UrbanBaby Buzz

The Beastie Boys rocked your world in the 80s. The Bheestie Bag will do the same for you in 2010.

Having young kids ups the odds that at least one of your favorite electronic gadgets will suffer an untimely death due to water damage. H2O, no. Your cell phone tossed in the bath, a glass of water spilled on your iPod or BlackBerry. Water can equal a PDA DOA. But the Bheestie Bag could spare you from having to purchase a new device. Say your iPod is the victim of an accidental apple juice shower. Just toss it in the bag, seal the bag and wait 24-72 hours (checking every 24 hours). The Bheestie bag can’t salvage every soaked item, but at least it gives you a fighting chance. So how does Bheestie stack up against the simple bag-of-rice dry-out? Bheestie co-founder Karen Wildman says the beads are made of molecular sieve and are better and faster at pulling out moisture. Speed is key because of the risk of corrosion. Wildman says another problem is that rice can get gummy. Cat litter, another option, works better than rice, but it’s messy and not so portable. The Bheestie is best for typical moisture build-up such as a sweaty iPod or cell phone, or condensation in a digital camera. The Bheestie team is also working on a larger bag for a laptop computer.

Stay dry.

Bheestie Bag, $20 at bheestie.com.

Where Do Polar Bears Live? by Sarah L. Thomson is a “Let’s-Read-And-Find-Out Science” stage 2 book that combines storytelling and an environmental lesson for ages 5-9.

A professor bear leads the reader through the story of a mother polar bear and her cub, and what their survival depends on and how that is threatened today. Young readers will be introduced to scientific elements of species, habitat and survival, with beautiful illustrations by Jason Chin .

At the conclusion of the story, readers will not be left empty-handed with only worry for the polar bears, but instead are given some practical ideas to get involved. “Find out more about why the world is getting warmer?” and “What can you do?” can begin some good discussions with budding environmentalists at en early age.

Other Stage 2 books for interested readers:

Almost Gone: The World’s Rarest Animals by Steve Jenkins.
Why are the Ice Caps Melting? By Anne Rockwell
What’s So Bad About Gasoline? By Anne Rockwell

Available at Amazon

Let’s Start the Discussion: Are your kids interested in environment causes? Do you and your family do any projects to get involved?

If you haven’t taken a good look at your kids’ school lunch menu lately, Fed Up: School Lunch Project may literally shock you. This blog chronicles the lunches of one Illinois schoolteacher, who orders, photographs, and then eats the school cafeteria lunch daily, and reports on the results. They’re not pretty. Cheap, empty carbs galore, a desperate lack of vegetables, mystery meat, a tidal wave of sugar: Is this what we’re feeding kids just before they’re expected to absorb algebra?

The National School Lunch Program is administered by the USDA under the Child Nutrition Act. Every four years, the act is re-examined, and reauthorized. Even now, Congress is poring over a budget that allocates $10 billion towards improving the nutrition content of school lunches. But will that be enough? After all, we have built a program that’s a dumping ground for commodities purchased by the USDA, including meat rejected by fast food operations. It’s no surprise that horrified parents are banding together to fight the power, through groups like Better School Food and Edible Schoolyard.

One thing’s for sure: today’s group of informed, annoyed parents would never let the President get away with classifying ketchup as a vegetable.

Like many of us, Charlotte Hume despaired of her son, Freddie, eating his vegetables. But unlike many of us, she convinced Freddie to undertake what she called the Great Big Vegetable Challenge, trying each vegetable from asparagus to zucchini in alphabetical order. Freddie had to try at least two recipes with each, and Charlotte endeavored to find recipes that she thought would appeal to her seven-year-old’s kidlike appetites. The result: a kid who tried dozens of new vegetables, and an incredible blog full of kid-friendly veg recipes and Charlotte’s priceless commentary.

If only the blog archive was organized by vegetable instead of by date! Use Google to do your searching for you; searching for “zucchini great big vegetable challenge” brings up “zucchini turkey burgers;” a similar search for butternut squash brings up a canneloni recipe. It’s a little clunky but for vegetables that your kid might actually eat, it’s worth the extra Googling.

With Valentine’s Day fast approaching and a rare night out with your DH, your maternity wardrobe requires an emergency infusion of hip, sexy pieces. After all, your pregnancy basics have been in heavy rotation and could use a break.

Time to pull in the big Gunn (as in Tim) or, rather, his Project Runway co-star, supermodel Heidi Klum. After almost seven seasons of Project Runway, years of red carpet action and miles of catwalk trekking for Victoria’s Secret, Klum knows fashion. And after having four kids, she knows maternity fashion. Next week, on February 12th, Klum launches two lines - Lavish and Loved. The first is for A Pea in the Pod and the second for Motherhood Maternity, both part of the same company. The two collections are heavy on the always-versatile black and gray, while Loved punches it up a notch on the color spectrum with some pops of cobalt blue. The LBD from Lavish (pictured upper right) is what you’d call a statement piece and is not likely to give you (or your DH!) maternity-wear fatigue as your pregnancy progresses. Klum notes that she experienced some fashion challenges during pregnancy and wanted to design maternity clothes that were practical and comfortable as well as stylish.

So on 2/14, be lavished and be loved … before the bambino arrives on the scene.

Available 2/12 in stores and online at apeainthepod.com and motherhood.com.

So typical. The cold/flu makes its way through your family. You pull a few all-nighters nursing various members of your brood, posting a play-by-play on Facebook and taking in a healthy dose of late-night TV (and the drama of rotating hosts). Then you get sick and there’s no one to mother you. So you can empathize when your BFF (cousin, old college roomie, etc.) is in a similar situation in need of some pampering.

Enter Spoonful of Comfort. It’s an online chicken soup biz. The point? To send your loved ones the gift of homemade chicken soup, the ultimate comfort food. Marti Bowes Wymer came up with the idea following the unexpected death of her mother in 2007. Wymer had just returned home to Florida after visiting her mom in Canada. A day later, her mother called to say she’d been diagnosed with lung cancer. With two young children in school, Wymer couldn’t just head North again. She wanted to do something, but, somehow, sending flowers or fruit seemed inappropriate. The lightbulb went off, the soup was on. Wymer’s mother passed away six weeks later, so she never had the opportunity to sample Wymer’s soup. In her mother’s honor, Wymer wants to help people reach out - to a grandchild with an ear infection, a kid in college who’s caught the flu- with some culinary TLC. The homemade soup is packaged with a gel pack and stored in a special insulated liner so it stays cold for 2-3 days.

And the taste? Never again will the canned stuff suffice. Bound to be a palate pleaser.

$32 per jar at spoonfulofcomfort.com.

Are we, as parents, completely misguided when it comes to, well, being parents? Are our assumptions leading our children astray?

According to NurtureShock, by Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman, “Many of modern society’s strategies for nurturing children are in fact backfiring – because key twists in the science have been overlooked.”

“Childhood obesity might be the result of not enough sleep. Moving the argument to another room might be the worst thing parents can do. Babyspeak DVD’s may stunt your child’s verbal development (since those eight wasted hours per week weren’t spent doing something productive). How about this one: children lie more often to permissive parents than they do to parents that set rules and guidelines.” - Hugh C. Howey

In her review, Alicia Van Hecke provides a good list of basic topics covered in the book, including “The Inverse Power of Praise” and “The Search for Intelligent Life in Kindergarten.”

During the fall of 2009 the authors wrote over 90 columns for Newsweek covering such topics as “Kids’ Food Allergies are Skyrocketing – Is the Spike Real?” and “Why Going to a Diverse School Doesn’t Lead to Diverse Friendships.”

Let’s Start the Discussion: It’s a dense book with meaty topics regarding parenting and education. We encourage UrbanBaby members to read this book over the course of the next few weeks and then come back to the UB boards to discuss in detail. We’ll announce a date for a guided board conversation. Will you read it?

A genuine eye-opener.

Traditional fairy tales are so creepy. And that’s why we love them. The eye-gougings, the princes that suddenly turn into ravens, the witches burnt to death in ovens, all of it speaks to something primal within us. Adaptations of classic fairy tales by Disney and others tend to dumb down their violent and scary aspects, creating something fluffier and less offensive, but somehow less compelling as well.

The Storyteller, a television series directed and produced by Muppeteer Jim Henson in the late ’80s, does no such sweetening. Each of the nine live-action 22 minute episodes retells a traditional folk tale, usually German, and is narrated by the great John Hurt, practically unrecognizable in his fantasy makeup but retaining his customary gravitas. The tales themselves are also given a majestic weight, with screenplays by Oscar winner Anthony Mingella, and fantastic character actors such as Brenda Blethyn, Miranda Richardson, and Jennifer Saunders (years before Ab Fab). Both acting and production values are of such top quality that each episode is like a mini-movie instead of a disposable kids’ show.

And what tales, full of horrific happenings! Sapsorrow, a Cinderella-like tale in which a princess is ordered to marry her own father; the Luck Child, in which an infant is thrown bodily off a cliff (and survives!). You may not recognize the narratives, but you will recognize their mythic weight. Oh, and speaking of myths, there’s a second four-episode Storyteller series that takes on Greek myths. Both the original Storyteller and the Greek myths version aired on NBC, and, in the late ’90s, on HBO. These days both are available on DVD, as well as free for Netflix members on Netflix’s Watch Instantly.

Scenario: You grab dinner at 7pm. At 4am, you go into labor. Because it’s your first pregnancy, Junior probably won’t appear for at least 12 hours. And you’re prohibited from eating or drinking until your little bambino first bunks down in his hospital bassinet. Do the math; that’s 21 hours without so much as a snack or beverage. Oh, but you can suck on a wash cloth or ice chips.

This hypothetical could change thanks to a new review of studies indicating that the no-eating-or-drinking rules don’t appear to have any benefits for the majority of healthy women and their infants. Earlier this week, in a New York Times article entitled “Labor, a Snack or a Sip?” writer Roni Caryn Rabin reported on the conclusions of this review, which was published by the Cochrane Collaboration. The restrictions were originally intended to reduce the risk of Mendelson’s syndrome, a condition in which a patient’s stomach contents are aspirated into the lungs during general anesthesia. In rare cases, the syndrome is fatal. Rabin points out that these days general anesthesia is used infrequently on the maternity ward and cites an estimate from Boston’s Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (a Harvard Medical School teaching hospital) that “just 1 to 2 percent of women in labor are given general anesthesia.” (The concern is with emergency C-sections when the use of general anesthesia is sometimes necessary.)

In August, the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists released new guidelines permitting patients to drink clear liquids. However, it remains to be seen whether you’ll be allowed to knock back a few slices of pizza in between contractions. According to the Times piece, anesthesiologists aren’t convinced yet that it’s time for women to dine and deliver, criticizing the sample sizes of the studies analyzed for the Cochrane Collaboration review.

So, for now, be happy with the ice chips.

Sure, you’d like the send the world a baby announcement and show ‘em all how incredibly cute your infant is, but who has the time to address, stamp, and mail a million cards when there’s an eight pound, seven ounce appendage hanging off your boob? Throughout 2010, stationery company Paper Culture has an almost-magic Mail & Message service: once you’ve ordered your card, Paper Culture will address and send your card for you, for the cost of the stamps alone! Nice! You can even include a personalized message, a different one for each card, if you wish, for no extra cost.

The cards themselves are gorgeous: thick, heavy paper stock, made entirely of post-consumer waste, with rounded corners and magnificently clear images, so they can see every tiny curve of your baby’s face. Quick, take a picture before the zits come in.

Visit paperculture.com for more information.