First Sunday Update April 6, 2008

Still haven’t gotten around to announcing the existence of this blog yet. It’s work’s fault.

Some goals for this blog:

• Posting weekly updates
• Cataloging Jack’s numerous words
• Sharing incredibly cute stories
• Publishing more pictures more often
• Adding some extra pages with Jack’s “reading list” and toy reviews

So, for this week – It was a decent Jack week. As I type this, he is asleep. Today, we went to the park and played in the sand. I think he must have got some in his eyes as he had been rubbing them all day. By bed time, they were extremely puffy, even after a bath. We gave him some Benadryl.

He’s liking his new day care provider – Angie – and so are we. She’s incredibly sweet, and very communicative. She has 4 other kids there around Jack’s age, as well as her 9 y/o daughter and one baby girl. We went to the Jungle (a play space) on Saturday, and I met one of the other parents. Nice time.

What else we did this week:

• Saturday (4/5): Went to Contra Loma Regional Park and saw lots of cows (I have video, and it’s adorable! Jack kept saying “Hello cows. Nice to see you!” and “Moo!”)
• Friday (4/4): I worked until very late and was very upset about doing so.
• Wednesday (4/2): Playgroup in the morning, and we had fun, although someone brought up vaccines. I had to leave the room. I brought Jack to Angie’s after that, then came home. I was in a lot of pain on Wednesday and Thursday, probably from a lot of walking.
• Tuesday (4/1): I fell prey to one April Fool’s Day joke.
• Monday (3/31): Jack did two cute things that I want to write about. I wrote them down in my paper journal, which I don’t have with me right now. I will remember to post them eventually.

Some of Jack’s new words this week: digest (digesting), insane, static electricity

I haven’t downloaded any of April’s pictures to the computer yet. I’ll have to add one in here from March and just deal. I have 283 pictures from February, and I’m still going through and renaming and cropping them. I have 274 from March 1 – 27.

We have been reading Micawber, by John Lithgow, as our last book each night before lights out. I highly recommend it! It’s about a squirrel who paints, but that brief synopsis does not do the book justice. It’s written in rhyme, complete with big words like “peregrination” and “beguiler.” I love it!

For Anyone Who Does or Does Not Vaccinate His or Her Children September 25, 2007

Jack has received 1 vaccine (3 shots), for Hib, a type of meningitis. If he gets any further shots, it will only be after age 2. I want to do a proper post about the vaccine issue, and why we do not vaccinate. Today, a great article about an ad in USA Today appeared. I highly recommend reading the article:
http://www.rescuepost.com/rescue_post/2007/09/america-meet-ou.html
You can also see the ad:
http://www.generationrescue.org/pdf/070626.pdf

I don’t know if vaccines cause, or help exacerbate, autism. I do know that auto-immune diseases have increased at the same time that the number of vaccines has increased. I do know that there are ingredients in vaccines that I don’t want in my house, let alone in my child. I do know that by age 2, a child whose parents follow the current vaccination schedule will have over 32 vaccinations. At age 2 months, babies are injected with at least diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis, Hib, polio, PCV, and Hepatitis B. Along with those diseases comes: aluminum (x3), formaldehyde(x2), phenoxyethanol (x2), glutaraldehyde, ammonium sulfate (x3), yeast(x2), thimerosal (x2, you thought it was gone, didn’t you?, nope, just decreased), various antibiotics, soy protein, gelatin, and monkey kidney cells.

Some babies are injected with even more stuff, like the Hepatitis A vaccine, or a new rotavirus vaccine. It’s new because the last one killed more children in its brief appearance than the actual rotavirus does in several years. The flu vaccine still openly contains thimerosal, and is grown in chicken embryos. When we add in Hepatitis A, rotavirus, MMR and chicken pox, we’re also adding material from aborted fetuses.

So, a 2 month old baby’s immune system now has to fend off at least SEVEN diseases, plus find a way to deal with all the excess chemicals, which are not innocuous. Even antibiotics are potential allergens, as are some of the other ingredients. You may say that having the diseases injected in vaccines is not the same as being exposed to all those diseases in “the wild.” You’d be right. These diseases are being injected into a baby’s bloodstream, bypassing the respiratory system which is generally the first line of defense against germs.

I don’t know that vaccines cause more problems than they solve. Nobody does. That’s because the CDC and the Federal government will not conduct a study comparing vaccinated kids to unvaccinated kids. They say it’s because the unvaccinated kids would miss out on the benefits of vaccination, and possibly die. However, children do die due to vaccine-related causes. We also don’t know what’s behind the increases in asthma, severe allergies, rheumatoid arthritis in children, diabetes, epilepsy, autism, and several other neurological and auto-immune diseases. I, for one, want to see a study. So does House Representative Carolyn Maloney, D-FL. If you think that we need to make sure that vaccines aren’t causing health problems in our children, or even if you want to show all the vaccine doubters that you’re right and vaccines are the greatest invention ever, take a look at her proposal, and ask your Congress-person to support such a study.