Must watch

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Grim Colberty Tales with Maurice Sendak Pt. 1
www.colbertnation.com
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The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Grim Colberty Tales with Maurice Sendak Pt. 2
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor & Satire Blog Video Archive

This is one of the best interviews I have EVER seen. I had no idea Sendak was such a grouchy old man, and gay at that.

Sendak- I didn't set out to make children happy or to make life better for them or easier for them.
Colbert- Do you like them?
S-I like them as few and far between as I do adults, maybe a bit more because I really don't like adults.

S-I'm a gay man.
C- I'm sorry, I must be mishearing you. You just said you're a gay man? Why are you allowed to write children's books? You're not allowed to head boy scout troops.

S on ebooks: $!$% them is what I say! I hate those e-books. They cannot be the future, they may well be, I will be dead and I won't give a $%!^.

  

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Indecision 2012 - Pander Express
www.thedailyshow.com
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Good clip overall, but I'm posting this for what happens at 3:40. I love him even more. Seriously- he's on my "list." Ryan Gosling and him have pretty much had the stop two spots for awhile now.

-Speaking of Ryan Gosling, Adam and I watched Drive last night. I can't get the trailer to embed, but here is the link. It was such a good movie. Suspenseful movie with an open ending. I don't always like open endings, but it works with this movie.

-I am reading John Green's new book The Fault in Our Stars. I mentioned his vlogs on YouTube to a friend and she had never seen them. Here's a funny one about honey badgers. Here's a somewhat more serious one about Kiva. His brother and him have also started doing crashcourse videos where they teach us stuff.

-I'll end with this one. Now, I'm crunchy in some ways (co-sleeping, extended breastfeeding, delayed vaccination schedule) but very mainstream in other ways.

Inspired

I am so inspired tonight. Adam and I went to the gym earlier. Now what I'm about to say may at first sound discriminatory towards older people or people with disabilities, but I promise it isn't. So, there were a lot of old people there and that actually really inspired me. You know, they're 60+ and they are not giving up on their bodies. They are doing all they can so that they enjoy life and can have more of it. I also saw a man there leaving after swimming that only had one leg. And then when I was on the elliptical machine an old man with only one arm got on the one next to me. It really was a "slap in the face" moment because I realized that even with all their challenges they have probably been taking better care of their bodies than I had been.

I was also inspired tonight by Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution. I have been so excited for this show, and he did not disappoint. I have got to make sure that Brayden knows what real food is and will eat it and like it. I know that will only happen if Adam and I eat real food more often than processed food. I will say that I think I have might great strides in this, because my whole family will tell you just how picky I was. If you didn't watch this show, I urge you to. His passion for healthy living was so evident and so inspiring!

Review: The Eco-nomical Baby Guide

After I decided to switch to cloth diapers, I started reading up on "going green." One website I found and came to love is The Green Baby Guide. The women who run the website, Joy Hatch and Rebecca Kelley, are releasing a book called The Eco-nomical Baby Guide and I was lucky enough to receive a copy to review here on my blog.

First things first- this book is beautiful! It features illustrations by someone with the alias woolypear, and they are just plain wonderful.

Most importantly, however, is the information contained in this book. It really is a great guide for someone with a young baby who is open to the idea of giving their baby a "green" start in life. I'll start with all the info on cloth diapers, since that is a major focus of the book. I assumed it wouldn't teach me much since I had been using cloth diapers for 4 months or so. I was dead wrong. And even if you don't use cloth (I know many of you don't), these work as general laundry tips as well. I had been following the directions I received when I bought the cloth diapers- to first run a rinse cycle in cold water and then a full cycle in hot water. Well, that has now stopped. In fact, I don't wash hardly anything in hot water anymore... I wonder why I did so often. And I'm going to attempt skipping the extra rinse too, unless a diaper is really bad. The next step I'm going to take will be harder since I am in a condo, but I'm going to try to put a clothesline up on my balcony to dry some of the diapers and use the sun to get rid of stains. See, these are tips anybody could use!

One statement the book made hit me hard: "Our lifestyles have turned parenthood into an industry like anything else." Seeing as when I read this, I was beginning to plan Brayden's first birthday party in my mind (yes, the birthday that is still over 4 months away and that he won't even remember). I so fall into the materialistic trap. It's one way I'm a major hypocrite and I know I need to work on that. This book had some great and simple ideas to help the environment, your wallet and ultimately your child. Some of the ones I'm going to work on are:

buying things secondhand whenever I can
keeping our thermostat at better temps
get one of the houseplants that reduces household toxins
make my own cleaning solutions (I already do laundry detergent)

I only wish I had read this book before I had Brayden. I may have started using cloth diapers sooner, but more importantly I could have worked on being a less materialistic parent.

Cell phones

Even with all the other forms of technology out there, cell phones are the one form of technology that can keep you "connected" to the world 24/7.

We got rid of our cell phones a month ago today, and I'm here to tell you it can be done. When we decided to cancel our phones and just have a landline, I was a little freaked out. I worried about something happening to Brayden and me possibly not being able to know about it right away. I worried about how I would fill my time on my 45-60 minute commute to work. Well, I'm just fine. Turns out there's this thing called the radio that usually has songs to sing along to, or heaven forbid I can just use the time to think and actually be alone with my thoughts.

I know cell phones have some good to them, so I'm not putting them down completely. I'm sure we'll get them again at some point in our lives, especially if we start making more money. But I'm glad we don't have them right now. It can make meeting up with people and things like that more complicated, but I was utterly too dependent on the thing and we really needed to save some money (you'll find out why in about 2 weeks).

So if you're looking for big ways to cut your budget but don't think you could give it up, you might be surprised. What I thought would be a huge deal to me has turned out to be not so hard.