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Silhouette portraits, an exceedingly common wall decoration and keepsake in Victorian times, is now something of a lost art. It’s a pity, since there are few things cuter than a baby’s double chin or the pursed bow lips of a preschooler, and silhouettes capture details like this perfectly.

Master silhouette artist Karl Johnson still practices the vintage craft, using photographs to cut out his images freehand, instead of using the tracing method of lesser artists. The silhouette portraits he produces are wonderfully accurate and charmingly old-fashioned, a perfect holiday gift for grandparents. They’re darned cheap, too: $25 for a 5 x 7 face-and-shoulders portrait, $50 for a 8 x 10, with extras like colored paper and full-body silhouettes costing a bit more. One divine extra to shell out for: $15 for a digital file of the silhouette, perfect for birthday invites and holiday cards.

Silhouette Pictures by Karl Johnson, starting at $25

Whatever behavior problem your child is currently having (living in a pigsty, ignoring you when you talk, picky eating), chances are its been addressed in the Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle series of books by Betty MacDonald. The series of five books was published in the ’40s and ’50s and written by an author who was already famous for her smash book, The Egg and I. In the Piggle-Wiggle series, Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle is a kind of magical good fairy whose late husband left her a pirate chest full of cures for childhood “ailments.” In each chapter, a mother who is concerned about her child’s behavior comes to see Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle for help and is issued a cure that clears the troublesome behavior right up.

Some of the cures are relatively pedestrian: when Hubert Prentiss won’t clean up his bedroom, his mother simply lets the toys pile up until he can’t get out of his room anymore and is forced to clean it up himself. Other cures are magical: When Evelyn Rover and Mary Crackle are being unkind to Cornelia Whitehouse, Mrs. Crackle gives the girls some candy-like Whisper Sticks that makes their teasing inaudible.

Regardless of whether the cures are real-world or not (I could use some Crybaby Tonic, for sure), it’s fun to read about a kid having a behavior issue to a kid who’s having that same issue, and it can spark both interesting conversations and maybe even change. At the very least, kids love hearing about naughtiness and comeuppance, good adults who know everything, and stories that end happily. And neither parents nor children can resist the Piggle-Wiggle illustrations, some by Hilary Knight of Eloise fame, and some by Maurice Sendak.

The L’ovedbaby Arms-Free Swaddler has a horrific name. Really? You want that apostrophe in there? Huh. But despite the bad name, the swaddler is a genius idea. When babies are first born, a tight arms-and-all swaddle helps them sleep. But just a few months later, they start fighting to get their arms free and wake themselves up doing it. With the genius Arms-Free, their arms can wave around while their legs are controlled. Hey, anything that gets you 20 minutes of extra sleep.

L’ovedbaby Arms-Free Swaddler, $29.95

By now it’s fairly well established that what turns on men isn’t exactly what turns on women. And as for what turns on a new mom…at least Chronicle Books has an idea. Following up its successful hunks-doing-housework photo book of last year, Porn for Women, Porn for New Moms extends the “this is what women really want” to breeders.

Yes, ladies, it’s hot dads saying “Let’s not have sex tonight. Let me just rub your feet while you tell me about the baby’s day,” and cradling the wee one in his lap while thinking “…and in just eight more hours we can wake up mommy!” Hey, that is hot.

Porn for New Moms, $12.95, chroniclebooks.com.

Word that stroller giant Maclaren was voluntarily recalling all its umbrella strollers sold between 1999 and the present hit the momosphere yesterday like a tsunami. There’s a lot of confusion swirling around, so here are the facts: Maclaren is not asking for the strollers back, merely distributing a free hinge-cover kit that corrects a defect in the stroller. Here’s where things get ugly: The Consumer Product Safety Commission has received reports of a dozen fingertip amputations due to the hinge. Parents are closing the stroller…the hinge pinches the tiny finger…you get the picture.

The models of stroller affected are Volo, Triumph, Quest Sport, Quest Mod, Techno XT, TechnoXLR, Twin Triumph, Twin Techno and Easy Traveller. If you have one of these strollers, visit Maclaren USA at maclaren.us, or call toll-free between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. EST, 877-688-2326. Both the site and phone lines have been deluged with requests; keep trying if you can’t get a response right away.

Once you get pregnant it’s like you’re a ticking time bomb, counting down the moments until you’re going to be in a heinous pair of maternity pants. Oh sure, you can hold on for a while, looping your waistband together with rubber bands, or wearing some type of big cloth belt to keep them up as they bag beneath your swelling protuberance. But sooner or later, you’ll be forced to buy a big, baggy pair of paneled pants. Unless you send your favorite pair to Denim Therapy. This innovative company specializes in denim restoration: patching up holes in the knee, butt, or crotch. But it has a sideline in turning regular jeans into maternity pants, and then back again.

For $60, Denim Therapy inserts comfy, stretchable panels into the seams of your regular jeans. While you swell, they swell with you in the belly area, while giving you the same fit down to the ankles. When you’ve had the baby and deflated back to your normal size, you send them back to Denim Therapy and the panels are removed. There! Wasn’t that an adventure for both of you?

For more information, visit denim-therapy.com.

Your television responds so beautifully to your commands, delivered by remote from across the room. Wouldn’t it be great if there were a remote to control your kid? Now there is!

The Control-a-Kid remote contains all the settings that a parent needs to keep a tiny or school-age kid in line. With just the push of a button you can get your kid to stop screaming, smoking, or sulking. You can press “Tidy Room,” “Say Thank You,” or the ever-popular center-button option, “Grow Up.” There’s a nice button to make the kids go play, too.

Do I have to tell you this doesn’t actually work? No, I didn’t think so. It’s still funny. And, on the upside, it doesn’t require batteries.

Control-a-Kid Remote, $6.99

Big, tempting containers of blueberries for sale at Wal-Mart…what could be the problem? Maybe that those blueberries might have been picked by little kids.

The problems were found by the state of Michigan, working for farms that supplied the Adkins Blue Ribbon Blueberry Co. with berries. Kids as young as age five were found working on the farms. Here’s a priceless quote on the child-labor scandal from the Independent: “The children were being put to work because their small hands are more efficient at picking the tiny fruit.” NPR says that farm checks also found hazardous sewage leaks and infestations of bugs and rodents in the migrant settlements.

Footage of the wee blueberry pickers was featured prominently on Nightline last week. Kinda makes those berries not taste so sweet.

Let’s put aside the question of whether or not you want to get the H1N1 vaccine because that is one spicy meatball, and for the time being assume you want to get it for yourself or your children. The first few flu-vaccine clinics last weekend were swamped with patients seeking the vaccine, waiting hours on line according to the San Francisco Chronicle. There will be more clinics in November, and only time will tell what the waits there will be like.

Vaccine events vary in each city; you can supposedly go to your city’s public health department website (here is a list of California health departments) for more information. Many of the sites are all but useless, with a lot of information on covering your mouth when you cough but not much about where to get the vaccine they keep advising you to get. San Francisco’s site is typical in that it tells you to call your primary care provider and ask about vaccines, but the San Franicsco health department’s swine flu Twitter feed has more up-to-date information, and SF residents can also call 311 for updates. Contra Costa’s public health department site is a welcome contrast from SF’s, with detailed info on upcoming drive-through flu clinics.

Many Walgreens, Rite Aid, and CVS MinuteClinic locations also have the H1N1 shots; call the stores nearest you to ask. Kaiser patients can phone 800-573-5811 to find out where to go get the shot. Walgreens also has dedicated flu shot clinics. Flu.gov has a ton of information and links that will panic you and make you say “Just tell me where to get the shot! Argh!” Hmm, maybe you’re better off calling your primary care physician after all.

If you have a little LEGO lover in your house and a LEGO store somewhere near you, maybe the little one’s birthday party should be there this year. For a surprisingly reasonable $125, 10 kids can invade the LEGO store for a party, which includes goody bags, invitations, thank you cards, a few LEGOs, a LEGO host wise in the ways of brick-building, and a $100 gift card (you’ll need it–typically each kid at the party builds a themed LEGO object from a kit, which you must also buy). Want to throw the same party at home? It’s $115, plus the cost of buying whatever LEGO kits you want to let them have at. Oh, and the home party kits don’t include the host, so you’ll probably have to do a lot more reading of instructions and directing the kids as they build their Pirate, Bionicle, Power Miner, or Star Wars creation.

There are LEGO stores in 21 states, but if you happen to not live near one, you can still put together your own LEGO party. The bricks are for sale in almost any toy store, and there are plenty of sellers on Etsy who make things like customized LEGO invitations, LEGO cake decorations, and party favors like T-shirts and LEGO soaps in interesting scents–”monkey farts” sure would appeal to most seven-year-old boys I know. You want to go really crazy? Commission a LEGO mosaic portrait of your child.

For more details on official LEGO parties, see lego.com.