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Tuesday, February 22, 2011

Goodbye diapers...hello environmental guilt.

It is a big day at our house. 9 years and 3 kids later, we have finally used our last diaper! Princess I is soundly sleeping in her rubber sheet covered bed without a pull-up. I feel giddy about this success and would jump for joy if it weren't for the excess weight of my T-Rex sized carbon footprints.

Oh dear environment, how I've done you wrong and I knew it all along. I picture a  pile of diapers at the dump with my name flashing over top of it as David Suzuki looks on with a tear streaming down his cheek.

I have to be perfectly honest when I tell you that cloth diapers were never an option for me. First of all, in 2002, when my first was born, the cloth diaper craze hadn't fully erupted again. They were still mostly being used, as far as I knew, by moms named Willow who carried all 3 of their kids in traditional African slings while gathering eggs from their backyard Kitsilano chicken coops. Also, I was...am...a girl of convenience (a kinder way of saying I was ignorant and lazy). Cloth diapers just seemed like to much work, too much mess, and they looked so bulky and uncomfortable for the baby. Would you like to spend a few hours with a wet towel stuffed down your pants?

So how do I settle the score? We start by selling our car. I will do all my traveling with the kids by bike and trailer. Next we move. Sell this energy sucking house and move to a tent down by the river. I will hand sew all of our clothes from re-claimed organic hemp that I have bought off of a mom named Willow from Kitsilano. We will eat off of the land...screw the 100 mile diet, we'd be on the 15 foot diet. If I can't grow it, kill it or milk it within 15 feet of our yurt, we don't eat it. We will cook by fire, wash in the river and nature will be our outhouse. We would of course be swearing off of toxic soaps, shampoos and toothpastes, so we will use tree bark as our loofah, sand as our toothpaste and I will make a soap substitute using tree sap and huckleberry juice. Hubby will have to quit his job in order to accommodate his new life as an environmental protester and I will need to keep plenty of time open to bail him out of jail.

So after 3 kids, each with 2+ years in diapers, I figure that oughta do it.

Or...just in case everyone else isn't on board with that plan...we could just say, I can't take back the damage I've already done, but I can offer a promise that I will do better every day from here on in and we already have! We as a family recycle now more than we ever have. We eat a reasonably high percentage of local organic food, and I am setting an example for my children, that hopefully they will not only pass onto their kids, but try to improve on. I know we're not environmental superstars, and I know we never will be, but we did the best we could do today with the promise of doing even better tomorrow.

I'm rambled out...until next time.

2 comments:

  1. my 2 were born 10 1/12 months apart, my oldest is just FINALLY day time potty trained, and working on night time. My son appears to have some learning issues so I think he will be late to the potty training game as well. I dream of the day I no longer have to change a diaper. Its scary to think of how many I've used in the past 35 months.

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  2. new follower from Mom Spark!

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    Keri

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