He’s at that age where he now responds to toys, stuffed animals; or anything that squeaks, rattles or clutches easily in his tiny hands. His nursery sports a basketful of plush toys… there has to be 15 to 20 in there, everything from Reindeer Pooh to an ecofriendly Blabla doll. It is shocking how much stuff a baby can acquire in a mere 90 days – of course, it’s the result of well-meaning friends and family members.

Sam wants for nothing. I have a feeling this is pretty similar to how most young lives play out. So as a parent I’m already wondering how we stop all the stuff from taking over. A friend pointed us to an article in the magazine, Best Life called Monsters Inc. and as a new parent it’s been a fascinating read on how marketing and consumerism impact kids. Here’s an excerpt:

Well, I’m not uptight, okay, and I don’t live off the grid or in a yurt. I’m just a dad who has figured out that the business of selling things to kids has reached a fever pitch in this country, and even the best efforts of parents to defend their children from the onslaught can leave them feeling surrounded, outnumbered, and outgunned. I have also learned that researchers have linked this phenomenon with a host of negative consequences for kids. Childhood obesity and the sexualization of girls garner the headlines, but those who have studied the problem say these issues are simply the more glaring symptoms of a larger illness.

Recent research links marketing and its sidekick, consumerism, to an increased risk for a broad spectrum of ills, including conflicts at school, conflicts with parents, psychological distress, indifference toward others, and a disregard for the world itself. Exposing a child to high levels of marketing, in other words, is a great way to make a child unhappy, unsuccessful, and unlikable. Most of us think of marketing as ads, but with shows having become toys having become brands, the most innocent of stuffed toys is no longer as innocent as it seems. “Even Sesame Street has an army of Elmo dolls out there now,” says Michael Rich, MD, director of the Center on Media and Child Health at Children’s Hospital in Boston. “For a child, these products are a connection to Sesame Street. The relationship they have developed with the program and its characters is leveraged to make them desire that brand. They’re just learning to be consumers, a mentality that says, ‘If only I can have that, I will be happy.’”

For those who say “ba-loney,” that advertising has always been with us, there’s no comparing your memories of 30-second ads with the 24-7, 360-degree, multimedia Manhattan Project now under way to own your children’s brains. In the past 25 years, marketing to children–an ethically indefensible practice that enjoys virtually no popular support and yet faces little oversight–has grown from $100 million worth of holiday-time ads, to a $17 billion effort to seed brands and licensed characters into every corner of children’s lives. With the convergence of technology that connects televisions, cell phones, and the Web, kid-brand gurus have developed an unprecedented array of Trojan-horse methods to enter your kid’s head and capture his mind. What’s at stake is more than a few dollars, it’s the internal emotional adventure of childhood itself.

If you’re a parent, it’s worth clicking over and reading the entire article. In the comment section below, please offer any advice to parents trying to battle the “born to buy” culture. Believe you me, I’m interested in any reader tips!

Photo credit: stock.xchng.

I was most militant about the plastic part. There are real health reasons for avoiding plastic toys, as well as my more questionable aesthetic ones. And then there’s the environmental impact–nothing shouts ‘carbon footprint’ as loudly as a discarded Tickle Me Elmo.

Well, here we are, almost two years later. And I am drowning in a sea of plastic clutter. Noisy, tacky, environmentally questionable clutter.

Why? Kids at this particular developmental stage love it. Anything that is brightly colored, beeping, and requires batteries that are not included is instant toddler crack. Moreover, they love choice—they crave a dizzying variety of shapes, sizes, and sounds. They learn through choosing, sorting, and discarding. Toddlers are capricious; the beloved squeaky toy of yesterday is cruelly cast aside for something shinier (and probably more expensive) the next. In fact, the “Terrible Twos” should be renamed the “Tacky Twos”.

So I caved. Bring on the plastic whoogies, the neon-orange whatsists! We don’t do television or supposedly educational (but actually provably brain-deadening) videos. The bulk of our daughter’s time is still spent playing out doors, reading, listening for the hundredth time to Raffi sing about that damn beluga, or doing some other inexpensive and ecologically correct activity. But I’ve partially caved on the plastic issue. She not only loves the plastic stuff, but seems to be learning from it. Where we can, we substitute a wood, lead-free toy, but where we can’t, we go with Demon Plastic.

What I won’t do, however, is waste money or bring known toxins into our environment. Here’s a list that will help you navigate the Age of Plastics if you should find yourself with a toddler who’s obsessed with all things Fisher-Price.

1) Check out the safety of the plastic that finds its way into your house. This site is most helpful in listing the names of plastics to avoid, and those that are (at least as far as we know) safe.

2) Find a resale store where other parents are regularly dumping their plastic goods. Then check on the safety of the brand/product. And rotate yours, too—when your toddler loses interest in a toy, donate it to a friend or resale stuff.

3) Clean up each night. I let things go during the day, but before I collapse for the night, I pick up everything I can. Bins are great for this: plastic (!) or wood bins on wheels into which you can easily toss the day’s detritus. Ikea has some great cheapies.

4) Lighten up. My daughter is a precocious talker and joke-teller. She is funny, happy, and smart. She eats organic, reads non-stop, and shows signs of being a decent human being. She is not going to turn into a t.v. addicted zombie simply because she’s played with a plastic gizmo or two. I’m not going to cave on everything, but a few plastic toys (as long as their safety has been verified) aren’t going to kill her. Or me.

Do you have tips for keeping the plastic chaos down to a minimum, or for alternatives to the plastic fantastic toddler lifestyle? Post them below!

Yipee! (Hopefully, that yipee isn’t premature…)

For those of us still shell-shocked from the disaster of 2004 (not to mention 2000), the excitement and anxiety are overwhelming. I’m all too aware of the problems with electoral politics, the winner-take-all system, the undue influence of PACs, those wacky ‘undecided’ voters, the use of queer issues as the poltical football du jour, and so on. As a queer parent, I see my issues get misrepresented and/or ignored by virtually all parties. I’m skeptical about mainstream candidates’ commitment to our issues. I have often had to hold my nose before pulling the lever. I think a two-party system ill-serves the diversity of the electorate.

And yet I still believe voting is one of the most important acts of citizenship we can perform. Why?

1) Your vote is your family’s voice.

I’m not a fan of those “Babies for Obama” onesies; I’ll let my kid decide for herself which candidates/parties she supports when the time comes (I’m the same way about those “I Love My Two Moms” onesies; how do I know how she really feels about this, given that she’s too small to express an opinion about carrots vs peas?) I do fantasize about voting for her one day…which probably ensures that she’ll turn out wildly apolitical.

BUT—it’s a biiiiig but, actually—my vote really is a vote for my whole family. If we want our issues to get greater coverage, we need to show up! I’m committed to non-electoral forms of politics (protests, boycotts, third parties, etc.) but until there’s another/better system in place, the single most forceful way of representing my family’s needs and getting them counted is the ballot box. Since my daughter can’t vote yet, it’s my job to consider her best interests when I pull the lever.

2) By voting, you model engaged citizenship and critical thinking for your kids.

I have vivid memories of going into the voting booth with my mom and dad –though unlike Cristopher Buckley, I never actually pulled the lever for them! My parents talked to me about the candidates, the electoral college, their beliefs about democracy, and so on. My mom always recounted the struggles of women and people of color to gain the right to vote, which made me understand how important voting was. And is. So bring your kids. I’m bringing my daughter, even though she’s only a year and a half old.

If you’re critical of the candidates or system, bring that critique, too. When I hear folks cynically complain about ‘politics’ and the uselessness of voting, I recall that the word ‘politics’ comes from the Greek word for the state: polis, which means the people. We, the people.

3) Voting helps ensure the future for your family

This is true on so many levels this year: whether we’re talking about the environment, No on 8, or the economy, our children’s futures really do hang in the balance. If we screw this one up, our families face even more discrimination, the environment will be so compromised that we’ll have endangered our kid’ (and grandkids’) very survival, and we won’t be able to pay those ever-ballooning college tuitions. I can’t think of a time when so many key issues affecting our families were on the ballot. Buying organic, recycling, and saving won’t mean a thing if policy decisions are made that make the air unbreathable.

4) Voting gives you the right to complain.

If you didn’t bother to drag your tush to the ballot box, well, how can you really complain? Hearing my parents complain about, critique, and organize against both those candidates they’d voted against and those who’d gotten their votes and then let them down (hello, Bill Clinton!) provided me with a model of engaged citizenship.

I think of voting as the ‘gateway drug’ to activism. Keep protesting and organizing against the candidates you never supported in the first place, and hold those to whom you gave your vote accountable for living up to those oh-so-quickly-evaporating campaign promises (hello again, Bill Clinton!).

5) It’s free.

Okay, I’m sure you’ve been waiting for the financial tie-in, so here goes: contrary to the right-wing slogan, freedom IS free. (It wasn’t always so; we’ve had to fight poll taxes and other nonsense.)

So vote! Go early, if you can. And don’t forget to bring your kids.

If you don’t know your polling place, go here.

To volunteer for phonebanking, driving, and other get-out-the-vote activities, go here or here.

And post your favorite voting memory below!

Photo credit: stock.xchng.

Toddlers love toys. They crave novelty, and are rather fickle: yesterday’s favorite plushy is quickly abandoned for the allure of a new board book. And they love noise—making it, hearing it, and pressing buttons that elicit it. Too often, this all adds up to pricey, environmentally unsound trips to plasticland, a.k.a. your local megatoystore.

Instead of littering our planet and your child’s world with nonbiodegradable, not too mention aesthetically revolting, plastic toys, why not make your own? I am a working mom, short on time, who is also rather three-thumbed—I love the idea of making stuff, but I’m a terrible sewer, can’t cut in a straight line, and am chronically low on patience for such things. So with all this in mind, here are some suggestions for homemade toys that are environmentally sound and, most importantly, highly entertaining to toddlers. Some are more involved than others, but all are easy, quick, and fun to make with your toddler.

1) The Booble-de-Bop

Okay, so if you’re intimidated by crafty stuff, this is the place to start. Place a shiny plastic object (we use a string of hot pink Mardi Gras-style plastic beads of unknown provenance) inside a plastic bottle. Close it tight. Let the great rumpus begin! The sound on your hardwood floors will make you want to jump out of a window, but your kid will be entertained for hours. For slightly older kids, attach googly eyes, bells, boas, etc. (all cheap and easily found at your local crafts shops).

2) Toddler Cars

This takes the age-old concept of the empty cardboard box toy and pumps it up a few notches. Cut off the top and bottom of a box big enough for your kid to fit in. Punch holes on either side of the front and rear and attach some thick string front-to-back for shoulder straps. Add paper plate wheels, as well as a steering wheel. Accessorize with cardboard, old t.p. rolls, and whatever else you have in your art/recycle bin to create racing stripes, wipers, and horns. Ours is a hybrid, of course…

3) Doll House/ Mouse House/Chateau de Kid

I was obsessed with dollhouses when I was a kid, and with creating mouse families to inhabit them. But the plastic ones are tacky as hell, and the wooden ones are so pricey you’ll need a sub-prime mortgage. Instead, use old shoe boxes to create doll/mouse houses, condos, and chateaux. A little non-toxic paint, some cut-out windows, and some old fabric for rugs, wallpaper, etc., and you and your kid can let loose with your inner decorators! Toy mice (a.k.a. cat toys) are easily found at pet stores, if your child is, like me, inexplicably drawn to the familias musculus. Or you can create paper dolls easily out of…paper. Either way, this is one of those projects that allows your kids’ imagination to really flower.

4) Puppets (Retooled Plushies)

If you’re like us, you’ve received a bazillion stuffed animals as gifts for your tot, most of which remain ignored on the shelf. Here’s a great idea: turn that lonely plushy into a dynamic puppet. Find the seam on the back of underside of the plushy, and remove stitches with a seam ripper. Remove the stuffing, hand stitch the edges of the opening, and voila!—you’ve made a puppet. You could add googly eyes, extra felt hands, dino scales, crowns, or whatever else will give your puppet personality and tot appeal.

5) Color Books

If you’ve been following my columns, you knew that I’d have to include at least one book-making project! Here’s a really basic one: Take bracketed color folders and fill them with matching color paper. Then, you and your toddler can choose images from magazine, ads, and other print materials in that color. Older kids can write the name of each item underneath it (or something more imaginative–a story connecting the objects, perhaps). You can also add actual items in that color, such as ribbons, coasters, bells, fabric, etc. This makes a great gift, too.

Okay, so what other cheap/free/recycled handmade toys have you made? Which ones did your toddlers love the most? Which bombed?

Photo credit: stock.xchng.

One caveat: my daughter, despite her ability to ‘go get the y’ from the alphabet magnets on the fridge, is only a year old and hence not in school yet, so these are ideas gleaned from others. Do you have some tips that have worked for your kids? Add them in the comments. And enjoy the fleeting sweetness of summer, while it lasts. (In that spirit, there’s an ice cream recipe in a link at the end of this article, proving that pink and green parenting can be fun!)

1) Brown bag it. And reuse the brown bag. A homemade, brown-bagged lunch is a yummy, healthy, and green alternative to the junk in the school cafeteria. And it’s cheaper, too. Avoid prepared foods, especially those that claim to be something known as ‘lunchable’, and use as little packaging as possible. Get your kids on board with this by letting them help choose what’s in their lunches. Try to prep it all Sunday night, and get them to help. If you’re including healthy, whole foods, it’s fine to include a sweet now and then, too. A homemade chocolate chip cookie is a heck of a lot healthier than most of the stuff that passes as lunchmeat in school meals! Use brown bags and a thermos, and ask your kids to reuse them. They can decorate them if they find them too boring. For the Advanced Pink and Green Parents: If you’ve already greened your kids’ lunches, try greening the whole school’s lunch.

2) Ignore those “back-to-school” clothing specials. Most of those deals being hawked in paper-wasting flyers right now…aren’t really deals. They’re come-ons to get you in the store and spend, spend, spend. Instead, make a list — with your kids’ help—of the must-haves for fall. Then, see if you can find them gently used, online or in brick-and-mortar stores. Again, try to get your kids excited about the process; let them know that they can afford to get more stuff if they get it used.

3) Make a budget for clothes, school supplies, etc., and stick to it. Include a splurge in your budget. This is somewhat self-explanatory, but it’s so easy to get caught up in impulse buys, come-ons, and so on. When it’s hot out and the air-conditioned mall beckons, it’s easy to give in to the “Mom, I NEED it” syndrome. Get your kids on board: have them help you make the list of what they need BEFORE you hit the stores or online websites, and break down how much they want to spend on each item. If you have older kids, have them organize a clothes swap with their friends.Include a splurge —small or large, depending on your budget. Maybe you can’t afford an entire new outfit, but you can afford a brand new knapsack or pair of shoes. Stick to your guns—you’re modeling good financial behavior here. Making room for a splurge sends the message that budgeting leads to financial empowerment and fun.

4) Wait. Everything will go on sale after Labor Day. Only get what your kids absolutely must have right now. If you know one of your kids needs a jacket, for example, wait until after Labor Day to get it, when fall clothes begin to be discounted. This also gives your kid a chance to see what’s in and what’s out, and adjust their wardrobe accordingly if they are the sort to follow trends. ( I could have saved myself the shame of being covered head-to-toe in whale paraphernalia in middle school if I’d followed this advice…but that’s another story!)

5) Combine shopping with non-consumerist fun. I like shoe-shopping as much as the next girl, but I don’t base my life around it.It’s fine for your kids to get excited about back-to-school shopping, and it can be a way to get them excited about and focused on the school year to come. Talk to them about other aspects of their upcoming school experience (new teacher, friends, activities), and combine each and every shopping trip with a non-consumerist summer activity such as swimming or a visit to a park or museum. This will both de-emphasize consumption as a key bonding activity, and allow you to have some low-key quality time with your kids before you are all sucked into the vortex of the school year. And you’ll save gas if you piggyback a non-shopping activity with a trip to the mall.

6) Educate your kids about the environmental impact of their consumer behavior. And celebrate their green choices. Discuss how the throw-away clothing culture negatively impacts the environment. Find articles that explore this, and discuss this with them. Do the same with the lunch and lunch bag issue. But don’t make this a big Debbie Downer talk; make sure to mark and celebrate when your kids make greener choices. Include them in the conversation about greener living. See what ideas, thoughts, questions, and suggestions they have, and try to incorporate them into your family’s practices. Reward their green choices with words of praise. Or homemade ice cream!

What other tips do you have for greening the back-to-school madness? Any tales from the pink and green parenting trenches?

Photo credit: stock.xchng

My daughter loves being outdoors, but with skin cancer rates rising nationwide, and with her inherited bad skin-cancer luck (three of her great-grandparents and one of her grandparents have had skin cancers ranging from the benign to the quick killing sort), I’m concerned about protecting her. I’m also concerned about putting expensive, toxic gunk all over her…that might kill her more readily than the skin cancer that it’s supposed to prevent!

To put it bluntly: sunscreens suck. By the EPA’s own definition, sunscreens are chemicals that protect skin by absorbing and/or reflecting UVA and UVB rays. PABA, the most common chemical in sunscreen is a known carcinogen, as are many of the other common ingredients found in sunscreen. Sunblocks, on the other hand, are made of ingredients that themselves simply block, reflect, and scatter the sun’s rays, without any chemical reaction. But many products labeled as sunblock really aren’t—they contain PABA or other chemicals. As I noted previously, skin products aren’t monitored for safety the way food products are, even though new scientific evidence suggest that they may be absorbed even more directly into the bloodstream.

So, what’s the best strategy for protecting your kids’ skin?

Shade. Try to find a shady place for your kids to play outside. If you simply avoid direct exposure to the sun, you protect them without having to load on sunscreen. And it’s free! Hats and covering up exposed flesh are also good options.

If they are swimming or doing something else outdoors in which direct exposure is unavoidable, try a product whose main active ingredient is zinc oxide. Yep, good ‘ole fashioned zinc: that white, gooky stuff that lifeguards put on their shnozzes. It works, it’s non-toxic, and if you rub it in, it doesn’t look too weird. There are products which micronize zinc oxide to make it less gloppy, but there are some health concerns about micronized particles—they are more easily absorbed into the bloodstream. So stick with the gloppy stuff. Dr. Hauscha makes a great children’s sunscreen that, while pricey, lasts a long time because you only need a little bit. It smells good, too! Blue Lizard is another one. And here’s a recipe for homemade zinc oxide sunblock!

What other tips do you have for inexpensive, chemical-free ways of keeping the sun’s harmful rays off your kids’ skin?

In a previous post, I expressed my angst about having purchased onesies from Steve and Barry that were made with child labor.

The good news is that you can go buy those Steve and Barry/Sarah Jessica Parker-inspired onesies that I told you about. According to this report, they do not rely on child labor. And they’ve lowered their prices! So snatch up some of those groovy green and purple stripey onesies I told you about with a clean conscience. And maybe pick up some of SJP’s latest designs for yourself, if you’re so inclined (her dresses are a bit too Desperate Housewivesy for me, but I did pick up some cute metallic ballerina flats and relived my high school bunhead days).

In another post, I talked about the potential hazards of BPA leaching from plastic baby bottles.

The bad news is that recent public health studies suggest that the BPA found in many plastic baby bottles is indeed carcinogenic, even in the trace amounts that leach from said bottles. I thought the Times’ coverage was the best; check it out.

So what are the alternatives? Glass bottles work really well. They’re eco-friendly, free of all plastics and chemicals, and are break-resistant. But we found that they’re too heavy (and breakable) to use when we’re on the go. So we invested in a few Born Free BPA-free bottles. They’re actually a better size for our one-year-old, ferociously independent daughter than Dr. Brown’s (which is also coming out with BPA-free bottles any day now); she was able to hold them herself, and use it like a sippy cup.

And here’s a tip: if you look online, you can only find them at exorbitant prices, because there’s been such a run on them in the past few days due to the press coverage of the recent studies. Whole Foods usually carries them, but they were sold out at both our local Lewd Moles (my lame cockneyizing of WF). So we sallied over to that den of credit card debt and plastic entertainment, Buy Buy Baby, and found them in stock, at reasonable prices. We only bought three; our daughter is eating actual food and water now, so she really only goes through three bottles, at most, per day. And we only bought the bottles; we brought a toy in for our daughter to play with while we shopped, so we wouldn’t be tempted by a baby-soothing impulse buy.

What other alternatives have you guys come up with? Other brands/bottles? Are there any other issues about which you’d like to see me update my coverage?

Buried in this week’s headlines about the election, sex scandals, and so on, was this item: “Toxins Found in Leading Organic Brands”. Upsetting, no?

New tests show that known (and utterly inorganic) petrochemical-based carcinogens, which are particularly harmful to babies and children, were found in a shockingly wide range of skin and beauty products labeled and marketed as ‘organic.’

Some of these products are even marketed specifically to babies! Here’s the complete list, and the results of the study.

According to the results of the study, “the California Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) classes 1,4-Dioxane as a leading contaminant of groundwater and suspects it to be a kidney toxicant, neurotoxicant and respiratory toxicant.” Yikes!

The problem is that while strict federal guidelines regulate the certification of food products, no such guidelines regulate health and beauty products. But shampoos, soaps, skincare products, and detergent enter our bloodstream through our skin! And, most upsettingly, through the skin of our babies.

Besides the considerable health issues this raises, there is also an economic issue: why should parents pay extra for ‘organic’ products that are filled with petrochemicals? Why should we trust and support companies who engage in such practices?

We shouldn’t. Of course we can and should read labels, and buy accordingly, but we shouldn’t need degrees in chemistry to purchase safe products that are what they say they are: organic. In Europe, organic health and beauty products are monitored just as foodstuffs are. Now, in the U.S., we tend to be persuaded by the logic of individualism: leave it to the consumer to decide what he or she wants to buy, not the government.

That’s all fine and dandy, but shouldn’t customers have the right to expect that those products labeled as organic… are actually organic? After all, we pay taxes to Uncle Sam every April 15 precisely for this kind of oversight. And we have it for our foodstuffs, just not for other products. So I’m not proposing more of a ‘nanny state’; just a logical extension of already existing regulations of foodstuff labeling to be extended to non-foodstuffs.

As parents, we need to be able to trust that the products we buy are what they say they are. For children who have allergies or other conditions, such mislabeling can be fatal. For my daughter, it wasn’t fatal, but she did get a rash from one so-called organic product that now has been revealed to be… full of yummy petrochemicals! I was delighted that two of my favorite brands, Dr. Hauscha and Dr. Bonner’s are both petrochemical-free. Dr. Hauscha, as a German product, has the benefit of the superior regulation of the EU of such labeling.

I hope you’ll join me in writing letters to and boycotting those companies engaging in this sort of deceptive practices. And I also hope you’ll spark a discussion here and in other queer/progressive parenting communities about how to make the organic moniker more than a branding tool! Our kids’ health—and our wallets—depend on it.

Parents, share your thoughts here on this… and make sure to check the list to make sure you’re not shelling out big bucks for toxin-laden ‘organics’. I’m going to go take a (hopefully) petrochemical-free bath with my daughter, and wash off the bad taste this corporate hoodwinkery leaves in my mouth.

Though I’m not a fan of most over-commercialized holidays, I love the ritual of honoring someone on the brink of parenthood. And it’s often the last chance to have uninterrupted adult time with them (of either the coffee klatsch or XXX variety) for… oh, eighteen years or so.

But though I love the spirit of the baby shower, I don’t embrace its commercialism (and underlying assumptions about gender, parenthood, and all the rest). So no, I’m not a fan of pink or blue onesies, prefab baby books, puerile joke gifts, or cookie cutter “you’re special, new mom!” sentiments. I strive to make my shower gifts memorable, meaningful, eco-conscious… and cheap.

So in that spirit, here are some suggestions for shower gifts that I hope are inventive, inexpensive, individualistic, and appropriate for queer/progressive parents-to-be.

1) Home-made Baby Book
I started making these because I found the commercial baby books unbearably tacky.All that pink, blue, clichéd sentimentality… yuck. It’s a great idea: a book documenting baby’s firsts. But instead of the predictable ‘baby’s first step, word, etc.’ pages, make up your own: baby’s first pizza, curse word, spit up, crayon masterpiece… Just buy a blank book and decorate it however you like, creating pages to document the momentous and absurd events in a baby or child’s life.

2) Heirloom Books and Toys
This is my hands-down favorite shower gift to give or get: high-quality, classic or antique books and toys that belonged to another child. If you have a child, see if she or he wants to choose a favorite (but no longer age-appropriate) toy or book to give to the baby-to-be. If you don’t have kids, you can use a book or toy that you treasured, or buy a replica.Ebay is a good source for vintage toys, but I prefer digging through Goodwill stores, yard sales, and antique shops. Your child (and/or you!) can also make a card addressed to the future baby, telling him or her about your own experiences with the toy or book.

3) DIY Onesies
This is for the mildly crafty/ambitious. But fear not! It’s easy. Buy or recycle some neutral-colored organic cotton onesies, and stencil them with baby-related graphics (clothes pins, alphabet blocks, bottles, etc.) or, if you prefer, something totally unconventional (I’ve made Elvis, Fat Elvis, Fat Albert, and Edith Piaf-imprinted onesies!) All it takes is some stencil paper from an art store, and non-toxic inks in whatever colors you’d like to use. Or you can do an iron-on, by printing an image on iron-on paper (available from craft stores). If the baby’s name has been chosen, you could even monogram it! One of my favorites was a onesie that a friend made with my daughter’s name silkscreened in a Rolling Stones-style font. Quel rock star! The main expense is your time, but this is a true-blue keepsake that the parents will treasure. Or at least get a good laugh out of it.

4) Queer Parenting Books
The end of a pregnancy (or final stage of an adoption process) is the best time to read these; once the baby arrives, the new parents will be too exhausted to think about the meta-issues as they drown in sleeplessness, diapers, and joy. So choose the books that were most useful to you, if you’re already a parent.

If you’re not, here are a few suggestions: These are all in paperback, and are relatively inexpensive:

The Queer Parent’s Primer
The Lesbian and Gay Parenting Handbook
The Complete Lesbian and Gay Parenting Guide

5) DIY Books
All it takes to make your own children’s book is a notebook, a computer printer, and some imagination. I use those hard-cover notebooks you can get for a buck at a drugstore, and then print out my stories and paste them in, along with illustrations and other decorations. I make the baby-to-be the protagonist, and turn him or her into a superhero with magic powers, fighting ridiculous demons. The sillier the better!

Or, if you’re not feeling that creative, you can retell a myth or familiar children’s story, making the baby-to-be the protagonist. My friends LOVE these one-of-a-kind books. The cost is minimal, but they’re priceless, truly unique ways to honor a new baby.

So those are a few of my favorite queertacular, eco-sensitive, mildly-to-extremely creative, cheapy cheapy cheap shower gifts. The truth is, I love babies, and the wonder of a new person coming into the world. And I love making gifts to honor them.

Have you given (or received) any unusual, inexpensive, ecologically-sound baby gifts? What baby shower gifts were the most meaningful to you? How do you feel about baby showers, anyway–love them? Hate them? Indifferent?

“Oh, so you shop at Whole Paycheck?”

“Organics! Well, my family can’t afford that.”

“We didn’t have all these special organic products when we were growing up, and we’re fine, so why bother?”

These are some of the comments friends and family make when they hear that we’re trying to raise our kid in an organic environment. The popular conception is that you can either be cost or health conscious—not both. But I’ve found that some of the most organic, natural lifestyle choices you and your family can make are also the most cost-effective.

As for the ‘geez, we didn’t bother with this in my day and we’re fine” argument, I would argue that we are in fact on the verge of an ecological disaster due to our dependence on petrochemicals that impacts all of us. Moreover, as a 41-year-old with three friends incapacitated by allergies, two friends struggling with cancer, and one six feet under from an unidentified illness, I just can’t buy that the damage we’ve done to the environment isn’t in fact corroding our health—and our childrens’. And this is one case where I’d definitely rather be safe than sorry!

And you know what? Organic stuff just feels better, tastes better, smells better, and is ultimately cheaper, if you do it the right way.

Yup, you heard right: organic can be cheaper.

Here are some tips for saving money while going organic. As with all lifestyle changes, it helps to try the one that seems the easiest first, see if it works for you, and then add another and another. You’re not only making your household healthier and your bank account larger; you’re modeling healthful, environmentally conscious, economically responsible behavior to your kids.

1) Go Local

The locavore movement got a lot of press (and its own entry into the Oxford American Dictionary!) this year, but it’s been brewing for at least a decade. Basically, the idea behind the whole locavore thing is to buy stuff grown within a 100 mile radius from your home. Why? Organic is really only half the story; those “organic” avocados that a certain store carries whose name rhymes with Snood Bowl are flown in from Chile. Which means two things: it’s hard to really know what the growing conditions were, since they don’t have to meet the US standards for organics, and a hell of a lot of petrol was wasted shipping them to the Lewd Mole.

And they’re way overpriced!!! Instead, try to buy local stuff that’s in season. My locally-owned health food store has locally-grown organic parsnips at half the price of those cosmopolitan avocados.

One great way to save money on veggies, buy locally and organically, and be a part of your community is to join a CSA, a Community Supported Agriculture organization. It’s a subscription service, but you get great veggies instead of trashy magazines! For a yearly membership fee, you get a basket of seasonal fruits and veggies from a local farm delivered to your house. We found that we got much more creative with our cooking once we had to use the seasonal veggies. And it saved us money; no more $2 avocados and $3 bell peppers from God knows where. I’m now an expert on Brussels sprouts, pumpkins, and parsnips And the kids love the surprise of it all—what will be in the basket this week?

2) Avoid ‘Clear’ Cleaning; Seek Whole Cleaners Instead

Many big-name commercial brands are trying to cash in on the organics craze, so they’re marketing their products (such as dish soap and laundry detergent) as ‘clear’— free of fragrance and color. And they’re upping the price for these supposedly healthier products! But here’s the deal: many of them actually contain scent-masking and color-neutralizing chemicals. In fact, they may have more additives than regular non-organic products!

Instead, choose natural products that are naturally chemical and fragrance free. Look at the ingredients; look out for multi-syllabic additives. Dr. Bonner’s, California Baby, and Seventh Generation are good bets; they’re made of pure, simple ingredients, and sell their products in bulk. If you do want to add scent, just add a few drops of an essential oil. Just as whole foods—unprocessed, with a minimum of additives—are better to eat, whole cleaning products are better to wash with. After all, do you really want petrochemicals on your baby’s tush?

3) Co-op

For a small membership fee and a bit of service time, you can join a food co-op, which will carry organic products at discount prices to its members. Co-ops vary in their demands; the Park Slope Food Coop is notoriously Byzantine in its structure, though it has amazing produce at unbelievable prices, but my local Takoma Park/Silver Spring Co- op is quite user-friendly. If there isn’t a co-op in your area, see if you can start a small one in your basement. Start with dried goods, which store well, and go from there. If you join a co-op, bring your kids when you do your service assignment; they’ll learn all about the source of their food, and the nature of community-building.

4) DIY

Many expensive, wastefully packaged kid- and baby-oriented products are easily made. Organic baby food is a great example; the canned and jarred stuff is a third more expensive than regular baby food, and comes in discardable jars. And the portions are too big; when we used the store bought stuff, we ended up having to throw half of it out. All you need to make your own is a food processor and some sterilized jars.

I know it sounds time-consuming, but it really isn’t; once a week, we cook some organic veggies, meats, and so on, mush them up in the food processor, jar some, freeze others in ice-cube trays, and then reuse the jars. It’s about a quarter of the price of commercial organic brands to do it this way. And we often use foods that we ourselves will eat (in un-mushed-up form), so it really doesn’t take much extra time at all. I imagine we’ll do the same for older kids’ foods once our baby reaches that point.

So there you have it: reasonably easy ways to go organic AND save money. If you have others, let me know. I’ll trade you my parsnip recipe!