April Fools - I did the meme!

This week we will answer some crazy questions brought to you by Kimber, the color of cooked crab, and the number 544.

1. It's the first of April, do you play April Fool's jokes on anyone? a couple years ago I told all the members on my forum that I was closing it down. It took them half the day to figure out what day it was.

2. Do you like to eat sardines?no, do you?

3. Have you ever played racketball? Thats with a racket, right? I think we played it in phy ed once.

4. If eating at a fast food joint that has a dollar menu, do you order a bunch of different dollar items or just go ahead and get a regular meal? dollar menu baby... but we still walk out $20 poorer

5. Have you ever taken a brand new pencil and sharpened it in an electric sharper until it was almost gone just because you were bored? can't say that I have... I don't even know if I've ever used an electric one.

6. Do you have any old broken computers still sitting around your home? a closet full of them, but I talked the husband out of the 2 monitors in there - garage sale!

7. Ricky Martin came out this week stating he is gay. Were you shocked, had a feeling, "who?" or just didn't care? huh?

8. If marijuana is legalized, do you think it should have a luxury tax added onto it? I think there will anyway... this is the US afterall. Any country that can put a tax on tanning will be tax on anything.

9. What's the oddest thing you have sitting on your computer desk right now or where ever it is you may be sitting with a laptop (you could be sitting at a Starbucks with an alien from Mars for all we know)? oddest? um.... an empty jolly rancher wrapper that nobody threw away

10. Have you ever bumped into a former lover and found out they were now gay or straight depending on your relationship with them? um... no.

11. Have you ever held a tarantula? yes. And I was ok with it until it's leg moved

12. Shower- curtain, door, walk-in, or do you just roll around in the dirt to get the stink off? What the sam hell are you talking about Kimberella? I shower in the yard with the garden hose.

13. Which commercial is the most annoying to you on TV or radio? the caveman commercials... they are just stupid now. At first it was funny but the 2nd time around? Not so much.

A random blog post.

Yeah, I'm still alive. Just been busy. So something thats been on my mind...

I'm really out of the loop on babies with my baby being 14 in May. I had my little quirks, but I was still a real laid back mom. Someone asked me if I wanted a changing table and I laughed and said "I have one! The living room floor!". I never had a diaper pail either. My oldest had her first taste of mashed potatoes & cranberries at 2 months... her first taste of peanut butter probably around the same time. I started feeding her cereal soon after that. My youngest I started on cereal at about a month and she had tastes of everything as I ate things. If I didn't wear a coat, they didn't. If I didn't think I needed a hat, they didn't.

I know a lot of things have changed in almost 15 years, but I really am amazed at some of the things that I hear from moms of little ones now. I seriously never heard of sterilizing a bottle until today. My youngest took a pacifier until she was about 2 1/2... I don't think I EVER did anything but rinse it off on occasion. Know what made her stop using it? We had a puppy that got a hold of it and chewed the end of the nipple part off and left it lay on the floor. I watched Krissy walk up to it later on, pick it up and stick it in her mouth. She pulled it out of her mouth, looked at the end bitten off, threw it back on the ground and never picked it up again.

Now, let me tell you my one dumb mommy move. When Taryn, my oldest, was born I breastfed her. I couldn't believe how much she ate! At night she would nurse for about 1/2 hour, fall asleep, but as soon as I'd move to go put her in her crib she'd wake up and start eating again. Some nights she ate for a good three hours! It took me a good 3 or 4 months before I figured out why that kid never took a manufactured pacifier. Mom, your a dumbass.

And sleeping.... oh I listened to the doctor and laid her on her back to sleep. Even tried her side. The kid wouldn't sleep for more than an hour or two at a time. My sister (10 years older than me) was watching her one day when she was about 4 months old and when I got home Taryn was laying on the kitchen table... ON HER TUMMY... sleeping. I just about had a heart attack. Then I found out that she had been sleeping almost the entire time we were gone... 5 hours! I put that kid on her tummy that night in her crib and got my first 7 hours of sleep since the day before delivery. To this day she's a tummy sleeper.

My kids shared a bassinet and a crib with a cat, crawled all over dogs, chewed on their ears and sucked on their nose. They used a walker that had wheels, they ate dirt off the floor and sometimes food that fell on the floor.

My point to all this? There really isn't one. But I do enjoy the mommy blogs & message board posts, but let me warn you... some I laugh at, some I roll my eyes at and some I sympathize with. As much as I want to reply and say how I did things way back when... I know you all would think I need to go into a loony bin!

Maybe this is my way to say that its ok.. they all grow up just fine. Mine sure did... outside of their thyroid conditions, they rarely get sick. But really, sit back and enjoy them because from someone who is dealing with teenagers - I'd love to go back to those nervous baby years and pay just a little bit more attention to the little stuff and even less about the stuff that really isn't going to matter years down the road. My oldest just walked through the kitchen and I am pretty sure she was never affected by that junebug she ate when she was a year old...

Wait. I wonder if the junebug stole her common sense on the way down her throat.... that could explain a lot!

1 In 4 Parents Believe Vaccine-Autism Link - Health News Story - WKMG Orlando

1 In 4 Parents Believe Vaccine-Autism Link - Health News Story - WKMG Orlando

One in four U.S. parents believes some vaccines cause autism in healthy children, but even many of those worried about vaccine risks think their children should be vaccinated.

Most parents continue to follow the advice of their children's doctors, according to a study based on a survey of 1,552 parents. Extensive research has found no connection between autism and vaccines.

"Nine out of 10 parents believe that vaccination is a good way to prevent diseases for their children," said lead author Dr. Gary Freed of the University of Michigan. "Luckily their concerns don't outweigh their decision to get vaccines so their children can be protected from life-threatening illnesses."

In 2008, unvaccinated school-age children contributed to measles outbreaks in California, Illinois, Washington, Arizona and New York, said Dr. Melinda Wharton of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Thirteen percent of the 140 who got sick that year were hospitalized.

"It's fortunate that everybody recovered," Wharton said, noting that measles can be deadly. "If we don't vaccinate, these diseases will come back."

Fear of a vaccine-autism connection stems from a flawed and speculative 1998 study that recently was retracted by a British medical journal. The retraction came after a council that regulates Britain's doctors ruled the study's author acted dishonestly and unethically.

The new study is based on a University of Michigan survey of parents a year ago, long before the retraction of the 1998 study. However, much has been written about research that has failed to find a link between vaccines and autism. Mainstream advocacy groups like Autism Speaks strongly encourage parents to vaccinate their children.

"Now that it's been shown to be an outright fraud, maybe it will convince more parents that this should not be a concern," said Freed, whose study appears in the April issue of Pediatrics, released Monday.

Some doctors are taking a tough stand, asking vaccine-refusing parents to find other doctors and calling such parents "selfish."

A statement from a group practice near Philadelphia outlines its doctors' adamant support for government recommended vaccines and their belief that "vaccines do not cause autism or other developmental disabilities."

"Furthermore, by not vaccinating your child you are taking selfish advantage of thousands of other who do vaccinate their children ... We feel such an attitude to be self-centered and unacceptable," the statement says, urging those who "absolutely refuse" vaccines to find another physician.

"We call it the manifesto," said Dr. Bradley Dyer of All Star Pediatrics in Lionville, Pa.

Dozens of doctors have asked to distribute the statement, Dyer said, and only a handful of parents have taken their children elsewhere.

"Parents have said, 'Thank you for saying that. We feel much better about it,'" Dyer said.

The new study is based on an online survey of parents with children 17 and younger. It used a sample from a randomly selected pool of nationally representative participants. Households were given Internet access if they didn't already have it to make sure families of all incomes were included. Vaccines weren't mentioned in the survey invitation and vaccine questions were among others on unrelated topics.

Twenty-five percent of the parents said they agreed "some vaccines cause autism in healthy children." Among mothers, 29 percent agreed with that statement; among fathers, it was 17 percent.

Nearly 12 percent of the parents said they'd refused a vaccine for their children that a doctor recommended. Of those, 56 percent said they'd refused the relatively new vaccine against human papillomavirus, or HPV, which can cause cervical cancer. Others refused vaccines against meningococcal disease (32 percent), chickenpox (32 percent) and measles-mumps-rubella (18 percent).

Parents who refused the HPV vaccine, recommended for girls since 2006, cited various reasons.

Parents who refused the MMR vaccine, the shot most feared for its spurious autism link, said they'd read or heard about problems with it or felt its risks were too great.

The findings will help doctors craft better ways to talk with parents, said Dr. Gary S. Marshall of the University of Louisville School of Medicine and author of a vaccine handbook for doctors.

"For our children's sake, we have to think like scientists," said Marshall, who was not involved in the new study. "We need to do a better job presenting the data so parents understand how scientists have reached this conclusion that vaccines don't cause autism."

I'm on the fence about the autism link, but I do think there is something going on with all the vaccines. There are more kids sick, more allergies and just more everything. I think I might have been one of those non-vaccinating or limited-vaccinating parents had I known then what I know now. I haven't seen any major things with my relatively healthy kids, but I do wonder sometimes about their thyroid disorders and their obesity if there isn't some link between that and something that we do now vs what people did then. The allergies is what really gets me though - why are there so many of them now? My kids are not allergic to anything (besides one having severe reactions to horseflies) and the only thing I know I did different than parents do now (and then) is they ate everything from birth on. Tastes of peanut butter, mashed potatoes, sips of milk... all in the first few months of their life.
There has to be some sort of link to the autism, but I also wonder how many misdiagnosis are going on. Everyone knows how much doctors (and some parents) love labels.

This is also being discussed on the InsanityCafe Forums - http://tiny.cc/ctROC