Search Results for: blog my first sunburn

Book Review: I’m Brown and My Sister Isn’t

Families are often advised to begin talking about adoption while a child is very young, even before he can understand the words, so that the child will grow up seeing adoption as a normal way for a family to form. Recent years have brought many children’s picture books on adoption, but it’s still a difficult topic to convey to toddlers and preschoolers. A book which speaks very simply about adoption and the diverse families it creates is I’m Brown and My Sister Isn’t, by Robbie O’Shea, who is herself a mother of two adopted children who have different skin colors. … Continue reading →

Natural Remedies For Sunburn

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Nobody’s perfect. We forget the sunscreen, and end up with sunburn. We find ourselves in situations where we wouldn’t imagine a burn was possible. That happened to me when I drove cross-country earlier this month — my left arm got toasted in the afternoon sun and I found myself in the middle of Iowa with a serious burn. So what can you do to ease the sting of sunburn? Cool water can be very soothing — if you can stand the sting of the shower water pummeling you. Try a washcloth or towel soaked in cold water if the shower … Continue reading →

How Do My Adopted Kids Think About Skin Color?

My daughters are still too young (seven and four) for me to know exactly how they think of skin color. But I’ve jotted down things they’ve said through the years. For those new to my blogs, my husband and I are white, we have a nine-year-old biological son and two half-sisters from Korea, ages 7 and 4. I assume the girls are fully Korean. We have no birthfather information on the younger one, and she was so much lighter-skinned than her sister that we wondered if she was half-European/American. But overall she now looks much like other Korean children I … Continue reading →

Family Fun On Vacation

This week, my family is on vacation. We have been having a great time, and Dylan has been doing very well as far as behaving appropriately and listening to us – much of the time. I think that there are a couple of reasons why things are going smoothly for us, even though our days have been much busier and exciting than they are at home. The first thing that I think is helping us to have a great vacation is to keep our expectations realistic. By choosing restaurants where we do not have to wait too long for a … Continue reading →

Summer Grooming Tips

Today I saw this picture of a fake cat made out of the fur of the real cat it sat beside. The picture really drove it home, as if the hardwood floors I have all over my house hadn’t already: summer is here, and that means so is grooming season. I hate grooming. It’s always just such a trial in my house. But I’m cheap so I hate paying for it more, and because none of my animals do much more try to walk away a little and guilt me a lot for brushing them, I don’t have a great … Continue reading →

Flaky Cats and What to Do About Them

My cat Chrestomanci is flaky. I don’t mean that he isn’t reliable or backs out on obligations (though I’m sure that too – he is a cat, after all), but that he has a dandruff problem. He’s had it ever since I’ve known him, even back when he was still just one of the cats kept by the rescue for which I volunteer. I’ve never been too concerned about Chresti’s dandruff, though I guess it’s a little gross. When I took him to the vet in February I asked about it, more out of curiosity than out of concern. At … Continue reading →

Treatment For Pancreatic Cancer

Are you becoming a pancreatic cancer expert? My hope for you is that you never need this information but it is here for you. We have covered symptoms, test and risk factors and now we need to talk about treatments. Pancreatic cancer is has a low survivability rate because of the fact that it is usually diagnosed after it has spread and therefor it is in a later stage for diagnosis. However pancreatic cancer does have low survival rates. For exocrine pancreatic cancer if you are diagnosed with stage 1A your 5 year survival rate is only 14% and that … Continue reading →

Beach Vacation

So we are heading out on family vacation in the morning. This is only our second big vacation since we adopted the kids nine years ago. Four years ago we went to Disney World with a charity called Kidd’s Kids. Kidd’s Kids takes chronic or terminally ill children and their family on an all-expense paid vacation. We were chosen to go because both of our sons have epilepsy a chronic neurological seizure disorder. This is the first summer vacation that we are venturing out on our own. When we went to Disney World it was November and I did not … Continue reading →

The Big Burn

My daughter’s Catholic school uniform is red, white and blue, though most kids typically show up to class wearing just the blue pants and white shirt. However, today when I dropped my first grader off at school I was met with a sea of red, only it wasn’t because all the kids finally decided to don their crimson sweaters. Rather, the red came courtesy of Sunday’s overexposure to ultraviolet rays. Yup, more than half the student body was sporting a mean sunburn. I suppose I shouldn’t have been that shocked considering that yesterday’s high of 83 was the first time … Continue reading →

Caution, Items in Sun Get Hot

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Summer is quickly approaching and the sun’s heat can be very intense. When we take our toddlers outside to play, we have to exercise caution against many things. We put sun block on our little ones so they don’t get burned. We bring plenty of fluids so they don’t get dehydrated and we try to keep our little ones out of as much direct sunlight as we can. What precautions are we taking at the playground? There aren’t any reminders that playground equipment gets hot. Even if the playground is not in direct sunlight, heat will permeate surfaces. We wish … Continue reading →