some mommy thoughts

The weekend was lovely. We had a Thai dinner out after a lazy Saturday in. I had mine super spicy, which was extra good for my sinuses, which had been bothered by some unidentified form of allergy, but may have been a little harsh on poor Jack's tummy. He's never been bothered when I've eaten spicy food before, but I think this time I had it extra spicy and didn't notice because my nose was so blocked that I couldn't smell a thing.

On Sunday we went to brunch with Rich and Stacy and Kaia, which, bizarrely, may have been the first time the six of us ever went out together. I need some confirmation on this, Stacy, but I think it may be true, because we almost always get together on weekdays, so we're usually without daddies, or at least without Ben. And I think the last time we went to brunch together Stacy and I were still (heavily) pregnant, because I distinctly recall Rich and Ben having a discussion about how they wanted to start a "Pimp My Buggy" show in the vein of "Pimp My Ride." Weird. I mean, that we haven't all six been out together, not the show idea. That's brilliant. Seriously, Rich and Ben could market anything together.

Today was pretty boring. Jack didn't sleep last night and he kind of creaked his way through the day, sleepy but with his teeth apparently hurting too much for him to sleep well. Poor thing. I've been giving him baby Tylenol and baby Motrin regularly throughout the day, but the pain always seems to come back as bad as ever after 3 or 4 hours. If tonight is bad again, I'm going to go to Boots and ask for some stronger medicine that Stacy said really helped with Kaia's teething pain (she should know--Kaia has 7 teeth already!). It's supposed to include some sort of sleep aide also, which would probably be good for both Jack and me, but it makes me just a bit nervous.

Which brings me to an issue I seem to keep confronting lately--chemicals. There's been this show on BBC 4 that is looking into all the manmade chemicals that people are exposed to. It's supposed to be some sort of expose', but basically this woman (who must be someone famous here, because they keep advertising it as "Sarah Beeny examines...") has people's urine tested for chemicals, shocks them with unexplained numbers ("Your triclosan levels were 650!" But 650 what? And what's high and what's normal?), then goes on to say, "Scientists tell us that these products don't have any discernable negative effect on people, but couldn't they really? I mean, when given in doses thousands of times higher than this to rats, they ended up gay/faster maturing/disoriented." Honestly, any credibility flies out the window then. And then I saw this article on CNN.com today about a family in California that had their blood tested starting three years ago for a newspaper article. The mom is now a huge activist because of it. The CNN article is slightly more legit. Not because it's CNN.com--they lost that credibility in my book when they lead with Don Imus for an entire week while Putin basically declared himself president of Russia for life. But because it at least mentions what the potential harms are and cites studies that have found harm.

But this whole "debate" is sort of like Fast Food Nation, which I just finished reading a few weeks ago. I have to say, I found it thoroughly unconvincing. I didn't find it gross at all, the "problems" he described with the fast food industry (which were more accurately described as problems with meat in general) didn't really bother me, and his sanctimonious tone alternately alternately annoyed and amused me. The only thing that really freaked me out was the stories of children dying of E.coli. But really, put in perspective, which the anecdotal stories were horrific, the incidence of illness or death was unbelievably rare.

At the same time, when confronted with a baby who attempts to put everything he sees (including his reflection) into his mouth, I have an uncontrollable urge to make everything perfectly clean in a way that kills all bacteria but leaves no cleaning product residue behind. Those goals seem at great odds with one another, as any "natural" product I've tried, with the possible exception of the Method line (which may not be all that natural anyway, just non-toxic), doesn't work worth anything.

So that's my dilemma. But I'm not going to lose sleep over it. At least not tonight. Jack's asleep, so off to bed I go for a few hours until he wakes up again.