Links
Places we go, people we see... this page is devoted to some of our
favorite or most useful links, which are grouped by topic.
Adoption
- Forums at Adoption.com: An amazing collection of
information. A must for any adoptive, expectant, or birth parent.
- The
Agency Feedback List at the Adoption.com Forums: Each member of the
forums can post a message including the name of their agency, attorney,
or facilitator. Prospective adoptive parents can send these people
private messages, asking for their opinion and experience. Highly Recommended!
- AA
Domestic Adoption: Yahoo! group to discuss
African-American and bi-racial domestic adoption (foster to adopt or private
adoption).
- ABC Adoption
: A clearinghouse of information, including forums and
situations.
- Adopting.com: An immense amount of information. Don't
try reading it all at once.
- Adoption
101 , The Internet
Adoption School: An overview of adoption.
- Adoption Blogs: A collection of writing by all
members of the adoption community.
- Adoption Guide: A
resource by Adoptive Families
magazine, this site is a good starting point for those considering adoption.
- Adoption Resource: All things adoption. The owner's
mission is to: "put together all your favorite adoption blogs and websites in
one place to help you eliminate the endless lists of bookmarks and wondering
where you saw a particular bit of information."
- Adoptive Families Magazine: The magazine for all
adoptive parents, from thinking about adoption to the teenage years.
- American Association of
Open Adoption Agencies: Some
great publications about open adoption for all members of the adoption triad.
- BirthMom Buds: An organization that provides peer
counseling, mentoring, friendship, and support for women who are considering
placing or have placed their children for adoption.
- Family Helper: A Canadian site dedicated to providing
basic resources about adoption, infertility, and family building.
- Open Adoption
Support: A site dedicated to supporting
and educating those in open adoptions.
- PACT: An organization that facilitates and supports
adoptions of children of color.
- Reaching Out: This site is by the author of the only
book that tells prospective adoptive parents how to write the "Dear
Birthmother Letter."
- Transracial
Adoption or Placement: Yahoo! group to
discuss adopting transracially, regardless of initial location of the child.
- Wide Horizons for Children: The agency we
would have used if we had gone international.
- 10
Things Your Adoption Agency Won't Tell You: A
cynical, but nonetheless important, article about some of the financial
pitfalls in adoption.
- Adopting Couture: Apparel for adoptive parents and
their children.
- Many Hearts, One Beat: A site featuring unique gifts
for members of the adoption triad, including beautiful jewelry.
- Not Showing: Apparel for the adoptive mom-to-be.
- Tapestry
Books: The largest selection of
adoption-related literature.
- Tessoro
Creations: Beautiful jewelry for those touched by adoption.
Being Green
- gDiapers: An excellent alternative to disposables and
cloth.
- Ideal Bite: They deliver a small tip about what you
can do to help the environment. Lots of little ideas add up to a big impact.
- Bringing Back
the Natives: An annual tour of gardens
that use plants native to California.
- Care2: An environmental and socially conscious super
site.
- Earth 911: A great resource for recycling items.
- Freecycle: Offer your usable but unwanted items. Ask
for stuff you need. Give stuff to others. All for free!
- The Green Guide: The complete guide to green living.
- LocalHarvest: Find farms and farmers' markets near
you.
- Moms Rising: A site that intends to harness the power
of mothers who want to make this world better for their children.
- My Footprint: Calculate how much you personally mess
up the environment.
- Vegetarian Shoes: Lovely shoes for those of us who
don't wear animals.
- We Are What We Do: A site to inspire people to change
the world with their everyday actions.
- Working
Assets: A phone company that donates a
portion of your bill to causes that you vote for each year.
- Worm Lady: You too can own
worms who help compost your organic waste (called vermicomposting).
Favorites
Friends
Hobbies
- Actorsingers: Community theatre company in NH, with
which Robyn was involved.
- Nashua Theatre Guild: Community theatre company in
NH, with which Robyn and Max were initmately involved.
- Etsy: The craft
world's alternative to Ebay.
Multicultural
Resources
- Anti-Racist Parent: For parents committed to raising
children with an anti-racist outlook.
- Black Books Galore!: An independent children's book
store, offering a range of carefully selected, marvelous books for black and
multicultural children.
- Dolls Like Me: Multicultural dolls, puppets, toys,
and games.
- SleepySoft,
Dolls and Toys for Adopted Children: This
site boasts the best selection of multicultural dolls on or off the Internet.
- Totally
Tots, African-American Dolls and Books: A growing selection of
African-American dolls and African-American themed books. You'll find
African-American dolls for boys, girls, babies, and toddlers, as well
as books written for, by, and about African-Americans.
Parent and Child
- Anti-Racist Parent:
For parents committed to raising children with an anti-racist outlook.
The site includes a wonderful list
of books that feature children of different races.
- Baby
Cheapskate: A blog that keeps track of sales and discounts on
children's stuff.
- Baby Loves Music: An innovative,
fun series of books that introduce children to different types of music. Jack
loves his "boom boom bap books"!
- Bottle
Raid 2007: Blog entry about the hazards of bisphenol-A (BPA) including
lists of BPA-containing and BPA-free products.
- ecochildsplay: A blog
that reviews natural children's toys.
- Fluoride Action Network: Site
that explains why fluoride isn't necessarily as good as we've been led to
believe.
- gDiapers:
Yahoo! group that discusses the wonderful diaper alternative, gDiapers, as well as other green parenting topics.
- Healthy Child, Healthy World: Also
known as the Children's Health Environment Coalition or Creating Healthy
Environments for Children, this site offers information and advice for living an environmentally-friendly home life.
- Holistic Pediatric
Association: Information about alternatives to conventional medicine.
- I.C.P.A,
International Chiropractic Pediatric Association: Information about chiropractic care as a "foundation of
wellness."
- International MOMS Club: An
organization that includes thousands of local clubs for moms and their
children. Robyn & Jack belong to the MOMS Club of Antioch
.
- iPride
: An organization that supports multiracial families.
- Mandy's Moon: Excellent personalized stationery,
including address labels, and gifts for adoptive or multicultural families.
- Milestone
Charts at BabyCenter :
One set of milestone charts from birth to age 3.
- The
Mushroom Tree : A
WAHM who sells cloth diapers, cloth feminine pads, and more.
- The Not-Quite-Crunchy
Parent
: A blog from a mom who went green.
- SafeMama: A blog
that is a child safety, product recall, health and well-being resource for
parents.
- Signing Time!: Jack's favorite
TV show! Teaching infants to sign means that they learn to communicate
earlier, reducing frustration for all parties.
- The Soft Landing Baby
Blog : Non-toxic baby gear and
reviews.
- Two Hearts Carriers: Robyn's friend Twana makes lovely met-tai carriers and is branching out into cloth
diapers.
- zRecommends:
Excellent blog with eco-friendly children's product reviews! My favorites are
the ZRecommends
Sippy Cup Showdown and Z
Report, A Directory of BPA in Baby Bottles and Sippy Cups.
- 100% Lactose Free
Entertainment: Information about
being lactose-intolerant (or allergic to cow's milk protein, which is often
just called being lactose intolerant).
Useful Tools
- Dotti's Weight Loss Zone: An amazing collection of
diet-related information, including the Weight Watchers POINTS values of a
dizzying array of foods.
- Newsweek: One of Robyn's two sources for current
events. (The other is The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.)
- Real Simple: The bible of organized living.
- TinyURL: This site makes long URLs shorter, so they
don't wrap around in email messages.
- The Ultimate White
Pages: Search several sites
simultaneously.
- Verse It: Lots of ideas for writing invitations of
all sorts.
- Weather Underground: Weather information from all
over the world, including archives that can tell you what the weather was
years ago.
Vaccination
- Vaccinations: Yahoo! group that discusses
vaccination-related issues. Heavily anti-vax! Articles are posted daily.
- WAVE, World
Association for Vaccine Education: Probably the best site I've come
across. A comprehensive, professional site that includes a well-written blog,
excellent listing and explanations of vaccines and their
ingredients
, and a wealth of related information.
- National
Vaccine Information Center: The NVIC was
crucial in starting the vaccination debate. This site is dated, but there is
good information hiding in it. Some pages worth reading include In the Wake of
Vaccines, VAERS & "Hot
Lots", and Vaccine Myths and
Facts. Otherwise, each link takes you to a list of articles and other
links related to specific vaccines and diseases.
- A User-Friendly
Vaccination Schedule and An Update
on This Vaccination Schedule: Dr. Donald W. Miller, Jr., the article that
solidified our resolve to delay vaccinating Jack.
- Adventures in Babywearing:
Blog articles by a concerned mom, who believes that her son's
epilepsy is a direct result of vaccinations. Vaccine-specific
posts include my favorite, Stirring
the Pot: What I Want Every Parent to Know .
- America,
Meet Our Unvaccinated Kids, 2.0:
Age of Autism, September 25, 2007,
by J.B. Handley. Discusses a study done by Generation Rescue that looks at the
correlation between autism and
vaccinations .
- Are
Vaccines a Waste of Time?: London Evening Standard, excerpt from the book
The Truth About Vaccines, by Richard Halvorsen
- Australian
Vaccination Network: Still under
construction, this site will have brief information about each disease for
which there is a vaccination.
- Legislation
Aims to Resolve Thimerosal Controversy:
Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney (D-NY), “Comprehensive Comparative
Study of Vaccinated and Unvaccinated Populations Act of 2007” (H.R. 2832)
- Current and Past
Childhood Immunization Schedules:
CDC, US schedules from 1983 to present. Useful for countering the "I was
vaccinated and I'm fine" argument.
- FDA
Experts Urge Ban on Cold Medicines for Young Children: (BabyCenter,
September 29, 2007) If over-the-counter cold remedies aren't safe for infants and toddlers, how is it
OK to inject them with 8 diseases and a slew of
"preservatives"?
- Generation Rescue
: This group is concerned with the correlation between vaccination and
autism.
- HealthSentinel.com: Graphs
that show historical rates of disease and death in the US and internationally.
- Informed
Choice, Glossary of Vaccines: Lists the
ingredients in common vaccines. One of my most-cited sites.
- The
Informed Parent: A UK-based group that supports making informed
decisions. The site includes information about measles, mumps,
rubella, and MMR and an interesting FAQ
.
- Healthful
Living, Vaccinations: Article discusses
vaccines and their possible relationship to
autism and other neurological disorders.
- History
of Vaccines: A brief list of historical information. Please note that the
rest of the site is extremely biased, even among anti-vax sites, and is an example of why people
who oppose vaccinations are often called insane.
- K.N.O.W. Vaccines Frequently
Asked Questions: Overview of the current immunization schedule,
ingredients, common reactions, and more.
- Medicine
Men, Vaccines and Brain Disorders: NewsMax, July 16, 2007. Article
discusses the findings of the Generation Rescue study, and the need for a
comprehensive study of vaccinated and unvaccinated populations.
- MotheringDotCommune
Vaccinations Forum: Mothering Magazine's web forum for learning more about
vaccinations, not vaccinating, or vaccinating according to a selective or
delayed schedule. The Vaccinations forum is heavily anti-vax, while cooler
heads tend to prevail on the Selective
and Delayed Vaccinations forum.
- New Yorkers for Vaccination
Information and Choice: Excellent site with clear articles and information
about the downsides of the vaccines. Great information about the chicken pox
vaccination and shingles.
- On
Public Health, So Why Does the State Want to Require HPV Vaccinations?:
San Francisco Chronicle, March 12, 2007, MaryAnna
Clemmons. Article clarifies what the HPV vaccination is supposed to
prevent, and how money influences vaccination decisions.
- Package Inserts
at the Institute for Vaccine Safety: Each vaccine comes with a package
insert, a "manual" about what is in the vaccine, what it does, what the common
reactions are, and so on. These are extremely enlightening! Find out what's in
the vaccines your child is supposed to have. This page covers US-licensed
vaccines only.
- Put Children First: Site
devoted to the link between vaccines and autism. Includes interviews and
articles. This site is related to Generation Rescue.
- quaintpassion,
Vaccination: August 25, 2005, Personal blog entry about one family's
decision to delay vaccinations. Includes hundreds of links to all sorts of
vaccine-related information. Only go here if you have a lot of time on
your hands! You will not find a more comprehensive list of links.
- Raising a Vaccine-Free
Child: Excerpts from the
book by Wendy Lydall.
- Saying No to
Vaccines: Blog by Dr. Sherri Tenpenney, "one of the country’s most
outspoken physicians regarding the impact of vaccines on health."
- State
Exemptions Information from NVIC: Vaccines are not mandatory! See this
list to determine how to get an exemption from your state.
- Think Twice Global Vaccine
Institute: Heavily anti-vax, and heavy on the conspiracy theories. Does
contain some good Q&A's and information about homeopathic alternatives to
vaccines.
- Vaccine
Articles at the Holistic Pediatric Association: Although somewhat dated
(the most recent article was written in 2005), some of these
articles are well-written and relevant even today. My favorites: "Vaccinations:
A Parent's Right to Choose" (Jane Sheppard, July 18, 2004), "Vaccines
and Immune System Damage" (Randall Neustaedter, July 18, 2004), and "Vaccinations"
(Randall Neustaedter, July 14, 2004).
- Vaccination Information
and Choice Network: Lots of links to articles, studies, historical
information - practically everything. Each disease and/or vaccine has its own
section, as do some of the reactions. The owner of this site is a nurse
who also offers classes on vaccine dangers and how to prevent and treat
disease holistically. Heavily anti-vax!
- Vaccination
Liberation: Lots
and lots of links! This site is very difficult to navigate. Some of the more
useful information includes...
- Vaccinations,
Parents Informed Choice: (The Weston A. Price Foundation, Lynne Borne,
November 7, 2005) A great, though dated, basic article that argues for
informed decisions regarding vaccination. Many of the reasons this writer
cites are the reasons why we do not vaccinate Jack.
- Vaccinations at
Health World Online: This site is devoted to alternative medicine, so it
is no surprise that the articles here are against current vaccination
practices. The articles are dated, but some are very informative nonetheless:
About Vaccine
Choices (Excerpts from The Vaccine Guide: Making an Informed
Choice, by Randall Neustaedter), Unvaccinated
Children (Richard Moskowitz, MD), Vaccination and Social
Violence (Harris L. Coulter PhD, 1996), SIDS and Seizures
(Harris L. Coulter PhD, 1996). They also have a Vaccination
News page, that appears to be completely updated.
- Vaccine Refusal and
Medical Intimidation: A personal account of one family's visit to
their pediatrician, this article includes excellent advice about what to do if
your pediatrician wants you to sign a "refusal to vaccinate form" and offers
alternatives. Summary: Don't sign the form! This account also links to a basic
article about vaccine choice, Dispelling Vaccination
Myths (Alan Phillips, May
2001).
- Vaccine Rights: Vaccination
injury attorney site, that includes an extensive legal FAQ. Another brief
article also addresses the forms, Refusal to Vaccine Forms Raise Ethical Questions (Alan Phillips, December 2007). Vaccine Exemption Alliance is
another vaccination-rights law firm.
- Vaccination
Risk Awareness Network: A collection of
links, articles, and information about vaccines, disease, and vaccine
reactions.
- Vaccination.co.uk: A site under construction by a
British chiropractor and father. There is quite a bit of medical
information here about the immune system and how it works. This man wrote
a dissertation
on the DTP vaccine.
- Vegan Family
Anti-Vaccine Information: A brief collection of interesting articles and a
recommended reading list.
- Vaccine Debate:
Personal web site of a vaccine opponent and author. Good for basic
information, though not all sources are listed. A good introduction to the
arguments against vaccines.
- Vaccination
Dilemma: A basic site that introduces the concept of refusing vaccines.
- I.C.P.A,
International Chiropractic Pediatric Association, Childhood Articles: A
list of articles about various pediatric health issues, including Vaccinations:
The Choice of a Lifetime: (Dr. Larry Palvesky, May/June 2003), Challenging
the Theory of Artificial Immunity (Keith Wassung), and Chicken
Pox Vaccine (Jim Davis, January/February
2003).