Month: March 2011

The Incredible Flammable Boy

/ Shane / 5 Comments

In order to keep Oliver’s eczema in check, he goes through a rigorous, full-body treatment of steroids and moisturizers, head-to-toe, twice a day. In the evening, we use Vaseline. In fact, we have gone through almost 4 of those enormous, should-last-you-a-lifetime Vaseline containers in the past few months alone.

Vaseline is a good moisturizer, but it leaves your hands feeling so greasy and gross, and it takes hours to get rid of it. Even washing your hands doesn’t help, because it repels water no problem. I hate having it on my hands, but I guess it is preferable to having it on my entire body.

All of this greasing up doesn’t go without side effects. All of Oliver’s clothes, and particularly his pajamas are slowly taking on a greasy sheen. It’s kind of like when you put grease on a paper plate, and it becomes transparent. His clothes are just starting to have a certain look.

In fact, his pajamas have gotten so bad, that they have developed a wet feeling and permanently weigh about 10 times more than they used to. Washing them is of no help; Vaseline repels water on clothes just like it does on my hands. When you feel this outfit, you want to wash your hands afterwards. The cloth is 100% saturated.

Vaseline is also known as petroleum jelly, and it is made from petroleum. If it is flammable, then there is no bigger fire hazard than our child’s pajamas. (According to what I found, the jury is sort of out. It’s not really flammable, unless it’s hot and there’s a wick of some kind. So it won’t burn, unless it does. Explosively.)

Just in case, lets keep open flames away from him (not that we were exposing our child to open flames very often, mind you). Getting rid of eczema is all fine and well, but not if it comes at the expensive of horrible burn scars!

Religion Makes You Fat

/ Shane / Leave a comment

It’s true. And it’s science.

Young people who are active in their religion are more likely to become obese by the time they reach middle age, according to a new study. Participants who go to church at least once a week were found to be about twice as likely to have a higher body mass index than those who attended infrequently or not at all.

Specifically:

Young adults age 20 to 32 who were on the high end of religious involvement were 50% more likely to be obese by the time they hit middle age compared with those in the “none” category. This was true even after researchers adjusted for sex, age, race, education, income and the participants’ body mass index at the start of the study.

The study didn’t give a very satisfying reason as to why this might be. Maybe there is some other correlation not accounted for. For example, people who tend to be religious might also tend to *ahem* live in a certain area of the country known for fried food.

Or maybe there are more calories in those host wafers after all.

Link via Sara, so you can direct all outrage to her.

Eeeevie has a boooyfriend

/ Shane / 1 Comment

When Evie started daycare, there were all sorts of people there. However, over time, they have gone off to school, moved away, etc. So these days, it is a few babies, Evie, and her best buddy L. (His name has been changed, obviously, to protect the non-consenting innocent)

So they spend a lot of time together, and I didn’t think much of all the “L. said this” and “Me and L. did that” stories. Evie and L. spend a lot of time making plans, so naturally they planned a day together. Naturally, the first thing they would do is pick flowers together in a field, after which they would take a bath together and then go to sleep together.

Finally we got around to inviting L. over to our house, and Evie was looking forward to his visit for weeks. The big day arrived, and the first thing Evie said to me in the morning was, “Today L. is coming! Can you tell my heart is racing? Can you see how happy I am?” When she went down to pick up her clothes she said, “I have to pick out clothes that L. would like!”

It couldn’t have been any more date-like. The funny thing is, when he got here, Evie spent most of the time playing with his older sister. (Although she was pretty disappointed that he wasn’t spending the night.)

I know that anybody who has kids this age sees this kind of behavior, but it was pretty funny. Obviously it isn’t really romantic love, just friendship through the eyes of two 3 year olds. We made a point to not make a fuss about it. We certainly don’t need another little girl with big girl ideas put into her head by adults. So leave her alone about it…don’t you remember when you were a kid and you got teased about something like this?

No, I’ll apply all my teasing retroactively, when she’s a teenager and she finds this blog post.

Quotes Monday takes a ride on the Chicken Limo

/ Shane / Leave a comment

Evie: “You fools! You have no idea how many I have!” – I don’t even remember what this was about, but I just remember thinking, “Looks like Uncle Nathan’s plan to turn her into an evil genius are succeeding…that sounded like a line out of a movie!”

Evie, gobbling Oliver up: “Oliver, you’re just a strip of bacon!”

::Evie was talking in her sleep::
Me: “Evie, are you okay?”
Evie: “I was dream-talking on the phone!”

Evie: “Indianapolis? Indianapolis? That sounds like…apples!” – Not what I was expecting her to say.

Evie: “I like your chicken!” – This was shouted at a group of woman pouring out of the “chicken limo”, a yellow limo with a chicken on top. You definitely need to check out the website, the limo is definitely as cool as it looks. However, these ladies were not who you would have expected to be getting out of the limo, and at least some of them looked vaguely embarrassed about the whole thing. So Evie’s comment was well appreciated.

Wanted: One Parasite

/ Shane / 1 Comment

My allergies are already starting up for the season, but it turns out there is an easy solution. All I need is a parasite. How hard can it be to find a parasite?

Jasper Lawrence so desperately wanted to be infected with a hookworm that he traveled to Africa and walked barefoot alongside open latrines in Cameroon to get one.

So you might think to yourself, how in the world could having a parasite help me with my allergies? There’s actual science:

…humans historically developed an immune designed to account for parasites in the body.

But in the last 150 years, the industrialized world’s clean food supply and plumbing suddenly removed parasites from people’s bodies. In response, researchers now widely think that people’s immune systems stopped developing properly.

…As a result some people’s immune systems go off kilter and misfire against their own bodies creating autoimmune disorders such as allergies, asthma, or inflammatory bowel disease.

Well, thanks but no thanks. Parasites are about the most disgusting, scariest thing I can think of. Waaay worse than allergies (at least my level of allergies).

Link via Sara