Happy Halloween!

We took it down to the wire and carved out pumpkin last night.  What do you think?

It was a collaborative effort (meaning my husband did all the work and the kids did their best to thwart him, while I took pictures).

 

Wordless Wednesday: Facebook cures cancer?!

Source: Facebook

Reminds me of this post.

First Yanks Game!

Every year my company holds an employee lottery for their season tickets to both The Yankees and The Mets home games.

This year I put in for tickets, but only for Yankees Vs. Red Sox games, and wouldn’t you know it- I won!

So, on September 5th, we took the kids to Yankee Stadium, met my sister, and Nemo saw his first Yankees game!  (Mabel’s first game was last year)

We all had a lot of fun.  Mabel was exited about the singing and the cheering.  Nemo fell asleep around the 5th inning, but woke when the Yanks rallied in the 7th.  We left on a high note during the 8th inning, and we super bummed they lost.  However, all in all, it was a really fun first game!

Her first library card

A few weeks ago I took the kids to the library for a few hours on a Saturday.  When we walked in there was a mother there requesting a library card for her daughter.

My first thought was, “Where is her daughter?  Why not have her get it herself?”

My second thought was, “Why hasn’t Mabel gotten a library card yet?”

So, after they’d played on the computer and picked out books, we went to the circulation desk and Mabel asked the librarian if she could sign up for a library card.

And she did!

She was thrilled!

Every girl needs a library card!

Nemo was beside himself with job that he was actually being permitted to use a computer.  Oddly, as only 15 months old, he knew just what to do.

Wordless Wednesday: Climate Change “Debate”

Source: IFLS

You might be a #scimom if…

You might be a sci-mom if you take your kid to the fair and all you can think of as she crawls through the Kiddiepillar is, “Is that a vulva?  Cloaca?  What do you call the back end of a caterpillar?”

And then you go look it up.  It’s technically the caterpillar’s anus.

It’s not too far off either.  Check out this figure from Caveney et al from The Journal of Experimental Biology (and a paper all about skipper caterpillars that can shoot their poop “over distances many times their body length”):

Source: Caveney et al. 1998

Did you know their poop is called “frass”?  No?  You didn’t know that?  Oh, well, now you do!

Flu Shots: We’ve got ours, have you got yours?

Last week Mac had an on-site freelance job, so I worked from home on Friday.  That meant I had the pleasure of taking my kids for their flu shots.

Can you tell who got the nasal spray and who got the shot?

It was entirely uneventful.  Other than some tears from both of them, it was easy, a couple of crackers and we were good to go.  Several days later, all’s well.  Nobody had any reactions.  Safe and effective.

Mac and I got our flu shots a couple of weeks ago when my company had a health fair with free flu shots for employees and their families (over 10 yo).

I’m hoping this year’s seasonal flu vaccine works better for us than last year’s.  While Mac and I were fine last year, Mabel and Nemo both came down with the flu- a strain the pediatrician said was a mismatch to the virus (see more on the efficacy of last year’s seasonal flu vaccine here).

I know that no vaccine is 100% effective.  For more on efficacy on the flu vaccines in different age groups, check out Melinda Wenner Moyer’s recent Slate piece on the topic (and note she gets herself and her son flu shots!). Given the safety of the seasonal flu vaccine, it is definitely worth the miniscule risk to give my kids even a “moderate” level of protection from the flu.  My own anecdata supports the safety and efficacy of the flu shot.  With a mom who is a public health nurse, I’ve gotten flu shots my whole life.  The only year I got the flu was the year of the vaccine shortage when I was in grad school.  I couldn’t get the shot, I came down with the flu, wound up with an abscess tonsil two days before Thanksgiving, it turned into recurring tonsillitis (every single time I got a cold), and landed me in the hospital the week my thesis was due to my readers, which meant I had my tonsils out at 27 years old the day after my thesis defense.

As I told Mabel when it was time for this year’s shot, “This medicine will help to make sure you won’t have to miss school on your birthday this year!”  Since she’s only 3 and still thinks school is nothing but fun, that line of reasoning worked for her.

Wordless Wednesday: #GOPshutdown

 

 

It’s not like we’re doing anything important here- like curing cancer or anything…