Tooth decay in baby teeth is on the rise.

Too much sugar -- in the form of processed snacks, juice and the like -- is to blame, say experts. It's the same phenom that's making our kids chubbier than ever before.

So what? They're falling out anyway, right? 

Here's the thing: After your first birthday, fat and toothless is no way to go through life. Also, there's the threat of untreated decay spreading from tooth to tooth. We're talking fillings, extractions and a lifelong fear of the dentist (which happens anyway, but usually not until later).

Not to mention really bad breath.

Anyway, there's some good news. The same study found that older kids have fewer cavities. Experts credit the growing use of dental sealants, a protective plastic coating applied to teeth. Properly applied sealants can reduce cavities by 60% or more. Sorry kids, you still have to brush your teeth. Why? Because I said so.

Tooth Decay Is on the Rise for Kids [AP]

When I was growing up, gym class prepared us for the dog-eat-dog world of adulthood. I'm talking, of course, about the blood sport of dodgeball, where inflicting humiliation and pain on others by pounding them -- preferably in the head -- with a ginormous rubber ball was the name of the game.

Today, even this last bastion of good old American values is falling to the pressures of a sissified youth. The instigator: a Japanese video game called Dance Dance Revolution that is infiltrating middle school gym classes from Hawaii to West Virginia. Unlike most video games, DDR is a whole body experience, requiring players get off their heinies and dance in ever more intricate and strenuous combinations to the pounding beat of techno.

Traditionally, physical education was about team sports and was very skills oriented," said Chad Fenwick, who oversees physical education for the Los Angeles Unified School District, where about 40 schools now use Dance Dance Revolution. "What you're seeing is a move toward activities where you don't need to be so great at catching and throwing and things like that, so we can appeal to a wider range of kids."

In other words, kids can totally suck at sports and still work up a good sweat, minus the blood and tears. Everyone's a winner. Isn't that nice.*

P.E. Classes Turn to Video Game That Works Legs [NY Times]

I don't know where this sarcasm is coming from, although I did go see Lewis Black's Red, White and Screwed last Friday. Probably wore off on me.

A weekly roundup of events in parentsville, including the good, the bad, and the utterly trivial.

The baby-making business -- or more precisely, the avoidance thereof -- saw a lot of action this week. After last week's decision upholding a federal ban of an abortion procedure, the Supreme Court added insult to injury, ordering several lower courts that had found similar laws to be unconstitutional to toe the line or else. Meanwhile, for the first time in its history, Mexico City said yes to choice, thumbing its nose at the Pope, who threatened excommunication.

Mexico City has like 9 million people. That's a lot of souls to condemn to eternal damnation. The Pope decided he'd better make some room by signing the transfer papers of babies who died unbaptized. They'd been languishing in limbo -- a kind of celestial airport waiting room -- for the last 800 years; now they get to go to Heaven. What a nice guy.

Speaking of nice guys, Alec Baldwin had a busy week begging the forgiveness of his daughter, fans and the world in general for his parenting "faux pa." Everyone, that is, except Kim Basinger, who, Alec explains, basically forced him to call his 11-year-old daughter a "rude thoughtless little pig." That [bleeped by Russell Simmons].

Speaking of pig-like behavior, food commercials cause kids to spend a lot more time at the junk food trough. Especially the fat kids. Must ... stuff ... faaaaace ... But what food commercials giveth, the government wants to taketh away. A ban on junk food and drink in school vending machines may be in the works, thanks to a report sent to Congress on Wednesday. Food brought from home would be exempt. The lunchbox council must be thrilled.

When we heard that the Republican governor of Texas had ordered all sixth-grade girls to be vaccinated against the human papillomavirus, a sexually transmitted virus that causes cervical cancer, it sounded too good to be true.

It was. Yesterday, the Texas legislature overruled Gov. Rick Perry's order by a combined vote of 165-to-3. Sen. Glenn Hegar Jr., who sponsored the bill to bypass the governor, explained why:

There was no public testimony -- why we were jumping so fast into a vaccine that was not for a true communicable disease ...

... because, as everyone knows, sex ain't allowed in the Lone Star State.

Texas Legislators Block Shots for Girls Against Cancer Virus [NY Times]

Want to chunk up your kids? Put them on a diet high in televised food ads.  In a recent study, University of Liverpool psychologists exposed a group of kids aged 9 to 11 to ads followed by a cartoon, then a tempting array of food ranging from chocolate to veggies. The result: Food ads make kids cram a lot more junk into their chubby cheeks:

Food intake following the food commercials was significantly higher compared with the toy ads in all weight groups, with the obese children increasing their consumption by 134%; overweight children by 101% and normal weight children by 84%.

Junk food marketers everywhere must be laughing all the way to the piggy bank.

TV Food Ads Make Obese Kids Hungrier [Consumer Affairs]

Rule #1: Don't stick your head through the potty seat. It might get stuck. Yesterday, a two-and-half year old British boy learned this lesson the hard way. After his mum failed to get the seat to budge, firefighters had to come to the rescue:

We simply put some dishwashing liquid on his head and ears and it slid off nice as pie.

Good to know. Unfortunately, no pix accompanied this story, but we did find a digitalized photo of the boy as an adult.




The seat of his future neuroses? [MSNBC]

A sneak attack on snacks may be in the works in the halls of Capitol Hill.

The Institute of Medicine released a report to Congress today called Nutrition Standards for Healthy Schools: Leading the Way Toward Healthier Youth. In 300 action-packed pages, the report lays out a two-tiered system designed to encourage kids to eat right at school. To sum up:

• No more junk food/drink in school vending machines
• Well, maybe just a little in high school vending machines

School kids needn't panic just yet. First, Congress still has to pass a law to put the recommended standards in place. Plus there is this loophole you could drive a food truck through.

The standards would not apply to bag lunches that students bring from home.

 We predict a lot more requests for bag lunches -- on second thought, never mind the lunch, just gimme some money. Thanks Mom.

Standards Urged for School Snacks [AP]

TV or not TV, that is the question. For kids like 13-year-old Carson Tsang, it's a no brainer:

Television is important, the Visitacion Valley Middle School seventh-grader said. There's commercials. There's news. And there's animals in trouble.

This week, organizers of the seventh annual TV-Turnoff Week are hoping Carson and other kids will reconsider, or, if that's an impossibility, that their parents will do it for them, pulling the plug on the box for a week (or at least waiting until after the children have gone to bed).

Such an extreme measure may seem like cruel and unusual punishment for kids and parents both, but consider this: It's well documented that too much TV rots the brain. OK, maybe not, but it does increase playground bullying by upwards of 50 percent. There's the health and fitness, family togetherness and time waste factors to consider as well.

Taking a page from Philo Farnsworth:

There's nothing on it worthwhile, and we're not going to watch it in this household, and I don't want it in your intellectual diet.

And that's coming from the inventor himself.
 
School's challenge: No TV [SF Chronicle]

This fearsome beast sent the city of Xiamen, China, into a panic last week, causing both humans and dogs to run for their lives. It wasn't until the cops arrived with an armed anesthetist from the local zoo that they realized it was just a sweet lil stuffed animal:

After observing for a while, we saw the leopard was stationary, so one of the officers gingerly went ahead and touched it. Then we realized it's a toy, said a police spokesman.

Just a toy. Remember Chucky? He was just a toy too ...

Toy leopard sparks panic [Ananova]

Breast may be best, but it won't keep your baby from becoming a fat grownup, according to a new study. Although the finding goes against the prevailing dogma, one expert says it totally makes sense:

It would be remarkable to find a behavior that you engage in for one year of life and see detectable effects from it 40 years later, said Larry Grummer-Strawn, chief of the maternal and child nutrition branch of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Let's see ... Adults who still engage in infantile behavior ... Nope, can't think of any.

Anyway, as any lactivist will tell you, breastfeeding still has lots of other benefits: IQ in the thousands, Star Wars defense-like immune system, Olympic athletic ability (as kids only, before they become fat), etc. etc. And by the time they're adults, remember, they are no longer your problem. So if your kids chunk out later in life, breast-fed or bottle-fed, they can't lay the blame at your doorstep.

Breast-feeding doesn't prevent obesity after all [MSNBC]   
 

Since Hooter Hiders will never make Cookie's list of fab Daily Finds, allow me to introduce you to this fine new product:

The nursing cover for hip mothers! This stylish and trendy nursing cover by Bebe Au Lait finally takes the place of the outdated, stuffy nursing covers that are currently on the market! Moms will look stylish and trendy while feeding baby without compromising Mom's modesty!

Sounds great, but I just can't get past the name "Hooter Hiders." I guess it's supposed to be playful and fun (and hip, stylish and trendy). But seriously, what woman refers to her breasts as "hooters"? Maybe the waitresses at a certain breastaurant chain do, (because they're under a contractual obligation or something) but that's about it.

Available at The Breastchester. I kid you not.

P.S. This is fun. Stay tuned to First Feeding for more Daily Find rejects.

Hooter Hiders [The Breastchester]

My daughter recently announced that she doesn't like her babysitter. The reason? "She makes me go to bed."

Life is hard for little ones. No really, it's hard. A chilling new poll of U.S. children ages 3 through 12 estimated that nearly 95 percent of American parents abuse their children on a daily basis. Witness the sad plight of 10-year-old "Derek":

My parents always tell me that I have to finish all my math homework or I won't be allowed to watch TV. They're so mean. I hate them.

Other shocking examples of systematic deprivation and gratuitous cruelty: being stripped naked and made to bathe, even though they don't need a bath; being subject to painful pulling, twisting and tugging of hair into "stupid" hairstyles like pigtails; being forced into brutal unpaid child labor like helping in the yard and practicing piano; and never ever getting what they want, ever.

It's a sobering report, and one that should give pause to every parent in America. It certainly opened my eyes. I can only hope it does the same for yours.

Majority of Parents Abuse Children, Children Report [The Onion]

A weekly roundup of events in parentsville, including the good, the bad, and the utterly trivial.

First, five old men in black robes deserve a big Bronx cheer for their Wednesday ruling that the nation's women should breed or die trying. By a 5-4 margin, the Supreme Court upheld a federal abortion ban, even when the woman's health is in serious danger. State lawmakers immediately began loading their cannons with anti-choice legislation aimed squarely at Roe v. Wade, the law that for the past 24 years relegated back-alley abortions to the dark ages. Salon has a thought-provoking roundup of the reaction of feminist bloggers and activists to this giant step backward for womankind.   

Anyway, too much thinking makes my brain hurt. Let's move on to another fine moment in celebrity parenting. Involving panty-challenged poptart ... Alec Baldwin. An unnamed source who goes by the code name Kim Basinger leaked a phone message from her ex to their 11-year-old daughter Ireland, who apparently didn't answer her phone for a planned call. "You are a rude, thoughtless little pig" and "your mother is a thoughtless pain in the ass," Baldwin yelled (thoughtfully) into Ireland's voicemail.

More evidence that celebrities should think before spawning: Will Ferrell's video on FunnyOrDie.com. In it, the breast-pump-toting comedian plays a tenant confronted by an angry landlord, in the guise of the 2-year-old daughter of Ferrell's writing partner Adam McKay. She's cute, blond, sweetly attired in a pretty dress, and ... get ready for the funny part ... swears like a sailor! Hahahahaha....umm, why are we laughing? Because we don't want to die. Of course, the video is a huge hit.

I note that both of these incidents involved girl celebabies. Which brings me, conveniently, to my next topic. According to a new study, the number of baby boys is declining in both the United States and Japan. Pollution is the culprit, killing off the weaker Y-chromosome toting sperm. But never fear, the Environmental Protection Agency is on the case. After the umpteenth recall, and an unfortunate incident or three, the EPA decided enough is enough, and banned leaded children's bracelets. You'd think that such a ban would already be in place, since we've known about the dangers lead poses to kids for, like, decades. You'd be wrong. Across the pond, the Brits were busily banning stuff too. On Monday, the U.K. laid to waist kid-aimed junk food ads.

Back to the global toxic soup, sans leaded kids' bracelets. Good news! Even if men are on the road to extinction, all is not lost. U.K. scientists announced that they've "coaxed" stem cells into becoming sperm. Which means women could conceivably conceive by producing their own sperm. Yeah, you heard me right. Next time, all you Supreme Court Y-chromosome types, I suggest you try thinking before you act.

First things first: Sanjaya's gone. Can you believe it? Now all there is to look forward to for the remainder of this season's "American Idol" is a bunch of in-tune, un-cute, coiffeur-challenged, big-voiced belter-outers. Bo-ring.

In other news, parents bribe their kids! And parenting experts warn that this tactic comes with a price! (For me, that would be cost of another Polly Pocket.)

Here's what the "experts" -- and the article -- forget: It all evens out at the end. Because, along with bribery, proper parenting, as I've learned, also involves blackmail and trickery. It's like this:

• Do this and you get that.
  
  
• Don't do this, and you don't get that.
  
  
• I have no idea what happened to [object of annoying obsession now hidden in closet].

So don't worry about the entitlement mentality, because as any kid knows, what is given can just as easily be denied. Or mysteriously disappear.

Parents buying off kids for good behavior [MSNBC]

The Easter turducken is the perfect solution to the dilemma presented by all those treats left over from the springtime equivalent of Halloween. In one easy arts-and-crafts/cooking session, you will rid your house of approx. one million empty calories and/or 25 sugar rushes.

(For those of you wondering what a turducken is, it has nothing to do with poopy (hey, it's the first thing that came to my mind). It's a Thanksgiving dish prepared by cramming a chicken into a duck into a turkey.)

The recipe for the Easter turducken: mini eggs into peeps into chocolate bunnies. Check out the link for step by step instructions (involving the use of power tools no less).

Here's how the Easter turducken works its magic. First, your kids will be too proud of their creation to eat it. As for you, the result (as pictured and imagined) seems far too disgusting to eat even for a WAHM like me, with a home office 3 steps from the kitchen and the self-discipline of a pre-rehab Britney Spears.

Easter turducken [Asteroid, via BoingBoing]

Hahahahaha ... too late ... oh well.

Having searched in vain for bloggers more serious and thoughtful than I to steer you to, I'll simply have to tackle this one on my own.

The Supreme Court waited until just the right moment -- a day when the media is fixated on the worst U.S. mass murder in history -- to quietly let slip that they've just perpetrated their own massacre of women's rights. By a slim margin (5-4), they upheld a nationwide ban on the so-called partial birth abortion. (You can thank the National Right to Life Committee for that lovely term.)

No less than six federal courts have found the law to be unconstitutional. To which the Supremes had this to say: "Whatever."

Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the only woman among the nine justices, said the latest decision

tolerates, indeed applauds, federal intervention to ban nationwide a procedure found necessary and proper in certain cases by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists.

One small step by 5 old men, one giant leap backward for womankind.

Court Upholds Ban on Abortion Procedure [AP]

This just in, from the land of chip butties (french fries and butter sandwiches) and spotted dick (we don't know what this is nor do we want to).

From now on, U.K. youth must learn about the joys of junk food without the benefit of advertising. Anywhere. Marketers, already reeling from the recent U.K. ban on TV junk food ads, must now face up to a near-total blackout on kid junk food ads in magazines, the Internet, newspapers, billboards and cinema, courtesy of the industry's self-regulatory body. Only fresh fruit and vegetables have been spared.

Our favorite part of the story is this excerpt from the statement announcing the ban:

These comprehensive new rules are designed to help protect children's health while still allowing advertisers an appropriate degree of freedom to promote their products.

We guess "appropriate" is a Britishism for nada, zero, zilch. Happily for advertisers, it's still a mecca for fat food ads across the pond, where the average kid sees between 30 and 50 hours of TV food ads each year, 90 percent for junk food.

U.K. Junk-Food-Ad Ban Expands Beyond TV [AdAge]
Kids see hours of fat food TV ads [SFGate.com]

I guess this is good news: Scientists in Germany have crafted synthetic sperm from stem cells. This breakthrough could eventually aid in fertility  treatments. ETA to market: 3 to 5 years.

In case you forgot (I kinda did) a stem cell is the shape-shifter of the molecular world, able to transmogrify into any number of specialized cells. The embryonic kind has the President's knickers all in a twist. These ain't that kind.

OK, here's what I really want to know: These stem cells could have been anything, ranging from red blood cells to brain cells to eyeball cells. Useful cells with long lives. Yet the scientists "coaxed" them into becoming sperm, the molecular equivalent of a kamikaze pilot. How? We're thinking red meat and potato cells, teeny tiny little copies of Playboy centerfolds, umm, maybe Nascar? Spike TV? Janet Jackson's Superbowl halftime show wardrobe malfunction?

And I wonder why my husband thinks I don't understand him.

Scientists create synthetic sperm cells [MSNBC]

Everyone knows lead is bad news for kids. So how did 300,000 Reebok customers last year end up with give-away charm bracelets that turned out to be 90 percent lead?

Like this: Oops. But never fear, the Environmental Protection Agency is here! It will demand a recall. And we know how effective those are.

Recalls can be tedious, though, especially when you're issuing them like every two months, just for lead problems. So yesterday, the EPA agreed to ban children's jewelry containing more than 0.06 percent lead by weight. A government agency hard at work safeguarding the lives of our nation's children? Well, not exactly. It had to get sued first.

Maybe we're being too hard on the EPA. After all, it must be tough to keep track of all the yucky stuff out there when you have to spend most of your time and resources on proving that global warming is the invention of Chicken Little tree-huggers. In any event, we'll take what we can get. A ban on products that could poison or kill our kids sounds like good news to us.

EPA Agrees to Cut Lead in Kids' Products [AP]

According to a new survey by MSNBC/iVillage, 28 percent of husbands have cheated on their wives. The percentage of cheating wives is 18 percent.

Some more stats: Most cheaters stray from the path within 10 years. The typical cheater is a guy married for 3-to-5 years who has a less-than-a-week-long fling with a friend or co-worker. And makes more than $300,000. Because diamonds are a cheater's best friend:

Wealthy men may simply have more dating opportunities than men with less income, says David Frederick, a psychologist at the University of California, Los Angeles, who helped analyze the survey findings.

"Dating opportunities." Now that's an interesting way to describe cheating on your loving wife and mother of your children with some nasty-ass gold-digging floozy. Who after three months will make your life miserable with demands that you leave "that bitch." And who will force you to max out your Amex card with expensive gifts in the meantime. And who will become less and less discreet the more you want to dump her. And ... well, you get the idea, guys.

Many cheat for a thrill, more stay true for love [MSNBC]

Portrait studios are so old skool. Shutter happy moms take the show on the road. Here's how it works:

All you need now is a marketing gimmick. For instance, a portrait party, where several families get together and the budding photog snaps pix of the kids at play. Or business cards with your client's kids' pictures on them. Before you know it, you'll be charging up the Nikon, strapping the lil uns in the car seats, and hitting the circuit.

Because at a certain point, you'll get bored photographing your own children. Never, you say? Well, they'll get bored of you.

Baby on Board, and a Photography Business, Too [NY Times]

Good news: 40 years after the Supreme Court officially sanctioned interracial marriage, Barack Obama, Tiger Woods, Keanu Reeves and the kids of Seal and Heidi Klum have puh-len-ty of company. More than 7 percent of America's married couples are interracial, compared with less than 2 percent in 1970.

The case that started it all: the fantastically named Loving v. Virginia. As in Richard Loving, a white guy married to an African American woman. And as in Virginia, the state for lovers, as long as they didn't mix and match. The Supremes did the right thing, throwing out Virginia's anti-miscegenation law, along with similar bans in 15 other states.

As a Waspanese myself, I can personally attest that there's no better way to fight racism. As Stanford professor Michael Rosenfeld says:

When you have the 'other' in your own family, it's hard to think of them as 'other' anymore. We see a blurring of the old lines, and that has to be a good thing, because the lines were artificial in the first place.

Of course, the melting pot isn't a masala quite yet. Some places have yet to get with the program. Like Imus' mouth. Which will no longer be trash talking its way through the mornings on CBS radio, thank you very much.

After 40 years, interracial marriage flourishing [MSNBC]

Tony Randall -- the poster "boy" for late-in-life fathers -- had this to say about being a first-time dad at the age of 77:

What I look forward to is when the kid is 15 and we go out in the yard to play ball. I'll only be 90.

Ha ha ha. But cruel fate had the last laugh. Mr. Randall died in 2004 at the tender age of 84, leaving behind 7-year-old Julia and 5-year-old Jefferson, along with their 33-year-old mom (we'll save you the math -- she was 51 years his junior).

There are two things I like best about this NY Times article on really really really old farts having kids. First, it makes me, a first-time mom at 40, feel positively teenagerish. Second, there's the acronym the writer dreams up to describe members of the Tony Randall Club. It's based on the non-obvious description "start-over dads." You got it: SODs. It's almost as bad as SAHDs. Now there's some creative reporting for you. 

He's Not My Grandpa. He's My Dad [NY Times]
 

Most of the predators that concern today's parents are human -- pedophiles, kidnappers, really stupid boyfriends. But for parents living on the edge of civilization -- like in New Jersey -- predators come in non-human form too.

The parents of 22-month-old Liam Sadler learned this over the weekend,  when a coyote bolted into the backyard of a suburban home 40 miles southwest of NYC and grabbed Liam in his jaws. Fortunately for everyone involved except the coyote, Liam's quick-witted 11-year-old uncle, Ryan Palludan, sprang into action:

My dad and I chased it into the woods, and my sister got Liam inside...But it didn't go all the way into the woods. It was kind of staying on the edge. It wanted its food.

Liam was fine, suffering minor bites on his head and neck. The coyote went off in search of an easier meal, like a cat or a Yorkie or maybe a sandwich:

Last week, [a coyote] sauntered into a Chicago sandwich restaurant through an open door, and plopped down inside a walk-in cooler filled with soda and juice before animal control officers removed it.

Bad dog. Lucky baby.

N.J. boy foils coyote attack on baby nephew [MSNBC]

We've all had our bad mommy moments. Many of us unburden ourselves in collective mommy fess-up-athons. Others keep our guilty secrets to ourselves. Now, there's a new means for giving voice to our worst parenting stories. True Mom Confessions, which launched yesterday, bills itself as "the first ever online confessions booth for moms." Think PostSecret meets UrbanBaby.

According to the Huffington Post, the site is the creation of ex-HuffPo-ster Romi Lassally and Rebecca Woolf (Girl's Gone Child), because they just aren't busy enough with the 8 million other projects they have going on. It's easy to confess on the site -- no Hail Marys required -- or to show your support by clicking *did it* or *thought it* after each post.

Which, by the way, are surprisingly dark so far. Like hating the hubby, hating time with the kids, hating the neighbor's kid, and loving being all alone without any of them around.

We hope they lighten up. We'd take a page from another website called True Mom Confessions that lasted about a week back in August 2006, before the blogger/moderator, goodenoughmommy, apparently stymied by technical difficulties, moved on, leaving her short-lived effort behind. Some samples:

Your Grammy is mentally ill. She's crazy. She's completely gone off the deep end. She will never, ever be in a room alone with you. Just be nice to her and pretend you like to be around her anyway.

I lied. Your chocolate bar didn't melt - I ate it while you had a nap.

I know you don't like being called Pumpkin Fish Boy. You don't know that it's an improvement over Suckerfish Boy which is what we called you till you were one.

Because although "motherhood is hard," as the new TMC puts it, it's also hilarious, eye-opening, and fulfilling (congratulations -- you've  kept the critters alive yet another day). Plus, it offers many wonderful opportunities for shopping therapy. Gear & Goodies, here we come! 

True Mom Confessions

Researchers have stumbled upon a potential female Viagra, called bremelanotide. Studies show the stuff makes female rats

wiggle their ears, hop  excitedly, rub noses with males and otherwise display unmistakable hallmarks of rodent arousal.

The researchers, who had originally developed the drug as a tanning agent, then tried it on post-menopausal female humans. They liked it too. Close to three-quarters reported feeling hotter down there, and 43 percent reported feeling hotter to trot.

Discouragingly, the study found that the same female humans were only "slightly more likely to have sex with their partners." In other words, sexual arousal does not necessarily lead to sex with a partner. Unless, we guess, he's the kind who's turned on by a spouse who is wiggling her ears, hopping excitedly and rubbing noses with him. And has a really nice tan.

The Search for the Female Equivalent of Viagra [NY Times]

It's a sloooooow day here in parenting newsville. We can only surmise that, like, half the reporters in this country are camped out in front of a courthouse in Nassau, Bahamas.

La-la-la-la-la-hmm-hmm-hmm.  Oh, hi again! It's the perfect time to brush up on tips for eating out en famille masse. Like this one:

Don't!

That's what babysitters are for. Make it a date. Hold hands, use naughty words, don't talk about the kids. Go someplace noisy enough that you can sit and eat in silence without feeling self conscious, in case you find out you have nothing else to talk about. 

OK, maybe that's just us. If you must make it a family event, here's a real tip:

Make it special. The promise of a mocktail, flaming dessert, pupu platter or some other "exotic" dish not on the menu at home might entice even the most fidgety child to sit still -- for a while. 

There's other good advice, like steering clear of places without crayons and kid cuisine (Jean Georges will just have to make do without you), and leaving a big fat tip for your poor waiter, along with the spillage and food and other detritus your kids leave behind on floor and table.

Dining out with the little darlings [MSNBC]

Mommy bloggers want to Emily Postify the blogosphere. In other words, take all the fun out of blogging. The good wimmin at BlogHer have a code of conduct; others are thinking along the same lines. Oddly, the NY Times article on the subject declines to name names when it comes to the only interesting tidbit in the entire piece: the website of the anonymous blogger who parodies dooce, the Queen of All Mommy Bloggers:

Since last October, [Heather Armstrong] has also had to deal with an anonymous blogger who maintains a separate site that parodies her writing and has included photos of Ms. Armstrong's daughter, copied from her site.

Ms. Armstrong tries not to give the site public attention, but concedes that, "At first, it was really difficult to deal with."

We really like dooce, who's funny and literate and entertaining. But it seems that the reporter made a deal with Armstrong not to publish the name of the parody site in exchange for an interview, which strikes us as unfair. Lucky for you, we have no hush order to keep us from spilling the beans, and we are definitely not going to let two hours of research go to waste. Without further ado, here's the missing link:

http://www.violentacres.com/

This blogger is very naughty. We are not in any way affiliated with this not-nice-person and do not endorse his/her hilarious spoofs. And he/she drops the f-bomb and other potty-mouth words a lot. Think: the Perez Hilton of the mommy blogosphere, and you get the idea. So go ahead and click ... if you dare ... but don't say we didn't warn you.

A Call for Manners in the World of Nasty Blogs [NY Times]