Monday, April 14, 2008

Au Natural

In the Grand Rapids Press today this chick announced that she is eating only $30 worth of food for the next 30 days. Interesting....so she's mainly eating rice, beans, and bartering for food. The rest of the $250 she normally spends on food in a 30day period she will donate to the Blanford Nature Center and Mixed Beans. You can check out her blog here.
I do have a point to telling you this....in this article, she happens to mention that her boyfriend thinks she's "a little nuts". To this, I answer, do all guys think this?

Here's the connection to our household.
I have slowly introduced more natural and organic items into our lives. My thought: there are so many harmful things in this world that we Don'T know about. If I can limit some of the things we KNOW are bad, and some of the MayBe's, then I feel better, like I'm doing my job as a wife, mother, and steward of this earth that God has given us to play in.
My Wonderful Husband (really, he is the BesT) is a guy who thinks anything fat-free or diet is bad and tasteless. And that *organic* = dirty (even though he likes green peppers straight from the garden) and overpriced. He thinks that the BPA scare is just that, a scare. Seriously, this guy could live off of iceberg lettuce, Western dressing, and Beef (with a couple pizza rolls and bagel bites every now and then)...
And we love eachother? (the answer is yes... :) Because, really, we are both *very* similar. I just happen to question EVERYTHING, whereas he is much more comfortable tackling what he needs to without bringing on additional stress that comes with asking "why?". And this is how we balance eachother out....but, I digress. Here's the rest of the story.

Adalynn: Raising Adalynn is a constant balance between my "Why do we do it this way?" and Travis' answer "It's FINE". We've done our research and issues that we feel passionate about we tweak to work for us. We are doing a delayed vaccination schedule. Not so much because of we're scared of Autism, but mainly it seems like alot of nasties to be introducing to a baby at once. On the BPA issue - we're still using her old, BPA contaminated bottles. We don't heat her milk, so it's not AS big of a deal. When she graduates from bottles we'll make sure her sippies are BPA-free. We buy organic clothes for her when we find them reasonable. I make her baby food from organic veggies and fruits. And we love the heck out of her (the most important, of course).

But, I may have crossed the line as I just bought some cloth diapers to use when we're at home.

And this had Travis thinking that I'm now one of the CRAZY ones...
I agree with Travis - that most of the hype out there is overexaggerated and DEFINATELY overpriced. But, I can't help but think that God didn't create plastic and pesticides and all that jazz for a reason. And, God gave us responsibility over our earth that we need to model for our children. So in the meantime we'll keep doing the best we can. And, WHY NOT?
So to Travis, *thanks* for supporting my insanity.

(Adalynn's giving everyone the bump you've recently taught her. :)

We Love You!

5 comments:

Tiffany said...

I hear you soul sista! So here's a funny story. The link on my blog that leads to your blog was really a link to a specific post. So i've been thinking that you haven't updated your blog since Feb 4th! Good one. So I just spent the last hour catching up on your blog. Seriously this is one of my finer moments. Love the slideshow by the way! Sorry for the lack of comments since FEB 4. I'll do much better now! love ya!

Jean said...

I use cloth at home (to save money though, not so much for environmental issues since the water and electricity used to wash them probably diminishes any env. impact/savings.) But I totally agree that we should do as much as we can - I don't buy organic (again to save money) but I do have a garden and so do the grandparents so during the summer months we eat a lot of organic food. I try not to get into the news hype but do what I feel is reasonable as a busy parent. (Burch doesn't do cloth diapers so I basically do all the changing when we're at home.)

Anonymous said...

so, I didn't read the whole essay, but I got to the first paragraph, and I came to a conclusion....

If this chick thinks living on 30$ food for a month is crazy, then she is not dutch. Or possibly I am crazy.

Kate said...

geez...the things that we have to think about as mommys...glad I am not the only one who dwells on such issues.

Anonymous said...

I know the girl in the article. I haven't talked to her since a few days before she started though. I will have to give you an update when I talk to her!