A few months ago I wrote a triumphant post about the joys of comfortably feeding baby on the go.  “It’s easy!” I proclaimed with glee.  “Why do people sequester themselves in private when you can just toss a blanket over baby’s head and continue socializing?”

Funny how much I forgot from my first baby!  Now that Jovi is almost one year old, she utterly refuses to be covered while feeding.  Even when I can arrange my shirt so that I’m not flashing the world, she stops regularly to look around and provide a milky smile for all to see, leaving me a bit exposed.  As this painting proves, distracted babies have been pulling off the breast to smile at onlookers for hundreds of years!

So do I breastfeed in public now?  Nope!  She rarely gets a good meal when she’s preoccupied with her surroundings and it’s hard for me to relax when she’s constantly flopping around to make sure she doesn’t miss anything.  Have you found any tricks for breastfeeding older babies?  Do tell!

If you’d like to see my daughter working her potty training magic you can visualize one adorably plump six month old perched precariously on her potty seat with chubby thighs spilling over the padded rim.  She’s happily performing zerberts while pooping and grinning broadly.  When she’s done, she again zerberts in celebration.

Or you can go to our facebook page by folllowing this link: Infant Potty Training–Jovi shows her stuff!

If you’re wondering why I even plopped her on the potty at this tender age, read Monday’s post about my accidental adventures in infant potty training. Enjoy!

Natural childbirth seems to be catching on amongst my peer group, but I’m not sure if it’s happening across the country.  Here in Oregon families have several natural childbirth choices available to them in hospitals, clinics and in the comfort of their own homes.  With both my kids I was fortunate enough to give birth in a local midwifery clinic furnished with antiques and hand sewn quilts.  Friends of ours have had water births in their homes or worked with midwives in local hospitals.   Do you have access to natural birth resources or is it trickier in your area?  What are your plans for labor?  (I realize that sometimes our bodies don’t cooperate with our plans.)

Today, on my 37^th birthday, I’m going to celebrate each year I’ve spent on this planet with one gratitude.

What does gratitude have to do with being green?  It counteracts constant desires and gives me the chance to look around and appreciate what I already have.  Our endless “needs”  fuel consumerism, debt, and lack of consideration for our natural resources.  Thankfulness stems my longings for stuff and refocuses my energy on all the more important gifts right in front of me. (Even though two of those gifts are really loud, create poopy diapers, and regularly rob me of sleep.)

My three year old should be able to manage being thankful for four things next year and I think we’ll write them down, illustrate them, and post them on our wall.  As for me, I have at least 37 things to list!

I won’t bore you every single one, but here are my top ten this year:

1. My dear husband who washes cloth diapers, makes incredible chocolate chip pancakes, and is a wonderful father.
2. Roscoe, our imaginative three-year-old with such a vibrant and silly spirit.
3. Six-month old Jovi, who grins and giggles with every diaper change and is layered with all kinds of chub.
4. Eighteen years of friendship with Rebecca, and after three years of work, the publication of our book, The Eco-nomical Baby Guide, in March of 2010!
5. Our support system of family and friends who buoy us as we face the challenges of sleep deprivation and three year old tantrums.
6. Having my husband home this year to care for our children and manage the household.
7. Finding fulfillment and purpose as a middle school teacher, and having a two-week winter break with my family.
8. Thrift, and how it has helped our family reprioritize and have more time together.
9. Our cozy little home which offers lower utility bills, a natural limit to stuff, and family closeness.
10. All of you!  I dearly appreciate having the chance to interact with thousands of like-minded parents who are raising kids on a budget while keeping the planet in mind.

Do you have any special birthday rituals at your house that help slow down the gift greed with your children?  Please share!

Baby will probably be perfectly happy to receive a wooden spoon as a gift this year, but her parents will be thrilled to have this very useful piece of clothing.

Halo’s wearable blanket (also called a sleepsack) keeps a tossing baby warm all night long without the SIDs risk, and is also incredibly convenient for those 3am diaper changes in the dark. I can unzip this gown, prepare a pre-fold cloth diaper and change my baby all by the faint light of the hallway. The zipper zips up towards the top so there’s no need to get baby’s chubby thighs in and out of pant legs or fumble with snaps in the middle of the night.

Plus, if you’re trying to keep the heat down during the day, you can zip baby into his wearable blanket and know that he’s snug and comfy even if your thermostat is turned down to the mid sixties.

If you are crafty enough to actually make one of these, here are the online instructions. If not, you’ll be happy to know that they’re currently on sale on Amazon. They can’t keep your baby from waking up, but the fact that they help you switch out diapers without too much fuss is worth it!

It’s the beginning of November, and my tomato plants are still churning out tomatoes. The beans bit the dust weeks ago. Aphids attacked the carrots, so out they went!  Once everything gets ripped from the ground, how do you get your garden beds ready for winter? Here are some tips I learned from The Vegetable Gardener’s Bible by Edward C. Smith:

Prepare the soil. Edward C. Smith, or “Ed” as I like to call him, recommends preparing the garden beds in the fall rather than waiting until spring. Once you’ve harvested your veggies, take a broadfork or pitchfork and loosen up the soil. Add in some compost.

Plan ahead. If you know where you’re planting what next year, you can amend the soil accordingly. Carrots like leaf mold and cabbages enjoy lime or wood ashes, for example.

Mulch. Ed says mulching is the number-one most important thing to do to prepare your garden for next year’s planting. Cover those beds with a thick layer of leaves or hay. Or, try planting some winter rye. Till it into the ground once it’s 8 to 16 inches long.

Here is a picture of one of my prepared garden beds. I have left the parsley and scallions, which I can eat all winter long, and covered the rest with red dogwood leaves. In the spring I’ll work the decomposed leaves back into the soil and plant some new crops.

Do you have any other tips for fall gardening? Let us know!

This post originally ran on Chatty-T: Random Musings from a Pregnant American in London. Tanya, the 28-year-old author of this article,  writes about pregnancy on her blog. Check it out for her thoughts on maternity wardrobe essentials, her secret to avoiding stretch marks, and much more.

We live in the age of the consumer and I’m staggered by the amount of baby paraphernalia on the market. What do I need? What is excess? Changing tables, breast pumps, reusable diapers, disposable diapers….decisions, decisions, decisions.I haven’t delved too far into this abyss, but I hope take a practical approach to baby shopping based on a mix of real need, environmentally friendly products and value for money rather than whimsical “that is so cute my baby must have it” urges. I believe this is a reasonable approach but have now contradicted my practical mantra and decided that I really want to buy a Bugaboo Cameleon stroller/pram.

Lightweight, compact, suitable from birth and with a fancy-schmancy steering system appropriate for country and city terrain, it ticked lots of my boxes. I’m active; even though I’m having a winter baby, I want to get out of the house as much as I can and walk with baby. We live in an urban environment but I love countryside walks at National Trust properties. Our house is small and doesn’t have the space for a big stroller. And if we’re going to splurge in one area, I was all in favor of doing so on our stroller.

The Cameleon’s price tag of around £700, well over £800 with the car seat etc. gave “splurge” a whole new meaning. Now I see why they are popular with celebrities—they can afford them. But how could we, two hard working young professionals preparing for the costs of a new baby justify paying that much money for a stroller in light of everything else we need to get/do to our house/etc., etc., etc. We just can’t.

It’s then that Chris, also taken with the Cameleon, suggested that we take a spin on ebay for used Bugaboos. I balked at first, but then started to consider the benefits. Buying on ebay would significantly reduce the price tag of an item that, like a new car, majorly devalues once it hits the road. Those that bought them in the first place were likely to have cared for them, but the wear and tear on any stroller we might “win” could be reviewed in person before finalizing the deal and exchanging funds.

Obviously we’d buy a new car seat for safety reasons and would have the option of replacing wheels, bearings, etc. if needed. Notably, buying a used stroller is another form of renewing, reusing and recycling, a green approach often forgotten in the whirlwind of baby buying. While I believe you should examine your chosen stroller in person before making a final purchase, online research and ebay bidding saves numerous trips in the car to Baby’s R Us and the like. I’ve seen a number of two-year-old Bugaboos on ebay that look in mint condition—why should they go to waste? Plus, if I bought my wedding dress on ebay, what should stop me from shopping for a stroller there?!

As my mom points out, the baby doesn’t care what it rides in and I spent the whole of my babyhood in a simple, cheap umbrella stroller. Is having a Bugaboo and its many functions really worth it? That’s something we’ll need to weigh up, but as we do, the ebay route makes our debate viable while also being a bit greener.

Have you been able to justify some splurges with the help of ebay? We want to know all about the steals you’ve found!

For those of you on the edges of your seats waiting to find out if we chose a gas stove, wood stove, or pellet stove insert for our wood burning fireplace, I’ll end the suspense: we went with the pellet stove. (Read my  wood fire post here and my fireplace insert post here.)  At first I was worried that a pellet stove insert would look strange in our 1924 house, but we found a model with a vintage feel to it.  Here’s what the fireplace looked like before:

(This photo is from last winter. Don’t worry; I haven’t hung up the Christmas decorations already!)

And now with the insert:

When I researched my options, it seemed like many people wanted a pellet stove as their primary heat source.  We already have a very efficient (95%) gas furnace, so that wasn’t our goal–we just wanted to be able to use our fireplace as another heat source and enjoy the cozy feeling of a fire during the winter.

Was this a frugal and green decision?  Not really.  With such an efficient furnace that burns natural gas–the cleanest-burning fuel around–there was no practical reason for us to get a pellet stove.  The greenest thing we could do would be to rely on our furnace for heat and never light a fire in the fireplace.   The pellet stove cost thousands of dollars, so it probably won’t ever pay for itself.

But, if we actually want to enjoy our fireplace in the winter months, we feel much better about burning pellets in an efficient stove than we do about burning wood in an open fire place.  Our pellet stove stays cool to the touch, so it’s safe to run even with young children underfoot. And while pellets don’t burn as cleanly as gas, they are actually a carbon-neutral fuel because they’re made from castoff materials.  Natural gas, on the other hand, is a petroleum product.

Does anyone else have a pellet stove?  How do you like it?

As I mentioned in this post, we had a few pangs of eco-guilt about using our wood fireplace.  Wood not only emits more pollutants into the air than other fuels, it doesn’t even do a good job of keeping our house warm during the cold winter months.  We started looking into a fireplace insert that would allow us to sit by a greener, cleaner fire.

First we looked into a gas fire insert.  We already have a gas line to our house, so we thought this might be the way to go.  Natural gas is the cleanest burning fuel out there.  However, we were not big fans of the fake-looking logs or coals that come with gas fires.

Then we considered a wood stove insert.  My dad got one of these years ago and loves it.  A wood stove burns wood much more efficiently and cleanly than a regular open fire place–plus it is an excellent heat-generator.  My dad enjoys finding free sources of firewood and keeps himself fit with hours of wood-splitting.  Somehow I couldn’t imagine myself thinning the forests or wielding a chainsaw.  Of course, here in the Pacific Northwest it would be easy to get a cord of split, seasoned hardwoods delivered and stacked for under $250.00.

What about a pellet stove?  My aunt and uncle and my cousin all professed undying love to their pellet stoves.  Pellets are a carbon-neutral fuel, made from sawdust and other castoff wood from lumber mills.  They burn cleaner than wood (though not as clean as gas or oil).

So what did we choose?  You will just have to tune in next week when I reveal the answer to our riveting, emotionally-fraught fireplace dilemma.

Did any of you decide to modify your wood-burning fireplace to make it more efficient?  Let us know!

Pregnancy is a wonderful time to cherish the life growing inside of you. It is also the time to dress as a pregnant nun or the Pillsbury Doughboy. Sporting a watermelon-sized belly this fall and wondering how to best feature it in this year’s Halloween festivities? Check here if you want to view a photo gallery of some homemade costumes for pregnant women. (I love the “bun in the oven” costume!) Thrifty Fun has many excellent ideas, many of which I’ve listed below.

• Pregnant ‘80s Lady