Yesterday I read this post over at Mom-101, which references this article about plastic baby bottles. It seems that all plastics, when heated either in the microwave or dishwasher, leach some chemical that has been linked to all kinds of bad diseases. And the worst kind of plastic is that which is labelled with a 7 inside the recycling symbol, or with the code “PC,” which stands for polycarbonate plastic. And plastic baby bottles and nipples, of course, are made from #7 plastic…and oh yeah, get heated a whole lot in the dishwasher, or in boiling water, and often, in the microwave, too.

The same site contains this list of recommendations, which basically boils down to, never put anything plastic in your kids’ mouths, ever ever ever. If you must have plastic dishware and/or toys, try to make them #1, #2, or #5 plastic, and never put them in the dishwasher or microwave.

To this I have to say…oops. Too late!

Luckily, our kids were never remotely interested in taking a bottle, so we never actually used the miriad Avent bottles that we own (the worst brand name, it turns out). Instead, we weaned them onto sippy cups directly, and our sippy cups are #5 plastic. Unluckily, those sippy cups have been through the dishwasher hundreds of time (only 50 washings can lead to leaching of the bad stuff), and the #5 plastic bowls and plates that we use for them, from IKEA, have also been in the dishwasher on a regular basis.

So now, I’m totally freaking out about this, because as you all know, everything you read on the internet is SO TRUE. This one does sound plausible, though. We’re trying to decide what actions to take to calm me down. We’ve already moved the Captain onto ceramic plates and glass glasses, and now we intend to move Gal Smiley onto the same “real” dishes right away. We’ll also try to take away or at least downgrade her sippy cup usage.

I would like to trash (or hopefully, recycle) all our existing sippy cups and plastic dishware, and replace it with new sippy cups (which will never see the inside of the dishwasher) and Corningware dishes. It seems like a rather radical move, but I think I have convinced Sir Monkeypants that this is a good idea. If only to shut me — and my Michael Moore-like ranting about conspiracies — up.

Meanwhile, Sir Monkeypants is having an awesome time shopping online for stainless steel or aluminum water bottles to replace the nalgene bottles we currently use when on the go with the kids (nalgene, apparently, also bad). He’s looking at Sigg and also Kleen Kanteen. They are cool and cutting edge and they sell them at awesome outdoor lifestyle stores like the MEC and Bushtakah, so he’s quite happy. Now if only I can convince him to get the one with the pretty flowered design stenciled on it, they’ll be something for everyone!

The other day, was watching a show on TV called Wasted. They collect a family’s garbage for one month, then they analyze the waste and teach the family how to cut down on their garbage and on their eco-footprint. Needless to say, I was super interested in the show.

This particular episode featured a family of four, with another baby on the way. The garbage analysis showed that about 1/4 of their trash was recyclable paper products; they were recycling newspapers, but not things like cereal boxes, junk mail, flyers, and fine paper. We’re way ahead of the TV show family on that front, so we had a brief moment of smugness.

Then, the show’s hosts talked about disposable diapers. The family has a preschooler still in diapers — probably about Gal Smiley’s size and age. They use 160 disposables per month, which is 5 or 6 per day, which is about what we use on the Gal. They brought out the month’s worth of diapers and poured them out on a table, which was pretty disgusting, and while the parents looked at that heap of crap, the hostess explained that diapers, as far as we know, do not degrade in landfills at all, and will be there for hundreds of years. Ew!

Also, she told the parents that approximately one tablespoon of crude oil is required to make the plastic used in a single disposable diaper. To illustrate, they then brought out a big basin containing all the oil they used in a month, just to diaper their baby. It was an impressive and ugly amount.

So, to reduce their landfill use by half, they recommended cloth diapers. This change would also allow the family to save money, because cloth is cheaper than disposable over the long run, and also, because this show was filmed in New Zealand, where families have to pay per bin that they put on the curb on garbage day. The mother was really skeptical about the switch — I hear ya, lady! — but she was convinced to try it out. After getting used to the process, she was still using disposables once or twice a day (probably overnight, I would wager), but cloth the rest of the time, and she says she is committed to staying with the system.

The rest of the show dealt mainly with their food waste — the show gave them a worm farm, something I have never heard of before, to handle scraps. It seemed like the worms ate the food completely — I’m not sure any compost or anything like that was created. Interesting. Lastly, the show recommended that the father in the family take the train to work, instead of driving, for his 1 1/2 hour commute — something that would reduce the family’s eco-footprint by about 1/3.

The whole show was cool and thought-provoking, but the part that mostly affects us is the diapering. On Saturday we went to the Baby Boom show here in town, specifically because I wanted to check out cloth diapering systems. Both and I were kind of thinking, oh well, Gal Smiley will be toilet trained soon (SO HELP US GOD), and then we’re down to just one kid in diapers, so it is worth it to buy all this new stuff? But when you think about the disposables that even one kid will use in their two or three years in diapers, and the mound that is going in the ground…it seemed worth it to at least think it over.

At the Baby Boom show, there were three booths showcasing cloth diapering systems, and I must say, cloth diapers have come a long way. I remember helping my mom with diapers for my two younger sisters — massive piles of diapers that had to be folded a certain way when they came out of the wash; having to take a poopy diaper and dip it over and over into the toilet, to rinse away the solid crap; hearing the babies cry when my mom accidentally stabbed them (or herself!) with the pins. These days…no more! You can get cloth diapers that are shaped to the baby’s shape, with elastic around the legs, just like a disposable. Most of them had multiple ways of doing them up, with velcro strips or snaps, so you could adjust the cloth diaper to any size — so one set of diapers takes you from newborn to preschooler. Two of the systems did require plastic overpants, but one system has diapers that come with a plastic outer layer, and so are liquid-proof all on their own. Another system had little flushable liners for the back part of the diaper, so in the event of poop, you can take it out and flush it, no dipping or soaking required.

I’m not saying I’m ready to switch over — new things scare me. And a friend of mine who used cloth for her first two switched over to disposable for her third, because she just didn’t have time to deal with extra diaper changes and the increased laundry. But it is definitely worth thinking about. Even if we only use the cloth ones during the day at home, and disposables when we are going out somewhere and at night, it’s something. I’ll keep looking into it.

In the meantime, we really, really need to toilet train the Gal. We’re hoping that once she starts preschool (tomorrow!! My baby!), she’ll be influenced by the other kids and the adorable mini-toilet they have in the classroom, and want to start up again. Otherwise, we’ll have to deal out a little Tough Love.

The finale of Grand Slam was last night and…

KenJen won! Yay!

He was a total machine, and I must say, his opponent in the finals, Ogi Ogas, was equally as impressive for most of the rounds. In the first round, General Knowledge, they were firing off answers before the question could even be completed, and they were talking so fast we could hardly understand what they were saying. At the end of that round, Ogi was ahead — by .14 seconds. So fabulous! and I had to pause the TV for a moment to catch our breaths (and grab an ice cream bar).

Ken was so amazing though…not just with his incredible, expansive knowledge, but the way he can think so, so fast, and even when doing math or jumbles. The speed of the show never phased him for an instant.

And to top it all off, he’s just SUCH a nice guy. And funny, too. Check out his blog.

I know, I know, I am gushing. But man, I love that guy!

This morning, and I went to the Tim Horton’s, and I got served by Haley Joel Osmet!

Okay, it wasn’t really him. But the kid behind the counter looked exactly like him. They should totally get Haley Joel to play Tim Horton’s Kid in a movie about his life. Or vice versa.

So as is usual for a Saturday morning, when we arrived at the Tim’s, it was crazy with cars and people. This kind of overcrowding always leads to the inevitable debate: drive through, or store front?

On one hand, the store line splits into two cashiers, and we learned in university that one line, multiple cashes, is the most efficient way to move people. On the other hand, the inside cashiers have to handle the cash and the getting of food, while the drive through has a whole team of people with specialised jobs to move the folks along. And also, the store tends to put the trainees and newbies inside the store, with the more experienced people manning the drive through, to keep the parking lot from clogging up.

On one hand, the line up for the drive through appears longer than it is, because cars take up more space. But on the other hand, the inside line can appear larger than it actually is as well, because it tends to be made up of groups of people, who will leave the line in twos and threes, moving it along.

On one hand, I find that the drive through customers are just after a coffee and a muffin, or maybe some Timbits — simple, fast orders. On the other hand, the inside customers can see the merchandise that is currently available, and have plenty of time to think about their order because they are not trying to pilot a vehicle while simultaneously digging through the glove box for change, so they should be able to order quickly and efficiently as soon as they get to the front. Although, in practice, I find that inside orderers are all about the dozen donuts, and it’s not like, “Give me a nice mix,” but instead, it’s like, “Give me a dozen, but no chocolate, except chocolate dip is okay, and no honey dips, but honey crullers are okay, and if you have chocolate crullers, I’ll take at least three of those, and nothing with sprinkles.” Grrrr.

It definitely used to be that if the drive through looked very busy, and you had both a driver and a passenger, it was a real advantage for your passenger to hop out and go inside. But I think now it is worth it to sit in the drive through, even if you have to deal with aggressive twits who think their need for coffee is SO much greater than yours that they feel the need to cut in line, like, I bet your friends call you BUDDY, BUDDY.

Today we chose to go inside, and I got to meet (almost) Haley Joel Osmet, so that was worth it. But in terms of service time, we totally got screwed, and the drive through was moving much faster. So I think we’re a drive through family from now on.

You know how some family stories become legends, and get told over and over again, usually to someone’s embarrassment? Like that time when I was about 15, and I let my 10-month-old cousin slip out of my lap because I wasn’t holding her tightly enough, now known as “That Time Lynn Dropped A Baby On Its Head.” Or that time when I was in my early 20s, playing Hearts at a family reunion with my Great Aunt June, and she gave me the Queen of Spades, now known as “That Time Lynn Called Aunt June A Wench and Received A Good Talking To From Her Mother.”

Many of my Mom’s family legends deal with the period of time when I was a baby, and my older sister, SocialButterfly, was 2. SocialButterfly has the misfortune of being the only extrovert in our family, and she was just dying for a baby sister to play with and care for. My Mom loves to tell tales of SocialButterfly cutting my hair, or putting me in her toy stroller, which I promptly fell right through, or feeding me inappropriate foods. Legend has it that I used to beg to be put into the playpen — unlike most active toddlers who beg to be let out — in order to receive a little respite from all that sisterly “love.”

I must say, although these stories may sound like torture more than playtime, I have never doubted that SocialButterfly acted purely out of affection; she has never been less than adoring with me, even up to adulthood, and she has the biggest, sweetest heart in the world. But I did think that it was really unusual for a preschooler to actually want and love a baby. Aren’t they supposed to be resentful of a new baby? Or at the least, so wrapped up in their own little world of wants and needs that they don’t have time to care about a squealing little bundle who can’t even work the LiteBrite?

But now, I have evidence that it actually can happen. Gal Smiley thinks that the Wee One is okay, sometimes, but Captain Jelly Belly is so enraptured of her, that we have to restrain him most of the time. When the Wee One makes an appearance, he rushes over to see her, getting right in her face with squeals of delight, repeating her name over and over again. At least 50% of the things I say to him these days involve stuff like, “Too close to the baby! No squeezing her face! No hugging while she is eating! Too close, I said! Captain, BACK UP!” But he just can’t seem to help himself, he is so excited to be near her. He begs us not to feed her or take her for a nap, because then he can’t “play” with her, whatever that means. He just loves to bring a parade of his cars or trains by, patiently explaining to her the name and vital stats of each one.

It’s really, really sweet, and I can tell that someday they are going to be really close. Already it’s obvious that they have similar personalities, and will relate to each other in a kindred-spirits kind of way.

But in the near future, I predict it is not too long before the Wee One is begging to be put into the playpen, already.

Last year, we put Captain Jelly Belly in preschool, three mornings a week. We chose the school because our friends Mr. and Mrs. Carl Sagan were sending their son there, and Little Carl Sagan is the Captain’s best friend, by virtue of the fact that he sees LCS more than most other little kids.

The preschool is a co-op, which means that the parents do some of the work of maintaining the place. About once every other month, you have a duty day, in which you provide the snack and help around the class during art time and then clean up when the day is over. You also have to do fundraising, which involves selling stuff like coffee and cookie dough — or, you can avoid dealing with the public altogether, like us, and “buy out” your fundraising obligation. actually calculated this year that if you spend your “buy out” money on actual merchandise instead, it will cover your fundraising obligation. So if anyone is interested in coffee and cookie dough, let me know, and I’ll get you $250 worth instead of buying out this year.

In addition to that work, every parent has obligations to one or two committees. These committees do special jobs like raking the yard in the fall, shoveling snow in the winter, preparing paper or felt shapes for crafts, or cleaning and sterilizing the toys on a semi-regular basis. Most of these jobs are, I think, undesirable, and last year I was so worried about how much work it was all going to be, and how we were going to fit that into our schedule, and how it was all going to pan out.

But I’m happy to say that the people at the co-op obviously love me very, very much, because last year, I totally got off easy. So easy, in fact, that I was afraid to mention it before now, for fear it would jinx me for this coming year, in which Gal Smiley will be attending the same school. Last year, I was on the craft committee, which meant I was suppose to prepare stuff for crafts, but they never actually asked me to do anything. Anything. Not one project! My scissors and glue lay at home, unused! My other committee was sewing, in which I would be asked to “make costumes and do minor sewing repairs.” And over the course of the whole year I did…nothing! Not one sewing project! In addition, I had also volunteered to maintain and overhaul their website, and they said, no worries, we are getting someone else to do it. And also, due to my extreme pregnancy in the late months of last year, I got out of one duty day I should have had late in June, because they figured I was just too big and bulky to do it (thank goodness), and they made some other poor parent take the day instead.

Is that the best, or what?

So this year, I was all afraid of what committees I might get, due to built-up co-op karma waiting for me. And what do I get this year? First up, Telephone — this requires me to be part of a phone tree, which means I need to contact 5 to 10 other parents in the event that the school is closed due to an emergency, like a water main leak or a fire. Last year this happened…never. Second up, I got sewing again, and we all know what that led to last year. Nada.

Man, by the time the Wee One gets there, I am going to have to practically be the President, Secretary, Janitor, and Fundraising Committee Head just to make it all up. In the meantime, here’s to co-ops!

One of the most interesting things about babies, I think, is that their line between awake and asleep is really blurry. I guess very few of us wake up like they do on TV and in the movies — with eyes suddenly flying open like a roller blind. But still, with most adults and even my older kids, I can usually tell when they are awake, and when they are asleep, or, in the case of Gal Smiley, in a middle ground known as, “Technically awake, but planning on lazing around in bed for another hour, and don’t even think of talking to me until I’ve had my first cup of juice.”

With the Wee One, it’s quite different. I think I read in one of my baby books that babies have something like eight “levels” of sleep, and between deep sleep and wide awake there’s a whole continuum. When I’m rocking her to sleep, sometimes I’ll think she’s totally out, and just then, she’ll startle and be wide awake again. But equally as fast, she’ll close her eyes and appear to be asleep again. It’s a little maddening, especially when the other two are running wild in the house and I’ve just realised I left an open jar of jam on the table.

On the other end of the spectrum, it’s often quite hard to tell if the Wee One is actually waking up or not. Very small infants will wail when they wake up because they want to be fed, but Wee One is big enough now that she doesn’t have that kind of starvation factor anymore. So when she’s been asleep for a while, she’ll start “snuffling,” which means making little grunting noises and moving her head back and forth, but with her eyes closed. She’s really still asleep, and the snuffling doesn’t mean anything conclusive — she might snuffle for anywhere from five minutes to an hour, and and the end of all that snuffling, she might just go back to sleep, or she might decide to get up. It’s kind of adorable, but also really annoying at 3 a.m., when I’m lying there listening to her snuffle for ages and ages and ages, waiting to see if she is going to need to be fed or not, and it’s like, “Wake up or get off the pot!,” you know?

At nap times, we’ll hear snuffling and even the occasional cry-out, but when we race to her room, she’s still totally asleep. As the Captain would say (he’s kind of on a kick right now), “April Fool!”

I guess with maturity comes the ability to wake up in a sharper fashion. At least for the Captain. In the meantime, it’s time to bring Gal Smiley her juice and the morning paper.

Captain Jelly Belly’s cousins were visiting yesterday, and they brought him a new car, a replica of one of the characters in the movie Cars. He has a whole collection and we’re down now to the more obscure cars — this one was “Bling Bling McQueen,” featuring Lightening McQueen with really fancy wheels and blue paint, who appears onscreen in a dream sequence for about two seconds. He is cool, though.

Anyway, the back of the package has a small picture of many of the cars in the set, so you can check off those you own and see the ones you should be coveting. The Captain loves to pour over these pictures and spends hours pointing out which ones he wants for his next birthday. Which is like, ten months away. It’s good to be prepared, I guess.

So with the Bling Bling package, the Captain’s aunt made the unforeseen, fatal mistake of cutting the package in half — she kept the part with all the little pictures on it for the Captain, but then cut away the rest of the cardboard backing and threw it out. (She’s normally an excellent recycler; I’m not sure why she chose the garbage on this occasion.) When the Captain saw that part of the paper was missing, I could tell he was NOT! HAPPY!, but he held it together.

Today, he comes by with his half-piece of packaging and…

Him: Where is the other half of the paper?
Me: It’s gone in the garbage, honey.
Him: Can I have it now?
Me: Oh sweetie, I’m sorry, but it is gone away. It’s garbage day and they took it with the garbage.
Him: Can we go to the garbage store and get it back?
Me: Sugar pie, there isn’t any garbage store. When they take away our garbage, it goes to a place called the “dump,” and they put it in a big hole, and we can’t get it back.

He goes away to think things over. A few minutes later, he comes back in tears…

Him: Mommy? How deep is the hole at the dump?

I couldn’t tell if he was crying because he figured the hole was too deep to climb into for a rescue attempt, or because he couldn’t bear the thought of his missing piece of paper lying on the ground. And I felt so badly for him, I swear for a fleeting moment I actually considered driving out there and digging through a whole city’s worth of garbage to find a 10 by 5 centimeter rectangle of cardboard that was in no way relevant to his car-checking-off process. Thus is the power of MommyLove.

But sanity prevailed, and the Captain had to make due with a hug and a kiss instead. Poor little guy.

When Captain Jelly Belly was a baby, Sir Monkeypants used to calm him down by rocking him to music. He’d go into our office and select a few MP3s, and then either dance around with the Captain, or let him watch the groovy kaleidascope display on the screen while having a little knee bounce. Sir Monkeypants’ favourite song to play for the Captain was Escape by Enrique Iglasius, a song which is in no way part of our personal taste in music. Rather, it was an ode to Sir Monkeypants’ oldest nephew, whose parents, sadly, indoctrinated him early to Enrique, and so he knew all the words to Enrique’s major hits by age 2, and could sing them in a most endearing way.

To this day, the Captain still refers to Escape as “his song,” and he also loves such groovy pop hits as The Sign by Ace Of Base and every pseudo-techno-tune featured on Lazytown. It’s all Sir Monkeypants’ fault.

With Gal Smiley, Sir Monkeypants sometimes used the same technique, but although he did use a sprinkling of Hi-5 songs, he often chose real rock. I remember one favourite was Brown Eyed Girl by Van Morrison. I think he also may have introduced her to Kelly Clarkson and Avril Lavigne. Now her favourite song is C’Mon C’Mon by the Von Blondies. She definitely prefers a rawkin’ guitar solo in everything she is listening to (although, she continues to have a soft spot for Hi-5).

And now, it’s the Wee One’s turn. I like to sing to my babies while comforting them, and early on she showed a preference for Time After Time by Cyndi Lauper. When she was just two weeks old, we had to take her to the hospital for an ultrasound, and after several performances of Time After Time in the waiting room, I moved on to a medly of 80s hits, whatever came to mind. And thus, we discovered that the Wee One’s absolute favourite song is Please Please Please Let Me Get What I Want, by The Smiths. Not exactly the most cheerful lullaby…but guaranteed to work. A couple of nights ago, she was fussy, so created a playlist of Smiths tunes — all with depressing lyrics set to a catchy beat — for her to listen to, and magically, she was calmed. And it’s not just that the dulcet stylings of Morissey soothes her; it’s that she has to coo and smile along, as if she is thinking, “Oh, those Smiths, such a noir sense of humour!”

We expect her first words to be, “Mom, can I wear black today? Maybe with a little eyeliner? Thanks.”

Sir Monkeypants bravely took the Captain and Gal Smiley on a camping trip this morning. It’s raining here, so I hope they aren’t getting too wet, and are having a good time making marshmallows. Sir Monkeypants hasn’t had too much luck camping in the past, and this is Gal Smiley’s first time ever sleeping outside, so I have my fingers crossed for them.

Meanwhile, the Wee One and I are having a lot of quiet time here at the house. This afternoon I decided to take her on a little outing, just to get out of the house and to have something to do. Besides, Sir Monkeypants went to a lot of effort to install her car seat in the Subaru, so I could go out if I wanted, and who am I to let all that hard work go to waste?

So I had a look at my to-do list, and one of the things on it is to get the new IKEA catalog, because I love thumbing through it, and 99% of the furniture in our house is from IKEA so we can practically think of the catalog as a full-colour magazine spread of our place. Look! Page 108 is exactly like our office, only with that really nice throw rug, so clearly, we get that rug!

The catalog came out yesterday, and it tends to go quick, so I thought, hey, why not pop over to the IKEA and pick up a copy? Because what could be more fun than the IKEA, on a Saturday afternoon, the day after the new catalog items have arrived, when it’s 33 degrees out? I’ll tell ya what’s more fun — all that, and with a six-week-old baby in tow! We’re talking party time!

I should have suspected trouble when we drove up to the big blue box, only to find several security officers policing the outside, and a small army of guys in orange vests who were directing people to parking places. I almost had a little fender bender when I misread the frantic waving of one cranky orange-vest-dude’s walkie-talkie. Me? Or him in the Jeep? Me? Him? Oh, me? Okay, don’t get fussy…somebody needs a Big Gulp.

As soon as I parked the car, the Wee One started wailing, because she hates her car seat and she hates the car and only forward motion at 80 km/h or higher will keep her calm while facing the injustice of a seat belt. And I thought, we’ll just pop in! What could be easier! So I loaded her into her stroller and we dashed inside, and after a frantic 10-minute search, I saw the pile of catalogs on the other side of a massive crowd of aggressive parents trying to get their kids into the ball room. So I shoved my way to the front, with my stroller — I’m sure I was the subject of many a whispered expletive — and grabbed a catalog. Then, it was a sprint back to the car to avoid the impending rainstorm. Baby in car, stroller in trunk, hard-won catalog in the front seat…then 15 minutes of fighting traffic to get out of the lot.

Then, a few street lights into the drive home, I finally glanced down at the catalog…and I had grabbed the French version.

And I grappled with myself for many minutes…couldn’t I decipher the French? Maybe with the help of Google? Wasn’t it really about the pretty pictures? Who cares that I can’t read the flowery J. Peterson-esque descriptions of each room and item?

Sigh. I cared.

So, it was back to the IKEA…back to the walkie-talkie waving, Big Gulp-needing orange vest guy, back to getting the Wee One into her stroller, back to fighting my way through a crowd of arguing parents. And finally I had an English version in my hands.

Then we spent another 15-minutes getting out of the parking lot, came home, and both collapsed into bed for a nap. Quite the outing! I think tomorrow we will just stay home.