and we’ve used it ever since.  It’s functional, but certainly not an heirloom that will stay with our family.  In hindsight I now think it may have just been better to buy a simple solid chair that my grandchildren could be rocked in years from now.

If I had it to do all over again, I would have actually saved money by just buying a new Angel Line Country Adult Rocker.  It is simple, straightforward, and a great deal at just under a hundred bucks.  Plus, the classic mission design will help it age gracefully with the rest of the furniture.

The most popular rockers seem to be gliders these days, but due to personal experience, I would be sure to invest in a good quality piece (either used or new) rather than have your baby woken up by metal squeaking as you try to soothe her.  The Graco Avalon has solid reviews and a simple design and is on sale for more than twenty percent off.  If you’re looking for something even more solid, you might consider a Dutailier Glider Rocker, but be warned that the prices often do not include the gliding ottoman.  They are a very sturdy chair but are also a major furniture investment.  Still, if you’re having several children, or if grandparents want to give you an heirloom gift, it may be worth it.

Do you even have a rocker at your house?  Have you managed to get by with baby wearing or co-sleeping?  Are you lucky enough to have someone make you a rocker?  Thanks for sharing!

I would like to interrupt our regularly-scheduled updates on cloth diapers and organic buntings to make a very important announcement to our Portland readers: Café Yumm is now open downtown! (Don’t live anywhere near Portland, Oregon? Keep reading. . . .)

Joy, over in our Eugene office, wrote a Café Yumm post last year in which she describes how she duplicates the café’s famous “Yumm bowls” in her own kitchen, thus satisfying her voracious husband and son with nutritious and cheap beans and rice. She later reveals the secret to making beans and rice even more delicious: Yumm Sauce. Here’s how to Make Yumm Sauce at home. (Incidentally, this is one of the Green Baby Guide’s most popular posts ever!)

So check out the Café Yumm website—or visit them in person at 1806 SW 6th Avenue in Portland. Look here for a list of all of their locations.

This is the first September in thirteen years that I am not heading back to school as an educator.  Last week I trekked out to my teaching grounds just in time to see the school buses pulling up out front. Nervous adolescents were trying to contain themselves while the teachers still sported relaxed summer smiles.

What was I doing? Floating above the ground with sheer bliss. My baby anchored me a bit by riding on one hip while my son pulled along on the other side, but I am so happy to be weighted down by these intriguing little people this year.

I greeted my colleagues and cheered them forward into the fray and then drove off to the park for a morning of sandcastles and swinging.

How did we achieve this miracle of being home with kids? Frugality! Living lightly and saving heaps has helped us prepare for this year. Everything we describe in The Eco-nomical Baby Guide that saved us thousands of dollars in the last four years has finally brought us to this point.

Is it easy? Not one bit. I rarely experience silence, rest, or an empty lap, but I am so grateful for the chance to get in on these valuable years with my kids.  I know that staying at home isn’t enjoyable for everyone.  We’re all built differently as moms, but for me, it is a dream come true.

And now that I am home, I have far more time to embrace frugality and green living even more fully. We are regulars at our local goodwill, frequently shop at garage sales, and eat more home baked meals than ever before. It’s great for our kids, great for our family, and pretty fabulous for the planet as well. Yahoo! Free at last!

My summer garden is a complete failure, except for a handful of cherry tomatoes, one strawberry, and a few tragically small leeks.  Should I even consider winter gardening?  Although my backyard farming skills are novice at best, it makes me feel better to know that we’re all struggling with low yields this year due to cooler temperatures.  Is winter gardening worth the effort?  Please inspire me with your wisdom!  (Or save me the trouble of even trying…)

I love it when our readers help me solve some of my most pressing eco-dilemmas. Remember that Friday Question I posed not long ago? What do you use instead of plastic bags to store produce in the refrigerator? You’ll be happy to know that—thanks to you all!—I no longer find myself hunkered over the sink washing out a three-year-old Ziploc bag for the sake of thrift and the environment.  Here are my top three tips for cutting down on the baggies:

• Use a container instead of a bag whenever possible. I used to store cheese in bags—now I put it in a dishwasher-safe container. (And even if I didn’t have a dishwasher, I’d prefer to wash out a container instead of a bag.)
  
• Don’t refrigerate everything. Lately I’ve been leaving whole vegetables out on the counter. Cucumbers, zucchini, cabbage, peppers—all seem to last over a week without refrigeration.
• Get creative with containers. It doesn’t need a “Tupperware” label to work as a container. I stored a watermelon in a 4-quart soup pot (see photo) and leftovers in a lidded sauté pan. Or place a plate over a bowl for a quick storage solution.

Our readers had even more ideas:

• Put fruit and veggies directly in the fridge’s crisper drawers, as Lindsay suggests.
• Make your own bags that can be washed in the laundry, as BB wants to do. Jennifer of Feed Me, Cloth Me suggests sewing them from mesh. You could bring these bags to the store, load up, and put everything straight in the fridge when you got home.
• Use Forever Green bags, as Emily at Little Home recommends. If the bags aren’t filthy, she just shakes them out and uses them again without washing them.
• Try out these reusable, laundry-washable bags from Reusablebags.com, as Larisa, Jennifer, and Eco-novice’s Betsy suggest.
• Choose paper over plastic bags for produce. Ruth suggested this, although she wondered if paper would have just as much impact as plastic. At least brown paper bags are recyclable, unlike all produce bags and Ziplocs.
• Buy some bigger containers for salads and greens. OnMon bought some 14 cup, BPA-free Rubbermaid containers to use for salads. Her washed greens stay fresh for up to ten days in these containers!
• Wash the Ziploc bags in the dishwasher! My initial reason for eliminating Ziplocs was because I hated hand-washing them. Lindsay discovered a gizmo that allows you to wash those bags in the dishwasher. She also recommends this article from the Vegetarian Times with even more tips for keeping fruits and vegetable fresh.

In just a few short months, I’ve drastically cut down on the number of plastic bags that I use. With bag-washing eliminated from my list of domestic duties, I now have significant chunks of free time to devote to setting up wind turbines and making my own tofu. . . .

I was very proud of my potty training efforts with both of my children—but that overconfidence has quickly faded into green shame! (My melodrama is intended here…)  First, let me tell you of my brilliant potty training efforts.  My son was blissfully free of diapers at a little over two years and my daughter started regularly using the potty at about seven months.  (She’s now 14 months and still in diapers, but makes the sign for “poop” and helps us avoid toilet dunking diapers most of the time!)

So here’s my dark confession.. My son, who has worn disposables at night since babyhood, is still in diapers at night.  So even though he used cloth during the day for just a few years since infancy, he has filled the landfills with his nighttime diapers for four full years.  We buy gigantic disposables and he’s managed to still fit in them without moving to pull-ups.  Although we resolutely tried to use cloth at night multiple times, persistent rashes and yeast infections eventually wore us down.

We have tried less fluids, salty foods, waking him at night, letting him wet himself, and using treats for dry diapers, all to no avail.  He’s an extremely heavy sleeper who wakes up a bit frenzied and disoriented in the middle of the night and screams when we ask him to try and pee.

Everything I’ve read indicates that kids may take years to night train.  Even up to six years!  Still, since the rest of the world potty trains far earlier than we do here in America, it seems like the night training thing should be possible.  Do you have any ides to assuage my disposable diaper guilt?  Are you in the same boat?  Help!

Waffle cravings on a gluten-free diet? No problem. With more and more pregnant and breastfeeding mothers swearing off gluten, we felt obligated to come to the rescue with this recipe from the Gluten-free Gourmand. Sure, you could buy a gluten-free waffle mix, but what makes all of the concoctions from this blogger special is the way she plays with flour combinations to get each recipe perfect. Once you have an array of gluten-free flours at your disposal, you’ll be able to whip up just about anything without wheat. Try it and let us know what you think!

Image from the Gluten-free Gourmand

Easy Gluten-free Dairy-free Waffles

Mix in a medium bowl:

1 cup white rice flour
2 Tbsp sorghum flour
1 Tbsp tapioca flour
1 Tbsp potato flour
2 Tbsp sugar
1/4 tsp salt
2 tsp baking powder

Heat your waffle iron.
In another medium bowl, beat thoroughly:

2 eggs

Add:

1 1/2 cup coconut milk
2 Tbsp canola oil
1/2 tsp vanilla

Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients and mix thoroughly.  When the waffle iron is hot, lightly spray it with oil and spoon or pour a serving of batter onto the iron and cook until the waffle starts releasing less steam.  Serve hot.

For more waffle recipes from the Gluten-free Gourmand (including a gluten-free buckwheat waffle and a gluten-free corn waffle recipe), look here.

Are there baby carriers that can last for months (or even years) and make it through several children?  We spent our time searching for the most flexible, and most durable products and came up with the following list.  If these seem a bit spendy, remember that you can always search for them used.  Our book, The Economical Baby Guide, has the inside scoop on finding quality secondhand gear and an index of green products for a range of budgets.

The Ergo Carrier tops our list, partly because as the name implies, it’s a comfortable carrier that helps you manage baby wearing without back pain.  Since it can carry infants from a few months old through the first few years of their life and be worn both on the front and the back, it will be worth the investment. Young babies can nurse while in the carrier and with the hood flap down, it’s very discrete. There’s also a handy zippered pocket to carry keys and baby paraphernalia.

The Scootababy Baby Carrier can tote infants from five months to three years old and will also transition from front to back with baby’s weight centered on your hip.  It’s gotten rave reviews for comfort the ease with which you can strap baby in.  The waist belt is padded with a stretchy shoulder panel that helps to support the child.

The Moby Wrap and Maya Wrap are far less expensive than the previous carriers, but will require a bit more adjustment than the other two carriers.  The Maya Wrap is a ring sling that will allow you to cinch your baby into place on your chest or hip.  It comes with a DVD to help you learn the multiple ways it can be adjusted and also has a built in pocket for keys or diapers.

Moby Wraps can accommodate tiny premies up to 35 pound children.  The thick fabric allows you to wear your child close to your body in a variety of positions on the front, side or back.  It does require you to do a bit of fabric origami, but doesn’t have a single fastener or clip.

What is your favorite baby wearing device?  For those of us who wore our babies for months and years on end, I know our product loyalty runs deep.  Of course, our children also have to be a part of our shopping decision.  Did you choose a sling or carrier that your infant refused?  Did you wait to buy until your baby arrived and could help you chose the right one?

Our babies happily play with paper bags and wooden spoons without feeling the least bit deprived, but what happens when your child ages a bit?  Can you get by with just wooden blocks and fabric food?  What happens when they see the myriad of blinking toys out there that aren’t made from organic hemp?

I could say that I teach my child to resist temptation and make himself happy with sticks, but that isn’t the truth.  My parents tried to teach us not to want stuff by limiting our gifts, which made me think that being resourceful and thrifty was a huge downer.  With my son, I’ve purchased some really fun secondhand stuff so that we keep our budget in check, we recycle, and we show him that living the thrifty green lifestyle can be a grand adventure.  This started with all the garage sale loot for his second birthday.  Virtually all his clothes, toys, and furniture has been purchased used, which seems perfectly normal to him.

The unintended consequences include his addiction to yard sales, his full acceptance of thrift store merchandise, and too many toys.  We pack them up in “treasure boxes” so that they stay in the garage and get rotated out to keep things fresh.  We also give toys away on a regular basis so that he gets the idea that someone else can find them and love them the way he has.

For his birthday this year, I spent about $50 and bought him a new bike, several trucks, (since vehicles are his passion), and a few small new toys.  The total cost of those items new would have been well over $250, but I was able to buy more and better quality by searching for it used.

Is it perfect?  Nope–But I hope it can show him that buying used benefits the environment, our budgets, and our quality of life.  How are you going green with your older child?  Any tips for the rest of us?