Kids Instantly Devalue Your Car

http://www.eatplaylove.blogspot.com/ put up a great challenge--ridding your car of junk so it uses less gas. Fortunately, my car doesn't have a lot of big stuff, like strollers. It just has lots of little stuff that doesn't weigh a lot, but just makes it look bad.
Here is an example: the front passenger seat is where I pile all my bags that I need to get through the day: my purse; a backpack filled with extra clothes, wipes and diapers; Ethan's school backpack; a lunch bag in case we need to eat on the go (more on that later). At the end of the day, I try to pull everything out, but don't always succeed.

The back seat is filled with toys to occupy the impatient boys during car rides. They both like to draw and color, so there are lots of Color Wonder coloring books and markers. Magna Doodles are another popular drawing toy. I try to have two of the same type so they don't fight over them. Since I drive a mid-size car (Toyota Matrix), my kids can easily reach out from their car seats and pummel each other over a toy.
Finally, as the pictures show, our car is filled with crumbs, crumbs, food wrappers, and more crumbs. I've found it easier to just eat lunch in the car at times than stop at McDonald's or a park and deal with the transitions of getting them out of the car and back into the car. But my poor car has paid dearly for it--even when I vacuum it regularly, there are stains that will never go away.
Good thing I like my car, because I would have to give it away after what my kids have put it through.

What Do a Snail And a Cat Have In Common?

We don't get the Cartoon Network in our household, so my kids have never been exposed to "Spongebob Squarepants." Yet, at the library a few months ago, James walked up to me with a "Spongebob Squarepants" video. "Let's get Spongebob," he said. Where he found out about Spongebob, I'll never know.
So started our family's love affair with the cartoon. I started half watching it with the kids, soon found myself laughing out loud to it. Not only did I find it funny, I could totally relate to the characters. Patrick reminds me of my kids, and Spongebob Squarepants reminds me of myself. And Gary the Snail is a complete knockoff of my cat, Molly.
Like Gary, Molly is a very coy, demure creature. She only weighs 8 pounds--she looks more like a kitten than a 13-year-old cat. I call her my model--she takes very good care of herself by drinking lots of water, eating very little, and getting lots of sleep. She's very skittish and stays far away from my rambunctious boys. My husband hates her, and she knows it, so she stays far away from him as well. So the only person she interacts with is me. She follows me around the house, meowing. She usually wants something from me, like, "Meow--open the window." Or "Meow--turn on the faucet so I can get a drink of water." (I don't do that anymore now that I'm more environmentally conscious.) Her meow is a dead ringer for Gary's. It's very calm and convincing: "Meow--you will do my bidding."
In one episode of Spongebob, Gary latches onto Patrick. Spongebob goes along with it at first, but after one day of Gary being out of the house, he starts to lose it because he misses Gary so much. Finally, after much heartbreak, Spongebob figures out Gary doesn't really like Patrick, he just wants the cookie in his pocket. The video ends with Spongebob happily getting Gary back in his life, but Gary never lets on whether he really missed Spongebob or not.
That's the dilemma all cat lovers face--do their cats really love them, or do they just put with their owners so that they can live a more comfortable life? As painful as it is to think that the latter reason may be true, their meow is a siren song their owners can't deny.

Flower Fest

The warm weather is bringing out the best in nature--lots of beautiful blooms. Here are some flowers in my garden:



I love tulips--their vibrant colors are an instant pick-me-up.



We covered these grape hyathinths with rocks to make a border along our driveway, and they still managed to defiantly pop through.




Our crab apple tree is the crowning jewel of our back yard in the spring. The pink buds open and turn into snowy white flowers before the petals flutter off the tree.

Now it's your turn. Send me a link of your site with pictures of your garden in bloom, and I'll post the link here.




Happy Spring!

Dear Albatross, This One Is For You

What started out as a quiz-taking venture on http://kdmacphee.blogspot.com/ has turned into a non-stop quest for more information on living a greener life. I always thought I was pretty green, but information I've gleaned from searching web sites like "green your" and "treehugger" has made me realize there is more I can do that doesn't cost that much money. More importantly, I see now how it is vital to take every action I can--the earth and its creatures depend on it.

A National Geographic special I watched on PBS this week drove this point home. The show, called "Strange Days on Planet Earth: Dirty Secrets," followed scientists trying to figure out why albatrosses chicks are starving to death. It showed the mother birds dutifully feeding their chicks, but eventually the chicks would die. Autopsies of the chicks showed the reason--their stomachs were crammed with bits of plastic that couldn't be digested. It turns out there's so much plastic floating about in the Pacific Ocean, albatrosses fatally mistake it for food.

This story really got to me. I recycle what plastic I can, but end up throwing away a number of plastic bags and wrappers. I had an "out of sight, out of mind" attitude about it until I saw those poor birds.

Of course, it's impossible to completely eliminate plastic from my life--most food from the store is wrapped in it. But there's one simple thing I can do, as http://eatplaylove.blogspot.com/ has mentioned: bring my own bags to the store. That would eliminate countless plastic bags from entering my household and eventually ending up in the trash.

My resolve was tested this morning when I forgot to bring my bag to Safeway. As the cashier starting putting the items in the plastic bag, it hit me. "I don't need the bag," I said. It was only four items, after all. The cashier gave me a strange look, but that's ok. I now know what can happen to those bags after they leave the store.

Happy Earth Day

Here are my Earth Day resolutions:
1. Start buying biodegrable healthcare and cleaning products.
2. Eat two meat-free dinners a week.
3. Use both sides of printer paper. I'll either run it through my printer, or let Ethan used it as drawing paper. Also, I've started saving paper from junk mail that is only printed on one side for this purpose.
4. Instead of pouring water from cups down the drain, water my garden with it.
5. Fill a small cup with water and use that to brush my teeth with instead turning on the faucet.
6. Turn the water off in the shower while I'm soaping up.
7. Try to buy as much organic food as possible.

Hopefully I'll have an easier time keeping these resolutions than my New Year's ones.

Ecomania

One day last week, I was home sick with a head cold, so I had more time that day to waste on the computer. I decided to look up more eco-friendly tips on the Green Your web site.

As I mentioned in my last post, I saw a couple stories about cleaning and beauty products containing high amounts of toxins that aren't good for you or the environment. I wanted to read up on that further, mainly because I'm a skin care products junkie. What I saw really depressed me. It said most products contain petroleum-based derivatives. I don't want a nonrenewable resource in my skin care products. It also said many products contain parabens, which contaminate water and soil. I got out my bottle of lemon and sage soapy sap from Bliss Spas. Sure enough, it had four different kinds of parabens. Where was the lemon and the sage? This stuff costs $35 a bottle! I felt duped by all those Bliss catalogs I got in the mail, insinuating that if you don't use its products, I'm going to get fat and wrinkly very quickly. It fails to mention the potentional carcinogenics that I'm self-preserving myself with. I promised from then on to never buy beauty products that I don't know what's in.

I moved on to the cleaning products section. Once again, I was floored with what I read. All I used to care about was getting stains out clothes, and used lots of toxic chemicals, such as chlorine bleach, to do so. I never realized that after these chemicals left my washing machine, they entered our ground water, polluting our waterways. I vowed to buy biodegradable detergent and cleaners. The problem is, thanks to Costco, I have a stockpile of toxic laundry detergents and house-cleaning products that I don't know what to do with.

I realize that the only person this information is groundbreaking to is me. In fact, I've heard some of this stuff before, but my protected suburban life kept me from taking it very seriously. I go to a park and it's green with lots of trees and flowers. Where's all the dead, deformed wildlife, and murky, smelly streams and ponds? But after eight years of being lied to by our current administration, I've lost a lot of faith in government, as well as corporate America. I agree with Michael Moore, who said in an email this today: "... I can't stand one more friggin' minute of this administration and the permanent, irreversible damage it has done to our people and to this world. I'm almost at the point where I don't care if the Democrats don't have a backbone or a kneebone or a thought in their dizzy little heads. Just as long as their name ain't "Bush" and the word "Republican" is not beside theirs on the ballot, then that's good enough for me. "

Amen, Michael!! For me, I can't reverse this horrible war that our fearless leader has gotten us into. All I can do is eliminate the use of petrochemical products as much as possible out of my life. I also can make my own private stand against harming the environment and all that depends on it.

Let's Get Greener

Recently, a friend told me about a web site that determines your "green IQ." The web site is http://www.greeniq.com/about-us/. I got a 62, which isn't horrible, but still has room for improvement. I felt frustrated because I can't afford to be totally green. It's too expensive for our family to buy all organic, replace our windows, install solar panels and buy a hybrid car. So I decided to look up tips for greening my life that don't cost money. I found a great web site called Green Your.com http://www.greenyour.com/. It provides tips for improving the environment in every aspect of your life, from feminine hygiene to solar panels. I haven't read through the whole site, but got a lot from a quick overview. For instance, I didn't know that daily water usage in the typical single family home is 69.3 gallons, with showers accounting for 16.8 percent of total indoor water use. The site recommends buying low-flow shower heads--something we need to do in the future--but in the mean time it suggests just turning off the water while your soaping up. I tried it this morning, and it wasn't bad--I thought I'd be too cold, but I was fine.

The site also suggests making your own facial cleanser, as well as cleaning supplies. I never really thought about how I'm polluting our water supply with toxic chemicals every time I clean our house--as well as my face. It's definitely something I'm going to look into.

Incorporating these tips into my life gets me excited--I feel like I'm doing something to take care of what's precious to me: preserving our beautiful world all of us to enjoy for the future.

The Juggling Act

I couldn't wait for this past Saturday to arrive because I had a hot date with a doctor--a RugDoctor steam cleaner, that is.



I couldn't wait to steam clean the carpets for a couple reasons, the biggest one being that my husband would have to take Ethan and James out of the house for several hours so I could get the job done. Finally, some alone time!



It must sound pathetic that the only way I can get some time away from the kids is to do a big chore like steam clean the carpets. And that's really not true. Terry is pretty good about watching the kids so I can go on a hike, go out to dinner with friends or go scrapbooking. No, the biggest reason I was so excited to pull a 70-lb vacuum across our carpet was that without the kids around, I could complete this task with no interruptions.



Trying to get stuff done while constantly being interrupted by my children has been one of the hardest aspects of parenting for me. My life became a juggling act as soon as Ethan was born--fold a couple of pieces of clothing, then pick up him up to nurse. Or stir the pot on the stove with one hand as I held a whimpering James. Or drive down the highway and change the music on the radio and pass back the sippy cups to irate Ethan and James--all at the same time.



I've found myself letting my kids get away with stuff just so I could get something done. The other day, for example, I had a quiet moment, so I tried to download some new music on my iPod. I just got the iPod connected to the computer and began downloading the CD when Ethan and James found me. Ethan got on our other computer while the CD is still downloading and wanted to draw pictures in the Microsoft Paint Program. Here we go, I thought. After a few moments he yelled, "Mommy, help me save this picture!" I stop everything to hit "save as" on his computer. Then he lost interest in drawing, and found some rubber bands in the desk drawer. "Hey James," he said, "Let's cut up these rubber bands with these scissors!" Uh oh, not a good idea, but the CD was taking forever to download and I didn't want to start all over again another time. Soon bits of rubber were all over the floor. My blood pressure started to increase wondering if they would start a sword fight with the scissors. Finally, the CD is done, and I grab the scissors out of their hands. "That's not a good idea," I said. "But Mommy, you were letting us do it before!" I sheepishly put the scissors away, thinking I should have downloaded the music after Ethan and James were in bed.



But this past Saturday, I did not have to make any guilty justifications to get something done. I cheerfully waved to Terry and the kids as they left the house, put on my iPod, and got to work. After five hours of non-stop vacuuming, my back was killing me, but my floors were clean. This was the first time I got something done in years without hearing a chorus of "Mommy! Mommy!"



Of course, as soon as Ethan and James entered the house, it started all over again. "Mommy, I want a snack!" I tell them to not eat on the newly cleaned carpet as they begin to walk on it holding their bowls of cereal. Bits of crackers and crumbs soon found their way into the carpeting. That's OK--it gives me the excuse to make a date with the "doctor" again in a few months.

Living the Green Life

When Bush was re-elected in 2004, I was morose. I voted against him, my husband even helped out with the Kerry/Edwards campaign. I hated the direction he led the country, and felt like I couldn't do anything about it. I was knee-deep taking care of Ethan, and James was on the way.

One of the many issues I was depressed about was global warming. Scientists around the globe gave grim predictions of the future if we didn't address global warming, and yet our country thumbed our nose at them. It was enough to make me turn off the TV, stop reading the news in magazines and on the Internet. If all this bad stuff was happening around the world, I didn't want to know about it.

Then, a couple of years later, I came across the Eco-Cycle Web site. Eco-Cycle manages local recycling areas, allowing you to drop off cans, bottles, cardboard, even paperboard. I realized our neighboring suburb had a drop-off site, and I downloaded the list of items you could recycle: paperboard, cardboard, plastics 1, 2, and 5, cans, aluminum, magazines, even telephone books. Our garbage collector took some recycling, like cans, bottles and paper, but not paperboard or cardboard. So I began sorting our trash, putting aside all the paperboard and cardboard, juice boxes, etc. Since we also compost, I was amazed how little trash we had for the collector.

I made my first trip to the recycling site with all my saved, sorted stuff. My husband, who believes in recycling, still wasn't very encouraging. "The gas you're wasting driving over there offsets the benefits of recyling this stuff," he said. I didn't care. Walking my tubs of paperboard over to the giant recycling bins and dumping the stuff in left me feeling empowered for the first time in years. I may not have the time, energy, money or brains to take on our corrupt government and turn our country in the right direction, but hey, I could recycle! As a stay-at-home mom, I had the time to sort every piece of paper, including tags on clothing, and put them in the appropriate bins. I could keep the juice box containers and Happy Meal paperboard boxes I get from McDonald's and recycle them. The high I got from recycling helped me stave off the depression I felt from picturing my kids as adults, living on a planet with melted polar ice caps and California and Florida submerged in the ocean.

Since that epiphany, my recycling/living green endeavors have expanded. Last summer I began hanging my clothes up to dry. Realizing how quickly they dried in the hot Colorado sun, I made an effort to never use the dryer during warm, dry days. The money I saved on my electric bill was an added bonus.

I also started reselling and buying kids' clothes from consignment stores. It always bugged me to buy new clothes and toys for babies and toddlers, since they outgrow them so quickly. Buying clothes and toys that were a little worn, but otherwise in good condition made me feel so much better. My kids could care less if they were used, so why should I?

With the next presidential election looming, my cynicism in having our country vote for a candidate who will make the environment a priority is still at an all-time high. But at least, this time around, I'm trying to do everything I can live green, and I can feel good about that.

Go Sharks!

Team sports and autism generally don't mix. Even if kids with autism are coordinated enough to play sports, it's difficult for them to be part of a team because they have a hard time understanding the concept of "we" and not "me." If a kid with autism has the soccer ball, for example, he may not be able to look around for another team mate to pass the ball to and make the goal. He'd probably try to just kick the ball to the goal himself, ignoring the possible opportunities to help the team win.

So when Ethan was diagnosed with autism, I didn't see team sports in his future. I felt a pang of sadness every time I heard moms talk about taking their kids to various sporting events. Instead, Terry and I began to focus on individual activities, such as swimming, and hoped that would be an outlet for him.

Ethan, however, had other plans. When he started kindergarten, he noticed kids playing soccer, and heard all his classmates talk about playing. He told me he wanted to play, but it was too late to sign him up for the fall. So I made a pledge to sign him up for spring soccer with the recreation center. "Are you sure you want to play?" I asked. "Yes," he said.

So with my heart in my throat, I signed him up. On one hand, I really felt he had the athletic skills to do it. Plus, it would be great opportunity for him to be around other kids in a structured, social setting. On the other hand, if Ethan didn't like it, he would be very vocal about it. I pictured him saying loudly, "This is boring!" and flopping himself down in the middle of the field. Or wandering off to go look at something more interesting than the game he's supposed to play.
But for $40, I figured if it didn't work out, it wouldn't be a huge loss. We'd never know until we tried.

On the first day of practice, some of my worst fears were confirmed. Ethan had a hard time staying in line for the drills. The coach had to repeatedly give him directions--"Kick the ball. Kick the ball. Kick the ball." This was going to be a long six weeks, I thought.

I resolved to work with Ethan during the week. I set up a soccer goal in the back yard, and we practiced kicking the ball into it. I also made him practice passing the ball back and forth to me. I told him over and over, "Listen to your coach."

It seemed to help. At Ethan's next game/practice, he stayed in line and completed the drills. During the game, he was too timid to kick the ball, but ran along with the other kids. The coach had him kick the ball in when it went out of bounds. Throughout the game, kept waiting for him to flop himself down in the middle of the field, or wander off. When he finally did fall down to the ground, the coach blew the whistle. Game over!!

"You did it!" I cried. "You played your first soccer game. You did great!" Ethan had a big smile on his face.

Ethan still has long way to go before he gets the team concept, let alone soccer, down. But his baby steps are definitely going in the right direction.