Archive for May, 2010

It would be nice to have an app that could warn you about life’s less-than-stellar moments, especially when trudging through the world of new parenthood. Consider the new book How to Have Your Second Child First: 100 Things That Are Good to Know…the First Time Around that real-world, unplugged app.

Authors Kerry Colburn and Rob Sorensen, two second-time parents, share 100 helpful tips and reassuring stories to assist rookie moms and dads in navigating pregnancy and the first year of life with ease and humor. The authors write, “The first time around, it’s hard to find the humor in all the ridiculousness of parenthood: being peed on, having Mom’s breasts leak in the middle of a date night, going to work with spit-up down your back. By the second time, these things are easier to laugh about…and then let go of.” How to Have Your Second Child First is bursting with practical and comforting gems of knowledge:

* You can ignore your parents.

* It’s okay for you and your baby to “do nothing” all day.

* You don’t have to listen to kids’ music.

* Babies don’t need their bottles or food heated.

* It’s all right to think your baby looks funny.

Colburn and Sorensen say you shouldn’t be afraid to experiment … or fail. If you want to try something with Junior - taking him out to an afternoon movie or toting him along for your pedicure - go for it!

Sometimes “being second” is what counts.

Available at Amazon.com

A report recently released by the consumer advocacy watchdog Environmental Working Group, Sunscreens Exposed: 9 surprising truths, is an eye-opener for parents who slather their kids with ’screen every day before school. The first sentence sums it up chillingly: “Sunscreens prevent sunburns, but beyond that simple fact surprisingly little is known about the safety and efficacy of these ubiquitous creams and sprays.”

Let’s go through some of the creepier points, shall we? Not only are scientists not sure if sunscreens prevent skin cancer, there’s some evidence that melanomas, the most dangerous form of skin cancer, are more common amongst sunscreen users. True, this could be because sunscreen users typically sit in the sun longer, feeling that they’re protected, but it certainly gives one pause.

More damning facts: super-high SPFs (50 and over) are not only meaningless, they may actually be harmful in that they encourage users to stay out in the sun longer. Vitamin D deficiency, caused by staying out of the sun and screening what sun you get, is rampant: seven out of ten kids in America have low Vitamin D levels. Enjoy your rickets!

The Environmental Working Group stresses shade, protective clothing, and keeping out of the noontime sun, but still recommends the use of sunscreen. What type? EWG warns against “chemical” sunscreens that “have inferior stability, penetrate the skin and may disrupt the body’s hormone systems.” Instead, choose “mineral” screens that contain micronized or nano-scale particles of zinc or titanium.

So what sunscreen should you use? EWG has your back there too, with a database of more than a thousand brands. Each listing contains information about the item’s potential health effects and ingredients. Parents can search by brand or search for brands by criteria, like those that contain no oxybenzone, a potent hormone disrupter.

Hear that sound? It’s your kid growing taller than you. Keep a handle on how fast it’s rushing by you with Miss Natalie’s Heirloom Growth Chart, a four-foot long woven strip of jute attached to a handle with a red ribbon for hanging. Line your kid(s) up against the strip, eyeball the height, and mark it with a safety pin and a tag with the name and date.

The kit comes with ten tags in red, ten in cream (in case you want to use different colors for different kids), twenty safety pins, and glue to clamp those safety pins on for good. The idea is that when the kids have grown you fold the whole thing into the keepsake box. But it looks so good, maybe you’ll keep it hanging around. Sure improves on the old pencil marks on the doorway method.

Miss Natalie’s Heirloom Growth Chart, $56

Trying to re-enter the workforce after off-ramping to raise a family, you may feel as if the deck is stacked against you. Make that several decks, given this economy.

Last week, the founders of MYOB Moms, Mind Your Own Business Moms, talked to UB about taking advantage of social media to optimize a job search and stay connected to the professional world. In part two of their interview with UB, Barri Waltcher and Pamela Weinberg, career advisors, share tips for maintaining your professional identity if you’ve opted for SAHM-dom (or been laid off):

Get Carded
Every woman who is searching for a job should have business cards. You never know whom you might meet at your kid’s nursery school, your book club, your cousin’s wedding. Head to vistaprint.com to get free business cards.

Get Confident
It’s not uncommon for women who have stayed home to raise a family to feel a bit uneasy when they contemplate re-starting a career. You can easily ramp up your self-esteem by getting new training, taking classes and sharpening your social media skills. (See You 2.0, Part I)

Get Smart about Volunteering
If you’re a writer, don’t volunteer to run the school’s bake sale. Write the newsletter. Get into the mindset that you can build your resume with unpaid work. What’s relevant is whether you’ve acquired skills and have a product you can show someone. MBA moms, take note: Running the big school benefit highlights your management and organizational skills as well as your ability to interface with businesses and organizations.

These days, so much of life takes place online, or is organized online, that it’s surprising when you can’t do something with just a few (or more) keyboard strokes.

Communicating with Junior’s pediatrician via e-mail pretty much falls into that category. A new poll from the University of Michigan’s C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital found that parents want more e-access to their kids’ doctors. Less than 15% of those surveyed currently had online or e-mail communication with their children’s pediatricians. Other e-access limitations the U-M poll highlights:

* Only 9% of those questioned said they could schedule an appointment or obtain a child’s immunization records online.

*Just 6% could obtain lab results or complete a checklist/screening form prior to a well visit.

*No more than 11% could request a prescription refill.

*14% could get advice on a minor illness or injury.

*50% of parents said it would be helpful to have electronic communication with their children’s health care providers.

The downside to docs going online and making electronic house calls? The U-M survey report notes that health care providers are concerned with the “medical liability associated with offering clinical advice via e-mail or [the] Internet without examining the patient.” Plus there’s the issue of reimbursement for services rendered electronically.

E-access still sounds like a hell of a prescription for convenience.

The U-M study is available at med.umich.edu.

Little Bunny is back, and just in time as her dear friend Brown Rabbit returns for a visit to the city. Little Bunny has planned so many events to show Brown Rabbit the true thrill and fun of her city life.

“She was so excited - there was so much she wanted him to see. Before Brown Rabbit could finish his cake, Little Rabbit said, “Let’s go. There’s not much time!” and she whisked him away.”

The whirlwind excursion - stores, museums, subways - leaves Brown Bunny a bit flustered and frustrated. But friendship inevitably prevails as Little Bunny realizes the error of her over-planning. By the end of the visit, they enjoy the park once again.

“As the sun set over the city, Brown Rabbit played his new guitar and Little Rabbit danced.”

In the City is a beautifully illustrated follow-up to last year’s Moon Rabbit. Author and illustrator Natalie Russell continues to charm readers with her screen printings.

Simple pleasures of time and friendship, no matter where you live.

Available at Amazon.com

Dad has enough ties, and he doesn’t want some stupid T-shirt, either. Other than sexytimes with Mom, quiet time from his offspring, and breakfast in bed today, in fact, there’s really nothing Dad wants that he can’t buy for himself. Except, that is, the warm gooey feeling he would get by trading in his Father’s Day gift privilege on something that could change another family’s life.

Such as, for instance, a goat. For a mere $75, international charity World Vision will donate a dairy goat to a poor family. Easy-to-raise dairy goats give up to 16 cups of milk a day, milk that’s easily digested by hungry children, or which can be made into nutritious cheese or yogurt. Extra milk can be sold at market, as can any baby goats produced. And, back in America, Dad feels good on Father’s Day and all year ’round.

Not a goat enthusiast? World Vision offers many types of gifts, such as the New Mother Care Kit for $77 (bassinet, diapers, and other new-baby gear), drought-resistant seeds for farmers for a mere $17, and a month of tutoring for an urban elementary school student in the U.S., a bargain at $55.

Goat donation from World Vision, $75

Baby naming is a perennial hot topic both on the UB boards and in parenting media in general, but it wasn’t always so. There was a time when babies were named after saints or dead relatives, not given nonsense backwards names (Nevaeh??) or last-names-as-first-names or brand names of alcohol or automobiles. What, pray tell, started this tidal change away from Mary and towards Beckett? Name maven Laura Wattenberg, author of the Baby Name Wizard, has some ideas in the Washington Post.

The Internet, with its emphasis on unique user names, got people thinking in terms of individuality: “A century ago, one Amelia Jenkins might live a few towns from another Amelia Jenkins, and they would neither know nor care. But on the Web, we’re all next-door neighbors. Prospective parents of an Amelia Jenkins now type the name into Google or Facebook and freak out. They find dozens of Amelia Jenkinses. The name is ‘taken.’”

The other force was the advent of the Social Security list of the most common names on newborns’ Social Security number applications, which began in 1997 thanks to actuary Michael Shackleford. “The result of all this,” writes Wattenberg, “has been a sort of reverse arms race, with parents across the country desperate to make sure that their chosen name doesn’t come out too near the top. Half a century ago, 39 percent of all babies born in this country were given a name in the top 25. Today that number is down to 16 percent.”

Ironically however, the rush to distinguish your kids’ names leads them to be more similar to each other than distinctive old-fashioned names like Alice, Thomas, Frederick, and Dorothy. Today’s namers favor lots of vowels, particularly long vowel sounds (Owen, Ava), and ending boys’ names with the letter N: “Call it lockstep individualism. Instead of a classroom with two Williams and two Jameses, today we have one Aydin, one Jaden, one Braedon and one Zayden — not to mention a Payton, a Nathan and a Kaydence. In our rush to bless our children with uniqueness, we’ve created a generation that sounds more alike than ever.”

Getting back into the workforce after “opting out” to raise a family is hard enough. Trying to do it in the worst economy since the Great Depression, with the unemployment rate hovering around 10%, is more daunting than trying to fit into your skinny jeans post-pregnancy.

Enter MYOB Moms, formally known as Mind Your Own Business Moms. It’s a New York-based company dedicated to helping mothers who opted out of the workforce stay connected to the professional world and explore career possibilities. MYOB Moms founders and career advisors, Barri Waltcher and Pamela Weinberg, are like your ultimate real-world, job-search app. (They’re not simply going to tell you to network by joining your alumni group.) In Part I of their interview with UB, they tell us how becoming social media savvy is crucial to retaining your professional identity and searching for and landing a job.

GET STARTED, GET SOCIAL
You’re most likely already on Facebook. Get yourself on Twitter and LinkedIn as well. Social media allows you to stay connected with your former colleagues and stay current on their career tracks (what companies they’ve moved on to) and what’s going on in the workplace.

LINKEDIN, THE MISSING LINKS
Waltcher and Weinberg say if you’re going to choose one social media network for your job search, go for LinkedIn. The more connections you have, the bigger your contact universe is.

*Try searching for the job you’re targeting, say, “brand marketing.” You’ll be shocked to see how many people you know and how many of those people are connected to your contacts. A true “six degrees of separation.”

*Ditto for doing a LinkedIn search for a specific company. Another “six degrees” moment.

*Corporate Web sites tend to be static, meaning they’re not frequently updated. Not true on LinkedIn. Companies typically have a person or team of people dedicated to updating profiles on the various social media sites. LinkedIn lists recent hires and departures, job postings, number of employees and a breakdown by gender of those employees. The info. puts you in-the-know and makes you current.

*Latch on to a “super connector,” someone with at least 500 connections. It’s an easy way to widen your contact base. Super connectors often have great profiles, so check them out to get ideas for your own.

*Have the right key words in your profile so your name will come up in employers’ searches.

*Your profile should also have a picture and recommendations.

*Join a lot of groups. You can directly contact anyone in your groups.

TWITTER TWEET BEAT
Following a company on Twitter can make you appear incredibly knowledgeable when you go for an interview.

*You’ll be up-to-date on the absolute latest developments in the industry and at the company. You’ll know that, say, the FDA approved a major new drug the day before.

*Companies often tweet job postings.

*Listorious.com will tell you who the major tweeters are in every major category. So you’ll know whom to follow in the cosmetics industry, etc.

FACEBOOK & CAPITALIZING ON YOUR FACE TIME
Facebook is a great personal branding tool.

*Tell people about an article you’ve just published or a speaking engagement you have.

*A lot of people you’re friends with on Facebook aren’t your LinkedIn connections. So you’re able to cast a wider net and network with additional people.

*Update your status to let people know that you’re looking for a job and the kind of job you’d like. (Just as with LinkedIn, you can set the privacy settings so your boss won’t see.)

Next Tuesday, we’ll run Part II of You 2.0 with MYOB Moms. Although based in New York, Waltcher and Weinberg are available for phone or Skype consults with those living outside the area. Visit myobmoms.com.

You’re tired of those Disney princesses ruling your DD’s world. Really, what do these royals do aside from getting married way too young? Yet you don’t want to eliminate the magical element of fantasy from your daughter’s life altogether. (We’ll go with the child psychologists on that one.) Time for princess lite.

French Bull, a maker of home and lifestyle accessories and a darling of the design world, has just launched its Princess Collection. The princesses are the latest pattern in French Bull’s kids’ line. Previously, French Bull has put its pop-art spin on monsters, robots and superheros, complete with bold geometrics and vibrant colors. The princess dishes and cups are made of melamine. They’re shatterproof, dishwasher safe, heat resistant and BPA-free. Just don’t stick them in the microwave. They also match many of the company’s fab adult lines.

Maybe these princesses are the kind of girls who will grow up to be Supreme Court justices. Hey, we are about to have three women on the High Court.

Available at frenchbull.com.