MOMMY AND DADDY, M.D.

Just thought I'd share our little discovery. Mico and I aren't exactly such expert parents but I'd like to think we handled Nicolo's chicken pox episode pretty well.

After Nico's birthday, his pockmarks sprouted just about everywhere, hitting him worst on his back down to his pampers area. During the first night, the little punk kept me awake for hours with his whining and scratching. Even Mr. Bean on TV fell short in sedating him.

The next day, Mico and I went on an anti-itch expedition at MOA. We were on a hunt for Aveeno's Oatmeal Baby Bath which, according to our research, is an excellent relief to chicken pox. We covered every cosmetic shop in the mall but failed to find any. Neither of us wanted to go through another night of gruesome screaming (come to think of it, Mico slept through the first night... he never really suffered as much... hehehe) so we agreed to get the closest thing to an oatmeal bath: oatmeal. We figured if it was the major component of the baby bath, we might as well go for the core. And so we went to the grocery and got the biggest bag of oats we could find. When we got home, we blended a cup of oats until powder fine and put them in lukewarm water. After soaking Nicolo for 15 minutes in a basin of our homemade mixture, we got him to sleep a long and whine-less sleep for the night. It was a ritual for the past couple of days.

The pockmarks have all dried up after a week, leaving very minimal damage. The oatmeal did him wonders because the scars aren't at all the repulsive things I've seen on websites and pictures. They're just little dots of crusty purple.

Well, here's to my oatmeal advocacy. I'll be spreading the oatmeal love.