I would never presume to replace the original, but there’s a book that’s basically become my baby bible. It’s called Raising Vegetarian Children by Joanne Stepaniak and Vesanto Melina, and if you are a vegetarian parent or a parent who’s thinking about going vegetarian or you have a friend with kids who’s vegetarian, you should purchase it immediately!

The book is packed with solid nutritional information for vegetarian parents, from infancy (including specific dietary guidelines and menu suggestions for nursing moms) through the teen years. It’s a resource that you (or your friend or your friend’s friend) will use for years.

OMG! Animal Rights +
Infant Wear = Super-Fun!

I was cruising through PETA’s Merchandise Department the other day and saw these jaw-droppingly cute onesies. My dude is a little small for the 6-month size, but I couldn’t resist, and I’m glad I didn’t! This morning when I dropped him off at the church pre-school where he spends a few hours a day, the ladies went nuts! In addition to the fact that he’s handsome and perfect, the “Give Peas a Chance ―Go Vegetarian” onesie is just too adorable―look closely and you’ll see that one of the little pea-pod babies has a binky!

Anyway, his little onesie helped start a couple of conversations about being vegetarian, and then one of the gals wanted to know where she could get some sweet PETA gear for her nieces … it was a whole lot of pro-animal fun. Next up, it’s the “Animals Are Our Friends” bib to protect the onesie from food disasters.

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When my son was a couple of weeks old, I began to panic because, in my sleep-deprived state, I hadn’t yet started actively encouraging his intellectual development. If he’s going to start playing Trivial Pursuit on Friday nights with Mom and Dad, I’d better get going on the early learning, right?

So, I went out and bought a couple of books, including one of nursery rhymes (subtitled A Crash Course in 80 Nursery Rhymes for Clueless Moms and Dads) that came with an accompanying CD (funsies!). I kinda knew “Itsy Bitsy Spider”—about a strong, resilient spider who beats the odds to climb up the water spout—and “This Old Man,” who gives his dog a bone, but little did I know of the horrors hidden in many of the cutesy verses sung by generations of parents to their children.

Cases-in-point: “Alouette”—a pleasant ditty I learned to play on the piano in elementary school. But translated from the French? It’s about plucking a pheasant in preparation for dinner! Then there’s “To Market, to Market to Buy a Fat Pig” (yikes!); a farmer’s wife cuts the tails off “Three Blind Mice”; if you “Sing a Song of Sixpence,” you’ll condemn 24 blackbirds to death baked inside a pie; and “Old Mother Hubbard’s” dog starves to death. At least the black sheep is asked for his wool, instead of having it stolen!

Happily, there are some animal-friendly alternatives (kiddies can go “to market, to market, to buy a ripe plum”), but if they aren’t readily available, you can always improvise on the fly (”this little piggy ate tofu”!). The point is, keep an eye out for opportunities to be kind while you’re teaching your kids to be creative. I leave you with the words of the wonderful little Spanish lullaby “Pio, Pio, Pio” (which is also the chorus sung by baby chicks) translated into English:

The baby chicks say, “Pio, pio, pio,”
Whenever they are hungry
Whenever they are chilly.

Then hens look for corn and wheat
For the baby chicks. “Pio, pio, pio.”

They give them food
And keep them warm
For the baby chicks. “Pio, pio, pio.”

Cute, huh? For more information on chickens, please read this.

Max hanging out on “her” changing table.

In my previous post, I talked a little about how my husband, Giehl, and I were preparing our pups for the arrival of our first baby (DS Isaiah). There’s so much good stuff to share about that, but I wanted to take a few seconds to let you know how my cat girls, Max and Katie, are doing with the new arrival.

Our cats and dogs don’t peacefully coexist, so Max and Katie had the most exposure to the gradual changes upstairs in the room that became the nursery. (Isn’t it scary that I cannot remember what used to be in that room?!) To help the cats adapt, we took things slow and made small changes each week or month. So, we’d put a piece of furniture in the room, and they’d spend a few days lying on it, making it their own. By the time the baby came into the picture, he was just one more little change—easy to deal with.

Another key to their overall acceptance of Isaiah is that I didn’t shoo them out of the crib or off the changing table. I still don’t, unless I need it (and then, food bribes work magic and don’t cause resentment). I know that for 400 years, people have been telling pregnant women and new moms that they have to watch out to make sure that the cat doesn’t steal their baby’s breath. I don’t know about any of y’all, but my cats avoid DS like the plague. It’s not that they hate him, but with his erratic movements and high-pitched cries, he’s not exactly an attractive kitty plaything. So, when he’s sleeping in his crib or bassinet, they leave him be. And when he leaves it, they make themselves at home again. It means that everyone always has a warm place to lie down.

What it all boils down to is setting your mind to making sure that your animal companions get the same kind of love and attention after the human baby arrives that they got when they were your only “kids.” For a sleep-deprived and overwhelmed first-time parent, this might seem like a tall order, but it’s really easy. Here are just a few little things I’ve done in the past few weeks:

• Sing to your cat while you feed the baby.

• Give your cat an extra-special treat every day—just a tiny, tasty morsel or a present from your yard (a leaf can provide many fun moments for your kitty!).

• Put one of your cat’s beds or soft places to lie in a corner of the baby’s room so that your cat knows that he or she is welcome, wanted, and provided for.

• If your partner has taken over baby duties for a while and you’re taking the opportunity to rest, invite your cat (or dog) to join you. Spend a few minutes petting your cat and saying how much you love him or her—if it’s been a stressful day with the baby, you’ll be doing yourself a favor too!

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The first book I bought when the pregnancy test revealed two lines instead of one wasn’t What to Expect When You’re Expecting (aka “What they never told you about pregnancy that you wish you’d known before you got yourself into this state”). It was a small tome called Happy Kids, Happy Dogs.

Giehl and I share our home and lives with two wonderful dogs and two very cat-like cats (who are far too busy and important to be photographed today). Clyde and Emma are both around 3 years old, and they’re full of enthusiasm for life (and food). While kids and dogs are often a great combination (I loved the dog we had growing up more than I loved most of my friends and family, I think), too often, the dogs in the house get the short end of the stick after the baby arrives—and bad things can happen as a result (e.g., neglected dog starts acting out, neglected dog then becomes neglected and yelled-at-a-lot dog, then neglected and yelled-at dog gets dumped at the local animal shelter). Happy Kids, Happy Dogs talks about how to ensure that your human baby and your canine child grow up to love and respect each other, starting in pregnancy and all the way through adolescence.

So just as you’d prepare an older sibling for the arrival of a baby brother or sister, Giehl and I started to prepare our dogs early on for the arrival of a baby boy. We bought a doll and started carrying it around in our Ergo carrier, sitting on the couch with it pretending to feed, putting it in the swing … things that will become part of our routine when the real baby arrives. The trick is to make sure that the experiences the dogs have with the fake baby are positive (e.g., while I’m sitting on the couch feeding the fake baby, I’m also giving Clyde and Emma little bits of treats while they sit or lie quietly next to me). We also spent a lot of time working with them on some basic training. As Karen P., PETA’s resident dog expert, will tell you, dogs like to have a job! Our dogs’ only job is to sit nicely before they ask for something, but it makes a big difference in their overall mental health (and, therefore, in our sanity).

There’s just too much good stuff in Happy Kids, Happy Dogs to put in one post, so look for more later. And once B-Day (that’s Birth-Day) comes and goes, I’ll be sure to let you know how it all plays out in real life!

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As someone who has an unhealthy love of food, I was really looking forward to being able to “eat for two” in pregnancy. Imagine my sorrow when I learned that pregnant women really only need an additional 300 calories or so—and only in the second half of pregnancy. WTF? So uncool.

My sorrow didn’t last long, as I was wracked for several long months with “all-day sickness” (another lie: morning sickness—it’s not just for mornings!) and couldn’t keep down much more than oatmeal and, on a really adventurous day, apple sauce (sprinkled with ginger instead of cinnamon, in a desperate and ill-fated attempt to fight the nausea naturally).

Skip ahead to months five through nine, when I could finally eat like a real person. I tend to gravitate toward foods in the starch and fat family (potato chips are the perfect food), but I knew that I’d be setting my kid up for a lifetime of obesity if I snacked on nothing but garbage all day. I’ve already been down the fat path and don’t really want to go back. Before I went vegan six years ago, my cholesterol was 250 (which, incidentally, was also about how much I weighed—fine, perhaps, if I were 8 feet tall, but at 5′6″, not so good), and I definitely wanted to give my kid the best start I could.

Since I don’t eat artery-clogging, disease-causing animal flesh, I felt like I had a pretty strong head-start on the whole “eating well” thing, but here are a few tips and tricks I eventually settled on:

1) Hummus and baby carrots are my friends. Hummus is packed with protein and healthy fats, and carrots have all that great vitamin A (they’re the best source of it, actually, unless you’re super keen on eating liverwurst, animal livers, or cod liver oil. Mmmmm, tasty!).

2) Soy milk is easy, fast protein. Starbucks will sell me a lovely bucket of steamed soy milk for a few bucks when I forget to go to the grocery store and buy my own.

3) Woman cannot live on pasta alone, but she can add a few Nate’s frozen “meat”-balls and make a nice balanced dinner.

4) Go back to the basics. Peanut butter and jelly on whole-wheat bread with a little apple sauce cup and a handful of raw vegetables is a good lunch, not to mention easy and cheap. On a fancy day, I’ll do Tofurky with Vegenaise, pickles, and tomato.

5) You can make a nutritious and protein-packed smoothie (if you’re veg, people will hound you even more about the protein than they did before you got pregnant—brace yourself) in about five seconds. Here’s my friend Dawn’s recipe (makes two):

2-4 bananas
4-7 leaves of fresh kale, stripped from the stalk
A big spoonful of peanut or almond butter
Soy milk

If you really want to make something with more than four ingredients (might as well relish it now, because I hear that after the baby is born, there’s no time for that kind of nonsense), you can add any of the following:

A few big spoonfuls of soy yogurt
Crushed red pepper, to taste
A dash of vanilla extract
4 tablespoons of flaxseeds (grind them first, if you can)
Small spoonful of maple butter or syrup
Half an avocado
4 dates or figs (soaked first)
Walnuts
Frozen strawberries

“No, I’m not getting rid of my dogs
when the baby is born.”

At times throughout my pregnancy, I considered getting a signboard to wear around my neck with the following information:

1) end of July

2) boy

3) I haven’t told my mother what I’m naming my child, so I’m probably not going to tell you either.

Also, I swear to you, if one more person asks me how I’m feeling, I’m going to start telling the truth. And do you think the truth is pretty? It’s not. (Hint: It’s July, in Norfolk, and I’m carrying around a furnace that displaces my internal organs.) For the most part, people probably mean well and I should be nicer, but there are two questions that I’ve been asked that make me want to spew fire. So please pay attention—these are my final answers:

1) No, I’m not getting rid of my dogs when the baby is born. I know I can be abrasive, but am I an evil, cold-hearted witch? I’d like to think not. Clyde and Emma are our canine children—our responsibilities—and we love them dearly. When we adopted them, it was for better or for worse—for as long as they live—and what in the world would make me think that it’s OK to go back on that promise? People who give away their animals piss me off. If you’re not prepared to make a 20-year commitment to Fluffy or Fido, don’t bother taking them home in the first place, you selfish jerk.

2) Yes, I’ll be raising my kid on a vegan diet. It’s weird, ’cause no one really questions whether I’ll be taking him to church every Sunday. Hello! Not eating animals is kind of an ethical cornerstone for Giehl and me—you know, because eating animals contributes to horrific cruelty, human starvation, my own poor health (someday I’ll post fat pictures, but not today), and global warming. Did I mention that I’m carrying a furnace in my belly? Please, for the love of all that’s holy, help lower the planet’s temperature, thanks. It’s a scary world to bring a kid into—the least I can do is ensure that he’s got the moral and spiritual foundations to leave it in a better state than it was when he arrived.

Are we clear? Good.