Itsabelly: Baby Concierge: Baby Planners: Baby Planning / Preparation: New Parent Education

DON’T Throw Out the Trash!

melissa — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 09:00:25 GMT

By Nicole Mabry, Itsabelly Atlanta Baby Planner

The old adage, "One man's trash is another man's treasure" is never more true than after you have a baby. One of my favorite green parenting tips for new parents is to NOT throw out the trash....at least not until you look at emptied containers to see which ones your baby might like to play with!

First, be sure to make sure that the container is safe to play with. There should be no small pieces, sharp edges or broken parts. Some of the best baby toys are canisters and plastic jars. Second, clean the container and make sure there all of the food is cleared away. Remove any removable labels or stickers. I usually give mine a good spin through the dishwasher. After being inspected and cleaned the containers are ready to give to the baby!

Now that he's crawling, my son loves to watch canisters roll across the floor and chase after them. I watched his eyes light up as he looked through the clear, clean jar that once held peanut butter. When he's a little older, we'll turn egg crates into painting palates and paper towel tubes into horns. I feel good about giving my containers a second useful life and not having those items sitting in a landfill.

As with all toys you give your baby, be sure to periodically inspect your reused/recycled toys for wear and tear. When they are worn or damaged, you can recycle them.

B Braithwaite – Where Paris Meets Peachtree

melissa — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 09:00:24 GMT

By Nicole Mabry, Itsabelly Atlanta Baby Planners

Stepping inside the door after being greeted by a giant topiary bunny and bear, I immediately knew that I was being transported to another land. B Braithwaite, located in the Westside Provisions District is a chic baby boutique inspired by a Parisian boutique - yet amazingly warm with Southern charm. You'll find that the ladies who work there love babies and babies love them in return!

There's more to love than just great company to enjoy, B Braithwaite is brimming full of luxury products for baby and nursery. There is also a great selection of green products that prove that "green" doesn't have to be blah. You'll find a great selection of Itsabelly approved products found in Itsabelly's Guide to Going Green With Baby including Uppababy and Orbit strollers, furniture by Stokke and bottle feeding supplies by Adiri. You can dress your little one in organic cotton clothing by Seedling Kids and provide organic and natural toys by MiYim and Dandelion. There is also a fabulous selection of organic cotton crib bedding and bath towels as well as organic crib mattresses.

I had a chat with store owner, Chaffee and she told me that her hands down favorite stroller was the earthfriendly Uppababy G-Luxe. Itsabelly Baby Planners love Uppababy because of their commitment to the environment; they recycle materials in old strollers and will even help parents to donate or recycle their used strollers - even those that aren't Uppababy's!

Chaffee let me take the G-Luxe on a little test drive around the store. I found it to be completely "luxe" and loved the lightweight frame and awesome functionality. When I decided to buy one (I'm a bit of a shopaholic!), the ladies at B. Braithwaite assembled it for me in record time, gave me a "mini class" on all of it's features and carried it out to my car. Try getting that level of service at one of the "big box retailers"; I can personally remember being 7 months pregnant and having to carry my own unassembled stroller - box and all out to my car! I was truly in need of a baby planner!

If you're interested in planning a nursery that cradles your baby in the lap of luxury with many green options and amenities, make sure to visit B Braithwaite.

Sprout is Springing Up in Atlanta!

melissa — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 09:00:55 GMT

By Nicole Mabry , Itsabelly Atlanta Baby Planners

Located in the Westside Provisions District on Howell Mill Road, is one of Itsabelly Atlanta’s favorite green children’s boutiques – Sprout – A Children’s Store.

The shop carries some of Itsabelly Baby Planner’s favorite brands, including some mentioned in Itsabelly’s Guide to Going Green with Baby. In the store, you will find an assortment of toys by blabla, Haba Toys and Viking. On my visit, there, I simply couldn’t resist buying a Viking Truck for my little boy. Though made of plastic, Viking’s parent company, International Playthings continually scrutinizes its products their materials for lead and other harmful chemicals. Viking toys are billed as “strong, sanitary and simple” – if they happen to get dirty (a likelihood with little boys!) then parents can just toss them in the top rack of the dishwasher.

In addition to fun toys, Sprout also carries functional, eco-friendly and beautiful furniture. Some examples include the HiLo chair by AGE Designs, nursery furniture by Oeuf and textiles by Zid Zid Kids.

Once baby is entertained and the nursery is outfitted, the last to be outfitted is your little one. Two of this baby planner’s favorites – shoes by See Kai Run and great casual clothing by Tea Collection are available at Sprout.

Just a short stroll across the bridge and you’ll find yourself at Sprout’s sister store, Seed Factory – a children’s store for older children. Seed Factory is a store and more! Seed Factory has a great play and learning area and holds storytimes and creative classes each week for children from 2 to 12 years of age.

Protect Our Babies from Harmful Chemicals - Take Action and Get Involved!

melissa — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 09:00:38 GMT

By Jennifer Lo Prete, Co-author of Itsabelly's Guide to Going Green with Baby

Have some time for a bit of online activism? May we make a few suggestions? We promise getting involved will be painless (well, expect the shock you may experience when you learn about toxic ingredients that are present in our everyday products!).

1.    Every parent, regardless the age of their children should frequent Environmental Working Group’s “For Parents” website. You will find loads of information on eliminating toxic chemicals that lurk around all of us. We love their downloadable, easy-to-use product buying guides that save time reading labels in the middle of the grocery store aisle.
2.    Sign the Kid-Safe Chemicals Act Declaration and pass along this informative video.
3.    Watch this informative video from EWG about their investigation of umbilical cord blood samples from 10 randomly-selected babies born in U.S. hospitals on the same day.
4.    Don’t forget to forward the information to your friends and family by clicking here!

Itsabelly’s Favorite Babywearing Resources

melissa — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 08:00:51 GMT

By Jennifer Lo Prete, Co-author of Itsabelly's Guide to Going Green with Baby

Readers have been telling us that they love our new book, Itsabelly’s Guide to Going Green with Baby, because it is non-judgmental about being green and has a ton of valuable resources for going green in all aspects of parenthood. We would like to give you a sneak peek of our resource list for babywearing. If you have any favorites that are not on this list, please comment below and maybe your selection will make it into Version 2.0!

•    Attached to Baby: A comprehensive babywearing store with great customer service
•    KellyMom Sling Sewing: A listing of many sling sewing patterns and websites
•    Mothering Magazine BabyWearing Issue Reprint: Comprehensive babywearing articles
•    Peppermint: A babywearing store with a great carrier comparison chart
•    Safe BabyWearing Blog: www.babyslingsafety.blogspot.com
•    Sling Rings: The only source for safe sling rings
•    SoBeBabies: A selective babywearing boutique that also sells unique diaper bags, strollers, European children’s furniture and clothing, www.sobebabies.com.
•    The BabyWearer: Everything you need to know about babywearing, product reviews and active online forum
•    Wear Your Baby: An amazing wealth of information on baby wearing including videos and printable illustrations to learn carrying positions and a helpful comparison chart of carriers and position advantages, www.wearyourbaby.com or www.mamatoto.org.

PS: E. Naomi Sandoval of SobeBabies contributed two great articles in our book. “Babywearing is Green” and “Safe Babywearing.” The Babywearer also made invaluable contributions to the Green Dictionary chapter in our book.

Itsabelly Partners with Kibbn (the best shopping in town)

melissa — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 19:55:38 GMT

By Windy Gossett, Itsabelly Seattle

Itsabelly is excited to partner with Kibbn. Kibbn is a little shop based in the Seattle, WA area that scours the globe for the awesome-est gear for your kids and family. Windy, Itsabelly's Seattle Baby Planner is now writing regularly for Kibbn's blog and sharing our baby product favorites list, see it here. Check out her first post on how a Baby Planner's tips on going green with baby:

A Baby Planner's Tips on Going Green with Baby

Stay tuned for more Kibbn & Itsabelly news!

Complimentary Class, Giveaway and More at Pottery Barn Kids this Saturday

melissa — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 14:14:57 GMT

Itsabelly Baby Planners is excited to present our expert tips on Preparing for Baby at Pottery Barn Kids, 1050 Bellevue Square in Bellevue, WA, on Saturday at 9:00 am. We'll share our Top Mommy Must-Haves and also explain what a Baby Planner is and how we can help expectant parents navigate the overwhelming world of baby.

Attend and receive a special offer from Pottery Barn Kids as well as a chance to win a gift basket full of delightful nursery must-haves, a copy of Itsabelly's "Guide to Going Green with Baby" and a one-hour baby proofing consultation.

So, what are you waiting for? Sign up by calling (425) 451-2966 to register for this FREE class at Bell Square on Saturday, June 27th at 9:00 am. You must be present to win the fabulous give-away!

Self-Care for Parents: Taking Care of your Needs too

melissa — Sat, 23 May 2009 17:47:27 GMT

By Amanda Stanford, Itsabelly Chicago Baby Planner

Parenting a newborn is incredibly hard work. It will challenge you in ways you’ve never been challenged before. Taking care of a baby can be so all-encompassing that you have very little time to take care of yourself. Even simple tasks like eating and showering can get neglected; simple errands become infinitely more complicated, and getting out on a date with your partner may seem an insurmountable challenge. And, on top of it all, you’re usually sleep-deprived. And lack of sleep makes everything harder: your problem-solving ability plummets, your memory fails you, your emotions see-saw all over the place, and patience is a rare commodity.

What can you do:

·          Sleep whenever the baby sleeps. If you have friends or family come to visit, ask them to hold the baby while you take a nap.

·          Make sure you have nutritious food in the house that doesn’t need to be cooked, and that you can hold in one hand while you hold the baby in the other. If friends or co-workers offer to help after the baby’s born, ask them to bring you foods that you enjoy eating.

·          Bring a bouncer seat or a carseat into the bathroom with you so you can still get a shower, with the baby nearby (often the sound of the water will lull a baby to sleep.)

·          Be gentle with yourself: if the house isn’t as clean as you normally keep it, try not to stress about it; if you’re not making progress on any of the projects you had planned for “quiet times” at home, stay relaxed.

·          Try to let go of “rules”: shoulds, always, and nevers. For example, “she can’t possibly be hungry again, I just nursed her” or “I’ll never get any time to myself again” or “I should be getting more done, or I’ll always feel out of control.” Stay in the moment: what can you do to make things better right now?

·          Find peer support: There’s nothing quite like being around other people who are experiencing some of the same challenges you’re facing. Seek out other new parents. The resource list includes support groups, postnatal exercise groups, and parent education groups; there are also things like Gymboree, Kindermusik, baby swim classes, etc. Hanging out at playgrounds and chatting with other parents also helps. Being around other parents helps lighten the sense of isolation and overwhelming change for the parents. It also allows you to see lots of different babies and lots of different parenting styles, and come up with new ideas that may work for you and for your family.

·          Call on friends or family before it gets bad. A friend of mine once told me: “after I had children, I could not imagine how anyone would ever want to abuse or hurt their child. I wanted to protect my child, I wanted to protect everyone’s children from harm. And yet… there were other moments when I totally understood why people abuse their children. When I was sleep-deprived, and hadn’t had a break to eat or to shower all day, and I felt like I had no resources left, and my baby was screaming and screaming and I had no idea what to do, I would sit and rock back and forth crying, not able to come up with any solutions. Somehow hitting the baby almost seemed like a reasonable action… nothing else I had tried had worked, in those moments of desperation, it almost seemed worth seeing if maybe hitting would.” She didn’t hit her child. She called friends and asked for help. When she first called, she wasn’t able to tell her friends how she was feeling. All she did was invite them over to visit her and the baby, and just having them around helped. Later on, she was able to talk more about her feelings.

·          Try it. If there’s something that you enjoyed doing before baby was born, and you don’t know if you can do it with baby, just give it a try to see what happens. The worst that happens is it fails… and you try again some other time. For example, if you love movies, try going in the middle of the day when it’s cheap and there’s not many people to disturb. If you’re lucky, baby will sleep right through. If you’re not quite so lucky, you may just have to leave the theater once or twice. And if it’s just disastrous, accept that it didn’t work out that day, and you can always try again some other time.

·          Find quality time with your partner. New babies put a lot of strain on marriages and relationships. When the baby has so many immediate needs, it’s often easy to put off meeting your own needs, and meeting the needs of your partner. It’s important not to let this develop into a long-term pattern. Try to find quality time with your partner each week, whether that’s a “date” or just a few minutes of snuggling and conversation at some point in each day.

Green Living In Toronto

rishma — Mon, 18 May 2009 19:03:31 GMT

By Rishma Lalani, Itsabelly Toronto Baby Planners

We all know the age old line from a little green frog “its not easy being green” but if you were in Toronto April 23-26^th at your disposal was hundreds of eco-friendly products and service providers willing to help you be as green as you want at the 3^rd annual Green Living Show.

As a continuously aspiring to be more eco-friendly mom and baby planner, the show had a plethora of information that I would love to share with all of you. In appreciation for your time to read this – I just want to give you a run down of some of my favorite stops. I was happy to run into our friends at Booda Bellie and Organic Lifestyle (do check out their new location at Liloo). Next stop was the Otterbottle – making drinking out of BPA free bottles more stylish. Then off to Planet Forward – launching at the show was a great line of modern, fashionable bottles, bags, clothing and a great MIY Green Home Kit. Can’t make it out to shop or don’t have an eco-friendly store near you? GreenCricket is here to solve your problems with a great on-line selection of green products for the entire family, pets and home. Lastly it was such a relief to know that there are now services available to help us green our homes by providing energy assessments and air quality assessments (which qualify for the government grants) helping make our homes safer for our family.

Walking down the aisles I was honestly proud to be “Torontonian”…a city that is embracing and educating us on how to live healthier and foster a more sustainable environment for our future generations. So I encourage you to think about your part in making our city an even better place to live and know that EVERY little step counts (like remembering to recycle those toilet paper rolls we so often toss in the bathroom garbage)!

Reduce, Reuse, Freecycle for Baby & the Planet!

melissa — Wed, 13 May 2009 17:27:26 GMT

By Nicole Mabry, Itsabelly Atlanta Baby Planners

A great green parenting tip is to make sure you join a Freecycle group in your area. While Freecycle groups aren't just for parents, they're a great way for any household to go green. Freecyclers post messages about items that they have in their homes that they no longer want and want to give away for free rather than disposing of them. Instead of ending up in a landfill, the items are recycled into someone else's home. Once you join a Freecycle group, you can post your unwanted items and view the things that others in your group have to give away.

As our babies are only babies for a short time, there is never a shortage of baby items on Freecycle. Most of the items are gently used and some have never been used at all. In cases where the items are not in pristine condition, the poster usually will usually state the condition of items up front.

Think of all of the things around your house that could end up on Freecycle instead of in a landfill! You don't just have to think of the big things like the bouncy seat your sister in-law swore your baby would love, but just causes him to scream; things that would normally be thrown into the trash, like baby food jars, a hundred plastic hangers from baby pants and the samples of infant formula you received from the hospital can be Freecycled. Even broken items can be Freecycled; just be sure to state your item's condition in your post so that the recipient knows that they may be getting a fixer-upper.

There are over 100 Freecycle groups in Georgia - many for different Metro-Atlanta cities, counties and neighborhoods.