We’re having a garage sale Saturday and getting ready to head to the cottage next weekend — keeping us occupied enough — but there’s also a ton of things going on in this fun region of ours the next week or so as we roll into Canada Day:

• Parent Source’s Canada Day Guide: Find out what your town has planned to celebrate our country’s 141st birthday, including where to go for fireworks
• Durham events from the local paper: Check out Metroland’s day-by-day event listings from across the Region
• Durham Tourism: All our local attractions
• Beach water testing: See if your local waterfront is safe for swimming
• SummerActive: Want out of Durham? This government of Canada website has event listings by age group from across the country

Do many of you get Today’s Parent? It’s a Canadian parenting magazine put out by Rogers, and I quite enjoy it. The past few months they’ve had a few fabulous articles on greening your house for baby and just in general:

How green is your home?: A room-by-room tour (kids’ rooms, bathrooms, kitchen etc.) to learn about the “environmental baddies” you may be harbouring, and how to fix ‘em. I really liked how they focus not just on the standard, big-ticket, expensive stuff such as new furnaces and windows, but on mattresses, bedding, paints, shower curtains and cookware. Literally the best resource I’ve read that compiles everything together. A must read.

The green nursery: Thoughts and tips on carpeting, paint, furniture and bedding in a vulnerable newborn’s bedroom. Did you know the glue that holds together many new cribs (particularly cheaper ones like *ahem* we bought from Sprawl-Mart) can off-gas formaldehyde for years?). Another excellent read.

Guide to less toxic products: From the Environmental Health Association of Nova Scotia, via the above story. Endorsed by the Big Man himself, David Suzuki. The article includes this warning: “You  may find out more than you really wanted to know about the chemical soup that is modern life.” Yeah…proceed with caution.

Easy recipes for non-toxc house cleaning: Love them.

Are you shutting off the lights tomorrow?

It’s Earth Hour between 8-9 p.m. Residents and corporations around the world are turning off their power to make a statement about climate change.

Almost every municipality and many businesses in Durham are participating. I’m dying to see whether the Region shuts off the eye glaring, power-sucking lights of their monstrous parking garage and headquarters at Rossland Rd. and Garden St. in Whitby. Everytime I drive by at night, that corner is absolutely shining. I bet the residents who live behind the lot will love it.

We will of course be participating. Already got the candles and bbq lighter ready to go. I’ve told Eric that watching COPS in the dark does not count. Which sucks ’cause this weekend’s new episode has spike strips and foot pursuits and helicopters.

*sigh*

My sister-in-law’s best friend, Sarah, has a daughter just a few days older than Lucy. Sarah’s been reading here forever (hi Sarah!), and last summer nominated Durham Region Baby to the Just Mommie’s Top 100 Mommy Blogs 2007.

And wowee, lookiee here: We’re number 31!

Sweet.

Thanks so much, Sarah!

p.s. — Sarah is a huge proponent in cloth diapering, and recently started selling them via the innovative Diapering Decisions. Check them out. I am seriously considering trying them for subsequent babies.

I hope all of you have noticed the growing sponsors on the left sidebar.

I am a small town, community girl at heart. Although a decade ago I physically ached to bust out of my hamlet and catapult into j-skool at Ryerson, I knew after less than five years of living downtown Toronto that Big City living wasn’t for me. I knew after five weeks at the Toronto Star that a Big City reporter job was not for me.

And so — having picked up a fiance along the way — we moved back to Durham. In that full-circle way of life, I landed my first Big Kid Job at the very first newspaper I ever worked for (at the tender age of 15).

And so began settling back into the community feeling I felt missing from downtown. That closeness has only intensified after moving to north Durham — now with a baby — back to the stomping grounds of my youth. We are planting roots here.

So you have no idea how awesome it is to have these wonderful local businesses on the site. To have other people value and validate what is so important to me, and what I strive to achieve with this site, is incredibly rewarding and fulfilling. And what better way to showcase Durham Region and the network of businesses that support it than share them with you?

I have purposely chosen not to go with a ad network. There is more money that route, but little if any control over content. There are restrictions on what you can say about your ads and advertisers (nothing, mostly), even where they can go on the site itself. I have no interest in that, and it defeats the purpose of what I am trying to create here.

Please take some time to visit them when you have a chance. A big fat thanks to all of you (and my endlessly patient and supportive sister) for the immeasurable help in reaching this point.

I’ve spent an eye-crossing amount of time updating and adding to the links section the past week or so. They desperately needed to be done to preserve my sanity, and also in response to what Mr. Google says people are looking for (namely: stuff to do, places to go, and birthday party centres — all for Durham).

Things are now split into what I hope are easier-to-navigate categories for y’all:

Durham links: The main entrance, also found on the right-hand toolbar over there, and directly above, under the logo

Places to play: Municipal recreation programs, indoor gyms, dance, birthday party centres

Stuff to do: Get out of the house with grown-ups (including, of course, Durham Mom’s Night Out!), Early Years Centres, public libraries, event listings, travel/tourism links

Durham daycare/nannies: Places to find childcare, resources

Safety and support: Recalls, breastfeeding, car seat safety checks, postpartum depression, parenting etc.

Local businesses and mompreneurs: List of consignment stores, baby gear, online sales, local entrepreneurs

Health: Labour, fitness, beauty

Fave Canadian retailers: The Eh! online stores we love the best

Coming soon: Baby shows, crafts and photography. Got any to add?

Have a site you love you want listed? A category to suggest? Business to add? Leave a comment or drop me an email. These are ever-expanding.

Enjoy!

I get Baby Toolkit’s posts via email, and was absolutely stunned to read this in my inbox late last week. I had no idea any of this happened, and thought all of you should know, too:

To the utter astonishment of friends and relatives, Jim and I quit chocolate cold turkey in 2001. We were chocoholics of the first degree. When I cleaned out the kitchen for all our chocolate we found over 14 pounds — not counting things containing cocoa.

At first I thought I would lose my mind. One night someone walked past me in a Circuit City smelling of Butterfinger bar and my consuming envy made me want to tackle them and bounce their head off the floor a few dozen times. I’m not a violent person, so this bizarre desire definitely meant I had momentarily relocated to downtown, central Crazy.

Chocolate was to me comfort, reward, and love. My beloved grandmother used to keep chocolate bars stashed for the grandkids, so it’s hard not to associate a Nestle Crunch with the pure joy of visiting grandma. My grandma loved kids, all kids — so much that she dedicated her life to schools and orphanages in Africa. I’m sure she had similar treats for the kids there.

As a result of my grandparents’ work, I always had a heightened sense of Africa. My mom never said “Eat your dinner, there are starving children in Africa.” Instead, I overheard conversations about war, coups, government closure of schools and orphanages, poverty, famine, police that show up in the middle of the night, imprisonment, execution, and families that had become kin to ours fleeing their nation through dangerous means both legal and illegal. I have always felt thankful not to have been born there, and I deeply respected my grandparents’ courage to work in such a dangerous place.

So…when I found out that virtually every American chocolate bar is tainted with child slavery (enacted in Africa), I didn’t want to believe it. Knight-Ridder had a series of articles outing the use of child slaves to harvest cocoa and coffee beans* in the Ivory Cost and Mali. It’s fallen off most of the news site because its age (2001), but it’s been reprinted here.

Read the rest of this entry »

Lucy is a little artiste.

She loves to colour, draw with chalk, and paste stickers on every surface. When we head to the basement to play, she always beelines for her easel first.

We’ve filled her Christmas wish list with fun art products, which I know she’ll adore. (Also, Wishlisr is free, fun and easy!)

(Special thanks to Poppy and Jen O. for introducing us to Crayola’s Colour Wonders, and to my clever comedian husband for the post title, which I know will make Uncle Stinky snort with laughter.)