A pox party is a party held by parents for the purpose of infecting their children with childhood diseases, most commonly chicken pox.

Would you, could you infect your child with a disease, to avoid the controversial avoidance of childhood immunizations?

In our careful watch to ensure our baby slept on his back to avoid SIDS, our newborn son started to develop a flat head. While only a cosmetic concern, our pediatrician recommended we put him on his side while sleeping to mitigate the potential problem. The challenge was, our active son actually rolled over by himself at 1 week, so was not likely to stay on his side.
We found the Symmetry Sleep Positioner useful to keep him on his side (and rotated sides). In the months before he was able to really move on his own, we place him in the SSP within his crib, and he slept comfortably. The device stopped being useful once he could roll himself off of it, but by then he was moving enough that the flat head syndrome was not an issue.
While we never used the caliper to actually measure change, the improvement was visible.

Happy people spend a lot of time socializing, going to church and reading newspapers — but they don’t spend a lot of time watching television, a new study finds.

That’s what unhappy people do.

“We looked at 8 to 10 activities that happy people engage in, and for each one, the people who did the activities more — visiting others, going to church, all those things — were more happy,” Dr. Robinson said. “TV was the one activity that showed a negative relationship. Unhappy people did it more, and happy people did it less.”

[From What Happy People Don’t Do - NYTimes.com]

While the study can’t definitively say it’s TV that makes people unhappy (versus “unhappy people watch a lot of TV), I think we all know all know it’s likely the former. It shouldn’t be much of a surprise since we all know that gorging on basically everything is bad for you. Gluttony, after all, is a deadly sin. Whether it’s too much steak, vodka, gambling, drugs, or just lying around the beach for years (AKA “sloth,” another deadly sin), too much of a good thing is, well, too much of a good thing.

Perhaps turning off the TV is hardest on us as parents. I know that this week, there will be more of our share of Kung Fu Panda and Wall-E than the kids need. We’ll need it however, if we ever hope to get anything other than canned cranberries on the table on Thursday. But reading this article, which can only confirm your suspicions, might help give me the strength to take the remote control in my hand and press OFF… well, maybe after just one more episode of the Backyardigans.

(Editor’s note: Here are more arguments in favor of cloth diapers. Everyone needs to make the best informed choice on this “paper versus plastic-type” debate, but it’s in everyone’s best interest to know the facts.)

Cloth diapering your young one’s bum is not only eco-friendly; it offers a solution to the highly absorbent chemicals found in disposable diapers. Consider the following.

*Babies in cloth diapers have fewer diaper rashes.1

*Cloth diapers are soft on baby’s delicate skin.1

*Disposable diapers contain sodium polyacrylate, a type of super absorbent polymer (SAP), which becomes a gel-like substance when wet. SAP has killed children after ingesting as little as five grams.2

*Scrotal temperature increases in boys wearing disposable diapers affecting spermatogenesis which can lead to infertility. 2

*Disposable Diapers contain Tributyl-tin (TBT) — a toxic pollutant pollutant, which has a hormone-like effect. The smallest concentrations of TBT can harm people’s immune systems and impair their hormonal system. 3

Sources:

1 http://www.healthsystem.virginia.edu

2 Whitewash: Exposing Health and Environmental Dangers of Women’s Sanitary

Products and Disposable Diapers, what you can do about it. Armstrong, Liz and

Adrienne Scott. 1993. HarperCollins.

3 New tests Confirm TBT Poison in Procter & Gamble’s Pampers: Greenpeace demands world-wide ban of organotins in all products. May 15, 2000.

Alison Manes is the mother of six, and the co-founder of Go Green Sustainable Industries, LLC. Alison won Tucson’s Business Woman of the Year award from the American Business Women’s Association in 2003 for her marketing work. Go Green Sustainable Industries, LLC, manufacturers a remarkable new sustainable diapering system using organic and recycled fabrics. Go Green Sustainable Industries, LLC, is committed to manufacturing sustainable products made in the USA. You can view LolliDoo® Diapers at www.lollidoo.com. You can also view Alison’s blog at http://earthymommaodyssey.blogspot.com/.

I gotta say, Tooth Tunes from Hasbro, has been a big hit in our house. At first, my wife scoffed, but these toothbrushes really are a good incentive for little brushers, like my 4-year old boy. The cool difference is that they play music through vibrations through the bristles which makes it sound like music going on through your teeth and into your ears. The songs they have are a little hokey, like “Waking (originally Making) up is Hard to do,” by Neil Sedaka, but others are by more recent teen brushers, like the Jonas Brothers and Miley Cyrus.

The brushes are available in two sizes, regular and junior. Music plays for a full two minutes to make sure the kids get enough brushing in. Too bad there is no “floss tunes.”

We had a chance to meet the inventor, Jose Bensoussan, of the Ubimed Cleanoz Nasal Aspirator Kit at the recent ABC baby and kids product show (2008) and he told a compelling story about this new device. The Cleanoz aspirator is meant to replace the rubber aspirator bulb given by hospitals to new parents. Many parents have been suspicious of the bulb since there is no way to really clean it out or sterilize it and it’s used inside the mouth and nose of very small babies. Better to leave it on the ground the next time it rolls off the changing table and use it as a dog pull toy. The Cleanoz does the job far better and easier using suction to gently pull mucous into a little balloon. After use, or the end of the day, you just throw away the balloon.

Baby Light and Clip – Nail Clipper for Babies If you’ve ever struggled to cut a baby’s finger or toenails, you’ll love this little gadget. It’s a very simple little tool that incorporates a basic baby fingernail clipper and a light so you can clip in the dark while they are sleeping. And, if you’ve ever cut down too close and actually cut your baby (yes, it does happen) because baby was struggling, or you couldn’t see, this clipper has finger guard so you can’t push in too deep. This may seem like just another gadget to some, but your kids will really appreciate it, up to eight years old. And the price is right at $14.99 MSRP and right now only $7.99 on Amazon (9/21/08).

When you have kids of your own, you sense the changing of the generations. I hope your parents are young and you have thirty years before you have to think of elder care, but likely they are old enough you have to at least imagine the need some day. This article, written by a New York Times writer specializing in old age issues, still feels she made several mistakes in caring for her older mother.

What I Wish I’d Done Differently
By JANE GROSS
Looking back on the last few years of my mother’s life, with 20/20 hindsight and the belated knowledge that came from four years of reporting about aging for The New York Times, my single biggest mistake was not finding a doctor with expertise in geriatrics to quarterback her care and attend to the quality of her life, not merely its length.

Given the crisis in supply and demand — too many old people and too few geriatricians — I may not have succeeded. But if I had, many of our crises might have been avoided. Those include unnecessary trips to the emergency room that left her in worse shape than she had been beforehand. It also includes surgery to remove a benign tumor from the outside of her spinal cord after it had already done the worst of its damage and with no regard for her advanced age.

[From What I Wish Id Done Differently - Caring for Elderly Parents – The New Old Age blog – NYTimes.com]

Her other three mistakes were:

2. accepting the “conventional wisdom” that nursing homes are uniformly bad and barely fit for a dog, and to be avoided at all costs. While she liked assisted living, it did not provide enough care as her mother got older, necessitating many changes, all of which were added work and destabilizing to her mother and the family.

3. thinking that a move out of the home to assisted living was the best choice. Once the move is made out of the home, you lose all opportunities for home care, and a nursing home becomes the only option when assisted living is no longer possible.

4. not fully understanding the limits of her $7000/year long term care insurance policy. It would have paid for 24/7 in-home care, but helped very little for assisted living. Once her mother was in a nursing home, the money went directly to the nursing home along with all of her savings until she ran out of money (when Medicare took over because she was “impoverished.”

As Jane Gross, the writer, points out, it’s hard to know how to avoid any mistakes since the sands are rapidly shifting in elder care and benefits, but her biggest words of advice are to research the situation now before you need it, since “haste, often the result of panic, is the enemy.

There has been a lot of talk about sick houses — houses that actually make you sick because of construction materials, cleaners, paints, solvents and pesticides. It might be hard to change houses, but there are things you can do to to make a house less toxic for you and your kids.

1. Get an air purifier and put new allergy rated filters on your furnace every 6 months. Whole house air filter systems work better than portable units. Ideally, use built-in or window unit air-to-air-heat exchangers in rooms where people spend the most time.

2. Get lots of plants. Experts recommend at least two tropical houseplants for every 12×12 foot area to clean up airborne toxins. Use ferns, spider plants, bamboo, and palms close to breathing zones like next to your bed, or TV chair.

3. Open the windows wide. Turn off heat or A/C and open the windows for 10 minutes each day to help rid the house of indoor pollution. Caveat: your allergist may tell you to keep all windows and doors closed during allergy season.\

4. Keep new pollutants out of the house. Every new TV, appliance, or laminate/particle board-based piece of furniture is a source of new toxins into the house. Environmentalists suggest setting these items in the garage a few days to air them out before bringing them into the house.