One more cup of coffee

Our son: doing his part to destroy the environment already

For such a young boy, Nathan is already leaving his mark on the environment. I’m so proud of him. Let’s review:

• Landfills. In researching the some-years-old debate on cloth vs. disposable diapers, pretty much everyone said that it comes down to a choice of which part of the environment you wish to destroy. With cloth diapers, you get to destroy the environment through the massive amounts of chemicals and bleach needed to clean the diapers; with disposable, you get to fill landfills. Given that it was basically a toss-up, we went with disposable. Two weeks after we got home, I had to call the city of Mountain View to ask for a bigger trash can to hold all the diapers: 64 gallons instead of 32 (we don’t really need 64, but there wasn’t anything in between). The woman who handled my request said, “You want an even bigger can than 32!?” Hey, at least I didn’t ask for the 96 gallon can. Sheez.
• Use of natural resources. Specifically, natural gas. Years ago, we purchased an electronic thermostat that let us set four different times per day, with different settings on weekdays, Saturday, and Sunday, for the gas furnace that heats our house. With this, we let the front of the house pretty much freeze at night, turn down during the day when we were at work, and heat up for the mornings and evenings. Then, our first night home, Meredith got up for the 3 AM feeding with Nathan and discovered that being in a living room that was pretty much frozen, well, pretty much sucked. So, now the thermostat is set to keep the house warm during times when Nathan might be awake – i.e., 24/7.
• Oh, and those chemicals again. Granted, his clothes don’t require the same level of toxic chemicals to clean that cloth diapers might, but we now seem to be running the washing machine all the time. Whether it’s his clothes, which get changed more often than Britney Spears changes costumes in a concert, or our clothes, which Nathan is happy to soak (through *ahem* various means), there’s always laundry to be done. And that’s not to mention the dishwasher, which now runs once or twice a day just to keep his bottles clean.

He is wonderful. I wouldn’t trade him for the world.