Its easy to get discouraged quickly when researching healthy living. Sure seems like the world is out to kill you! One could become scared to eat anything! I have certainly met a few hyper-freaky “health-nuts” who boarder on hypochondria! When my efforts to pursue excellence and health begin to push me to worry, fret and fuss I stop and remember that no one is going anywhere until it is their time. My sweet grandmother smoked like a fire and lived into her 80’s. God is the one in control and I could put petrochemicals all over my body and bathe in diet Coke and still happily live to see my great-grandchildren. Grace can do such things, ya know! God knows our financial and circumstantial limits. He isn’t going to punish me with cancer because I couldn’t afford all organic products. How silly!

Of course God gave us minds and abilities and resources to use wisely. He has established principles to help us learn virtue and wisdom and through these to have joy. In general, the healthier we live, the more we manage this earth as good and wise stewards, the ‘healthier’ we will be, though God often makes exceptions to “the rules” so that He may display grace. May we revel in His grace! Truly, what sustains my healthy efforts is really the peace and joy of doing in more than the fear. Sure, fear of being fat and having cancer gets me going, but fear doesn’t sustain it. Though fear of consequences may get the ball rolling, the joy of the Lord is our strength.

I was in such a good mood today because I was so excited about God’s creation! How the things HE made are the most awesome! When I pulled out my truly all-natural, organic “Tush Treatment” to put on Ella’s hinny I felt joyful, that I was nurturing my little one with the hands of God, with the wondrous things He has made and given to us to use and cultivate. Fish breathe best in water, birds fly best in air and people live best in the things designed for them by God.

Does this mean that the things men make are bad? No! We were made in the image of the Creator, made to also create! However, the things that we make, I believe, reflect the virtue with which we make it. So many things now are made fast and cheap, with a heart to make a profit above all. And the products which result reflect it; cheap, fast products that are not well designed with care and our bodies, lives and environment suffer as a result.

After crusing the internet for a while and consulting with my mother, Terressentials seems to be among the best in quality of products that you can buy ready-made (I will post on homemade recipe’s later). Their website has an amazing synopsis and list of ingredients that ought to be bookmarked on every health-aware mom’s browser.

Recent studies have shown that we may actually acquire more toxins through skin absorption and inhalation than through the foods that we eat. Because the skin is the largest organ in the body, this is a substantial surface area through which toxic chemical migration may occur. When you rub chemicals on your skin, they can pass straight through and enter your bloodstream within minutes. Think about how nicotine and birth control patches work. Personal care products should be as pure as the foods we eat.

This page tells you what you want to see on an ingredient list, what you don’t and why. Print this out and take it with you shopping, as you look for “the least bad” products at the grocery store.

‘Round these parts Burt’s Bee’s seems the best you can buy at the typical grocery store, in terms of all-natural personal products. Their website is pretty informative and worth a gander. I compared several of their ingredient lists against the Terressentials list and their products seem to be “mostly” natural yet not that organic. Far and away better than the Suave I have been using, but still containing a few petrochemical synthetics here and there to keep the cost down.

I about to get on a organic health kick. Prepare for posts and links concerning how wicked comercialism and all conventional products are going to kill your children! Just kidding.

Two things have lighted a fire under my lazy, cheapskate derriere; Ella seems to have very sensitive skin and my mother works at an organic clothing store. It seems obvious that we ought not eat chemicals, but mom reminded me that our skin is an organ too! Should we put things on our skin that we wouldn’t eat? Well, to some extent, that is the function of our skin, to keep bad stuff out. However, she told me that the chemicals commonly found in hair and facial products (esp. those derrived from petro-chemicals) have been found inside cancerous tumors. Yikes!

So I am going to spend my nursing time surfing for information, tyring to discover just how concerned we should be as well as where to find alternative healthy products.

While you wait for something coherent, here are a few sites that have so far perked my interest. This site is based in the UK and I am sure shipping would be too expensive, but it seems to have some good information. I have the “Tush Treatment” from Terressentials and my mom really likes the effectiveness and quality of their products. They are expensive, but have some good information on their site as well.

Here is a website with instructions on how to make you own household cleaners. I have posted about this before.

I will from now on ALWAYS go to the grocery store early in the morning. When hauling three children under age 4, the emptyness of a Tuesday 8am grocery store can’t be beat. Plus, WE are all in a better mood, I have the energy to wash the veggies right away, and we are done by 10am, with time to spend the afternoon as we please.

“This is the way we buy our groceries so early Tuesday morning!”

Whew - I am definitely getting worked over with this third baby! I can see how (I think) God wants to use this in my life. It’s fairly obvious that I am all too self-reliant instead of grace reliant, not to mention numerous other rough spots I feel being smoothed out.

Inspired by Ma Ingles weekly routine, we have simplified our own to keep but one thing in mind each day.

Laundry on Monday
Groceries on Tuesday
Friends on Wednesday
Clean on Thursday
Projects on Friday
Bake on Saturday
Rest on Sunday

We sing the little “Here we go round the mulberry bush” song to work on learning our days of the week and their assigned tasks. My eldest has started asking me what day it is. “Mommy! Today is the day we run our errands so early Friday morning!” It has both helped involve the girls in the household chores as well as segway into learning the calendar.

I love these free, classy catholic e-cards. I am going to put up a link on the sidebar.

I finally conclude my little series on Infant Baptism by simply quoting the end of Wilson’s book, To a Thousand Generations.

It is true that the New covenant nowhere excludes the children of believers. But what are some express indications of their continued and ongoing inclusion in the covenant?

The first Christian sermon cut the listeners to the heart. They cried out, seeking what to do. Peter told them to repent and be baptized, and that the promise was to them and to their children (Acts 2:39). We are taught that children of at least one believing parent are holy. The word used by Paul is hagia, which when applied to persons is almost always translated saint.(1 Cor. 7:14). Little children and infants are included by Christ in the kingdom of God (Lukie 18:16). Children constitute one of the recognized subgroups of the church, to be taught along with the rest of the saints in the church Eph. 1:1; 6:1; Col. 1:2; 3:20). Little Gentile children are taught that the covenant promise made at Sinai are applied to them, just as it had to the Israelite children from infancy on (Eph. 6:1-3). We are taught that one of the features of the New Covenant was to be the restoration of the covenantal father/child relationship, not the dissolution of the covenantal father/child relationship (Luke 1:17). (122-3)

The Gospel we are taught, is for the families of the earth (Acts 3:25). It is therefore not surprising that the normal mode of evangelism and baptism in the New Testament was household by household (Acts 16:14-15). The point is not that such are narratives of infant baptisms. The point is that they are narratives of household or family baptisms (1 Cor. 1:16).

And last, one of the most precious doctrines of Scripture for believing parents is the teaching of covenantal succession from one generation to the next (Ps. 102:28). Faithful parents are promised that their children will follow the Lord (Dt. 7:9). Moreover, the blessings of this covenantal succession were prophesied as coming into a glorious fulfillment under the New Covenant (Ez. 37:24-26; Is. 59:21; 65:23; Jer. 32:38-40). The responsibility for the reverence and faithfulness of children is therefore quite properly delegated to parents (Eph. 6;4; 1 Tim. 3:4; Titus 1:6). Under the New Covenant, our children’s children are truly included (ps. 103; Luke 1:48-50).

But the steadfast love of the LORD is from everlasting
to everlasting on those who fear him,
and his righteousness to children’s children,
to those who keep his covenant
and remember to do his commandments.

Psalm 103:17-18