The Monkey #1: Neglecting my poor second child

I've started to realize that the Cheese, my oldest, tends to get more blogging time than his little brother. I guess this to be be expected. He is, after all, the first to do everything. He's hitting all of the milestones first--having all sorts of picture/blog worthy experiences three years ahead of his brother.

Poor guy's been getting less press coverage because he lacks experience. That's just not right.

I love my sons equally. There's no doubt about that. But I love my two sons for totally different reasons, which only makes sense because they are two totally different little beings. But today, I want to talk about the Monkey.


The Monkey is pure joy. He's my lover--my cuddlier. He loves to kiss, kiss, kiss and gives hugs that are so tight you have to beg for mercy.

The Monkey is also a total crack up. He's a ham--a total goof-ball. It makes me smile to know that he has such a great, natural sense of humor. I know that it will serve him well throughout his life. And it doesn't hurt that he's so darn cute.


He's a great at sharing--quite a feat for a 3-year-old--and makes friends easily. He's really friendly and not a bit shy.

He'll tell you "I'm not a baby. I'm a brother." and that we live in "Califorjah." He loves to give you a thumbs up and a wink, and while sharing a bag of chips the other day smiled at me and said, "You and me, Mom. You and me."

I have no idea where he gets this stuff.

But my sweet baby is far, far from perfect. He doesn't listen very well and has already learned that his cuteness often gets him out of trouble. He can be very sneaky--especially when it comes to stealing his Pop's change off of the bathroom counter. And he will often do whatever he wants even though you've told him a thousand times not to.


He's ornery and is the child that every one in our family seems to think will give me fits the older he gets. But I don't believe that--I'm not going to speak that onto his spirit. His heart is good and I predict that whatever "trouble" that he gets into in the future will be because his adventurous nature will get the best of him.

I better start praying for him now.

My new mantra.

This is the new poster hanging in my laundry room {don't you love the green?} right next to the back door that I have to go in and out of seven hundred and three times a day as I take kids to school, to football practice, to My Gym, to church, back from school, to friends' houses to play, to the grocery store, to the bank, to PTA, to the post office, to Target, to workout, to the dog groomer, to the hair cut place, to the...

I think it's a good mantra to live by. Don't you?

Big thanks to {petit elefant} for the heads up on the poster. She recommended the "juicy orange" and I do love it!

Gorgeously Green

My friend Erica over at 3 Guys for Every Girl reminded me the other day of something that I needed to tackle: green up my beauty regiment.

I consider myself (among other things) an environmentalist. Environmental issues really concern me, so I try my hardest and do my best to make my global footprint as small as it can possibly be. But being "green" is more than just recycling and using reusable tote bags at the grocery store (although both of those things are very important and I do both religiously.)

Being green is also about making healthy choices for your family that also have a low environmental impact. Examples--I only use "green" products to clean my house with, not just because it's better for the environment but because I don't want my family breathing in all of those chemicals and toxins that are in a lot of your basic home cleaners.

Well, in the new book Gorgeously Green by Sophie Uliano the author addressed the issue of beauty. As she says, we spend hours on our beauty regiments every day, not realizing that we are lathering up and rubbing our skin with toxins morning, noon, and night.

"One product alone is unlikely to cause harm, but repeated exposure to these chemicals can eventually lead to health problems and environmental problems." So I headed to our bathroom to see what I could find.

Uliano gives you a Cheat Sheet of what she calls "Red Alert" chemicals to look for in your products. She said that products with any of these in them should be thrown out right away. She also gives you a list of "Orange Alert" chemicals that she says you could go ahead and finish using but shouldn't buy any more of either.

So I printed off the cheat sheet and headed to our bathroom. I just decided to get rid of everything on the "Red" list and the "Orange" list. I gathered all of the stuff from all of the bathrooms and sat it on the counter. After dumping things down the sink (not probably the greenest thing I could have done) I had the bottles lined up on the edge of the tub to go to the recycling bin. Here's a view of everything that I had to get rid of...

Kind of scary isn't it? And this picture was taken before I was even finished going through everything.

I won't bore you with a list of the chemicals that I found and what they cause but here are a few examples.

Aluminum was in both mine and the Golfer's deodorants. It is listed as a carcinogenic, toxic, and mutagenic. It has also been linked to Alzheimer's. Yep, uh, I wasn't about to take a chance with any of those. They went straight in the trash.

The other big one that I found in almost all of our products--especially our shampoo, conditioner, lotions, and hair products--were Parabens. Parabens are chemical preservatives that are estrogenic and disrupt normal hormone function.

When I told the Golfer that, trying to be funny smiled at me and said, "Oh...so that's why..." Uh, yeah, I really wasn't laughing.

Women of the blogosphere here me now--"Exposure to external estrogens have been shown to increase the risk of breast cancer." Uh, yeah, again I'm not taking any chances. Out they all went. (You'd be shocked how many things have Parabens in them that we use every single day.)

The other biggie is Fragrance. "This ubiquitous term is used to mask hundreds of ingredients, including phthalates, with disrupt the endocrine system and could cause reproductive and developmental harm." And we wonder why so many women of are generation are having reproductive issues? I'm not saying that the "fragrance" chemical listed on the back of your shampoo bottle is the lone culprit, but do you want to take the chance? Yeah, me neither.

So after recycling all of the bottles of all of the stuff that I threw out, I headed of to buy new. Luckily for me, there's a Whole Foods just down the road that offers a lot of green, earth- and people-friendly products.



It wasn't the cheapest thing that I've ever done, but I know that as a mother it is my duty to keep my family safe and healthy. The deodorant has taken some getting used to, and my shampoo doesn't really lather up the way that I'm used to or smell quite as good. But I'll forgo the lather now to still have both of my boobs and a sound mind when I'm an old lady.

But that's just me...

Last thought...in case you are thinking, "But yeah, there's not a store where I live that sells green beauty products" or "I don't have the time to look on the back of all of the bottles", Uliano gives you many websites that sell green beauty products online. Her product suggestions aren't always the cheapest ones, but hey, it's a place to start.

Even if you can't thow every thing out at once like I did, try to make the effort to slowly replace some of your regulary used items to greener ones. Your body will thank you for it later.

Happy Labor Day!

Mama in labor, February 2002