Again, apologies to the person who sent me this link. Posting it anyway, since it’s a good one:
38 Tips to Keep Your Kids Entertained and Stress Free When Seeing a Doctor
Wow, it’s been a long time. I just released a bunch of comments from over a year ago (my sincere apologies to the commenters) and deleted another 30 or so that were blatant spam (Hi! I like your site! Please click here <random porn link> <random porn link>)
So, here we are. New theme, new version of WordPress, slightly older daughter, same neuroses. Now that BG is out of the danger zone of being a baby (which means I should probably change her alias and stop referring to her as BG), there are a whole new set of challenges for a germophobic mother and a somewhat normal father. I will attempt to regularly post such things.
Stay tuned…
BG has a rash that’s been there for 4 days, and we’re still not sure whether it’s standard-issue diaper rash or a yeast infection. All signs are starting to point to yeast, so we started on Lotrimin tonight and aired her out for about a half hour. Of course, halfway into said airing, she peed all over the crib, which we had (pats self on back) lined with many towels so it would stay off the mattress.
NM has also been a bit wary of putting adult yeast cream on such delicate skin - so we looked online and found that people use plain yogurt as an alternative. Maybe we’ll try that next. Anyone have any experience with this?
This might be a bit late, but I was on vacation and didn’t have any way to post last week. Seems that certain Thomas & Friends wooden toys have lead paint, mostly the red ones. You can read about the whole thing here.
Oh, and, since I’m back and rested, and things have calmed down a bit elsewhere, I will be posting to this blog regularly again. Sorry about the wait. Not that anyone is reading, according to my stats, except maybe Google’s spiders.
Wow, has it been nearly a month? Never fear, I have some new neurotic episodes to share, just as soon as I’m done painting the hallway and installing the baseboard molding.
I promise to write a “real” parenting-related post soon, but this was too good to pass up (via What Would Tyler Durden Do?):
I mean, really. These poor kids are going to be in therapy for years.
Alec Baldwin is set to apologize on the View tomorrow - just heard from NM. While I don’t think this excuses his crazy tirade against his daughter (which was really against his ex-wife, obviously), at least he’s manning up and doing the right thing. Of course, now he’s trying to leave 30 Rock (and the country), so I’m sure we’ll keep hearing his name on the news for a few more days.
I was catching up with a friend of mine this weekend and he told me a harrowing story about his daughter: she had been running a fever, which suddenly spiked to 104 degrees; she then ended up having febrile seizures and stopped breathing. Had he not known CPR, she might have died, according to the paramedics and doctors in the E.R. Luckily, she recovered and is doing fine.
After hearing this story, NM and I decided it was high time we learn, rather than be sorry later. I took mandatory CPR classes in high school and a refresher course at work a few months back, but there are obviously different techniques for infants and small children. We bought a video
There are some excellent resources online, one of which can be found here. Even if you’re not neurotic, you should take some time to review these. Seriously. Print them out, give a copy to anyone who watches your child, and anyone you know that has their own kids. Take 15 minutes every month or two to refresh your memory and you could, like my friend, prevent a senseless tragedy.
NM just played me the Alec Baldwin freakout tape - man, someone should be in (more) therapy. Anyone who talks to his daughter that way, calling her a “thoughtless little pig,” needs his ass kicked up and down Hollywood Boulevard.
Check it out here, courtesy of TMZ, your source for neurotic celebrity news.
In an earlier post, I touched on the baby-bottle-and-sippy-cup Bisphenol A issue. As promised, here’s a bit more in-depth information.
First off, what is Bisphenol A and why do we, as Neurotic Parents, care about it? Take a look at the Wikipedia article, specifically this paragraph:
“Bisphenol A has been known to leach from the plastic lining of canned foods and to a lesser degree plastics which are cleaned with harsh detergents or used to contain acidic or high temperature liquids. Infants fed with concentrated (canned) infant formula have among the highest exposures of anyone eating canned foods. Infants fed canned formula with polycarbonate bottles can consume quantities of bisphenol A up to 13 µg/kg/day.”
There’s been much debate about the actual degree of harm caused by Bisphenol A consumption. At one extreme, the city of San Francisco passed legislation in 2006 banning the use of the chemical in baby products. The Environment California Research and Policy Center has also released a report that claims to find significant leaching of Bisphenol A in baby bottles made by five major manufacturers: Avent, Dr. Brown’s, Evenflo, Gerber, and Playtex.
Of course, at the other extreme, a group of plastic manufacturers have put up a website that collects articles trying to disprove that Bisphenol A leaching is a health hazard at all.
In the middle, there are some European and Japanese studies that show very slight leaching under certain conditions (plastic bottles and bowls that have been in regular use for four years or more and heated repeatedly to high temperatures) and make conservative recommendations on discontinuing use in these cases.
Who to believe? Well, here’s our unscientific take on the whole issue: While we don’t usually put much stock in scare tactics used by environmental groups, we also don’t have any faith in large industry to do what’s right. NM and I are just crunchy enough to dig the fact that San Francisco is ahead of the curve on being healthy, and we’d rather not take the chance that they’re right. So, as previously mentioned, we’ve gotten rid of all of BG’s polycarbonate sippies and replaced them with polypropylene ones. An ounce (or seven, as it were) of prevention…
Of course, after making this decision, the next problem was finding out which manufacturers use the good plastic. Most do in at least a few of their products, but BG’s favorite seems to be the Playtex First Sipster
How to tell which plastic your little one is sucking on? Most definitive way is to look at the recycling number in the little triangle stamped into the bottom of the bottle/cup. If it’s #5 (polypropylene), you’re cool. If it’s #7 (polycarbonate or “other”), chuck that puppy. Here’s a quick guide to all of the numbers.
