A New Taskforce

Article in today's Boston herald.

In response I would like to start a new task force for the purpose of eliminating unnecessary task forces.

Our economy is the worst it's been in decades, and we're looking to start task forces to address FRACKING TRAFFIC!

I'm a statistic

One of the X% of people who stop blogging after a few months.

Visit my wife's blog at http://www.mom-et-al.com

GWAR!!!!

Back in our pre-parent partying days with our friends from Putnam Investments, it was common place to hearing our friend "Soup" screaming GWAR!!!!. This was of course, a common reference from Beavis and Butthead.

I just got an e-mail about shows coming up in our area and got this.

Is it me or are these guys just a bunch of reject villains from the Power Rangers?

Music Shows

When you become a parent, the music that sticks in your head changes dramatically. Our daughter Sofia, like many kids I suspect, is a TV addict. Like mother and father, like daughter I guess. So as a result, our days are filled with countless episodes of Little Einsteins, Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, Backyardigans, and *cringe*, occasionally an episode of Dora.

Off topic a little....does anyone hate Dora as much as I do? I like the Spanish element. That's not my problem. It's the incessant repetitiveness of every show coupled with the annoying tone to "SAY BACKPACK, SAY BACKPACK!" like the TV will swallow your kids whole if they don't comply.

OK, back to the music in my head. No longer do I have to struggle to keep myself from public headbanging to an old Metallica song ringing in my head. Yes, old. Anything after the "Black album" is garbage.

Instead, I find myself fighting to hum the theme of one of the aforementioned shows or the latest "Annie version" of an old classical music piece, or the countless songs from Backyardigans, etc. etc. There's nothing that says "tough guy" like whistling the Dora theme in the elevator.

I was never a huge classical music fan, but like many, I knew the major pieces. Some by name, by not many. Now, every piece of remotely popular classical music is inevitably attached to an episode, in many cases multiple episodes, of Little Einsteins. Beethoven's 5th is either "We can sing low" or "Fee Fie Fo Fum". My favorite is the William Tell Overture sung to "Hurry up, hurry up, get the pigs, pigs, pigs."

Music also extends to the car of course. Getting tired of listening to kids singing nursery rhymes, I decided to make things more bearable. I created a disc of the best songs from some of the contemporary Disney movies. Basically, a few songs from the Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Lion King, Aladdin, and Mulan.

Sofia has dubbed this disc as her "music shows". Dominic, 17 months, even gets in on the action. We were startled when he started singing the part in "Poor Unfortunately Souls" from the Little Mermaid when Ariel sings to give up her voice to Ursula's spell. VERY cute.

While listening to the Disney songs in the car is much more bearable than the nursery rhymes (in fact I enjoy many of the Disney movie tunes), unfortunately it still hasn't replaced the short Einstein songs in my head. "You.....are......my....best friend....I love you." DAMN, GET OUT OF MY HEAD!

New Study shows that Studies can be hazardous to your mental health

My name is Tony and I'm a researcher. ("Hi Tony")

Whenever I make a large purchase and many times even small purchases, I do extensive research. You want help buying a Digital SLR camera? A Blu Ray player? Home Theater? Drop me a line. I've done the research. Parents...want advice on good learning toys? money saving baby products? sex toys to spice up your marriage? Been there, done that.

I look for every review, article, specification, and try to do a hands on check before I buy. Okay, maybe not the sex toys.

Before I move on to my annoyance of specific studies, let me make one proclamation. If it's man-made, it's a carcinogen. First there was Sweet and Low (saccharin) ..... carcinogen .... then Nutrasweet (Aspartame) .....carcinogen..... Splenda (sucralose) ..... okay, not yet, but give it time (I actually found that it is made by taking sugar and replacing Carbon atoms with Chlorine...yeah, that's sure to be safe). Companies can save trillions of dollars in research money by just subscribing to this simple statement.

Okay, back to the topic at hand. As a researcher, I'm quick to look up information on the "rules" about parenting. You know the ones...they can eat this, they can't eat this, this is okay but only after 6 months, use this but only anally after 3 months (oh, sorry, I did a flashback to the sex toys), formula-bad...whipping out your breast with complete disregard for everyone because it's my right and I don't care what anyone thinks-good. Had to throw that last one in there for shock value. Maybe my "comment per post" record (7 at post time) will triple.

The issue of the day..... peanut allergies. We as a society have become paranoid about everything having to do with how we raise our children, including what we feed them. Now, some are good. Although I think using infant formula is fine, breastfeeding just logically seems to be the best thing to do, if you can. Of course, when I was a baby it was the complete opposite. At that time, 75% of all babies were breastfed (insert Generation X = lazy = direct result of powered baby formula joke here).

I think the problem starts in two places....lawyers and research studies....and then merges into one big clusterf#%k.

One, young people still haven't gotten the word that there are too many law students and not enough lawyer jobs. As a direct result, there is one personal injury lawyer for every 0.5 people in this country. And then the dominoes fall. Personal injury lawyer ads are seen on TV more than all car ads combined = parents picture themselves as Roy Munson in Kingpin's Indecent Proposal spoof swimming in a million dollars after selling Ishmael to the Chris Elliot character = people are ready to sue any doctor who does anything equal or above dropping a tongue depressor on their child's foot.

Two, the ten million studies that are done in this country. Each one contradicting the previous one.

Now, let's merge those two factors. Too many lawyers = too many personal injury lawyers = selling out your buddy's butt for a million dollars = scared doctors + the next study that says X is bad for someone + protective mother = child can't have product X.

According to my wife (paraphrasing from a doctor), a child shouldn't be given peanuts before the age of two (I might not be remembering correctly, it might be 3) as doing this increases the risk that said child will develop a peanut allergy.

I've always been skeptical about what the latest fad is. Dieting is perfect example. Fat is bad, no...Carbs are bad, now you need Acai berries, blah, blah, blah. Selling a video saying "get your ass on a f!@$ing treadmill you lazy piece of s#$t" apparently just won't sell. I just go on common sense.

My thoughts on this (not introducing peanuts until a certain age), before doing any research, have always been:

1. If this is the way to go, then why are peanut allergies so prevalent now when they weren't when I was a child.

If you're in your 30's like me, think back to when you were a kid. Do you remember anyone having a severe peanut allergy or any type of severe allergy? I don't. I remember one kid being lactose intolerant, that was about it. Back then, there were no rules about when to start giving a child peanuts or not eating peanuts when you were pregnant or breastfeeding.

Now, it seems like every class has one kid who will turn to stone if he or she even looks at a peanut. I've read about schools having "no peanut butter" tables for kids with peanut allergies. My nephew has a peanut allergy.

2. The conventional wisdom which always made sense to me was building immunity was important at an early age. This is also why I never prescribed to the killing germ craze. On a side note, does it get any better than the South Park "Chicken Pox" episode where the parents try to deliberately expose their kids to chicken pox, the kids find out and give them the ultimate FU by getting a Herpes-inflicted prostitute to use their parents' toothbrushes? I think not.

OK, being the researcher that I am, I did some googling to find some information about peanut allergies. Strangely I could not easily find the study or article about not introducing a child to peanuts until the age of 2 (hence the mention of age 3 above which I did find here).

What I did find is that maybe my common sense approach has some merit. Imagine that, new study completely contradicts the old study. Honey, Dominic is having a peanut butter sandwich for dinner tonight. :)


Mama won't let me have peanut butter.