Louse Stories from the Front, Part 1

Our school has been infested with lice since September. Just when we thought it was safe, news of more outbreaks came pouring home. My older daughter has had a full-blown case once and tiny cases twice. My younger daughter and I have each been infected once.

By tiny case I mean that a bug landed on her head and laid eggs, also known as nits, but because I was checking her vigilantly I pulled them off immediately.  By full-blown case, I mean she had upwards of 400 nits and 150 live bugs. I know this may sound like a shockingly large number, but apparently it can be much worse.

We got our full-blown case when I decided to be the laid back mom who doesn’t drive her kids crazy with weekly neurotic check-ins like: “Is anyone sick? Puking?” “You need to put your hair up!” “You know you can’t wear fashion boots to gym?” It was during my calm mommy phase, “Sure, use the cucumber smelling shampoo instead of the lice repelling tea tree if it makes you happy,” that my daughter was infected. And then my other daughter was infected … and then I was, too.

I decided to suck it up and pay an exorbitant amount of money to have a nit-picker come to our house. It’s not that I wanted to flush a short trip’s worth of cash down the toilet, it was more that I knew I had lice. And I had no one to take care of my curly, coarse, thick hair. We learned a lot in our seven-hour session, and I thought I would share our new found information with you:

1) Your best protection against lice involve the following steps:

-       For boys and girls: never share hats or sporting helmets.

-       Girls should have their hair up in a ponytail or braid, AND they should wear a wide fabric headband. Lice apparently use wisps of hair, generally along the sides of the head, as bridges.

-       Check your child’s head for lice every week or so.

-       Run a lint roller over the surface of any fabric, public seat, including airplanes and movie theaters, before sitting down.

-       Do not rely on lice protection products. Our nit picker told us she recently treated an entire infected family that used Fairy Tales hair products religiously. That said, there is some anecdotal evidence that neem shampoos, tea tree shampoos, and even some strong dandruff shampoos do kill live bugs. (Not the nits.) I used Babo Botanicals tea tree shampoo on my younger daughter and actually found dead bugs on her shoulders afterward. I now use the shampoo and the conditioning spray regularly in addition to regular checking.

2) If there is a case of lice in your child’s classroom, check your child vigilantly IN GOOD LIGHT. This was where I messed up during our first outbreak. My daughter’s head was itchy. I kept checking her over and over again, but I didn’t see anything. I was in the wrong light. Sit your child in a chair near a window and/or with a lamp directly above their head. Look carefully and take your time. I divide the head into four sections and check section by section using metal clips and the back of a comb to lift small amounts of hair.

2b) If you are checking regularly and find that these sit-down searches are taking long periods of time, another option is to lather your child up with white colored conditioner and comb through with a real nit comb, I like “Nit Free”. Comb each chunk in four different directions. This is how I found my second tiny outbreak. After each combing, I wiped my comb on a white paper towel. When I saw tiny brown eggs, I knew we had to take action immediately. (This conditioner method is also a great way for moms to check themselves.) This check should take at least ten minutes.

3) Look for BROWN nits (or live eggs). Not the white ones. White eggs are no longer living, they are just the shells of already hatched bugs. Brown nits are incredibly hard to see and they actually blend in with most shades of brown hair. (It is apparently easier to spot lice on blond or black hair.) When working with a light, angle your lamp so that the light mimics sunlight. Nits will glitter, like tiny jewels.

For tips on what to do if you actually find that your child has an outbreak… stay tuned for part two.

What is Eco Friendly Fashion?

I'm not a fashionista, and I'm about as far from a diva as they come. But in the past year or so, I've had a resurgence in my desire to look good when I leave the house. 

As part of this process, I purged my closet of things that are either grossly out of style or simply too banged-up, ripped-up, stained or pilled to be worn in public. Unlike years past when I might have just thrown things away, I'm trying to be more thoughtful. Ripped cottons were turned into rags.  Beat up shoes were sent to Africa, and I'm passing out bags of clothes and gear to friends, acquaintances, and charities who can better distribute them.

But what does one buy when one wants to be conscientious? Simply the acquisition of something new means that at some point, it will need to be disposed.

Have you noticed how poorly made clothes are today? I bought three pairs of jeans on sale at Banana Republic about two years ago, and they all ripped through the knees within a year. Remember when a pair of Levis lasted a lifetime? Those days are long gone. Name brands feel like nothing more than letters printed on labels.

Even brands claiming to be eco friendly are sometimes poorly made, with fabrics that rip and snag easily or are so thin they are practically see through. What's more, many of them have been imported from abroad making me wonder if the fuel used to fly the product here cancels out the bamboo or organic cotton.

I don't mean to pan all brands. I've had great luck with Green Apple Active (often found at TJ Maxx) and my girls are wearing hand-me-down Hannah Andersson pajamas that are at least five years old and still look like new. But even these higher quality and often more expensive brands will need to go somewhere once we're done with the clothing.

Recently, I've embraced the idea of second-hard. Consignment shops are everywhere, and you can buy quality clothing and home goods. Second-hand furniture (if old enough) is far better made than the disposable, low-quality items produced today.

I'm also rethinking the idea of a 'deal' or a 'steal.'  A few years ago I invested in a pricey pair of jeans. At the time, I chastised myself for spending so much. Now, years later, these jeans still fit perfectly and they don't have one hole. In the end, they were a great investment. Moving forward, I'm more likely to spend a little more if I know products are high quality and long-lasting.

Eco-friendly shopping isn't what it seems. Yes, we should embrace and support  brands trying to do things differently, but at the same time, we need to remember that being eco-friendly is also about reducing consumption and reusing existing, perfectly-good products.

More reasons to embrace the imperfections of organic:

Imperfection is Organic

There's nothing like apple picking in New England. For years, my family has enjoyed this fall tradition.

We've visited farms with train rides, hay rides, corn mazes, gourmet donuts and ice cream, petting zoos, pony rides, barbeques and playgrounds. These theme-park orchards provided great entertainment, but they could never provide us with one thing: organic apples.

They say that it is impossible to grow organic apples, pears and stone fruit on the east coast. They say these crops will quickly be devoured by molds, fungi and pests.  I've spoken to many vendors at my local farmer's market, and they all sing the same refrain: we do our best, we use as little spray as possible, if we didn't spray you couldn't eat these.... But that's not entirely true.

For the past two years my family has visited Old Frog Pond Farm, a 25-acre pick-your-own orchard owned by a local artist. Our first year there, it was sleepy and quiet. The trees were short and looked sparse. The apples were tiny, lopsided, disfigured and covered with black and brown splotches.

"Are these safe to eat?" I asked the young man who worked there. He smiled and informed me that these blemishes were a natural part of the apple, perfectly safe for human consumption. "Organic," he said, "is not perfect."

Still, we were a bit fearful, so we took them home and baked pies and cooked applesauce instead of eating them raw.

Over the course of the year, his words remained with me: "Organic is not perfect." It got me thinking about my perceptions of the world and myself. When I shop I seek out perfect products. I exercise in hopes of a more perfect body. I write aspiring to the perfect manuscript. I child rear with earnest desire to be the perfect mother ... wife ... citizen.  I keep searching for the aha! moment when I realize that it has all come together perfectly.

In a world of shiny, glossy, beautiful people, products and produce, it's hard to accept anything less.

This year, we decided to go back to Old Frog Pond Farm. My kids discovered hidden sculptures, designed by the owner, nestled between the trees and along the edges of the field. The orchard seemed busier, the trees seemed fuller, the choices seemed greater, and the apples seemed less blemished. When my kids asked for samples, I didn't bat an eyelash at the black mottled skins.

The apples were not beautiful by traditional standards. Not even close! But they were grown without toxic chemicals and they were delicious.

I've finally begun to understand that imperfection really is natural, organic and healthy. It's the mottled moments that make us human and the lopsided apples that give us something to write about.

No Vaccine ... No School

Here's a copy of the op-ed I submitted to my local paper last week after our public school threatened to suspend my daughter for two weeks because we did not want to vaccinate against chicken pox. This may offend some of you, and it might resonate with others. Either way, I think it is a conversation that needs to be had as more and more parents are opting out of the AAP vaccine schedule.


Vaccine Study is a Sign of a Growing Trend

A study published in the November issue of Pediatrics states that 1 in 10 parents are not following the recommended vaccine schedule for their children. Of this subgroup, 30% claimed they began following the recommended guidelines, but subsequently deviated. I am like that 30%.

Vaccines save lives and as a new mother I was content playing my part in public health protection. But my older daughter began suffering from food intolerances and allergies and my younger daughter was plagued with ear infections. The idea of injecting foreign viruses into children struggling with health issues didn't sit well with me.

I did some vaccine research, but there seemed to be only two polarized messages: Vaccine experts adamantly defending the safety of their products, and extreme radical groups calling for an end to all vaccines.

In 2007, Dr. Robert W. Sears published The Vaccine Book, a mainstream source offering information about individual shots and their risks. Essentially pro-vaccine, he offered an alternative schedule for concerned parents.

I decided to slow down our process, giving one shot at a time, when my kids were healthy.

One vaccine I could not rationalize was chicken pox. I don’t understand why we vaccinate young children for a disease that is mostly benign in childhood and risk immunity waning during adulthood when the disease is more dangerous.

Studies also show there is a correlation between the chicken pox vaccine and an increase in adult shingles, suggesting that lifelong exposure to the virus keeps shingles at bay.

I decided not to vaccinate my younger daughter for chicken pox and to postpone the booster for my older one. I would vaccinate when they were teenagers if they hadn’t acquired immunity.

But matters came to a head last week when there was a case of chicken pox in my daughter's kindergarten class.

The school nurse called, panicked, on Friday morning while we were celebrating the Jewish New Year. The unwell child was diagnosed on Wednesday, and I had 72 hours from exposure to either vaccinate my daughter or keep her home for two weeks. Because it was Friday, I had just one afternoon to figure it all out.

I asked questions like: What if the child was contagious on Monday or Tuesday? What’s the point of the vaccine then? Was it one of her friends? Was she actually exposed? The nurse wouldn’t tell me anything.

Chicken pox is inconvenient, but it is not a public health threat. It’s not even that easy to catch. A sick child must actually cough or sneeze on another to spread bodily fluids.

After talking to our daughter’s teacher, we ascertained she’d had no contact with the sick child. Our daughter was not a public health risk. There was little chance of her getting sick or of exposing others in a town that boasts 98% vaccination rates.

Still, I felt I had no choice but to vaccinate. As a kindergartner just beginning to adjust to her new school, I was reluctant to pull her out for two weeks.

After we vaccinated, I learned that the only child in the grade at risk from this potential ‘outbreak’ had been our daughter. I feel duped.

If Monday’s study is any indication of things to come, there will be more and more parents like me. Well-intentioned, thoughtful parents who aren’t extremists, but who want to take control of their children’s well-being in a system that is neither answering questions or concerns adequately nor addressing individual’s preferences with logic and reason.

For Your Consideration: Preserve Peppers

I love red peppers. I could eat them fresh or cooked every day. But peppers are part of the dirty dozen - the twelve fruits and vegetables with the highest pesticide levels according to the Environmental Working Group; so I only buy organic or from farmers I know.

Once the farmer's markets end, I'm in trouble. Grocery store organic peppers are expensive, and they are imported from all over the world raising energy consumption and purity issues (depending on the country of origin). A small organic pepper from Holland may cost $6.00 and is a painful purchase.

Last year I decided to see if I could stretch my farmer's market purchases. I bought all my favorite vegetables in bulk: Green beans, broccoli, spinach, peppers, zucchini and even pumpkin. I knew that I wasn't interested in the canning process, which felt both cumbersome and labor intensive. Instead I experimented with blanching and freezing. I had mixed results.

Broccoli: My frozen broccoli was disgusting. I didn't blanch it first, so I just chopped and froze it. After a month, the broccoli smelled and tasted horrible in addition to being smooshy.

Green Beans: I blanched and froze green and yellow beans. These tasted fine, but the consistency was too soft for us. Ultimately I chopped the frozen beans and added them to other foods. It wasn't really worth the effort, though.

Spinach: Spinach is a little labor intensive because you need to thoroughly wash off all the sand before you do anything. Also, a lot goes a little way. Still, this was one of my more successful attempts. After blanching the leaves, I scooped them onto a cookie sheet using a measuring cup and froze the mounds. The spinach tasted great and was easy to prepare.

Zucchini: We love zucchini bread in our home! Are you surprised? I try to bake a batch every other week so the girls can take it to school for snack. It's hard to track down organic zucchini in the winter, but naturally grown zucchini is now in abundance at the farmer's market. I buy about ten and shred them all in the food processor. I scoop the shreds into measuring cups and freeze these mounds on a cookie sheets. Then I store the mounds, and they are premeasured for baking.

Pumpkin: Pumpkin is probably the most labor intensive of all, but we love baked pumpkin products, and it's almost impossible to find bpa-free cans. I bought sugar pumpkins, which are used for baking, but I needed my husband's help to cut them in half. I scooped out the seeds, roasted the halves, scraped out the edible center, pureed the flesh with a little water, and froze it in measured cups. My favorite farmer has assured me that I can replace pumpkin with certain winter squashes for baking. I may give it a shot because much labor yielded small results.

Peppers: Of all the vegetables, these are hands down the easiest to preserve. Just rinse, slice, freeze on cookie sheets and then move to freezer bags. Frozen peppers don't quite crisp up in a stir-fry or saute, but we used them in all sorts of foods and we thoroughly enjoyed them.

Buying in bulk at the farmer's market in season turned out to be a great way to save money on organic grocery produce. I don't love using all those freezer bags, but they are the most space efficient, and I wash and reuse them until they crack. I've also found myself freezing fresh domestic organic strawberries and peaches, both of which are on the dirty dozen and become virtually impossible to find come November.

Give it a try and let me know how it goes.

Happy shopping, chopping, and freezing!

Seeking a Safe Backpack

Backpack shopping has tuckered me out. If I were like many folks, I'd take my kid to Target, Walmart or the Gap and say, "You need a new backpack. Pick what you love. Knock yourself out." Then, I'd pay for my products, and we'd all go home happy.

But alas, I cannot shop like that.

Backpacks, you see, are often made with lead, pthalates and PVCs - all of which are toxic to our bodies, but especially to little bodies. It's hard to find one that is free of all three components.

Safe Mama has a thorough list of companies who manufacture 'safe' backpacks. She has done a great deal of research, literally calling companies one at a time.

But as you'll see from Safe Mama's list some companies just don't seem sure about their own stuff. When I called one company on the list, the man I spoke to raved about his lead safety, but he could not confirm his products were PVC-free. When Safe Mama called, she was assured the bags were indeed free of all three elements.

Another issue I've found is that many of the 'healthier' backpacks are highly expensive, stylized and skew young in design. Beatrix NYC has a line of big kid backpacks decorated with large, cartoonish animals. They are hip and cute, but at $52.00 a bag, the last thing you want to hear in a year is, "It's too babyish" or "I don't like owls anymore."

The good news is that more and more companies are producing healthier products, and there are good options out there if you're willing to poke around a bit. Jansport and High Sierra, for example, make healthy packs that should also be durable. Personally, a first filter is what the bag is made from. Polyester and nylon are less concerning to me than vinyl.

Of course if you have a picky little peanut like me, who has pretty much said "No" to every backpack I've shown her, you'll have other health issues to deal with ... like your mental health. But that's an entirely different problem. Sigh.

Happy Shopping!