A weekly roundup of news in parentville, including the good, the bad, and the utterly trivial.

Dads are the new moms. According to marketing's top trade rag, AdAge, dads today have finally woken up to the dirty little secret of working moms: We love killing ourselves at work and then coming home to do it all again. We may be falling asleep in the shower but as we slither unconscious down the soapy side of the shower stall, we're patting ourselves on the back all the while. Two lives for the price of one! It's so fulfilling!

That's about as dumb a theory as I've heard in a while (and I specialize in sniffing out dumb theories).Yeah, dads today may be more fam-centric but many seem to think that means just being a playmate, while good old mom is still handling the dirty work of feeding, dressing, washing and cleaning up after the flock. For evidence, you needn't go any further than the article itself. As one UberDad quoted in the piece announced proudly:

I had dinner with my children last night.

Not, I note bitterly, "I cooked dinner for my children last night."

Anyway, speaking of dads-as-moms, Jake Gyllenhaal of "Brokeback Mountain" fame, is reportedly expecting a baby later this month with his boyfriend of several years, who is either actor Austin Nichols or Chef Chris Fischer. Not sure who is carrying the kid. If it's Jake, he's done an awfully good job of keeping his bump under wraps.

Other weird-but-true pregnancy news: a mom in Ohio just gave birth to her second set of triplets, without the help of fertility treatments. The chances of that happening: about 1 in 64 million. Mom's rather understated observation on the prospect of 300 diaper changes and 168 bottles a week, on top of care-and-feeding of the first set, now 3 years old:

I guess we should have been more specific and said one more child, not one more set.

A Brooklyn mom got a slightly different version of the several-for-the-price-of-one birthing surprise. Little Jeshuah Fuller entered the world on Tuesday sporting 12 fingers and 12 toes. Cute on a cat, not so cute on a kid. The extra digits will be unceremoniously deleted in a couple of weeks.

If your heart is set on a freckly lil red-headed kid, breed soon.  National Geographic reports that gingers will probably be extinct in 100 years. The hue was the result of a freak mutation thousands of years ago in Europe. At first, it had the beneficial effect of increasing the body's ability to make vitamin D from sunlight, but today's carriers are more prone to skin cancer and sensitive to heat and cold-related pain.

Redheaded or not, at the rate we are going, we will all probably be extinct in 100 years, so what's the big deal?

Moving ahead a couple of decades, 21-year-old twins accidentally separated at birth by a hospital in China have reunited. Xiang Nan and Wang Yiwen  figured out what happened after neighbors of Wang Yiwen complained to his parents that a young man they thought was Wang Yiwen (who was actually Xiang Nan) often ignored them. A blood test confirmed they were blood brothers. After wiping the tears of joy from their eyes and coordinating their wardrobes, they promptly sued the bastards. The hospital says too much time has passed and any claims are "hypothetical."

Let's end on an upbeat note, shall we? Lawyers for dueling sanitary pad makers are ready to kiss and make up. Just kidding -- here's the real story. A father looking for his 31-year-old daughter whom he hadn't seen since she was a baby found her -- strolling past right behind him in the publicity photo he posed for in his attempt to find her.

Isn't that a beautiful story? Aren't you glad you read my blog?

Have a fab Labor Day weekend!

For kids born in the summer, I've got good news and bad news.

Bad news first (get it over with is what I say):

You're basically doomed to have lousy eyesight:

babies born during the summer months of June and July have a 24% greater chance of becoming severely shortsighted than those born between December and January.

Prof. Michael Belkin, of Tel Aviv University's Goldschleger Eye Research Institute, explains: The body has a mechanism that causes the eyeball to lengthen, causing shortsightedness, when exposed to prolonged illumination. Hence, the more light a newborn is exposed to after birth, the more the eyeball lengthens and the worse the myopia will be.

Sorry 'bout that. But there's good news too for the folks with the long eyeballs. The winter-born crew may see better than you but you're the crowd with the big brains. In a rare case of a stereotype living up to its name, people with coke-bottle glasses are often smarter than the average bear.

Back to the eye business. Belkin says kids' eyes are much clearer than adults' eyes, so it's that much more important to protect them. Still not convinced? Visualize, then, the sight of a tiny tot sporting a pair of baby-Vuarnets. Can you stand the cuteness?

Israeli researchers show that summertime babies more prone to myopia [Israel21c]

Are you a right-cradler or a left-cradler?

Most of us cradle our babies with the left arm. Some think that's because it places the baby's head closer to the sound of the mom's heart beat. Others say it's because the left side is controlled by the right brain, which deals with emotions and intuition.

But if you're stressed out, you are more likely to cradle your baby on the right.

Per a new study, 32% of stressed moms are right-cradlers compared with 14% of non-stressed moms. (There's no link to whether you are right or left handed.)

Who thinks up studies like this, anyway?

The researchers said they had no clue why stressed moms went for the right-cradle. But it could help ID unhappy moms. The researchers pointed to one such famous for-instance:

We have all seen pictures of Princess Diana - she always cradled to the right.

Nuff said.

Women who cradle baby on their right arm are more prone to depression [Daily Mail]

Flying today, with its business-as-miserable hassles, is a drag, but sending your kid off to fly solo can be downright terrifying.

Should your kid ever be on board a United Airlines flight with Capt. Denny Flanagan at the helm, however, expect the phone to ring. Capt. Flanagan likes to call parents with reassuring updates.

"I picked up the phone and he said, 'This is the captain from your son's flight,' " said Kenneth Klein, whose 12-year-old son was delayed by thunderstorms in Chicago last month on a trip from Los Angeles to see his grandfather in Toronto. "It was unbelievable. One of the big problems is kids sit on planes and no one tells you what's happening, and this was the exact opposite."

Sounds pretty wild, but that's Standard Operating Procedure with Capt. Flanagan. He also snaps cellphone pics of the pets in steerage to show owners that their animals are on board. He has flight attendants raffle off 10% discount coupons and bottles of wine. He writes thank you notes to first-class passengers and frequent flyer road warriors. If flights are delayed or diverted, Capt. Flanagan tries to find a McDonald's where he can order 200 hamburgers, or a snack shop that has fruit he can hand out.

Doesn't Capt. Flanagan realize he's making his fellow pilots look really, really bad? Does he care? Apparently not. He says, in his defense, that "the customer deserves a good travel experience."

It's amazing he still has a job.

To a United Pilot, the Friendly Skies Are a Point of Pride [Wall Street Journal]

Another fine product of our public education system.

Britney may be under investigation for child abuse, but it's her manny we should be worried about, say many child-welfare groups.

Why? He's a man.

Since most child predators are male, many child welfare groups recommend that when it comes to our kids, men are to be avoided at all costs. Even the stroller pushing dad is suspect. Hey, when you think about it, what better way to lure in unsuspecting kids than with a decoy kid or two of your own?

But watch out Mr. Stroller-Pushing Predator, because Virginia's Department of Health is onto you. It's mounted a billboard campaign for its sex-abuse hotline featuring photos of a man holding a child's hand. The caption: "It doesn't feel right when I see them together."

Fathers' rights groups were incensed by the implication that a man -- any man -- holding a girl's hand is probably a predator. Amazingly (or predictably), the Virginia DOH was unapologetic, pointing out that 89% of child predators are male.

So dads, the next time you are taking your daughter across the street, whatever you do, don't hold her hand. Because you know what that means.

Are We Teaching Our Kids To Be Fearful Of Men? [Wall Street Journal]

The wipe-and-dipe is a long-standing ritual of modern American parenting. It's not the most pleasant one, but what are you gonna do? Toss out the Huggies and turn your entire house into a human litterbox?

In fact, a growing number of "diaper-free" parents are letting the kid go commando as early as birth. So do their homes smell like a public restroom in Grand Central Station? Not at all, claim these parents. In fact, their homes smell super sweet, because everyone big and small does their business in the potty and there are no Diaper Genies stinkin' up the joint.

The no-dipe crowd swears that babies are born with the instinctive ability to signal when they have to go potty, allowing you whisk the kid off to an appropriate place to do his business.

It's probably true, but who has the time, patience and dedication to be on potty alert for two or three years? Not this blogger. Anyway, I've already dedicated a diaper mountain at the town landfill in my daughter's name.

Parents Being Potty-Training At Birth [New York Times]

Fat is contagious. Faithful readers of First Feeding know that already, per my earlier post on how you catch fat from your friends. But there's new evidence that a common cold virus can make you fat.

The virus, known as adenovirus-36, is a frequent cause of respiratory and eye infections. You'd think that making people miserable for a week or so would be enough. But this virus has greater ambitions -- much greater. It wants a place in the textbooks alongside the greats -- smallpox, bird flu, Melissa. And it's hit on the perfect crime -- turning stem cells into fat cells.

Scientists have suspected AD-36 for a while, but recent studies suggest it really is all that. Click here to read up on the science I'm feeling too lazy to summarize.

Poor fat kids. On top of everything else they have to contend with, moms are going to be telling their kids not to play with them, for fear they'll get fat too. But at least now, maybe they'll develop a vaccine.

Too fat? Common virus may be to blame: Study [Scientific American]

As I reported earlier this month in an appropriately gushing post (and you know what a gusher I can be), Matty Lovo saved his dad's life when his dad passed out behind the wheel of his tractor-trailer. Hauling more than 100 bazillion pounds of weight behind him, little Matty took the wheel. After he slowed down the big rig by turning off the ignition, another driver hopped in the cab and put on the brake (which Matty, being only 9, apparently couldn't reach).

When asked by CNN's Kyra Phillips if he thought he was a hero, Matty had this to say:

Yeah.

Don't you love the refreshing honesty of youth?

Matty has also put in a request with his dad -- who, need I remind you, would be dead if it weren't for his kid -- for a Playstation 3 as a reward.

Hey, Matty may be a hero, but he never said he was a saint.

Son, 9, saves dad in runaway truck, wants a PS3 [Gaming Target]

Yeah, I know MILFs (a.k.a. cougars) are way old news. Whatever. I just wanted an excuse to post this video.

A weekly roundup of news in parentville, including the good, the bad, and the utterly trivial.

Disney's mega-hit High School Musical 2 debuted this past weekend as the most-watched cable show ever, drawing 17.2 million screaming, swooning tweenage-and-younger viewers. What is this phenom called High School Musical? I have no idea.

I do know about "The Nanny Diaries" though. Okay, I didn't read the book or see the movie -- who has time? -- but I did read a review. It's a glimpse into the lives of the rich moms of Manhattan's Upper East Side. They're all miserable, monstrous control freaks with crappy marriages and bratty kids.

Phew! I am so glad I'm not rich...It must totally suck.

Speaking of bratty kids, did you hear the one about the snake-hating boy who stomped on and killed a man's beloved 10-foot-long pet python, Popcorn? The horrified owner, who was exhibiting Popcorn at a festival, says

he saw a man grab the child and say, "This is why I don't take you anywhere," before disappearing.

Uhh, Dad? Wrong answer.

Another top contender for First Feeding's Parent of the Week award: an Israeli mom who tried to exchange a pair of Crocs because they didn't fit her son. Unfortunately for CrocMom, apparently she forgot that she had stolen them from the same store a few hours before.

Honorary mention goes to Agnes Hitchcock, who pelted Detroit school board members with grapes during a raucous vote to cut costs by closing 34 city schools. Agnes says the $250 fine was worth the chance to speak about mismanagement in the district. But she demurred on the most pressing question that this blogger had, anyway: Why grapes?

After a recent study found that babies who watch "educational" baby videos know about 6 to 8 fewer words than their non-video-watching peers, the founder of Baby Einstein now says the videos were never intended to make babies smarter.

Rather, Julie Aigner-Clark claims, the videos are designed to make babies happier

by exposing them to "beautiful things" like art, music and poetry.

Julie explains further that "Baby Einstein" doesn't actually refer to Albert the genius, but to his younger brother Joe, the inventor of the sock puppet.

Julie, Julie, Julie. How dumb do you think parents are???

Pretty dumb, I guess. After all, we buy your videos.

Creator of 'Baby Einstein' backs the videos [MSNBC]

My 4-year-old daughter loves all kinds of food -- as long as it's beige. This has been the case ever since she started toddling, when her formerly wide ranging tastes shut down to the point where I can count what she'll eat on one hand, with some extra fingers for cake and candy.

I'm sure many parents of picky toddlers share my vague sense of guilt that I somehow caused this state of affairs, out of laziness, lack of imagination or basically crappy parenting skills.

So I was thrilled to learn that it's nature, not nurture, to blame here. According to a new study comparing pickiness of fraternal and identical twins

nearly 80% of children's tendency to avoid unfamiliar foods was inherited.

Scientists theorize that food neophobia, or fear of new food, had an evolutionary advantage. While the baby gourmets keeled over right and left from eating pretty mushrooms, the kid who lived on neolithic chicken nuggets survived to breed more food neophobes. In the modern world, food fright may seem pretty silly, but try explaining that to a 3-year-old recoiling in horror at the sight of a broccoli floret poisoning his plate.

That doesn't mean parents of picky toddlers are completely off the hook. Repeatedly offering a new food to a kid can make it more familiar, and thus, just possibly, safe to eat.

'No Broccoli! Kids' Food Fear May Be Built In [Wall Street Journal]

An elite kindergarten in China has hit upon a sure-fire test for ensuring they only accept the smart ones.

It checks the shape of the applicant's head.

Because that saying about pointy headed intellectuals?  A myth.  In fact, as the school's owner Li Junjie explains, it's the round headed kids that make the best students:

A round head indicates cleverness; a student with a flat head can never be outstanding no matter how hard he works.

The school promises to have its pupils reading at 3, in middle school at 7, in college at 15, and running the world at 21. Roundheads rule! All hail the roundheads!

This kindergarten's not for squares [Ananova]

Keep this story in your back pocket for when the time comes to sit your kid down and give the tough love talk about drugs.

Oregon narcs were questioning a tenant in an apartment when a man came by and asked to buy drugs, according to a cop on the scene named Webber:

As detectives stood around with their badges hanging from their necks and latex gloves on their hands, the man asked the tenant, "Can you hook me up?" Webber said.

The tenant was seated on the couch with handcuffs around his wrists. A detective was writing him a citation.

The tenant said, "I don't think I can help you," Webber recalled, but the visitor persisted. He then allegedly turned to a detective and asked him for meth.

The cops arrested the would-be buyer. They also arrested a man who walked into the apartment carrying seven baggies of meth and ticketed a fourth man who showed up with a butterfly knife (I don't know what that is, but apparently it's illegal).

After that, police stopped answering the door, Webber said.

Why? At the rate they were going, by the end of the day, they could've all been promoted to detective.

Anyway, here's the moral of the story: Crystal meth makes people stupid. Or only stupid people take crystal meth. Either way -- you're stupid.

OTOH, pot makes you smart.

Man Asks Officer Wearing Badge for Meth [AP]
Lobes of Steel [New York Times]

Where I live, having just the one ankle biter is definitely not the norm. I imagine a lot of parents of only kids feel like me -- a little weird, guilty about not giving the kid any siblings and worried about raising a spoiled, selfish, bossy little brat.

Fear not, fellow only parents, our kids are all right!

Contrary to the popular belief that onlies are spoiled, aggressive, bossy, lonely, maladjusted, etc., etc., in fact:

There have been hundreds and hundreds of research studies that show that only children are no different from their peers.

So if you're looking for reasons your kid is such a brat, don't blame her status as only child. Blame yourself.

Wait! There's more! It turns out there is a significant difference when it comes to intelligence. A landmark 20-year study showed that the increased one-on-one parenting onlies get produces higher education levels, higher test scores and higher levels of achievement.

As for the companionship of siblings...well, that's why God invented television.

The Only Child Myth [ABC News]

My favorite color is blue. My daughter's favorite color is pink.

A new study says we are both in the majority. It found that while most people prefer blue, chicks like pinkie-blues while dudes like greenie-blues.

The article, entitled, "Why Girls Like Pink," says this is proof positive that the tyranny of the pink-is-for-girls-and-blue-is-for-boys rule is not just an arbitrary creation of Madison Avenue. Rather, it's biologically programmed.

Nice try, but that theory falls apart like wet tissue paper when you consider the fact that the pink/blue divide happen to be a fairly recent phenomenon. In fact, 100 years ago, the exact opposite color association informed the infant layette. According to a 1918 issue of "Ladies Home Journal":

There has been a great diversity of opinion on the subject, but the generally accepted rule is pink for the boy and blue for the girl. The reason is that pink being a more decided and stronger color is more suitable for the boy, while blue, which is more delicate and dainty, is prettier for the girl.

So where does that leave the fashion forward baby mom? The ironic onesie, of course. The one that says, I'm too cool to care whether you think I'm a boy or a girl. Because, the truth is, the kid doesn't care. You do.

"Kid Nation," a new reality show airing on CBS next month, is about a group of 40 kids, ages 8 to 15, who built a society free of adults. For 40 days the children cooked their own meals, cleaned outhouses, formed a government and ran businesses, all without adult intervention or participation.

"Everyone usually had a job," said Mike, an 11-year-old from Bellevue, Wash., who participated in the show. Among them were cooking, cleaning, hauling water and running the stores.

Naturally, the harshness of actually having to work for a living -- without the benefit of iPods and other electronic gadgetry, no less -- has led to charges of abuse and neglect.

A mom of an 11-year-old Kid Nationist says her daughter got splattered with grease while cooking and several others had to go to the emergency room after drinking bleach in an unmarked soda bottle.

If that's the worst of it, I say, big whoop. My daughter has more accidents than than in a single 12-hour period. And the kids seemed to appreciate the experience. As Mike said:

"It was hard work, but it was really good. It taught us all that life is not all play and no work."

Where can I sign my kid up?

A CBS Reality Show Draws a Claim of Possible Child Abuse [New York Times]

Three-year-old Arkansans may not be allowed to drink or drive, but there's one thing they can do -- get married.

A law passed this year was supposed to set 18 as the minimum marrying age, but allow pregnant kids under 18 to get married with parental consent. A typo, however, allows any Arkansan who is not pregnant to marry at any age with the parents' blessing.

The bill's sponsor claims it was a mistake:

It's clearly not the intent to allow 10-year-olds or 11-year-olds to get married. The legislation was screwed up.

Phew! They had me worried there for a minute. I mean, tweenage marriages are just wrong. OTOH, pregnant tweenage marriages ... well, that's just good ole southern fried family values.

Error in Ark. Law Allows Kids to Marry [AP]

A weekly roundup of news in parentville, including the good, the bad, and the utterly trivial.

Babies, babies, everywhere. A Canadian woman has given birth to a quartet of identical girls. How super cute is that? And consider the rarity: a 1 in 13 million chance. In fact, there are only 50 such sets in the whole world.

Stupid names, unfortunately, are not nearly as rare. The latest contender: @. That's the name two Chinese parents came up with for their new little one, because, as the proud papa explains:

The whole world uses it to write e-mails and translated into Chinese it means 'love him.'

While I'm on the topic, I'd like to give a shout out to the poster mom for dumb parenting moments. According to a new Star expose, Britney tried to whiten Sean Preston's baby teeth using Crest Whitestrips. The experiment didn't go well -- he kept crying -- so

finally, Britney threw the strips away, telling Sean, 'Fine, you'll just have ugly teeth then!'"

Other fodder for K-Fed's custody bid: When Brit's pissed, she reportedly yells and screams at the boys and once told them, 'You were both mistakes!' She's called them 'burdens, a pain in the ass and the reason (your) father left.'"

Poor kids. Yet Britney has her tender, good mommy moments. Just the other day, she took her two guys out to eat, told paparazzi to get lost, and even put little Jayden James in his car seat - the right way.

Maybe what the princess of pop needs is a box of chocolates. Specifically, these chocolates, formulated with "natural botanicals" that help relieve irritability, depression and anxiety. And bloating and all the other PMS-related symptoms which some of us have once a month and others of us have, well, pretty much all the time.

Don't expect to see SpongeBob SquarePants on your chocolate wrapper. He and his friends at Nickelodeon are just saying no to junk food. Except holiday-themed junk food. Flag Day Fritos, anyone?

The Food and Drug Administration -- the agency responsible for making sure the drugs we take are safe -- has issued an advisory warning parents never to give cough and cold medicines to kids under the age of 2 unless instructed to do so by a doctor.

Of course, if you've ever bothered to read the label on children's or infant's cough or cold medicine, you'd know they already carry that same exact warning.

But the FDA says parents often ignore the label warning. Even worse, they inadvertently overdose their kid by giving two different products that contain the same stuff. That's where the vast majority of emergency cases arise.

It's not even clear whether these products actually work in kids, or are safe even in standard doses. Dextromethorphan, for instance, can cause hallucinations and pseudoephedrine can cause heart arrhythmias. And of course, they are totally unnecessary. We're talking about runny noses here.

The agency is convening a panel of independent experts on October 18 to spend the next decade discussing whether more bans or warnings are warranted. In the meantime, it is content to issue a toothless advisory telling parents not to dose their kids with products that are aggressively marketed exactly for that purpose.

Parents Warned Cough Medicines Imperil Infants [New York Times]

It's not nice to prey on parental paranoia.

Not nice, but lucrative.

The latest gimmick aimed at parting parents from our hard-earned cash -- the bulletproof backpack.

Because everyone knows, schools are a war zone. And every day we send our innocent little babes deep into enemy territory, with no more than an algebra book to defend themselves. What are we thinking???

The backpacks were designed by a couple of Massachusetts dads. Check out the photo, right, of one of the dads complete with said backpack, pistola and goofy "you looking at me?" facial expression. The backpacks feature 

a super-lightweight bullet-proof plate sewn into the back that weighs no more than a bottle of water.

The material used is -- shhhhh -- a secret, but an exclusive source informs First Feeding that it is a patented formula derived from laboratory grade leftover cafeteria mashed potatoes, earwax harvested from used iPod earbuds, and the leftover contents of baby bottles used by Sean Preston and Jaydon James Federline Spears.

The price -- since you asked -- is $175 plus tax and shipping, or about $150 more than your garden-variety book-carrying backpack. But we're talking about your kid's safety here, people! Don't be so cheap!

Soon to be available in my favorite porn sheet for the paranoid parent, One Step Ahead.

Dads push bulletproof backpacks in schools [Boston Herald]

A decline in the use of hormone therapy, not any drop in mammography-linked detection, is the most likely explanation for the recent U.S. drop in breast cancers.

We're not talking teeny-tiny numbers either. In the study, which looked at data on more than 600,000 mammograms, use of hormone therapy in the group declined by 7 percent a year between 2000 and 2002, then by 34 percent annually between 2002 and 2003. Over the same period, breast cancer rates declined annually by 5 percent and estrogen-receptor-positive breast cancer rates fell by 13 percent annually from 2001 to 2003.

As one doctor points out, this is a really big deal:

Women have to understand there is an associated risk of developing breast cancer when taking combined estrogen and progestin.

Still, doctors say it could be tough to break the hormone habit. Many women -- and their doctors -- think hormones will help keep them young.

Seems like a no-brainer to me, though. I'd rather be old and alive than youthful and dead. Besides, that's why God invented plastic surgery.

Decline in U.S. breast cancers tied to drop in hormone use [Yahoo! News]
Women's Health Initiative [NIH]

On Monday, you heard about the superhero mom who wrestled a rabid raccoon in hand-to-paw combat and won.

This week's news features an equally fearsome mom-trait: the ability to immediately know that your kid is telling lies whenever and wherever those lies may occur.

That's what happened when a 27-year-old Romanian man pretended that his mom had died so he could wrangle some cash from his boss and get the day off to attend the funeral.

Moments after the money had changed hands, but before the guy could skedaddle, his mummy showed up at the door.

He was fired. And grounded.

So kids -- Let that be a lesson to you. Don't lie. Because we know. And we'll come back from the grave to shake our bony finger at you.

Dead mum visits son at work [Ananova]

Just when it seemed the chicken blood principal had a lock on First Feeding's coveted Educator of the Week award, Jaison Biagini came along.

Here's the Pennsylvania high school teacher's story, in his own words.

The trouble all began when I won a date with the lovely  Akira (an actress and model specializing in mature audiences) during a contest on the "Bubba the Love Sponge" radio show.

I was really excited, because this meant I could visit the Salvador Dali museum in St. Petersburg. (I'm an art teacher.)

I also buy Playboy for the articles.

The trip was a bust. People made fun of my disability (I'm in a wheelchair), I was offended by how I was portrayed on the show, and I worried about losing my job. And the date with Akira was all fake and staged. You'd think she'd at least be interested in whether my equipment is in working order, being in a wheelchair and all. She's a professional, after...

Jaison, we're out of time, but thanks so much for talking to First Feeding. Let's wrap this one up.

Bubba the Love Sponge + Akira the Porn Star + Jaison's moronic excuses and lame attempts at getting people to feel bad for him = Sorry, dude. You are so fired.

Teacher Resigns After Porn Star Date [Fox News]

Mattel today announced its second major recall in a month of Chinese-made toys contaminated with lead paint.

While it was at it, the company decided it may as well recall millions of other toys with small, powerful magnets that could come loose and be swallowed and cause your kid to stick to the fridge door or the hood of your car or any other magnetic surface, causing major inconveniences to kid and parent alike.

Because I fully expect more recalls to come, here's my suggestion -- immediately throw away all your kid's toys and replace with some of your old socks, a milk carton, and your kid's own long-slumbering imagination.

Actually, I have a hot tip for you, for reals. A woman I was chatting up in the post office (we bloggers don't get out much), said Mattel gave her a $75 voucher in exchange for a recalled toy, which was way more than the toy was worth. How cool is that?

Here's the website for recall information.

Mattel Issues New Recall of Toys Produced in China [NY Times]

The next time you are taking a pleasant stroll through the Connecticut woods and happen upon a vicious, foaming-at-the-mouth raccoon, let's hope you have this mom by your side.

Mom strangled a raccoon with her bare hands after it ran up and bit the 5-year-old son of a friend.

"She had the presence of mind to choke it," animal control officer April Leiler told the Record-Journal of Meriden. "She is one tough lady."

The beast tested positive for rabies, so both woman and boy have to get those nasty shots. And it wasn't even her kid!  Would that we were all so brave.

Woman Kills Raccoon With Her Bare Hands [Washington Post]

 

Nine-year-old Matthew Lovo Jr. really really really wanted to drive his dad's semi.

He finally got his chance on Friday, when his dad passed out while driving and fell from the driver's seat of the moving tractor-trailer. In Junior's own words:

He made a weird noise and fell down and I'm like, 'Dad, are you joking?' and he wouldn't say anything, so I smacked him and he wasn't.

So Matthew Jr. jumped into the driver's seat and took the wheel of the truck, which had veered into oncoming traffic and struck a pole. He got to use the CD radio too. How cool is that?

The fun and games ended when a passing motorist jumped into the slowing truck and put on the brakes. Matthew would have done it himself but he couldn't use the jake and drive at the same time.

Boy, 9, steers big rig to safety after father falls unconscious [Seattle Post-Intelligencer]