Just looking at this page makes me feel guilty for not having written for so long!  But I have a good excuse: I had another baby in July (that makes three boys for us)!  His difficult birth, my recovery, and just getting used to a household of three boys under 4.5 years, plus running the business, has set me back a bit.

But with September around the corner, the back to school feeling has put me in the mood for new beginnings and getting back to my regular schedule, so here I finally am!

There is so much to catch up on, so tune in over the coming weeks as I write about:

• new non-toxic products for packing a litterless lunch
• 7th Generation eco products ( a review)
• how to select a tree to plant in your yard
• how much has changed on the organic/eco-friendly front since I had my first baby 4.5 years ago

Any suggestions for topics you’d like me to explore in this blog are always welcome; same for product suggestions for our online eco store, kaikids.com.

Check out the great Organic teething Bonbon review on Cool Mom Picks!

Cool Mom Picks – Bonbons for babies

2:30 PM

Here are a couple of pictures from our ’store’ location. It has been quite a different experience compared to doing something like the Greenmom or Children’s trunk show. We have not had as many customers but you get to spend a lot more time with each person, and so far everyone has bought something! We’ve had very positive feedback from everyone who’s visited so far so at the moment we think we wil do it again. We’ve had some gorgeous babies here so far today including 2 Maya’s, a Caitlin , sisters Ines and Isabelle, and an adorable 9- month-old boy named Luca (Luka?). Here are 2 pictures from the ’store’.

Okay, time to go get a coffee before we get inundated with the apres-nap crowd! If there’s time, I will try to post again before we leave the store, otherwise, I will post sometime this evening after the boys are in bed!

Hope you’re having a great day!

Peter…

10:45 PM

The end (?) of the day. It wasn’t quite as busy as we had hoped but it was fun nevertheless. No apres-nap crowd after all. It’s a great space though and I think it has a lot of potential. I have quite a lot of ideas after being there today. We will probably have another shopping day in September, we will let you know as soon as we confirm.

Thanks to everyone who came by today, it was great to meet you all.

Peter…

Robin at Comox Valley Kids blog just wrote an article about us, posted on Feb. 1st. Robin, thanks so much for the flattering post- we are glad you like our organic baby and maternity clothes! Check out Robin’s blog – it’s a great resource for parents with preschoolers at home. Although some of the activities are specific to her enviable location on Vancouver Island, she has lots of good ideas for crafts you can do on a rainy day and also, a fantastic Rainy Day Book Club, with some excellent kids book recommendations.

Launching a business is all consuming! But now that it’s been a few months and our organic baby clothes store Kai Kids is up and running well, Peter and I thought it would be fun to write a blog about our business, new products we are thinking of adding, our kids, and our adventures in green parenting. Plus, we wanted somewhere we could start a conversation with you – our customers and potential customers! We hope to hear from you in this space: what you are trying at home with your own children, products you’ve heard about and recommend we stock, what you think about our lines and more.

We just added two new lines to www.kaikids.com: Earth Friendly Baby and South of France. Since our son Kai was born three years ago I’ve struggled to find natural soaps, bubblebath and chemical-free skincare for our family that smelled nice and were affordable. It’s been particularly tough to find bubble bath that passes the judgement of both me and Kai! A lot of the natural, organic bubble baths just don’t foam up, and you end up wasting a lot of it trying to work up some bubbles. Earth Friendly Baby is a popular, award-winning natural baby skincare line from Australia that we are proud to now carry at Kai Kids. They do not contain any artificial colouring, parabens, sodium lauryl sulphate, petroleum-based ingredients, or any synthetic fragrance and detergents. And no animal testing has been conducted on any of their products. So we’re going to use their bubble bath and see! We are also stocking their Organic Shampoo & Body Wash formulas in two scents: Lavender and Chamomile. This line is quite new to Canada so we are looking forward to hearing what you think of it!

South of France isn’t a baby line, but we thought we’d stock their quality, natural soaps nevertheless. They are quite a good value as they are large, very hard bars of 100% vegetable soap that last and last. With lovely scents like Lavender, Honey and Lemon Verbena, each bar contains soothing olive oil and moisturizing Shea butter infused with natural fragrances and essential oils. Although made in the U.S., these rich lathering, bars are produced using a traditional recipe from Provence. And the company ensures their soap is not tested on animals, is biodegradable and they also use recyclable packaging.

-N