Archives › 2005 › November
New CPR Guidelines
The American Heart Association has just updated its guidelines for CPR, making the process easier to learn and do, even for those with minimal training. It’s my opinion that anyone with kids, or anyone with childcare responsibilities, should be certified in CPR. If you took a course in preparation for your child’s birth, and your [...]
Same-Sex Parenting in the Land of Dykes
Blogging Baby reports today on some new statistics about lesbian and gay couples in the Netherlands. The number of such couples either married or in a registered partnership is on the rise, although they comprise just over 1% of all cohabiting couples in the country. While about 9% of such couples have children, this represents [...]
IKEA Assembly Tips
One of the advantages of hosting Thanksgiving this year was that my parents stayed for a few days to help babysit. My partner and I were able to run some errands, including a trip to IKEA, our favorite home-furnishing store. IKEA is fun with kids, too–in fact, it’s one of the most kid-friendly stores that’s [...]
The Great Nursery-Rhyme Debate
A bit of quick fun for the holiday: Take a moment to participate in the poll on the right and help me solve the age-old question: Is it “Itsy-Bitsy Spider” or “Eensy-Weensy Spider”? Posts here will be sporadic the rest of the week until my extended family has departed. Have a great Thanksgiving, if you’re [...]
Turkey Sanitation
Those of you cooking turkeys this holiday season may want to read these tips from Catherine Cutter of Penn State’s College of Agricultural Sciences, on how to avoid Salmonella, Campylobacter, and other bacteria-borne illnesses while preparing and serving the big bird and associated trimmings. If you’re of the vegetarian persuasion, or are hosting vegetarians or [...]
Arkansas Appeals Revocation of Lesbian and Gay Foster-Parent Ban
An Arkansas state appellate court is now reviewing a law that bans foster parents from having “adult homosexuals” in their households. The law was struck down last year, but the state is appealing the decision. What amuses me here is the attached definition of a “homosexual” as “any person who voluntarily and knowingly engages in [...]
10 Most Dangerous Toys of 2005
World Against Toys Causing Harm (W.A.T.C.H.) yesterday issued its annual 10 Worst Toys list for 2005. The list contains expected items, like paintball shooters, but also stuffed ponies and baby dolls of certain brands. Take a look, just in case.
Colored Bubbles
Ever wonder why there are no colored bubbles? If you have kids, chances are you’ve played with bubble solutions that shimmer and shine, but which are basically clear. Bubbles in a solid hue, however, are a non-trivial problem in chemistry. Until recently, no one had created one. This didn’t deter inventor Tim Kehoe, however, and [...]
Children and Technology
Some of you may be interested in a post on Children and Technology that I wrote for my Salty Snack blog. It looks at the recent trend towards technology-based kids’ toys as well as educational uses of technology.
Sweets Relieve Stress
After the last post, I thought you might want something uplifting: Research presented last week at the annual Society for Neuroscience meeting indicates that sweets relieve stress. This may not be news to many of us, but now we know why it works: sweets cause the body to produce lower levels of glucocorticoid stress hormones. [...]
Children Can Wed in Georgia, but Not Adult Same-Sex Couples
Same-sex couples can’t marry in Georgia, but children can, as long as they have unprotected premarital sex and conceive a child. This nearly forgotten Georgia law came to light last week when a 37-year-old woman was arrested for having a sexual relationship with a 15-year-old boy. The woman had wed the boy several days before, [...]
New Government Statistics on Births
The U. S. National Center for Health Statistics has released its analysis of birth data for 2004. One of the potentially worrisome findings was that C-sections in the U. S. are at an all-time high. The increase may be connected in part to the rise in multiple and preterm births, as well as a large drop in [...]
Pregnant Women and New Moms Risk Blood Clots
Reportedly, pulmonary embolism has overtaken all other causes of maternal mortality in the past two to three decades. Research from a thirty-year study just published in the Annals of Internal Medicine indicates that pregnant women and those up to three months postpartum are four times more likely than other women to suffer pulmonary embolism or [...]
Supreme Court Says Parents Bear Burden of Proof in Special-Education Cases
The Supreme Court ruled today, 6-2, that parents who challenge the adequacy of a disabled child’s “individualized education program” have the burden of proving it inadequate. The two dissenting justices felt that conversely, the school district should have to prove a program’s adequacy in such cases. While much of the current press surrounding Supreme Court [...]
New Test for Detecting Down Syndrome in First Trimester
Researchers at the Royal College of Physicians in Dublin, Ireland, announced a new screening test last week to detect Down syndrome in first-trimester fetuses. If the results of the test are positive, a woman can then choose to have further tests to confirm the diagnosis. The new test, a combination of a blood test and [...]
“In My Shoes” Documentary by Children of GLBT Parents
This weekend marked the 18th annual “Creating Change” conference sponsored by the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force. Among other things, the conference included a screening of “In My Shoes,” a half-hour movie produced by middle and high school-aged members of COLAGE, about their experiences as children of same-sex parents. I haven’t seen the film [...]
Cranbanero Sauce
Thanksgiving is almost upon us, so I thought I’d offer a recipe idea: Cranbanero Sauce, a fiery version of the classic condiment. If you like spicy food, and grandma’s lumpy gravy just isn’t doing it for you, try this. Buy a standard 16-ounce bag of cranberries at your local supermarket. Put cranberries, sugar, and water [...]
U. S. Senate Panel Approves Amendment Banning Same-Sex Marriage
A U. S. Senate panel led by Kansas Senator Sam Brownback yesterday approved a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage. The amendment will now go to the full Judiciary Committee and, if it passes there, the full Senate, the House, and then the state legislatures. As the Seattle Post-Intelligencer reports, however, Democrats are saying this tramples on [...]
Magic, Trains, and Children
The protagonist lives in a realm that’s been described as “magical,” and which has some parallels with the United Kingdom. He finds adventures with his friends and is brave, kind, and sometimes a little cheeky. His stories and movies have had phenomenal success around the world and are beloved of both children and parents. No, [...]
Election Results: Win Some, Lose Some
A brief political roundup for election week: Yesterday, Texas voters approved a measure placing an amendment in the Texas Bill of Rights defining marriage as a union of one man and one woman. It is unclear whether the language of the amendment would also ban other legal ties between same-sex partners, a similar conundrum to [...]
One-Pot Cooking
Eartheasy has some great ideas for one-pot cooking, including “templates” for three different types of dishes: rice, potato, and pasta based. You can adapt them to suit your tastes and leftovers. These are useful for those of us with young kids who need to cook quickly, or those who want to limit the mess when [...]
New Market for Handmade Items
There’s a new e-commerce marketplace called Etsy that looks very intriguing. It’s quite similar to E-Bay, in that it lets people buy and sell items, but limits itself to handmade goods. Etsy is still fairly new, but has a good interface and some innovative search features, so you can easily find items by type, material, [...]
A Mom by Any Other Name
What do our children call us? This is a recurring topic on several of the lesbian-mom blogs I read, and has popped up as a question on Mombian as well. Most recently, the Faggots on the Third Floor blog has asked whether “mommy” tends to be used for the bio mom, and “mama” for the [...]
Teaching Toddlers to Read
A recent research paper suggests that simply reading to toddlers may not help them learn to read, although it may have other developmental benefits. Apparently (and not surprisingly), toddlers focus on pictures more than words. They won’t learn to read words, though, unless the reader points out letters and words as well as narrates the [...]
Mombian Marketplace
With Halloween behind us, the winter holidays are right around the corner. Rather than plague you with too many gift ads on the main site (though I’ll always have a few), I decided to launch a separate Mombian Marketplace, with books and magazines on LGBT parenting, books, toys, and music for kids, and tools for [...]
1 of 2
