UrbanBaby Buzz

I can’t be the only one to notice that a lot of nursing accouterments are a little…fetishy. I mean, those pumping bustiers? Paging HR Giger!

And why not? It’s hard enough feeling sexual when your body is dripping strange fluids and marked with new sags and stretch marks. Not to mention that Baby is getting most, if not all, of your attention in the Breastfeeding Era. Why not give Daddy and Mommy a lil thrill? Don’t hide those hard-working funbags behind some ugly nursing cami; wear a peek-a-boo Milkshirt under your sweater.

Yep, just like a vintage nipple-less creation from Frederick’s of Hollywood (hey! now there’s a breastfeeding solution!), Milkshirts have strategically located holes. Pull up your shirt and it’s business time. Whatever business you want to do, that is.

Milkshirts in black (also available in white), $20

It’s been a scary (Discover Channel hostage crisis), tumultuous (NJ Housewives Reunion) and foreboding (Earl) week in TV and the news. Your family might just opt for a first-rate reading weekend. After all, you hope to instill within your child a rich appreciation of books based on your own love of literature, and not just as a means to increase their test scores.

If you do not have a thorough knowledge of children’s books, two of the most trusted reviewers in the field bring you A Family of Readers: The Book Lover’s Guide to Children’s and Young Adult Literature. Roger Sutton and Martha V. Parravano are the editors of The Horn Book Magazine and their new book is meant to help sharpen your own sense of what makes books work with young people.

A Family of Readers is broken down in four parts:

1. Reading to Them: Choosing and sharing board books and picture books with babies and very young children.
2. Reading with Them: Launching the new reader with easy readers and chapter books.
3. Reading on Their Own: Exploring what children read—and how they read—by genre and gender.
4. Leaving Them Alone: Respecting the reading privacy of the young adult.

Artists, authors, reviewers and designers including Maurice Sendak, Lois Lowry, and Kevin Henkes contribute their views and experiences. Each chapter ends with a selection of recent recommended books of the relevant genre and an entire list of all books discussed can be found in the back of the book.

“Why do kids read? They read because they are made to, of course, but they also read - via media in a multitude of forms - because they want to find something out, or they want to join their imagination with somebody else’s” - Roger Sutton

Pre-order your copy today at Amazon.com – Available in bookstores September 28, 2010.

Little kids and gender seems to be a bit of a hot topic du jour, having been covered recently in Salon (“Is that my son wearing a dress?”) and the Chicago Tribune. A transgendered character has recently popped up on Degrassi: The Next Generation, two male-to-female grade-schoolers appeared on This American Life, and this Wednesday, Northern California public radio station KQED hosted a beautiful call-in talk show on the matter.

The radio talk show whipped through some of the typical issues, like bullying from classmates, the need for progressive education for and from schools on gender, therapeutic modalities for treatment of any issues arising from gender issues, and some parsing of what, exactly, defines gender: clothing? playing with trucks instead of dolls? But unlike most media takes on transgender children, the KQED show included the perspective of a parent who sounds like she’s had to work terribly hard to accept her new-daughter-former-son:

“We went to see the Nutcracker at Christmas, and she just fell in love with Clara and she came home and put on her princess dress,” says Rachel Beckert, whose daughter is 7. “And from that point on she never took a dress off.”

“I just couldn’t think of a good reason to say no,” says Beckert, who sounds like an exceptionally open-minded mom. “Because our society doesn’t allow it? That didn’t seem like a great reason. Because it would be embarrassing? To whom? To me? I just couldn’t think of a great reason to say no. And so we just let her go.”

Soon enough, problems arose over which bathroom was appropriate, and which dressing room the child should use for sports. The girl was so distressed over such issues that she came home repeatedly from school covered in urine. “Especially in hindsight I can say we were in crisis. I met with the teacher and she said ‘Can’t you just make him wear pants?’ And I just knew that I couldn’t.”

What would you do if your child expressed a wish to be the opposite gender, insisted on wearing “boy” or “girl” clothing, or felt he or she was born with the wrong body?

Back to school, back to kids complaining that what you’ve packed is boring and/or gross. Get some fresh inspiration at these useful sites:

Lunch in a Box: Building a Better Bento: Fresh ideas on filling up a bento box with a vast variety of interesting items. This blog is likely to make you feel bad about your slapped-together PBJs, but still has wonderful recipes and ideas.

Vegan Lunch Box: The posts here hard to navigate; the site could use a search function, but the recipes and photos are choice. The author, Jennifer McCann, has written several indispensable books on packing healthy vegan lunches.

Lunch Box: More product oriented than most, this site will make you want to buy stuff.

Kids Lunch Box: This adventurous mom feeds her kids things like mini uttapam and Japanese okonmiyaki. Her “what we ate today” posts will make you both envious and hungry.

Super Healthy Kids: More of an allover kids-and-eating blog than just a lunch resource, but this mom takes beautiful pictures of herself preparing the kid-friendly foods her family eats.

With Labor Day approaching, a new fall TV season is just around the corner. That means fresh episodes of the L&Os, CIS and NCIS multiples and The Good Wife plus a batch of freshman shows (many of which are usually canceled).

For the sandbox set, PBS Kids is rolling out The Cat in the Hat Knows A Lot About That (see UB story) on Labor Day, and Nickelodeon is launching its first annual Nickelodeon Mega Music Fest, an hour-long, prime-time concert special. Teen sensation Justin Bieber will be headlining the show along with Wyclef Jean, The Laurie Berkner Band, The Fresh Beat Band, Dora the Explorer and Yo Gabba Gabba! Comedian John Leguizamo will host, with Sherri Shepherd serving as Stage Manager. The Mega Music Fest, which was shot live at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, will feature a mix of pop and family-friendly songs.

No rotating panel of judges to follow … just singing, dancing and a young American idol with the most famous hairdo since Rachel on Friends.

Nickelodeon Mega Music Fest premieres Labor Day, Mon., 9/6, 8-9pm ET/PT on NICK with encores on Nickelodeon Tue., 9/7 at 10am ET/PT and Thur., 9/9, at 1pm ET/PT.

With the Dow hovering around 10,000, we’re not exactly working with bull market material. Time to get creative (and we’re not talking bonds or gold … well, maybe gold).

French Bull can provide us with a bull market of a different sort. French Bull is a fab home accessories and tabletop line that’s put a modern spin on melamine. The eight-year-old company is launching a number of new products this fall, including adorable kids’ trays with vibrant colors and eye-popping graphics (as of 9/1). Our fave is the “Playtime” design; it kind of looks like the Candyland board game. Kids can follow the path leading to dessert. (That’s our preferred destination.)

Coming later this fall (10/1): the premiere of French Bull Bags. We’re loving the leather Astrology Pouches. Get one to celebrate your own sign or Junior’s. Perhaps these will replace the ubiquitous initial charms necklace as a way of honoring your DC?

These new French Bull products will be available at frenchbull.com. The website also has a brick-and-mortar store locator.

This past year has been about going back to basics on the parenting front. Instead of ramping it up, we’re dialing it down and learning about simplicity parenting and unspoiling a child. Part of this change in thinking is a backlash to helicopter parenting. Part of it is due to the state of the economy; many of us have less money for over-the-top toys, clothes and extracurricular classes for our kids. TIME magazine created quite the buzz in the blogosphere last November with its cover story “The Growing Backlash against Overparenting.”

But one of the books that started it all was one of our faves here at UrbanBaby: Simplicity Parenting: Using the Extraordinary Power of Less to Raise Calmer, Happier and More Secure Kids. Well, now Simplicity Parenting is out in paperback.

Waldorf educator and consultant Kim John Payne teamed up with writer Lisa M. Ross to guide parents away from the four pillars of “too much”: too much stuff, too many choices, too much information, and too fast.The book presents a wealth of helpful ideas for reclaiming childhood and finding family harmony with chapters that cover four levels of simplification – environment, rhythm, schedules and Filtering Out the Adult World.

“As parents, we’re the architects of our family’s daily lives. You can see what a family holds dear from the pattern of their everyday lives.” Kim John Payne

A friendly reminder to slow down and simplify before the school year is in full swing and we’re knee deep in the holiday season.

There are plenty of mommy/daughter aprons out there but it’s tough to find a set that doesn’t make you look like Holly Hobbie and, and, um…who was Holly Hobbie’s mom? Half Pint and Ma. You don’t want to putter around in your kitchen looking like a couple of sister wives just off the compound. Instead, what you want is the Carly Mother/Daughter Aprons.

The two ruffly, fluffy things are sweet enough to be adopted by little girls, yet, with their simple styling and vintage-look fabric, not too ridiculous for Mom. It’s an over-the-head style, so it catches more spatters and drips, and tie in the back, so the daughter version will last a nice, long time.

One quibble: each could use a pocket. But they’re cute enough that we don’t mind all that much.

Carly Mother/Daughter Aprons, $32-39

Forget about those nasty little glass bottles of processed baby swill, or even those frozen cubes of steamed vegetables that you slave over long at night after your babe’s already tucked into bed (and you should be sleeping too!). All you really need to feed your infant once he’s passed through the first-feeding stage is one of these handy dandy food mills.

At 7 and 1/2 inches, it’s small enough to be thrown into a (big) diaper bag, or certainly won’t take up a lot of room in your crowded kitchen drawers. And it produces velvety smooth mixtures, perfect for second-stage feeders and beyond. Whatever you’re eating, toss it in the mill: chicken vindaloo, fish and chips. A couple of spins later, baby food! Or, for toddlers and preschoolers who don’t like lumpy soups or vegetable dishes, paste of pleasure!

You may even find that the food mill comes in handy long after your kid is tearing away at steak at the table. It removes skins and seeds (toss in tomatoes and out comes sauce), and makes smooth-as-silk mashed potatoes. At $50 this model is a little expensive but it works like a dream.

OXO Food Mill, $50

The Italians have given us design fabulosity in the form of Gucci, Prada, Armani, Alessi plus dozens of other celebrated brands. So it’s no wonder the Italians have managed to make even a sippy cup look chic.

Welcome mOmma, a beloved Italian line of feeding products for infants and toddlers. The mOmma brand has recently come stateside. The company’s roly-poly sippy cups (with and without straws) and spoon function like a Weeble - they wobble but they don’t fall down. So that means the part of the cup that touches Junior’s lips doesn’t come in contact with dirty tables and counter tops. The cup may tilt but will pop back up before touching the table. Bonus for you: fewer spills. Bonus for your bambino: BPA- and phthalate-free products. Plus the wobbling feeding accoutrements score high in the entertainment category.

MoMA’s design store in NYC will carry mOmma (pronounced with a long “O”) items. What better endorsement of mOmma’s ability to meld design and function. mOmma at MoMA.

mOmma is available at mOmmaus.com and amazon.com.