Category Archives: Eco Friendly Parenting

How to Start Your Baby on Homemade Baby Foods

Starting your baby on homemade baby food feels like quite a big step. You’re going from feeding your baby either breastmilk or formula only, to preparing foods from scratch and having to worry about quality control.

It’s honestly not that hard. You can make wonderful baby food at home right from the start with just a few supplies and some work.

You will absolutely want a high quality blender. VitaMix blenders are very powerful, which is handy for pureeing the wide variety that baby will eat eventually. These blenders can even handle meats, although it takes a bit more effort. You can buy a more affordable blender if you don’t feel up to paying a lot. Try for BPA free if you can. It may not help, but it’s not likely to hurt.

You will need to be able to store your baby foods. Ice cube trays and Ziploc bags are an easy way to do it, but you can buy special baby food storage trays if you prefer. The advantage is that you can buy BPA free baby food trays, while most ice cube trays really don’t specify.

You can start with cereal, vegetable or fruits for your baby. It doesn’t really matter which, just keep it thin enough for baby to deal with.

Don’t start any younger than 6 months old if you can help it. One of my kids really made it hard to wait that long, so I understand the challenge, but do your best.

If you choose to start with cereals you’ll probably just buy a box of organic baby cereal. Rice cereal is a popular starter. But you can also grind rice into a powder using a coffee mill to make your own rice cereal. You will need to add boiling water and cook for 10 minutes to make this work, while boxed varieties may simply need water, breastmilk or formula added. Make sure the temperature is safe at feeding time.

Preparing Fruits

Some fruits can be served to baby simply after pureeing or mashing, such as bananas. Others do well after cooking, which also changes the flavor a little.

Buy organic when you can, so that you don’t have to think about pesticides. Peel the fruits. Babies often can’t really digest the peels yet.

Pears and peaches I always like to bake first. Peel and cut them up, then bake in a 350 degree F oven until soft. Puree in the blender, adding water if needed to reach the right consistency.

When cool, pour into the baby food trays and freeze. You can keep some in the refrigerator to cool off for a feeding the same day.

You can make applesauce as well, but given how readily available it is, I often just bought the unsweetened jars. I do not recommend bothering with the baby food jars of applesauce or individual serving containers. Get a big jar and freeze the excess. Much less waste.

Bananas just need to be mashed, and I suggest serving those fresh. However, bananas give some babies trouble with constipation. Be aware and don’t overdo them.

Skip citrus and pineapple for the time being. They’re more likely to cause allergenic reactions when a baby is young.

Preparing Vegetables

I suggest either steaming or roasting most vegetables. Steaming uses less water than boiling vegetables, so you lose fewer nutrients to the water. Puree in the blender, adding water as necessary to reach the consistency your baby currently prefers.

Squash, green beans, peas, carrots, potatoes and sweet potatoes are all good choices for the early days.

Preparing Meats

Most pediatricians say to not introduce meats until about 7-8 months of age. Ask your child’s pediatrician for current guidelines.

Beef, chicken and turkey are good choices for starting your baby on meats. Cook in small chunks until completely done. Babies are really not up for meats that aren’t well done, for safety reasons.

Puree the meat with its cooking juices in your blender. Remember that just because you try to go low fat doesn’t mean your baby should. They need the fat. Add water if you need still more liquid.

Meats go well combined with vegetables as well. I keep them separate when preparing, then combine them when I reheat for each meal.

Keeping Track of Baby Food in the Freezer

It’s important to use up frozen baby food within a reasonable time frame. Put dates on the bags when you pop the cubes out of the trays. Using baby food up within one month is best, but three months is still considered safe.

To really keep those cubes cold, don’t store them in the door of the freezer. Put them in the main compartment so that they are less exposed to temperature changes when people open and close the freezer.

Great Green Toys for Toddlers

As babies become toddlers, they start to take more of an interest in playing with toys. The challenge comes in avoiding the parade of plastic toys and keeping things a little better for your tot and the planets. Here are some suggestions:

Plan Toys Punch and Drop

Plan Toys Punch and DropPlan Toys in general makes great toys for kids. They use organic recycled rubber wood for this to. It’s made really well too.

The Punch and Drop is your classic hammering toy. Kids have played with these for a long time, and there’s a reason why they keep making them. Kids enjoy hammering. The colors are great too.

And you can’t forget the lack of batteries!

Educo Alphabet Abacus

Educo Alphabet AbacusThe Educo Alphabet Abacusis the kind of thing that can hold my toddler’s attention for a long time. She’s very much into anything brightly colored and fairly complex. Pictures in books and magazines get her babbling too.

This has the advantage of giving her something to look at as we sing the alphabet song. She loves music of any sort and even babbles along. Using any sort of visual may eventually help her to start pointing out letters at a young age without quizzing her all the time. Early exposure helped my older two, anyhow.

iTunes

No, it’s not a toy as such. But it’s a great idea to expose your baby to all kinds of music very young. But rather than buy a musical toy, just find appropriate music to download on the computer you already own. Get that toddler dancing!

WONDERWORLD Puffy Dragon Ride-on

WONDERWORLD Puffy Dragon Ride-onIs the WONDERWORLD Puffy Dragon Ride-on cute or what? I mean really!

My one year old is very much so into ride on toys. She started liking them before she could walk, of course. This looks nice and soft as well as fun.

And I could never resist saying my child rides a dragon! He’s made from rubberwood and biodegradable fabrics.

Green Sports for Your Kids to Enjoy

Most parents sign their kids up for a sport at one point or another. My oldest two, for example, are currently enrolled in karate and have been asking about soccer. It’s nice being able to keep them active.

While signing up your kids for sports isn’t necessarily a time many parents think about the environment, maybe it should be. There are more and less green sports for them to choose from.

Karate is a fairly green example. The class my kids are in takes place at the local Elks Lodge, so all it requires is the uniforms and the gas to go to and from class. They’re evening classes about 3 miles away on very hilly roads, so not a practical walk for a 7 and 5 year old. At least not if I want them to have energy for class. Not to mention the return home.

As the kids get to higher levels, there are some more resources used, but it’s not all bad. It’s not like they’re going to be breaking bricks right from the start, and one of the things their sensei showed us was the reusable breaking boards they have for teaching them some time down the road how to do that. Certainly better than boards that only break once.

Their choice of soccer isn’t as green, although it could be worse. The bad part is simply the care of the playing fields, which in most places means using a lot of chemicals on the fields and trimming the grass quite short. But at least the equipment needs are minimal.

For those who are into it, hunting and fishing can actually be quite green. This is because the licensing most often goes toward conservation efforts and there are generally sensible limits geared toward maintaining the resources. There can be issues with less than green equipment, however, not to mention the ethical considerations many have toward eating meat.

Bicycling is another great green choice. The bikes take some resources to maintain, but not a lot and as kids outgrow them bicycles can be handed down or sold. Bikes are easy to buy online or locally. Best of all, even if the kids use bikes for sport they also have a practical purpose as transportation.

If you’re up for letting your kids do it, rock climbing can be another green choice. Minimal equipment and you take it all home with you at the end of the day. Rock climbing can help to develop quite an appreciation for nature also.

Hiking and camping are also great choices, provided you stick to established trails and bring back out everything you bring in. You can even make improvements if you come prepared to haul other people’s trash back out.

For all sports, be sure that you consider the environment when you buy equipment. Buying used is always a great choice, but if you need new consider what materials you’re buying. Amazon Green has a sports section, although you still need to consider whether it’s green or greenwashed.

Always remember how very important it is for children to be active, especially outdoors. It’s not just about keeping our kids fit and healthy. It’s building an appreciation for activity and the outdoors. You can’t love nature if you only see it on TV.

Encourage Your Kids to Do Science Experiments

One of the greatest skills I think you can give your children is the ability to explore the world around them. That means letting them play outside as well as encouraging them to experiment with science.

Experiments are a lot more fun way to learn science than what most schools teach too. Great for showing your children that science can be fun, not just equations and numbers.

I’m always on the lookout for great science books for my kids. I just came across The Book of Totally Irresponsible Science: 64 Daring Experiments for Young Scientists on Amazon, and it looks like loads of fun. Nature in a Nutshell for Kids: Over 100 Activities You Can Do in Ten Minutes or Less looks good too, and even comes in a Kindle edition if you prefer.

While not every science experiment is great for the environment many can be, and an understanding of science is a real benefit to children as they grow up. It will help them to understand more of the concerns about what we’ve done to our environment and to understand when you disagree with the naysayers.

Don’t forget that you can include science even in your nature walks. Pick up fallen leaves and talk about their parts and what they do for the trees. Discuss the different kinds of rocks you find. Talk about how the different animals you spot live.

Make science fun and interesting and you’ll give your children a lifelong benefit. They don’t have to become scientists, but a basic understanding of the principles is a good thing.

Keeping My Kids’ Video Gaming Green – Atari 2600!

Kids love to play video games, but new gaming systems are expensive. Then you add in the cost of buying new games, any extra controllers they want, and it gets expensive. Not to mention all the electronic waste when they want the next great system.

That’s why my kids just have an old Atari 2600, plus whatever games they can play online on the computer for free. Much, much cheaper, and the games are still incredibly fun.

The systems really aren’t that hard to find. You might luck into one at a garage sale or thrift store, but if you don’t want to hunt around town you can buy old consoles and games that still work through either Amazon or eBay.

My kids go absolutely nuts for our system. I still need to get a better joystick for them, but when you consider how old these systems are, that’s not such a bad thing.

Most will come with what you need to attach it to a modern television set. If you had one and you remember the old connections, you know it won’t work anymore. But if you need to buy something, there’s an RF TV Adapter on sale at Amazon that’s supposed to do the job quite neatly. Or you can search for one of the consoles that has been modernized with the red, yellow and white plugs.

I have no doubt the time will come when my kids will want whatever the hot gaming system is. But for now they are quite happy using a system that was made more than 30 years ago and still works well today.