The Mola Fish Baby & Sustainable Parenting

It was 6:14 AM on a Tuesday, and I was wearing Dave’s old college sweatpants backwards because the dog had thrown up on mine. I was standing in the middle of the kitchen, clutching yesterday’s lukewarm coffee in a chipped mug, and staring at a neon-orange plastic light-up dinosaur that had somehow made its way into the refrigerator crisper drawer next to the sad, wilting celery.

I was just vibrating with that very specific, heavy brand of millennial mom guilt. You know the kind. Where you realize your entire house is basically just a landfill waiting to happen, and you feel like you're personally responsible for the destruction of the earth because you bought your kid a noisy toy that runs on six AA batteries. I thought I had to be this pristine, zero-waste goddess who exclusively dressed her infants in unbleached linen and ground her own organic oats, but I was failing. Miserably.

And then Dave—who has this habit of getting intense hyper-fixations from late-night Reddit scrolling when he has insomnia—walked in, looked at me holding the cold plastic dinosaur, and said, "Hey, do you know how small an ocean sunfish is when it's born?"

I didn't care. I really, truly didn't. I was too busy having an existential crisis over Tupperware.

But Leo (he’s 7 now, but still obsessively interested in anything that sounds like a weird alien) overheard from the hallway and immediately demanded to see pictures on Dave's phone. Thus began our family's absolute, unhinged obsession with the weirdest creature in the ocean. And ironically? It totally changed how I handle all this eco-friendly parenting crap.

I used to think green parenting meant being perfect

Before the great fish obsession of our household, I was driving myself absolutely insane trying to keep up with these aesthetic Instagram moms who decant wooden heirloom blocks into woven seagrass baskets while their impossibly clean babies chew on ethically sourced twigs. It's so much pressure. You feel like you've to single-handedly save the ice caps by never buying a plastic pouch of applesauce ever again, while simultaneously breastfeeding until your kid is in kindergarten and remembering to sort the recycling perfectly. I'd literally stand in the grocery store aisle having a silent panic attack over which diaper brand had the lowest carbon footprint, while Maya (now 4) screamed in the cart because she dropped her shoe.

It was exhausting. Truly.

I was trying to do everything all at once, driving myself into a wall of anxiety over every single purchase we made for the kids. I've no idea how carbon offsets actually work and honestly I never will.

Then Dave brought up the weirdest fish in the ocean

So anyway, back to Dave and his phone in the kitchen. He starts explaining to Leo that the ocean sunfish—also called the Mola mola—is basically a giant floating pancake. But the crazy part is how they start out. According to whatever late-night Wikipedia hole Dave fell down, the fry are supposedly born so ridiculously tiny, like 2.5 millimeters long. Basically the size of a crumb on your kitchen counter.

Leo’s animal encyclopedia that we checked out from the library later that week said the moms can lay like 300 million eggs at once? Which, oh god, my uterus just sympathy-cramped even typing that number out.

But they don't look like their parents at all. They look like these aggressive, miniature spiky puffballs. The spikes are supposed to protect them from getting eaten, and then as they grow, they lose the spikes and their tail just kind of folds inward into this scalloped rudder thing. And they grow to be like 5,000 pounds. My brain can't even process that kind of math, going from a crumb to a minivan. Nature is wild.

Why a spiky ocean pancake made my kids care

Here's where this random marine biology lesson actually saved my sanity.

Our pediatrician, Dr. Aris, told me once during a very chaotic check-up that little kids just don't have the brain capacity to care about abstract doom concepts like "climate change" or "pollution." She said if you want them to understand why you're making certain choices at home, you've to attach it to something concrete, empathetic, and weird enough to hold their attention.

Well, sunfish eat jellyfish. And floating single-use plastic grocery bags look exactly like jellyfish when they're in the water.

Suddenly, we had a face for our sustainability efforts. We weren't just "recycling to save the earth" (which means nothing to a toddler). We were making sure the spiky little ocean crumb babies didn't accidentally eat plastic bags when they grew up into giant docile pancakes. Leo became a militant little environmentalist overnight. He would literally slap plastic straws out of Dave's hand at restaurants. It was intense, but it worked.

It also completely shifted my perspective. I stopped trying to be perfect and just started making easier, smarter swaps in the kids' stuff where I could, focusing on things that actually go in their mouths.

The stuff we seriously use

When Maya was aggressively cutting her canines, she was a drooly, furious mess. Instead of buying those cheap plastic teething rings filled with mystery gel that always made me nervous, we grabbed the Malaysian Tapir Teether Toy. I'm totally obsessed with this thing.

First of all, it's shaped like a tapir, which gave Leo another weird animal to fixate on and tell all his friends about at recess. But practically speaking, it has this little heart-shaped cutout in the middle that Maya could hook her chubby, sticky fingers into. She would just sit there on the rug in her diaper, fiercely gnawing on the tapir's ears for like twenty solid minutes while I finally drank my coffee. It's 100% food-grade silicone, which meant when she inevitably threw it into the dog's water bowl or onto the driveway, I could just chuck it in the dishwasher. No boiling, no stress.

If you're dealing with the teething nightmare phase right now, you can browse through all of Kianao's organic and silicone teethers here.

We also had the Panda Teether from the same brand. It's totally fine. The silicone is soft and safe, but it’s so flat that it kept slipping perfectly between our sofa cushions. Dave had to fish it out from the couch abyss like three times a week. It got the job done, but I much preferred the tapir because it was bulkier.

When Maya was a tiny potato infant, way before the sunfish era, we had the Fishs Play Gym Set. It was honestly beautiful—just smooth, sustainable wood with these simple wooden rings. It didn't flash neon lights or play aggressive circus music at me while I was already overstimulated. It just looked nice in my messy living room and kept her happily swiping at things.

We're definitely not eating them (a very weird disclaimer)

By the way, Dave read on some deep-sea fishing forum that sunfish are really super toxic to humans. Apparently, the European Union strictly bans selling them for food because their internal organs are full of toxins that will wreck your stomach.

Which, honestly, who's looking at a 5,000-pound floating slimy dinner plate and thinking, "Yes, let's put that in a taco"? Nobody. But it's good to know, I guess, just in case my kids suddenly figure out offshore commercial fishing while I'm not looking.

The relief of not doing it all

I still buy berries in those terrible plastic clamshells because I'm weak and my children require raspberries for basic survival. I still forget my reusable bags in the trunk of the car half the time.

But I stopped feeling guilty about it. We replaced the big things. We use silicone instead of plastic for their toys and plates. We talk about the ocean. We draw pictures of the ridiculous spiky fish. It’s messy, and it’s imperfect, and my house still looks like a tornado hit it most days, but at least I know the stuff my kids are literally chewing on isn't going to sit in a landfill for four hundred years.

Before we get into the deeply chaotic and highly personal FAQs down below, if you want to swap out some of your plastic baby gear for things that seriously look nice and won't make you feel guilty, you should really check out Kianao's collections.

Messy Parent FAQs

Are giant ocean sunfish dangerous to humans?

According to every nature documentary Leo has forced me to watch, no. They're incredibly docile and mostly just float around sunbathing near the surface. Though Dave did read that they sometimes jump like ten feet out of the water to shake off parasites, and their heavy bodies have crashed into small boats before. Basically, they're giant, harmless dummies.

How do I get my toddler to care about sustainable stuff?

You literally can't just talk at them about the environment. It doesn't work. You have to find an animal they think is cute or weird, explain that plastic hurts that specific animal, and watch them become deeply emotionally invested. Make it a bedtime story about a spiky fish or a turtle, and just swap out the worst of the plastic crap in your house when they aren't looking.

Can I really put these silicone baby teethers in the dishwasher?

Oh god, yes. I wouldn't buy anything I couldn't throw in the dishwasher. The silicone ones survive the top rack perfectly fine. Sometimes if it gets really gross—like when Maya dropped hers at the park in the dirt—I'd just boil it in a pot of water for a few minutes while making mac and cheese.

What if my baby refuses to play with wooden or natural toys?

Totally normal. Sometimes they just want the loud, ugly plastic thing your mother-in-law bought them. You just casually rotate the nice wooden ones like the play gym into their line of sight, and eventually, they'll grab them. Don't force it or stress about it.