Mommy Eats Colors

There is an age old question: "does life imitate art or does art imitate life?" There are scholars who debate in both directions, but at any rate, children imitate their parents.

Aoife is quickly coming up on five months and naturally the question arises, "are you introducing solids soon?" (FYI: The answer is no, Joshua and I intend to feed Aoife only breastmilk for the for her entire first year. There is too much evidence that introducing solids too soon can be harmful for an infant, not to mention it is infinitely more easy to breastfeed than it is to prepare meals for a baby!). The second popular question we receive makes me laugh, "is she showing interest in food?" My answer is almost always, "of course!"

I love looking at the world through Aoife's eyes and this one is the one that tops the charts. It must be so odd for her to watch me eat. There are colorful objects on my plate: orange carrots, green broccoli, red peppers, brown rice, and pink salmon that I scoop up and put in my mouth and then, it doesn't come back! How bizarre. Aoife is at that stage where absolutely everything ends up in her mouth. She must look at me like I just inhaled one of my toys. She probably wonders how it is that I can consume my colorful toys but she cannot. She watches the process very carefully and I can tell that her little mind is trying so hard to compute where those 'toys' are ultimately ending up and if I can play with them again tomorrow.

I can understand parents thinking their children are showing interest in "food", however, if they have never had an introduction of their own to adult foods, then it will not occur to them that they are missing out on an opportunity. I also know that the flavors of the food I am consuming is passed to my daughter through my breastmilk, so she begins to discern different tastes and preferences of her own. The wonderful part of this process is that I am already giving Aoife a head-start on healthy eating. When I consume healthfully, she develops a desire for those wholesome foods as well and when we do begin solids those foods will be her preference. Unfortunately, the converse is also true, so I better stop eating sweets after church on Sundays or she will become permanently addicted to all things chocolate (of course, as a female, I think she may already be doomed).

As far as the question goes, life does imitate art and for Aoife, I want to make sure what she emulates from me are healthy eating patterns since there will come a day when that she will be eating mommy's "toys" too.

Organic Shampoo Review

I regularly rotate out which shampoo I use. After one bottle is empty, I switch so that my hair does not become accustom to a particular formula. As Joshua and I have recently switched to all organic, that has had an effect on which body care solutions we use as well. Here are a couple of my favorite shampoos.

• Nature's Gate: Herbal Daily Shampoo - - this one has become my favorite. It handles my weekly swimming routine well without letting my hair feel chalky in the shower and it removes the grease that Joshua is familiar with while working on the ship. This herbal blend draws on properties from chamomile, lavender and sage which offers a pleasant clean aroma and the lavender also doubles in aromatherapy for stress relief, which is a nice reprieve in the morning before work.
• Nature's Gate Organics: Asian Pear and Red Tea Shampoo - - this one is my favorite if I'm not swimming. I happen to get a little more tangle out of the shower with this one, but the smell is fabulous. This shampoo is more appropriately formulated for color-treated hair, which though I haven't had my hair colored in over a year, preserves the shine well and offers an extra brightness to my blond highlights.
• Alba Botanica: Hawaiian - - this is the only type available at my grocery store by this company, though they do have other varieties. This particular blend is thicker than the other botanical organic blends I have used previously. It lathers particularly well and the smell instantly transports to the bottom of a waterfall in the tropics. Macadamia oil, pineapple, kelp, awapuhi, and kukui nut attribute their natural properties to this mix and I am growing increasingly fond of this blend while the weather is changing to be drier. With the cooler weather coming, my finer hair tend to get really prone to splint ends, but I do not foresee this being a problem with this blend. [Blogger's Note: Alba Botanica also offers an organic Kukui Nut Body Creme that is rich, silky and a great nut-smelling alternative to a former favorite of mine The Body Shop's Brazil Nut Body Butter, which is too mainstream and completely non-organic, though the nuts themselves are community traded.

Looking for Green

It is my Friday lunch hour and as it is so dreary and rainy outside and I already tried braving the weather for my morning one miler, I decided to set up shop inside today and surf the web for something green. Here's where I spent my time:

• ideal bite: a sassier shade of green offering tips and tricks to live a more "green" lifestyle
• Honeybee Gardens: all body natural products for men and women
• Terrapass: balancing CO2 emissions
• Green Festival: showcasing and teaching on eco-friendly living
• VegNews Magazine: for vegetarian lifestyles
• Planeterra: an adventure company for off the beaten path
• Green-e: a renewable energy certification company
• Organic Spa Magazine (online): connecting spa with sustainability
• Natural Home Magazine: making green homes chic

Surf's up!

Swimming in Bleach

In my pursuit of health, I'm finding a terrible inconsistency in what I say and what I do.

With some recent joint pain and weight gain, I have turned over to swimming as a great way to do my cardio workouts and still relieve the muscle soreness associated with such heavy pounding on the joints. However, I have to swim through chlorine. It is completely inadvertent, but I am finding with so many laps (at least 1500 meters), I am taking in quite a bit of water through my mouth, nose and on my skin. I swam last night and I still smell like that horrid chemical. I am noting my hair becoming more brittle, my skin drying out more rapidly, my throat hurting substantially in the morning and I am dry as a camel throughout the day. I am loving the exercise, but I need to pull away from the pool, else I fall victim to perhaps some serious damage.

For my throat, after my swims I am immediately drinking Throat Coat tea as well as half a liter of water to help flush the harmful fluids from my body. For my hair, I have started placing a thick organic conditioner on my hair prior to placing on my swim cap to help save my hair from the damage of the pool and then only rinsing my hair once I am back in the locker room after my laps. For my skin, I am also attempting to rinse off more thoroughly after I swim, but somehow I can not shake the smell. It's rather unprofessional to be sitting in the office at my desk and smell like a can of bleach and tooting the "all-natural" horn.

Any suggestions to help my skin while I pursue this short-term interest?