In an attempt to become as eco-friendly a parent as possible, I have tried every single diapering option known to man. For the first seven months of Ari's life, I had him in cloth diapers, picked up and laundered by ABC Diaper Service in Berkeley.

After nearly cracking from sleep deprivation -- I was changing them even at night! -- I switched over to the chlorine free diapers by Seventh Generation. But after a few accidents, including leaking and diaper rash, I turned to the evil Huggies. They contain lotions that kept and still keep my baby from getting diaper rash and they come in a box of more than 100, eliminating trips to the supermarket -- another environmental consideration.

As part of the article I was working on (see below), I got to test the new hybrid gDiapers on Eli. (See pictured.) The verdict? It's a great concept, but not readily available, even for this city dweller.

I had to drive 15, 20 minutes to North Berkeley to purchase them. And they aren't the cheapest option on the market either: $22.99 for a starter kit that includes two cloth-plastic wraps, 10 diapers, which resemble over-sized maxi pads, and a plastic stick. (I'll explain in a minute.) To buy additional pads for the wraps, cost $13.99 for a box of 32.

The concept is cool and I got a little thrill from putting together the diaper without reading the directions. (Woo-hoo!)

Basically, you snap the plastic in the cotton wrap and stuff the oversized pad in the plastic. The diaper is bulgy, which was one of my beefs with the cloth diapers. Then again, the gDiaper does seem to be easier to handle than a cloth diaper and more eco-friendly than a disposable. Once the baby soils the diaper, you simply tear open the pad, the cotton falls out and you flush it down the toilet.

While I, thankfully, did not have an issue with a clogged toilet, apparently it is not an uncommon problem. The plastic stick is to break apart the cotton in the toilet in the event it does not easily disintegrate. (Mine did.) I marveled at my baby's excrement going where it should: the sewage system as opposed to the garbage.

But I admit that I have not rushed to the Elephant Pharmacy in North Berkeley to restock on gDiapers. It's too much of a hassle to drive there for a single item and getting the diaper together, not to mention the bulkiness, got old quickly. I am back to using the evil Huggies. But as an environmentalist, I am trying to cut down on the number of diapers by sitting Eli on the potty in the mornings, and hopefully, getting her out of diapers sooner than Ari (4 years).

Here's my most important advice should you see this film: Bring Kleenex.

So I like a good tearjerker as much as the next gal, but I really thought my sobbing-at-the-movies days were far behind me. After all, I'm no longer a melodramatic teenager...I'm a grown-ass woman!

But when a movie revolves around the painful, wrenching separation of a mother from her son and his against-all-odds Dickensian quest to reunite with her, all bets are off.

The Mexican film La Misma Luna is the story of 9-year-old Carlitos, played by the astonishing Adrian Alonso. His mother Rosario (famed telenovela actress Kate del Castillo) is one of the estimated millions of Latinas who have left children behind in Latin American countries in order to come here, legally and illegally, and make enough money to feed said children.

Carlitos and his mother have been separated more than four years when tragedy spurs the boy's decision to cross the border, alone, armed with nothing more than an address to find his mother. The resulting journey is by turns dangerous and blessed, fearful and joyous. The lump in your throat remains long after the last, mesmerizing frame.

The narrative puts an achingly human spin on the hot-button topic of illegal immigration. While the melodramatic twists and turns verge on maudlin, it's refreshing to see a multi-faceted portrayal of illegal immigrants, and the compelling, desperate reasons why so many of them come here. It's a welcome break from the rhetoric spewed by the Lou Dobbs and Minutemen of the world. Their law-and-order argument is a perfectly contrasted black-and-white; movies like this fill in those crucial shades of gray by depicting the daily indignities immigrants face, and why they feel they have no choice.

I admit it: I love TV.

I love TV so much that I've stopped adding season passes to my TiVo-- there's no time to watch new shows! But the recently ended writer's strike has left a gap in my viewing schedule, and the commercials for The Secret Life Of A Soccer Mom on TLC were too intriguing to ignore.

The premise is simple: take a SAHM who gave up an outside career in order to take care of her family, and throw her right back into it. Is it all that she remembers? Will she sink or swim? And will she choose to go back to that career?

As an added twist, their unsuspecting husbands have no clue their wives are off trying a career on for size. They think mom's off at a spa, and struggle with the caretaking duties while she is away.

In the first episode, mom Adrian blossomed as a fashion designer and accepted a full-time job at a design house at the end of the show. In the next episode, Katie proved her mettle as a gourmet chef but turned down the subsequent job offer at a chic restaurant; she wasn't ready to leave her preschool-aged sons.

The show is bittersweet; these moms clearly long for their former careers and their husbands rejoice in their accomplishments. But real-life decisions are nuanced and delicate, and the show reflects that.

Of course, Adrian's decision to go back to work triggered ?a predictable backlash from the judgy judgers, who used TLC's message boards to spew anonymous venom:

The posts said the premise of the show is "sick" and Adrian is "selfish." One mom wrote, "Let's show the other side of the story ... how the kids' world is going to be turned upside down by having to go to day care." Another woman goes even further: "Unless you're about to starve there is no reason for you to be at work. If you didn't want to raise your children, you should not have had them. It's child abandonment."

So since 70 percent of women with children under 18 work outside the home...that's A LOT of abandoned children running around! Speaking of which, I should see what my little 3-year-old munchkin is up to...it just occurred to me that I haven't seen or fed her in a couple of days. What can I say, I'm a working mom! I hope she didn't wander down the highway again...

Anyhoo...would you ever consider appearing on a show like this? What career would you want to try on for size? What are some of your favorite reality shows? And do you find the term "soccer mom" as annoying as I do?