Tag: crunchy

Monday’s Mama is Earth Mama FOR REALZ.

Published on by Darlene Dee8 Comments

This Monday I am pleased to introduce Jessica Claire Haney. Jessica is the founder, publisher, and editor of Mindful Healthy Life who is likely going to be annoyed that I totally added an Oxford comma to her bio.

Jessica Claire Haney Headshot

Jessica is very busy. She is the author of the Guide to Holistic Family Living in Metro DC. She volunteers on issues related to wellness in public schools and was the founder of the Arlington/Alexandria Chapter of Holistic Moms Network. A writer working on her first novel, Jessica offers writing, editing, and consulting services.

She probably also sings to plants and harvests artisan catnip for feral felines. I’m assuming.

I met Jessica in 2016 at MommyCon DC. We realized that we were basically neighbors and planned to get together for coffee someday. You all know how that goes. I’m not convinced that she even drinks coffee. Jessica seems more like a kombucha kind of lady. Last October, we randomly ran into one another at the Type-A Parent Blogger Conference. We totally hung out that weekend, and Jessica is the sweetest. I’ll miss running into her at those East Coast Conferences.

SPEAKING OF CONFERENCES, Jessica will be at BlogHer Health next week so if you are there too, tell her I said hello. You will have an instant friend. Jessica might be the kindest person on earth. I’m not sure. I haven’t met EVERYONE.

Jessica was nice enough to answer my questions. Jessica put SO MUCH THOUGHT into my silly little Monday’s Mama questions. That is just who she is. Genuine. Considerate. And MINDFUL, y’all.

jessica claire haney

1. What is  your go-to yoga practice, or meditation, or whatever else works to keep you centered in your every day life?

I have been doing yoga since 2001, and in the past few years, I’ve tried to integrate it into other aspects of my life. Sometimes that’s been more successful than others. I’ve taken my mat to the lawn of a blog conference – two years in a row – but had other times when I fell off the wagon.

I’m super pleased that I’ve been starting each day with movement for the past six months. I do a jiggling and tapping along my meridians that is sort of a Qi Gong “lite.” It gets your lymph flowing and awakens your energy pathways to clear out stagnant stuff. I do it three times – head to toe – followed by three deep breaths and centering.

Then I do a yoga sequence that takes just about 12 minutes. I do it first thing, no matter what, and I think it’s really helped to do this daily. On school days, I do alone in the dark. On weekends, it happens whenever I get up, even if my kids are running around or watching TV or trying to crawl under me.

The kids don’t often join in on their own mats, but sometimes we practice together. At least they see me doing yoga regularly now, and they know they are doing it on my business card and website, so that’s something!

2. What is one easy thing we could do/change we could make for those of us wanting to stay both mindful and healthy in their everyday lives?

Easiest: Get out in nature every day.

Harder: Eat foods mostly from the perimeter of the grocery store.

Really Big: Make a list of goals and ideals for how you want kids to feel and to interact with the world as they grow and mature. Consider what kind of future you really want for your kids for their heart and soul and then to think about what behaviors, habits and special moments align with that vision.

3. What is your most crunchy hippie belief or practice, in your opinion?

How could anyone start their day without scraping their tongue, make it through without at least a few essential oils, or go to bed without spraying magnesium oil on their skin?! Ha ha ha.

(Darlene here: Jessica gave me those links. Thankfully. I left them in in case you ALSO wanted some further explanation.)

Oh, and I am a sucker for health and wellness conferences and events. I probably attend even more than most reasonably crunchy people.

jessica haney at conference

4. It’s the PTA Bakesale. Handmade, store-bought, or nope?

I don’t speak Bakesale!

No, seriously, I just opt out. Given my history with celiac disease and my kids’ genetic markers for it, we are all gluten-free and I’m mostly grain-free. It’s clear that my kids have also inherited the need to be super conservative with sugar consumption.

Of course, sugar isn’t good for anyone, and neither are artificial dyes or artificial flavors, so I wish schools would stop elevating sweets in a public way with bake sales and birthday celebrations and other treats and leave families to manage their indulgences outside of school. Lots of kids have more severe food issues than mine, and it is no fun for anyone to feel left out!

(Darlene again: Jessica is TOTALLY RIGHT OF COURSE but I like cupcakes. So.)

There are plenty of non-food ways to celebrate and have fun. For a school to serve the needs of the whole child, I’d like to see it pursue best practices toward health and wellness. I’m so glad to see more gardening integrated into schools so kids can have a better understanding of healthy eating and of where food comes from.

school-courtyard-gardens-Jessica Claire Haney

Follow Jessica on Facebook,  Twitter and on Instagram. Jessica’s personal blog is Crunchy-Chewy Mama, which is also on Facebook and Twitter.

And remember to say hi if you see her at BlogHer Health next week. She won’t even give your cheese danish any side eye. Ask me how I know.

Pura and Simple.

Published on by Darlene Dee11 Comments

*Sponsored post.*

YOU GUYS I FOUND SOME SWEET NEW WATER BOTTLES.

Well, ok, I found them in my mailbox after asking the nice people at Tryazon to hook me up with their Pura Stainless party pack. I said please. They said yes. Sweet!

(Skip to the bottom if you already love Pura Stainless and just want the discount code. It’s fine. I won’t be mad. Much.)

I invited over some friends and their kids and we painted rocks and talked about water bottles. We talked about other things, too, but water bottles are fascinating, y’all.

(I may have mentioned my obsession to find the perfect water bottle before. But maybe you don’t know that this obsession extends to Mama size bottles too.)

I love the earth, and I love drinking water, and I have a ToddlerMonster that will spill any water with no lid. So I need perfect water bottles at home on the couch, by my bed at night, AND on-the-go.

The perfect water bottle will keep my water cold. The perfect water bottle will not have a weird taste. The perfect water bottle will not spill if knocked over. The perfect water bottle for the ToddlerMonster will not spill even if it is banged around in my backpack. The perfect water bottle is easy to clean. And the perfect water bottle is good for my health and kind to the earth.

I have found an almost perfect water bottle.

YOU GUYS OMG!

Before I declare complete perfection, I do need to tote Babystar’s straw-spout bottle around in the backpack/diaper bag for a bit to see if it leaks all over everything. I don’t think it will — I turned it upside down and shook it VERY HARD. I will update this post later with my very scientific results.

The Pura Stainless bottles definitely keep my water cold. I have been using the larger size insulated bottle for a week, and my water is just as cold at 4am as it is when I set it on my bedside at 10pm. And it’s STILL COLD in the morning.

The spout is silicon, even though most of the bottle is stainless steel. Silicon tastes like nothing. PERFECT!

Results are out on the long-term spilling situation on both the mama bear and the baby bear size. The outlook is good but further testing is needed. I want to tell you about them NOW though, not in three months.

All parts of the Pura stainless bottles are (top-rack) dishwasher safe! But more importantly to me, there are not many parts and they all come COMPLETELY APART. So there is no question of whether that is mold in that plastic bit that I cannot dismantle.

There is literally ZERO PLASTIC. None. It’s really freaking cool. The bottles are stainless steel and silicon. That’s it. 100% recyclable and good for my family and the entire planet.

BUT WAIT THERE’S MORE.

These bottles have a feature that I didn’t even know I wanted. But now I’m so mad that every company doesn’t do this. Every single component is compatible with the other. There are six sized bottles from 5oz to 28oz. There are five different types of tops: baby nipple, toddler sippy, straw top, capped drinking spout, and a silicon lid that closes the bottle completely to turn it into a storage bottle (which would be great for formula or those powder sports drink mixes). I can mix and match as much as I like. The thready bits are all the same size, so everything fits on everything.  I LOVE THIS SO MUCH.

(Well, ok, the bottom part of the straw won’t reach the bottom of the larger bottles but I suspect there will be straw size options eventually. And you can technically still use the straw top on any size bottle but you have to tip it.)

I AM OFFICIALLY OBSESSED. Right now, I prefer this bottle to almost everything in my entire kitchen. Babystar is less impressed; she prefers her Unicorn Water but I think that’s only because there is a freaking unicorn on it. Toddler logic, y’all.

I gave away three of the five bottles that Pura Stainless sent via Tryazon because I AM SO NICE. I miss them. I kept the two that Babystar and I have been trying. Below is a size comparison, using my hand. Not a ruler because I am lazy. Those are the insulated bottles in 9oz and 22oz. I totally kept the insulated ones because I AM SO GREEDY. (Well, ok, I gave away one of the three insulated bottles they sent to me. See? NICE.)

Dear Pura Stainless, please make some sleeves with dinosaurs or unicorns or clever sayings (for the teenagers — and mostly me). Love, your latest social media stalker.

I wish I could have invited the whole internet to my rock painting party but I didn’t have that many rocks. I guess you could have brought your own. Whoops, my bad. But you can still use the party’s discount code for 20% off  through September 3: Pura22206.

HIGHLY RECOMMEND.

MAYDAY MAYDAY: Have you tried Pura Stainless bottles? Do you have a different favorite water bottle? Am I the only reusable-bottle-obsessed mama on the internet??

RAISING BABYSTAR: $20,963.61