Something Svan-durful

GreenDaddy opened the box to the Healthy Choice High Chair as I observed him from behind my copy of Charles Chesnutt's The Marrow of Tradition. I thought he might vomit inside the box because of the look of horror on his face after his first peek inside...Had he discovered a rotting rat? A dismembered thumb? Or worse, a nondismembered thumb?

What's wrong, I asked him.

He tossed a dramatic hand into the box and procured the high chair's food tray. He swung it in front of him like an infested flag. He didn't have to say anything at all to me, once I saw it: it was large, white, and... plastic.

BabyG only has a few plastic toys, most are wooden or stuffed. I sent away for special metal spoons to feed her with. I don't buy organic Gerber baby food, when I buy food, because its in plastic containers. We have written extensively about the dangers of plastic, especially of putting it in your mouth. If BabyG picks up a plastic rattle, of course, I don't wrench it away from her; I am not yet a total nutcase. But when I'm thinking about what rattle to give her, I usually pick out her wood & gourd maracca; when people ask me what sort of toy she'd like, I tell them wood or metal or soft.

So here was this perfectly fabulous high chair, one we'd researched and picked out purposely, just a year before. And it had a big plastic tray. It wasn't quite a dilemma, because we just knew we couldn't keep it. It wasn't like having a rattle or a little plastic music maker she plays with sometimes; I mean, how could we make BabyG, the whole impetus of our Green Parenting website, spend her first three years eating every meal off a plastic plate?

We felt jammed up. We felt silly. If I saw somebody else's baby with a plastic high chair, I wouldn't think, "Whoa, that's child abuse." I wouldn't even think, "They really oughtn't do that." I would tell them what I know about plastic sometime, and let them decide what to do. People make the best decisions they can for their babies, in the context of their particular lives. Some people won't let their babies get in chlorine filled swimming pools, but BabyG goes all the time. You choose your battles.

Plastic is one of our battles. We couldn't let BabyG eat on that high chair. So I sold that high chair on Craig's List, and we looked for used wooden high chairs. Most were rickety. One was an antique that had a hole in the seat for the baby to potty in while she ate...and we're into EC and all, but there are limits.

After researching around on the web awhile, we fell in love with the Svan High Chair, which costs about twice the amount of the Fisher Price Healthy Choice.

But it is made of wood. And it IT IS SO COOL LOOKING.

And it converts into other forms as BabyG grows so it remains useful fifteen times as long. When she's a toddler the seat will boost her up to the table, and we can lower it as she gets taller. And when she's officially tall and wants to sit in the same chair as the rest of us, she can use it as her desk chair, heh heh. She can take it to college with her, by then it'll be retro.

I think all this was interesting because as parents, we're learning about what lines we draw. Chlorine, yes. Plastic high chair tops, no. I wonder what choices other parents make, choices that might make them feel (or make others feel) they've gone over some edge. Or can people think of things their parents did...what rules or what beliefs they had that were inflexible?

Probably this is too big a question for this post. But here it is.