I was at a wedding the other night (congrats Amy and Ash!) and our reception table was composed entirely of people that I used to work with. A very fun group. We also all have kids around the same age. Inevitably, the issue of the toy recalls came up. What to do? Just look at the recall list? Throw all toys from China out? What about Taiwan? What about toys from before the recall date? What about toys in general? Are we better safe than sorry to just go back to basics? You know – forget the toys and let the kids go play outside in the dirt? Actually, I think my kids would love that – it must be vacation!
Over the weekend, I spoke to my sister, who lives in Canada and has a 4-year-old and a 22-month-old. My sister is one of the moms (like me) that has chosen to use this opportunity to downsize on the toys. She has cleaned out all toys from China (whether they are on the recall list or not) and other toys her kids simply don’t play with very often from her house and three large bags of toys are sitting on her front porch ready to be carted away. My 4-year-old niece’s friend came over to play and spied the stack. “OMG – you still have Dora’s Castle? My mom said we have to throw mine away because it was made in China. We don’t have any Chinese toys anymore…but I did get to keep one from Mexico.” My sister and I talked about how this brought our mother’s anti-Barbie stance (my mom became a feminist the day she had twin daughters) when we were growing up to a whole new level. Instead of us being excited when we got to play with Barbies at our friend’s houses, will our kids be excited about going to a playdate and getting to play with Chinese toys?
Along with toy issue is the newest concern around the use of polycarbonate plastic in baby bottles and sippy cups potentially causing behavioral and neurological defects – specifically Avent’s Natural Feeding Bottle and Dr. Brown’s Natural Flow bottles, but any bottles or cups made from polycarbonate plastic. Apparently, polycarbonate bottles are made from bisphenol A (BPA), which poses quite a litany of health risks. Actually, I guess the bottle concern is not completely new – Silicon Valley Moms Blog’s own Courtney blogged about it back in January. But it was news to me. Whoops…
Ok, my preschooler twins are past this issue (although they used Dr. Brown’s bottles when they were babies, so maybe this explains how insane they are?) – they drink mostly out of “big kid” cups made of acrylic. But my baby? Well, she’s 15 months old now, so she’s technically a toddler. And a “big girl” – getting bigger every day. And I tell her so all the time. To illustrate her big girlhood, she can: climb down the two steps in our backyard deck all by herself, say “Uh-oh” (premeditated at times), “D-D-D-D-D-Dora” (what can I say – she has older siblings), “Peas” (please) and many more words, go find her shoes when she wants to go outside… but she’s still My Baby. My Last Baby, in fact.
So maybe I have babied her a little bit, because she is my last baby. Also, she was very ill when she was born (she had pulmonary hypertension and very nearly died). She spent about a month in the hospital and when she came home she was a constant nurser. My theory is that she just needed comfort after all she had been through. But she may just be one of those babies who loved the boob. Anyway, it took almost 7 months to get her to even TAKE the damn bottle and now she is quite attached to the thing, which is, of course, an Avent bottle, one of the polycarbonate plastic bottles at issue. Even now, she won’t drink milk if it is not with me – she will hold out until I get home. While she knows how sippy cups work (and will use them if she is very hungry and the promise of a bottle at bedtime still holds), it is certainly not her preference. I was going to go cold turkey to a sippy cup about a month ago, but then she got sick two days in and I felt bad and caved. Now that I know what the research says, it is time to make the switch. No going back this time.
Considering my options, I could get a replacement bottle. Glass? Seems like a ridiculous idea to give a toddler glass. But I guess that’s what people did before plastic was invented. Now that is really back to basics. There are BPA-free bottles now on the market – the Adiri and Born Free, for instance. But it seems that this is a good time to get her off the bottle and onto a sippy cup all the time, as painful as it will be. So…are my sippy cups BPA-free? Did some research and got myself some new cups. So for the last three days, after I tossed my Avent bottles as directed to, we are on the sippy cup program. All day long, she pinches my chest (code for Give Me The B-O-T-T-L-E – by the way, we can’t say the word anymore as she knows what it means) and throws her sippy cup at me in frustration. Man, is getting back to basics painful or what?!
Attention Silicon Valley and beyond....On Sunday, the USDA recalled 143 million pounds of beef from Chino-based Hallmark/Westland meatpacking company. DC Metro Mom blogger Joanne posted about the recall here a few days ago. Over the past two years, thirty-seven million pounds of meat from so-called downer cows were shipped to school lunch programs. Schools are busy pulling meat from freezers, but our kids already ate most of it, according to the the Department of Agriculture's food safety official. Thankfully, the meat is not known to be tainted with e. coli or another pathogen. It's "just" from sick cows, so Hallmark/Westland thought they could get away with it.
We moms do our best to keep our families safe. But in light some recent safety news, I think my family is going to go find Saddam Hussein's worm hole and take up residence there. 
Check to see the Made in the USA tag on the product.
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