Start here. Grow far.

To flu (shot) or not to flu (shot)? That is the question.

Raise your hand if you get the flu shot each year. Raise it again if your child gets the flu shot too. I probably know more people who don't get the shot than those who do but I'm a believer that flu shots are good things that prevent the disease.

Back in 1991 I got the flu and that miserable beast of a virus knocked me flat for three weeks. Seriously, as in I could not get up out of bed for three weeks. I lost nearly a month of my life to that horrible illness and so I've gotten the flu shot ever since (and never got the flu again). And, in all those years of getting the shot, I only had the possible side-effect of flu-like symptoms following the shot once (that was last year when I was pregnant and sick all the time anyway so it's possible that I felt bad for some reason other than the shot).

As for my kids, my daughter's had the shot for the last three years and never had side effects or gotten the flu. This year she'll get it again and so will my son for the first time. My pediatrician's office assured me that the shot they offer infants is mercury/preservative-free and that was a prerequisite for me, since I have him on an alternative vaccination schedule to avoid compounding his exposure to aluminum and other metals (like mercury). As an aside, I adopted this alternative schedule because at two months my son experienced what I believed to be unnecessary and troubling side-effects from his shots. As for my daughter, well, I've been unable to find a place in town offering a mercury/preservative-free flu shot for her (she's three) so she'll likely get whatever shot her pediatrician's office is providing since she's never had reactions to the flu shot, or any other shot, before.

I know that whether to vaccinate our kids or not is a hot topic of debate but I wonder if people feel the same about flu shots. The flu is rarely deadly but it does incapacitate it's victims for days or weeks at a time. And, with the merry multitude of the germs and illnesses that my daughter brings home from preschool and the gym daycare, I want to be sure that the flu isn't one of them.

What about you? Will you and your kids get the shots (or the nasal flu mist) this season?

[Photo credit: HealthNews-Stat.com]

I hate to stereotype but...

Are boys are more difficult as babies and girls are more difficult as preschoolers? My parenting experience only spans to preschoolers so far so maybe more seasoned parents can give their opinions. My daughter was the world's easiest baby. She slept well at nights, took great naps, didn't have separation anxiety, adapted to any situation with ease. But now that she's a preschooler she's hell on wheels: defiant with mood swings that rival anything I've ever dished out (and believe me, I'm a pro). And my son? He's adorable, loveble, delicious, but doesn't nap and is going through the worst bout of separation anxiety possibly ever seen. He's not happy (read: he is screaming his head off) unless he's attached to my body.

Maybe it's just my kids, maybe it's just me (I am learning on the job, after all so what do I know?) but what do you think? Are girl babies easy and boy babies difficult? Or is that just some silly stereotype?

Wordless Wednesday: Lucky Guy

More Wordless Wednesday here.

Balancing Act

Although I'm not doing a great job of tracking when my son, my second child, should hit certain milestones, I am great about making a huge deal of it when he does hit them. But, unlike how things were when it was just my daughter I celebrated, now it's not just about my son.

Last night he stood up by himself for the first time. I whooped. I hollered. I even teared up and then grabbed the video camera. But I wasn't the only one in the room with him. His three-year-old sister, my first-born, was there too, taking in every second of mommy cheering for someone other than her. And she didn't like it one little bit.

Suddenly she was excitedly vying for my attention. "Mommy, look at me! Look at what I can do!" she shouted as she jumped off my nursing stool repeatedly. And it was then that I wondered: should I temper my excitement over my son's accomplishments to prevent hurting my daughter's feelings? And, if not, how do I balance the compliments I dole out? Celebrating him doesn't mean I'm not celebrating her. My motherly pride overflows for them both and what I need to do is find a way to explain that to the tender heart of my impressionable, young daughter.

This, then, is one of a multitude of challenges faced by a mother: how to delicately navigate the fine line between siblings so they come out understanding that they are both loved.

[photo credit: SXC]

Love Thursday

My daughter doesn't have preschool on Tuesdays and Thursdays and today she drove me BONKERS. I don't know who came up with the term, "Terrible Twos" but they most certainly had not lived through the "Torturous Threes" yet. Still, with all of the challenges she threw at me today (and throws at me regularly, *ahem*), I love her to bits. I adore her. She slays me. She is the funniest, most fearless, gutsiest girl I know and I'm so proud she is my daughter. You know, when she's not making me want to jump out a window.

View more of Love Thursday here.

A shift

In the past if my daughter got sick on one of her school days, the only days I can possibly hope to work, I'd be thrown into a pani c. I'm a work from home mom and I count on those three preschool days each week to give me a bit of time to earn a paycheck. Also, in the past, if my daughter's getting sick happened to fall on a day when her baby brother was sick too? Well, I'd just have a conniption fit and go cry in a heap in the corner. See, up until recently, my kids getting sick was the worst thing that could happen to me and to them. I'm a self-admitted germaphobe and it's because if my kids are sick I can't work. And if I can't work my task list starts piling up towards the sky and that makes me hugely anxious because I hate, hate, hate to miss a deadline. So I chase my kids around with Purell and make them scrub their little hands raw and I panic when we head to places like the gym daycare or Chuck E. Cheese's because I can literally see, with my superhuman infrared eyesight, the disgusting number of harmful viruses and horrific bacteria coating the environment they're heading straight into.

Today? The previously unimaginable happened. My daughter stayed home sick and my son is sick too. Whammo, out of the blue, two kids with two completely different illnesses. Neither one is extremely sick, thank goodness, but they both needed to stay home for some extra love and care. And, for some reason, I'm not panicking. I'm also not getting much of anything done work-wise but somehow I'm OK with that.

I keep thinking of our fellow Texans who are heading home to face uncertain futures in Houston and the Gulf Coast. I think about what is making them panic right now, what must be causing them to be anxious. And I'm realizing how lucky I am and that putting off work for a few days is simply not a big worry in the grand scheme of things.

I became a stay-at-home, and then work-from-home, mom so I could be here whenever my kids needed me. Today they do and today I'm here for them, not wishing I was working instead.

Underexposed

I'm a proud breastfeeding mother. I nursed my daughter for 17 months. I'd like to nurse my son for that long as well (although he, with his desire to move, move, move and explore and venture out and never stay pinned down may have other plans!). So after reading Catherine's post about a flight attendant practically forcing a blanket over her and her infant son as he nursed, I left her this comment:

"Just today I wanted to nurse my sobbing, separation-anxiety-ridden son in our gym's daycare after they paged me to come get him when he wouldn't settle down. I asked for a spot to nurse him but all the caregivers could tell me was that there wasn't an 'appropriate' place for that because there were (gasp!) older children and it wouldn't be OK for them to see me like that.

I wanted to shout, 'Why not? So they can't, won't, ever become accustomed to seeing it? Because God forbid children should think that breasts have a purpose, that they were once fed by their own mothers. Don't you think that if more children were exposed to nursing mothers instead of shielded from them, we wouldn't be having this conversation right now???' But instead, I took my sobbing child and walked out of there. I, too, wish I had stood up and shouted that. But my main concern was making my son feel better so I got the hell out of there.

In this day and age when we feel so evolved, it is painfully obvious that we so are not."

I'm still amazed that people get uncomfortable when they see a breastfeeding mother and child. Now, I know that not every mother chooses to feed her baby by nursing. There is certainly nothing wrong with formula feeding. I'd never judge a mother for making that choice. We all do what is best for our child and ourselves and our choice is a personal one. With that in mind, why should a mother who decides to breastfeed be judged, whether she's in public or not, for the choice that she has made? And how are we, as a society, ever going to accept nursing mothers in public when we ask them to cover up, when we are aghast at seeing something that is natural, normal and healthy, when we tell our children to look the other way?

I'm proud to breastfeed in front of my nephew (who's nine) and niece (who's four) as well as my daughter (who's three). I hope that because I do they will grow up viewing breastfeeding as a natural thing, something that is a part of life and nothing out of the ordinary. I hope that one day all children will grow up thinking that breastfeeding is as normal and as accepted as bottle feeding and that women will not be made to feel that they need to hide something about which they should feel great pride.

We have our winners!

Congratulations to the four winners for our first giveaway:

The winner of our "Swimmer" onesie is Gina StratosG.
The winner of our "Gymnast" onesie is Queen of the Click.
The first winner to choose from one of our original 12 career patches tees is Rebecca C.
The second winner to choose from one of our original 12 career patches tees is The Aitch.

We'll contact you to get your shipping info.

Thank you to everyone who entered and helped us celebrate the launch of our new blog. We hope you'll come back often, comment and enter our upcoming giveaways!

Let's chat about Sarah Palin

Keeping politics aside--because this is a blog about babies and parents and, well, there are other great blogs that discuss those topics along with politics--what do you think about Sarah Palin as John McCain's pick for his VP running mate and the fact that she's a mother to five children?

My first thought was, "Whoa! She's got five kids? One's an infant? And she's running for VP? I have two kids and I work from home part-time. Most days I can barely manage it all. How does she do it?" And then I thought, "She must be an uber-manager since she's got to handle not only the State of Alaska but her large family too. And, hmmmm, I wonder which is more difficult?" But, of course, I--and we as a nation--never question how men do it all no matter how many children they have. Why do we still, in this day and age, tend to treat women differently?

I may or may not agree with Palin's politics but I think her introduction to the national scene has already sparked intelligent and thoughtful debates and discussions about important women's issues. It's about time.

What do you think? Can a woman run a country and a family, both successfully, at the same time? Is her husband, by the very demanding nature of her potential job, relegated to the role of Mr. Mom and would that be a bad thing?

[photo credit: The Progressive]