The Happiest Baby

A pediatrician has written a new book called "The Happiest Baby on the Block." It really should be called "The Happiest Parents on the Block" because we all know if baby is miserable everyone in the house is miserable.

Check out Dr. Harvey Karp's Web site, which includes advice on calming infants and toddlers and, of course, how to order his book.

Here's the link:
http://www.thehappiestbaby.com

Early Bird Specials

Call me a glutton for punishment (and you wouldn't be the first), but I woke up early this morning to take advantage of the early bird specials. I promised myself that I would not rise at the crack of dawn this year and make my way around the big box stores with the rest of the turkey-stuffed, sleep-deprived pack. But I did.

And, as far as the bargains go, it was worth it.

After I came home from my family's Thanksgiving feast in Bayonne, I perused the store circulars that came in the Asbury Park Press (of course!) and mapped out my course of action.

I was out of the house by 7:20 and hit the Walgreen's (remote controlled helicopter for $10), Wal-Mart (building blocks, two sets of Matchbox cars and Barbie's purple Volkswagon, all $10 each) and the Christmas Tree Shop (note paper galore for our elderly hearing-impaired aunt who loves to send letters, all 20 percent off). I was back by the time my husband had to leave for work.

The afternoon portion of my shopping extravaganza wasn't as productive. Hendrick, my 2-year-old son, was now with me. (Need I say more...)

Things started to get hairy by the time we hit the Disney Store in the Freehold Raceway Mall. All of a sudden the crowds became intolerable, the lines didn't move and my nerves were starting to fray. As I stood there holding my one-day-only sale items, I could see my poor mother chasing Hendrick throughout the store as he yelled, "I want this!"

By the time we left the store we were all a bit frazzled. Hendrick fell asleep before we left the parking lot.

But I'm home now, Hendrick is still snoozing in his crib, and most of my Christmas shopping is done.

I guess there's nothing left to do now but start wrapping.

Thanksgiving

While I was busy baking for our Thanksgiving meal, my husband took the time to reflect on what our son means to us on this special day. Sometimes moms get caught up in the preparation of a holiday and don't take the time to remember why it is so important to us.

I guess that's why John and I work so well together; He reminds me why I need to slow down and spend more time with Hendrick. The family will get by just fine with one less dessert.

Thanksgiving
Change comes not with trumpet sounds or tumbling walls
But on the flow of the inevitable tide
Advancing, then receding to unveil treasures found
In tiny footprints.
The sea foam flies, glinting like shards of shattered glass in the air,
And alights his golden hair.
Suddenly my heart is filled
With love and thanks and infinite joy.
The world is mine and his
For a while, a moment,
Bright and fleeting.
-CJS

Go Green

If it wasn't for the high cost of organic foods, I'm sure most mothers would fill their shopping carts each week with pesticide-free products. But for those of us who can't afford to stretch our supermarket budgets by more than a few dollars, we really need to ask: Which foods have the highest levels of contaminants?

Here's where I can help: Hendrick's godmother sent me a link to Dr. Greene's Web site. He is a pediatrician who recently published a book titled "Raising Baby Green." It includes tips for pregnant women and mothers who want to keep their kids - and homes - free of harmful contaminants.

Some suggestions for those with limited budgets include purchasing just organic apples, milk, peanut butter, ketchup and potatoes.

For more information on why these are smart choices to get started, here's the link:
http://www.drgreene.org/body.cfm?id=21&action=detail&ref=2154

Cookie Did Me Wrong

I can't help but feel that Cookie Monster did me wrong. Ever since my son started watching a Cookie Monster video - the one in which Cookie gets a job in a bakery then eats all the cookies he makes - my son has become crazy about cookies. He even thinks the moon is made of one.

Whenever we drive by DelPonte's Bakery in Bradley Beach, on the way to visit my brother, Hendrick yells out the window, "Cookie store!" I suppose we shouldn't indulge him but you should see how his little face lights up when he sees all those mounds of beautifully arrayed cookies at eye level. They really are delicious.

And now that his palate has become more discriminating, Hendrick no longer believes me when I say crackers are cookies, too. (I knew he'd wise up sooner or later but I was hoping for later.)

What's a mother to do when all her son wants to eat is sweets?

You fake it whenever possible. Today, for example, I cut my home-made banana bread into squares and called them cupcakes. I even went so far today to stick a candle in a chunk and sang "Happy Birthday" just so he would eat it. He bought it, but I know he was wondering what happened to the frosting.

It can be an ordeal trying to get a toddler to maintain a well-balanced diet, let alone make him understand the importance of leafy greens and lean meats. It was so easy when he was a baby. He would eat anything mashed in a jar as long as I smiled and talked softly to him as I swooped it into his mouth.

Nowadays, it's all about the sugary snacks. Why couldn't Sesame Street have created a monster who was crazy about carrots?

New Lead, Mercury Test Explored

The Utah Department of Health is exploring ways to test newborns for exposure to lead and mercury. If this state can find a practical means in which to determine how many babies have high-levels of these toxins in their bodies, it may provide a model for other states to follow.

Preliminary testing of 2,000 babies showed a handful of them had dangerous levels of one of the metals, according to an article in the Salt Lake Tribune. Children are usually only tested if their doctors or parents suspect a problem.

"Mercury is just a very, very nasty substance," Cherise Udell, founder of Utah Moms for Clean Air, said in the article. "You definitely want to know how much of it is being emitted, how it is accumulating up the food chain, what kind of accumulation [is found] in babies. It will affect their neurological development."

The article states that the National Children's Health Study will track 100,000 children in the United States - including 2,200 in Utah - from the womb to age 21.

Utah may be the only site in the study that will monitor mercury exposure and links to autism, asthma and other conditions, Rod Larson, who is working on the study as director of industrial hygiene for the Rocky Mountain Center for Occupational and Environmental Health, told the newspaper.

"The reason: Utahns are exposed to several sources of mercury pollution, from coal-burning power to mining activity to being downwind of gold mines in Nevada," the article states.

According to the National Children's Study Web site, New Jersey is not represented among the 105 study locations nationwide for 2007. Burlington, Middlesex, Passaic and Warren counties, however, are part of the study for 2008-2010.

New Jersey is downwind of many coal-burning plants in the Midwest, and parts of the Shore area have a large population of autistic children. For these reasons, we should eagerly await the study's findings and hope the results will benefit children all across the country.

For more information on the study, see: http://www.nationalchildrensstudy.gov/

Here's the link to the article: http://origin.sltrib.com/ci_7434248

Better Milk for Healthier Babies

Here's another reason to spend the extra money on organic milk. New research suggests that mothers who drink organic milk during pregnancy and while breastfeeding their babies could help their babies avoid allergies.

A study in the British Journal of Nutrition found that organic dairy products might help children fight off asthma, eczema and other allergies, according to an article in The Scotsman, a newspaper in Scotland.

I know that organic milk costs more -- a lot more -- than regular milk, but the benefits of this healthier food is worth it.

I buy organic milk for my son whenever possible. (Organic milk is almost never sold at the local convenience store, so when we run out late at night I am forced to buy the regular stuff.)

To read more about the study, check out this story:
http://news.scotsman.com/health.cfm?id=1784222007

Is the workplace really family friendly?

There is a new study that looks at why professional married mothers choose to leave successful careers. And the reasons aren't what you would expect to hear.

Below is the press release that give details on sociologist Pamela Stone's analysis and where you can read more about her findings.

Washington, DC -- While the commonly assumed reason professional women leave or "opt out" of their successful careers is the burden of children and family, new sociological analysis appearing in the fall issue of Contexts magazine shows otherwise. Sociologist Pamela Stone describes the reasons women leave their careers as much more complex. Stone explains, "There is a choice gap between the rhetoric of choice and the reality of constraints within the workplace." Women are often caught between demands on the home front and the increasing pace of professional jobs.

Stone says these women's options were more limited than it seemed. "Between trying to be the ideal mother and the ideal worker, these high-flying women faced a double bind ... there is a difference between the decisions the women could have made about their careers if they were not mothers or caregivers and the decisions they had to make in their circumstances as mothers married to high-octane husbands in ultimately unyielding professions."

Stone studied 54 women in-depth from a variety of professions (e.g., law, medicine, business, publishing, management consulting, nonprofit administration) living in major metropolitan areas, roughly half in their 30s and half in their 40s. The women were highly educated, affluent, mostly white, married with children, who worked as professionals or managers and whose husbands could support their being at home. More than half had graduate degrees in business, law, medicine, or other professions; they also had thriving careers in which they had worked for about a decade and had strong incentives to continue with them.

Stone determined that workplace pushes were a significant reason women opted out, and "all but seven women cited features of their jobs -- the long hours, the travel -- as motivation for quitting." Those who tried to rearrange their work schedule "felt like they were being given special favors." Professional women aren't quitting their careers solely because of babies and family, but because too many workplaces are not fostering an environment that allows them to keep working once they become mothers.

In her analysis, Stone discovered husbands were a key factor in these women's decisions as well. "That not all women talked about their husbands' involvement, or lack thereof, reveals the degree to which they perceived the work-family balancing act to be their responsibility alone. But women seldom mentioned their husbands for another reason: they were, quite literally, absent," working long hours at their own jobs.

Ultimately, Stone believes that the prevailing misunderstanding about why high-achieving women quit careers only serves to undermine the will to change the modern-day workplace. She says, "Current demographics make it clear that employers can hardly afford to lose the talents of high-achieving women. Forget opting out; the key to keeping professional women on the job is to create better, more flexible ways to work."

True Confessions of a First Time Mother

There are some mistakes the Diaper Diva has made she wouldn't want her family and friends to know about. They would make me change my pen name to something a little less flattering if they knew about the time I left Hendrick sitting on our riding mower. I didn't switch the mower to first gear when I got off and it rolled backward across the yard. I turned my head away for one minute and the next minute my son is crashing into the picnic table!

Before you call DYFS, rest assured that Hendrick wasn't hurt. Maybe a little bewildered that mom finally let him drive, but not hurt.

If I have anything else to get off my chest -- or feel the need to locate parents who make mistakes much graver than mine -- I will call up a few new Web sites that allow mothers to anonymously admit their mistakes. (After all, I have a reputation to uphold on this site.)

According to a Reuters online story, one of those tell-all sites, truemomconfessions.com, offers an online posting board that also allows mothers and fathers to air their grievances about in-laws, lament their diminished sex lives and share stories about misdeeds that child welfare officials wouldn't find very amusing.

You won't exactly get good parenting tips on these sites:

"The 'new parent' website, Offsprung.com, includes parental tales of dropping children and doping them with Benadryl while on Babble.com, one mom reveals her secret to keeping calm with her irritable toddler -- time-outs to get stoned."

The responsibility of parenting is enormous, and we all feel like failures when we experience lapses in judgment. If it helps to know that other people are making the same mistakes - or ones far worse - read on. Maybe some of those startling admissions will make you realize that you are a better parent than you think.

Here's the link:
http://www.reuters.com/article/asiaTechnology/idUSIndia-30342120071105