Showing posts with label wool. Show all posts
Showing posts with label wool. Show all posts

Tuesday, November 8, 2011

Safe, softer, sleeping

Now that my daughter is getting older (she's edging quickly towards 2 1/2) her mattress, organic in all it's glory, is feeling a little on the firm side for her tossing and turning little body. I'm finding her sleeping on her side and back more and more, so I started looking for a mattress topper to soften it up a bit. Not as easy of a task as I thought it would be. Finally though, I found one, at Ecobaby.com.
Since growing bones grow best on firm mattresses, their recommendation for softening up a firm mattress without adding too much give was one of their organic plush pads, made of natural wool attached to a cotton backing, so as to be humane. My daughter sleeps in a Stokke oval crib, and they even make a pad for her mattress.
Here's to hoping both she, and I, will be catching a few more Z's.

Monday, November 1, 2010

Be floored


When my daughter started to outgrow her foam play mats and baby gates, I went in search of a healthy floor covering alternative (our floors are marble, and are hence very hard and cold). I was turned onto Flor modular carpet tiles, an ingenious system of square carpet tiles that fit together to make either a large area carpet or wall-to-wall carpet. They have a variety of different types of tiles, but the natural wool option was what made me fall in love. A wool carpet was a must for us since we only wanted natural fibers near our daughter's skin. FLOR squares are also one of the lowest VOC (volatile organic compounds)-emitting home carpet products out there. This is good since we don't want most of the acronyms you hear of (BPA, PVC, VOC...) anywhere near our kids.
The tile system is great since you can replace just one if (or more like when) an accident occurs. You can mix and match colors, weaves and patterns, even as subtly as parqueting the tiles (alternating direction of the weave), which is what we did. Since we've had the carpet in our living room, we've suddenly started migrating back into our formal living room, which we haven't gone near since she was born. It makes the room feel warm and cozy, and now I don't need to hunt down a pillow to sit on every time I want to sit on the floor to play. Installation consists of laying the squares down and lining them up. Voila. They also provide corner stickers to connect the tiles, but I haven't even used those yet and the carpet seems to be sticking in place just fine.
As far as my daughter's reaction, it was like Christmas had come early. She thought it was crazy and amazing that all of this soft carpet was laid down just for her. Who knew Santa came in the form of carpet squares.
I also love that over 90% of FLOR tiles are made in the USA and that they recycle any squares that are returned to them. Check them out at www.flor.com/

Friday, July 2, 2010

Wonderful Wool


When our daughter was born I bought several wood puddle pads for her co-sleeper and, later, Stokke crib. Luckily, we haven't needed them too many times, but there were a few nights of diaper rash, where we let her sleep without diapers that they came in very handy. We now have the oval pad under her organic mattress in her Stokke (oval) crib and we use one of the smaller ones we got for the co-sleeper in the middle of our bed, under the sheets.
Lots of manufacturers make natural pads...we got ours from Pure-Rest, but the wool mattresses and pads from Sheperds Dream are just dreamy.
http://www.purerest.com
http://www.shepherdsdream.ca