Earth Babies Blog

Archive for the ‘Green Living’ Category

Have you got your soil and seeds ready? Only 7 days to go till Planting Season.
Join us in getting outside in the sun with your kids and have a little fun planting something they can nurture and eat - (we would love it if you would share some photos with us of them busy).

planting a vegetable box

I am not a keen gardener for 2 reasons a) somewhere along the line the green thumbs I should have inherited from 2 plant crazy parents got frostbite and turned black. and the bigger problem b) I hate sand and soil and mud on my hands and feet – I am gril’ing just at the idea of it.

I was not always like this there were many photos of me as a toddler covered in icky mud – especially in my mouth (yum – I was apparently a mud connoisseur). I also spent most of my childhood running around the hills and dust and forests barefoot – no more. BUT i will be sticking my hand in dirt and mud to plant some seeds in support of Planting Season on the 22nd.

I had hoped to actually get a vegetable garden going this spring (we have been working on making space for this) but I have put all on hold till I know where/what/how will be happening with our living arrangements in the next few months (staying, moving house, moving town … life is an adventure) Ü.

Sally guest-writes for the Jozi kids blog and did a Let’s get planting post for them last week – nice read.

When I first read about Elimination communication it was just something that resonated with me. It made sense and was something I was wiling to try. Read more about the what and how and why of EC on our website

All went well with my daughter and living in South Africa made it easy, the warm weather ment that nappy free time was easy and I only really used nappies as a back up when I went out. She was dry at night really early and totally without accidents from just under a year and was totally finished with training pants at about 18 months. So I totally thought had this EC thing waxed, she did not have any potty strikes and we just progresses along nicely until we were all done. I really sounds like I am bragging and exaggerating how young she was but honestly she was, it just worked so well with her. That and I guess being the first she had my undivided attention.

Then my son came along, I started straight after birth and we did quite well actually. But the pressure of 2 kids and not being able to focus on just one all the time really made ec a lot harder but we progresses slowly. He was in nappies a lot more as we were at that stage in the UK and it is always cold – well except for those 3 days in July that they call summer.

The kids and I got back to South Africa in January and the hot weather was great, lots of bear bum time. He has always told me when he is wet though if I miss a wee and he never tolerated a poo nappy for more than a few seconds and would usually tell me before. So I was sure that, although a little slower than Rachel, he would also be done with nappies before he was 2.

Roll on the hysterical laughter, he is now 2y3m ( yes i know still very young for a boy to be potty trained – but he has been doing this since 4 days old!!!!) and he in now totally back in nappies, he does not tell me if they are wet and worst of all you only know he has poo’ed when you smell him coming – yucky. He does not seem the least bit perturbed by it at all, in fact he runs away when I even suggest a nappy change. He will still try wee in the toliet when I take him but it is quite a mission to convince him that going in a good idea.

Toilet paper shredded into tiny piece is a great thing to do in the toilet, flush the toilet 500 times also huge fun, wee in the actual toilet – not so much!!! Oh well I guess as the weather gets warmer and we can get outside more he will get back on track. This of course brings me straight onto my next dilemma, now that he is older and I don’t hold him over the toilet anymore, how do you teach a boy to stand and wee when all he sees is him om and sister sitting???

I was asked to be Great Expectations Spring Day show last week. For those who don’t know the show it is a parenting show presented by Samantha Cowen. They wanted a mom who had walked the talk on all things natural, and while I am far from the perfect eco mom I agreed to go and talk about natural parenting and try to be green.

Surprisingly I was not even nearly as nervous on the day as I thought I would be. Once you get there it is off to make up. Wow I had more make up plastered on my face that day than I even had at my wedding. I was not even going to ask if the make up was natural or organic as I feared that I already knew the answer but I guess for one day it was not going to kill me. It felt so weird and when I watched myself of the show I can see in talking how conscious I was of the layer on my face. Once the hair was straightened and they declared us all pretty enough it was off to the set.

There are a few read through practices and we got to ask questions and figure out how it would all work. By the time it actually started it was all quite relaxed and we were having a good laugh.

Sam Cowen the GE presenter asked me how I landed up as a green parenting expert and I guess the answer is that it is a slow process. I started with researching natural birth and then came across other natural and more eco friendly idea. I started adding things as I went along. This is really the point I want to stress to people when it come to all things green. It is not that you have to change everything at once but rather that it is a process of adding things one at a time that you think you can manage and once you have one thing sorted and are used to the changes then you can look for more things to change.

I have been so encouraged by the positive response that natural and green parenting is getting here in South Africa. When I started Earth Babies 5 years ago people thought the idea of cloth nappies and natural parenting was quite mad, but at the last natural and organic show we did in June the response was over whelming. I was think we would really have to try drag people into the stall to hear about cloth nappies but in stead people were flock to us, they had heard about this new kind of nappy and wanted to know more. The change in attitude just to nappies was very very encouraging. And now being asked to be on a fairly mainstream parenting show has really left me with Great Expectation that an eco revolution is here!

This week at our home school group we helped one of the mom’s start build a cob playhouse. Cob building is a very old method of mixing clay, sand and straw to make walls for a structure. It was so nice to be outside in the sun now that the weather is getting warmer. The kids were running around playing in the fresh air and came and went during the whole process helping as they felt like it. I can’t actually remember the last time I had mud between my toes and it really did feel good.

start with some sand

add water

add feet

fold

more feet

roll

build

Like I said Mud Between the Toes is such a great feeling

While reading about all things healthy and always being on the look out for stuff to try I came across Kefir. I started asking around at health shops and trying to see if I could find anyone that had some to share but most people did not even know what I was talking about. Quite by chance I asked at one health shop after I had almost given up hope of finding any and not only did the lady know what I was talking about she had a number of where I could get some from.

So if after reading this you like the idea of kefir and want try it please feel free to contact me and I will happily share mine with you. Once your own batch starts to grow be sure to share it with others.

So what is it and why should you try get your hands on some.

What is Kefir?

Kefir is a fermented milk drink. The word kefir is said to have originated from the Turkish word “Keif” which means “good feeling”.
Kefir Grains are white or cream coloured grains that look a bit like cauliflower florets and they ferment milk. This grain is a like culture of more than 30 microflora that form grains or cauliflower-like structures in the milk. As they ferment the milk they grow creating new grains. Real kefir from live culture is an endlessly self-propagating process. So as your grains multipy you will have enough to share with others.

Microorganisms present in the grains include lactic acid bacteria, Lactococcus lactis subsp. lactis, Streptococcus thermophilus, Lb delbrueckii subsp. bulgaricus, Lb helveticus, Lb casei subsp. pseudoplantarum and Lb brevis, a variety of yeasts, such as Kluyveromyces, Torulopsis, and Saccharomyces, acetic acid bacteria among others. They give kefir excellent keeping qualities by keeping putrifying bacteria that might otherwise colonise the milk at bay. They’ve been shown to inhibit both salmonella and E. Coli in laboratory tests.

Kefir and Health

Okay so this is the why part, why would you want to get some of these little grains to ferment your milk?

Kefir helps restore the balance in gut flora and has many reputed health benefits. It has antibiotic and antifungal properties. It has been used to help in many conditions including metabolic disorders, atherosclerosis, allergies, tuberculosis, cancer, poor digestion, candidiasis, osteoporosis, hypertension, HIV and heart disease. While it might seem strange to drink something with yeast in for a condition like candidiasis it helps restore natural balance, the micro elements kill of the Candida Albicans.

In addition to beneficial bacteria and yeast, kefir contains many vitamins, minerals, amino acids and enzymes. Particularly calcium, phosphorus, magnesium, B2 and B12, vitamin K, vitamin A and vitamin D. Tryptophan, one of the essential amino acids abundant in kefir, is well known for its relaxing effect on the nervous system. Because kefir also has an abundance of calcium and magnesium, also important minerals for a healthy nervous system, kefir in the diet can have a particularly calming effect on the nerves.

Even many lactose intolerant people can tolerate Kefir as long as it is raw and not cooked, and it is usually of great benefit to them.

Research into Kefir:

www.torontoadvisors.com

www.nourishkefir.co.uk

How to make it:

www.seedsofhealth.co.uk

Green is the new buzz word at the moment, we are all being encouraged to think about the impact of the things we do on our environment and I am delighted that there is this change in attitude and a focus on treading more lightly on the earth. I have really tried to live as environmentally friendly as I can, even before Green was the flavour of the month.

I think I came pre-programmed to gravitate towards all things natural, quirky and simple. My parents gave me a great gift as a child – they taught me to ask questions and not just got with the flow. I think they may have come to regret this at times when they were the flow and I was going against.

This was working great and it was fairly easy to do my bit and live a greener kind of lifestyle. And then my children exploded into my life changing it forever. Nothing prepares one fully for how much you will love the wrinkly, gorgeous little parasite that will invade more areas of your life and time that you ever thought possible. Using eco friendly and natural options helped me to parent in a way that feels congruent to what I believe. I feel like I am working with the parasite- oh I mean baby, in practices such as home birth, cloth nappies, extended breast feeding, co-sleeping, elimination communication etc they just made so much more sense to me than a lot of the do to the baby style parenting that seem so popular today.

Some days though things don’t go the way I planned and I find myself being rather a bright shade of orange (a quick check of the colour wheel shows that red/orange are lurking ominously opposite green) I have read a lot of natural parenting books and websites and have even written articles helping other who want to know about practices like Elimination communication (nappy free) baby wearing, the benefits of extended breast feeding amongst other things. But real life is sometimes far from the books and comes crashing in like a pot of bright orange paint splattering my Green Mom ambitions.

Now orange is a lovely colour one I am quite partial to but it does not fit into my idea of the super natural mom I want to be. The one who always looks cool calm and collected while she plants, bakes, breast feeds, recycles, home schools and all those other great things that earn us the Green Mommy Badge.

One day in particular I remember going to a museum with my sister, my daughter Rachel (3yrs), son Caleb (8 months) we where there to look at dinosaurs, Rachel’s latest craze.

I had duly carried Caleb in a sling while he slept and breast feed him sitting on the floor in a corner while being glared down at by some rather menacing looking ‘wotsit-o-saurus’. Afterwards dead on my feet and with a rather cranky 3year old who wanted mommy to buy lots of toys we collapse at a coffee shop. I just wanted to drink my coffee in relative peace and try to revive myself for the long journey home. I tired to get Caleb interested in an organic 3 wholegrain finger biscuit I had brought with me. After he threw the third biscuit on the floor, practiced standing and wriggling as much as possible on my lap, making it near impossible for me to actually get my drink near my mouth without sloshing the hot contents all over myself and him, my patients was wearing thin.

Caleb suddenly spotted one of those sugar paper tube thingy that they have on the tables and quick as a flash started chewing on it. I was just about to yank it out his hand when I noticed that this tube of sugar was winning where 3 organic biscuits and 2 rattles had failed, it was keeping him quiet and still on my lap. Long enough for me to drink my coffee and an inkling of calm return to my shattered nerves (In my defence it was natural brown sugar and not super processed white sugar – Semantic I am guessing) so with my ideals suffering from a splattering of orange I finish my coffee and trudge the kids back home.

There are plenty of times when I have driven instead of walking, bought some unnecessary thing in way too much packaging. I have even left the computer on all night when I went to settle Caleb back to sleep and landed up falling asleep on the bed with him instead of returning down to where I was working. I would be lying if I said that the TV is not occasionally used as the baby sitter so I don’t have 2 kids underfoot while I cook or clean or whatever other chore needs doing.

I realize that while I am not perfect feeling guilt for a bit of orange every now and again is not making me a better mother in anyway and I might as well recycle this emotion into something more useful, like the drive to do better next time and to think daily of ways to tread lightly on our planet. I think by trying to teach my kids responsible living hopefully it will be easier for them to follow a greener type lifestyle in the future. I think not having the emphasis on all thing eco friendly when I was a kid means that sometimes old habits die hard.

Of course there are the inevitable conversations with mainstream parents who are always keen to tell you about the baby sleeping through the night from a ridiculously early age, and how they go out and have their life back and ‘oh how expensive disposables are’ but how they could never use cloth like you, said with the slightly up turned nose as though the very thought is a beyond repulsive. Some time what they describe seems so easy.

They have the baby all trained so that it is does not really disrupt their life all that much and in comparison I think about the bucket of nappies I have at home to wash, the wooden toys strewn all over the floor, and the umpteen household chores that just never seem to be as important as reading a story or playing dress up going out for a walk. And so what if my son does not sleep though the night, I get to feel his soft breath against my check and I can kiss his fluffy little parasitic head any time I want to in the night.

It may not be the easy way and I am far from being green all the time, but it is the way that makes sense to me even if I get a little orange splatter every now and again. I think more important than trying to be a super green mom, I need to be a mom who is only human and teach my kids that we all have bad days and that sometimes a little orange is okay. So now I am off to find a eco friendly way to get rid of the snails eating our beans.