Chronicles of a “Mr. Mom”

Ford has made parenting a little easier by introducing MyKey, a programmable ignition key for Ford automobiles that monitors teenage driving behavior. With MyKey in place, various driving habits that parents may consider unsafe, or merely obnoxious, can be curtailed.

It covers all the common parental complaints: The car’s speed cannot exceed 80mph. Radio volume is limited to 44 percent of maximum and, if seatbelts aren’t fastened, no sound will come from the speakers at all. Extra-careful and/or paranoid parents can place warning sounds at 45, 55, and 65mph, blasting a warning of potential reckless driving to the youthful driver.

Full story: MyKey Turns Your Ford Focus into Your Mom

Pls don’t try this at home:

Yesterday, when courts docs surfaced revealing Sharon Stone’s desire to have her son’s smelly feet Botoxed, well I couldn’t help but wonder what other creative advice Stone might have for weathering the myriad annoyances and little inconveniences that come with raising a kid. Unwittingly, it seems Stone may have hit upon a new parenting model and I look forward to a lively, yet civil, discussion of these proposed Sharon Stone-inspired problems and solutions:

Really heart breaking to read stories like this:

MORE than anything, John and Adriana Roldan love each other and their two little boys, Brandon, 5, and Samuel, 1. And so now that Mr. Roldan, a mechanic and a building superintendent and a New Jersey National Guardsman, has been deployed to Iraq for the second time in three years, he and his wife will start lying to each other again, just as they lied their way through his first Iraq tour.

That first time, Mr. Roldan told Mrs. Roldan that as a mechanic, he never left the base in Iraq.

Full story: Guard Families Fight War of Their Own

The diaper area is dark, moist, and warm. Therefore, by the virtue of wearing diapers, infants are prone to develop diaper rashes and even yeast infections in the diaper area. It’s important to learn how to prevent diaper rashes, as well as how to tell a diaper rash from a yeast infection, to protect your baby’s skin integrity.

Prevention Is Key
You can keep your infant’s diaper area healthy by frequently changing her wet and soiled diapers, applying barrier ointments, such as petroleum jelly (Vaseline) or A & D ointment, and allowing the area to air out after every diaper change. Using cloth diapers decreases your infant’s risk for diaper rashes, because the air can circulate better through cloth than though a synthetic diaper.

Diaper Rash If you notice redness or pinkish red pimples in the diaper area, your infant has developed a diaper rash. You need to reach for over-the-counter zinc oxide cream like Desitin. Apply a thin layer to the diaper area 3-4 times daily, and then cover it with a thin layer of a barrier ointment. Continue to air out the area after each diaper change.

Yeast Infection
If the redness in the diaper area has spread to the bends of the legs and looks very red and shiny, most likely it is a yeast infection. You might have already tried the zinc oxide cream at this point without any results, so it is the time to consult with your infant’s health care provider. The best treatment for yeast infections in the diaper area is an anti-fungal cream applied 3-4 times a day for 7-10 days.

Contact your child’s health care provider if your infant has a rash and develops a fever, the rash is spreading, or you are concerned in any way with how the diaper area looks.

Dr. Hillary is a pediatric nurse practitioner with a doctoral degree in health promotion and risk reduction. She works as a pediatric clinician and writes for Plugged in Parents. Plugged In Parents provides up-to-date info on pediatric health, safety and nutrition along with movie reviews, recipes, tech-savvy tips, and a parent’s only forum. You can also contact Dr. Hillary for personal questions related to health and nutrition.

Please visit http://www.pluggedinparents.com

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Barbara_Hillary,_PhD

This is a funny, cute post at Craigslist.

My kids are a pain in the ass. Just in the past hour, i have had to tell each one to do something more than once. oldest: can i have soda? it’s just a sprite? please? can i? no, no and no.
the next one…don’t even get me started. seriously.
the twin six year olds: one wanted dessert before her dinner was over, one kept wanting to know why I wouldn’t let nine year olds swing her around by her limbs. (the fear of a dislocated shoulder did nothing.)
Please help me.
I can be a tad difficult to work for. I’m loud, pushy and while I used to think we paid well, i am no longer sure. i work from home, so you get the pleasure of being hounded by me all day long. and, you get to pretend to like me, because i am deeply sensative. (but well dressed and a know it all, a winning combination I assure you.)
If you cannot multi task, or communicate without being passive aggressive, don’t even bother replying.

Here’s the actual post.

Whether you’re a parent jumping enthusiastically for joy, or a kid moaning and groaning, there’s no getting around the fact that school is just around the corner. And as schools across the country kick into full swing, children will be filling the streets, sidewalks and parking lots as they get themselves to and from school.

When I was a kid, I had to walk … uphill … both ways, for most of my youth. And it snowed most days, too! Whether your student will be traveling by bus, car, bike or under foot power, there are numerous things to keep in mind to make sure each trip is a safe one.

Full story

Your young preschooler may be ready for class, but is she ready for the bus?

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(ARA) - When Janeé Pedersen gave birth to a beautiful baby girl, Noelle, last year, she was certain that cloth diapers were the right thing for her.

“I knew I would use cloth before I was even pregnant with my daughter. I did a lot of research online and by the time we came home from the hospital, I had my stash ready to go!” she says.

Pedersen, like many of today’s eco-minded new moms, is part of a growing number of women who are ditching disposable diapers for more environmentally-friendly diapering options. The influx of moms going green has been a key contributing factor to the booming resurgence of cloth diapering.

The good news is that there are many cloth diapering systems for a mom to choose from, however, this plethora of options can be overwhelming. Here is advice from three veteran cloth diapering moms on how to get started — and stick with — cloth diapering.

Get Educated  
“The first thing a mom needs to do is become educated on the different types of cloth diapering systems, from pockets to all-in-ones to fitteds,” advises Kelly Wels, who is expecting her third baby and is the founder of KellysCloset.com, a popular cloth diapering boutique. “After a little research, moms will realize that cloth diapering has nothing to do with pins, rubber pants or soaking and swirling dirty diapers.”

Wels also recommends that moms turn to the Internet, specifically the DiaperPin.com, to learn the cloth diapering lingo and read about the different cloth diaper brands.  

Try Different Types and Brands  
New mom Jesi Josten from Denver concedes that figuring out what type of cloth diaper to choose can be overwhelming. “I always suggest that you buy a couple of each kind of diaper, then sell off the ones that don’t work and go with the ones that do. Sometimes what sounds great on paper doesn’t really work for you in real life,” she counsels.

Go With the Tried and True  
With new diaper brands popping up every day, Wels advises that you can’t go wrong using the tried and true brands. “I usually recommend new moms use Fuzzi Bunz pocket diapers because they are so easy-to-use and wash at home,” she says. In fact, Wels has dedicated an entire online boutique, FuzziBunzOnline.com, to exclusively selling this type of diapers and accessories.

Other tried and true brands include BumGenius and Happy Heinys, which are popular one-sized pocket diaper brands available online at OneSizeDiaperStore.com. These diapers allow parents to squeeze maximum value from their investment because the same diaper fits most babies from newborn to toddler.  

Josten says when she first started cloth diapering her 16-month-old daughter, Violet, pocket cloth diapers were all the rage. However, these diapers just didn’t work for her daughter so she switched to Thirties fitted diapers. Josten is happy she made the switch rather than give up on cloth diapering altogether.

“I’ve learned that there is no such thing as one-kind-fits-all. There are literally hundreds of different brands and styles to choose from, so even if you have a hard-to-fit baby you can find something that works for you,” she says.

Follow Your Heart  
Josten believes that it’s important to make decisions that mean something to the world-at-large. “My husband and I try really hard to follow the ‘reduce, reuse, recycle’ motto in our daily life, and I just couldn’t see throwing away literally dozens of diapers a day into landfills. My research into cloth confirmed my beliefs that this was the best way to go.”

Don’t Give Up  
Josten also advises that moms shouldn’t give up if cloth diapering doesn’t seem to be working for them right away. She suggests getting support from a local mom who uses cloth diapers too. “It would have been great to have a mentor to meet with where I could actually touch and feel the diapers and ask questions about cloth diapers in real-life.”

Wels says that cloth diapering is so much easier than most people think and tells moms that they should at least give cloth diapering a chance if they are even remotely curious about it. “Give it a shot. You might just surprise yourself and become a fellow mom of the cloth.”

Courtesy of ARAcontent

Just another video in our “Funny Babies” series

Our primary schools reward what they call citizenship, a series of behaviours ranging from helping a hurt friend, to finding the scissors for teacher, to not sticking gum under the desk. What they don’t teach is the morality of citizenship; the web of rights and obligations that cling to the right, or obligation, to vote.

Our schools, and our systems, teach the necessity of keeping your head down. Of not being the person to dob on the ministerial pedophile. Not fessing up to being the boss of Beth Morgan, the lowly Wollongong planner found to be corrupt, but whose decisions must have been ratified by any number of now-invisible superiors. Not carrying the can.

Full story: We need tough love, not bad parenting