This cute, clever pillow set could be the perfect way to stop the "It's YOUR turn!" fights between you and your husband in the middle of the night (found via Ohdeedoh). Simply flip the pillows every night to remember who's "On Duty," and you won't have to argue about who gets the baby bottle or who has to check under the bed for monsters.
As the recession looms, families are relying more on food banks, which are struggling to keep up with the need. Washington Post
Mind your manners! Do your kids need etiquette lessons? Boston Globe
What it's like to be a successful mommy blogger. Wall Street Journal
How to get your infant started on good sleep habits. Time
One out of 15 hospitalized kids is affected by medication errors, new research finds. Yahoo! News
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Easter weekend at Grandma and Grandpa’s meant all the kids in the family were worked up, fighting off naptime, and terribly tired late in the day. Impromptu napping eventually struck, leaving snoozing toddlers strewn all over the place: under the dinner table, on the dog’s bed, in the hallway, even with one hand in the Easter basket.
So we’re wondering: Where is the strangest place your child has ever fallen asleep? Post a comment and your story might end up in Parents magazine!
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Carrots and bananas and blueberries, oh my! My son, Will, has ultra-sensitive skin so when we got these cool, made-from-100%-organic-cotton pajamas , I took them home to try on the little guy. I love the design – big, bright, beautiful fruits or vegetables splashed across your little one’s cute little body. Will got blueberries. And he’s comfy and quite adorable wearing them.
Take a closer look at the design on the bedding to the right. If a familiar feline face is sweetly staring back at you, your eyes aren't mistaken... that's Hello Kitty all right. The popular character is making a sophisticated comeback with a couture bedding line. I think the subtle design is perfect for anyone who wants kid-friendly design with a bit of opulence (and for die-hard Hello Kitty fans who just can't let go of their childhood obsession). My Hello Kitty, you are looking very pretty these days!
Check out the whole line on target.com!
It's not news that teenagers' body clocks tick to a different beat, causing them to stay up later as well as wake up later. What's interesting is that, according to this New York Times Op-Ed piece, when schools acknowledged this sleep pattern by pushing back the time of the first bell, attendance and standardized scores went up, grades rose, dropout rates decreased, and at a Kentucky high school, the number of teenagers involved in car crashes actually dropped. Hmm, seems that with results like these it wouldn't be a bad idea to incorporate this later school day throughout the country. Thoughts? Would you write to your school district to a encourage a later start time for high schoolers, or do you have an "I dealt with waking at ungodly hours as a teen, they can too" attitude?
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A new report finds that as kids read less for fun, their test scores drop—even in math and science. New York Times
The Chicago Tribune tested 800 toys on the market for lead and found alarming levels in some products. Chicago Tribune
Forget French, or even Spanish—more and more kids are learning Mandarin in school. USA Today
Another reason to make your partner pitch in at night: Not getting enough sleep might be sabotaging your efforts to lose the baby weight. Yahoo! News
Get ready to settle in at the airport if you’re traveling this Thanksgiving. CNN
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I'm totally exhausted this morning (my body's new favorite thing to do is to spring awake at about 3 or 4 in the morning), so I'm already very excited to get an extra hour's sleep next weekend courtesy of Daylight Savings Time. And since I spent way too much time starting at the clock last night, I now have (cool) clocks on the brain.
Perfect for over your computer:
I'm loving these citrus-inspired "Juicy Clocks" for the kitchen:
This sweet cow clock moos to wake your kids up:
Hey, you can never have too many reminders:
Normally, what happens in my bed stays in my bed. But here's an exception I feel I can share with the entire Goodyblog world. I had a dream last night that I was pregnant. This is not the first time this theme has shown up in my dreams. I'd say at least once or twice a month for the past 6 months or so, I've dreamed that I was in some stage of pregnancy (and, weirdly, I get more and more pregnant each time). Editor's note: I'm not preggers, nor am I planning to be preggers any time soon.
What could these dreams mean? According to this online dream dictionary (totally legit, I know): "Symbolically, pregnancy dreams may indicate the birth of a new project or idea in one's life, or being pregnant with emotion." Hmm...I'll have to think more about that.
So, do you have recurring dreams? Are you willing to share them with us (please post them in the comments!). And have you looked up their meanings?
Go read this amazing piece in this week's New York Magazine about how the ramifications of kids not getting enough sleep go way beyond having a cranky child. It turns out that the evidence is mounting that lack of sleep affects everything from academic performance and emotional stability to seemingly unrelated phenomena such as the international obesity epidemic and the rise of ADHD.
One study discussed in the article really blew my mind:
"The performance gap caused by an hour’s difference in sleep was bigger than the normal gap between a fourth-grader and a sixth-grader. Which is another way of saying that a slightly sleepy sixth-grader will perform in class like a mere fourth-grader. A loss of one hour of sleep is equivalent to [the loss of] two years of cognitive maturation and development.”
The second I was done reading I told my kids about it and warned them that every minute they stay up past their bedtime they're losing IQ points. They looked mortified and got right to sleep! Is that a bad parenting technique? I'll keep you posted as to how it's working out for us.
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