Archive for March, 2011

Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer signed into law what appears to be the first legislation in the nation to ban abortions over ethnicity and the fourth to ban it by gender.

From The Associated Press:

“The law makes it a Class 3 felony to knowingly perform or provide financing for an abortion sought because of the race or sex of the fetus or a parent’s race. The maximum punishment if convicted is 3 1/2 years in prison.”

“Supporters said the measure is an important statement against discrimination and for life.”

“We are a multicultural society now and cultures are bringing their traditions to America that really defy the values of America, including cultures that value males over females,” said state Sen. Nancy Barto, a Scottsdale Republican who supports the bill.”

“When the bill was being debated, supporters said they wanted Arizona to prevent discrimination-based abortions, and they disagreed with opponents over whether there’s evidence that race and sex selection-based …

Continue reading Should abortions due to gender or race be banned? »

Time.com has a heartbreaking story about a mother who was left brain damaged after giving birth to triplets in 2006. Abbie Dorn, a 34-year-old paraplegic, has been blocked from seeing her kids because her ex-husband thinks the kids could be traumatized by seeing her.

Dorn cannot do much physically. She can blink yes or no to questions. She can hear sounds and see things. She can smile. Last week a Los Angeles County Superior Court judge ruled that Dorn’s kids can visit her for five consecutive days each year. Dorn lives in Myrtle Beach, S.C. Her husband divorced her after the brain damage.

From Time.com:

“The court finds that even though [Dorn] cannot interact with the children, the children can interact with [Dorn] — and that the interaction is beneficial for the children,” wrote Judge Frederick Shaller. “They can touch uch her, see her, bond with her, and can carry those memories with them.”…

“The judge also ordered monthly Skype visits for Dorn and the kids and …

Continue reading Should a disabled mom be banned from seeing her kids? »

In the last few months, I have become a convert to texting. I think it’s a great tool for moms for many of the same reasons that teens like it.

• It’s less intrusive than a phone ringing. I feel like I can send a friend a question without bothering them or interrupting their family time. Also if you don’t know the family’s schedule – are they eating, are they napping, praying – it’s just less intrusive.

• It’s immediate and easy to do.

• I also like that the info stays around. I needed my friend’s address so she texted it to me. I can look that up anytime I need it and it doesn’t disappear like paper notes.  I can send babysitters dates and times and I know they will have it even if they don’t write it in their calendars.

I have several friends who work crazy hours and when they are home with their families I don’t want to interrupt their family time.  But with texting we can says things like “hey if you have time to walk I am going at 5 or we’re …

Continue reading Is texting a Mom’s new best friend? »

Boston.com has an excellent story about teens who are sleeping with their phones under their pillows or near the bed so they can wake up in case a friend needs them via text.

They are “on call” in case of a break up or other emotional teen trauma. But besides becoming exhausted from not getting enough sleep, these texting teens are actually interrupting their learning cycle!!

Here are some stats from the article on teen texting:

Teenagers sent and received an average of 3,276 texts per month in the last quarter of 2010, according to the most recent statistics from the Nielsen Co.

“A Pew Research Center study from 2010 reported that more than four out of five teens with cellphones sleep with the phone on or near the bed, sometimes falling asleep with it in their hands in the middle of a conversation. Pew researchers did not ask whether the phones were on, but Amanda Lenhart, a senior research specialist, said ‘many expressed reluctance to ever turn their phones off.’ …

Continue reading Is your teen ‘on call’ for texts all night? Are they exhausted and actually hurting learning cycle? »

AOL reports that the woman believed to the be the oldest mother in the world is dying just 18 months after giving birth to her first child.

Rajo Devi Lohan says she is suffering from complications after her IVF pregnancy and is too weak to recover.  Lohan ,72, and her husband Balla, 73, are poor farmers who live north of Delhi.

They have been married for nearly 54 years and always dreamed of having a child. They took a loan for the $3,000 IVF treatment.

From the AOL story:

“I dreamed about having a child all my life,” she told the Daily Mail. “It does not matter to me that I am ill, because at least I lived long enough to become a mother.” ….

“News of a dying Lohan comes just short of year after the death of the former world’s oldest mom, Maria del Carmen Bousada of Spain. Bousada died in July of last year at age 69, leaving behind 2-year-old twins. Bousada had lied to a U.S. fertility clinic in order to get pregnant, telling them that she was 55 — the cut off age for in …

Continue reading Too old for IVF? Oldest mother, 72, dying leaving behind 18-month daughter »

A weekend editorial in the Boston Globe (Boston.com) put into writing something that Michael and I frequently talk about – families with more than two kids in carseats (or even boosters) have to have larger, less fuel efficient, cars just to fit them in properly.

From the Boston Globe:

“RECOMMENDATIONS THAT parents keep children in specially designed car seats until older ages — the American Academy of Pediatrics recently decreed that kids up to age 2 should be in rear-facing seats — have improved safety on the roads. But the need for special seats for multiple children had an unintended consequence: Parents buy larger cars because those seats don’t fit easily into smaller cars.”

“That’s the fault of both the automobile industry, which has failed to contour back seats to maximize space for child seats, and the seat makers, who don’t seem to have given much thought to how parents can fit multiple seats into a modest-sized vehicle. The two should start working …

Continue reading Are car seat regulations forcing families into bigger cars? »

All of a sudden I am seeing and hearing everywhere about this new (actually old) hCG diet. The gist of it is you trick your body into thinking you are pregnant by injecting yourself with human chorionic gonadotropin, or hCG, which was first discovered in 1927. With the presense of hCG, your body (in theory) releases fat surpluses to go to the fetus (that doesn’t actually exist). Men can also use the diet. Dieters are supposed to lose 1 to 2 pounds a day on the diet.

Discovery Health wrote a comprehensive article explaining how the hCG diet works. Check out the link to read all the details. (It is several pages long.)Below is some highlights from the article to help explain this complicated diet.

How the hCG affects your body according to Discovery Health:

“We aren’t ravenous for fatty foods for no reason. Our bodies like to maximize caloric intake in case lean times are ahead. In the case of women, excess calories tend to wind up in “problem” areas such as the hips, …

Continue reading hCG diet: Can tricking your body into thinking you’re pregnant help lose weight? Is it a good idea? »

Jarvis has requested a topic about advice dads give to their sons about dating.

From Jarvis:

“I’d be interested in hearing from some of the other dads on dating advice for their boys. Do you tell them to treat girls well? My guy is still small, but I already try to teach him to not treat girls like one of the boys. I think it will pay off later in life.  Girls are different and they don’t take things as lightly as boys. They think more.”

I think it’s an interesting dilemma because I think girls and women want to be treated as equals in school and in the workplace so then should we be telling our boys to treat them differently in general?

Should good manner just apply to all whether boy or girl or should boys be taught that women are the ‘fairer sex” and need to be treated more gently? How will that attitude affect them outside the dating arena?

So what are you telling your little guys about how to treat girls? What dating advice are you giving to your teenage …

Continue reading Dad’s dating advice: How are boys taught to treat girls? »

The Huffington Post is reporting that a 4-year-old girl who is a U.S. citizen was sent back to Guatemala when she entered the country with her grandfather.

Here is part of the story from The Huffington Post (check the link for all the details):

“The girl, Emily Samantha Ruiz, is a U.S. citizen. But she, like many other children of undocumented immigrants, became caught in a web of complications for families with mixed legal statuses. On her way home from a trip to Guatemala with her grandfather on March 11, Emily was detained in Dulles International Airport when authorities stopped her grandfather on an illegal entry charge from more than a decade ago.

“Authorities took her grandfather, a non-citizen on a valid work visa that allowed him to travel, into custody. But the young girl was detained in the airport, then sent back to Guatemala with her grandfather, citizenship notwithstanding. ”

Her family claims they were told Emily would either have to be sent back to …

Continue reading Should kids be separated from parents based on immigration status? »

You can tell what year a house was built based on a couple of things: Is the master bathroom gigantic and is the master on the main?

Somewhere in the 90s (or was it the 80s?) builders decided parents wanted the master bedroom on the main level away from their kids. The theory is the parents would get more privacy but I actually think it just causes more problems.

In my first two houses the master was upstairs with the kids. In this house, the master is downstairs, and I hate it.

My just-turned 4-year-old thinks we are way too far away from her room and wants to sleep in our bed every night. In the old house she was fine in her own bed because we were right down the hall.

When she does fall asleep in her own bed, I worry that she will fall down the stairs trying to come to us during the night. I set up fencing that she would have to be semi-awake to navigate through. I didn’t want to use a locking gate the top stairs in case of a fire – no adult would be up there to let …

Continue reading Master on the main: Love it or hate it? »