The type of mom who, in past years, went through her child’s bag and deemed about three-quarters of it “crap.” The kind that re-gifted her kid’s stash if we ran out of the “good” stuff I buy. (Is there an official word for giving out the Halloween loot your kids bring home?) The one who goes through the candy with the equivalent of a red pencil (my writer friends should get that analogy), all the while calling out, “This has nuts. This has more artificial dye than should be legally allowed. This one is made in China. Out, out, out.” (My BIGGEST pet peeve is people who spend $1 at Dollar Tree on candy that’s all made in China. That stuff, FWIW, will never get re-treated. It goes right in the garbage where it belongs.)

You can probably picture it in your head. We’re there, all dressed up, and Big Girl’s original stash gets smaller and smaller until all that’s left is pencils, dimes, pretzels, chips, Sour Patch Kids, stickers, Play-Doh, and Twizzlers.

I don’t think I am mean, though. Especially given the fact that, once we prune down the stash, I hand it over without a single rule. Big Girl can eat the entire bag in a single night or keep it in her room for a month. It’s her stuff, and she can do with it as she wishes. (She’s a saver, so I usually toss the last of it after Christmas.) But I digress as always…

From the beginning we discussed why we were doing what we were doing. We talked about what constitutes healthy food, and why artificial colors and preservatives are bad for our bodies. We talk about why certain candy coughmadeinChinacough is so cheap and why we pay $5.99 for a pack of organic candy. And then we’d talk about how the Halloween witch was going to stop by and get rid of all the garbage. You know, the one who comes and swaps out bad Halloween treats for good ones? (My friend Christina over at Spoonfed Blog has a longer explanation in her Halloween post.)

Our Halloween witch came in the middle of the night and, for example, left American Girl Bitty Baby dresses in place of the garbage. We did that two years in a row until I decided it was just plain crazy — and Big Girl was old enough to read the packages. Now, she reads everything herself. She’s got it down: The more ingredients you have, the higher the probability that it’s not real food. The longer and more complicated the words, the farther removed you become from pure, healthy food. Garbage food in the garbage pile. Good stuff in the eat at will pile.

This year is going to be interesting, though. I think we’ve got to go back to idea of the Halloween witch since we’ve got Little Girl to contend with. Resourceful, headstrong, pushy Little Girl. The child who drags Little Tikes chairs around my house so she can grab things off of counters and tabletops. The same one who is also allergic to chocolate. I’m planning on having a bag full of Little Girl-friendly treats waiting for us when we get home: Z Bars, Pirates Booty, stickers, pretzels, Cheddar Bunnies, organic lollipops, raisins. I will hand her that bag and go off and hide the real one until after she goes to sleep. And I’ll ask Big Girl to refrain from looking in her bag until after the little one is in her crib.

I’m sure many people think I am crazy. (Although I personally think it’s crazier to let your kids eat treats that come from China.) But I don’t. This works for our family. My kid gets plenty of candy, plenty of cookies. She’s not deprived. And the little one will, too, this year. It’s just our kind of junk food. Nothing scary about that!

This post is how I am participating this week in Real Food Wednesdays and Fight Back Fridays — two awesome campaigns to get people eating real food again.

The subject line: URGENT ACTION NEEDED- GARDASIL BILL

The rest of the email explained how, here in New York State, lawmakers would be voting on a bill that would allow “STD shots (Hep-B and Gardasil) to be given to minors without the consent or knowledge of Mom and Dad.” (Except all in CAPS.) There was more. About how “even five-year-olds could nod their heads” and that would in effect be consent. It also explained how the state legislature wants to add Gardasil to the list of vaccines required for school enrollment.

I did a Google search and nothing came up. I went to the official New York State legislative Web site and searched for the bill numbers. Nada. So then I decided to call my State Legislator, Assemblyman Joseph Saladino. The woman answering the phone said she would have him give me a call. After we spoke, I can say that at it’s core, the email was true. There are two bills that are coming up for vote. And yes, our assembly members and senators are trying to not only remove consent from the parents, but also make this relatively new vaccine mandatory for all little girls entering 6th grade. Disgusting.

My assemblyman was understandably concerned that this bill will take control from the hands of the parents and place it into the hands of children, who can’t really make informed decisions.

Here’s a verbatim quote from my discussion with Assemblyman Saladino: “I’m all for protecting minors from all kinds of situations, but there are ways that are more fit and unfortunately there seems to be too much of a pattern of bills that don’t take parents’ views into account, and don’t respect parents abilities to understand what’s best for their children. I want to make my position clear that I am all in favor of efforts to protect children from all sorts of situations. But the way we do it, the nuances involved and the structure of the bill and the structure of the way these programs are implemented really needs to be more fully vetted and really need to protect and respect the views of parents.”

Amen, Congressman. What’s the point of a bill that would remove parental consent? Why should a 12-year-old be able to direct her own medical care? Even more important: Why should New York State tell me that my 12-year-old daughter needs a shot to protect her from a sexually transmitted disease? I’m the parent. I should be able to make that choice. You want to mandate something that you can get through airborne particles such as the measles or the mumps? I get it. I’m not thrilled, but I get it. You want me to let you mandate the same level of care for a disease that I’m hoping my little girl won’t be exposed to until she is much, much older? I don’t think so.

And I haven’t even discussed the fact that Gardasil is a relatively new vaccine with plenty of question marks when it comes to safety. When you Google Gardasil side effects the second link you get a link to Merck’s own side effects page. They are staggering. Fainting and “shaking or stiffening or other seizure-like activities.” Really? I’m not really surprised. The more I read, the more concerned I am. Women have died. Women have become confined to wheelchairs. Research is still coming out about its side effects and safety. For example, two new studies just came out in August. They were published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. I’m not going to post them here. You can read an excellent post on the U.S. News and World Report Web site about the side effects as well as the issues documented with the safety and monitoring effectiveness. But the bottom line: there clearly needs to be more examination and research done before we make every little girl put their arm out and get the shot.

I very rarely ask people to retweet or repost my work. However, I am asking today. Please make my post your Facebook status. Get the word out. We need people calling their assembly person. You can find the correct phone number here. We need more national newspapers and news-gathering outlets to pick up this torch. We need to affect grassroots change. WE the people, remember? WE elect people. We have the power to dictate our own laws.

Please let me know how you feel about this post and this topic. I’d like to hear about it.