>>>> My kids had the full round of immunizations (though Solomon had chicken pox long before there was a vaccine). I'd do the same if I had it to do over again.
>>>>
>>>>Thanks - that seems to be the consensus. I actually didn't know until recently that there WAS a vaccine against chicken pox. Glad I got my week off from school in the first grade before they came up with the vaccine (got to watch the greatest kids show of all time, the Banana Splits)
>>>
>>>Yeah, I had it when I was in first grade, too. With Solomon, it was a little inconvenient. We found the spots after everyone had gone home from Nathaniel's bris (circumcision). We'd had 40 or 50 people in the house, including a dozen or so other pre-schoolers, and of course, we had a 1-week old. Amazingly, none of them, including Nathaniel, caught it.
>>>
>>>Nathaniel never did get chicken pox, so before he went off to college, he had the vaccine, since chicken pox can be really nasty for adults.
>>>
>>
>>Exactly. The vaccine came along after both girls had already had it. Somehow it came up in conversation with their pediatrician and she said she was not recommending it. She said it's not all that big a deal for a young child, just a crummy week, but can be serious later in life.
>>
>>Here is a kind of funny memory. When Allie was about two weeks old we were going to go over and spend Sunday with my best friend and his family. He called the day before and said we may need to reschedule; their boys had both come down with chicken pox. Then again, he said, you may want to come anyway and just get it out of the way. I said thank you for your kind offer to INFECT my baby but I think we'll pass, LOL.
>
>http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/g/archive/2004/01/29/chxpox.DTL&type=printable

A few years later I might have considered it. But two weeks old?

It's probably not much of a worry when your kids go to day care or the early school grades. Little petri dishes they are. By far the worst was when a lice infection went around Emily's class in either kindergarten or first grade. If you have not had the pleasure, lice are not dangerous but aggravating as hell. You have to laboriously go through the hair every day looking for and removing them, which isn't easy because they are close to invisible. All the sheets and pillowcases have to be washed every day. And then when you've got it, one of her classmates who still had lice would start them around again. This went on for about a month, no exaggeration. Some of the boys' moms decided to get them short short crewcuts. (Hair Club For Men, I called them). None of the girls went to that extent but I bet some of us were tempted. What a nightmare.

My wife was particularly bedeviled by the whole experience. We got her good the next April Fool's Day. I called her at work and said, "You probably don't want to hear this but Emily is saying her head itches." Got her, too, at least until the girls and I all started laughing.