You know I’ve got stress when I think of my own kids as I read the headline:

Sister Hopes Frozen Airman Is Her Brother

Because, even though she really does love the Bear, there are plenty of times when she wishes he would go get preserved in a glacier and leave her alone.

For the first year after he was born, I think the Princess was really puzzled by this whole little brother thing. Her daddy was gone on det, her mama was tired and crabby, and it was nothing like the picture on the box her kiddie pool came in. (That picture was the final straw in her quest to have a little brother or sister. It had a little boy and girl playing happily in the water, with a mama watching over them. Everyone is smiling and happy and full of love.) Was it too late to send this spitty, smelly, noisy thing back?

At two and a half, he’s not so spitty (he’s still smelly and noisy), but now the Bear wants her attention. “Read to me, Princess!” “Look at me, Princess!” “Hi, Princess! HI-I-I-I!” She regards his adoration as flattering, if a little annoying. Little brothers can be awfully inconvenient, as it turns out.

Which is why the headline grabbed me. Not that she wants him to expire in an icy wilderness…but it would quiet things down around here, wouldn’t it?

“It would be exciting, in a sad way,” said Pyle

Just in time for Halloween procrastinators (cough), here is a site with hundreds of low cost costume ideas that you make yourself. My favorites are

• Substitute Teacher: Dress conservatively like a teacher (hair up in a bun, skirt and sweater, glasses on a chain around your neck). Then, stick a paper airplane in the back of your hair, put a note that says “Kick Me” on your back, cover your hands and face with chalk, and put chalk eraser prints on your clothes. Attach staples and paperclips to your clothes, with broken pencils sticking out here and there.
• Frank Einstein: Get a Frankenstein mask and attach an Albert Einstein wig, spray the wig with green haircolor, wear a lab coat with pocket protector, pens, etc.
• Dust Bunny: Wear a dirty old white bunny costume and carry a feather duster, or “dust buster” vacuum. (Much cooler than all the 12 year old Playboy bunnies that we get at our front door every year. Funnier, too. Ed.)
• Leggo My Eggo: Wear pajamas and a bathrobe with the right sleeve burned. Put a wig in rollers and burn the hair on the right side as well. Buy an old toaster and carry it around by sticking your fingers in one of the slots… with a waffle in the other slot.
• Windblown Biker Babe: Wear leather jacket, boots, etc. Rat your hair and hairspray it so it looks blown back. Run tons of makeup off to the sides to simulate high speed biking. Add flies and bug splats for realism. Put coffee grounds in your teeth and smile a lot.
• Ms. Canada: Wear a plaid shirt with jeans (to look like a lumber jack) and have the sash that says Ms. Canada. (More believable as a man’s costume. Ed.)
• Phantom of the Grand Ole Opry: Wear black clothes. Put on a black cape, Phantom mask, cowboy hat, boots, with play gun and holster.
• Conan the Barber: Dress like a barbarian (armor, boots, leather, etc.), and carry a large pair of fake scissors, a comb, and a hair dryer and brush.

Excuses that you are an adult now are unacceptable. Everybody needs one night out of the year to get creative and be someone else. It’s also the best shot many of us have all year at being funny. (It really impresses your kids, too.)

So go get dressed. And post a link to your picture in the comments – I want evidence!

The state schools just keep looking better all the time. Why do I bother with this thing called “home schooling?”

I finally have found the Bear’s motivation! He doesn’t care for any of the usual potty pastimes. What he wants is…lotion. His sister’s pink strawberry glitter lotion. He will sit forever if I dole out tiny dabs on his hand to rub onto his face and knees. “Sparkly!” he says.

Being a twenty-first century kinda gal, I am okay with my son’s smelling like fruit and shining like Vegas showgirl. He’s two. But it got me to thinking – Do they even make a manly-man version of this stuff? Jergins is just not very exciting. How’s about:

• Lance Armstrong lotion. Bright yellow, and smells like a mixture of sweat and bike chain lube.
• REI lotion. Forest green, and smells like pine, patchouli, and granola. $24 for a 2 oz. bottle.
• NASCAR lotion. Tar brown, and smells like gasoline and beer. Limited edition keychain version available soon!

The medical community wonders why we are fleeing in droves. Here’s a clue: Pediatricians Would Dismiss Families Who Refuse Vaccinations.

Well over a third of pediatricians – 39 percent – say they would “dismiss” families that refuse all vaccinations, a new study suggests. That’s surprising, says study leader Erin A. Flanagan-Klygis, MD, assistant professor of pediatrics at Chicago’s Rush Medical College.

But another finding surprises Flanagan-Klygis even more. More than one in four pediatricians – 28 percent – say they would fire families that agreed to some vaccinations but refused one or more other vaccinations.

I’m not a total earth mama – my kids get immunized, albeit one shot per visit. (Which means we visit the clinic about once a week when they’re tiny.) But I do not go for the chickenpox vaccine. In military medical circles, this pretty much amounts to heresy. And the pressure is worse now that we know about the Princess’s little problem. They really want her to get the pox shot. Why? So we can give her steroids. Let’s see… No, and no.

When I was a kid, I got chickenpox twice – twice! – but only lightly. Blisters and itchy, but only for a couple of days. Kind of like a vaccine, I got small doses of the disease, and my body learned to fight it.

Only it didn’t. I got a full blown case at age 25 while I was working for an after school program at the Y. This time, I got gonzo sick, and it happened just as Mr. MG was out to sea for a few weeks. Miserable? You betcha. But now I can walk into a room of itchy, fevered, oozing children and not worry. Not that I plan to take it up as a hobby or anything. But I could.

Which is why I won’t be giving my kids the vaccine. I want them to get a good, solid case that will last them for life, no booster needed. And this makes me akin to a child abuser in the medical community’s eyes. I’m just another wacko internet mama.

A “natural mothering” web site gives a recipe for spreading varicella zoster virus — the chickenpox germ. It advises parents to pass a whistle from the infected child to other children.

“It is absolute lunacy,” UCLA infectious disease specialist Peter Katona, MD, tells WebMD.

Lunacy! For not handing over my kids without question.

I was told that the oral polio vaccine was safe, and was glad to spare the Princess an extra poke. Two months later: OOps! Guess it’s not so safe… Some kids get polio from the oral vaccine. Being a lunatic, you can imagine my reaction.

As long as doctors try to regulate us, to force us into decisions we are not comfortable with, it will erode our trust. And then they will have the nerve to ask, “Where’s the love?”