The Joys of Stomach Flu

Why can't someone invent a shot for stomach flu?  I mean for crying out loud they figured it out for the regular flu so what are those slacker scientists waiting for?!?!? 

Here is a summary of my day today:

5:45 Wake up and do some relaxing yoga
6:15-7 Finish up several emails to my customers
7:00 Enter Children's room with a big smile on my face as it is usually my favorite part of the day.  The smile disappers when I am greeted with the umistakable smell of vomit
7:00-7:15 Clean said vomit out of crib, pull out all sheets, toys, pacifiers and begin lengthy clean-up process including opening windows and bringing in fans to air out the smell
7:15 Change disgusting runny diaper and put a pound of Butt Paste on the poor red bottom that has been sitting in diarrhea all night
7:30- Attempt to wrestle milk cup out of toddler's hands since I have now determined he has stomach flu and cannot drink milk
8:00 Scramble around the house in search of items the kids can eat.  It turns out I have no bananas and only one applesauce. 
8:30-10:00 Try to entertain sick children inside the house
10:00 Take children outside to swingset for a change of scenery
10:05 Step in giant pile of dog poop
10:05-10:15 Clean dog poop off shoe
1:00 Put kids down for naps.  As I carry my three year old daughter upstairs she wraps her arms around my neck super tight and whispers in my ear, "Mommy, you're my most favorite Mommy in the whole world."

At that point, I realize I'm lucky that I get to be home with the kids when they're sick.  They need their Mommy when they aren't feeling good.  I still have fond memories of my Mom taking such good care of me when I was sick.  In fact, I remember almost feeling lucky when I was sick because I knew my Mom would pamper me.  And I'm lucky they only have the stomach flu.  It could be much worse because at least they will get better eventually.

So yes, for now I'm grateful...until tomorrow when I have to pull sheets off the bed again that are covered in vomit and little pieces of carrots, bread, etc.  Kids sure can be fun.

New Insight on How to Cultivate Little Brains

Don't you just love it when you read a book and it really changes your perspective?  When it really makes you start thinking about things in a new way?  I recently read a book written by a Kindergarten teacher and it really has changed the way I interact with the kids.  For example, here is one section that really opened my eyes:

"Decode your child's questions.  A curious child's questions may seem never ending but they reflect a child's cognitive and emotional development.  Parents should take their child's questions seriously and answer in a way that will strengthen and deepen the relationship.  Don't just always say 'yes."

Keep in mind that Munchkin Girl talks ALL the time.  Even though I do try to to answer her, sometimes I can't hear her in the car very well so I find myself saying, "I don't know.  That's a good question."  Or, "Yes, you got it!"  I never tell her to stop talking, but I don't really appreciate what she's saying.  My mind is always on which customer I need to call back or what needs to be added to the grocery list.

It never occurred to me that her questions would help her in her development.  So, the other day on the way home from my parent's house, it was late and I was alone with the kids (seems to be a common theme on this blog, huh??  He's an orthopedic surgery resident).  She was murmuring something in the back and so I asked her to talk louder so I could hear. 

"Mommy, where did the sun go?"

"It went to bed already," I replied.

"Mommy, where is the sun's bed?  Is it comfortable?"

Look what happened when I really listened and took her seriously!  I really got to see her little mind at work and it made me so proud that she made the jump from me telling her the sun went to bed to her thinking about the sun's bed.  Being a Mom really can be fun if you're not distracted.

Another section that really helped me was the section on Play:

"Promote the artist in your child....Make learning fun.  For example, 'Is there something blue in this room?'  Give your child a notebook and play Blue's Clues.  Help your child find different shapes in the environment..."

Normally I put the dishes away in the morning, and again, my mind is in the clouds, thinking about all the things I need to pack for the day, both for myself and for the kids.  I sell medical equipment so every day I have to pack my car full of equipment, my computer, etc.  However, I decided to really focus on Munchkin Girl this time.  As I was putting away the dishes, I asked her to help me.  I kid you not, she picked up the crockpot cover and looked at me and said, "Mommy, what shape is this?"

"That's an oval," I said.

"Is that different than a circle?" 

So I took her over to her chalkboard and showed her the difference.  Now she loves to draw ovals and she's so proud of herself for knowing what it is.

This book also says:

"Play is an expression of the soul.  Take children to a park to swing."

I happen to agree with this.  My kids definitely think swinging is good for the soul, even Little Buddy who isn't even old enough to do it right yet.



One of the things I have loved about writing this blog is the wonderful people I have met along the way.  The author of this book, Susan Case, sent me this book several weeks ago to review and although it sounded interesting, I've been busy and didn't get to it right away.  Plus, my daughter is only three so I wasn't sure how much it would apply.

I have to say, I think even though the title is about Kindergarten, I really did enjoy this book and I think all Moms could really get a lot out of reading it.  I found it to be pretty inspiring and her love for children really comes through in her writing.  Her ideas and persepective as a teacher helps me see what my daughter is capable of learning.  The book also has good tips on how to get kids ready for school.  I will say that it is also geared toward kindergarten teachers, so I recommend that you skip the first two chapters and then go back and read them later when you have time. 

The book is called Kindergarten: Tattle-Tales, Tools, Tactics, Triumphs and Tasty Treats for Teachers and Parents. Susan taught Special Education, Early Childhood, and Kindergarten and now edits and writes. You can visit her blog at Kindergarten for Teachers and Parents.

If you do read it, let me know what you think! 

PS...I got no money at all for this review and will make no money off the sales of the book.  I just really did like it!!

Choosing to Bottle-feed Does NOT Make You Evil

This is another one that I published first at Technorati

In the 1950s, bottle-feeding was very common. Lactation consultants didn’t exist and women didn't read dozens of books about lactation. Nipple shields weren’t invented yet and they certainly didn’t have high-powered breast pumps. Neither doctors nor Moms knew what we know now: that breastfeeding prevents illness and allergies and even boosts intelligence.

Breastfeeding has really taken off since the 50s and now it is far more common for women to breastfeed, at least for the first few months. The unfortunate side effect of this breastfeeding craze is that now it is almost taboo to bottle-feed. I literally heard a nurse gasp at the hospital when a woman told her she did not want to even try to breast-feed. Women today are judged harshly for making the choice to feed formula instead of breast milk.

Although I chose to breastfeed for the first 6 months, I eventually switched to bottles. My daughter had terrible acid reflux and she wasn't gaining weight and I never knew how much milk she was actually getting. I was also working and the pumping situation was creating an enormous amount of stress. My daughter was only sleeping a few hours at a time, even at six months and I felt like I was teetering on the edge of a breakdown. Something needed to give and I chose breastfeeding. Once I switched to bottles, I felt like a new woman and like a huge weight had been lifted from my shoulders. This may sound dramatic but it’s true. I blame the hormones.

Instead of sharing my joy with the world, I hid these feelings of relief because I felt guilty about it. Everyone from the doctor’s office to strangers I met on the street made me feel like I had given up. Like I had let my baby down by feeding her bottles. Almost like I was a bad mother because I wasn’t pumping anymore. Today, I think that a woman who chooses to feed formula, especially for the first few months, is seen by society as someone who doesn’t love their baby enough.

A study was released this week regarding the long-term effects of bottle-feeding on Reuters. The study followed kids born in Germany from 1995 to 1998. At age 10, the children were reevaluated. The study found that it didn’t make any difference to their long-term weight whether they were fed formula or breast milk. The choices their mothers made for them as infants didn’t affect their weight one way or the other.

Now that we have this new evidence that bottle-feeding might not be as bad as we think, I say we make a decision as women and as a society to stop judging others for their choices. Some women have a hard enough time transitioning to new mother-hood. New moms should spend their days watching the baby, cuddling the baby, encouraging the baby to sleep instead of worrying about what people will think of them. Some moms have easy babies who never cry, but others spend 6-8 hours a day pacing around the living room trying to get the baby to stop crying. The last thing those Moms need is to worry that their neighbor will make a snide comment when they feed their kid a bottle of formula.

Now don’t get me wrong. Breastfeeding is great and I don’t dispute any of the scientific evidence regarding the benefits. I just think we need to give new Moms a break and support and encourage instead of judge.

Am I a Helicopter Mom??

I actually published this article first as Children who Play Outdoors are More Confident on Technorati, which is a great website:

A few days after we moved into our new house, our doorbell rang. Obviously I was expecting a new neighbor. What I wasn’t expecting was a five-year old without a parent, asking if our daughter could come out to play. I was very shocked that a parent would allow their child to run around the neighborhood alone at 7:00 at night. What kind of parent does that? Don’t they know the rate of kidnappings in this country? Not to mention the risk of getting hit by a car. Since that day, I haven’t lost the memory of that little girl all alone on our front porch, and I’ve been very strict about always being outside with the kids and never leaving them alone for even a second. That’s just smart parenting, right?

Maybe not. An article was recently published in USA Today that is a stark contrast to my idea of good parenting. This article discusses an idea that is truly revolutionary to me. You should let your kids play outside. Unsupervised. Often.

According to this article, allowing the kids to play outside is one of the best ways to ensure that a child grows up with high self-esteem and the ability to solve problems. Of course I want my kids to grow up healthy and happy, but by closely supervising them, I may not be giving them the tools they need in life to learn how to be healthy and happy.  I wouldn't call myself a Helicopter Mom normally, but this article made me wonder. 

In the past, when I did let the kids play outside, I watched closely for any behavior that needed to be fixed. If I saw my daughter hit someone, I intervened and explained that there is no hitting. I expected other parents in the neighborhood to do the same. I also tried to keep them from eating dirt and bugs and I tried to keep them out of the mud. All this time I was convinced I was doing the right things, so I was shocked to read this article and learn that I may be depriving my children of some of the basic foundation they need to grow up confident and happy.

I have definitely seen it firsthand: when children play outside, there is no doubt they get time to interact with other kids in a totally unstructured and unsupervised way. Proponents of this free outdoor play argue that children learn to stick up for themselves. They learn to think creatively to come up with games to play and they learn to be assertive. According to this article, kids today who don’t have the chance to play outside have a tendency to be more depressed and ridden with anxiety. I don’t want that for my kids! Yet creative outdoor play has always taken a back-seat in my mind to safety, mostly because I didn’t understand the full benefits of free outdoor play.

An article was also released on this topic in the Journal of Play that closely mirrors the USA Today article. Lenore Skenazy wrote the book, A Nation of Wimps: The High Cost of Invasive Parenting, and she was interviewed with a colleague named Hara Marano about the results of the research they have done over the years on the decline of free play in the United States.

“Kids need to play outdoors where they have space to explore and run around. Also, playing in the dirt seems to strengthen the immune system…without free outdoor play, kids lack the ability to gather and play spontaneously, and that in turn causes a serious lack of social skills. Gathering and playing freely with others lets kids practice many aspects of democracy and when free play is denied, so are these opportunities.”

Again, this is a very new idea to me. As a Mom, I take responsibility for my kids. I have always felt that I should be teaching them right from wrong. How will my kids learn not to hit if I don’t tell them? I am ashamed to say that it never occurred to me to just let the kids learn the lesson the hard way. If my daughter hits someone and they hit her back, will she hit again? Possibly not.

However, I have a very hard time with this, because I don’t want anyone to hit her. I don’t want to watch my son ram his toy car into our neighbor’s bike. It goes against every Mommy instinct I have to watch my child struggle with getting their bike off the curb and not run out and help. If someone pushes her at school, I want to be able to step in and demand that someone make the child stop pushing. However, Ms. Skenazy would probably tell me that if I don’t let my kids work it out on their own, they will be prime suspects for bullies in the years to come. In her interview, she tackles the subject of bullies:

“By playing regularly with other kids – playing freely- kids gain social skills that become a natural deterrent to bullying. They learn how to handle disruptions. They learn how to negotiate disputes….And they learn how to be assertive, which is the single best defense against bullying.”
By giving the kids the opportunity to play outside I am giving them the gift of independence and confidence. The problem with all this is that I also looked up the statistics on kidnapping. According to the U.S. Department of Justice, every day over a thousand kids are reported missing in this country. How can I possibly even consider not supervising the kids while they play outside?

For me, I think I will have to come up with a happy medium. I will have to find a way that I can watch from a distance and make sure there are no strange trucks lurking around the corner. Ms. Skenazy also gives some tips on ways to create a safe environment for unsupervised outdoor play that I intend to follow.

One thing I am certain of is that I will not judge parents who do allow their kids to wander around unsupervised. After all, the kids are really learning the great life lessons of independence, assertiveness, and how to eat bugs without getting sick.

Temper Tantrums or Autism??

Pin It Let me paint a picture for you:  I'm standing at the kitchen counter, slicing strawberries for dinner.  Little Buddy comes over and starts tugging at my pants.  "Dinner will be ready soon," I say.  He continues to tug at my pants, getting more and more insistent, even stomping his feet while he whines and points.  I hand him one small strawberry to tide him over.  He smacks my hand away.  He doesn't want strawberries.  He starts genuinely crying now.  Louder.  And louder.

I stop what I'm doing.  I pick him up and let him reach out for what he wants.  He can't talk yet so he can't tell me what he wants.  He goes straight for the knife.  He's getting so strong and fast that he almost jumps out of my arms.  "You can't have the knife Little Buddy.   It's too dangerous."  I put him down and try to turn to go back to my strawberries.

Unfortunately, Little Buddy is now in full-blown tantrum mode.  He is laying on his stomach, banging hands and feet and crying hysterically.  Now I have a few options that I consider:

1.  Abandon dinner and run around the house frantically trying to find something else that will make him happy.
2.  Wrap a towel around the knife, followed my masking tape so that it's not sharp anymore,and carefully supervise him while he plays with the knife so that he stops crying
3.  Ignore him
But here is what my doctor said:

"Katie, he interacts with you and is playful.  He doesn't have autism, at least at this point.  He is strong-headed, you have a tough one.  Ignore him completely when he has a tantrum.  Go into another room.  Act like you don't even hear him.  After a few weeks, you should start seeing a difference."

Oh, so he's just being a brat!  Lightbulb!!  Sure enough, I did see almost a 180 degree turn-around.  No longer did I have the kid who was kicking his legs and screaming at the top of his lungs in the mall.  He settled down after a few weeks and now I'm not even TEMPTED to let him play with knives!! :-)  Now, here is how is life looks:


Pin It

Should we force our kids to eat?

Ever since Munchkin Girl was a baby, she has been a terrible eater.  Even bottles she barely ate and I was always worried she wasn't getting enough nutrition.  She has also been a very busy kid and hates to sit still.  We had her three year check-up last week and I really was worried about how it would go since she looks like she's barely grown at all.  Of course she insists on brining her purse to the appointment, which just happens to be a fake Prada purse that I got in New York City several years ago.  At the appointment we sit next to a lady with her baby.  The woman smiles at me and glances at Munchkin Girl.  She suddenly sees the "Prada" symbol on the purse.  She raises her eyebrows at me and frowns at me really sour.  She looks away.

"It's not really Prada," I say.  I tried to resist justifying myself, but I couldn't help myself!  I'm not the kind of person that would buy my kid an expensive anything, let alone a Prada.

"Yes it is Mom," she says.  "It's a real purse."

"What?" I say.  "No, really it isn't.  She's just being silly."

The lady smiles, almost a pity smile.  Then they call her kids name and she walks away.  Munchkin Girl grins at me and starts searching through her purse and finds a small stick.  She pulls out the stick and carries it with her when they call our name.  

The nurse puts her on the scale.  Keep in mind she is three years old.  And the scale says....25.2 pounds!  Yes, that is less than my 17 month old weighs!  The doctor comes in, and we love him.  He sees her purse and then sees her stick sitting next to the purse.  He laughs and they talk for a few minutes about her stick and what else is in her purse.  Then he begins the exam, and Munchkin Girl is actually very well-behanved.  At the end, it's time for him to chart her weight and height.  He tells me she is in the 3rd percentile for weight.  Yikes.  But the 25th for height, so that's good news!  I ask him if I should be worried about her growth.  He shows me her chart.  From a small baby, she has hovered between 3rd percentile and 10th percentile.

"Nope," he says.  "This is totally normal for her.  Just keep doing what you're doing."

So that brings me to the question, Should we force our kids to eat?  Even though the doctor says she is fine, I know that she often is hungry and won't eat.  She will beg me for a snack, but when I tell her she has to get up in her chair to eat the snack, she suddenly isn't hungry anymore.  Even when she's in her chair, she'll eat a few bites, only enough to tide her over and then she'll say she's full and wants to get down.  Then without fail about 15 minutes later she says she wants a snack.  So the question is, should I insist that she eat more?

My grandmother had 8 siblings.  She says that she's the only one still alive for a reason (Yes, she's a bit of a skeptic and a very interesting old lady).  She says that she never forced herself to eat like the rest of her family and that's why she is still in good shape and still alive.  Although slightly morbid, I think she might a point.  I see moms who force their kids to eat every last bit of the pudding they brought for them to the park.  And their kids are slightly chubby.  Do we want our kids to go to school chubby?  For what?  So that we didn't waste the pudding we bought?  Plus, my friend was just telling me the other day how she forced her son to eat after he told her he had a tummy ache.  He went ahead and ate and about three hours later he promplty threw up on her.  Clearly he wasn't hungry for a reason, but she was worried about his nutrition. 

On the other hand, I know how frustrating it is to cook a meal, even macaroni, and have the kid not even want to touch a single bit.  Or worse, try a bite, make a face, and then spit it Mom's hand (that really happens a lot, I'm not making that up).

I think I've come to the conclusion that all we can do is try.  I'm going to really try to only offer healthy foods like lots of cheese, fruit, and veggies.  Whole wheat english muffins are actually a huge hit, and they will both eat them plain.  I'm also going to keep trying to always get them to eat in their chairs instead of while they wrestle (again, actually does happen sometimes).  Then if Munchkin Girl chooses not to eat, at least I know I've tried.  The good news is that at least the doctor says she's normal, she'll always be skinny, which she'll really appreciate when she gets older.  And at least I don't have this problem with Little Buddy.  That kids eats.  A lot.

What do you think?  Should we force our kids to eat?  Email me and let me know your thoughts!  I also have a poll on my home page.  I'm going to close the poll on September 1st and post the results!