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February 22nd, 2012

March Book Signing Events from NYC to the Jersey Shore

March is shaping up to be a mini-book tour for Spit That Out! As I visit a few wonderful places in Philly, New Jersey, and New York.

First I’ll be speaking to Philly Mompreneurs March 1st, at 7:30 p.m., at Ali’s Wagon, 2017 Fairmount Avenue

I’m honored to be a part of the Eat, Drink and Be Mommy series at the Museum of Motherhood in New York. On Friday, March 2nd from 1-3p.m., I’ll be signing books at this groundbreaking new space with a mission to support and celebrate all mothers.

I’ll also be doing a book signing at Nature’s Corner in Spring Lake Heights, NJ on Sun, March 25, 11 a.m. – 1 p.m. If you live near Monmouth County, this is a great opportunity to check out this amazing natural foods market!

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February 20th, 2012

The Diaper Debacle Never Ends – RIP Cloth Diaper Service

This is the kind of post that makes me want to add a hashtag: #greenmomproblems.

Because this is about the kind of drama that only a green baby mama must contend with – my cloth diaper service has ceased operation.

Seems trivial, no? But, alas, it is far more complicated than that.

For anyone who has read my book or follows my blog, you know that I started out using disposable diapers for my son. But after about 18 months of diapering I was finally swayed to the cloth side and never looked back. I was wrong about muss and fuss, as the lovely diaper service made it all so simple! I was finally a proper green mother with cloth credentials, and even updated my book to reflect my new experience.

Now at almost 2-and-a-half I figure my son must be getting close to potty training so I can just ease into a handful of pull-ups and padded undies and pass with flying colors. Or not…

My diaper service is officially going out of business.

I could switch to another service, but there are no other services in my area that launder pocket diapers – of which we are now the proud owners of dozens. It seems way too ridiculous to start over with pre-fold diapers and a whole new service when my son is getting closer to 3. Especially when it took such a struggle to get his preschool on board with the cloth pocket diapers – we certainly can’t spring pre-folds on them now. Of course, we could just wash them ourselves. And after trying that out I am over the gross-out factor and see that it really can be done quite efficiently. But I just can’t bring myself to add more loads of laundry and all that pocketing and un-pocketing to my crazy schedule.

So it looks like we’ll have to get back on the disposable bandwagon for now – chlorine-free and safer-made of course. But it’s really quite disappointing, especially when I have given the whole process so much fanfare. It’s silly, but I feel a bit defeated – even more so as my formerly potty-interested toddler has been absolutely anti-potty for the past few weeks.

For now I will pack up my fancy cloth diapers in vibrant colors that my son so loved picking out. Perhaps by the time we have another baby there will be a new pocket diaper service in town. If not, we’ll just go with a prefold service and ease back in from scratch.

In the meantime, I must stop feeling guilty about not wanting to add to my laundry haul and try to cope with these #greenmomproblems!

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February 13th, 2012

Psychology Today Blogger Posts on Pre-Maternal Green Guilt

I stumbled upon a great blog on Psychology Today about pre-maternal green guilt:

“The problem is, once you know it’s out there, you start to see advice everywhere: all these things you really should be doing to go green before a pregnancy. The craziest among the green-guilt-mongerers have been known to suggest more than a year of cleanses, diet changes, furniture replacement and generally ridding one’s life of all things chemical-laden. Why? If you don’t, you will not create the healthiest possible embryo/fetus/baby! What about environmental factors and epigenetics?! And once you have kids? There’s no end to it.”

Read more about why this blogger won’t give up her Mac Book but might be in the market for a new mattress.

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February 10th, 2012

Sign Petition to Get Cancer-Linked Chemicals out of Tide Free & Gentle

I’ve called out Proctor and Gamble in the past for being quite possibly the world’s biggest greenwashers.

So it doesn’t surprise me that their new Tide Free & Gentle®, marketed to mothers, was reported as containing high levels of the cancer-causing chemical 1,4-dioxane in the detergent. Oh, and 1,4-dioxane doesn’t appear on the product label or on the product website, so consumers have no way of knowing it’s even there.

Procter & Gamble already has experience stripping this chemical out of its products; in 2010, the company reformulated its Herbal Essences® shampoo to eliminate 1,4-dioxane. Unfortunately, Dirty Secrets test results show that the company has not chosen to make the same effort for its laundry detergent.

Fortunately, my friends at Groovy Green LivinWomen’s Voices for the Earth, MomsRising and Healthy Child Healthy World have out together a petition asking P&G to strip this harmful cancer-causing chemical out of Tide Free & Gentle.

I must also mention that today Twitter suggested a new friend for me to follow: @ecofriends: A place to trade ideas on how to make the world cleaner for tomorrow. Sponsored by Tide.

This page hasn’t even been updated since 2007, but I guess Twitter heard me mention Tide somewhere and thought I might be a fan.

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February 7th, 2012

Donate Your Recycling Rewards Points to Green Local Schools

The bad news: My favorite Kashi and Happy Baby coupons seemed to have disappeared from the Recycle Bank rewards program.

The good news: I realized I could make even better use of my points by donating them to local schools through the Green Schools Program! For every 250 Recycling Rewards points you donate, Recycle Bank will give $1 toward your selected school’s green plan. When the schools reach their goals, they’ll implement projects like community gardens, land beautification, and recycling programs. Call me a bleeding heart, but this kind of stuff makes me even more excited than a discounted box of organic whole grains.

Visit Recycle Bank to read about each school’s plan and donate your points.

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February 3rd, 2012

Weather-Obsessed Philly Gets Real About Climate Change

For all those people who have said things like, “Dude, I’m really digging this global warming. 60 degrees in February!”

Philadelphia Magazine has an interesting article this month about climate change from the perspective of how it is directly affecting Philadelphia. It takes into account the effects on everything from energy use to mental state – and is particularly poignant to for a city that is so strangely weather-obsessed.

“All in all, we’ve seen so much weather weirdness that our weather-obsessed city—which generally holds its meteorologists more accountable than its politicians—is asking one question: Is this just a freak blip on the Doppler? Or is it the start of something really big and scary and heinous: Permanent Climate Change?”

Read more here.

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