Days that don't suck are a good thing.
Late last night I got an email from the little one's teacher asking if I could step in for a field trip in the morning. I knew Little L would be thrilled and so I agreed and then surprised her this morning when I told her I would be going on the trip with her class today. Of course, then I looked outside and saw the foot and a half of snow that we had to navigate through to actually get to school. I realized that the last time I was on a yellow school bus in a snow storm was sometime in late 1989 when my bus got stranded and stuck in traffic for 5 hours on our way home from school. This was going to be interesting.
And yet, despite the odds against us, the snowpocalypse, 50+ six year olds Grade One students going to see the ballet, and no time for me to get a coffee, it went remarkably well. My kid has the best teacher (I am not kidding, she is amazing and I am seriously worried that my kids are going to peak with their best teacher in Grade 1), and she had her class of 20 kids running like a well-oiled and extremely colourful snow-geared-up machine.
The ballet itself was so much fun. It was a production/adaptation of The Night Before Christmas put on by the students of Vimy Ridge Academy and I was incredibly impressed by the caliber of dance and performance that these kids have.
I watched Little L from my seat at the end of our aisle. She was the one kid who sat on the very edge of her seat, who clapped the loudest, and who noticed little details like the different costumes and different music used by the contemporary dancers versus the ballet dancers. I saw in her eyes that her love of dance is thoroughly entrenched and my life as a dance mom is all but inevitable.
After everyone had been safely bussed back to school and to a much needed "collation" (that's French for snack), I made a snap decision to go to the mall and check out Black Friday at a few of my favourite stores. It was a gamble to be sure; would I even make it there with the streets covered in snow? Would I find parking? How bad were the lines and how good were the sales?
In the end it was all worth it. I found a decent parking spot, the mall was surprisingly not as busy as I expected, and after circling Anthropologie a few times, I asked a sales person to find my lobster, the one item that I have been coveting in the catalogue for the past few months. She found it. I bought it - at 25% off too - and my day was officially made!
I am not sure what to call her yet (I am leaning towards Frida), but I do think I may be developing a little bit of a throw pillow problem...
Today was one of those days. One that defies (bad) expectations. One in which it feels like time is on your side, that there is plenty of it, and that all will be good in the world.
At least for today.
n~
folding to the panic and chaos
Last night, everything kind of hit me all at once. Some things I can talk and write about, others I can not.
I am trying to take care of everyone and everything and starting to feel very overwhelmed.
There is just too much going on and not enough of me to go around...
My reserves are severely tapped. I feel as if I am driving an old beat up car and just filling it up $5.00 at a time and never running on a full tank.
This is not a good way to live.
I spend my days daydreaming of sleeping for a whole day (or a whole weekend). Of taking off to a far away island somewhere to stand in the sun, like some kind of mom-version of Olivia Pope. Of not having to worry about anyone or anything for just a few hours.
It just doesn't seem to be the year for that.
We are in the height of flu season, I have had a head cold for over a week that I just can't shake, and I am perpetually paranoid about passing any kind of respiratory illness to my son. I know I am going to have a giant panic attack the day he gets his next fever and while I rationally know that this is ridiculous and that he will be fine, it's not something I can get away from yet.
Yesterday, he had a follow up appointment with the audiologist. It's an almost 2 hour appointment and halfway into the second hour, my phone rang. It was the kid's school. They were sending my daughter to the office and asking me to come pick her up because she had a fever and a tummy ache.
I froze. I didn't know what to do. I was on the other side of town, finding out that my son's hearing is not improving and may, for some reason, be getting worse, and my daughter was at school with a fever and a tummy ache and historically, these symptoms usually precede some kind of expelling of bodily fluids. I am fully aware that I have had far worse days than yesterday, and some quite recently, but it was just all too much. We cut the audiology appointment short and promised to follow up on another day for the debriefing part. We made it to the school within 25 minutes and I found her with a warm forehead, red cheeks, and a rumbling tummy, waiting quietly for me in the office. We all went home, changed into our pyjamas, laid out some towels on top of the bed (just in case) and had a nap.
Well, that was my plan at least. The kids "napped" for all of 15 minutes and then went off to play and demand things like snacks and Netflix access and reading of books and a bunch of other things that were not SLEEPING. And damn it, I was just so tired (and a certain someone got over her feverishness very quickly).
After dinner, The Consort and I managed to get the kids to bed early and then I planted myself in front of the TV in the living room and settled in for my version of a soothing, brainless, providing-order-when-I-feel-surrounded-by-chaos, activity: folding laundry. I sat and folded and surrounded myself with neat little piles of my family's perfectly folded wardrobes and felt a calm descend upon me.
And then I decided to watch Benjamin Button and cried all the tears.
{Sigh}
Maybe I should just take up colouring like my friend Elan has.
n~
Two things.
I spent the day in a room full of babies and baby carriers today at a local Babywearing Swap & Shop organized by a friend of mine. I had a bin full of demo carriers left over from my personal babywearing stash, the Natural Urban Mamas store and my babywearing educator days. I took along The Little Lady and we set up our table (she brought two of her doll carriers to sell) for a day of babywearing and de-stashing. This event confirmed a few things for me.
The first, is that I really am done with that phase of my life.
I don't long to hold every baby that comes my way, although I'll gladly do so if you need me to. I don't look at mamas with beautiful blossoming bellies and instinctively touch my own and wonder what it would be like again. Neither my ovaries, nor my boobs, feel any kind of twinge-ing or tingling when I hear a baby coo or cry. And surprisingly, I no longer yearn for the days of wearing my babies anymore - although I am almost 99% sure that my daughter would jump at the chance if I offered.
It's officially official. I am done with babyhood. So much so, that I didn't even wrap a baby on myself today OR take a babywearing selfie!
The second thing that was confirmed for me today, is that I am still really good at two things: educating and selling.
I love the look on a parent's face when I am able to show them how to use a carrier properly and it's like a whole new world has opened up for them. Or when a mama tells me that she has a ring sling, but her baby hates it and then I tweak it just a bit (upright positioning people!) and again that "OMG, I had no idea!" face happens. The best one today was the sweet, 8-week old, baby girl who fell asleep within 10 seconds of being put into a wrap carrier for the first time. That was the easiest $100 bucks I have ever made! Well, except for that one time at... oh, never mind. ;)
Sales has always been something that I am good at. In retail, as a pharmaceutical sales rep, and as an online boutique owner, it's just kind of what I do, and do really well. I catch myself doing it even when I am not making any money at it! Did I ever tell you about that time when we where building our first home and I spent a day at the show home office and sold two houses for our builder? Yup, that happened.
I once attended a brilliant talk by Arlene Dickinson (I highly recommend you go see her speak if you ever get the chance). Arlene talks about how marketing is all about story telling and there is a very good reason that Arlene is as successful as she is, she is a DAMN GOOD story teller! Sales is a bit different though. Selling is about listening to another person's story and asking questions and then finding the right product to fit into that story. Sometimes that product is what you have on your table and sometimes it isn't and you have to send them somewhere else to find what they need. To me, THAT is the sign of a good salesperson. Remember that next time you are shopping and/or trying to sell something.
~~~~~
It's nice to have days that affirm certain aspects of your life for you.
It feels good to not have that nagging feeling of what if following you around and taking your focus away from the currently IS.
It's also nice to have that "I've still got it" feeling too.
Now, I've just got to figure out how to work what I've still got into where I am now in my life...
That's the next challenge.
n~
how many joy units is that?
The Consort has been hounding me for months (or possibly years) to read a book. Not just any book, because I do read a lot of them, but one particular book. This one.
And this weekend I caved. I had just finished a different book and was looking to start another and he, ever so nonchalantly, went to my bedside table, grabbed this book and placed it beside me on the couch.
OK, dude. I get it. I'll read the damn thing.
We all have those books that transform us or speak to us in ways others do not. When my husband was leaving his family home and taking off to the adult world of undergraduate studies at the ripe age of 17, the original "Wealthy Barber" book was given to him by his father. This is HIS book.
I am pretty sure when TC is doing anything financially-related in any way, the voice he hears in his head is David Chilton's. "Is this worth it? Are the joy units going to last long with this purchase? Have you saved FIRST?"
I fully admit that I am the spender in our family and The Consort is the saver. I do the clothes shopping for most of us, all of the grocery shopping and I am the one who buys the gifts for all the birthdays, anniversaries and holidays. Yes, we do have a family budget, that I stick to - about 87% of the time. It's that other 13% that gets TC's knickers in a knot and why he wants me to read what Mr. Chilton has to say about finances.
The funny thing is, that in the past year, I truly believe that my spending habits have changed. Or more specifically, my shopping habits have changed.
I know that part of the change has been a response to the life-altering time we experienced this past summer and from that has come much reflection on the things that truly matter in our lives. And you know what? More stuff is not IT. Another part of why my shopping habits have changed, is that I am much more aware of the influence that marketing has on us as consumers. Years of being a breastfeeding advocate and seeing the ways that infant formula is marketed has rubbed off and has me looking a lot more closely at the way ALL products are marketed. Being a blogger and a mother, I've also seen the way that marketing has taken hold in this age of new media and I am VERY sensitive to this in the blogging world. I am more aware now about the message I am hearing and who that message is coming from as well.
~~~~~
This past weekend, we were supposed to go away for a short little mountain getaway. That didn't happen, mainly because it snowed and I have crap for tires on my car and we couldn't even get out of our little neighbourhood, let alone make it 300 kilometres to the lodge in the mountains. For the next four days we had to use my husband's compact car (which thankfully has AWD and all-season tires) for all our outings. What we both noticed over the weekend is how surprisingly easy it was to function with less car. And this included multiple errands, grocery shopping, and hauling all four of us around to various activities to make up for our missed trip to the mountains.
I have also recently purged every single closet in this house. My wardrobe alone is roughly HALF of what it was a month ago (if you know me at all, this is HUGE!). I am not quite down to Capsule Wardrobe numbers, but the philosophy behind this concept is guiding me right now in regards to what I keep, what goes and how I look at clothes shopping now. It's definitely a change. Especially for one like me, an admitted shopaholic, who gets greeted at Anthropologie BY NAME!
All of these things - reading David Chilton, surviving a week as a family of four with one compact vehicle, minimalizing our wardrobes - have happened at the same time and have caused a kind of cosmic convergence in my mind about how I want to live my life and about the lessons about money and spending and the value of what we HAVE versus the value of what we DO, that we are modelling for our children.
My family lives a very comfortable life, one that I am so very grateful for each and every day. It's just time for me take stock of all that we have, not get caught up in the game of keeping up with the proverbial Jones's and resist the messaging that we are bombarded with each day that we need MORE! More car, more house, more toys, more clothes, more STUFF.
Because we really do not.
My kid is not going to remember the expensive brand name winter boots he was wearing when he was eight years old or what kind of car I drove him to school in. He is more likely going to remember that his Mom bought new snow pants for herself that year, so that she could play outside and build a snow fort with him.
And trust me Mr. Chilton, the "joy units" from that purchase will never depreciate!
n~
this is six: the reboot
Six years ago to the minute (it is now 8:55 PM), after about 7 hours of labour, I was fully dilated and about to start pushing. By 9:05 pm, I had delivered my second child, a girl. Our perfect, full-term, straight to the breast, easy-peasy girl. When my husband first told me that she was a girl, I felt two things. Panic and complete and utter surprise.
And then panic again.
How was I going to raise a girl? I only know boy stuff. I have a house full of boy stuff. I know how to change boy diapers. I can DO boy. And I fully expected to be doing all that boy stuff again with our second one - hence the surprise part of my feelings.
Under the surprise and the joy was the panic though. That first night, she latched on to my breast within 45 minutes of being born and only came off for a quick wipe down and check by the nurses. She suckled all night long (her big brother had kept my supply going throughout my pregnancy so there was no real waiting for my milk to come in). And while she did, I stared at her. I stared and marvelled and traced every inch of her tinyness and fell in love.
And yet, the panic was still there.
It wasn't so much the logistics of caring for a newborn girl baby that had me all tied up in knots (although the amount of dirty diaper wiping needed for girl babies versus boy babies is vastly under-reported in all the baby books!), it was the whole concept of RAISING a girl in this world that had me feeling ALL the anxiety. It was the feeling of being a previously (and most likely still) slightly broken girl raising another girl. That first night, all the thoughts of what her life would be consumed me. I thought of how I was going to manage to not pass on to her all of my own issues with self-esteem and self-worth? Of how I would be able to help her navigate a world that automatically sees her as an other, just for being born a girl? Of how I was going to be able to help her through the mean girl years - teaching her both how to not be one and how not be picked on by one? But mostly, I thought of how this was the universe telling me that what goes around comes around. That she was going to be my mini-me and I had better be prepared for that.
Dear Universe. I do so hate it when you are right.
She is a mini me.
Except, it's in all the best ways possible.
And while I still panic every now and then about raising my daughter in this messed up world of ours, it is somewhat less than what it was on that first day when I held her and stared at her for 24 hours straight. Not because our world is any less messed up than it was then, but because I am. And because I am fixing the broken parts of me, the ones that tell me that I am not good enough, not strong enough, not {insert ingrained pattern of belief here) enough, I am in turn raising a girl child whom I hope will never internalize those kinds of beliefs about herself.
At six years old, my own world came crashing down around me as my parents split up. No one was able to tell me why in a way that made sense to my then six-year old brain, and the messages about myself that I have carried with me ever since have been ones of low self-worth and un-lovableness. It is hard to unlearn 30-plus years of patterned beliefs about one's self. BUT... Because I see so much of myself when I look at my daughter now, in those hard parenting moments {and in the good ones too}, I get to stop and think of what six-year old me needed to hear those very many years ago and say those things to my own child.
I want the words that my daughter hears me speak to and about her now, to become the voice that she hears in her head as she grows up.
Loving words. Forgiving words. Kind words.
That is my birthday wish for her today and all her days.
My beautiful life lesson.
My gift from the Universe.
My girl.
XO,
n~
Pillows
While we were on Vancouver Island for our holidays recently, we visited more than one craft/street/farmer's market in the towns and areas surrounding us. It's one of my favourite things to do while we are there and I look forward to it every year. This year while at the market in Qualicum Beach, my daughter saw a super cute puppy pillow and really wanted it. It was $20 and I looked at it and thought, I can totally make that and proceeded to tell her this. And every day since we have been back she has asked me if today is the day we are going to make her puppy pillow. At this point my stalling seemed to be getting a bit cruel, and so I decided that yes, today was indeed that day.
Frst we had to go to Michael's and get supplies, and I don't know about you, but I can never get out of there without spending at least $100.00. Then we had to drive the 45 minutes to my mom's place to borrow her sewing machine, and being as it is now 12:35 AM, I have poked myself innumerable times with a sewing needle, had to go and check Youtube for a bunch of tutorials on how to actually use my mother's sewing machine and I am finally done and just put everything away, all I can think of is, "Damn it woman, buy the bloody $20 pillow next time!"
Also, this is what the house of a non-crafter looks like when she decides to go against her nature for the day! Don't ask about the hammer...
And this is the hand that had to undo way too many stitches today, because... NON-crafter!!
And after many hours, this is the final (non-stuffed) product. I gotta say, despite it all, I am feeling quite proud of myself. Yes, the whole thing cost way more than the $20 bucks I would have spent at the market, and yes, it took me all of the day to actually finish the damn thing, but I can't wait to see the look on her face when she sees this little guy sitting on her bedside table waiting for her tomorrow morning!
Here is the tutorial I found for the puppy pillow from Lisa over at The Red Thread. And since I was kind of on a roll and found some old quarter pieces of fabric that I had tucked away in the laundry room, I busted out this guy too. Yeah, C's gonna be stoked too! 
And now it is almost 1 AM. I have to be up in less than 6 hours and I believe that I have officially fulfilled my crafty-mama quota for this year! And to all you people who do this kind of thing for a living, I salute you! And I will never, ever again try to haggle with you over the cost of your products! Because if someone wanted to buy one of my pillows today, with the amount of time and effort and injury to my poor fingers that went into them, these babies would be $500 EACH!
n~
Miracle Milk. make it, donate it, love it.
2,078 Days ago, I delivered a 3 lb, 6 oz baby boy. I kissed his tiny little head and then he was taken away, accompanied by his daddy, to the NICU one floor above me. This is how I entered the world of motherhood. It was at least 3 hours before I was able to see my child and another 5 more before I was able to hold him and all the various tubes and wires attached to him.
I had gestational hypertension throughout my first pregnancy. It was discovered early enough at 26 weeks and we knew that regardless of how well controlled we could keep my blood pressure, the chances were VERY high that I was going to have to deliver the baby before we reached full-term. Outside of my weekly visits to the neonatology clinic for NSTs and ultrasounds, I was put on bed-rest for the remainder of my pregnancy. And I read. I read every book about premature babies that I could find. I learned about the challenges that they face, the complications of early birth and the best practices for how to overcome them.
This was how I learned about the benefits of kangaroo care and babywearing. And this was the first time I heard the phrase "liquid gold" in regards to colostrum and breastmilk. This was also when I learned about the #2 killer of NICU babies, necrotizing enterocolitis (NEC). In medical speak, "necrotizing enterocolitis (NEC) is one of the most common gastrointestinal emergencies in the newborn infant. It is a disorder characterized by ischemic necrosis of the intestinal mucosa, which is associated with inflammation, invasion of enteric gas forming organisms, and dissection of gas into the muscularis and portal venous system." (1) In laymans' terms, part of a baby's immature gut basically dies and needs to be surgically removed. It is extremely painful and has both short and long-term complications.
I was fortunate to carry my baby to 35 weeks and have a rather uneventful, albeit quick, delivery. My son was very small and very jaundiced, but otherwise healthy. He even ripped off his oxygen tube in those first few hours in the NICU (a fact my husband is still kind of proud of). Because we had done our research before heading into the NICU, both my husband and I were very insistent that our child only ever be fed breastmilk. I started pumping within hours of his birth and then set my alarm for every three hours and religiously pumped either at the hospital or at home to ensure that my milk came in and that he would have enough human breast milk at all times.
Some of the babies in our "pod" in the NICU were not as fortunate and had indeed succumbed to NEC. I remember the young mom of the baby next to us coming in every day to change her baby's ostomy bag (she insisted on doing it herself) and hoping that this would be the day that the doctors told her that his gut was healed, he could have his next surgery and that the hole in his belly would be closed up.
NEC sickens 5,000 U.S. and Canadian premature babies per year, of which roughly 500 die from the disease. Feeding fragile and compromised babies human milk – whether from the mother or by donor — has been shown to reduce the risk of NEC by 79%. For all these reasons, The Canadian Pediatric Society says “human breastmilk provides a bioactive matrix of benefits that cannot be replicated by any other source of nutrition.” The American Academy of Pediatrics also recommends human milk, by mother or by donor, for all preterm infants. Both the AAP and CPS clearly recognize the life-saving power of donor milk for preterm babies.(2)
Yesterday, I participated in the first Best for Babes Miracle Milk™ Mother's Day Stroll. This North American campaign was started to raise awareness, funds and donor milk to save lives and spare the suffering of our most fragile population -- preterm and compromised babies. This is the first year for the Miracle Milk Stroll and Edmonton was one of almost 70 sites – 11 in Canada, 57 in the US and 2 on military bases in England who participated.
There are still NICUs within Canada and the US who do not or can not provide human milk for these preemie babies and this is why we stroll. To raise more awareness of the importance of human milk for human babies and the need for donor milk and for more milk banks across North America. Parents, health care providers and hospital administrators need to know more about the critical importance of an exclusive human milk diet in a preterm baby’s care or about the accessibility, safety and life-saving power of donor milk if mother’s own milk is not available.
I was extremely proud that the kids and I got to be a part of this inaugural campaign and encourage you to find out more about how you can help these tiny babies in your community.
Yes, that is my preemie now in the grey sweatshirt.
Find out where your local milk bank is and donate and please check out the Best for Babes website and all the ways you can help mothers and babies.
In Canada, we now have four human milk banks that you can donate to {monetarily or milkily} in Vancouver, Calgary, Toronto and Montreal. Edmonton has it own Milk Bank Depot at the Grey Nuns Hospital where donations can be dropped off as well.
Tell your friends about how important human milk is for these compromised babies and how easy and safe it is to donate milk!
And of course, wear your Miracle Milk™ T-shirt with pride!
Happy Mother's Day Everyone!
natasha~
1. Neu J. Necrotizing enterocolitis: the search for a unifying pathogenic theory leading to prevention. Pediatr Clin North Am 1996; 43:409.
"Likes" don't save lives: #UNICEFDay 2013
Halloween is upon us and when it comes to this childhood tradition, like many things in my life, I am a purist. I like to encourage my kids to think outside the box (or racks) of traditional gender-biased costumes, I like to decorate our front porch with that crazy spider web stuff and DANGER tape everywhere and like the good hardy Canadian kids that they are, my children don their snow pants, squeeze their costumes on over top and go door to door in our neighbourhood screaming "TRICK OR TREAT" at the top of their little lungs. It's how I did it as a kid and I feel it is important to maintain these traditions for my kids. One of the things that I do miss from my childhood and that was always part of Halloween growing up were the little orange UNICEF boxes that everyone had as the ultimate accessory to their costume. My brothers and I used to have a little bit of a competition every year to see who could collect the most pennies and whoever had the heaviest box at the end of the night would get to pick something from the others candy haul. Those were some good {cavity-inducing) times.
And while the orange boxes may not be around anymore (UNICEF Canada cancelled the program in 2006), UNICEF continues to do amazing things for children all over the world. I had a chance to talk to some wonderful UNICEF representatives while I was at Blissdom Canada a few weeks ago and got a mini tour of UNICEF's main programs and humanitarian efforts that directly affect children around the world. It was an eye-opening, tear-inducing, heart-breaking and hope-creating experience for me.
From tasting the Plumpy Nut high protein therapeutic food that they provide for malnourished children, to following the trajectory of a vaccine from manufacturing to a child in a tiny village in a remote area of Mongolia, to picking up the VERY HEAVY jugs that children have to haul miles every day just to have safe drinking water for their families, it was humbling and inspiring to see what all those pennies we used to collect have done and what donations to UNICEF continue to do today for children the world over.
The one program that touched me the most was UNICEFs work with children in refugee camps. In the UNICEF room at Blissdom, hanging on the walls were pictures that were drawn by Syrian children from refugee camps and I am still haunted by their artwork. I have two children who love to express themselves through art. My 7 year old loves to draw pictures of dinosaurs and his latest Hero Factory toy and my daughter draws pictures of animals and her family daily. This is what Syrian kids are drawing...
And not because they saw these images on some superhero-to-the-rescue cartoon show, this is their REAL LIFE. We hear about Syria every other day in the news and the focus is always on drone warfare and chemical weapons and trying to figure out who is the bad guy in this particular war and what, if anything, we are to do about it. What we don't hear about are the over 3 million children IN Syria living in dire situations and caught in the lines of fire or about the over 1 MILLION children that have been displaced from their homes and are now living in refugee camps in Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq, Turkey and other regions of North Africa.
UNICEF has multiple ways that they help in these situations and one of them is through their Survival Gifts donation program. For just over $200 dollars you can send a whole school in a box to a refugee camp. Or an early childhood development box. These are literally big steel boxes with enough supplies for up to 50 kids that get shipped to the areas that need them. A tent can be turned into a school. The shade of a big tree can become a play area for toddlers. In the grand scheme of things this 'gifts' may not seem like much, but for a child who has lost everything and who is in a strange place and has a terribly uncertain future, a slice of normalcy-reading a book, learning his or her letters and numbers or stacking some blocks-can be just what is needed so that all hope is not lost and so that they don't forget what it means to just be a kid. There are many other much needed survival gifts that can be purchased and some for as little as $10.00. It really doesn't take much to help save a life.
Thursday, October 31st, 2013 is national #UNICEFDay. Won't you please join me and support UNICEF's work and NOT "LIKE" THIS POST at all! Instead, please visit Unicef.ca and purchase a life-saving survival gift. Think of it as a your little orange box and fill that sucker up with as much as you can. Somewhere in the world there is no Halloween, no trick-or-treating and no dress-up school parties to attend today. There is only fear, and hunger, and sickness, and despair, and no amount of "likes" is going to change that.
A gift of medicines, of tools for education, of blankets and nutritional supplements, these are the things that offer hope and comfort to these kids. So please, Tweet about #UNICEFDAY all day long, post it all over your Facebook page, and then walk the walk and let everyone know that your support goes further than just sharing something on your timeline.
I just bought a School-in-a-Box.
In my mind, it is one ginormous orange UNICEF box and someone now owes me some of their candy!
Happy #UNICEFDay Everyone!
Natasha~
P.S. Disclosure - I was not compensated in any way for this post, but thanks to the generosity of Hallmark, because of this post, 10 children will be getting a live-saving vaccination.
P.P.S. Want to get in on that action? Head on over and give UNICEF your email address and you too can help a child get vaccinated. One email address = one vaccine = one child's life.