Sometimes It's the Huge and Vicious Things That Count

We have worked hard here in Megalopoland to teach Grasshopper how to be a smart, green little baby. She shares, so long as she gets something she wants at the same time somebody else does. Her drinks have never been tained by the taste of old plastic. Her butt has rarely been covered in poo, her hair has never been covered in sodium laurel sulfates. She has eaten cherry tomatoes from our own organic garden, she has learned to love molasses (thanks Amit) and is a pretty good little green baby. We thought we were teaching her to make intelligent, thoughtful choices that would guide her through life. But as we exited the plane in Missoula, and headed towards the stairs we passed this seven or eight foot tall Grizzly:



Grasshopper saw it, ran towards it full tilt, squealing, "Doggy, doggy, doggy!" and then hugged the bear's giant glass cage.



Thus proving that sometimes it isn't the little things that count. Sometimes it's the very, very, big, and vicious things.



Sadly, or perhaps luckily with Grasshopper's track record, we didn't see a live bear or moose, though we saw tracks. We saw Rock Creek freezing over, and deer, and this crazy bird that only comes to Rock Creek in the winter. It dives into the freezing water and digs for crazy, cold-loving insects. In the photo above Grasshopper is proving that so long as you have a daddy's chest nearby, it is possible to take a snooze sub-zero land.

Car Seats in Asia?

Before we went to Thailand and India, we made an appointment with a specialist in pediatric travel medicine at the children’s hospital. After a long wait, the doctor told us that BabyG didn’t need any shots or extra vaccinations beyond what she already had, but then the doctor read off a long list of precautions we should take:

*Dress the baby in long sleeves and pants
*Apply insect repellent on all exposed skin daily
*Apply permethrin to the baby’s clothes (another kind of insect repellent)
*Avoid rural areas and contact with animals
*Give the baby mefloquine to prevent malaria (based on BabyG’s weight, she recommended a quarter of the regular tablet)
*Use a car seat.

“The number one cause of child mortality in foreign countries is motor vehicle crashes,” she said.

The bill for talking to this specialist, even though she didn’t give BabyG any medicines, was over one hundred dollars. I remember thinking, we better heed her advice since it cost us so much. MaGreen bought Ultrathon insect repellent, which worked very well. We soaked the clothes in permethrin instead of spraying it on, since it repels insects longer that way. The house started to reek of poison while we did this, so we shifted the operation outside. Apparently, once the permethrin has bonded to the fibers in the clothing, it is not known to be toxic to humans. We even packed a mosquito net.

But a car seat? How could we carry BabyG’s huge Britax car seat around Asia? In my previous trips to India, I had never seen anyone use a car seat. Even my brother and sister-in-law, who are very safety conscious doctors, didn’t use one with their son while in Asia. But the doctor’s words rang in our ears. Number one cause of child mortality. After all of our preparations and expenses, what kind of parents would we be if BabyG got hurt because we didn’t put her in a car seat? People wanted to take Britney Spears’ kid away from her because she got caught by the paparazzi not using one. So we bought a $40 portable car seat off the web. The user reviews were mixed, but the manufacturer said it could fit into backpacks and weighed less than 4 pounds.

In Thailand, none of the taxis we encountered had seat belts in the back seat. They seemed to have been cut out. The tuk-tuks, which are like rikshaws, were built without seat belts. And sometimes tuk-tuks were the only mode of transport available. When we went to Khao Yai National Park, we specially arranged in advance for a taxi that did have seat belts. After a long and difficult instillation, we managed to get BabyG in the car seat on the way there. But on the way back, she absolutely refused to sit in it.

In India, my cousin’s van was also built without seatbelts and by that time we were resigned to holding BabyG in our lap or letting her sit on the floor. According to one of my uncles, fatalities from crashes in India happen for completely different reasons than they do in the US.

Most of the time, in India, motor vehicles are rarely driving over twenty-five miles per hour, so collisions between small vehicles at high speeds, where a seat belt would really help, don’t happen frequently, he said. Sometimes cars get trapped between large trucks on the two-lane roads, he added, and then a seatbelt will help no one.

As you can imagine, I didn’t find this analysis very reassuring! And yet, we all survived – praise the Green Goddesses -- and BabyG enjoyed the break from car seats as you can see in the pictures. (When we passed cows on the road, she mooed with glee.)

Green Parenting Goes to Asia

Pretty soon the whole family will be travelling to India via a brief stay in Bangkok. I left today. MaGreen and BabyG will be leaving next week. I took all the family stuff packed up in my bags so MaGreen won't have to lug around much more than our 18 month year old progeny and her entourage of snacks and toys.

MaGreen thought the trip itself would go pretty well because the preparations have been vein-poppingly stressful. Passports that don't arrive. Supply orders that don't go through. Ungainly sized visa lines. Travel doctors priced for mightier Maharajas than we. Now I'm stuck in Atlanta because my flight got cancelled. Apparently, a volcano erupted in Russia and the plane would not have had enough fuel to fly around it.

If the whole experience is to balance out, Laws of balance ought to come out on our side once we're overseas.

Opposite Day

I had a long day and missed the bus home, the last bus for the night. MaGreen had to pick me up. We didn't get to the apartment until ten pm. No time to cook, so we bought veggie burgers, french fries, and a Coke from the Burger King drive through.

BabyG enjoyed the break from being an exemplar of green.



She insisted that the cat try out this strange and exciting lifestyle her parents have somehow neglected introducing to her.



Here she is totally blissed out on ketchup and french fries.



May the Green Goddess forgive us.

A Return

Blogger promises our problems will be solved by the end of the week, sort of.  Already I am experiencing the particular writers block of a person who has a long list of Very Important Things to blog about, and is therefore stumped.  I want to write about elimination communication and how, miraculously, BabyG makes the "pssst" sound about 70% of the time she needs to go pee.  I want to write about my stepmother's end stage liver failure, a little, and alcoholism.  I want to write about birthday cake recipes.  I also want to write a post that's just about BabyG, who turned a year old.  And I want all the posts to be fabulous.

Sigh.

And I have a few product reviews to write.

Sigh.

There's so much to write it seems daunting.  

Will this post?

 

Blogger is not Green

This might work. I have hacked into the html code, and will upload the whole blog.

We aren't ignoring the world. We switched to the new and "better" "Beta" "Blogger" but so far it has only been new. It won't let us upload any files. It won't register that you've commented, although if you click on the comment links (0 comments), you'll see any comments left. Anybody publishing via ftp & vdeck is, as the teenagers used to say, screwed.

We are using vdeck and publishing via ftp.

So since GreenDaddy's last post, we haven't been able to regularly publish. One post got through on a glitch. And I'm hacking this one in to see if it will work.

Muy deflating.

Highlights You Might Not Expect From the Holidays:

• 
  
• My stepmom thinks I'm Caroline Kennedy. Really.
• She thinks my father is four different men named Lou.
• We like my sister's fiance, and he works for Homeland Security.
• BabyG made her happy, and vice versa.
  
• BabyG got some plastic electronic toys from the family that she ADORES.
  
• BabyG hung out with all her grandparents and started feeling comfortable around them.
  
• BabyG and I saw our friends' Julie and Jeff's incredible property, filled with Redwoods,outside of San Jose.