It’s March 9th and the temperature outside is a balmy 63 degrees here in New Jersey. What a great day to open some windows and let in some fresh air! The EPA reports that air pollution is up to five times higher inside than outside and most people spend up to 90% of their time indoors (especially in the winter). It’s also a great day to turn the heat “off”, conserve a bit of energy and give your gas meter the day off.
There’s a toxic brew of chemicals lingering in our homes. Many homes are built or remodeled more tightly, without regard to the factors that assure fresh and healthy indoor air. Our homes contain many furnishings and products (carpets, draperies, animals, floor tiles, paint, heaters, dust mites, chemicals etc..) that can greatly affect indoor air quality. Opening windows creates a healthy environment for your family. It helps to dilute pollutants and creates a natural ion balance and helps with humidity and moisture control. Chemical Cleaners are a major contributor to this toxic brew and long-term exposure to them inside our homes is harmful to us and our families. 150 chemicals found in the home have been associated with allergies, birth defects, cancer and psychological disorders. Cancer rates for cleaning women and women that stay at home are much higher than those who work out of the home.
I know all too well the impact exposure to chemical cleaners has on our bodies. My youngest daughter was hospitalized at the age of two for severe breathing difficulty after I got lazy and used bleach to clean my bathroom. This harrowing experience was a huge eye opener for me and one of the reasons I maintain a green-toxin free home and proudly represent Shaklee which I believe makes the best selection of natural non-toxic cleaners on the market. It’s amazing how your sense of smell will become more astute once the chemicals are removed from your home.
After a good cleaning, my home smells like a fresh Spring Day and not a mixture of Windex, 409 and Bleach. My children notice the difference and can detect these awful chemicals when we go to other people’s homes – sometimes asking me to open the windows to let the “smell” out.
Even when it’s still cold outside, it’s good a habit to open the windows for at least 10 minutes a day to get the dust and chemicals out – any season of the year.
Of course the 20 million Americans now suffering with asthma will surely benefit from some good fresh clean air in the house. Unfortunately, asthma rates in children under age five have increased more than 160% from 1980-1994 and an average of one out of every 13 school-aged children has asthma. That’s disturbing and we need to open our lungs and start breathing some non-toxic air.

Ok so here are some cold hard facts:
There have been 81,000 chemicals registered with the EPA in the last 30 years, and fewer than 20% have been tested for toxicity!
90% of all poison exposures occur at home
218,316 reported poison exposures in 2005 were from household cleaning products

Chlorine Bleach is the chemical most frequently involved in household poisonings in the U.S.
Degreasers may contain petroleum distillates, which can damage lung tissues and dissolve fatty tissue around nerve cells
Glass Cleaners may contain ammonia. Ammonia fumes can irritate the skin, eyes and respiratory system
Oven Cleaners can be one of the most dangerous cleaning products, which can cause severe damage to eyes, skin, mouth, and throat
Toilet Bowl Cleaners can be extremely dangerous cleaning products, which can be harmful just by breathing the fumes—and fatal if swallowed
Let’s take a look at SODIUM HYDROXIDE which may be found in dishwashing liquids, laundry products, oven cleaner, scouring cleansers and tub and tile cleaners

Inhalation is immediately irritating to the respiratory tract and contact can cause severe damage to the eyes, skin, mouth, and throat. Long term exposure can cause liver and kidney damage.

The list goes on and on … but what can you do?
For starters, get educated by going to the National Institutes of Health Household Products Database. Find out what you have in your home. Enter names of chemicals and see which brands contain them and Look up Toxicity Information or Health Information for them
Visit http://householdproducts.nlm.nih.gov/ingredients.htm
Properly dispose of harmful products and find safer choices.

Of course there are so many so-called GREEN options – your head may be spinning.
Labels are confusing and often times very misleading. The Shaklee Get Clean line as I mentioned is my all time favorite choice. GET CLEAN is always safe and nontoxic, has no harmful fumes, is hypoallergenic, contains no Kerosene, Phenol, Cresol, Lye, Hydrochloric acid, Sulfuric acid, Sulfamic acid, Petroleum distillates, Ammonia, Sodium hydroxide, Butyl cellosolve, Phosphoric acid, Formaldehyde, Morpholine to name a few.

All the products are super concentrated which help me to save money and I use ONLY the 3 bottles which come in the starter kit – keeping plastic out of the landfills. From my personal experience – they work better than anything I’ve tried. But don’t take my opinion, for the cost of a nice dinner out you can transform your entire house. Your family and your planet will thank you. 100% guaranteed! Click here to learn more.

Cindy Arko, Mompreneur, Wellness Coach, Triathlete, Shaklee Independent Distributor, Concerned and Curious Advocate for Healthy Living. Cindy takes a proactive role in her family’s health and believes most diseases are preventable – not curable. Cindy enjoys reading and writing about simple lifestyle changes to help ensure longevity and good health. She is an active Mom of three, a student at the Institute for Integrative Nutrition in New York City and a .com entreprenuer. She proudly sponsors the Food Allergy and Anaphylaxis Network, Shaklee Cares, The Freedom Alliance, Holistic Moms Network, American Diabetes Association, Challenged Athletes Foundation, Environmental Working Group and Habitat For Humanity to name a few. Cindy can be reached at cindy@recipeforgoodhealth.com.

Are you a mom that has made the move home from the corporate world but is looking for some work on the side? Do you know someone that lost their job in the recent recession and is looking to make a few extra bucks? ModMa needs help! We are currently seeking someone to help with a variety of marketing campaigns and promotions. As many of you know, we have enjoyed the help of Lindsay, our intern, since ModMa began and now as she graduates we need another set of hands. If you are interested, contact Tracey at tracey@modma.com for more information. Please pass along this article to anyone else that you know that may be looking as well! Thanks in advance to our mama network!

What a week…

I jinxed myself last week. I wrote that Hayden has been not so angry- that she resembled a “good” kid… Fast forward to Saturday- the Angry Little Diva returns. In full force. Apparently the miraculous arrival of her second tooth also possessed her to become a holy terror. That and the fact that she openly prefers her grandmother over her own mother have me on the verge of losing my mind. That is why I am posting a full 24 hours later than I usually do. I honestly am so exhausted from her antics that I had no idea what day it was. If it hadn’t been for a friend of mine who asked when I was going to post today, I wouldn’t be writing this.
Anyway… Orange is Hayden’s sleeping buddy. Orange is a stuffed orange seahorse that I won at a crappy carnival game this past summer. She has selected this ugly looking, big head (wait a minute… maybe that’s why she loves him, because he too has a big head… interesting) cheap stuffed animal as the companion she cannot live without. I allowed this stupid looking creature to move in with my baby girl because I couldn’t take it out of her clutches while she slept. She looked so cute grasping him for dear life.
Needless to say, all things that I think are “fine” usually aren’t. This was no exception. Hayden usually cries herself to sleep for naps. I don’t know what it is, but she needs to cry for two to three minutes before she’ll pass out in a heap. Saturday night, I gave her the bottle, kissed her good night, and put her in her crib as usual. I grabbed the monitor and downstairs I went to pour myself a congratulatory glass of Cabernet. (What? No one else celebrates surviving another day with a glass of wine?) As usual she stood there crying. I watched. Still crying. I still watched. Her usual protest turned into fits of hysteria. After a full twenty minutes, I began to panic. Against what every book I have ever read has advised, I went up and entered her room. Sure enough, Orange was on the floor. She had thrown him overboard and was hysterical without him. I grabbed Orange and helped rock her to sleep.
I called my husband and told him about the incident. It was “cute” how much she loved her Orange. You know what wasn’t cute?… When she began to repeat this for every nap the entire week. I would watch her intently on the monitor. Here were the sequences of events: I put her down… She begins to cry… She stands up… She dangles poor Orange over the edge… She is quiet while she threatens his life… She drops him…. Silence… Hysteria. Fabulous.
Oh, and she really dislikes me. Most children have separation anxiety when their parents drop them off to go to work. Not Hayden. I leave her with my Mom and she waves “bye bye” with a huge smile on her face. I go to pick her up- hysterical crying. I literally have to pry her off my mother. If I have to listen to her scream the entire way home one more day, I’m actually going to lose my mind.
Speaking of random- I’m addicted to my Blackberry, or as my friends call it, my Crackberry. On top of having a crazy week at work, Hayden going into possessed mode, and backing my car into my fathers Jeep, I’ve had an intervention regarding my “problem” with my phone.
I think if I write about it, then I’ll be able to deal with it. I can’t live without that phone in my hand. I check my e-mail constantly. I mean constantly. I think it’s so funny that this is actually a problem. My mother asked me to please stop checking e-mail while at red lights, one of my best friends asked that I didn’t respond to e-mails when we were out at dinner (Really? I do that? Apparently.) and my husband is constantly asking what’s so important and who am I writing to. I think that my job (Realtor) involves me having to be constantly available and I’m from a generation of instant gratification and I offer instant gratification to my clients. Ask me the list price of a new house on the market, I’ll answer you within five minutes. Need to know an inspectors phone number- I’ll bbm it to you in seconds. I am a product of an instant gratification age.
So as of yesterday, I am trying to not check e-mail while driving (I’m so embarrassed to admit that I do that- but I literally can’t help it) and trying to keep my phone in another room when playing with Hayden. I should have known something was wrong with me when Hayden would hold my phone correctly and act as though she is texting (she really does this) or holds it to her ear and speaks gibberish. Of course she does- that’s all she see’s her Mommy do.
Hm. That’s enough for tonight. Can you believe that I check e-mail while I’m at red lights? I can’t even believe I do that. I stand in the line at the grocery store and return e-mails. Hi, my name is Anna and I’m a textaholic.

Anna Sforza-Zapotosky is a first time Mommy to an almost one year old girl named Hayden. Her husband and baby reside in Norwalk, CT. Anna is a full time Realtor with William Raveis Real Estate serving all of Fairfield County. Before Hayden was born and flipped her life upside down and inside out, she performed stand up comedy all over NYC, Fairfield County and Westchester County. She can reached online at annazapo@yahoo.com

Romeothecat.com is a site dedicated to raising money and awareness for
animal rescues and shelters. Each month they select a new organization to
support. Since February 2009 they have raised more than $32,000 to help animals across the United States!

Their March rescue is: Small Paws Rescue, a nationwide Bichon rescue that has rescued over 7,500 Bichons in 11 years from shelters, puppymills and surrenders .  To learn more about Romeothecat.com and to donate to Small Paws Rescue please visit www.romeothecat.com.

Do you have an idea for a MODMA spotlight of the week? A Mompreneur? A local event? A charity doing great things? Then email me at tracey@modma.com!

If you are looking to shake the winter blues, nothing like a fabulous lime green handbag to spice up your life!  And if it is 70% off, that doesn’t hurt:-)  This is your insider tip, ladies–it is today only–check out the link below:

http://view.ed4.net/v/2GSZHK/YI8T/6226LMP/7QU78/MAILACTION=1&FORMAT=H?csm=125863216&csc=28656&csa=125866464&csu=28665

The Epic Battle

Hayden woke up a full thirty minutes earlier than she usually does (how dare she!) and I was a little sideways as a result of a rare splurge of a girls night out the night before. As I blurry eyed stumbled into her room, I was overcome with excitement to see her. I had a super busy day at work the day before and went straight out to meet my friends after my last appointment, so I literally hadn’t seen her in almost 24 hours.
She began the day the way she usually does; by pulling off her stinky sock and putting it into my mouth- but today was different. As I pulled off her diaper, the smell was strange and familiar. I was so taken back by the stench that as I let her place the sock in my mouth, I bit her. Hard. She screamed out in pain. I had a million different thoughts running through my mind- I just bit my daughter- why does her pee smell like that?- why did we order a second espresso martini after two bottles of wine- I hope she’s not going to bleed- How am I going to explain to people that I bit her?- and then I recognized the smell. It was asparagus pee!!
I calmed her down and apologized for trying to eat her finger. I screamed out to my husband, Paul, and asked if he had given her asparagus for dinner. Sure enough, he had. Her stinky asparagus pee smelled just like my stinky asparagus pee! She is my kid!
I’m always fascinated by what I find in her diaper. It’s been a reoccurring theme with me since she was born. I could spend hours talking about her poop, her issues with constipation, my theory on her colic related to her poop, the colors, the textures, the smell’s- I really have a problem.
Lately though, the issue isn’t so much the actual pee and poop that come out (although this mornings discovery was incredibly exciting) but the epic battles we have now to change her diaper. Long gone are the days where she would just lay there and I would change her. At this point, I dread the walk up to her nursery. I’ve contemplated whether it’s actually necessary to change her diaper if it’s only pee. The child will not sit still. She’s rolling all around. She has to grab and touch every single thing in the basket next to her changing pad (lately she is totally obsessed with her rectal thermometer and is constantly trying to put it in her mouth…so gross. Mental note to self: stop leaving it in there and hide it in the bathroom otherwise her breath will smell like crap). I break a sweat every single time I have to change her diaper. I have a routine. It involves draping a towel around me because she apparently thinks it’s great to pee on my clothes. She will sit up and refuse to lie back down. She has to touch her dirty diaper otherwise she will kick me repeatedly. I have to give her a baby wipe to suck on to calm her down… Is that even okay to do? Lately it has gotten worse. She has now realized that there’s something “down there” that she can touch. Of course, she only wants to explore when there’s a huge poop. So I mentally prep myself to make every changing as fast as possible. There have been plenty of times where I have failed at my mission and have to spend extended periods of time cleaning poop out from under her nails. I’m waiting for the day that she grabs a handful of it and throws it across the room. I sing, I dance, I plead, I hold dirty socks in my mouth- the child will just not sit still. When I went to take off her diaper tonight for bath time, I noticed that the Pamper was wedged right between her butt cheeks- Like a thong. Maybe that could be my claim to fame. I could design diapers to look and feel like thongs for babies. I’m sure that’ll make me some money.
Anyway, today the Tooth Fairy (otherwise known as my mom) announced that another tooth had arrived in Hayden’s mouth. Apparently my mother has declared herself the foremost authority on teething. She claims every single thing that Hayden does relates to teething. So after waiting almost three full months, Hayden has sprouted a second tooth. My mother was feeling pretty triumphant from the discovery. I was just in plain shock because I had given up on the fact that she would even have teeth at this point. I still haven’t witnessed the tooth because Hayden won’t let me anywhere near her mouth without biting and/or sticking out her tongue and making it impossible to stick my finger in there. But if the Tooth Fairy says it’s there, it’s there. Exciting stuff!
So as I sit here with my laptop on my lap while I lounge in my bed, I can’t help but stare at my little diva on the monitor screen. As usual she is clutching her “Orange”. Orange is the name we gave to an orange sea horse stuffed animal I won last year at a carnival. She bites him. She tries to pull off his eyes. She wrestles with him in her crib. She jumps on his head. I’m beginning to worry that she has anger management issues; especially since lately she is constantly hitting me in the face with blunt objects. Not to worry though, my Mom has reassured me that she’s just doing that because of teething.

Anna Sforza-Zapotosky is a first time Mommy to an almost one year old girl named Hayden. Her husband and baby reside in Norwalk, CT. Anna is a full time Realtor with William Raveis Real Estate serving all of Fairfield County. Before Hayden was born and flipped her life upside down and inside out, she performed stand up comedy all over NYC, Fairfield County and Westchester County. She can reached online at annazapo@yahoo.com

H salon and Branches of Hope are coming together for their 2nd annual fundraiser. Branches of Hope, a non profit organization, based in Westport, serves families and children with complex needs, such as, autism. Branches of Hope and H Salon are joining forces in Fairfield to support this cause. H salon recognizes the need to help these families. They are offering haircuts, in lieu of payment they ask everyone to make a tax deductible contribution to the Hope Center in any amount you feel necessary. The event will be held at H Salon on Sunday, February 28, 2010 from 12pm-3pm. Please call H Salon to schedule an appointment (203) 255-0798.

Every year, the Town of Fairfield joins together for one great book that we share as a town. This year, the book is Into the Beautiful North by Louis Alberto Urrea. Urrea weaves a story of a woman in a poor but closely bound community in Mexico as she finds that her small town has been over run by gangsters and heads north to find men to bring back to protect the town. Fairfield has many events happening around this event, so check out the local happenings page for the details. Perhaps the most significant of which is an evening of discussion on the book with Louis Alberto Urrea on March 24th. For all the details, click on the event under Local Happenings and get reading!

Are you a current Bank of America customer? Well, you may be interested to note that you can have free admission to over 100 museums nationwide the first full weekend of every month! Here locally, the Stepping Stones Museum in Norwalk is FREE the first full weekend of every month just by presenting your your Bank of America Card. If you venture a little farther down the road, you can take advantage of the Bronx Zoo, New York Aquarium, Intrepid Museum, or MoMA! For more information, visit http://museums.bankofamerica.com/ and don’t forget your Bank of America Card when you head out for some culture with the kids!

Quirks

Over the course of the past few months, I’ve watched my Angry Little Diva resemble some sort of a high maintenance, funny little girl. I wouldn’t call her so Angry anymore. Don’t get wrong, she certainly has her moments where I’m convinced that the sky will fall or that her head will explode from the amount of screaming that she’s doing. Overall though, she has gotten a lot better. She has changed so much.
Some of my Mommy friends say that they miss when the kids were “itty bitty” and just laid there staring up, taking in the new world. I don’t miss that. Not even for one second. While some of the Mommy’s would talk about how their little darling slept for 7 hours straight at 2 weeks, I would sip my 13th cup of coffee for the day and be sure that they must be overdosing on left over percocets from their delivery. Hayden didn’t sleep therefore I didn’t sleep. I remember one night, my clearly oblivious husband and I were out somewhere. I overheard someone ask if Hayden was sleeping through the night. He smiled and said that of course she was. She had been sleeping through the night for weeks. I stared at him in disbelief. Then I realized that he hadn’t woken up once to take care of her after 10 p.m. since she was 2 weeks old. Apparently, it never dawned on him why his wife now resembled a zombie. Obviously all new Moms go around with a cup of Dunkin Donuts in one hand and a dirty martini in the other and wear black circle make up under their eyes.
I thought it would never get better, but it did. Slowly, it did. One night I put her to sleep at midnight and she slept to 6 a.m. I was sure something horrible had happened. I rolled over, saw that the clock said 5:58 a.m. and woke up in a panic and screamed. My screaming woke Hayden up, but I can easily say that was the best nights sleep of my life. Slowly, my life began to return.
It still wasn’t easy. She’s a fussy kid, but now she’s hysterical. All of her friends started getting teeth. Not Hayden. My mother became obsessed with the fact that she didn’t have any teeth. Every time I would glance over, my Mom would have her fingers in Hayden’s mouth feeling around. I’ll never forget the day she discovered that one had come in. She was 9 and a ½ months old. I heard her screaming from the next room. “It’s there! It’s there! I can feel it!” And just like that, Hayden had a tooth. It was December, so of course all we asked for Christmas was Hayden’s two front teeth. Well, we got one. And now, at a whopping 11 and a half months old, she still only has one. She uses that one tooth very wisely though. She bites when she needs attention and I have to say, nothing is cuter than when she flashes that one tooth smile. I’ve come to terms that she will most likely only have 1 tooth for her entire life. And that’s okay. My grandparents only have a few teeth too. They survived. Paul and I call her our Little Can Opener.
Hayden does a lot of little things that I think are hysterical, but the “well behaved” Mommy in me has to discipline. She has this habit that when she’s with other children her own age, she has to crawl on top of them and sit on their laps. Again, I think this is hysterical; other Mom’s not so much. So I usually take her off them. I think it’s a term of endearment. She pokes people she loves in the eye with her one pointer finger. Me? Hysterical. Others? Not so much. The most fun game we play is when she takes her sock off (and by the way, she has the sweatiest smelliest feet ever) and forces the sock into my mouth. She actually has a weird obsession with her socks and usually pulls them off and carries them around the house with her. She even takes baths with her sock in her hand. I let her. I think it’s funny. I love the way her face lights up whenever there’s a Geico commercial. I don’t know how she knows it’s a Geico commercial, but she does, and she thinks it’s the “bee’s knee’s”.
She pants like a dog when she crawls, screams like she’s on a rollercoaster whenever you pick her up out of the crib, isn’t afraid of my parents 140 pound Doberman and pulls his ears, and throws her Cheerios off the high chair because she wants the “good stuff” (blueberries). She’s quirky and I love it.
So ladies, I do not miss the early days of sleepless nights. Truthfully, I barely remember a time when she just laid there staring at the walls. I’m actually pretty sure she was never that young. But then again, who knows? I do like me some percocets! Kidding!

Anna Sforza-Zapotosky is a first time Mommy to a n almost 1 year old girl named Hayden. Her husband and baby reside in Norwalk, CT. Anna is a full time Realtor with William Raveis Real Estate. Before Hayden was born and flipped her life upside down and inside out, she performed stand up comedy all over NYC, Fairfield County and Westchester County. She can reached online at annazapo@yahoo.com