The baby gets its own shoebox...

K so we are coming to a sort of compromise...For those of you familiar with our journey, you may find this repetitive, so pardon.But, for anyone who happens to be reading this for the first time, here's the nutshell: we are 3 people on a yearlong roadtrip to every state in the union, documenting environmental sustainability as we find it... I became pregnant somewhere in about the 3rd month of the trip and things started getting more challenging...We have a shoebox that rides around in the car with us, collecting every single piece of garbage we create...Every month it gets emptied and counted, then stays with us in the car, usually put into a cereal box, also garbage. (Incidently, I am suddenly reminded that today is the 1st day of the 8th month of our journey and we can now put last month's shoebox into...some other container...to be carried around with us till the end...) *We do consider recyclables as waste in this experiment, since there is waste in their downcycling and much energy and water used in the recycling process, but at the end of the trip once they are counted they will be recycled. Or even better, reused!Anyway, there have been a few times here and there that I have played the pregnant card on this journey and, shoebox be damned, I bought some freaking yogurt or milk when i craved dairy or drank a bottle of water when i felt unsure about drinking water from the motel bathroom sink. At first, this was rather upsetting to the team but eventually Mark decided that the baby, being an unplanned part of this trip w/different needs than we had anticipated for ourselves, should get her own shoebox, thereby freeing the rest of us from the guilt of breaking from our 'no-waste' commitment. (*note: we still aren't 100 % positive that 'she' is a girl but that is what my gut is telling me. Apologies in advance if you are a boy, my darling. You must be in touch with your feminine side.)That said, we are still trying very hard to remain true to our commitment of making as little waste as we possibly can on this journey. I am going right now to start reading No Impact Man's blogs from the very beginning and see how far I can get. I encourage any of you who are interested to do the same, as he's a wonderful read, with some great ideas.And for now, i will go back to obsessing about baby names and being mildly frustrated that I still have a week before the next ultrasound so that i can hopefully narrow down the search to one sex...Here a picture of my belly so that you can predict - What are we having? Is our little YERTian jackaroo or jillaroo...??? What will it be? Mystery solved in 7 dys!