In our research for The Eco-nomical Baby Guide, our favorite organic choice was Nature’s One Baby’s Only Organic Formula.  And in our recent exploration of hexane, Baby’s Only again stands out as the best choice.

So what is hexane anyway?  It’s a petroleum derivative that’s found in glue and gasoline and has recently been used in infant formula to help obtain the DHA and ARA fatty acids from fermented algae and fungus.  Since breast milk is packed with DHA and ARA, there has been a recent drive to get these components into formula.  (Don’t get us started on the advantages of breastfeeding.  If you possibly can breastfeed, there are a million reasons that it will provide you with better health, your baby with better immunity, and save you heaps of cash.  Since not everyone can, we want to be sure to share organic formula options. If you are breastfeeding, don’t forget to enter our Hygeia EnJoye Breastpump Giveaway!)

Similic Organic Formula and Earth’s Best Organic Formula both state that no trace of hexane is detectable in their formula and that it’s just used to process the DHA and ARA.  But Nature’s One Baby’s Only is the only organic formula to derive their DHA and ARA fatty acids without hexane.  They are also the only organic formula to have 100% BPA free packaging.

There’s just one problem with Baby’s Only Organic formula.  In an effort to encourage breastfeeding, the company recommends their formula as a follow up to a full year of breastfeeding.  However, they offer a nutritional chart comparing their formula to others on the market and recommend that you consult with your health care professional.  It’s clear from viewing the chart that Baby’s Only  meets or exceeds other brands with its nutritional components and would be more than adequate as an infant formula.

Baby’s Only Infant Formula isn’t even the most expensive option!  It comes in at $0.88/oz. while Earth’s Best Organic Formula costs $1.15/oz. and Similac Organic is a bit cheaper at $0.73/oz. (These are my current rough estimates based on buying from Amazon in large quantities)

What’s your favorite organic infant formula?  Any tips on finding the best prices on formula?

The Hygeia Enjoye Professional-Grade Breastpump was invented with working moms and the environment in mind. I have to say that I would have loved to have one of these incredible machines, and one of you will be getting one for free very soon!

So just why is Hygeia EnJoye so unique? It actually has a device that records your child’s cry or cooing so that you can play it back while pumping to help you with let down.  I personally had to sprint into our school’s filing room and try hard to envision my baby’s faces so that I could produce milk in the allotted fifteen minutes I had to pump.  Hearing their voices would have been a huge help!

The Hygeia EnJoye works as a double or single pump, comes with a battery and electrical cord, and is intended for long-term and frequent pumping.  Plus, these pumps are designed not to end up in a landfill anytime soon. They can be reused when each new mom buys new tubing for the pump or sent back to the company to be refitted for another mom.  (And all the components that come in contact with breast milk are BPA/DEHP Free)

At just eight pounds, the Hygeia EnJoye pumps are far smaller and more portable than the giant unit I toted around for a full year. And one of you will win a pump (valued at well over $200!) this week!

Four Ways to Enter the Hygeia EnJoye Professional-Grade Breastpump Giveaway:

1. Simply post a comment

2. Like us on Facebook (then tell us you did it in the comments)

3. Visit Hygeia’s Website and comment on what you learned.

4. Spread the news about the giveaway! Email someone, post it on Facebook, tweet it, blog it, or send someone a message about it via carrier pigeon. (And again, don’t forget to tell us all about it in the comments!)

This contest ends on Friday May 6th and is only open to U.S. Residents.

Great luck!

Books sit on my nightstand for weeks before they are ever cracked open, but I was aching to read 15 Minutes Outside: 365 Ways to Get Outside and Connect With Your Kids.

Why did this little gem get preferential treatment? The title alone tells me what I wish we were doing on a daily basis around here. It’s fine to skip the paper towels and embrace cloth diapers, but what do all those things mean to my kids if they don’t have an intimate relationship with the world outside their door?

The rain has been  relentless lately and we don’t seem to take the time to slip on our boots and brave the weather. We could save a stranded earthworm or find a budding pussy willow or perhaps slosh through a dozen puddles.

This book is simply a list of 365 wonderful ideas, organized by month, to push your reticent crew out the door. When I tell my children we’re going to go outside, my son always replies (rather loudly), “but I’m cozy mama!”. He’s four and loves building blanket forts while clad only in underpants.

But if I told him that we were going to hunt for bugs or plant pansies, maybe I’d have a better chance of moving him beyond these four walls.

If you’d like the chance to win a copy of 15 Minutes Outside, this is your lucky week!

Three Ways to Enter the Fifteen Minutes Outside Book Giveaway:

1. Simply post a comment

2. Like us on Facebook (then tell us you did it in the comments)

3. Spread the news about the giveaway! Email someone, post it on Facebook, tweet it, blog it, or send someone a message about it via carrier pigeon. (And again, don’t forget to tell us all about it in the comments!)

This contest ends on April 25th and is only open to U.S. Residents.

Great luck!

Walking through the baby aisle in through any big box store, you’d think tots require blinking plastic playthings for constant entertainment.  As we point out in The Eco-nomical Baby Guide, parents need far less than they’re pressured to buy in those months leading up to baby’s arrival.  Plus, everyone knows the story of the child who receives a brand new gift only to end up playing with the ribbon and cardboard box.

So what do you have around the house that might fascinate your baby and toddler?

Cereal boxes, egg cartons, and toilet paper tubes. Young children bat them around and sit on them while older kids can use them to construct castles, caterpillars and many other three dimensional art projects.

Paper sacks and measuring cups. I love seeing how many hours a six-month-old can spend observing a paper bag.  It crinkles, it has an inside and outside, and it collapses.  What a fantastic device!  My children spent many hours nesting measuring cups and clanking them together.  Plus, the fact that these are obviously real adult objects that parents use regularly makes them extra appealing to tots.

Real pots and pans, wooden spoons, and grains or pasta. Sit your child at the table with a bowl of dry noodles or rice, several measuring spoons, and various bowls and cups.  They’ll be entranced by their cooking experiments and you may just get time to prepare a meal.

Keys were another hot item that parents listed when we solicited info for the The Eco-nomical Baby Guide, but then they aren’t always safe.  What are the favorite non-toys that your baby loves to play with at home?  Is your child chewing on Tupperware at this very moment?

One day, when we were out of boxed mac and cheese,  I tossed a few ingredients together to discover the easiest and most delicious mac and cheese ever.

We were shelling out nearly two dollars a box on organic macaroni and cheese that used a powder for sauce, and this new version is much more delicious while costing just pennies per serving!

Recipe:

• 1 cup macaroni noodles
• 1 Tbsp. butter
• 3 Tbsp. sour cream
• 1/2 Cup shredded cheddar cheese
• ¼ Cup shredded parmesean cheese

Optional additions:

• 1 Tbsp cream cheese
• 1 Tbsp. Nutritional yeast sprinkled on top (You may or may not be able to get away with this.  My kids call it “flakey cheese and really think that it’s a yummy addition.  Older kids may challenge you on this!)

Simply toss the noodles in a pan of boiling water until cooked, drain them, and then add in the other ingredients.  If the hot noodles aren’t quite warm enough to melt the cheese, zap the pasta and cheese for about thirty seconds in the microwave.

My son actually LOVES this homemade macaroni and cheese and favors it over the boxed stuff any day.  It’s simple, delicious, and saves packaging and money—and honestly, it takes me the same amount of time to prepare as the premade brands.  (I just grate the cheese and gather the ingredients while the noodles are boiling)

If you’re searching for a Vegan Mac and Cheese recipe, you can give this one a whirl.  I haven’t tried it, but the ingredients look appealing.  Great luck!

As frugal souls, we love that you can get our book for free at your local library. It’s even more exciting when the price of The Eco-nomical Baby Guide randomly falls to below eight bucks on Amazon! You can now score a copy for just $7.98, which is sixty percent off the original price of $19.99.  Considering that our little gem can save you hundreds if not thousands of dollars, it’s worth the meager investment in a green baby guide that’s infused with humor and humility.  These price dips usually last just a few days so you might want to pick up a few for gifts while the sale lasts. Good luck!

For many expectant families the new The Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) ban on the manufacture of drop side cribs won’t be an issue. It’s easy to pick out a non-drop side crib and there are several eco-friendly option including the DaVinci Kalani Convertible Baby Crib or the DaVinci Richmond 4-in-1 Crib each of which go for just under $250.

Still, what about those of us who bought used cribs, or are still using drop side cribs that we bought for our first child? In The Eco-nomical Baby Guide, we suggest that families consider buying a used crib if it’s in excellent condition. Is that advice suddenly outdated? Should we all turn our cribs into sweet pea trellises and invest in another piece of furniture? What about cribs that we’re done using? Are they safe enough to be passed on to another family?

Happily, families can now get a free crib immobilizer kit that will make any drop side crib into a safe, stationary sleeping space for baby. Most manufacturers offer them at no charge, but if your company is not listed on the previous link you can also buy the crib immobilizer hardware for about ten bucks online and install it in under an hour. Even though we never bought this device, early on I simply stopped using the drop side option for our crib. The intensity of sleep deprivation made my sad memory even worse than ever and I was worried that I’d forget to put the side back up while stumbling out of my baby’s room after a late night feeding.

I will be passing our used Childcraft drop-side model on and sharing the information about a crib immobilizer kit with the next family to use our sturdy baby bed. It hardly seems worthwhile for every family in America to trash their cribs and buy new ones, but I do want parents to feel safe about their baby cribs.

What’s your take on drop side crib recycling or reusing? Do you know of any other resources for green-minded families?

During all nine months of my first pregnancy, our home was littered with books instructing me on how to gracefully cruise into motherhood.  Many of them simply freaked me out while others seemed utterly unrealistic.

None urged me to trust myself, buy less stuff, use cloth diapers and opt for used gear–all of which we emphasize in our book, The Eco-nomical Baby Guide.  In fact, back in 2006 I could not find a single book on green pregnancy or parenting!  That was part of the reason Rebecca and I were so inspired to write The Eco-nomical Baby Guide.  During the months that we wrote and re-wrote the text, green baby books started to pop onto the market, but none of them had the frugal emphasis that was essential to our eco-friendly message.  We were also surprised to see that none of the green baby guides had an in-depth section about cloth diaper usage and we were careful to dedicate two detailed chapters to cloth diapering, although we could have filled an entire book with our cloth diaper wisdom.  (If you don’t already know, we are rather ardent cloth diaper fans who strike up conversations with total strangers about Fuzzibunz and flushable diaper liners.)

The books I did enjoy were Baby Bargains (which provides a wide range product information and does encourage buying secondhand gear) and Momma Zen, a book which kindly allows you to forgive your imperfection in those first challenging months of new parenting.  I haven’t read Ina May’s Guide to Childbirth, but it has gotten rave reviews from friends.

What are the books you would recommend to pregnant women?

When my son still hadn’t potty trained through the night at age four, I wrote a post about trying to keep him dry through the night. (Most of which totally didn’t work at the time.) Many readers commented that bladder control for boys doesn’t developmentally happen until they’re older—possibly around age six.

Giving up altogether seemed rather strange to me. My post on The History of Potty Training in America, shared that potty training ages in this country have gone up across the board—partly because of the ease of disposables. If everyone waits to even attempt night training until their children are older, there are years of waste (and expense) that could be avoided with some effort.

The only two choices for parents certainly aren’t the following:
A. Torture your child with extreme night training regimens.
B. Just wait. It will happen eventually. In the meantime, buy lots of pull-ups.

In our case, the successful solution was to cut off beverages at 5:30pm and give him a chocolate treat each morning. It’s successful about 95% of the time and my four and a half-year-old son feels really excited to wear underwear to bed.

I’m not saying that all kids can night train at five (or sooner), but it seems worth knowing that some of our efforts may help kids get there a bit earlier.

Have you had success or struggle with night training? The best tips always come from readers so please share your experiences from the trenches of early parenthood!

Does your favorite supermarket or farmer’s market meet all your needs?  Mine doesn’t, but I love it nonetheless!

Trader Joe’s always delights me as a mother, an eater, a frugalista, and a tree hugger. The concept of a shop stocked with almost completely generic, high quality products is revolutionary!  Prices are usually reasonable, products are creative, but the abundance of packaging and the small serving sizes aren’t ideal.  Still, I do visit once a month or so to stock up on cereal, granola bars, and other prepared foods.  They aren’t always organic, but they aren’t packed with corn syrup and preservatives like other mainstream brands.

Although it isn’t ecologically perfect, I drive across town once a month to shop at Trader Joe’s.  I have to hit other grocery stores in the interim to pick up produce and household items, but it’s worth the extra trip for me travel to TJ’s. As we mention in our book, The Eco-nomical Baby Guide, green living is all about progress, not perfection!