The power of suggestion

My boys never cease to amaze me. Even though I am convinced that they are both special little brilliant geniuses, I still underestimate them all the time.

I found a version of some older software for toddlers that S used to love playing. When I first put Z in front of it, I figured he would be hitting the keyboard randomly for a while, and it would be forever before he started pointing and clicking the mouse, and even longer before he actually understood that it corresponded to something on the screen in front of him.

Well, he was pointing, clicking and dragging within about 2 days.

The other thing I underestimated was the ability of Z to be influenced by what he was looking at on a screen. When he pointed and clicked on the number seven, seven apples popped up and he said “Caco!” (his word for apple…it actually is short for avocado…long story). He ran to the refrigerator, grabbed himself an apple, and proceeded to eat it. Ten minutes later, a similar situation happened with bananas showing up in the game. He chirped “ ‘nana!”, jumped up, and insisted on eating a banana.

Luckily, he doesn’t watch much TV, and what he does watch has few commercials. But, the power of image to be converted instantly into want and then action made my head spin. And, of course, it made me paranoid about what future effects advertising will have on his mind and on his waistline.

I found a good site from PBS called Don’t Buy It. This site is geared more towards kids S’s age (7 ½) than Z’s age (2). I will try it out on his older brother first. But, who knows, he may be ready for it. I may just be underestimating him again.

Photo credit: anissat at www.sxc.hu

Just snort it up, why doncha?

I am taking a break from transferring blog entires from my old site (boo! hiss!) and writing a new entry. I have a few bouncing around in my head to write, but this one needs to show up now to say:

HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY!!

We have avoided sending out cheap crap with some TV or movie character on them to S's class for three years going with this cute little idea! Take the picture, paste it on construction paper, and we are set to go.

So, the people who only know me online get used to my rants and liberal use of the word "crap" when it comes to junk food. Twice today on a board I frequent people made jokes about me judging them for discussing eating / giving their kids crap food. OK, so I am building a reputation. I feel like Julia Child when she said (I am paraphrasing) that everyone thinks she eats quail eggs constantly, but every now and then she is in a hurry and drives through for a burger.

Case in point: My sons are fighting over S's Valentine's Day candy as I type. My 2 year old Z asked me to open up Fun Dip for him. Fun Dip! (I didn't let him have it. I may throw it away if S doesn't eat it in a few days.) I haven't eaten that since I was in college, and my hair was purple at the time, if that was any indication of my judgment.

S's new favorite candy is Pixy Stix. Someone gave this kiddie crack candy out to his second grade class. He keeps on pouring stick after stick down his throat and exclaiming "Wow! I reeeeeeally like this!" with a crazed, glazed look in his eye. I half expect to find him cutting it in lines and snorting on the dining room table after dinner tonight.

So, point is, yes, I complain, but I am a hypocrite. I value healthy food, but I know what it's like to have a sweet tooth, or to have kids who get handed crap at school once a week for one reason or another.

Don't worry, no judgment here. I don't hate the player, I hate the game.

Is the ultrasound why Johnny can't read?

It may be too late for my kids, since I had the
standard ultrasounds with both of them. One for dating early in the pregnancy, and one for checking the placenta placement and to identify the sex of the baby later. Actually, I starting to question the necessity or safety of repeated ultrasounds during pregnancy and wasn’t going to get the second sonogram during my pregnancy with Z, but an apparent gallbladder attack with severe pain and vomiting sent me to the radiologist just in time to find out about his penis-to-be.

Well, more research shows, although in mice, that ultrasound exposure may interfere with the normal neurological development of the fetal brain. The correlation in the study was strong enough to make me reach for my tinfoil hat.

My last pregnancy was right before the 3-D (or 4-D) ultrasound craze. And before Tom and Katie and their copycats got the ultimante accessory: a home ultrasound machine. Some moms-to-be get many ultrasounds, and many practitioners use their machines more often than is probably "medically necessary", which is a subjective term.

Childhood fat can be fatal

I was on line with my husband Coach Stu for the fantastic White House years exhibit at the Abraham Lincoln Museum in Springfield, Illinois this past weekend. My mom raved about the exhibit, which she had seen earlier in the year and loved. She was watching the boys, and we were refreshingly child free as we waited to get in.

Right behind us in line, two women were having a scathing conversation about a mutual friend who is a toddler mother. I like to imagine if I had Z with me, they would have toned down the mama bashing a bit.

"So, did I tell you she doesn't let him have French fries."

"She doesn't?"

"No, she makes him eat the apples with the Happy Meal or something ridiculous like that. Says the fries are fattening or something."

"Hmmmm. Tsk tsk"

"Oh, and she doesn't let him drink pop. She can have twelve pops a day, but she won't give any to him." (Ha. "Pop". We call it "soda".)

"She doesn't??!! How old is he?"

"Almost two."

"Well, WHAT does he drink?? Milk? Punch?"

"I don't know. Water I think."

"WHAT??"

I turned red with anger and shame. These women were talking about a mother as if she was abusing her child for making some of the same choices that I make daily. I have to admit Zach has had his share of French fries on our few fast food and restaurant experiences (almost exclusively while traveling). But, I would never dream of giving him soda, and even closely restrict it in my seven year old. Although I have total sympathy for parents who rely on fast food for their family, I love to cook and healthy food is a priority for me, and the French fry exposure is kept to a relative minimum in our household too.

Let's get this straight. I am not judging parents who make different decisions than me in their priorities. I am simply pointing out why I identified with this mom that these women were tearing apart.

A recent study in the Annals (no giggling) of Internal Medicine concludes that teenagers who are the most obese are almost three times as likely to die before the age of 44, which was the end of the study. An easier to read article on the study claims the heavier subjects were also more likely to smoke and to commit suicide. (Kurt Vonnegut argues that smoking cigarettes is a slow form of suicide).

Thinking of how much I have to struggle with my weight, and I was not obese as a child or adolescent, makes me paranoid about the future of my children and the children of America. Childhood overweight and obesity is an epidemic right now. I guess I will have to take some people talking smack about me and moms like me, because I am going to stand by my no soda for my toddler decision.

Slings and arrows for baby carriers

I think I know when to put on my tinfoil hat. When I am reading ingredient lists, it is a must. When I am watching the news, ditto. Shopping for baby carriers? Not so much.

So, I was taken by surprise when I saw this article, written by a chiropractor, saying that certain baby carriers can do spinal damage on babies. I did happen to use the sling with Z, but I very amusingly wore it the wrong way in the beginning. (No, it is not supposed to hang way down low like that, and I have never pretended to be an expert at anything.) It probably was very hammock-like for baby Z, as recommended in the article, but might not have been the best for my back! What slings did you use or do you plan to use? Did your babies seems comfy?

Just another hippie Saturday

I had to poke a little fun at my crunchy self. This Saturday I used my friend's (thanks, Summer!) present to me: a push lawnmower! This is the second time I used it. It ROCKS. No noise, no dangerous whirling mechanical blades, no gas, no money to OPEC, no addition to global warming....

I love it. As part of my paranoia, I am afraid of global warming. I thought An Inconvenient Truth was a fantastic, well made movie. I wish Gore could have been that compelling in the lead up to 2000, but that is another blog.

My mother-in-law grew up in a house her father built on beautiful Sugar Loaf Key in the 1950's. Last year,
Hurricane Wilma, only a paltry category 3 hurricane, left the entire island under several feet of salt water. After New Orleans and Katrina, the submerged island didn't really make a lot of news. Every car on the island was a loss. My mother-in-law's beautiful house was flooded. Salt water corroding and ruining every piece of furniture, every appliance, every book.

If you can look beyond my strikingly handsome boys, take a gander at the water line on the wall behind them. Something tells me that fifty years ago, this may not have happened. At least not both in the same hurricane season. I have lived in Florida almost as long as my mother-in-law, and I cannot remember hurricanes ripping through here like they have in 2004 and 2005, our worst years yet, except for possibly Hurricane Andrew.

I was due with baby Z during the 2004 hurricane season, and we endured three successive hurricane hits within a month of his birth. Our direct hit by Wilma's screaming eye last year was far more frightening for me, however.


Anyway *shaking head and blinking* what were we talking about? Oh, right. My crunchy hippie self. So, this Saturday, I ate some organic blueberry granola with organic kefir, went out and used my push lawn mower, popping my head back in every now and then to check on how my home made yogurt was doing. I looked back on the afternoon and felt compelled to go buy some patchouli and stop wearing deodorant. Oh, wait, I did forget.....Don't worry. I showered after the lawn mowing. And there was no money hidden under the soap.


I checked my email inbox later, and apparently my tinfoil hat did not prevent the spam email advertising people from reading my hippie vibes. I had these two ads in various news letters today. Enjoy, fellow hippies:


Peace blocks


Organic Gift Shop


And both have reasonably priced items!


Here is a hippie-friendly new blog called
Emerald Market by a friend of StephaniaPButler

My many hats

Every now and then, I will be taking off my tinfoil hat and putting on one of my many other hats: mom, friend, cook, feminist, midwife in training. This week it will be my midwife student hat on my head.

I am training at the Miami Maternity Center and International School of Midwifery, the same place where I gave birth to my younger son Z. It is a grueling but beautiful program. I get to be part of some of some of the most memorable and emotional experiences of women's lives. I also get to catch vomit, mop floors, inspect placentas, and dipstick urine, sometimes at 2 o' clock in the morning. Sometimes I wonder what is harder, giving birth naturally or midwifery school.

Especially this week. Tomorrow starts my "Hell Week". In our 3 year program, we are required to spend one full week at the birth center in our second year, and two full weeks there in our third year. We have to attend every birth, every clinic, every class. We shadow the director and ignore our families.

It is the albatross around the neck of every student in the program, and it is especially hard on those of use who are parents. I have so much to do - pack clothes, pack food, pack a sleeping bag. All I want to do is run away and hide. I know if I worry about sleep deprivation, missing my kids and husband, or the amount of work and cleaning I will be doing, I will make myself miserable. OK, more miserable. I am really looking forward to the experience and all of the moms I will meet and births I will see, but I am going to have a hard time leaving home tomorrow morning.

How I learned to love my tinfoil hat

I hope most of you are in the group who laughed uproariously and said "What a funny name!" when you read the title My Tinfoil Hat, as opposed to the few who gave me a puzzled look and said "Um, what is that about?"

The has been touted by concerned people as being a layer of defense against unseen threats such as mind reading, electromagnetic fields, alien transmissions and radiation. This hip fashion accessory has also become a symbol for protection among the paranoid.

I am not what many would call paranoid in all of my parenting choices. I let my kids run around barefoot outdoors. My older son S voluntarily told me he's not so sure it's such a great idea, since he has had more than one painful splinter digging expedition into his tender feet. He rides his bike, plays with his friends with intermittent supervision, and sometimes even walks to the bus stop with me waving from the front door, hoping to crawl back into bed with my toddler Z instead of walking the whole crew up the street.

Z is a daredevil child, climbing up onto windowsills and scaling the backs of furniture. He stands on the back of his rocking horse. I smile, and take it in stride. When one of them coughs or sneezes, I am not immediately booking the next appointment at the pediatrician's. No anxiety attacks, no wild parental fear.

However, when it comes to the lurking synthetic dangers, that's where you get me thinking THEY are out to get me. You can find me in grocery stores, scanning ingredient labels for the latest threatening additive the mad scientists of the food industry have invented. I prefer the genes of my organisms unmodified, thank you very much. I worry about a cell phone tower being built in my neighborhood. What exactly do they beam out of those things? Is THAT why Z isn't sleeping through the night yet?

So, My Tinfoil Hat is a place for me to document my paranoid research into what won't kill my kids, but may make them stronger. Or, give us all cancer. Who knows? Stay tuned and find out.