Health Care Reform Begins With You

After glancing at the title, you may have some reservations about proceeding with this entry. It may sound like you're getting ready to delve into a political piece that's loaded with possible left/right wing biases, but that's not true. The truth is that I have spent the past 10 minutes trying to think of a title that would catch your attention and pique your curiosity (okay, maybe not 10 full minutes, since I'm sitting here watching "Clifford the Big Red Dog" with Max) so you'll be willing to stick around for the meat of the entry.

We're fat. Indiana is fat and America is fat. Every year when researchers publish their findings on the fattest states, newscasters always seem surprised at how low Indiana ranks. What I've yet to understand is why so few people seem spurred into action after the findings are given to the media. If you think about it, obesity is the one disease that is solely your fault. Sure, someone may get lung cancer, but did they smoke the cigarettes or was it brought about from second-hand exposure? Many people have died from lung cancer and have never even put a cigarette to their lips. How many more people have died (or are going to die) from all of the bad food they put into their bodies?

Let's ponder some of the reasons why people may be the sizes they are and what can be done. Some people are emotional eaters. When they're depressed, they eat; when they're happy, they eat. People also eat when they're bored. One excellent remedy for these people is exercise. Science has proven that when you exercise your brain releases endorphins. Endorphins are neurotransmitters that are released and provide a natural high (like the term "runner's high") many find encourages them to exercise more. It would be a logical choice to exercise if you're sad because you will not only be relieving stress from the sad event, but your brain will take care of you, too. If you're happy (which is great), exercise to help stay happy (because eating may make you happy now, but may turn around and make you sad later). It's just that simple. Additionally, many people eat when they aren't even hungry. More often than not, what we mistake for hunger is actually the body's way of saying it's thirsty. The next time you find yourself rooting around for a snack, try drinking some water and see if that hungry feeling was real or not.

Everyone knows that physical activity is a key component to being healthy, but many aren't able to discern between which foods are good for you and which are not so good. This particular problem bothers me the most because it's the one people know the least about. If you think back to your school days, when did you take your last health class? Sometime in high school, right? Do you recall the primary focus of high school health education? Yup, sex and STD's. As I sit here, I honestly cannot remember the topic of nutrition coming up in anytime after middle school. That being said, it's not too surprising to find that many students push any nutrition education out of their memory banks in order to absorb information for calculus or chemistry. Yeah, you may be able to remember that a Mol is 6.02 x 10 to the 23rd power, but what's the difference between trans fats and saturated fats or your HDL and LDL levels? Between you and me, I think that the latter information is more important.

Now, I'm not going to jump up onto a soapbox and pretend that I know all about food and nutrition. Trust me, I don't know nearly as much as I should. However, I have been taking it upon myself to seek out any information I can find about eating well and promoting one's health. It wasn't a big concern of mine a few years ago, but having children will bring about changes like that. Once my oldest started getting ready to eat "real people food" I had to start being concerned with what he was eating since he wasn't the one doing the grocery shopping. After looking through assorted cookbooks (seriously, check my cabinet--I have a ton), I was starting to discover what I really needed was nutritional information in my cookbooks. Out of the cookbooks I have, few of them provide nutrition labels for each recipe or portion size. After doing some research on my own, I found two wonderful websites that provided me with what I was looking for: yummy recipes that included portion size and nutritional content. The first is Spark Recipes and the second is Cooking Light. Both of these websites also have bonuses: Spark Recipes has an iPhone application that is wonderful and Cooking Light is also a magazine. Another thing that I really like about Spark Recipes is that it is primarily geared toward people with dietary restrictions (i.e. wheat/gluten free, low cholesterol, etc), so if you know someone with a dietary restriction that they're struggling with, refer them to the site.

Going back to the title of this entry, what does this have to do with health care reform? I'm not telling you to go march on Washington D.C. or anything--all I'm saying is if you want to change your health, it starts with you. As a friendly gesture, I'm going to share one of my favorite healthy recipes from Spark Recipes. I encourage you to post any healthy recipes you may have in the 'comments' section so we can share them with others.

Slow Cooker Chicken Taco Stew

Enjoy and have a wonderful day!

~Jenna

My New Love For Cloth Diapers

If you have read the description of this blog, you were probably able to figure that a post on cloth diapers was coming soon. Today's the day, my friend!

Before I begin, let me just say that I'm not going to try to innundate you with some liberal propaganda to make you feel bad about using Pampers and how they're ruining the environment. That's not my objective. I'm just so happy with my experience that I want to share it with you.

Let me also say that there are many wonderful and different types of cloth diapers out there. The only kind that I am familiar with are the Bum Genius 3.0's. If you want to do your own cloth diaper research, click here.

These are two of the Bum Genius 3.0 All-In-One diapers.

I'm not sure how well you can tell the difference, but the one on the left is a fleece-lined diaper, whereas the one on the right is a standard cloth-lined diaper. The difference is primarily that the fleece-lined ones are slightly softer and are slightly better at pulling moisture away from the baby's buns than the standard cloth-lined ones. Another difference that I've personally found is that the standard cloth-lined diapers come in a wide assortment of colors, whereas the fleece-lined diapers are only available in a few select colors (at the time I ordered mine before Annie was born, they were only available in a dark pink and light pink. I don't recall if any 'boy' colors were available because we knew we were having a girl.).

One thing that I LOVE about the Bum Genius 3.0 diapers is that with proper care, they'll last a very long time. How is this possible? Well, the brilliant people at BG figured out how to make the diaper grow with your baby (which saves money on having to buy different sizes of diapers).

Here is a picture of the diaper in the "small" setting.

Here is a picture of the diaper in the "medium" setting.

What sets this one apart from the small setting is that you unsnap 1 row of snaps to allow for extra length. This will be made clearer in the next picture.

Here is a picutre of the diaper in the "large" setting.

If you look at this picture in comparison to the one directly above, you'll notice how there are now more snaps visible, making the diaper bigger. Also, instead of using an adhesive to fasten the diaper, you can see that velcro tabs are used. This is very handy when washing the diapers.

You may be asking yourself, "So, just how do these things work?" Here's the rundown. The first thing you'll need to do is gauge how much your child (ahem) pees. The younger they are, the less they pee. This is important because you need to figure out what size insert to put into the diaper. These are what they look like:

If you look, the one on the left is smaller than the one on the right. The left one is what the company calls the "newborn" insert. I think that I was safe to use this one alone in the diaper for the first 6 months or so (to be fair, I didn't really start using cloth diapers on Annie until she was about a month old because she was so small and the diapers looked like they could swallow her up). As the child gets bigger and pees more, you'll need to switch to the adjustable insert. If you look carefully, you can see some of the same snaps that are on the outside of the diaper. You will just adjust the insert to the same size as the diaper and you're golden. For now, Annie is safe using the adjustable insert, but I have heard that some people with older children may have to double up the newborn and adjustable inserts for nighttime.

Now, where exactly do these inserts go?

If you look at this picture, you'll see how there's a little pocket at the top of the diaper. Quite simply, you just stuff the insert into the pocket and you're ready to go!

What about when your child is ready to go, so to speak? Easy! You pretty much have to options to correspond with their two functions. If the child pees, all you reall need to do is spray the diaper and insert with deodorizer (I recommend the Bum Genius deodorizer because it's natural and doesn't stink up the nursery with that overpowering smell that often accompanies aerosol sprays).

Just give the diaper and insert a few squirts of this spray and then you can toss the dirties into a specified hamper. I do not recommend chucking the dirty inserts and diapers into a clothes hamper since these need to be washed differently than your standard laundry, but I'll get to that later.

Now, about the poop...

Honestly, it really depends on the poop itself. If the poop is hard and nugget-like, you should be safe just dumping it into the toilet, spraying the diaper and insert, and putting the diaper and insert into a hamper. However, for those lovely and unexpected runny poops (which are generally more common the younger the baby is), you'll need to have a sprayer on hand. This will be your best friend.

This lovely little sprayer attaches to your toilet and allows you to spray any runny or particularly messy poops into the toilet. Also, you're able to clean any remnants clear so they don't stain the diaper. You may not need to use the sprayer often, but you definitely want to have it on hand!

As far as washing goes, this is what I do:

Liners and diapers will need to be separated from each other and all snaps will need to be undone. As far as the velcro tabs, there are actually little squares available to attach the tabs to so they don't snag anything in the wash. Once you have the items in the washer, you'll need to put it on the cold water setting and add a detergent that is free of perfumes and dyes. I recommend Tide Free and Clear. This is important because you don't want any perfumes and dyes to be on a fabric that's on the bare skin of your child's sensitive areas, possibly leading to a rash. Run this through one cycle. Once the cycle is complete, you'll need to adjust to the hot water setting and add a cup of white vinegar. While the first cycle was for cleaning purposes, this is for disinfecting. Once this cycle is finished, go ahead and throw everything in the dryer (and don't forget to turn off the hot water setting). Don't put in a dryer sheet (this goes back to the perfume issue). After the cycle is finished, you're good to go!

*Note--if you have well water or hard water, you will most likely wash the dirties a different way.

I have found that there are times when I can't use cloth diapers. The most often occurs when we go on a trip or someone babysits the kids. Most people aren't familiar with cloth diapers nowadays (at least not these kind--most just have memories of the ones with safety pins) and I don't want to pressure/scare people into having to use cloth alone. I do keep disposables on hand for the rare occassions that may call for them.

In the interest of trying to "go green," I have a strong preference to the Huggies Natural Diapers. They are organic and biodegradable. Yay! I will admit that when I'm short on funds I will buy whatever is cheaper and do feel bad about it, but I know that overall, my cloth diapers are keeping me from contributing to a huge mess in a landfill. Plus, in the long run, my cloth diapers are going to save me money (who doesn't love that?). Sure, you have to spend a bit at first to save in the long run, but it's worth it. You figure that a box of diapers in any brand is about $20 and that may last you a month (if you're lucky). So if you figure that an average kid wears diapers consistently for maybe 30 months, that puts you at about $600 alone on diapers (if not more, since there are less diapers per box as the sizes go up). If I remember correctly, when I bought all my supplies (cloth diapers and inserts come together, the sprayer, clothes hamper and liner for dirties, and deodorizer) I think that I spent around $300. So, I know I'm saving at least $300 compared to someone who has a kid the same age as Annie and uses nothing but disposable diapers.

Now, here's what's going to blow your mind. As long as they're taken care of properly, cloth diapers can be passed down. This means that you won't necessarily have to stock up on more diapers (unless you want to; if I have another baby and it's a boy, I'm going to have to buy more diapers, since Annie's are mostly in girly colors) or other supplies, since you'll already have them. What's that mean? YOU SAVE MORE MONEY! Whoo hoo!

Okay, that's my schpiel on cloth diapering. I will say that I wish I had this information sooner so I could have used cloth for Max. Oh well--can't do too much about that now. It may seem like a bit of work, but I believe that it's worth it. If you aren't interested, it's cool--I'm not going to judge those who do things differently. Honestly, I thought it was all a bit funky at first myself. I do have to thank my friend Colleen who turned me on to this.

Have a wonderful day and spread a little cheer!

~Jenna

It May Take a Village To Raise a Child After All...

Just to warn you, this is going to be a venting entry. *Deep breath.*

Here we go.

I am growing increasingly disheartened with the future generation. Well, maybe not the one directly after mine, but the one that consists of the current pre-teens/tweens and early teenagers. Just to be safe, we'll say this includes kids between the ages of 11-13.

As I am writing this, it's the middle of the summer and that means that I have been taking the kids on lots of outings. We've been out to the playground at Parkview North Hospital, the zoo, and we just started going to the library. While these outings are inherently fun, it doesn't take too long before some bratty and/or rude kid has to put a damper on my day.

Yesterday, for instance, we had a lot of running around to do. I told Max that if he was patient and well-behaved, I would take him to the playground at Parkview North. Bless his 2-year old heart--he was well-behaved and patient, so we went to the playground. Being that it was hot, we weren't there too long, so we went to the library (which Max has a newfound love for--YAY!). Okay, I'm not sure about the rest of the parents out there, but whenever I have to take my kids (aged 2-1/2 years and 8 months) anywhere, I have to bust out the double stroller. As much as I love my stroller, it's a tandem, so I usually have to hope that someone is going to be kind and hold open the door for us or hope that there's a handicap accessible door opener. You know, these lovely little buttons that will open the door for you:

So I loaded up the kids into the stroller and let Max hit the button to get into the library. No sooner did those doors start to open then did a swarm of these lovely tweens run me and the kids down to get into the library. I was so appalled by their behavior that I actually called them out on it. What the kicker of it was that not one of them apologized. Grrrrr.

Fast forward to today.

I was sitting in my family room with the kids enjoying my coffee as they (well, Max) watched "Clifford the Big Red Dog." All of the sudden, I heard a muffled "popping" noise that could only be coming from outside. I went to look out on the back patio and saw 2 boys (maybe 11-12 years old) lighting off firecrackers. Not only was I angry that kids were ballsy to be doing such a thing in the daylight, I was angry that they were doing it right off my back yard.

This is my view of our backyard looking out from our patio. We were very excited when we went to a showing of what's now our house and saw that our backyard butted right up to the Tot Lot of our neighborhood. Also, you may be able to see that there's a sidewalk running in front of the park. This sidewalk leads down to a makeshift baseball diamond, a basketball court, and a playground for older children. We couldn't believe how lucky we were to have such direct access to a playground for our children--until today.

Those kids who decided to light off firecrackers were doing so right behind the play structure on the Tot Lot. Yep, I saw them pedal away as fast as they could and I regret that I didn't scold them for being so careless to public property. I didn't say anything because I was too stunned to form the proper words.

In both of the aforementioned instances, the hoodlums in question were unsupervised. I would be willing to bet that had their parent(s) been around, such behavior wouldn't happen (and if they behaved that way when their parents were around, I'd be having some words with them if the parent didn't scold their kids for such behavior). I've been sitting here racking my brain trying to figure out why kids today act worse than we did when we were that age. I will be the first one to admit that I wasn't the best kid, but I also did not behave anything like these kids did. I remember once when I was about 7 that my dad yelled at me for walking on someone's lawn and to this day I will not walk on grass unless there is no feasible way to get from point A to point B (I remember being at Ball State and watching people cut across the Quad through the grass and I kept thinking my dad was going to jump out from behind a tree and yell at them).

Why do parents fail to discipline their children? The only two reasons that I can think of are that either they want to be more of a 'friend' than 'parent' or that they are not around. Both of these circumstances are unfortunate, but I feel that the first situation is the worst between the two. The second situation is regrettable, but sometimes, especially in this economy, the parent(s) need to work more in order to support the family and let their older children look after themselves. Anyway, it does bother me that parents would rather be a friend to their children instead of a disciplinarian. Children need rules and boundaries and any parenting book will tell you that they like life with parameters. Personally, I think that you can have a healthy mix of being fun and stringent (called "authoritative parenting" as opposed to the drill-sergeant style which is "authoritarian parenting") and that this style benefits your child the most (I know I'm not alone on this because there are many studies that back this up). You can be a friend to your child, but I would save that for when your child has left the nest, but I digress.

So back to the title of this entry, "It May Take a Village To Raise a Child After All." I'm going to have this mean that if you're not going to correct your child, I will. I'm not going to yell at them in any way, but I will correct them when they blatantly do something wrong. If the parent is around, I probably won't say anything because I despise confrontation (which is why I quickly abandoned my childhood dream of becoming a lawyer) unless their kid hit mine or something. I feel that I am actually helping your child if I have to correct them. More often than not, the only time that I'll be hard-core about it is if my kids are around. I want to set a good example for them and if I cannot maintain that example both in and out of the home, they may not take me seriously. However, if my kids aren't around, I'm more likely to let things slide (and may just mutter something under my breath). I think that I'm going to call this my Type AB behavior. I'm not a Type A person unless my children are around and am usually Type B the rest of the time.

The moral of the story: discipline your children so I won't have to.

To New Beginnings

Greetings and welcome to the Progressive Mommy blog!

First of all, I would like to say that the title "Progressive Mommy" is not used to pigeon-hole myself into any one general category. When many people today hear the term "progressive," they may picture a stereotypical hippie, one who only eats vegan cuisine, is extremely liberal, and a feminist (the Maggie Gyllenhaal character from "Away We Go" may be the best manifestation of the aforementioned stereotype). Nothing is wrong with any of these labels, but they are not what I have in mind when I use the word in regards to this blog. For me, "progress" simply means that I'm moving forward toward continuous improvement. Improvement in myself, my family, my household, and (hopefully) my world.

That being said, I'm very excited to get this underway and share/vent my experiences/ordeals with the cyber-world. I will say right now that I am not going to commit to maintaining this endeavor on a daily basis. I mean, seriously--I have a 2-1/2 year old and an 8 month old, so that will not be happening. I will say that I will be happy if I can log on here once a week, but I will not encourage you to hold your breath in anticipation for such a schedule to maintain consistency.

As I sit here catching up on various podcasts (yay iTunes!) while setting up this blog, I realize that it is nearly 2a.m. and I'm rapidly running out of steam. Since we're already 2 hours into the start of a new day, I realize that it is now officially our wedding anniversary. As of today, the hubbs and I have been married for 5 years! Holy cow--how time flies! It's amazing to see how far we've come and how much the Lord has blessed our marriage during our time together. Myself, being the good wife, I went out this past weekend and got Mike this DVD set that he's been wanting; the question is, will Mike remember that it's our anniversary (and will there be a gift in store? Note: it doesn't have to be an actual gift, but something to acknowledge it's our anniversary would be nice)? Okay, I think that putting in 4 hours into the development of this blog is enough for one night. Hopefully I won't be neglectful and will remember to update this soon!