The Month in Pictures

So we're heading to Montana, tomorrow, to spend time with my aunt and uncle in their cabin just outside Missoula.  (I know, I know: if we bought carbon offsets, this year, somebody would be very rich and we would be very poor.) I thought before I get a store of a whole new set of photos, I'd do a little photoblogging to make up for the long lapse of no posting:

After Greendaddy's parents left...and we didn't get any photos when they were here...we had a few regular days.  Greendaddy and Grasshopper tooled around in the cool bike seat my friend Jbrd gave us.



And Greendaddy experimented with taking over my old job (or my boob's old job) of putting Grasshopper to sleep...



...then he perfected it.



After a couple weeks of moseying and snoozing, we hopped on the plane with our irate toddler and went to Virginia, where Grasshopper got to bond with her cousins Katydid (who is five) and Cricket (a little older than one).  This was taken right before we went to a Pumpkin Patch:



This is the picture that shows how Grasshopper was the one little cousin who really needed a nap, but refused to take one:



At the farm with the Pumpkin Patch we spent about twenty minutes lounging in this pile of corn. Greendaddy wanted to make his own pile of corn, right in the back yard, because it was so comfortable and refreshing.  Really, on both accounts.  This is Grasshopper:



And Cricket:



And the whole bunch of us:



When we got back home, my mom came to visit, and it was Halloween.  Grasshopper appears here as a Lion.  She's wearing her friend Willy's costume, homemade by his grandmother the year before.  She won $10 at WholeFoods later on, in the costume contest my mother quickly discovered and entered her into:



And she was also either a Boohbah or Rodney Dangerfield:



I didn't think she knew how to open up candy by herself 
since we never give her any candybars.   But my baby is no fool.



Here's my mom, Greendaddy, and Grasshopper -- the only proof mom was here, as I keep aiming the camera at the baby and my husband, and nobody else.  Got to get better at that:



Mom took us to the Renaissance festival.



Grasshopper was sitting on a giant, fabulous cement pig that my mother didn't think was nearly as intersting as we are:



We went to Galveston with my mom, but we went too late to get in the water.  The weekend after she left, though, we went to Surfside and it was still warm enough to get in the water.  Two weekends ago.



Montana, where I'm going at five a.m. tomorrow, will be tough medicine for this subtropical family, but I hear we get to go cross country skiing...

Toddler Talking Trash

I know I've been heavy on mommy posts, lately. But I'm thinking Grasshopper's interst in this blog, if she ever reads it, will be these sorts of posts.  Don't worry, though: I'm in the midst of a post on feeding a vegetarian baby. Okay. That's a lie. In order to justify another post about my wee one I hustled some synapses, which reminded me of the Quorn taste in my mouth, and how I once considered writing a post on the topic of raising a healthy vegetarian child. I am still at the dawn of thinking about writing that post however.

This post, by the way, is unabashedly about my adorable toddler whose requisite pronounciation mistakes have a distinctly crass bent.

For instance, although she has always referred to her breastfeeding as, "NiiighNigh!" she ran up to me and started demanding boobies last week. Boobies?? Grasshopper is all but weaned and neither of us could remember the last time we'd uttered the "b-o-o" word. The next morning, though, she asked again. I said no, outright, which sent her into tears, but she quieted down and gazed at me intently as I started making her morning seven grain cereal. When I opened the freezer, as usual, and dumped a handful of frozen blueberries into the pot she let out a victorious gurgle of sorts and started laughing/chanting like an insane baby: boobies! boobies! boobies!

And just tonight she crassified another of her favorite foods. I was teaching her that all liquids aren't, actually, called agua or water. On the table in front of us: bilburry juice (jugo), milk, water, and ketchup. After a protracted conversation in which I had to assure her that my name was still "mommy" even if all the liquids were not "agua," she decided I wasn't pulling her leg. Then she pointed and named everything on the table: aqua, jugo, milk, cow poop.

And last but not least: after she sits on her potty GreenDaddy chirps: "Good job, Grasshopper! Let's go put the pee pee in the toilet." Grasshopper falls into a full tilt run towards the bathroom yelling, "Twat! Twat! Twat!"

We're trying not to encourage her in these mispronunciations, since I don't want to be one of the YouTube parents who thinks it's funny to teach their children to swear worse than sailors and put it on the web for the world to see. But, like my father always swore he was doing for me, I am saving these stories to tell her first dates (though by the time she's thirty-five, she'll probably just think they're funny too...heh heh).

Of course, my favorite of her words is not an uncouth mispronunciation at all: it's an extraordinary invention. A mix between the spanish and english words for shoe -- "zapato," and, well, "shoe." A shoepato.

Tale of a Fateful Trip

I am yankering to begin this story about our camping trip to Bastrop State Park by assuring you readers that it really taught the Green family a lot about what we should do better on our next trip. Which you know means one thing: everything went wrong.

It did. Wrongness was the most confident and reliable member of the camping party GreenDaddy, BabyG and I set off on with our friends Gemini, Araf and their five year old daughter, Maha. I’m fairly certain none of us would deny it.

But just in case somebody would, I’ll make my case, which begins by explaining how the site we had planned to visit, Huntsville State Park, just an hour away from Houston, was filled. Garner State Park and the clear and cool Frio River, where I really, really want to go was too far: four hours away. So we drove to Bastrop State Park, which we knew little else about except that it had a swimming pool and pine trees. I could not dismiss a forboding feeling when I heard the park (was so lame) that even though it had two lakes, it also had to have a pool.  Something seemed amiss.  

But Bastrop is two hours from Houston and had a spot open: who cares about amiss? GreenDaddy and I spent hours Friday night amassing gear...so long we skipped breakfast and were two hours late meeting up the next morning. Then, though she didn’t scream the whole two hours, our child refused a nap and earned high high-maintenance marks.

Bastrop Park was hot. Our site was hilly, BabyG tripped, and this made her cry until daddy took her for a walk. We forgot ice. When Gemini and I went to buy some, I asked the cranky old lady in the park store where we could swim, and she told us nowhere: the pool was closed and no wading or swimming was permitted in the lakes or creeks. Since we were planning to paddle, I asked if water-contact was prohibited because the water was somehow dangerous, or if it was just a protected ecosystem. She said it was an ecosystem, and wouldn't say more. When an old volunteer guy carried our ice to the car, I asked him how to cool off. He said drive five miles to the lake in the neighboring park. We eventually did: it was a crowded, swimming-pool-sized, fairly shallow area in a lake otherwise meant for water skiers and that, Maha said (dismissivley) smelled like ketchup: otherwise it was perfect.

That night, BabyG peed the bed. Twice. It was blistering cold outside, for Texas, and we were serenaded by the continuous humming, honking and buzzing of cars passing on the nearby highway. Half the pan of oatmeal fell into the fire, that next morning. BabyG started saying bye-bye to everybody, which meant: okay, I’m ready to have been back in Houston three hours ago.  

Instead, we headed to the lake you couldn’t swim in, to kayak and fish. It turned out we were missing GreenDaddy’s kayak oars, so he and Araf rented a canoe and then Araf went fishing. It took forty mintutes to put the Klepper kayak together, after which, Gemini, Maha, BabyG and I climbed into the canoe. I took one oar as Gemini had never paddled before, and GreenDaddy took the other in his kayak.

Maha, almost immediately, wanted to go fish with her dad, and BabyG was unabashedly unimpressed with her life-jacket. She performed her best shrieking raptor imitation, non-stop, until I stopped paddling and breastfed her. Gemini didn't want to take the helm as the canoe thing was new to her. She thought she'd kill us. She didn't though: she caught on to paddling nicely.

When we reached Araf, he said he’d like a ride. GreenDaddy jumped waist deep in the water to help moor us as we transferred vessels. When Gemini’s family came back, we all decided to picnic on what ended up being waterlogged veggie burgers. Yum. After eating, we packed up and headed to our respective homes.

Fast forward twelve hours and note how GreenDaddy’s body is a minefield of flatworm infestation. It looks like countless mosquito bites. Initially, I felt sorry for him, but didn't pay much attention. When the bites seemed to multiply, I searched the internet and discovered he has swimmer's itch: bites made from a parasitic worm that cycles through snails and ducks until humans stupidly offer up their, apparently, duck-like skin. Its itch is severe (like poison ivy) as opposed to mild (like insect bites) according to the Center for Disease Control. He has over 74 bites.

So, it’s like I said, we learned a lot about what to do better, next time.

But it's also like what I didn’t say, but what GreenDaddy and I talked about half the way home. As BabyG slept peacefully in her Aloha carseat, and we were following the wildflower drenched highway back to Houston (and there were dozens of varieties of wildflowers out this weekend: in purples and reds and yellows and golds and whites and lavenders...) we talked about how we both felt toatlly relaxed. Stress-free for the first time in months.

And it occurred to us, as it has occurred to all campers at one point or another, that the swim in the grass-filled and pondy bottomed lake, the making due with imperfections, the passing of intensely intimate time with another family, the learning to wash two pounds of spinach in a plastic bag, the witnessing of somebody learning to steer a canoe, the blossoming friendship between BabyG and Maha, even the little part of beauty evident in the presence of motorhomes with their sewage systems, Christmas light pollution, and satellite televisions: the power of camping is that all of these tiny things come together and trump the obvious wrongs. And no matter how annoying the wrongs were at the time, by the ride home they seem to be integral parts of camping fun (except for those worm bites.)

I mean, I wrote all this just to say: we had fun. More fun than we've had in ages and ages. It was nice to spend that time with our friends and each other. And though next time we’ll be sure not to wade in shallow lake water we’ve been told not to swim in, and we’ll remember toys for the baby, and we’ll make simpler meals, and we’ll get up earlier and swim in cooler water…something else unexpected will happen. And we’re looking forward to finding out what it will be.

Seder

Robin, the illustrious author of The Other Mother, and her partner, Marcia, had us over for Passover Seder last week. I’d never been to a Passover Seder before and didn’t have any expectations ahead of time. At first, BabyG was happily dazed by the company of the other children – Pearl, Carrie, and Miles – and after about fifteen minutes she started playing. Robin and Marcia told us that they would keep the Passover ceremony short and child-friendly. Their tone was reassuring, as if I was thinking, “G-d, I hope it’s not going to be one of those long ones,” which I wasn’t thinking since I’d never been to one.



We all sat in a circle on the floor around a platter, in which several kinds of food were arranged. I can’t recall the ceremony exactly, but I remember eggs, parsley, horseradish, a sweet mix of apples and nuts, unleavened bread, a chicken bone, and wine. (I hope I didn’t miss anything.) Robin explained that each food had a symbolic significance connected to the Jews fleeing slavery in Egypt. Actually, she started off by explaining that Passover is for all people, not just Jews. All groups of people, she said, have experienced different high and lows in their histories. Then as we ate each kind of food, she explained how we might understand its significance. All this discourse took place in English. Later, when we sat down at the dinner table, Robin led the recitation of a few Hebrew prayers.



Though we apparently experienced an abbreviated Seder ritual, I found it very meaningful. Hindu rituals are almost never performed in English. Our wedding sacrament, for example, was in Sanskrit. I hope one day American Hindus can emulate the way American Jews have woven Hebrew and English together in their ceremonies. And I’m so impressed by the way Robin drew us into her tradition and expressed that tradition in an inclusive way. MaGreen and I have the ambition of doing the same with Holi next year.

The Innies and Outies of Interpreting BabyG

BabyG has become an expert at identifying her favorite words in the world around us. She spots miniature cat ornaments nobody else notices and screams: “Baicy! Baicy!” since she calls all cats after our own, Percy. In other people’s homes, she giggles wildly if she comes across a stuffed dog before addressing it: “woof woof!” or if she sees a picture of a cow: “moo! moo! moo!”

If you say, “BabyG, where’s your belly button?” she opens her mouth like you’ve reminded her of the most incredible idea in the world, hitches her dress up and points. “Bay bay!” she croons, hanging slightly on each of the ‘y’s.

In her picture books, she points at babies and says, “baybay.” Faster than a belly button, but the same word.

When she’s on the potty, or she has to go poo, she says, “bay bay,” only this time, the ‘b’s are very slightly sharpened…not quite ‘p’s yet, but on their way.

Finally, there is the word which, when she's in an enunciatory mood, may come out "bye-bye" or "bye" or "bay-bye" – but just as often comes out "bay-bay."

I figure she’s determined to use words to their full potentiality at this tender age. That she wants to reuse, renew and recycle syllables in order demonstrate the innate connection between the words we use and the way we use the world. And I am very proud of her for making such an intelligent stand at such an early age.

The only problem is that sometimes she drops whatever’s in her hands as if she’s been suddenly shocked by something she sees, points her tiny finger, and says, significantly, as if she’s introducing somebody to the queen: “Bay bay!”

And then you have to figure out what she’s pointing at: the potty, a baby, a belly button…or, God forbid, some new thing she’s decided should be signified by her favorite two syllables. Because not only does she want to point it out for her, she wants you to agree that she’s right by looking at whatever it is she’s found, pointing at it yourself and saying, “Yes, BabyG, Bay Bay.”

The other morning she was sitting in her highchair, eating some of her coveted frozen blueberries, when she began frantically pointing at the closed closet door and chirping: “Bay Bay! Bay Bay!”

“No, BabyG, there’s no Bay Bay, there,” I said, when I walked in from the kitchen to see what the commotion was about.

“Bayyy Bayyyy! Bayyyy Bayyyy! Bayyyy bayyyy!” she insisted, making the ‘y’s as distinct as possible.

By this time she was doing her best to jump up and down in her high chair, leaning as far out of it as she could (thank God that Svan is so well balanced). I stared into the door like you do at those 3D stereograms, and noticed she was pointing specifically at the closet’s missing door knob...

Which is, you will note if you take the time to move your mouse over the picture below...

quite clearly, an "innie."

A Blessing for You and Your Newborns

For Ruben and Angela, and for Ruby Graciela and Lucia Simone who were born 19 Feb 07

May they mash you up in their gummy mouths.
May they render you into a pulsing goop,
a thing that shares only a DNA signature
with the person that you were.
Make it new, they will say in their secret languages.
May they hold back their first smiles.
You will peer into their faces at dawn.
You will try swinging around to catch them
laughing at you like torturers.
May they hold back
and yank you down with their first smiles
like undercurrents in the warm sea.

Love Fest 2007: G(comm Unity)nting

BabyG's 1st year bash was, if I haven't mentioned, a six hour long open house. Long enough that I wanted to provide sustenence for my guests in the form of not only delicious Harvest Pumpkin Apple Cake, but Dilled Egg Salad Sandwiches, two kinds of cookies, and homemade Limeade. It was on a Saturday, and the following Wednesday, I cooked three lasagna's for GreenDaddy's surprise birthday (in which my surprise was upstaged by the mean intestinal bacteria some piece of food delivered GreenDaddy two days before...)

These party preparations and caring for the poor, sickened GreenDaddy arrived, as the best kind of stress and sickness does, at the height of the holiday season. Right when normal people are busy getting their winter plans, purchases, and/or trips in gear. For us, that meant preparing for a two week long sojourn to Utah and then to California, to see all our respective parents.

All this plus doting mightily on BabyG was enough to frazzle icecubes. But everything came off okay.

"But how!" I hear one of you dear readers gasping. "Good Golly," another is muttering, "Your family surely is a veritable mountain of unyielding force!"

Yes, we are. Thanks phantasmic reader, for noticing.

But how DID we survive? And why didn't the eldest heroine of this blog expire in a pile of lasagna noodles, pumkin puree, and happy birthday ribbons?

[MaGreen], my friend and loved one,

we'll be over tomorrow at the beginning of the party, and you should think of hank and i as people who you can call in the morning or before the party begins to get last minute whatever (including, "please bring a can of coke with you to the party").

we can also run errands, take out garbage, put out chairs, provide nonviolent conflict resolution, mop up pee puddles, open windows, change lightbulbs, turn compost, take things out of ovens, entertain children, and oil squeaky door hinges.

love,
ch.

It's that simple. I always want to write about how at least 50% of our ability to keep working at being green parents is a direct result of the incredible community that surrounds us. Our nurturing, loving community is the "reen Pare" in Green Parenting.

For those of you who want a way to help out new moms, or sick friends, or just friends who need a lift: copy above note, change the names, and send it off. (Well, better change some details in it, too, because otherwise it could have effects opposite of your good intentions. Chuck's note immediately lowered my blood pressure, and even now, weeks later, reading it makes me incredibly happy. Makes me feel inordinately lucky.



It wasn't only Chuck who saved my ass. Our friend Nicole did all sorts of decorating, last minute shopping, and lasagna baking. Janira helped me get the house ready. Heather came over and made cakes. Kayte brought her camera and took pictures of the 1st birthday(since our camera was missing that day). Keith and Theresa lugged over half a dozen or so extra chairs. And for the surprise party, all GreenDaddy's friends brought little and big somethings to augment the lasagna. And even the people who didn't "do" something, "did" something by celebrating the births of my two favorite people, and have "done" countless other life saving and wondrous things for us these past many years. Thank you.






The ever expanding sum of my friends' kindnesses reminds me that being green isn't just about using glass storage containters instead of plastic, or growing your own food, or creating less waste, or riding your bike to work. It's about nurturing the people around you so they can make their own green choices, or maybe choices more inline with their belief systems, but that you support because they're your people.

This is important for me to remember. My community enables me to work for what I believe without becoming pissy, angry, or poison because I'm greener, or peacier, or a better earth-lover than whoever. It keeps me going when I'm pooped, and it makes me want to be as fabulous to other people as my community is to me. Which is Good for Green.

_____________________________________________________________________________

Sending this in to the scribbit Write Away Contest!

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.

Plucking the Tofu in time for Thanksgiving

The last post was a little long and self-indulgent. But my nostalgic demon had to have it before I could get on to what I wanted to write, which is more on the topic of Green Parenting, and is short and sweet... Although it is another cooking post, but I promise it's the last for awhile.

I’ve spent the last couple of weeks learning how to cook tofu. I haven't learned sooner because I'm terrified of marninades. But since I've been an on-off vegetarian for over ten years, I figured it's about time I got over that hump. Oh, and when I write, "I've been learning to cook tofu" I mean, actually, that I’ve just tried the same two recipes twice: A Veggie Loaf and a Veggie Cutlets with gravy.

I’m doing this partially in order to provide my family with tasty food on Thanksgiving, but mostly because I just miss hearty food supplemented with a vegetable, sometimes, and beans and/or pasta doesn’t always do it for me. I'm not experimenting with the Tofurkey because that's my friend Chuck's territory.

I found the recipes at Vegweb.com, and since I really hate most tofu-based meat replacements, and I really loved these recipes, I decided I ought to share them. I don’t know how long the link will work, as they’re special Thanksgiving recipes, but if it breaks, go to VegWeb.com and look up holiday/Thanksgiving recipes.

The two I like are Thanksgiving Meatloaf and Marc’s Cutlets -- and note, something like fifty other people also gave them five stars... And I'm sure I don't need to tell you these hardcore vegan/vegetarian types are generally pretty damned stingy with the stars. Both recipes are really well flavored...

My special notes for anybody who actually decides to lift one of these recipes:
Veggie Cutlets: a) you eventually turn the marinade into a gravy GreenDaddy is a huge fan of, and which will allow us to finally have gravy on Thanksgiving; b)I pressed, then froze, then thawed the tofu before marinating; c) I dipped the marinated chunks in egg to make the breading stick better, added chopped almonds to the breading to make it more glamorous, and cooked it in the oven instead of on the stove. GreenDaddy likes the baked, which are crunchier; I like the fried, which are fattier, but still crunchy.

Meat Loaf: I didn't try, but think you could use the old tofurkey-collander method to make this shaped like a dead and plucked turkey. I also accidentally purreed the onions on my first round of making it, and I think it made the recipe better, it wasn't at all crumbly like the second round was.

So there you have it. And if anybody out there can point me to any other types of tofu recipes...please do!

Catalogue of Thanksgivings...

The first Thanksgivings I remember were celebrated in the house I grew up in, which was attached to my dad’s bar, the Three Legged Dog Saloon. He invited anybody without family to join – that usually meant men working on the oil rigs, women who had crushes on my dad, ‘barmaids’, and a few Utes who lived on the reservation the bar was in and were regulars. People crowded around a table filled with generic Thanksgiving fare that my father always made himself: turkey, potatoes, beans, stuffing, cranberry sauce, and pies. Lot’s of wine, too, but that was store bought. I was usually the only child, but I relished that role. Everybody was extra kind to me because of it, especially on this day when everybody missed the vestiges of real families and a little girl fed their nostalgia as much as the food and the tradition did.

After that, there were Thanksgivings I spent in Salt Lake City, which I never enjoyed as much because they were formal and lacked the chaos I associated with the day. And then there was the college Thanksgiving I forgot about until seven or eight at night, when my friend Nick Jackson and I went to a convenience store and bought a couple turkey pot pies (only in Minnesota do convenience stores carry pot pies). It felt hip and I was impressed with our ingenuity.

In New York City I cooked my first bird in a fast-cook method, because I didn’t realize how long it took to thaw a turkey. My college friends Wi Sorenson and Eric Heaton refused to eat it because, though I found it tantalizingly juicy, they were convinced it was raw and might kill them. I was congenially distressed.

In Houston, I spent a few Thanksgivings with the same friends, usually at the Wolfes’ fabulous abode. About sixteen close friends from the writing program all smoked up before dinner, and we ate Steve’s incredible food, and passed out all over his house, our sleep sound as Rip Van Winkle’s (which was appropriate as Van Winkle himself was a creation of one of our friends’ great, great, great, etc. granfather.).

When that group broke up, I hosted several at my little blue house. These events were like my fathers’, filled with people I knew, but usually not very well. We drank wine and argued and flirted and had a good time. Finally, I became a vegetarian again, as I had been in college. My first vegetarian Thanksgiving was actually a vegan one, which I spent at my friend Chuck’s. We awaited Janice Blue, host of Pacifica’s Go Vegan Texas, like she was the Easter Bunny, and when she arrived with her Textured Soy Protein Turkey, the countless sweet potato, corn, and barley dishes immediately appeared not only less oppressive, but ordained.

By then I was dating GreenDaddy, and my mom joined our first Thanksgiving together – it was the first Thanksgiving I’d spent with a family member since I was 18. My friend Kate was going to bring a turkey, but she was very stressed, and for the only time in the history of my knowing her, she bailed on bringing it over late on in the game --the night before Thanksgiving. My mom needed a turkey and was worried it would never thaw in time…but luckily, Houston isn’t Myton, Utah, and not all turkeys are frozen. We went to Whole Foods, picked one up, and cooked it with our friend Jenny’s help. Mom came the following year, but the year after that she was too sick; and now she’s coming again this year.

For the first time in years, we’ll have Thanksgiving at the Wolfe’s again. So the Houston Thanksgivings come full circle. And actually, a good chunk of the original Wolfe Thanksgiving participants will be at this years’ event. And my mom will be here, so I’m excited. Steve and Diana will have a turkey, Chuck will bring Tofurkey, and I will bring some foods derivitave of the Americas…Amyrynth stuffing, probably, and I’ll also bring either vegy loaf or vegy cutlets.

And it’s BabyG’s first Thanksgiving. She had a mild bout of Scarlet Fever and had to take Amoxicillan, and since then has refused most food outside of breast milk, so she’ll be vegetarian this year…though she’s about the size of a big turkey.

Thanksgiving is a holiday I’ve spent with so many people, many of whom I no longer am in contact with, and many of whom I still see daily. I like that. I like that my father modeled it as a night of community and that I continue to celebrate it in this way. That’s about as profound as I feel like being, and after over a week of no posts, I feel like owe more to the blogging world. But I just wanted to say I like Thanksgiving, and I am happy to have a little baby girl and a fabulous husband to celebrate the next couple dozen or so with.

More Thawing of My Jello Brains: Halloween

Saturday I spent making our Halloween costumes, and then went to our friend Kate’s fabulous Halloween party, where BabyG fell asleep and we stayed later than we expected. I even got to return, after putting BabyG to bed at home, because we’d swiped Nicole’s purse on accident. I got to stay up till one or two talking with Kate and Nicole, the last of the partiers.

On Halloween itself, I completely didn't know it was Halloween. I thought it was Wednesday, not Tuesday. All night long I was convinced the School District had announced kids had to go out a day earlier. Don't ask me why I came to this conclusion: I just saw kids dressed up in a grocery store and decided it was the wrong day. When trick-or-treaters came, I gave them candy, but I still thought it was October 30th. I said to 13 year old next-door-neighbor-boy, in a tone of voice suggesting that he was on my side and thought Halloween should be celebrated on the 31st: "But you're having your party tomorrow, right?"

"This would be my party," he said, mortified, rolling his eyes the way 13 year-old-boys with loopy neighbors are apt to do. But me? I thought, "How sweet, Ben's getting moody and sulky for no reason at all." But still didn't think it was Halloween. Not until I got online, and I saw the date, did it occur to me.

BabyG was in bed by the time I realized she should've been wearing the Itsy Bitsy Spider outfit I made her. At Kate's, she was the spider, and I made GreenDaddy into a water spout, and I was the sun and the rain. These were the first costumes I ever put any real thought into…and the itsy bitsy spider was the first Martha Stewart ‘recipe’ I ever followed. It was a no-sew costume, which I mistakenly thought meant simple and not-time consuming.

I used tools I’d forgotten about: a razor, wire, duct tape, a glue gun, and cardboard. It was very relaxing and all-consuming, much to Raj’s chagrin, as he had a paper to write. He put off all his work until my comps were over, and then I spent my first “freeday” and his first “workday” slacking.

But making BabyG’s costume was a little bit of a coup for me. It’s definitely one of the things I’ve done in order to undo my own Halloween experiences growing up. I never had the cool parent-help-made costumes. I was always made out of whatever was laying around the house after the Halloween party at my dad's bar. One year my dad made me into a cone head…a Saturday Night Live skit based costume my dad had worn the year before. Another year I was half witch, half Snoopy, because my dad found green paint and we had a witch’s hat from one of the barmaids, and somebody picked up a plastic Snoopy mask at the grocery store. But the most memorable year was when I was eight or nine and I trick or treated wearing my step-mother’s fur coat, wearing dog ears, and told people I was a stray.

So I felt very hefty and supreme spending an afternoon constructing a costume for BabyG that looked like somebody (new to crafts) cared. Which isn’t really fair to my parents, because there is something to be said for the on-the-spot-creativity Halloween evoked in my family…on the spot thinking is probably one of the best traits I inherited from my dad, at least.

And of course, if you asked BabyG about it, she’d tell you she didn’t really like wearing spider legs. Luckily, her annoyance at the legs only enhanced her costume. Her pal Cosmo had a Superman outfit comfy enough to sleep in. I saw the question in her eyes: Couldn’t mommy have just found me some Wonder Woman Underoos?

Alas, dear BabyG, Momma couldn’t have. You will probably work hard to let your kids trick or treat in whatever get-up they can muster…but for the next few years, at least, I’m going to have to impress myself with my sloppy, well-meant craft-making, at your expense. When you’re old enough to vocalize, I promise to use the glue gun according to your specifications.

Free Hugs ReUppies

Well, I took both comps last week but am not quite thawed out enough to begin blogging.

But I thought I'd wet my feet by learning to post a U-Tube video on the blog...and perhaps you've seen this video, but I've been in bookland for awhile. It was nice to see this on the way out.

It Ain't Easy Being Queen

Every year my hometown, Myton, Utah, has a celebration that used to be called Myton Homecoming, in order to entice people who couldn't afford to live in a place with no jobs to come home and visit. Now it's called Myton Daze, I suppose because most of the people who attend live in Myton and most people who have moved away don't happen to be home on the weekend of the year the town (officially) parties. Except this year, BabyG and I did just happen to be in Utah for Myton Daze...fortutious, especially, since my mother Kathleen is the mayor and had a big hand in organizing the event. We got to go be proud of her.

As a little girl I dreamed of winning the annual Little Miss Myton contest, mostly because I believed a world without the sparkling crown adorning my own head would be a terribly cruel one. My Aunt Sallie won one year, and her own jeweled tiarra sat on top of the piano in my grandparents' family room, torturing me. I wasn't allowed to play with it and the top of my head pounded viciously with the desire to put it on.

I never got it together enough to actually participate. My dad owned the bar next door to the park where the celebration was held, and Myton Daze/Homecoming always just crept up without my having prepared some talent or other to wow the world with. The one year I got to almost participate in Myton Daze at all, in a square dance performed by the entire third grade class of Myton elementary, I showed up at the dress rehersal but by the time the actual dance began I had run across town and was busily watching my Aunt Fern's cat having kittens with my cousin Darren. Poor old Rowdy didn't have a partner and had to dance with Mrs. Jones.

Just today, however, my father lied to me and told me that I did win the Miss Myton contest. He said it was the same year he won the ugliest shirt contest and our dog, Sidney, won the best looking dog event. Neither event actually ever existed, but my dad has a wonderfully fictive memory that is almost always becoming to me.

All this is coming up becuase this year I was unable to resist putting BG in the baby contest...even though I feel like I'm supposed to hate baby contests. My own mom told me she never entered me in one because she would have ripped the eyes out of all the judges if I didn't win. Not to mention Myton Daze/Homecoming didn't start until I was seven...I don't think they ever had a retro baby contest.

Baby contests are not in the realm of green parenting, they are more like orange parenting, or neon parenting, or Fire Engine Red Parenting. People say the contests are all about the parents' needs, not the childrens'. I think people are right, because I pretty much NEEDED BG to become Queen Baby of Myton. Every six months old drop of her knew this as she sat on my lap on the stage in the little elementary school and giggled winningly at the judges, one of whom was my former Kindergarten teacher. She fluffed back her incredible head of hair and pretended to be a mix between Miss Breck and the Gerber baby. Of course, BG won out against the one other baby in her age division (six to nine months), who was her first attendant. So BG's cousins Cole & Haydon won several races; her cousin Alexia won a watermelon eating contest, and BG won Queen Baby.

She won a fabulous crown that I sat on just about right afterwards. I had to bend it and glue it back together so that she could wear it during the big parade the Queen and her mother rode in on a float. The parade's path follows the mile of strip that is Myton's main street. I looked forward to the event the entire day before it began, and bathed BG and made sure she had the right amount of sleep to really enjoy her first ride on a float.

But the Karmic gods got me for entering her into the contest in the first place, in the end: it was HOT, first of all. Notice her tongue sticking out in the picture to the left. I almost dehydrated my baby who was too mad to eat because the fire department was riding behind us. That meant we were followed by honking, siren rearing folks. Giant Red Monsters, so far as BG was concerned, and Queen BG was NOT impressed. In fact, Queen Baby howled at the top of her lungs for about the entire fifteen minute duration of the parade. I wanted to jump off the float and save my baby and my own concience, but it was too tall for me to jump off of without dropping the queen.

And so it begins, BabyG paying for the sins of her mother.

On the Legacy of Vasumati Desai

My maternal grandmother, Vasumati Desai, died Wednesday March 22, 2006 at the age of 88. I simply called her Ma. She was living with my uncle, Yogesh “Hiru” Desai, and his family in Baltimore. Maryland. When he returned from work that Wednesday afternoon, he tried to wake her up from what seemed to be an unusually long nap. Ma was already gone. Her expression was calm. There was no sign that her last moments were painful. Hiru mama told me that her eyes were half closed and that she held a tissue in her hand as if she had just wiped her nose. My dad, who was there shortly after Hiru mama found her, added that Ma’s face was turned towards the window. Ma’s heart had weakened in the past few years and her heart beat had been unsteady. She could still walk and largely took care of her own needs. Nobody expected that particular day would be her last. She probably had a sudden, massive heart attack or stroke.

Ma was born on February 19, 1918 in Porbandar, an old city on the coast of the Arabian sea. Incidentally, Ma shared her birthplace with none other than Mohandes Gandhi. The Mahatma was born in Porbandar several decades before my grandmother. Unlike Gandhi, Ma never led a struggle for national liberation. She did not turn her life into an international movement for justice. Richard Attenborough did not and will never make a three-hour film on her life. On the grand scale of History, she was an ordinary person. A mother, a schoolteacher, a good citizen. However, I feel a deep urge to set down in writing – for posterity! – some of my knowledge and memories about her.

Ma’s parents (my great-grandparents) were Chaganlal and Champak Bakshi. Ma once told me that her father's held himself as stiffly as a cane. He was a school headmaster. I imagine that he was an immaculately kept and crisply dressed man. Their home life, however, was not disciplinary or harsh. They had progressive ideas for their time. The men, women, and children ate their meals together. They supported the education of their daughters and they found a husband for Ma who would do the same. She completed a masters degree in English after her marriage to my grandfather.

There were some unusual things about Ma that I attribute to her upbringing. For example, all her children addressed her by her first name – Vasumati. This is unusual in any culture, I think, but it is especially unusual in ours. She was also uncommonly observant of people. She tried to understand people’s psychology and their motivations. The word she used was swabow, which she translated as a person’s nature. “Swa” means self. It also appears in Gandhi’s two favorite words, swaGreenDaddy (self-rule) and swadesh (made by one’s own country). Ma’s strangest habit of all was to tell people that she loved them. I’ve never known another Indian of her generation to say “I love you.”

Ma lived in Bombay until my grandfather, who we called Nanaji, died in 1992. Unlike the other children in my school, I could not just go to “grandma’s house” for the weekend. Visiting her meant two days of plane flights from Mobile, Alabama through Atlanta then London to Bombay. In those days, we packed our bags full of VCRs, telephones, watches, and other gadgets, because India still maintained customs and tariffs to protect its own post-colonial economy. Nobody talked about globalization back then. We could only make the voyage every four years or so. We could only stay for one month and had to split that time between all our relatives. Those visits, however brief and far between, were formative for me. For the rest of my life, Ma and Nanaji’s home in Goregam, a neighborhood of Bombay, will be the real and authentic India to me. The refrigerator that gave you a jolt when you reached for the handle, the firm beds hung with mosquito nets, the midnight honking and bustle from the street, and the open gutter. When I think of Ma’s house, I feel an overwhelming mix of awe, pride, and shame that I believe most Indians feel about India, but that first generation Indian-Americans experience in our own acute way.

About a year after Nanaji and Ma moved from Bombay to Ahmedebad, Nanaji died. A year after that, Ma moved to the United States. She was so lonely and isolated then. I think she experienced our comfortable American lifestyle as a golden prison. She stopped wearing a gigantic red bindi. Her wardrobe consisted of white saris. Ironically, after all those years with the electrocuting refrigerator, it was our kitchen that terrified her. It took us years to get her to operate a microwave. She skipped meals if no one was there to cook or warm up food for her. The woman who ran a Bombay household only a few years before was no more. She did not wail or cry in front of me, but her resignation was painful to see. But she survived this period and bit by bit emerged into a routine life of reading the Gita, watching television, waiting by the window, and hanging out once we got home from school or work.

For the next ten years or so, I spent a huge amount of time with Ma. I’m not sure I can say what I learned from her. We chatted in English usually. I extracted a type of family history by peppering her with questions. She was just such a kind, loving, unassuming, intelligent, observant, and quietly determined woman. She tried to reason with me if she disagreed with my choices – like when I quit medical school – but ultimately respected my final decisions. If we talked on the phone, she always ended with that courageous and somewhat awkward “I love you.”

Ma’s funeral was the first Hindu funeral that anyone in our immediate family had organized or even been to in America. She was taken directly to a funeral home from Hiru mama’s house. Her body was refrigerated, but not embalmed. The service was held just a day and a half after she died. A priest conducted a short sacrament during which he had Hiru mama fashion five balls out of flour and water. They symbolized the five elements of the universe – earth, air, fire, water, and ether – and were placed next to Ma’s body. The casket was a card board box that my mom wrapped with one of Ma’s saris. My mom and my aunt, Jagruti mami, also had to help the funeral directors dress Ma’s body in a sari. The funeral directors did put make-up on Ma’s body. They even put some lipstick on the lips which I thought was a bit funny. I think it was the first time those lips had ever worn lipstick. It was Ma's bare feet that caught my attention. Her big, wide feet. Toes all the same length because she wore sandals all her life and never shoes. I list all these details because I think the funeral was just as Ma would have liked it – unassuming, not wasteful, and dignified.

After the sacrament, I helped role the body out the building, across the parking lot, and into the crematorium. It was basically a large shed with a metal structure inside that kind of looked like an oversized pizza oven. Several funeral directors placed the box with Ma’s body inside onto a gurney and then into the furnace itself. They closed and bolted the door. Hiru mama pressed down two switches and there was a roaring sound. At that moment, most of the seventy or so people gathered there collectively lost composure and cried.

I didn’t cry then. At least, I don’t think I did. I actually felt lightness. Even joy. Ma’s death was enviable. Her last moments weren’t on a crash cart or in a hospital bed rigged with tubes. She did not live a fairy tale life, but she did live a full one. I did not have any regrets about our relationship. I listened to her until she was tired of talking. Ma never got to see or hold my daughter, but for the past year she said the same thing to me, whether on the phone or in person, every time we talked, as if she already had one foot on the other side and she knew what she wanted her last words to me to be. “Bless you and MaGreen and BabyG," she said, "Be happy. OK? I love you.”

Green Tree

I love Christmas Trees. My dad used to go cut one down from the Uintah Mountains when I was growing up, they smelled fabulous. They leaked pine sap all over the living room floor and oftentimes they were way too tall for the house. I guess it’s hard to gauge how high a tree ought to be when you’re out with a lot of drunken friends in the middle of a snowy Utah night, in early December. We’d have to cut off the bottom of the tree with regularity.

My mother Helen collects an eccentric and dazzling number of ornaments. She has hundreds that people have given her over the years, and even on an enormous tree, there’s not room for all she has. After spending a day putting on lights and decorating tree we had this lovely, lovely visual spectacle to greet us throughout December and January. The tree was always one of the important personalities of Christmas – its antics mirrored the woozy nog-filled ones that took place during my parents’ numerous holiday celebrations. On the years the tree didn’t tip over because in no way does a real pine tree’s base fit into a commercial tree-holder’s stand, one of the cats would invariably decide to climb it, or somebody would stagger into it. Always one of Helen’s favorite ornaments was broken, which was okay in the end. It was a sort of survival of the fittest sort of tree we hailed.

Since moving to Texas, I’ve never had a tree, but now that we’re having a baby, I feel like I need to start making some conscious efforts to incorporate holidays – both Indian and “culturally American” holidays. So I want a tree. But in keeping w/Green Parenting spirit, not a Christmas Tree lot tree. That seems wasteful of a perfectly good tree to me, especially in Houston where I figure any tree they have planted ought to stay that way. But I also don’t want a fake tree because that feels like lying. So we will:

a) Cut down the ugly little deciduous, pokey, evergreen-like trees in front of the house and decorate them. We were going to tear them out, anyway.

OR

b) Research trees in my Texas Gardening book, buy two, decorate them and use them through Christmas, then plant them, along w/BabyG’s placenta, after Christmas. As I said in my ordinary blog, if BabyG is born already speaking Gujurati, English, or Spanish, she can tell us which tree she’d like her placenta buried beneath.

Probably unless BabyG comes out today, we are a choice “b” family. The downside to it is that I really love the evergreens I grew up with, and we’re going to buy some sort of oak or fruit or magnolia tree or a bush with red berries. Not to mention that we both secretly love the idea of using the two trees we don’t like and that we already own.

Though maybe we could freecycle those. All the time people have other people come over and dig up whatever plants they don’t want, and take them for themselves. Maybe the two scrappy trees I will never understand would make somebody else’s Winter Solstice.

I’ll have to consult Mr. GreenDaddy.

Eco Green Natural Gift Ideas for Baby Showers and Holidays

MaGreen and I both try to avoid obsessive and arguably immoral consumerism. We know we will not become ideal parents by buying expensive, new things. We frequent a local second-hand baby shop and are grateful for hand-me-downs. However, expecting parents and newborns do receive many gifts. Gifts are an expression of the givers’ love (or at least their sense of duty and obligation). And new parents do need lots of equipment and clothing. I hope this list is useful to new parents, friends, and family. In making our choices, we sought out organic and fair trade items when possible and reasonable. In some instances, however, we believe plastic makes sense or is unavoidable. Unfortunately it can be difficult to create a baby registry for these types of gifts. We’ve had some success with felicity.com. Please feel free to make suggested additions or critiques through the comments option. Note the prices are approximations in US dollars and we don’t receive any advertising money.


Baby Clothing, Receiving Blankets, and Sheets
mamasbaby.com
www.ecobaby.com
www.sckoon.com
store.naturalchildren.com

Baggie/Gown Organic -- $21.99
Bummis Sleeveless Bib -- $9.25
Organic Kimono, snap wrap style -- $14.99
Zutano Complete Outfit (cotton and colorful, but not organic) -- $29.95
Sckoon Organic Cotton Baby Underwear -- $13
Sckoon Organic Cotton Wrap-me Body -- $24
Organic Cotton Cap (many options available) -- $9
Organic Sheets -- $150

Cloth Diapering, Diaper Services, and “Diaper Free” Supplies
www.theecstore.com
www.babynaturale.com
www.diaperpin.com/home.asp
Google Diaper Services Directory

Infant Potty Training by Laurie Boucke -- $19.50
Daytime Diaper Cover: Bummis Prints -- $10
Nighttime Diaper Cover: Stacinator Deluxe Fleece Prints -- $17.50
Snap Pants -- $14.03
Fuzzi Bunz Micro Terry Inserts -- $5.50
Fuzzi Bunz Stay-Dry Changing Pad -- $14.95
FUZZI BUNZ system (see fuzzibunz.com/care.htm) -- $14.95
Happy Pants, Small 8 – 14 lbs. -- $12.00
Hemp/Cotton Fleece Doublers -- $2.33
Imse Vimse Swim Diaper -- $11.95
Infant 4x6x4 Chinese Prefold - $1.50


Technology
www.tvbgone.com

TV-B-Gone (keychain remote that can turn off televisions) -- $19.99

Other
store.gxonlinestore.org
www.aubrey-organics.com
store.naturalchildren.com

Organic, Fair Trade Teddy Bear -- $29
Aubrey Organics Baby Shampoo -- $7.95
Case of 10 Fair Trade Green & Black's Chocolate Bars -- $35
Receiving Blanket Organic -- $22