Ok, this CSPIA stuff is scary! But there is some light at the end of this crazy tunnel. I’m posting something I wrote on TBW so more people (that means YOU) can act.
YOU CAN HELP!!!! Please make your voice heard. I found this info from this TBW thread: http://www.thebabywearer.com/forum/showthread.php?p=3287907. One of the mamas that works for another governmental agency clarified the fact that CSPC MUST read every comment that they receive!
But the deadline for comments about COMPONENT TESTING, which will basically make or break EVERYTHING for many of our beloved BW vendors is TOMORROW!
PLEASE send an email or fax TODAY!!!
Here is a copy of what I sent, for your reference. (Feel free to use any/all of the language. I wanted to write something from a personal, rather than form-letter, perspective.)
Thanks in advance!
renee
To: Sec102ComponentPartsTesting@cpsc.gov
Subject: Section 102 Mandatory Third- Party Testing of Component Parts
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Sirs and Madams,
I am one of MANY WAHMs (work at home mom) who will essentially be put OUT OF BUSINESS, and thus OUT OF INCOME FOR MY FAMILY unless this legislation is amended to make the testing/compliance standards accessible for micro-businesses.
In many cases, these children’s products are either one-of-a-kind, or in such a small LOT, that individual testing of each FINISHED PRODUCT would be either cost prohibitive or utterly impossible.
If manufacturers are allowed to present third-party certification of compliance of COMPONENTS, it will be much more feasible for these small businesses, that make up the fabric of our culture, to continue to thrive AND insure they are producing SAFE PRODUCTS!
This legislation is intended for the SAFETY OF OUR CHILDREN. But parents who suddenly LOSE ALL INCOME because they cannot adhere to the requirements of the law are putting their families (not ONLY the children) in EXTREME PERIL! Please act swiftly and ALLOW COMPONENT (as opposed to strictly finished product) TESTING!
We are proud to announce the launch of a new meetup… South Florida Babywearing.
[Update 11/16/08]
Here is the link to the new SOUTH FLORIDA BABYWEARING meetup.com group. If you live in South Florida and have ANY interest in babywearing (using a baby carrier to keep your baby close, and still remain hands-free) please check out this group. It is a clearing house for the babywearing activities that are happening in the Greater Miami/Fort Lauderdale area. We have several members in Palm Beach county as well. We are working to establish a babywearing meeting in Boca Raton for those people.
We had our first meetup Friday. There were 2 other cool families that showed up! (2x – Mom, Dad & baby girl) It was great to meet other young, hip parents with their beautiful babies! We turned quite a few heads walking down the Hollywood Beach Boardwalk! lol
Well, I must say that homeschool has definitely been an adjustment! But we are sinking into the groove of it, and meeting some other cool homeschooling families in the area.
Au-Teen recently joined the South Florida Homeschool Key Club (a service-oriented social club). He says all the teens there are cool. He was SO RELIEVED to find others that “feel his pain”. lol (He’s referring to the solitude, which he finds nicer than dealing with standard public school hooligan issues, but is still new and different.)
We are signed up for some core classes through Florida Virtual School – FLVS. FLVS is a FREE, state-run online school in which students may study full-time or part-time. The students are assigned to a virtual class. The teachers are available for questions from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m.
I have subscribed to several local homeschool Yahoo! groups. I have learned about all types of social activities that the kids can participate in. They all have weekly or bi-monthly park days, field trips, etc.
We also went to a meeting, lecture, and ice cream social put on by the Broward Christian Homeschoolers (BCH) group. The Key Club volunteered to setup, conduct the ice cream and concessions sale/fundraiser, and clean up afterward. Au-Teen met another teen guy that had circumstances that were uncannily parallel to his own. So they really hit it off.
And the BEST part is that I’m now “required” to spend even more QUALITY time with my son. It’s so easy to get caught up in our own thing, while our teens are doing THEIR own thing. This is proving to be a beautiful opportunity for both of us! And it also legitimizes many of the otherwise mundane and seemingly “pointless” household chores… they count as “LIFE SKILLS” in school!
I will continue to post updates as we get even more plugged into this new and wonderful world of homeschool!
Please LEAVE A COMMENT about your experience (or exposure) to homeschool, or ways that you have connected with your teen.
As I’ve mentioned before, I LOVE Meetup.com! And I love it even more now that someone local started a new Attachment Parenting Meetup Group. (There has been another one in the area, but for some reason, I never managed to meet up with them. I think it is mostly because their kids are older toddlers.)
Anyway, I went to my first Meetup with this new group. We had a GREAT TIME! This park is devoted to the Arts, and shows it! Architecturally, it is phenomenal! (My hat’s off to Glavovic Studio.) The playground fixtures are actually sculptural! I want to get Elliott to do a photo series that showcases the lovely design of Young Circle Park!
Twilli LOVES the water now. So this was right up her alley. I didn’t think to bring her bathing suit, as I thought it was just a park. So please excuse her diaper-only attire.
Oh yeah! The boys had fun too! I think ALL of the little tykes slept well that night!
Please LEAVE A COMMENT about your favorite play place. And if you know some good file compression techniques for YouTube (via iMovie), please TWEET ME.
You got it. We have modified the body/blanket design of the Twilli Pie Podegi, based on feedback from our first round of testing. Now we need a few more families to test the new poegis.
Thanks to the wonderful mamas for providing excellent feedback! You’re the best.
We even re-did (I call it “remix”… a throwback to my old dj days.) this podegi, for a local babywearing mama and her son. She was the first mama to alert me about the blanket width issue. Her darling son is the same age as Twilli, but he has LONG LEGS! We want to keep baby and parent/caregiver comfortable for the long haul. And we wanted to avoid creating different sizes
(ex. Toddler pod, baby pod, etc.) to sort out.
We carefully drafted the body/blanket pattern so it can “grow” with your baby. One of the other testers said she could comfortably hold her 3 year old AND her 5 year old in the new Twilli Pie 2.0!
So head on over to the Twilli Pie Design website and check out the new designs that are available for this limited (hopefully final) round of testing.
Remember, the testers get a $10 discount, PLUS a $20 refund after the questionnaire and photos are submitted.
This is a great chance to try a brand new, one-of-a-kind baby carrier, at an awesome price.
If you would like to become a Twilli Pie Podegi tester, please leave a comment so I can send you more info and determine if you would fit the bill to be a tester.
Today our sweet Twilli Pie turns 1 year old!! It has been an amazing ride so far. She has grown and changed so much. Yet she is still the same unique person that she has been since she was born, this day, one year ago. A birthday wouldn’t be complete without remembering the BIRTH. Twilli’s birth was an amazing story! Read about the “3 Minute Baby” made her grand entry.
I have a few things I’d like to share with Twilli.
Twilli, today we celebrate your birthday. You were already very present to us BEFORE you were born. But it was such a blessed day when we finally got to see you! Touch you. Hold you.
You have grown so much. We have grown so much! You have already taught us so much about life… about how to LIVE in the present. You are a divine teacher. You have gently taught us how to transcend fear. You have shown us that the birth process is a beautiful thing! You have helped us come back to things that we had somehow forgotten or brushed off… as humans. You have taught us the joy and warmth of attachment! You introduced us to babywearing! You have given us superpowers! (Yes, even when all you wanted to do was nurse, I was thrilled to be able to bond with you and care for your most basic need in such a natural, loving way!) You have helped us find new careers… new callings! You helped us extend our old skills, too! You have even helped your daddy embrace his Korean roots!
We know you will do amazing things. Heck, you already have done amazing things! Thank you for being awesome! Thank you for choosing us. Thank you for being YOU! We love you more than anything!
We had what I guess to be about 50-60% “success” rate of catching potties. And we were only having to change a dirty diaper about every 2-3 days, since Twilli does most of her poops in the toilet, first thing in the a.m.
While we were out of town, we really relied mostly on the diaper. But I still took Twilli to the potty in the morning to do her daily “business”. Since the schedule was wacky, she wasn’t as regular as usual. So we were having at least one dirty diaper about 5 out of 7 days.
Since we’ve been home, I’m proud to say that Twilli is doing really well with it again! I think we’ve only had 1 or 2 dirty diapers in the 6 days we’ve been back!
Sunny was SOOOO helpful about making it possible for us to get the BARE BONES minimum “starter” set. Her store is lovely! I wish her the best of luck and hope all of the natural parents in Knoxville support her!
Those prefolds are SOOOOOO soft!!! And I truly believe that wearing the cloth diapers is going to accelerate the EC, since Twilli definitely feels the effect of the wet diaper and definitely TELLS US about it! (She’s always been very laid back about the wet disposables. At least they do their job of pulling the moisture off baby’s bum.)
I somehow feel like we’ve taken an inside out approach to all of this! Everything I read recommended combining EC w/cloth diapering. But my Westernized “modern” ways sometimes hang on with a vengeance! lol
Please leave a comment and let us know if you have any experience with EC or CLOTH DIAPERS.
Hello everyone. Long time… I JUST NOW got DSL hooked up at my parents’ house in TN. Yea! So I should be posting with a bit more frequency now.
I returned from the Babywearing Conference in Chicago on Sunday. The conference was amazing! I learned so much and met SO MANY wonderful people! It is amazing to see so many like-minded people in one place. And it was very refreshing to be in an environment where I can wear and nurse my baby at any time, and still be part of the goings-on! Twilli responded REALLY well to everyone there too! She got to play with a lot of little babies and toddlers.
The TWILLI PIE PODEGIs were well received! I will be requesting testers soon, so please contact me if you are interested.
I met SOOOOO many influential people in the babywearing and attachment parenting realm! I probably don’t know the HALF of it! I plan to continue seeking wisdom from these people who have “walked the walk” and continue to share with us relative newbies!
It was awesome to traverse the city via public transit. (Gas was $4.47 – $4.89 per gallon there. Eeek!) And I did a LOT of walking! Babywearing makes a HUGE difference in that regard. And I was very pleasantly surprised at how much people helped me with my luggage on the train or in the train station/transfers! I guess I was quite a spectacle with a baby strapped to me, a backpack, a diaper bag/purse, and my suitcase pulled behind it all! lol
I will write more about the conference in the next few days. But I wanted to touch base and let everyone know that we are still alive and kickin’!
We are finally happy done with the TWILLI PIE PODEGI prototype development! We will be making exclusively narrow blanket podegis, for the time being. We prefer the straight straps, although angled straps will be an option. And each TWILLI PIE Podegi will feature at least one piece of reclaimed or vintage fabric. This is an effort to recycle, and thus keep a bit more out of the landfill!
We are happy to introduce the newest Twilli Pie pod, “Water for Chocolate”.
“Water for Chocolate” features internally reinforced and padded baby corduroy straps. The front side of the podegi body has a lovely designer print fabric as the focal point, with a corresponding double pocket. We have also added a TP signature design element of the vertical band of fabric. This reinforces the branding in the logo and forms the letter “T” when the straps are extended out to the sides. There is also a solid blue cotton fabric and reclaimed denim for the “tail”.
The reverse side is solid navy blue twill with the vertical bar in the same designer print from the front. The reverse side of all Twilli Pie Podegis will be solid, or minimal print. We like to be diplomatic, and hope that a more gender neutral side will be appealing to babywearing daddies.
PLEASE LEAVE A COMMENT and let us know what you think of the new Twilli Pie Podegi!
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On top of everything else, our a/c died last week. We are in South Florida, where summer is already in FULL FORCE! So it is very hot at home. I have to admit that these are the days when it sucks to work from home. lol
So yesterday we decided to take a swim to cool off. I was excited to finally use my solarveil water sling in the pool! I have worn Twilli in the ocean with it before. But we hadn’t been in the pool yet.
Twilli really enjoyed being close to me in the water. And she just looks so stinkin’ cute in black! This sling is awesome! It is UV protective too. The ONLY problem is that once we got out of the water, and thus out of near-weightless-baby-zone, Twilli seemed a lot heavier than before. But even when the sling is wet, it is still quite supportive and comfortable.
*For the babywearing purists out there: y KNOW the rings are quite a bit too low. hehehe They just always inch down when we adjust, and I decided I wasn’t going to worry about it.
We are in South Florida, where summer is already in FULL FORCE! So it is very hot at home. I have to admit that these are the days when it sucks to work from home. lol
