Yet a closer read displays Orenstein’s true agenda, to send up her friends as Marie Antoinettes playing milkmaid.  They’re suffering from “an increased risk of depression, a niggling purposelessness, economic dependence on [their] husband[s].” She diagnoses them as “precious” and sniped that those who go so far as to homeschool their kids and go without health insurance as “a bit like being Amish, except with a car (no more than one, naturally) and a green political agenda.”

Blogger Natasha Burge aptly expressed her disquiet upon reading Orenstein’s article on the blog Feminuity: “I truly believe that growing our own food is a revolutionary act, so to see it framed as just another hobby for idle, wealthy housewives is disappointing,” she writes. “And must we continue playing into the assumption that all feminists think housewives are not good enough, or are not making a legitimate choice? Feminism is about women having the choice to do whatever they want with their lives, and respecting the choices they make, whether it is to raise children and care for their family, work in an office outside the home, or both.”

Um, yeah. What she said.

Design Public has the U Roll on sale, only $95, when it retails elsewhere for up to $175. Grab it while you can.

U Roll Scooter, $95

Bugaboo Bee The original trendsetter of upscale, modern European strollers is launching a new Bugaboo Bee. This compact stroller, which is an infant-to-toddler system, features a height-adjustable backrest that simultaneously adjusts the sun canopy and and five-point harness for four different height positions. Finally, features that coordinate.The Bee also has a reversible seat that’s been re-engineered with a circular joint system.

iCandy Cherry iCandy, a British family biz that dates back to the 1930s, turns out delicious, modern, sleek strollers named after fruits: cherry, pear, apple and peach (coming this fall). The cherry has a ginormous shopping basket, adjustable leg rest and soft-touch grip handle. The iCandy cherry comes with a bassinet and stroller seat, and the bassinet folds flat for easy storage. Who doesn’t like candy!

City Select by Baby Jogger - The company that’s been giving us fab jogging and all-terrain strollers for the past quarter of a century has just introduced the new City Select. The City Select is all about multi-functionality, and you can customize this stroller to meet your family’s growing needs. Mix and match seats, bassinets and car seats for up to 16 combinations, including various set-ups for a double. Other features: a hand-operated parking break, a foot well that tilts for added leg support and multi-position seat recline.

UPPAbaby VISTA 2010 Special Edition
Billed as “part sports car, part super-utility vehicle,” this new special edition VISTA comes in a fab mellow yellow color called Maya and has an aluminum alloy frame with a graphite-colored finish. This 2010 model got a number of upgrades: an organic latex, hypo-allergenic, anti-microbial bassinet mattress; a pop-up, SPF 50+, ventilated sun-shade for the bassinet; a plush seat cushion with twice as much padding and extended seat height to accommodate taller children. This baby converts to not only a double but a triple with the piggyBACK board.

UPPAbaby Bassinet Stand We’re loving this. It truly completes the VISTA system. It’s a stand that works with the VISTA bassinet. Perfect for getting your bambino situated in any room of your home. The bassinet snaps into the stand just like it snaps into the stroller.

Enter Ticings by Sweettoof Studios. They’re edible stickers created by brand identity and print packaging guru Mia Natsume. Natsume has worked her design magic for corporate heavy hitters, including Jaguar, Hilton and Hyatt Hotels, Lexus and Bank of America. Now she’s bringing her creativity to cake decorating. Ticings are edible art that peels and presses onto any soft-frosted cake. You just press the FDA- and kosher-approved, gluten-free, circular “sticker” onto any flat-frosted cupcake, give it 30 minutes to meld, and then serve.

Also great for baby showers and holidays. Our fave? “Bite Me.” So Alice in Wonderland.

$15.95 for a sheet of 12 2.5- or 2-inch cupcake circles. $15.95 - $19.95 for full-cake Ticings. Available at ticings.com.

The Commission looked at 14 deaths associated with sling-style infant carriers in the past 20 years, three of the cases in 2009, and found that these baby carriers pose two types of suffocation hazards.  The first is for the youngest babies who can’t control their heads because of weak neck muscles. The fabric of the sling can press against a baby’s mouth and nose and suffocate the baby within a minute or two. Slings that keep a baby in a curled position, bending his chin toward his chest, can also restrict the airways, limiting the oxygen supply and hindering a baby’s ability to cry for help.

Of the babies who died in slings, 12 were younger than four months and many were either a low-birth-weight twin, born prematurely or had breathing issues (such as a cold). The CPSC urges parents of twins, preemies, babies in fragile health and those of a low weight to consult a pediatrician about using a sling.

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Recently, the Commission added slings to the list of durable infant products that require a mandatory standard and is investigating whether to take further action. The CPSC recommends that people who are going to carry a baby in a sling:

- Make sure the infant’s face is not covered.

-Make sure the infant’s face is visible at all times.

-Moms who nurse a baby in a sling should reposition the baby after feeding so the baby’s head is facing up and is clear of both the sling and her body.

In a press release, the CPSC said it is “interested in receiving incident or injury reports related to infant slings.” To do this, visit https://www.cpsc.gov/cpsclist.aspx or call the CPSC hotline at (800) 638-2772.

Diagram source: U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission

So, babies are actually smarter than us, they can shed new light on ancient philosophical problems, and the development of their imagination is no less than a basic survival skill. (We’re definitely reading this one.)

“Most parents want to believe their children are brilliant. But how much do babies really understand about the world around them? In her provocative new book The Philosophical Baby, Alison Gopnik, a developmental psychologist at the University of California, Berkeley, asserts that babies and young children are in some ways “actually smarter, more imaginative, more caring, and even more conscious than adults are.” Scientific American MIND Reviews by Jascha Hoffman

“Gopnik does, however, make the bold suggestion that thinking about small children can shed new light on ancient philosophical problems. Whether or not this is true, her account of what the science of recent decades has had to say about infants’ minds tells a fascinating story of how we become the grown-ups that we are. “ NYTimes Review by Anthony Gottlieb

“Gopnik speculates that early childhood prepares us for both the appreciation and creation of art: imaginary play among children hones the ability to entertain counterfactuals—the alternative worlds out of which art, and invention of any sort, are primarily made. It requires discipline to stay in the imaginary role one has assumed, to project psychologically what it means to be a mother, a firefighter, a soldier, a prisoner. If it doesn’t feel real, the game falls apart. Imaginary play is a rehearsal for understanding the minds and intentions of others, a basic survival skill.” The New York Review of Books By Michael Greenberg.

Available at Amazon.com

More from Alison Gopnik

Other features: the Flair seat is made from one solid, molded piece of plastic; there are no seams to gather grime and force you to come at them with Q-tips (or just ignore a whole lot of encrusted food). The seat’s also on wheels, allowing you to roll it anywhere you want in your house. Wheel it onto the balcony and feed baby alfresco!

The Flair is good for kids up to age 4 (or 50 pounds, whichever comes first), so it makes a good chair for preschoolers, too. Oh, and once they figure out how to use the pneumatic lift button, you try keeping them out.

Boon Flair Highchair, $230

Part of the Rosie appeal is the sheer strangeness of the scenes. Beatles suits play guitar on giant bugs, potted plants ride on a seesaw. Designer Roz Streeten clearly has a rather skewed sensibility, and a good sense of what will attract kids. No surprise that she got her coloring book start at home in Bath, England, where she drew fanciful dresses for her little daughters to color in.

The Rosie Flo books are published in the UK, and you can get more of them over the pond. But in the states, Chasing Fireflies has three volumes for sale: garden, animals, and the original Rosie Flo book.

Rosie Flo Colouring Books, $9 each

“You can get so confused
that you’ll start in to race
down long wiggled roads at a break-necking pace
and grind on for miles across weirdish wild space,
headed, I fear, toward a most useless place.
The Waiting Place … ”

Now the ultimate carpe diem book is going pop-up. Oh, the Places You’ll Go Pop-up! goes on sale today. (There’s also a pricier limited edition pop-up available.) The man behind the book’s pop ups, veteran paper engineer David Carter, is the author of 80 pop-up books, including the Bugs in a Box series. Carter’s and Robert Sabuda’s intricate paper sculptures that leap out at us from the pages are part of the recent pop-up explosion. But these books, which seem to spring to life, have actually been around for centuries. Carter clues us in:

-A group of collectors called The Movable Book Society claims that a Benedictine Monk named Matthew Paris created the first pop-up in the 1200s.

-Lothar Meggendorfer, a German illustrator and writer, is considered the father of modern pop-ups. Back when Meggendorfer was creating his visual feasts in the 1800s, pop-ups were called movable books.

-The books weren’t called pop-ups until the 1930s.

-It can take up to a year to complete one pop-up book.

So remember:

Today is your day!
Your mountain is waiting.
So … get on your way!

Available at amazon.com.

When you do 40 children a night on a busy night, that can impact you average check quite significantly. The average check for a child is $7.50; our average check for an adult is about $31.00.

40 children x $7.50

150 adults x $ 31.00

190 covers total net sales is $ 4,950.00 or $ 26.06 per cover.”

So maybe that’s why restauranteurs keep the food-encrusted high chairs over by the bathroom and give you such a dirty look when you ask for one.