CherylKatz.org

Some readers may laugh when I write this, but here goes:  I am simply not the girliest girl there is.  Not by a long shot.  Sure, I love me some cute dresses and shoes, but on a normal day you find me in jeans and a t-shirt, flip flops and probably just a smear of lip balm.

Imagine my surprise when I find my 21-month old daughter raiding my shoe rack.  She pulls out a pair of high heeled pumps and puts them on.  She picks up the purse her Grandma brought her (small bag for me = standard size shoulder bag for Sami) and slings it over her shoulder.  Then she walks - no, struts - down the hall to examine her ensemble in the full length bathroom mirror.

Ladies and gentlemen, I do not primp excessively in front of my child.  This is her inherent personality expressing itself.  As a mom, it is slightly terrifying.

So here is another slightly terrifying idea (and yet, so funny that I am sharing the link.)  When is too young to start your baby girl in heels?  Some would argue between birth and six months of age.  I can’t begin to tell you why this is terrifying.

Okay, I can begin to tell you.  First: Sami showed a propensity for admiring shoes well before 6 months.  Now she’s not even 2 and is showing an intense interest in heels.  So by providing my 0-6 month old infant with high heels, I’m showing her that high heels are normal and accepted shoes for little girls.  And I know that playing dress up is one thing.  That is going to happen.  But high heeled shoes of her own before she could even walk?  That might have happened over my dead body.

My saving grace at the moment is that Sami knows that heels are shoes for Momma. So they’re part of her imitation ritual.  Imitation and dress up are important activities and I think they’re OK.  She also seems to understand that when Sami needs shoes, HER shoes are the ones she should grab.  And she does.  I am not sure how I’ll handle it the first time Sami throws a fit because she really wants to wear my shoes.

I just hope that I have a long, long time to prepare for it.  Like maybe when she’s a teenager.

Nope, it’s not that some people are just insensitive, self-centered  or mean.  If you have difficulty relating to other people’s problems, you might have empathy deficit disorder.

Sure, we all could strive to be more attentive to others’ feelings.  Some more than others.  I just can’t get my brain around the idea of slapping on a “disorder” title for what I otherwise would call “personality.”

On NPR today I heard a story on the tomato-salmonella problem, which seems to be overblown, considering regions at risk have been identified and many regions have already been cleared by the FDA.

What caught my attention was when an FDA food safety wonk was talking about how hard it is to track the problem.  A market may have up to 4 distributors bringing in tomatoes, who each may get tomatoes from 4 suppliers, who probably get tomatoes from 4 or more farms themselves… the supply chain is convoluted and WIDE.  How in the world can such a problem ever be solved?

I know!  Buy local produce!  I know it’s not a perfect solution, but encouraging more people to know the farmers who grow the tomatoes they eat would be a start.  I don’t worry about salmonella because I can call up the farm my share comes from and find out if they’ve been tested and what the results were.  I find that reassuring.

On the “never ending diaper ado,” I just had to include this link because the columnist’s response sums up my views on diapers.  I’ve always thought that if you compare the resources required to launder diapers (soap, water consumption, gas for drying, etc) to the impact of disposable diapers (manufacture, landfill disposal, etc) you end up with a wash.  The study mentioned invested exhaustive research to back up previous research on the same topic.

Yup, the brits determined that cloth at home, cloth with diaper service, and disposable diapers are roughly equal in environmental impact.  So, bully for anyone who is seeking out environmentally friendly laundry detergent, seeking out sustainable cotton for nappies, buying local to reduce the energy consumption of transport, drying in the sun, using disposables that are made from recycled materials or free of petroleum, or using compostable diapers.  Making choices like those actually DO make one individual’s choice stand above the otherwise equal choices.

Ben and I were watching Daily Show just now and lamenting the “This Week in God” segment.  Lo and behold, Colbert did “Obama’s Church Search” which was not a surrogate, but certainly a salute to the old digs.  Sigh.  I miss “This Week in God.”  The Daily Show hasn’t been quite the same since Colbert left.

And that’s about all I can squeeze up at the moment.

Well, I’m officially impressed with gDiapers. I got my starter kit yesterday, which came with two pairs of g pants (cotton covers), four snap-in liners, and a packet of inserts.

Since 5 PM yesterday when I put the first one on her, we’ve had a wide variety of the types of diapers Sami typically experiences. I won’t go into too much detail, to spare the folks who don’t wipe someone else’s butt many times a day. But - no leaks! Period. When we were in cloth diapers, I could count on at least a leak, probably two in a 24-hour period, and disposables haven’t been all that much better. I think the liner + cover design really works for gDiapers.

I’m excited about how little has gone in my trash can. I’m more excited about how much has been able to go in my compost bin!

Obviously, this is my 24-hour review, and we’ll see how I feel in a week. I’m optimistic.

Lately I discovered gDiapers, and they seem like such a good idea that I wish I had known about them when Sami was tiny. They seem frankly perfect for San Diego - diapers that can be composted (if not dirty), flushed (if sewer line is not tree infested) or tossed in the trash! Unlike a regular diaper, they break down in under a hundred days, hence the compostability.

If only I’d known about these before going wholesale down the cloth route, I would have chosen gDiapers hands down. The water bills wouldn’t have balooned out of control. Cloth diapers are downright wasteful from a water standpoint! We wouldn’t have generated the trash we did for a while after the water bills became cloth-laundry-prohibitive. And I would have had probably four times the yummy compost to fertilize my garden when I planted last month.

I’m considering switching for the tail end of Sami’s diaper-wearing career. I’ll pretty immediately cut out the diaper trash, which will make me feel a lot better about what’s happening downstream from me. I doubt it will have much impact on Sami at all. And man, if we ever have another kid, I know how I plan to diaper.

So here’s something I’m miffed about but deep down actually is a good thing:  I ordered Sami a new pair of shoes.  They were bigger than the pairs that don’t fit her and smaller than the pair she’s wearing now, which I thought were Way Too Big.

The new shoes arrive, and they are cute and pink and trainery and arrived in a teeny tiny child-size shoe box.  And they don’t fit her one bit.  I was able to wiggle her foot in there with no socks, but only just.  So, back to Piperlime they go, for a size exchange, and back to school Sami goes in the gold maryjane sneakers she’s been wearing.

So I’m miffed because now it’s more time before she can wear her pink sneaker cuteness, but deep down it’s a good thing because she is growing like a string bean and her feet are keeping up!

In other news… Sami has so much fun at school that she doesn’t want to come home.  I couldn’t even get her to come near me for a hug when I arrived to pick her up; she was waaaaaay too busy climbing up and sliding down the big slide in the big-kid playground.  I let her do this 8 times before I finally snatched her up at the bottom of the slide and made away with her.  She threw five full-on tantrums between her classroom and our car.

I think she likes her new school!

My stroller wheels are being replaced, after which time I can start devising a stroller-related fitness plan.

Why do I need to replace my stroller wheels? Well, not all of them. One rear 16″ inflatable wheel, and the front 12″ inflatble wheel.

On Saturday, my mother in law and I set out to take Sami for a walk in her stroller. As we passed the neighborhood gas station, it occurred to me to add a little air to my stroller tires. I inflated the rear tire to a tender yet satisfactory pressure, and moved on to the front tire.

Said front tire exploded about two seconds into inflation. Not only were the inner tube and rubber tire blown out, but the galvanized black plastic wheel frame itself was cracked, along with my index finger severely bruised and the skin next to and under my middle finger nail punctured. (I have a picture of that nail before draining; I will assume that no one wants to see it. Gnarly.

I realized later that 35 psi in a tire about a quarter of the size of my bike tire and 35 psi in a car tire are the same, yet different. Don’t get me wrong. I didn’t try to pump each tire for very long with the industrial pump. It was psst, psst, psst, done.

Well. An hour after we got home, parked the stroller behind an overstuffed chair, washed up my hand and were about to sit down to dinner, the rear tire exploded too. Also cracking the wheel hub as well as blowing out the inner tube.

I know that I certainly, unintentionally exceeded the pressure limitations of the tires. It just never occurred to me how little inflation effort is required to achieve 35 psi in a tire that small. I suspect it’s a mistake that others must make from time to time as well.

It’s not shocking that overinflating the tube resulted in the tube bursting. What I find shocking is that a) the force was sufficient to break the hard plastic wheel itself and b) that there isn’t some kind of pressure-safety release valve to ensure that parents and children are not injured making the same mistake I made.

My hand was minorly and annoyingly injured, but otherwise, no one sustained any injuries. No big deal in the end. And the stroller manufacturer, after re-iterating that the pressure limitations are mentioned in the manual and on the tire, is shipping me replacement wheels. So all will be well that ends well.

The stroller is the BOB Revolution, for those who are interested, and let the record show that I am satisfied with the company’s response, and otherwise quite happy with my stroller. I don’t recommend against the stroller, as long as tire inflation guidelines are followed.