1.  Clean Well All-Natural Foaming Hand Sanitizer With swine flu fears circling, Clean Well’s satisfyingly-foamy, quick-drying, non-sticky antibacterial has shot to the top of the list.
	2.  Safe Starter Stainless Steel Baby Bottle A recent introduction to our shop, Kid-Basix’s totally unique, totally durable and totally non-toxic baby bottle makes its first appearance in the Fab Five Faves. Welcome kid – you’re gonna be a star!
	3.  3 Sprouts Organic Storage Bins We can’t say we’re surprised about the continued popularity of these adorable storage bins from Canadian boutique outfit 3 Sprouts. But the number of customers beating down our (virtual) door for these bins since we introduced them last month continues to amaze – easily our most popular gift item recently.
	4.  Erba Organics Baby Lotion Cold weather = dry skin; thus, the popularity of Erba’s deliciously luxurious, everyday baby lotion.
	5.  Dano2 Bug Bite Teether This simple, smartly-designed, self-enclosed teether toy is the perfect antidote for a cranky, tooth-sprouting kid. And at just 6 bucks, it’s a steal.

Now for a few more highlights…

After 6 months of testing a slew of household cleaning products from a wide variety of manufacturers, we are very excited to introduce a full line from our hands-down winner, BabyGanics. Made in the USA by a New-York based pair of dads, BabyGanics’ products continually wiped the floor with the competition.

Also, if you missed this week’s launch of Cool Mom Picks’ 2009 Holiday Gift Guide, we’re proud to have been featured for our Green Toys Chef Set.

See you next week – with some Black Friday deals you won’t want to miss!

There may be lots of toxins in your average kids product, but if there’s one place where bad stuff lurks even more, it’s online.

Parents have lots of ways to restrict their children’s access to the web, but it’s a virtually certainty that the kiddos will find a way to get connected, somehow.  If you’re looking for new ways to help your kids find appropriate content, check out KidZui, a web browser built for kids.  Ignore their big corporate sponsors and skip straight to the good stuff.

Want some more info?  Start with TechCrunch’s article.  (In my spare time, I’m a bit of a tech/gadget geek.)

As you know, I’m a bit of a researcher.  I rarely make important (or unimportant) decisions without doing my homework.  So that’s why my recent and sudden bout of indecision about whether to vaccinate my children against the swine flu is so perplexing.

About 6 weeks ago my kids’ doctor asked if we wanted to be put on the list to receive swine flu vaccine when it came in.  My response was a resounding yes.  And I didn’t think much about it after that.  There was no indication as to when the vaccine might be available, and so it just didn’t seem like something I needed to deal with right away.

Then, late last week, I received an urgent phone call from the pediatrician’s office.  A small number of vaccines had arrived.  Would I like to have my kids vaccinated?  If I didn’t have it done by the next day, I would be moved to the back of the list.  So without much thought I scheduled an appointment for the next afternoon.

Yet somehow, with so much going on at the office and otherwise, I still didn’t think much about the vaccine decision.  To be honest, I didn’t consider it much of a choice at all.  Though we evaluate everything ourselves, my wife and I generally opt to follow our doctor’s advice and vaccinate our kids.  And with all the craziness surrounding H1N1, I just figured it made sense to have them vaccinated.

But literally an hour before my children’s appointment, I suddenly panicked.  The swine flu vaccine, I knew, was in fact a highly controversial one.  How could I not thoroughly research the issues before making a decision?  So I began to frantically do some last-second research, and two things quickly became clear: 1) there is less consensus in the mainstream medical community regarding the H1N1 vaccine than most other vaccines; and 2) there was no way I was going to figure this out in time.

So I made some phone calls to other parents I trust to gauge their opinions.  I got some useful feedback, but hardly enough to give me any confident direction.  Not knowing what to do, I headed to the doctor’s office while still weighing the issues.  When I arrived, I asked to speak to the doctor personally before having the vaccines administered by the staff.  For the next 45 minutes I actually did haphazard research online on my cell phone.  This was not the way I liked to do things!  To make matters worse, I figured that our doctor, who we very much like and trust but who is very blunt, would to some extent minimize my concerns about the vaccine, especially since the CDC was recommending it.

When the pediatrician finally emerged, it was to my great surprise that he only reinforced my hastily drawn concerns about the vaccine.  No, there had not been the typical amount of testing on this vaccine before it went into circulation.  Yes, it had Thimerisal in it (though he felt strongly that this was not an issue).  Yes, the type of vaccine his office had received required a booster shot in 4 weeks, and no, they had no idea if they would get enough vaccine in to administer boosters to their patients.  (And he felt my doubts about the utility of the vaccine if no booster was administered were valid.)

After a taxing afternoon of indecision, I had come to only one conclusion.  I had no idea what to do.  So with the knowledge that doing so would send my children to the back of the waitlist (and very likely mean they would never have another shot at getting the vaccine), we headed home uninoculated.  I’m still gathering information, having talked to some doctor friends with some real expert perspective on the issues.  But at the end of the day I’m still not sure I made the right choice.  I think either would have been defensible, and I guess I’ll just have to live with that.