Sense to Save: Other Blog

What is up with Sesame Street these days?

Lately, I’ve let Johnny watch Sesame Street. I figured it was a fun, educational show — just like I remembered when I was a kid.

Except, now it’s not.

Sure, it might be a little educational and maybe a little fun, but it’s definitely not the same show I remember.

There are lots of old favorites missing! I don’t know what has happened to Cookie Monster, Big Bird (he’s on sometimes…not often enough), Oscar the Grouch, Grover, the Two-Headed Monster, Mr. Snuffleupagus, the Count, and lots more. They might be on sometimes, I just haven’t seen ‘em.

I did see Telly today. And Elmo. WAY too much Elmo. He has a segment at the end of every show called “Elmo’s World.” He is not my favorite.

There’s some orange monster named Murry, and he’s sort of the show’s emcee now — popping in and out between segments.

There’s an incredibly annoying segment called Abby’s Flying Fairy School. Abby Kadabee is a newish character and apparently she’s a fairy. I’m not so big on the fairies and magic and all that. Not a fan of the segment.

And our friends Bert and Ernie? They’re now making appearances in a claymation segment. Ugh.

What happened to all our old, loveable pals? And what happened to all those random segments where you learned about the letters and numbers of the day? Those are still there sorta, but not nearly as many as there used to be. Those three new segments take up a lot of time.

And what happened to the field trip-type segments where children learned about how things like crayons were made? (Or was that from Reading Rainbow or Mr Rogers?).

It’s really a shame. The old shows were so much fun — AND educational!

Right now, PBS has a bunch of lousy (in my opinion) kids’ shows.

Maybe I’m just an old fart who thinks my generation had it great, in terms of TV? And let’s not even talk about what Nickelodeon has become (though we don’t have that channel right now).

Since PBS is publicly funded, I do plan on telling them my views. Maybe if enough of us do, they will make some changes.

In the meantime, I’m going to scope out some videos. Sesame Street has some “old school” compilations that aired well before I was born. Reading Rainbow, Mr Rogers and others have DVDs, too.

I know that Johnny is technically too young to be watching TV. I guess the suggested age is over 2. The kiddo doesn’t watch that much, I promise.

Organic foods and me

For the longest time, I never gave much thought to organic foods. I’d see them in the supermarket, look at their price, and grab a conventional item instead. “Why pay more?” I thought.

But several things have come onto my radar as of late that have shown me the true cost of conventional foods. And it ain’t pretty.

Perhaps it all started when Johnny was old enough for solid foods. I knew that we had to be careful with what we gave his little body. Sugars and fake foods and produce with crazy pesticides would have a much stronger impact on a growing baby, so I set out to make sure what he ate was actually good for him. We’ve had some slip-ups, for sure.

A few weeks ago, we viewed “Food Inc.” (available streaming on Netflix, if you have it!). Truly eye opening, and mostly geared toward meats and items fed to livestock and poultry, and corporate farming practices.

I was horrified at what I saw — horrible, unsanitary living conditions for the animals, gross mistreatment of the workers, and disgusting ways of harvesting/processing meats.

I learned that in one conventional hamburger, I could be eating the meat from 1,000 different cows. No wonder when there’s a beef recall, it’s so wide-spread. You could have one sick cow and it can contaminate so much!

The widespread use of antibiotics and growth hormones are not good things for these animals or us.

Some chicken feed is laced with antibiotics and arsenic. Hi, that is a poison. Also, during processing, chicken is routinely doused with bleach. How is that a good idea?

So after viewing Food Inc., we switched to only antibiotic-free/hormone-free beef and chicken. I found a grocery here that sells regional Amish chicken for a reasonable price, and good ground beef for $2.19/lb if you buy 5 lbs. So really, there’s no good reason for me to continue buying conventional meats.

I wanted to learn more about eating whole foods (that is, foods that are just plain food — no genetically modified produce, no chemically engineered “food” products) and organic foods. I picked up some books at the library and did some blog searching.

A friend suggested I view “The Future of Food” which is available for free on Hulu. This film had some similar info as presented in Food Inc., but it was more geared toward produce/grains for human consumption.

Also, last week I attended a class about whole foods (and next week is part 2). I learned that there is no testing or regulations on how food chemicals interact. So how can I know that if I take Food Additive 1 and combine it with Food Additive 2 and know that these two won’t have a dangerous reaction? I can’t know this! The data isn’t there.

I don’t want to be a science experiment.

So we’re cutting out artificially created “foods.” It isn’t going to be an instant change, but I know it will be a worthwhile one.

And what’s so great about organic produce, vs. conventional?

Well, a lot. Organic farmers have to follow strict guidelines to be certified organic. I’m choosing it whenever possible because I believe it will be more nutritious (and have more minerals — the mineral content of food depends on the soil it grew in). There’s no genetically modified foods. There’s no sewage sludge fertilizer or ionizing radiation (how scary is THAT stuff?!).

I don’t want to eat things like that. And I don’t want to support companies that expose their workers to that kinda junk.

If we put junk into our bodies, then it makes sense that we’ll get a junky output.

I’m not going to say no to convenience food (just yet, anyway). But, I am going to be picky about it’s ingredients. No fake food. Nothing engineered or modified in any way. Just plain regular FOOD. And if its organic, so much the better.

For added nutrition and cost savings, I’m going to make some more things from scratch. It might take a little more time, but I can do thinks in bulk and it’ll be easier.

I’ve got a while to go before I have this thing figured out, but it’s something I HAVE to do.

I can’t just forget the things that I’ve learned. I can’t just say, “Well, whatever. Organics cost more, and it’s more effort to go after that kinda food.”

I have found that if I shop at the right places, the cost difference isn’t much, if anything at all. And some things I will end up spending more money on.

To me, it’s worth paying more money now and eating better than it is to pay a little less and have weird health problems on down the road.

15-month checkup

On Saturday, Johnny will be 15 months old! He had his checkup with the pediatrician today.

He weighs 24 lbs. 12 oz. (50th percentile) and is 33 inches long (90 or 95th? Something high). His first measure was 33.5 and that was a bit high for him, so we redid it and he’s still way up there in height. My little boy will be taller than his mama one of these days! Maybe even taller than his daddy. We shall see.

He was NOT in a good mood at the doc’s. Maybe he vaguely remembers what goes on there, or maybe it’s because he was up a lot last night. He’s teething like mad right now and he’s so uncomfortable! Poor guy.

He has four teeth on top and two on the bottom. I’m hoping this round of teething will let a bunch more through so we can just get on with things.

Johnny loves to dance! We’ve tried to capture it on video but he always goes after the camera instead. He gets his feet going really fast and sometimes does some squats, or waves his arms like crazy, or does a jerky chicken/Elaine walk, or goes in a circle. Or sometimes he keeps it casual and just nods to the beat.

As soon as I turn on the radio he starts moving, even if I haven’t found a song for him yet.

My parents are in town visiting right now and he’s had fun dancing with my mom. I think she’s his preferred dance partner. He took 10-15 minutes to just stare them down and warm up to them, and after that he was ready to play. He’s sad when the leave the room or go outside without him and he likes to be held by them and to play with them.

One of his new tricks is we’ll ask him “Where’s your belly button?” and he lifts up his shirt and pokes at it. Haha! We’ve also sort of taught him where his nose is, but he usually just shoves a finger straight up it, so I think we’ll just forget about the nose for awhile.

He’s getting really good at doing laundry. He helps push the basket down the hall and he’ll load the washer, or take things out and hand them to me to put in the dryer. He also will put dirty clothes in the basket. Gotta love that!

He loves standing at his step stool and splashing in the bathroom sink. We were blowing  bubbles earlier today and he started blowing, but I don’t know if he was able to actually make a bubble.

Still pretty anti-bath. We might try a bath in the sink, in case he’s just afraid of the tub and not bathing in general.

He’s working on feeding himself with a spoon. I haven’t tried to teach him too much — I just hand him the spoon and sometimes help him find his mouth with it, but he does seem to enjoy and prefer using the spoon at times. I guess that’s a sign that he’s sorta civilized. Hee!

He likes peas (cooked frozen ones), pears, bananas, grapes, spaghetti, yogurt, cottage cheese, crackers, Cheerios and a whole bunch of other things. Yesterday, he ate sauerkraut! We had Reubens and he wanted some and had a bunch.

He’s growing out of a lot of his size 18-month clothes. Some still fit but some are on their last few wears. Fortunately, I’ve been able to borrow some summer 24-month clothes and we should be set for the season!

His shoe size is 6 and he’s pretty well anti-shoe. That’s fine if we’re inside, but that ain’t gunna cut it when we’re playing outside this spring/summer.

Johnny says “bye-bye,” “hi,” “yes” (on random occasion only…sometimes he’ll just nod), “mama” and I don’t know what else, if anything. My mom said he said “yellow” twice yesterday when she was showing him his yellow blocks. He babbles a lot but most of the time I don’t understand his words.

His favorite words seems to be “uh-oh.” He says that a lot and the “oh” part is a round circle with his mouth. He sometimes drops something just so he can say uh-oh!

He responds to our verbal instructions when he’s in the mood. Like, he’ll go get his ball or bring us something or come give us a hug or kiss.

Sleep has improved tremendously since his early months. We’ll do his sleepy-time routine and he’ll lay in his crib, push his Gloworm to play him a song and he’ll usually nod off to sleep without much help. He still does wake 1-2 times per night, though he does go back to sleep fairly quickly.

I don’t think there’s anything I can do to prevent that. He’ll grow out of it one of these days, right?

Oh, and Shane gave him his first haircut recently. Just a trim off the back and sides. He stood him on his step stool and set him up to play at the sink, and did a snip at a time. Shane says with each snip, he turned and stared for a second, and then went back to playing. Haha!