If you live in NYC, NY Cake and Baking Company is a baker’s dream. I love it and I don’t even love (or have the patience) to bake. They have every kind of jimmy, sprinkle, frosting, cake mold, cookie cutter, etc. all the way up to professional baking and display materials. After searching for holiday cupcake ideas online, I decided to make my own version of snowmen. There is so much you can do with these if you have the time and inclination. I used basic Betty Crocker vanilla cupcake mix and icing and holiday liners I found at NY Cake. Once cooled and frosted, I added a marshmallow which I decorated with black gel. I used dark chocolate baking disks, which I adhered to the marshmallow with more frosting for the hat. (My husband claimed they looked French.) My carrot nose proved to be a little difficult since I didn’t have the right tip for my orange frosting tube (some looked like a lame version of Mr. Bill or a group of penguins) but it worked. You could use anything for the nose, including orange gummies. I found snowflake jimmies and sprinkled them all over the dish. And if you weren’t walking them 10 blocks to school, you could make them 2 marshmallows high to resemble a real snowman. Use jimmies instead of frosting for the eyes and buttons, licorice for a scarf…the list goes on.

My only regret is not eating one…my husband claims he “forgot” to share the one extra with me…

With a 4 year old in preschool, daily visits to classes and the playground, and routine daily contact, I guess in this day and age you can’t be too safe. But what about strangers who think they are entitled to touch your children?

I was never so worried when someone wanted to pat my pregnant belly, and was ok when someone wanted to ruffle my big one’s curls and slap him high five. Thanks to an MD brother-in-law, I was of the belief that kids needed to be exposed to certain germs. But just today alone 2 strangers reached out to touch…not just my child…but his hand…with their hand!! I was speechless.

We’re in the process of visiting schools for my big one to go to kindergarten next year, and actually visited a school yesterday that said, ‘We’re not shaking hands this year in light of the flu season.’ It made me like the school even better.

But I’m stumped with how to handle the random person passing by who thinks my 1 year old’s outstretched hand, waving, is an invitation to grab it or stick their finger in the palm for him to grab (note to people: that’s a good trick for an infant, but 1 year olds don’t need to be grasping fingers.)

After much thought, I think I’m going to go with, ‘Oh…he has the sniffles…you may not want to touch his hand…’ and quickly veer the stroller away.

spill the beans wants to know what you would do.

I’ve scouted some cute things for our readers who didn’t order their kid’s Halloween costumes in June:

Dinosaur Stomp:

Too cool for Barney? How about these adorable dino hoodies? Pair them with a dino tee, maybe some dino slippers from the Gap, and you’re good to go. Plus, the hoodie is cool long after Halloween is over!

For the extremely laid back Halloween costume, how about this adorable dinosaur skullcap?

Are you a good witch or a bad witch:

Your little girl may have a witching hour, but she’s more of a good witch. She’ll look too cute in this witchypoo tutu.  A candy corn inspired tutu would make for great pics.

Let us know what your kidlets are being for Halloween this year, and any great Halloween costume finds you come across!

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/29/health/views/29essa.html?_r=1

Pregnancy Is No Time to Refuse a Flu Shot

This article is by Anne Drapkin Lyerly, Margaret Olivia Little and Ruth R. Faden.

Pregnant women are deluged with advice about things to avoid: caffeine, paint, soft cheese, sushi. Even when evidence of possible harm is weak or purely theoretical, the overriding caveat is, “Don’t take it, don’t use it, don’t do it.”

In a few contexts, the admonition is warranted; in most, it is merely inconvenient and anxiety provoking. But in the case of pandemic influenza, it may be deadly. With the second wave of swine flu at hand, and up to 50 percent of the public at risk, the usual mode of thinking about pregnancy and medications threatens to make a worrisome situation worse.

The dangers of this mentality became frighteningly apparent this summer, when a study in The Lancet reported strikingly high rates of death and of complications like pneumonia in pregnant women with H1N1 influenza. Pregnancy meant a fourfold risk of hospitalization, sometimes with a tragic outcome; all the pregnant women who died had been relatively healthy to begin with.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have since put pregnant women at the top of the priority list for the vaccine, and have recommended that pregnant women start antiviral medications as soon as possible after exposure to the virus and after the onset of flu symptoms.

But if experience is any indication, even these forceful recommendations may not be enough to overcome reluctance among pregnant women and those who care for them. Even though the seasonal flu vaccine is recommended for pregnant women in particular, in one study only 15 percent received the vaccine — a rate far lower than any adult group for whom it is recommended.

And despite recommendations that antiviral drugs be started as soon as flu symptoms appear, many pregnant women in the Lancet study were not treated soon enough. Delays ranged from 6 to 15 days from the time that symptoms started, and 2 to 14 days from the time the women were seen by a doctor. Not one of the six pregnant and relatively healthy women who died received medication within 48 hours of the onset of her illness.

This is a sadly familiar pattern. After the thalidomide disaster of 1960s, and the very real concerns it raised about the impact of drugs on fetal development, many ended up viewing the use of any medicine by pregnant women as anathema. As a result, doctors and women alike often eschew or discontinue medications for serious illnesses, even when the harms of untreated disease, for women and the children they bear, are worse than any risks of medication.

Poorly treated asthma during pregnancy, for example, is associated with higher rates of pregnancy complications for women, as well as growth problems in the fetus and premature delivery. By contrast, women whose asthma is controlled with medication do as well as women without asthma, and so do their babies. Untreated diabetes early in pregnancy elevates the chances of severe birth defects to as high as 1 in 4.

And yet even when the evidence is clear, pregnant women find it hard to fight against the “don’t take it, don’t use it, don’t do it” mentality, which focuses our minds and emotions only on the risks of taking a drug. Obscured from view are the risks of the disease itself.

Overcoming this mindset will take work on several fronts. Every effort needs to be made to alert pregnant women and clinicians about the special risks of H1N1 in pregnancy. Educational efforts need to be honest about the reasoning behind these important recommendations, including both the limits of what we know and the reasons that concern for pregnant women is now so great.

But the key to success, now and in the future, will be the conduct of research that is specific to the needs of pregnant women. Concerns about the ethics of research involving these women mean that we know far less about how to treat or prevent disease during pregnancy than for other adults and children. The urgent threat of H1N1 flu has brought into sharp relief the fact that pregnant women can and should be protected through research, not from it.

Studies enrolling pregnant women in trials of vaccines for swine flu, financed by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, are now under way at six major medical centers. Researchers are also studying ways to guide the use of antiviral drugs to suit pregnant women’s changed metabolisms. Experts suggest that studying blood samples from as few as two dozen women is all we need to determine whether the standard adult dose of antivirals is effective for treatment or protection during pregnancy.

If there was ever a time to rewrite the playbook on how to think about drugs, vaccines and pregnancy, this is it. The lives of women and babies depend on it.

I never thought I’d be the mom of 2 boys. Never! Maybe it’s because I am such a girly-girl (or at least I was before childbirth, countless sleepless nights and the lack of date nights out with my husband.) But here I am with 2 adorable…boys! OK, so they seem to have a sensitive side and they don’t much like rolling around in the dirt, but they do have their fair share of beastie boy quirks. Like how many times can ‘You know there are things called tissues?’ come out of my mouth? What is it about the sleeve that draws runny noses to it like a moth to a flame? Or how about, ‘Cough into your arm, please. Not on your friend!’

And then I found sniffle sleeves…adorable covers for a child’s sleeve in various germ-fighting patterns that reminds them to cough or sneeze into their arm. You can even add various essential oils to reduce the germs being spread and even lesson your kid’s symptoms. That’s good news for this family of 4! Visit snifflesleeves.com.

And for my infant son, I’m loving these adorably packaged Boogie Wipes! They’re made with saline, alcohol free and come in kid-friendly scents.

If you really want to make nice with your germs,  sells cute and cuddly, plush microbe replicas. Think cold and flu viruses. Each comes with information about getting sick so you can educate your little one (or give it to a grown-up in your life with a sense of humor!)

Bringing home baby changes everything, including, of course, your sleeping habits.  I can say with almost certainty that a complete night of sleep will never be the same again once you become a parent.  But the first few months are undoubtedly like no others.   You are anxious about leaving your little angel for even a few moments of rest.  What if you fall so soundly asleep that you miss some urgent need your baby may have?  And when you finally are exhausted enough to drift off and relax, that little bundle is sure to wake you up with a piercing cry that you certainly could not have missed if you were in a bunker.
There is an age old struggle of how to get your newborn baby to sleep longer and longer stretches.  Should we feed him more, let him cry, dream feed, or shorten day naps? What sleep books should we read and follow like the bible?  And by the time we have it all figured out, our little one has beat us to it and finds her own way to get the sleep she needs.  However, until that time, it is PAINFUL.
For me, not sleeping can be compared to having teeth pulled.  I need my sleep, and without it I am a different person while I am awake:  short tempered, cranky, edgy and some other lovely qualities that I care not to admit.  I can recall one particular night maybe a week or two after my daughter was born that my husband and I had reached our breaking point.  Stella woke up and would not return to sleep no matter what we did or how we did it.  We fed her, changed her, rocked her, held her, sang to her, and put her in the swing, the car seat, and dare I say it, our bed!  But her crying persisted and persisted until it was already time for her next feeding.  We finally gave up and put her back into the bassinet while her wailing persisted. Suddenly I became so overwhelmed and angry that I actually kicked the bassinet that my sleeping child lay in!  Ok, so it wasn’t too hard, and she barely flinched, but what scared me was that I actually had a desire to do this.  How could I even think of attempting to hurt this precious little baby, who I adored and loved so much just because I selfishly needed to sleep?  Looking back I now, of course, realize that it was not simply my need for sleep that landed me in that place.  Several contributing factors came into play that all new parents should be aware of during the first few weeks.
First, there was anxiety.  All new parents, whether they realize it or not, are anxious in some way.  Whether you are worried about your parental instincts kicking in, or how you are taking care of the baby, or finances, baby’s health or familial issues, there is anxiety in many forms that creeps up on us unexpectedly during these first few weeks.  Next, there is change:  change in our schedule, our eating and sleeping habits, our relationship with our spouse, our amount of free time, our work schedule, sex life and the list goes on and on.  Next on the list is frustration.  We had this baby and we are expected to know exactly what to do with him.  We should know why he is crying or when he needs to eat, or if he is sick or just gassy.  We were prepared — we read all the books, took all the classes, we have college degrees and we still don’t know what this screaming child needs or wants from us. Ouch!  Mix the anxiety with the change, and the frustration with sleepless nights, and you will have two very overwhelmed people who may or may not be thinking straight.
The key to success in getting through these crazy eight weeks is no magic secret. It’s just that — getting through them.  Time will tick away and a new routine will form and you will grow accustomed to it.  Your anxiety will decrease, and you will feel more relaxed in your new role.  You will get to know your baby and begin to have a better understanding of his or her needs.  And suddenly you will realize you don’t need nine hours of sleep, but your body has readjusted and six or seven good ones will be just fine.  And then just like the pangs of labor that suddenly disappear, sleepless nights will be a faded memory when you are off to next phase of parenting…like child proofing your house and weaning off bottles!  Like any rewarding job, there’s always a new challenge.