So we’re pretty much done with the breastfeeding around these parts. Thanks to a combination of a sudden drop in supply due to pregnancy and Baby Evan’s obsession with peanut butter, we’ve gone from exclusive nursing to only once or twice a day in less than 3 months. (I can’t even begin to explain how much peanut butter that kid eats on a daily basis. I think if there was a sudden peanut shortage he would starve to death rather than eat something not slathered in sticky, nutty goodness.)

For a month or so I’ve been following the “don’t offer, don’t refuse” method of weaning, but in the past week I stepped it up to “distract and offer an alternative” even if Baby Evan specifically makes the sign for “milk” (to be fair, he uses that sign for milk, food, water, juice, and sometimes ATTENTION!!!!!). Today he skipped his remaining nursing session – first thing in the morning – and only latched for a few seconds as I rocked him down for his nap.

As ambivalent as I wasabout the end of our breastfeeding relationship, I can now say THANK GOD he’s done. Pregnancy has done weird stuff to my hormones. Weird, hurty, uncomfortable stuff. Rather than the warm-fuzzy-happy feeling I used to get when the baby nursed, now it just feels like someone’s gnawing on my boob. I have to grit my teeth to keep myself from clawing my own skin off and mutter “getoffgetoffgetoffgetofffffff” under my breath. It is…unpleasant. I don’t feel any differently about breastfeeding in general – and I can’t wait to nurse the next bebeh – but for NOW, I am dunzo.

ANYWAYS, because I am no longer nursing day and night, I no longer have to be here. I mean, YES, I do have to be here, because I am his mother and he needs me and loves me (despite the fact that he STILL doesn’t say Mama) and there isn’t anyone else to watch him while E is at work. But there is no longer an invisible tether attached to my nipples. Which means I’m having a teeny tiny crisis.

In August, I’m going to/hosting a bridal shower (and bachelorette party)(I’m DD)(because I can’t drink and because I drive a minivan)(at least being lame has it’s advantages for SOMEONE) for one of my oldest friends in Virginia. I had been trying to talk E into driving down with me, since 6+ hours in the car on 95 by myself with the baby sounds like the OPPOSITE OF FUN. Add pregnant to that mix and all I can think of is how much that sounds like the start of a particularly tragic Dateline story. Film at 11.

Today E suggested “Why don’t you just leave the baby here with me?”

OMG WHAT?

The idea of not bringing Baby Evan is both horrifying and incredibly appealing. NO BEBEH FOR A WHOLE WEEKEND? Where am I going to get my daily dose of adorables? How would he survive without me?? NO BEBEH FOR A WHOLE WEEKEND? I could sleep in as long as I wanted. I wouldn’t spend every second worried he was driving my mother crazy or falling down the non-baby-proofed stairs or pooping behind the dining room table. I might actually enjoy myself. Is that even ALLOWED?

For the record, I have NO DOUBT that E would do a great job with the baby by himself. I have zero concerns at all about that half of this equation. I’m worried about how I’M going to handle it.

Advice, please. Have you gone away without your kid(s) yet? Were you crushed with guilt and bad-mother abandonment issues? Are you dead?

In the never ending battle between my growing green crunchiness and E’s epic laziness, the one thing we usually agree on in recycling. Tossing a milk jug into the recycle bin takes exactly the same amount of effort as throwing it in the trash and since Connecticut gives charges us a deposit on soda cans we’re militant about dragging those down to the Stop & Shop for our nickels. I feel pretty good about our efforts, even if the occasional peanut butter jar does end up in the trash (they’re really hard to clean).

Unfortunately, just like in most towns, there’s a limit on what sort of materials they accept. Which is why when TerraCycle emailed about their program I was so excited! TerraCycle is a small (but growing!) company that takes normally non-recyclable products and turns them into cool and useful stuff.

In 2001, Tom Szaky, a Princeton University Freshman, founded TerraCycle in hopes of building an eco-capitalist company built on waste. After winning countless business plan contests, Tom dropped out of Princeton to pursue his dream of founding the world’s most environmentally friendly company. Seven years later, TerraCycle’s eco-friendly products have received a myriad of social and environmental accolades and are sold at major retailers like The Home Depot, Target, Wal*Mart and Whole Foods Markets. TerraCycle’s business plan and products made from waste received a Zerofootprint Seal of Approval, won The Home Depot’s Environmental Stewardship Award twice and recently won the 2007 Social Venture Network Innovation Award. Please visit us at www.terracycle.net to learn more.

So what exactly do they do? Well, they collect trash – everything from drink pouches and plastic diaper packaging to corks and Scotch tape – and turn it into usable products. Their newest partnerships are with Huggies and Sprout but they have programs for tons of other non-recyclables too. TerraCycle collects each kind of trash through groups called “brigades” and even pays for the shipping and donates money to charity for each item received, totaling more than a million dollars so far!

Unfortunately, there isn’t a way to join a brigade already in progress so I’m hoping to convince a local school or childcare program to set up a collection with us. (On that note, if you’re a local school or a childcare program, please email me.)

Even if you can’t help collect the trash you can still help by buying the trash – after it’s turned into cool stuff of course. Shopping for the environment! Everybody wins!

Know anyone going (back) to school in a few months?

It's like Lisa Frank for the eco-friendly era! Rainbows included!!

And today, because they’re such nice people, TerraCycle is giving one of my readers some of their cute stuff! I’m told there’s a big Capri Sun tote bag (diaper bag sized), a Kool-Aid Jammers lunch box, and a Capri Sun pencil case waiting to be sent right to your house. That’s right, I’m doing a GIVEAWAY.

All you have to do to enter is leave a comment on this post telling me how you and your family try to recycle or Terracycle.

For one extra entry you can tweet (leave another comment telling me you did) the following: Tell @TerraCycle and @bebehblog why you TerraCycle or recycle and win a lunch box made from juice pouches! http://bit.ly/9QZUyA #TCbebeh

Entries are open until midnight on July 22nd. CLOSED. Winner will be selected using random.org and announced on July 23rd, 2010. Please make sure you use a real email address when commenting so I can let you know if you won! Sorry my Canadian friends, US residents only. Good luck!

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Disclosure: All opinions are my own. I received no compensation or goods in exchange for this post – YOU’RE the only one getting the free stuff. I just thought it was a great program and wanted to share!

Today you get a very, very special guest post from my sister, Carolyn, who is as we speak probably hauling buckets of water to her hut for a bath or saving children from illiteracy. She’s pretty cool.

p.s. If you want to ask her questions in the comments I’ll email them to her so she can answer and post her answers. Her internet access isn’t always reliable (SHOCKING) and I don’t think she has a fast enough connection to respond through the blog.

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Hii! This is Carolyn, Suzanne’s sister in the Peace Corps in Burkina Faso (West Africa) and regular reader of this blog. Suzanne asked me to write a guest post ages ago, and today I’m finally going to do just that. Honestly, the reason I was so reluctant to do this sooner (sorry Suz!) was because generally, I don’t think about babies. (This is probably a terrible thing to say on a baby blog, right?) Not really high on my radar. I am very far from being an expert; I feel like I don’t even know enough about them in the states to make legitimate comparisons between there and here. But here goes!

Babies here are extremely cute. Unfortunately, they are usually terrified of white people, so they tend to start screaming at my approach. And making faces to get them to smile only makes it worse, as I discovered VERY early on in my time here. Every once in a while, on a bush taxi in particular (where they have many, many hours to get used to me) I get a baby who makes the sort of shocked face that’s usually a precursor to crying, but on rare occasions leads to smiling and playing peek-a-boo over his mom’s shoulder and all the women making arranged marriages between me and him. That’s when I like babies best.

When women are pregnant here, it’s not usually talked about. Perhaps because of general silence on women’s issues, or maybe because of the risks of pregnancy here, I’m not sure. When a baby is born the customary gift to give the mother is soap. This is because in Burkina, there… aren’t diapers. Babies usually wear little western castoff outfits (very cute ones, actually) with shorts or pants or just fabric wrapped around them, so those layers get washed very frequently. Which uses a lot of soap. As soon as they’re walking, kids are essentially potty-trained because they can squat down wherever they want.

A pagne is essentially just a length of patterned fabric, and is what all women use to carry their babies on their backs. You constantly see women with babies asleep on their backs- working in the fields, at the market, riding motorbikes, everywhere. There’s a routine motion that you notice of women bending forward and hiking their babies up, then re-tying the pagnes. (ed: Carolyn sent me several and I tried to carry Baby Evan Africa-style ONCE. It did not go well. I never made it out of the family room.) In cold season you see bulges on women’s backs with a tiny knit hat on top, the type with the puff ball attached. I should also mention that it’s not only women who carry babies like this. No, I’m not saying that the men do too (they absolutely do NOT.) Often older siblings, or I should say, sisters, carry the babies too. It’s cute, but maybe kind of sad, that you see tiny girls carrying babies almost as big as they are.

I know Suzanne talks about breastfeeding a lot, which I think is great. I was perhaps a little uncomfortable with breastfeeding in practice before I came here, just because I was never exposed to it in the states. Burkina, however, is a different story. Women breastfeed. When babies get a little older there is a type of porridge that they eat, and I see women feeding babies the occasional bit of biscuit or rice or whatever else they happen to be eating, but the main source of nutrition comes from nursing. You see women breastfeeding everywhere: the secretary at my school does it in the office while she’s working, women do it while riding in donkeycarts, and I’ve had, on several occasions, a baby in a bush taxi half-lying in my lap while being nursed by the woman next to me. So I am now VERY accustomed to the idea, in theory and in practice. But here part of it is that breasts, in general, are much less shocking than they are in the states. I still see old women working in the fields or going to fetch water topless (honestly, that’s one of those things that make me remember I’m in a different country, no matter how accustomed I’ve become to other aspects of living here.)

Healthwise: If women go to the health center during pregnancy they can get prenatal care and can give birth with nurses, otherwise there are local midwives or just unassisted home births. Once they have the baby they can go to the health center for vaccinations or to have their babies weighed (and get supplemental formula if the baby is underweight.) Peace Corps has a health sector here and one of the main focuses is child and maternal health, but since I’m a teacher I don’t have much personal experience with it (and even if I did, I imagine I would just have lots of really sad stories to tell.) A lot of child care depends on the economic situation of the family. Poor, rural families often can’t afford the small fees incurred at the health center, so they don’t go.

So overall, babies here are very abundant, and their care is pretty simple. No formula, no diapers, not really any toys, no car seats, no strollers, no cribs (they just sleep on a mat with their mamas.) I actually think it’s quite a nice way to raise a baby, if only you could improve child safety and health care. But I very much like the ideas of breastfeeding, no diapers (or I guess cloth diapers?), wearing the baby wrapped on your back, and co-sleeping. If I ever have babies (yikes) I’m totally following the all-natural, Africa/hippie way of baby-raising (go Suzanne!)

So between the tax increase (thanks for NOTHING stupid town) and the new minivan (thanks for NOTHING fetus) (just kidding) our budget is feeling a little pinched.

By “budget” I mean “dollars left over in our bank account three days before payday since we seem to be totally incapable of planning or predicting exactly how much we’re spending despite spreadsheets, software and having made pretty much the same amount of money for the last 2 years.”

And by “a little pinched” I mean “I’m considering selling my gold for cash. If I could just remember where I buried that chest of pirate’s booty.”

Unfortunately our largest expenses are all fixed – mortgage, car payments, insurance – so we’re taking a really hard look at our optional expenses. Since we can’t really stop eating or bathing and I would probably DIE without internet (not an exaggeration at all – I NEVER exaggerate) the service on the chopping block is cable.

OMG CABLE.

Growing up, my parents refused to pay good money for TV when it was available for free right out of the airwaves. Of course “available” is a relative term that often meant Dad climbing on the roof to reposition the giant antenna so we could watch whatever channel was currently broadcasting the documentary about soap in English.

We spent a lot of time at other people’s houses who did have cable outside.

When I went to college I was THRILLED to learn the dorms included cable – INCLUDED!!!!! – although I’m pretty sure my dad called to ask if he could get a discount on room & board if he had the connection turned off. Don’t worry, roommates, I’m sure he would have climbed up on the roof of the dorm to install a giant antenna for us.

With that kind of traumatic TV past, I’m having a hard time giving up my cable. I am in fact, throwing a little bit of a hissy fit about it. I don’t CARE that we have Netflix. I don’t CARE that almost every show I watch is available online. I don’t CARE that I can buy a season pass to almost everything else on iTunes for a fraction of our monthly cable bill. I don’t CARE that we have a super-fast desktop designated media computer attached directly to our TV so I can watch all the online shows ON MY ACTUAL TV. I don’t….oh. Well, when you put it that way, I guess I’m being a little unreasonable. Fine.

I think instead of giving up all TV we’re going to go to the absolute bare bones $16 a month cable plan (which is less than we pay for Netflix). Then I can still watch the Today Show in the morning while Baby Evan and I get ready and the Price is Right at lunch. Because it’s not lunch time without The Price is Right and I am NOT screwing around with roof climbing and antennas. It means I won’t have a DVR. It means I have to choose between shows when there are two things on I want to watch. It means when I’m deciding if I should sit on the couch and watch Wipeout or take the baby to the park the first option might take enough effort that I make the wiser choice.

I think it will be good for us and our bank account.

What, you didn't see that one coming?

While my husband and father did demolition in the basement, rewired the family room, fixed our plumbing problems, added gutters to the house, and hauled literal tons of crap to the dump (both cat and human ACTUAL CRAP as well as a zillion pounds of junk, trash and a treadmill I swore I would use every single day if only I could have one please pretty pretty please please), my mother and I took the baby down to Mystic. I know, my life is so hard. Let me tell you though, with the way the baby’s been acting recently I would rather be knee deep in poop than get smacked in the face one more time.

Luckily, my mom was with me and she has the patience of a saint. Or of a grandma. Same thing, really.

Also luckily, Baby Evan likes ducks so a 99 cent bag of duck feed and a few friendly quack quacks earned me 30 minutes of scream-free time.

Yes, this is my child running shoeless through Ye Olde Mysticke Villageeeeeee

World's most patient ducks. I feel like I owe them all writen appologies.

He really liked calling them "duhs! duhs!" and he tried to say "qwah!!" a couple times. Of course maybe he was saying "Dog" and "What is wrong with you woman, don't you see how dirty this ground is?"

My child looks even more hobo-like next to his MorMor (Swedish for grandma) since she always looks so classy. For the record it was 90 degrees that day so I thought his outfit was appropriate.

It’s times like these I am really really sad we live so far away from our family.