For those new to the Lead Safe Mama website:
Tamara Rubin is a multiple-federal-award-winning independent advocate for childhood Lead poisoning prevention and consumer goods safety, and a documentary filmmaker. She is also a mother of Lead-poisoned children (two of her four sons were acutely Lead-poisoned in 2005).
- Tamara owns and runs Lead Safe Mama, LLC — a unique community collaborative woman-owned small business for childhood Lead poisoning prevention and consumer goods safety.
- Since July of 2022, the work of Lead Safe Mama, LLC has been responsible for five product recalls (FDA and CPSC).
- All test results reported on this website are science-based, accurate, and replicable.
- Please check out our press page to see some of the amazing coverage of our work so far this year!
Saturday — July 10, 2021
Welp, Charlie’s birthday is just five days away! I think we got him covered this year!
Many of my readers like to know what kinds of things I actually buy for my family (and especially for my children). They know that the things I choose for my own family will most likely be Lead-free. To that end, I am going to share everything my family is giving Charlie for his birthday this year in an article here… just for fun.
But first — what we have planned for the day itself…
- We will probably have pancakes, smoothies, and veggie-bacon for breakfast (Charlie has a thing for pancakes and veggie bacon)!
- Then my four sons (ages: Almost 25, almost 19, 16-1/2, and almost 13) have been planing a zoom Dungeons and Dragons session together for the birthday day!
- I also got the boys (on both coasts) balloons for making balloon animals and the big brothers are practicing how to make My Little Pony-like balloon animals (thank you YouTube!) and they will be doing that for Charlie via zoom as a surprise.
- For “Lunch,” Avi has promised to make sugar-free, dairy-free/ vegan lemon birthday cake (which I guess the boys on the East Coast will pretend to eat with their brothers, lol). We probably will have this with carrot and celery sticks and sliced apples to balance things out (Charlie loves those things — oh! And snap peas!)
- The boys may also play Magic: The Gathering.
- After the zoom games (which is not something we have ever done before!) we are going to take the two younger boys (the boys here, with us, on this coast) outside to do something in nature (probably go out to Sauvie Island and run them on the beach for a bit and see about picking some berries at one of the Organic berry farms out there).
- For dinner, Charlie will probably get his new favorite from the food carts a block from our house — orange chicken on rice (with broccoli)!
Here are the presents:
The most important present: YOU (my friends and readers) have been subscribing to Charlie’s new YouTube channel! Thank you all for that. He’s excited about it. He has 123 subscribers now and has already made two videos he is planning on uploading — so stay tuned for those. (And if you haven’t yet followed him on YouTube, and can take a moment to do so, that would be amazing — he’ll appreciate it more than you know. Thank you! Here’s the article I wrote about that!)
#1) A new pink toothbrush!
We actually gave this to him a few weeks ago so it’s not technically a birthday present (and what mom gives her kid a toothbrush as a birthday present?), but it’s out of the “birthday budget” this year. He was so excited to have a new PINK electric toothbrush. I’ll do anything to get him to willingly brush his teeth with all I have spent on dental work over the years and they finally have some Philips choices at less costly price points!
#2) Some of the balloons we got for the surprise above:
#3) More of the balloons…
This set of 100 is biodegradable!
#4) More of the balloons (a set of 150!)…
#5) A new neodymium fishing magnet
I just wrote about this in this piece, here. Charlie got one of these as a gift last summer and it was a huge hit. When I broke my leg in Maine in January, I ended up leaving a lot of the things we took on our cross country trip with my older sons in Boston. My 18-year-old A.J. had as much fun with this — as much as Charlie did last year — so I knew he would appreciate it if I left it with him! I needed to get Charlie a replacement (for this summer, in Oregon)!
#6) A tweezer set!
Charlie has been spending the past couple of weeks making some pearler bead art (you can see what he is making here on Instagram), which he loves doing. As we 100% anticipated would happen, his brother bumped into his most recent big project and the beads went EVERYWHERE and there was a lot of screaming. Afterward he got really upset that he wanted to put it back together but we couldn’t find the tweezers he had been using. (It seems several pairs of our tweezers must have evaporated in the past year, somehow). So we got him this pretty set of tweezers, that way he could have his own set in his art area! (They were the closest I could find to the My Little Pony color range!)
#7) My Little Pony Monopoly!
Thanks to some help from my readers I was able to locate a copy of this that was NOT the $160 advertised price on Amazon! (It’s amazing what you can find online if you have an army of people helping you look for a deal!) This is going to be a major moment of excitement for Charlie, as it marries his two ABSOLUTE FAVORITE things! Monopoly and My Little Pony!
#8) A “Ponies The Galloping” special edition card
These also marry two of Charlie’s favorite things (My Little Pony and playing Magic: The Gathering!) These were sold a few years ago as a limited edition set and we (his brothers) got him just ONE of the cards (the least expensive one we could find)! The Twilight Sparkle card was about $35 all by itself! We don’t think Charlie knows that this set was even made and we know he’s going to flip his lid to get an actual official Magic: The Gathering My Little Pony Twilight Sparkle card!
What sorts of things did you get your 13-year-old for their birthday?!
Thanks for reading! Thank you for sharing these articles, too!
Tamara Rubin
#LeadSafeMama
The tweezers tested safe, yes? I was about to make a post asking for suggestions in the group but re-found this post while searching the random word “cake.” I really need new tweezers, for hairs, not just perler beads lol
Yes! Any stainless tweezers should be fine. I love Tweezerman tweezers!
aflink: https://amzn.to/36jbXwM
But these are our absolute favorite (aflink): https://amzn.to/3I5Inbg
T
Have you tested the metal bits in old monopoly sets? Eg the ship, hat, boot, wheelbarrow etc?
I was wondering the same thing about Monopoly.
I used 3M swab tests on a couple recent monopoly sets and they swabbed a very odd dark maroon color, not exactly sure if that means lead. Online it says they’re made of pewter, and cheap pewter is often made with lead. So yea, outside of the sets with plastic pieces, could every monopoly game really have leaded pieces?
They are made of Zinc. They are Lead free in pretty much all modern versions of the game. I have never tested a monopoly piece that was positive for Lead. The swabs turn dark purple / maroon on solid zinc substrates.
T
Thank you, but what about older sets, maybe 20 years old? Have you tested any of those?
Hi Anita – older sets of…? what.
T
Monopoly
Ok, thanks so much! Some fan site that chronicles the history of Monopoly pieces said current pieces are made of pewter, but I’ll assume they don’t have an XRF. 😛
Was the Sonicare toothbrush tested? I know sometimes batteries can be of concern.
Alkaline batteries don’t have lead. Kid’s toys always have batteries in compartments that are screwed closed as a precaution.