Category Archives: Baby Girl

Related to Josie

Sunscreen Report 2011

Oh my god, the sun is out, where is my sunscreen post?! Imagine me digging around in the piles on my desk. Oh, that’s right, I haven’t written it yet. Save the kittens!

First off, you can get caught up with last year’s sunscreen news here.

The big news for this year is concerns nano zinc and titanium particles. These particles, when inhaled, have been shown to cause cancer in lab rats. More studies are needed before we know if they have a similar effect when absorbed through the skin, but for now, they’re easy enough to avoid.

Same as 2010, we’re trying to stay away from oxybenzone (endocrine disruptor). Vitamin A (retinl palmitate) is still controversial but also easy to avoid.

Kathy and Statia over at Safe Mama have already posted an awesome sunscreen report. They have a short list of what you should buy, with many reviews and feedback about texture, consistence, scent and efficacy.

The Environmental Working Group also just released their list of the best sunscreens. There are some great mineral and non-mineral options.

As for me, I’m still looking for the holy grail of sunscreen – the natural lotion that won’t make Josie bright blue. This year I think I’m going to try these

All Terrain Kidsport Sunscreen Spray SPF 30.

And the Aubrey Organics Saving Face SPF 15 Sunscreen for me. I love their conditioner and I could get this one at PCC.

How about you? Do you have a natural sunscreen you love?

The Peanut Puzzle Part I

After my last post, I know you’re all relieved to know that we finally settled in around the one pool in the greater Las Vegas area that did not have loud music. It was a plain rectangle that was in the shade of the high rises until 1:00 every afternoon but we made do.

The highlight of my reading was this: “The Peanut Puzzle: Could the Conventional Wisdom on Children and Allergies Be Wrong?” Sorry, they won’t let you read the article.

Um… YES.

Since 2000 the “conventional wisdom,” endorsed by the American Academy of Pediatrics, has said that parents should wait until a child is 6 months old before introducing solid foods. Then parents should start with the foods that are least likely to cause allergic reactions. This late introduction was thought to make children less likely to develop food allergies.

In the past decade peanut allergies have doubled. Clearly there’s something wrong with our “conventional wisdom.”

I hated giving Josie formula. Spooning powder from a can seemed like the antithesis of nourishment – it was the ultimate processed food. I was anxious to start her on solid foods, but I followed the conventional wisdom and waited until she was 6 months old to give her a bite of cooked sweet potato. In spite of my efforts, or maybe because of them, she’s currently allergic to eggs, soy, white fish and tree nuts.

Doctors Hugh Sampson and Scott Sicherer at Mount Sinai Medical center have found that food allergens are unavoidable and babies come into contact with protein molecules though particles in the air and on skin and in other food and that by giving them such small doses we are actually making their systems more sensitive and more likely to develop allergic responses.

“You can’t avoid food proteins,” Sampson, said. “So when we put out these recommendations we allowed the infants to get intermittent and low-dose exposure, especially on the skin, which actually may have made them even more sensitive.”

Based on a report submitted by Sampson and Sicherer, The American Academy of Pediatrics overturned this practice in January of 2008, stating – “Current evidence does not support a major role for maternal dietary restrictions during pregnancy or lactation… There is also little evidence that delaying the timing of the introduction of complementary foods beyond four to six months of age prevents the occurrence of [allergies].”

Now what? The retraction of the previous recommendation leaves a hole where the current advice should be placed, but there’s nothing there. At this point, all we know is that we don’t know what we thought we knew and I guess that’s a great first step.

When did you introduce solids? How did that work out? Does your child have allergies?

To be continued…

Vegas

We went to Vegas on vacation recently. Paul was there for work and, well, it seemed like it would be easy to join him for a week of sunshine and swimming.

We found a great condo and our accommodations were perfect. We had a kitchen, living area and big bedroom. We were upgraded to a corner unit on the 29th floor with a view of the strip and the desert beyond. The morning after we arrived Josie and Paul headed down to the pool at 9:00 am. I could watch them playing near the lazy river from our room. It was 80 degrees. It was perfect.

Then I went to the pool.

First there was the walk to the pool lined with monitors advertising a Vegas show that involved the shaking of bare butts. Please, could you make sure the hallway content is rated G? Then, we got to the pool and starting at 9:00 am every morning they play LOUD music. I mean so loud that I couldn’t read.

And, no, they could not/would not turn it down for the pasty white lady reading her New Yorker in the shade.

Then at about noon the 20-something’s descended on the lazy river. The pool bar sold fruity, boozy concoctions in gigantic plastic containers. I can’t call them cups because they were so much more than that. They were like 18 inches long, shaped like barbells and outfitted with long straws and lanyards so that you could wear your vodka slurpee around your neck. That way, if you’re too drunk to lift your glass you can still manage to get the super-long straw into your mouth. Awesome.

There was a guy in our hallway who was so drunk at 3:00 in the afternoon that he couldn’t get his zipper up. He stumbled over himself apologizing while Josie stared at him wide-eyed. I’m sure that was one of his proudest moments.

OMG, Vegas? What was I thinking?

We did eventually find one pool that didn’t have loud music and I did eventually get some reading time while Paul kept our girl from drowning in the pool. She, by the time we left, was swimming and breathing on her own and diving to the bottom to retrieve toys. I think she gained 5 pounds of muscle that week. Think of what she’ll be able to do when she reaches the ripe old age of FOUR. I look forward to watching her swim laps from the quiet shade of a palm tree somewhere other than Las Vegas.

PS – I intended to write a quick intro to this article I read, about kids and food allergies, but it looks like I’ve lost my way. That’s how it goes some days. I guess you’ll have to check back next time to hear about the important stuff.

Josie’s Middle-Aged Baby Sister

Josie and I were at a stoplight one day about 18 months ago, before we’d decided to adopt again, when Josie told me her baby sister was coming and pointed out the window. She said her name was Hona and I was super-surprised to find out she was a middle aged white woman wearing sneakers.

We made the decision to adopt again about a year ago but since we weren’t going to start the process right away and we knew how long the process takes we decided to wait as long as possible to tell Josie. So we still hadn’t told her when a friend said, “Hey, if you need any baby boy stuff, just let us know.” Josie was sitting on my lap and she turned, put her hand on my tummy and said, “You have a baby in dere?!” Oops. I told her, that no, I didn’t have a baby in there but that we’d talk about it later.

When we got home late that night she said, “Mommy, who’s Michelle?” Oh heavens. Michelle (name changed) is Josie’s birth mother. I looked at Paul, I guess we’re going to talk about this now… He nodded. So we did. We talked again, about Michelle and the women who choose families for the babies in their tummies.

Then I told her that she was going to have a baby brother or a baby sister and that she was going to be the big sister. She threw her head back and covered her face with both hands. She made a long yelling/laughing aaaahhh sound that could have been agony but that I knew was excitement. I knew the sibling-induced agony wouldn’t come until later, hopefully much later. I could see the smile even under her fingers. Hona would be with us soon.

It’s a Bufflehead

It’s April, finally the time of year that we go back to the island. In the winter, when the baseboard heater can’t keep up with the cold on the other side of our single-pane windows, and the concrete slab floor feels like ice, and we have to drain the water heater every time we leave, and a certain three-year-old’s hands are cold, and she has to use the potty after you’ve turned off the water, and she’s tired and hungry for a snack, and you still have a boat ride before the car drive, its best to just stay home. But this time of year, when I start to feel spring coming, I get anxious. I can smell the lake water and taste the fresh crab. Almost. Here.

We made it up to the island last weekend. It was the first time we’d been up in a while and one of the crazy things about little kids is that they change so much so fast that it seemed like I was taking Josie to the island for the first time again. It’s not that she doesn’t remember it. Oh, she does and she loves it, but she’s so grown up, so mature that she sees new things and appreciates another aspect of the island.

We were at the marina. Walking down the dock, I noticed a duck-like bird. It was nearly all black with white wedge around the eye. Josie was walking next to me holding my hand. We stopped and looked at it. We described it to each other.

When it flew away we noticed that it stayed close to the water and it had a white stripe on its wing near where it connected to its body. Then we walked on.

When we got to the house we picked up the bird book. She sat next to me on couch. We looked through pictures together until we found one that looked right, then I read the description of the bird and we agreed that it was indeed a bufflehead.

Did you hear what I said? We walked down the dock together. We stopped to describe a bird. She SAT on the couch next to me. We looked at pictures. She LISTENED to the description. These are all things that I would not have thought possible six months ago, or even last month.

It wasn’t just a mallard, it was a bufflehead and maybe next time, maybe sometime before the summer is over, we’ll see a pink-billed oystercatcher. Really, anything could happen.

Round 2

Warning: big announcement ahead.

We’re waiting for a baby. We’re waiting an indeterminate period of time, gestating without any delivery date, expecting without guarantee. It’s hard to know what to call this period in the adoption process when you’re in line but have no idea when the baby will come. I usually say we’re expecting. Actually, we’ve been officially expecting for a month now, I just haven’t had the time to tell anyone.

It tends to be something I casually drop into sentences, thinking that I’ve told the other person. Then: sorry, what the what?

The whole thing is a bit hard for me to believe. If I were pregnant, I could say something casual like, we were thinking about it and it just happened, all of the sudden. But it’s hard to say we fell into our 2nd child, casually, maybe even accidentally, when we spent hours and hours writing the 20 pages of our autobiographies, and pondering our childhoods and our parenting philosophy in an effort to portray ourselves in the most positive light possible – pick us, pick us!

It all just seems so much more carefree and cavalier than last time. By the time we adopted Josie, we’d been waiting for a baby for 3 years, since before I was diagnosed, then through a year of treatment in which we let go of our hope of biological children, came to terms with the possibility of my short childless life, then started the adoption process. I was kind of a wreck by the time we finished the paperwork. Wait, I was kind of a wreck even before we started the paperwork. Then we got a dud of a social worker for the placement part of the process. Then we started working with a facilitator who yelled at me. I was officially broken by the time we got the call about Josie.

Fortunately it worked out. We met our girl a few days later. I realize now that in some deep hidden part of my brain, I believed the gift of a child was permission to live. It was a grant, a concession from the universe, a permission slip to go ahead and resume “life as normal.” Carry on.

Of course, my rational brain knew this wasn’t how the world worked but that didn’t stop me from feeling it. The adoption of a child was a sigh of relief, a celebration of not just her life but the resumption of ours. I see that now and I understand the entirety of what was at stake.

This time, I know it will happen. The baby will come. No lives hinge on the delivery. I hope to relax and enjoy the process, even the wait, to enjoy the imaginary, indeterminate gestation. I have dreams of a wait time filled with preparation, nesting, house projects, photo books, and buying a few cute little baby things that I was afraid would jinx the process last time.

That’s a nice dream but in reality, my imaginary, indeterminate gestation is filled with a tireless three-year-old, endless book edits, a job, and a blog, but this is it, this is what normal life looks like. This is us as we carry on. This is us, busily waiting to greet our new baby.

Her Beautiful Friend

Lately my three-year-old brown baby has become aware of skin color. She points out all the black children at the pool and the store. Sometimes she seems pulled toward them. Other times she seems not to have any interest, she’s just pointing out a fact.

A few weeks ago, I bought the new Mavis Staples CD. When Josie asks for her it comes out sounding like mabitaple and she always wants to listen to her LOUD. I’ve told her teachers and grandparents that if they can’t figure out what she’s saying, she’s probably asking for Mavis.

We’d only listened to the CD a few times when Josie found the jewel case sitting on the front seat of my car. She picked it up and stared at the picture of Mavis. We talked about how pretty she is – what a nice smile she has. Josie started calling Mavis her bootiful fwiend and carrying the case around, holding it close to her chest.

For the rest of the post, click on over to www.mybrownbaby.com.

How to Adopt a Baby

1.       Talk to friends and friends of friends about their experiences.

2.       Try not to get lost driving around foreign neighborhoods looking for a community center that will host the Journeys of the Love, Hope, Heart, Blessed-Child’s Dream of the Christ’s Open Adoption agency meeting.

3.       Ask the social workers what programs/countries will let you adopt if you are single, over 40, in a same-sex relationship, and/or a cancer survivor.

4.       Choose the agency that can answer your question.

5.       Get fingerprinted, background checked, dig up the value of your house, find pay stubs, photocopy bank statements, get friends to write references, find your dog’s vaccination records, have the pet store where you purchased your fish sign an affidavit of its health, make a list of every illness you’ve ever had, dig up the name of your third grade teacher who could verify that indeed your favorite color was lavender, make a list of your stuffed animals and their names and how well you took care of each and every one of them, and promise, that if they could talk, they would guarantee that, if given the opportunity, you’d be the bestest mother ever. Click here to read the rest…

Holidays

The cousins arrived.

Santa came to grandma’s house on Christmas Eve. Who do you think was most excited?

He came back that night and filled stockings with band-aids, scotch tape, play-doh.

Then we went to the island.

Now we are here. We wear down vests and mud boots all day. We walk. We sit on the couch and talk about investment portfolios, book contracts and potty training. We dig through the bin of 50 cookie cutters and try to guess the animal for each. It’s surprisingly difficult. Is that a giraffe or a llama? Paul fixed the faucet. I steam cleaned the carpet that Josie smeared with Aquaphor last summer. I’m enjoying a book (Out Stealing Horses) for the first time since I read Cutting for Stone. I read while sitting with my feet close enough to the fire to melt the tread off my slippers.

We promised the girls a trip to the lake after their naps. We took them even though it was almost dark.

Happy New Year everyone!

A Punch in the Face

After Josie was diagnosed with lactose and fructose intolerance I began to wonder how years of consuming lactose-laden foods had affected her behavior, and if her behavior would change with her new diet. Of course, as I thought (fantasized?) about my girl transforming into a quiet easy going child, like other kids I’d heard about but never actually met, I didn’t like the idea one bit. I love that she’s gritty and tough and doesn’t let anyone (including her parents) push her around.

A few weeks into her new diet I’m chatting with the director of her preschool and she tells me about an incident at snack time. Josie’s sitting next to her best friend, we’ll call her Maya. Maya is eighteen months older than Josie, significantly bigger and, um, let’s call her a natural leader (aka: kind of a bully). Maya likes to be in charge and most of the time Josie is so swept up in Maya’s awesome-olderness that she’s happy to follow.

At snack time Maya takes one of Josie’s animal crackers. Now, you don’t mess with Josie’s food. Josie asks for it back. Maya ignores Josie. The teacher tells Maya to give it back. Maya ignores the teacher. Josie stands up and reaches over to her friend’s plate and tries to grab one of her cookies. Maya grabs Josie’s hand and they push and pull and push and pull. Josie’s fingers get squished and she lets go. Josie sits back down but she’s mad. Nothing has worked. The teacher hasn’t been able to fix it. That’s when Josie turns to Maya, pulls her elbow back, and punches Maya in the face.

I guess we don’t have to worry about Josie going all submissive and mellow on us.

When I heard the story I kind of felt like laughing and saying good for her. The director seemed to think it was funny. You have to know how pushy Maya is to really understand. In a way, it’s great to see someone try to keep this girl in check. Josie’s punch may have been one of the strongest messages Maya could have received – from anyone. But then, of course, rational mother steps in and says it’s never okay to hit… Ever. Or is it?

I’m thinking about all this, my brain still whirring, when my friend posts this on his Facebook page.

Parenting survey: your 4 year old daughter comes down from the top of the playground structure, crying her eyes out. She says, through her tears: “Daddy, a boy hit me in the face!!” You give her a hug and then say …. What would you say?

Oh my, the comments he got… Some parents encouraged their children to defend themselves, to hit back when provoked. Others were strongly against hitting under any conditions.

What would you say? Do you encourage your kids defend themselves?