Rockabye Baby and our country cousin, Hushabye Baby were recently seen on The Early Show on CBS, on a segment in which a parenting expert shared tips for soothing children with nightmares, insomnia or other sleep problems:
“Young children can be really be helped by soothing and rocking and something we found really great when my children were younger were the Rockabye and the Hushabye Baby collections. These are soft versions of rock classics. In our case we had Bob Marley and U2 and there are a lot of great music methods here that really soothe children in a different way than adults may have experienced… Parents can tolerate it, which you know a lot of children’s music – you can’t.”
Getting ready to fly the friendly skies with your brood? Better to plan ahead before boarding and make sure you aren’t carrying anything that won’t pass muster—you know, bringing personal care items that are 3 oz. or less in your carry-on bag. Now, stocking up on the right-sized stuff is as simple as point and click. 3floz.com is chock-full of all your favorite beauty and grooming products, and now they also carry baby items such as bath products, oils, creams, sunscreens and towelettes. They even have high-end brands include Little Twig, MD Moms, Lather and Weleda Baby.
If you place your order by 2 pm EST, you’ll receive same-day service in Manhattan. Even if you’re not a New Yorker, we love that you can upgrade your order from ground shipping to overnight by including your flight itinerary that shows travel within three days. Cool perk! Now, if only they could do something about that pesky kid kicking the back of your seat…
What is the purpose of the diaper? Is it to stop your baby from leaking or is it to create a fashion statement?
Huggies recently released the new Jean Diaper. They claim to have the same leakage protection, design and technology as Huggies Little Movers Diapers except now they look like your baby is wearing Daisy Dukes. They are available for a limited time and feature realistic looking images of pockets in the back and a fly in the front. Too bad they don’t say Jordache anywhere. (Did I just date myself?)
The diapers have created a bit of a buzz online, as most people use them for practical reasons only and rarely let their kids go out in public wearing nothing on the bottom but a diaper. Fans of the Jean Diaper say it’s a cute alternative to having to dress kids up, especially in the hot summer months. Hey, as long as the diapers keep in what they’re supposed to, then they’re doing their job. We think this baby to the left looks a bit like Bruce Springsteen on the cover of Born in the USA! What do you think?
Meet baby Yotaro. He cries, giggles, kicks when you tickle him, sneezes and his nose runs. And he’s a robot. In Japan, project leader Hiroki Kunimura and his team created Yotaro, feeling that “a robot can’t be human but it’s great if this robot triggers human emotions, so humans want to have their own baby.” Japan is struggling with a low birth rate and although Yotaro wasn’t initially created to remedy that, many feel that this glowing ersatz baby will trigger couples to want to have kids.
Yotaro’s emotions are pre-set in a computer program; his warm temperature is created by water-warmed silicone, while his dripping nose is just a slow-drip water hose.
Will this robot help couples start their own families? That remains to be seen, but I can guarantee you anyone who has a baby because of the way they felt when holding Yotaro will be in for a big surprise when the real baby arrives and doesn’t sleep through the night or has a leaky diaper as you’re getting ready to leave the house.
Have you ever seen the episode of the Simpsons where Homer’s brother (played by Danny DeVito) moves in with the family and using baby Maggie as a his test subject creates a device that tells parents why their babies are crying? The Simpsons is just a cartoon but it seems someone has actually managed to create such a device. Check out whycry.com. Using a microphone, the gadget listens to your baby crying and then translates it into one of five expressions, hungry, bored, annoyed, sleepy and stressed. The site claims they are 98% reliable and through a digital processing of the signal there is a maximum of 20 seconds wait time. What do you think? Can a machine really tell you what’s wrong with your baby?
Another item I thought was pretty clever was the Squirt baby food dispensing spoon from Boon, Inc. The bulb holds three ounces of baby food and when you squeeze it dispenses “just the right amount of food” on to the spoon. What is “just the right amount of food?” Well, for my son it was probably more than this little spoon can hold, but I’m all for anything that will cut down on the mess that is involved with feeding babies and teaching them to eat!
What’s your definition of a superhero, or better yet, how does your kid define one? In the real world, you don’t necessarily need a cape and special powers to save the day or just to bring a smile to your child’s face. In honor of Dear Old Dad comes a book that celebrates fathers as the best heroes of all. The comic book-style graphics mesh well with the story of a young superhero himself who spends his days fighting bad guys and chasing away villains. But when he finally meets his match, the young boy realizes that even superheroes need help every now and then. It’s his dad who comes in to rescue his son from a nightmare and interestingly enough, he’s not wearing a cape or a mask. Out the window climb the villains, as father and son share a happy moment together. The last page of the book showcases the unbreakable bond between parent and child, one that will surely pull at your heartstrings.
Even if you don’t consider yourself a mushy person, this is one read whose message is simple and sweet: your kid thinks the world of you. Happy Father’s Day!
An eternal debate amongst parents rages on, and once again another writer has decided to try and make sense of the boys versus girls debate. Kids are not easy to raise regardless of their gender, and of course each child is different. But let’s just put this fact aside momentarily and ponder a bit, are girls easier to deal with than boys? Are boys just a bit too crazy for a tired parent or is a girl’s (sometime) silence and sadness too confusing for a dad or mom?
In a recent article on Parenting.com Paula Spencer, discusses the differences in raising a boy or a girl and the challenges each offer parents. While she starts off the article saying that she spends much more time on her boy than on any of her three girls, this fact is pushed to the side immediately when parents of girls claim the opposite. Which is harder to raise?
Here are some tidbits from the story that can be open to debate:
From birth, we talk softly to girls but throw boys in the air.
Girls’ hearing is more sensitive in the frequency range critical to speech discrimination, and the verbal centers in their brains develop more quickly. That means a girl is likely to respond better to discipline strategies such as praise or warnings like “Don’t do that” or “Use your words.”
Boys tend to be more tactile — they may need to be picked up and plunked in a time-out chair
Boys are more rambunctious and aggressive. Taking risks lights up the pleasure centers of their brains.
Letting kids explore — at the cost of a few scrapes and cuts — builds character, self-confidence, resilience, and self-reliance. Boys, being natural risk takers, may need encouragement to slow down a little, but maybe girls need to be encouraged to take more risks.
From birth, a girl baby tends to be more interested in looking at colors and textures, like those on the human face, while a boy baby is drawn more to movement, like a whirling mobile.
Because girls study faces so intently, they’re better at reading nonverbal signals, such as expression and tone of voice. Boys not only learn to talk later than girls and use more limited vocabularies, they also have more trouble connecting feelings with words.
As girls get to be 8 or so, things can get harder: The flip side of being so adept at communicating is that girls exert a lot of energy on it. There can be a great deal of drama around who’s mad at whom, who said what and why.
Girls tend to grow up less confident and more insecure than boys.
In their early years, most boys lag behind girls in developing attentiveness, self-control, and language and fine motor skills.
One area where girls do less well in school concerns spatial learning, such as geometry.
The general consensus seems to be that boys are more of a handful early on, and girls more challenging beginning in the preteen years.
So reading these facts, what do you think? Do you agree with Spencer that boys are harder to deal with early on and easier as they get older, or is the opposite true?
It began over 65 million years ago. The band was created when a flash of lightning and witches’ spells revealed and cracked five metal dinosaur eggs buried deep in a mountain. Thus Hevisaurus was born!
What is it, you ask? They’re a five member heavy metal group in Finland who dress as dinosaurs and play songs that deal with what to do when homework gets boring, flying on a dragon’s back, or “Rupu-Rupu,” a monster, who “smells like an unwashed potty”. The band played their first gig last September for a charity event and their fans have grown exponentially ever since. Their first album Jurahevin kuninkaat (Kings of Jurassic Metal) was on Finland’s album chart for 10 weeks. Their second is due this fall.
Mirka Rantanen, who has played with a few head-banging bands including Thunderstone, started the band. “Long-haired dinosaurs playing heavy metal — it started to sound like a really good idea” said Rantanen. And he put some serious effort into launching his idea. The costumes were made of reindeer skin dyed green and treated to look scaly in a process that took four months and 24,000 dollars.
While you won’t be able to see them live in the U.S., check out their website and their videos so you and your kids can rock along with Herra Hevisaurus, Milli Pilli, Komppi Momppi, Riffi Raffi, and Muffi Puffi.
The newly released documentary, Babies, has been loved by critics and film-goers alike. Directed by French filmmaker, Thomas Balmès, this film takes on the great differences found between cultures around the world, specifically focusing on how children are raised from infancy. The director picked four very different locations and followed a child from birth to its first birthday, periodically switching between the four throughout the film.
The film’s locations include the plains of Mongolia, the grasslands of Namibia, the high rises of Tokyo, and the streets of San Francisco. But while some audiences may be expecting some long diatribe on how our differences make us unique, or some other type of narrative, they’ll be disappointed. Babies features absolutely no narration, no direct summation of the scenes as they pass. You’re basically just stuck watching the babies in their habitats as they become more familiar with their surroundings – the entire time.
For those of us that just like to watch infants coo and spit and fall over, this is basically what you’ve been waiting for. Each child has a very distinctive personality and as you watch then grow and develop more comfort with their surroundings, you may feel that you’ve been there throughout the tiresome process of growing up.
If nothing else, it’s immensely interesting to be able to pick apart the different customs each culture carries out with small tasks such as washing a baby, keeping an eye on them, or even feeding time. For parents, wanna-be parents, or even just those of us that started out as babies, this film is for the breeder in all of us, and it’s guaranteed to make you cry out, “Awwwwww,” at least once.
Yes, the sunshine might be calling your kids outdoors—and by all means, let them go! But it doesn’t mean you have to put aside storytime. Instead, grab a blanket, pull up a deck chair and welcome the wonders of the warmer weather with some classic children’s stories that celebrate springtime. You may, in fact, remember many of these treasured fables from your own childhood, so dust off your copy and share them with your little ones.
The Tale of Peter Rabbit
by Beatrix Potter
Little mischief makers may recognize themselves in the little bunny who always managed to get himself into trouble. And who could forget that horrible Mr. McGregor? This is one story that will show you how to parent, tough love-style.
The Velveteen Rabbit
by Margery Williams
The Velveteen Rabbit turns the magic of make-believe into reality when a stuffed rabbit that longs to come to life realizes the power of true love. It’s a heart-tugging tale that may recall your old lovey which you toted around until it was practically in tatters.
The Ugly Duckling illustrates the timely theme of recognizing one’s strengths, no matter how flawed they might seem. Regardless of how you were raised or where your family came from, this story reminds us that beauty is truly in the eyes of the beholder.
The Runaway Bunny
by Margaret Brown
The Runaway Bunny shares the delightful antics of a baby bunny that tests his mother’s love by keeping her at arm’s—or paw’s—reach. A gentle reminder that childhood can be fleeting and a longing for independence is simply a sign of growing up.
