Gardner Olympics

The Gardner Family Olympics in July. We competed in such events as the water balloon toss, the carry-egg-in-spoon relay, the thread-fruit-loops-on-yarn relay, and the good ole fashioned foot race!

Atticus relishes the prospect of eating his necklace

Cousin Ben excitedly helps string on a fruit loop

Henry, keeping in vogue with those his age, sports his trendy new rings.

A great smile from Ben, who shyly avoided the camera most of the time

Finally, a true candid of Mom!

Grant, gearing up for the big race!

Is that a fruit loop in his mouth? This is a sugar rush in action!

Atticus trick-or-treating

An ecard by Smilebox

Florida!

We had such a great time! Courtney's graduation, time at the beach, in the pool, going to Shark Valley, enjoying some sunshine, and just hanging out with family--so fun!

Atticus the naturalist

Yesterday, Atticus broke a stick-of-gum-sized piece of plaster off of the bottom corner of our living room wall. Though I did not observe this, I did see what happened next: he stuck it in his mouth, like a lollipop. I scurried over, yanked it out, and told him firmly NOT to eat the wall. When he has children, I hope their growth is not stunted.

This morning, Atticus was in a destructive phase, probably because I had been making lots of calls and writing lots of emails and trying to figure out what to do about my foot, which probably is suffering from acute metatarsalgia. He unplugged the modem, which meant I had to restart the internet. He climbed up on me and tried to jerk the phone away, and then pulled my hair. He began eating my breakfast cereal. Just pulled it right over from my empty seat and began contorting his mouth around my large spoon, slucking up the cereal. In other words, he was saying "Hello, Mom! It's me, Atticus. Stop ignoring me! I can obviously make your life much more difficult if you continue to ignore me! Watch!"

Well, he's right. I gave up and began doling out the pistachios. His new favorite food is a pistachio. He has been pining away for pistachios for three solid days. I mean it! How do I know? He says "stachio." Honestly. Over and over. And over. So, yesterday, I finally went shopping and picked some up. I think he's already eaten half a pound. Okay, that's exaggerating. But, enough to produce an impressive heap of shells, which were promptly thrown off the table. Fortunately, Atticus is very good at cleaning up his messes. I simply gave him a bowl, asked him to clean up, and he cleaned up every last shell, without any supervision to boot!

Warning: the following two paragraphs contains graphic content, including the word "poop" and the word "eggshell." Not in the same sentence, of course! However, if you find the words "poop" or "eggshell" offensive, you should stop reading right now. So. Atticus appeared to need to go number 2 today. With high hopes, I whisked him off to his potty (which he's practiced sitting on, but never used), removed his diaper, and told him to sit. He kept standing up and trying to open the bathroom cabinets, so I incentivized him with...pistachios. He had put a very small amount of number 2 in the potty, and I was elated! He stood up for a minute, and I pointed it out to him. In my excitement, I did not notice that he was finishing his business on the bathroom rug. A lot of heavy dooty business. Poor, forlorn, Atticus. He was standing there with unsavory stuff on his legs and in his pants, and on the floor. I was thinking of calling Merry Maids, but decided that even they would be more grossed out than a Mother, so the job fell to me.

Atticus loves eggs. Anyone who has ever allowed Atticus to peer in while opening a refrigerator with eggs inside knows this basic fact. No, I don't mean he loves eating eggs. In fact, he refuses even the tiniest bit of cooked egg. No, his love for eggs is purer. He loves them for who they are, or rather, for their outer shell. He bleats "o! o! o!" (Romanian for "egg") whenever he sees an egg--in a book, in the store, in the fridge, on my lunch plate this afternoon. Once, Walker gave Atticus a raw egg while he was standing, bibbed, over the kitchen sink. He was in reverential ecstasy. In toddlerese, this means he was smiling in pure triumph. For a few minutes, he held the egg and shook it up and down. This, of course, was followed by testing the egg's surface on that of other hard objects, namely, the kitchen sink. When the egg cracked and the yolk and white slipped out, he was rather at a loss. He played with the shell for a while, but then wanted a replacement egg, which was not in the cards. His egg obsession has not lost any vigor, though. For example, this afternoon, as we were eating lunch, I left the table for a few minutes. When I returned, Atticus was holding the cobweb of eggshell that was left after I had eaten a hard-boiled egg. He was crunching it in his hands. I figured nothing would be hurt by this. So I went into the kitchen for a few minutes. I poked my head out a few minutes later. The eggshell had disappeared, but it wasn't on the floor. Hmm. I heard Atticus chewing on something very crunchy sounding. Oh, it must be his....yogurt?!? I peered into his bowl of yogurt. There, crushed right in, was his precious little eggshell. He was eating them together. Yogurt-eggshell crunch. Very high in calcium. And comic value.

Whining is not always for wimps...

Right? Atticus had an appointment this morning for his fever and cough, which has sounded terrible. The doctor gave him a prescription for the deep congestion he has. I am not feeling well, either, but I grudgingly drove to the UW pharmacy, because our insurance will reimburse more of our Rx payments if we use that pharmacy. Of course, I had to pay for parking, park, and then wait at the pharmacy. For 40 minutes. Just to hand them his prescription (I verified there was not a faster way of doing this. There's not.). Just to be told that this medication was out of stock. ARRGH. I told the pharmacist that it seemed rather inefficient to wait for 40 minutes just to be told they were out of stock. She told me that, next time, I could always ask at the counter about whether or not a medication was in stock--that this was the one thing I could do that didn't require me to take a number and wait. Could I call? Yes. Well, maybe. Their new computer system wasn't accurately tracking the actual stock of medication...so, best to come in and ask. Oh, okay. So, I drive all the way to campus, pay to park, and then ask if the medication is in stock? That sounds mightily more efficient. A full hour after starting my trip, I headed over to Recycled Cycles, on my way to Walgreens, to pick up 2 special-order tires for the bike I got at a tag sale last summer for $20. The bike I've been trying and trying to fix up so that I could ride it to do errands...like picking up prescriptions from my local pharmacy. Hahhah. The reason I had to order tires was because I discovered that the tires the bike came with do not actually fit the rims. The sizes printed on them do not match. This I discovered only after prying and pulling and cutting myself on the old tires, all the while convinced I just wasn't giving it enough umph. Oh yes, and the tubes sold to me by the same trusty tag-salesman were too big. And that, of course, was on top of the a priori missing seat, which I picked up at Recycled Cycles on my first trip there--ah, I remember those good ole days. So much for an easy-fix bike!  In any event, the guy at RC couldn't locate the special order tires (which they never called us about, even though they said they would--I've been waiting a solid month for these tires!) so I waited around for 15 minutes while he looked around, came back and asked to see my receipt, twice, and then finally, while he talked to the most official-looking dude there, and found them, right next to the check-out counter, ready for me to pick up. Hahhah. At least they were there! And then it was off to Walgreens. MUCH better experience here. 45-minute wait, but I took the time to go grocery shopping and fill up the tank ($3.94/gal at Safeway with a fuel discount. Still seems like an obscene price) then zipped in and out of the pharmacy. I felt like a shoplifter, getting in and out so quickly, with a medication that only cost twice as much as it would have at my normal pharmacy (well, more, if you consider that insurance will not cover as much from an outside pharmacy, but that's not the point). Wow, what a getaway!!!

Plastics are Passe. Or should be.

A word on BPAs! Most everyone has heard  about the risks posed by bisphenol-A, or BPA, a chemical found in many plastics (including bottles, pacifiers, plastic dishes) which interferes with or even mimics certain hormones found in our bodies. Well, a new study reported in Time suggests that many if not all plastics--even "BPA-free" ones!--may leach hormone-disrupting chemicals.

Oh, I turned out fine, what's all the fuss? Well, read this article, also published in Time. There is far too little regulation of the plastic industry, and consequently, far too little research done on the effects of plastics on our health. Take this powerful 1-2 punch from the article:

"If you want to market a new drug, you need to convince the FDA — in multiple tests, over the course of years — that it won't cause serious harm. If you want to sell a new pesticide, you need to prove the same thing. The burden of proof is on manufacturers to make the grade, and government regulators are the final judge.

But if you want to market a new chemical for use in a product — even one that will come into contact with children or pregnant women — it's up to the EPA to prove that it's unsafe, using whatever data are provided by the chemical company, with little power to ask for more. And if it's one of the 62,000 chemicals that were already in use when the TSCA went into effect in 1976 — a category that includes BPA — chances are it was never really tested by the government at all. "Chemicals are deemed safe until the EPA can prove that they are dangerous," says Richard Wiles, executive director of the nonprofit Environmental Working Group. "It's completely backward."


Here is my new plastics rhyme, based on the numbers found on the bottoms of almost all plastic containers (which, by the way, do NOT indicate that they can be recycled, only that they belong to a particular class of plastics). I was getting annoyed that I couldn't remember what was "safe" and what wasn't.

1 and 2 try not to reuse
3's chlorine and nerve gas
4 and 5 are a.o.k.
but try to use fabric or glass!

Some rhyme, huh? :) Here is the deal (based on +/-10 million articles): When you reuse 1 and 2 (water bottles, milk and juice jugs, etc), especially when you use hot water to clean them, you are increasing the chance that hormone-like chemicals--chemicals that can interfere with growth or harm reproductive function-- will leach into the water or food you store in them. In addition, their production can create toxic byproducts, which often end up in our environment.

I have decided that I will NEVER use number 3 (polyvinyl chloride) plastics. They not only can leach powerful carcinogens into food and water, but their production also releases toxic amounts of chlorine (okay, not nerve gas, but it works for the rhyme!) that can kill wildlife. Many plastic wraps contain number 3 plastic! Nor will I ever use number 6 plastic (polystyrene, or styrofoam), which contains brain-damaging styrene (read more).

Number 4 plastics are safer for longer-term use, but in some instances have been shown to leach hormone-like chemicals. Number 5 is the only plastic that seems not to leach much. However, read here! Apparently, some researchers identified estrogen in their experiments, even though they weren't using any in their experiment. Where did it come from? The only plausible explanation: the plastics being used in the experiment (number 5s). Sadly, I live in an age where plastics are so ubiquitous I just can't avoid them all.

Here are the names of the plastics (awful ones crossed out!):

#1 is PTE (PET) or polyethylene terephthalate
#2 is HDPE or high-density polyethylene
#3 is PVC or polyvinyl chloride -- found in many plastic wraps!
#4 is LDP or low-density polyethylene
#5 is PP or polypropylene
#6 is PS or polystyrene--styrofoam containers and cups!
#7 is mixed. It could be a plastic not listed above, could be a mix or 2 or more.
It could be, for example, polycarbonate (PC), which until very recently was used to produce Nalgene bottles. PC is NOT GOOD for you since it contains BPAs. 

That is the end of my tirade. Okay, not quite. Do I use plastics? Yes, it's inevitable. I am trying to switch to glass for food. For now, I use only number 5's for food storage ONLY--never for reheating. For that, I transfer to a glass bowl. If only pyrex were less expensive! Also, I am throwing OUT my old nalgene bottles (apparently, new ones are available, don't know more than that). And though I have never bought bottled water, I am not planning to start now. And, I have sadly had to give up reusing old gatorade bottles for drinking water. I am still using old juice bottles for water storage, since I only washed them once and am not planning on reusing much, only replacing the water every 6 months or so.

Conspiracy? I think so.

As soon as I put Atticus down for a nap this afternoon, around 1:30, a series of seemingly coincidental events began. First, our apartment manager told us he would come to repair a few things sometime between 11-3. Great, except that Atticus often naps between 1-3, and one of the closets in his room needed repairs. So, I set up the pack n play in our room. No problem, just a little inconvenient. And much brighter than his bedroom. A few minutes after putting Atticus down in our room, whereupon he began to howl--which he never does except in a pack n play--the manager knocked on the door. I asked him to try to be as quiet as he could, which he was. In fact, he was not loud at all. What was loud? A car alarm that pierced the afternoon, bleating for a few minutes. Booming thunder, uncharacteristic for Seattle, accompanied by flashes of lightning. Oh yes, the hail that pelted down for 5 minutes. And me dropping a heavy, metal drain plug into the tub, in the bathroom that shares a wall with our bedroom. Twice. Loud enough to produce ringing in my ears. I think it was all a conspiracy to make sure Atticus would not nap. What think you?