All good things must come to an end, including First Feeding. After an incredibly fun year-and-a-half, I'm off to other adventures. A million thanks to Cookie Magazine and my web editor for the opportunity to amuse and endarken you, my loyal readers.

I searched high and low for a clip of my favorite scene from "Toy Story" to illustrate this final post, but came up with nuffin...so a pic (right) and a quote from the clip will have to do:

I have been chosen!
Farewell my friends.
I go on to a better place.

Hopefully, we're not talking about a dog dish... I'm thinking, a best selling novel. Okay, I'll settle for a published novel. Okay, I'll settle for a self-published novel.  Okay, an article or two???  - Tamara Loomis   [tloomis@optonline.net]

Lice are refreshingly non-discriminatory. Rich or poor, white or black, they will happily inhabit the head of any human they can get their little licey claws on. All they need are a few strands of hair to cling to and stick their little eggs on and they are set.

Enter the Hair Fairies, a chain of professional nit-pickers coming soon to a neighborhood near you. For $95/hour, they will delouse your kid, should that situation occur. Although there's no epidemic, lice are common -- and disgusting -- enough that Hair Fairies, LouseCalls and other delousing salons are raking in the bucks by raking through your kid's hair.

Throw in school policies that remove children from the classroom, and manual lice removal becomes a burgeoning business. As Richard Pollack, a Harvard University public health entomologist, puts it:

They seem to be growing like the McDonald's franchise.

It's a lousy job, but better them than you.

Lice salons: lousy idea or necessity? [Baltimore Sun]

Hi there!  Are you a hipster parent?  The kind who would rather die a death by a thousand cuts than take the kids to the Happiest Place on Earth?  Well, you've come to the right site!  I have found three excellent alternative destinations just for you and your ironic tee-shirt-clad kids.

1.    The Mutter Museum at the College of Physicians of Philadelphia:  An oldie but goody, the museum features an outstanding collection of medical oddities professionally displayed. Highlights include:

• The 40 pound colon, looking like "a sand worm from Frank Herbert's Dune -- arranged with one end rearing up from the tastefully underlit display."
• Celebrity body parts, including the "Secret Tumor of Grover Cleveland," and the "Thorax of John Wilkes Booth."
• The soap woman: The body of a woman who died of yellow fever and was buried in soil with certain chemical properties . . . that turned her into soap!

.

Please note that this is a very serious place designed for study by "members of a dignified overpaid profession.  Shouts of 'Will ya look at this MONSTER BABY?' are entirely inappropriate."

2.   Museum of Bogota's Exhibit of Laziness:  An exhibit in a museum in Bogota, Columbia, featured sofas, televisions, hammocks and beds - anything associated with the avoidance of work. Marcela Arrieta, the museum curator, explained:

We always think about laziness as an enemy of work. So we wanted to explore that and make people think about the social issues implied in taking a nap, in being jobless or in feeling that maybe we are wasting time.

The exhibit, which you missed -- sorry! -- took place over the holidays. But you could always set up an impromptu exhibit of laziness in your own living room. All you need is a TV and a couch. Let me know how it goes.

3.    Memory Village in Haiti: It's not open yet, but you will definitely want to put this theme park on your "100 hipster places to visit before I die." 

Memory Village will allow visitors to play "slave for a day." Participants will be given traditional African clothing

and then 'kidnapped', chained and forced to march to a slave ship in a mock crossing of the Atlantic. They will then be part of a reenactment where slaves were taken to market to be sold and later broken down with torture in quarantine and put to work on a plantation.

Since even the most hardcore hipster may balk at the idea of spending 12 hours as a slave, there is a payoff. Toward the end of the stay, participants will get to take part in a reenactment of the slave rebellion which eventually led to the establishment of Haiti. So you get to rid yourself of the guilt handed down to you by your brutal ancestors and kill your masters!  Now that's hipsterrific.

Feeling like your relationship is a bit rocky these days? It could always be worse...

Consider, for instance, First Feeding's three candidates for Couple of the Week.

1.  The Jenkins:  "Joe" Jenkins and his wife, Candida, had a fight in the car. He got out and started walking away. Candida was furious. How dare he walk away from her! So she revved up the engine and ran him over. Much to her chagrin, "Joe" survived the attack. She had the last laugh, though, because now the whole world knows that her husband's actual given name is King Money Tarzan Jenkins.

2.  The Fifes:  Jason Michael Fife found out his wife was having an affair. He was infuriated. What to do?

Mr. Fife thought and thought and thought. Then he remembered that scene from "The Godfather." Brilliant! He got a cow's head from a butcher shop, claiming he wanted the dried skull for decoration. Instead, he mailed the head to the lover. He sent it frozen so as not to alarm the post office. The box became bloody after sitting on the lover's doorstep on a warm day. By way of explanation, Jason's lawyer said his client

understands that in a civilized society a person cannot send a severed cow's head to anybody.

Jason was arrested and got two years probation for his stunt. He and his wife later reconciled. They deserve each other, don't you think?

3.  An Unnamed Polish Couple-No-More: After 14 years of marriage, sex with the wife can get pretty dull. So a Warsaw man decided to spice up his sex life with a visit to a local brothel. Much to his surprise, he found his own wife there spicing up the sex lives of other men. He had this to say about his discovery:

I was dumbfounded. I thought I was dreaming.

The couple is getting a divorce.  In case there was any question...

In a case of the rules of attraction gone seriously awry, a brother and sister who were split up at birth and adopted by different families later met, fell in love and got married.

Only after the wedding did they discover the inconvenient truth that they were, in fact, twins.

The case was cited by Lord David Alton of U.K.'s House of Lords in a debate over legislation on human fertilization and embryology, which opponents say will weaken the ability of children to identify their biological parents. He said:

They met later and felt an inevitable attraction, and the judge had to deal with the consequences.

Lord Alton said the judge who granted the annulment told him about it. Much to the frustration of bloggers everywhere, Lord Alton did not offer any more details, except to say the case was "recent."

Lifetime has already started production on the Made for TV movie.

British Peer Cites Twins Who Married Unwittingly [New York Times]

As someone who's been languishing in kid-flick hell for the last 4 years, I was psyched to see this article from my favorite New York Times movie reviewer, A.O. Scott.

A.O. lists a whole bunch of movies playing at a theater near you that gradeschoolers and even preschoolers can enjoy even though the pix aren't specifically aimed at them. A.O. says these movies even offer a different kind of pleasure for kids -- the pleasure of bewilderment, and struggling to make sense of something just above your head.

I've witnessed this phenom myself, with my 4-year-old daughter, who loves "The Office," although she can't possibly know what's going on.

So, A.O. says that

while I am happy (or at least willing) to take my children to the latest animated or tweener-star-driven "family" movies -- with their singing chipmunks and chirpy Loch Ness Monsters -- we gravitate more and more toward age-inappropriate fare, exploring the grown-up realms of PG-13 and even, sometimes, R.

A.O. suggests movies like "Persepolis" (which is subtitled, so your kid will need to know how to read), "Charlie Wilson's War," "Into the Wild," and "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly."

Of course, you need to use common sense in making your selections. For instance, I suggest steering clear of any film with the words "Blood," "Gangster" or "David Lynch" attached to it.

And Jerry Seinfeld says there's no such thing as fun for the whole family.

Take The Kids, And Don't Feel Guilty [New York Times]

After a cousin's birthday party, two-year-old Almedia "Mimi" James was left behind at a Fort Worth Chuck E. Cheese.

For two days.

No one reported her missing. The parents say they thought she was staying at the house of one of her two aunts. The two aunts, who were both at the party, each say that they thought the other had brought Mimi home with her.

Maybe Mimi is the world's biggest brat (though she certainly looks sweet in the pic). Maybe the grownups involved thought she'd like having the run of Chuck E. Cheese for the weekend.

Even so, leaving her there for two days seems rather extreme.

Mimi was found shoeless and alone Saturday at the restaurant, and taken into CPS care. She could tell the cops only that her name was Mimi. After no one reported her missing, police distribute her picture to the media on Monday, hoping that someone would recognize her. Neighbors of Mimi's parents told them that their daughter was on TV.

Some people have all the luck. Whenever I leave my daughter behind somewhere, within minutes she invariably tracks me down.

Dad thought girl was with aunt [Star-Telegram]

I was kicking around the idea of getting my daughter a puppy for her birthday, but after seeing this pic, I've changed my mind. She's getting an octopus.

Every day, this blog faces the hard decision of selecting the newsiest, most interesting, most important parenting news items to present to you, my loyal readers.  Many items are considered, few are chosen.

Here's one that made the cut. It's a story about Diego, an 11-year-old Mexican boy who glued his hand to the bed so he wouldn't have to go to school.

Early Monday morning, Diego slathered industrial glue on his hand and attached it to the bed. Mom later found him watching TV with his hand stuck to the bed. She spent nearly two hours trying to free the  hand with water, oil and nail polish remover before calling the cops, who managed to unstick him.

Mama said: "I don't know why he did it. He's a good boy."

Diego said: "I didn't want to go to school because vacation was so much fun."

At first glimpse, this story may seem beyond trivial. But there are several valuable lessons to be learned here.

• Your kid may be "a good boy" but that doesn't mean he's not kinda stupid.
• Make vacations less fun. In fact, make them so not fun that by the end, your kids will be desperate to get back to school and away from you.
• If despite your precautions, this happens to you, leave the kid where he is. Sooner or later, he'll realize the fatal flaw of his clever scheme. Like when he has to go to the bathroom.

Boy Glues Hand To Bed To Avoid School [AP]

A new study is sure to rekindle the controversy over vaccines and autism.

Jenny McCarthy, Robert Kennedy Jr. and a lot of other non-celebrity-types are convinced there's a link between vaccines and autism.

But the study suggests it ain't so. It found that autism cases in California continued to climb even after the preservative thimerosal (the alleged culprit) was removed from vaccines in 2001.

OTOH, some say the rising incidence of autism is attributable to a broader definition, coupled with increased awareness of the disorder (i.e. if you look for something, you're more likely to find it).

Which leaves us ... kinda where we started. In other words, the cause of autism is just as big a mystery as it's always been.

Anyway, whether you believe in Jenny's theories or not, she's surely an inspiration for the autism community. Take, for example, her straight talk about the insecurities that arise from having an autistic kid:

After the divorce, even though it felt good and the right thing to do, I felt, as I'm sure many mothers with children who have autism feel, 'Who in the heck is going to love me with my child who has autism?' I don't care how big your boobs are or blonde your hair is -- you're going to feel that way.

Well, Jim Carrey, for one. Jenny says he loves her and her kid -- boobs, blonde hair, autism and all. That's so cool.

Study refutes autism, vaccine link [MSNBC]
 

Don't feel like bringing your newborn round for the relatives to coo over? In Japan, you can send a bag of rice instead.

A rice shop in southern Japan sells "Dakigokochi," or custom-made rice-filled bags shaped like a bundled baby and printed with the newborn's face and name. Each rice bag weighs as much as the newborn and is shaped so holding it feels like holding a real baby.

And its bags are better, says shop owner Naruo Ono, because

other rice shops sell bags printed with baby photos, but they use regular bags. People say they aren't good for holding. Rice for small babies would be stuck at the bottom of the bag, and the baby's photo would be scrunched at the top.

I agree. It's just not the same rocking your rice bag to sleep when the face is all scrunched up like that.

The rice bags are the perfect "half-return" gift, Ono says. In Japan, a gift recipient is often expected to respond with a gift worth half the amount of the first gift. (Does the first giver then have to respond with another gift worth half the amount of the second gift, and so on? What a weird custom.)

Still, it's not the perfect solution. Ono says people complain that once the cuddling is done, they have a hard time opening the bags up and eating the rice. I say anyone who develops that level of affection for a bag of rice has other, bigger problems to worry about.

Newborns visit relatives as cuddly bags of rice [Reuters]

The rest of the world may see a big fat kid, but chances are his parents thinks he's perfect just the way he is.

A new study found that 4 out of 5 parents of really fat kids view them as normal or, perhaps, a tad on the chunky side. You know, "big boned."

We're not talking about babies either (the only people who can get away with being potbellied and toothless). We're talking gradeschoolers.

Here's the skinny. Among parents with an obese, or extremely overweight, child aged 6 to 11,

43 percent said their child was "about the right weight," 37 percent responded "slightly overweight," and 13 percent said "very overweight."

Seven percent of parents actually said their little fatty fat fat was "slightly underweight." Can you spell D-E-N-I-A-L?

Study: Many parents of fat kids in denial [MSNBC}

As a highly allergic person married to another highly allergic person, First Feeding would love nothing better than to prevent my daughter from suffering the same itchy, sniffly, hive-prone fate.

Unfortunately, according to a new study, this blog has already blown it. The study says that the only surefire advice for preventing certain allergies is to breastfeed your baby exclusively for four months.

Which, I'm ashamed to say, I didn't do. But it may not be too late for you, because now you know what the deal is, courtesy of First Feeding! See how much I care?

Oh, and by the way, don't bother avoiding any foods like they used to advise. It doesn't matter.

Here's the full rundown:

• For babies with a family history of allergies, exclusive breast-feeding for at least 4 months can lessen the risk of rashes and allergy to cow's milk.
• Exclusive breast-feeding for at least 3 months protects against wheezing in babies, but whether it prevents asthma in older children is unclear.
• Feeding babies who are not solely breast-fed hypoallergenic formula may help prevent allergies.
• Avoiding peanuts or other foods during pregnancy or breast-feeding doesn't prevent allergies.
• Delaying introduction of foods such as eggs, fish or peanut butter doesn't prevent allergies.
• Soy-based formulas don't prevent allergies.

Anyway, that's it for the useful information, at least for a while. I'm allergic to earnest-itude.

Advice changes for preventing baby allergies [MSNBC]

What the hell is this? It's a wedding cake that is a full-size likeness of the bride (on the right, with self-satisfied expression and smaller set of boobs).

Don't you just love the expression on the groom's face? He looks like he stepped off the curb to hail a cab and got run over by a fleet of trucks.

The cake took a week to make and a week to eat -- those final bites must've been pretty chewy. Chidi Ogbuta, the bride, says the cake

actually fulfilled my childhood dream.

Some kids want to be a doctor when they grow up, some want to be a teacher, and some want to be remembered as the ultimate narcissistic self-absorbed Bridezilla to end all Bridezillas.

If I were a guest at that wedding, I'd probably skip the cake. Like what if you end up with something that looks like an ear or a finger or a left butt cheek?  Eeeeww, yucky.

Unknown which part they are keeping in the freezer for their first anniversary, though I really hope it's the head. Can you imagine the expression on the face of unsuspecting guests when they go to the freezer for a couple of ice cubes and come face-to-cake with Chidi's frozen visage? Definitely fodder for some excellent home video footage.

A British pub chain is limiting parents with kids to just two drinks, saying it wants to stop customers from using its pubs as a babysitter. A spokesman for pub chain JD Wetherspoon had this to say:

What we don't want, and what our customers who don't have children don't want, is that parents sit there for hours on end while their kids are getting bored, running round.

Harsh! And so unfair! Because they're just kids being kids! And they're adorable! All of them!

Anyway, this story totally makes me want to move to the U.K., since it means there are still plenty of other pubs where you can spend hours hanging out drinking, playing darts and watching Manchester United beat Chelsea while your kids are getting bored, running round, without your having to fork over hundreds of dollars to a babysitter. Throw in some mocktails and fish and chips and you got dinner taken care of too!

What a civilized country.

British pub chain limits drinks for parents [Reuters]

More people file for divorce today -- the Monday after New Year's -- than any other day.

It makes perfect sense. As divorce lawyer Suzanne Kingston points out, absence makes the heart grow fonder, or at the least, distracted from the deeper problems by the static of day-to-day existence. The flip side of that means the end-of-year festivities can translate into way too much togetherness. It reminds some people how much they can't stand their spouse, or their in-laws, or the entire package put together:

Over Christmas people are spending longer periods of time together. There is also the financial worry and the impact of relatives. And at New Year people often make resolutions and think about what they want for the future.

So if you're looking to shore up a rocky relationship, consider celebrating Valentine's Day early. Like today. Because it's hard to be mad at someone bearing chocolate and champagne.

Busiest day for divorce [Ananova]

You're Joel McKiernan. You're a guy. Your ex-girlfriend wants kids. You got sperm. She wants what you got. She promises you won't have to pay child support -- she'll raise the kids on her own dime. Being a nice guy, you say okay!

The next thing you know, a court socks you with an order to pay $1,500 a month in child support for the two kids, plus $66,000 in back support.

Because...no good deed goes unpunished.

And because, in the somewhat surreal world of family law, there's a school of thought that a mother cannot bargain away a child's right to support. As one judge put it:

The children point and say, "That is our father. He should support us." What are we to reply? "No! He made a contract to conceive you through a clinic, so your father need not support you." I find this unreasonable at best.

Lucky for Joel, that judge was in the minority -- barely. In a 3-2 decision, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled that the mom, Ivonne Ferguson, couldn't renege on the no-child-support deal she struck with Joel to get his sperm. They reasoned, reasonably, that:

Where a would-be donor cannot trust that he is safe from a future support action, he will be considerably less likely to provide his sperm to a friend or acquaintance who asks, significantly limiting a would-be mother's reproductive prerogatives.

In other words, had the dissenters carried the day, the children wouldn't be doing any pointing and saying, "Pay up, Dad." Because they wouldn't exist. Alive but poor(er) or nonexistent? Tough choice.

Sperm donor wins child support battle [MSNBC]

It's the cold and flu season and some people will try anything to get relief for their kids or themselves.

Here's something new, in geologic time anyway. The New York Times has seized on a cold-and-flu cure that is either two thousand years or a year in the making, depending on whether you are a follower of Indian yogis or Oprah.

It's the neti pot, which has nothing to do with the Abominable Snowman, though they do rhyme.

The neti is a little teapot that you fill with saline solution and stick up your nose to clear out the snot.  It's supposed to help with sinus infections and the like. Does it work?  Expert Dr. Bradley Marple says yes:

Studies indicate that saline nasal irrigation is a highly effective, minimally invasive intervention for people suffering from nasal issues. But it's just not as sexy to talk about. People want to hear about surgery or antibiotics.

Not even close to sexy. Kinda disgusting, actually.

But some believers have even gotten their toddlers to use one. Toddlers do love gross things. One mom bribes her 3-year-old into cooperating by giving him the little packets of salt to tear open.

First Feeding used a neti pot for a while until the novelty of having water go up one nostril and pour out the other -- along with whatever it gathers on the way -- wore off.

The neti pot also makes an excellent creamer.

Short, Stout, Has a Handle on Colds [New York Times]

Hey O! A new drug for increasing women's sex drive is in the test drive phase.

Libigel, a testosterone based ointment, works by causing selective temporary amnesia. For 4 to 6 hours, women taking the drug will forget that they have ever had kids. Instead, they will believe they are 25, single and childless.

If it passes the test and gets FDA approval, to market it will go, available to the roughly 1/3 of American women with low sex drive. Vroom vroom!

A 2004 study of LibiGel showed that the drug "increased the number of satisfying sexual events by 238 percent," from 2.1 to 7.1 events per month.

Side effects include a big hairy spot where you rub the stuff in??? Hopefully, they'll figure that one out beforehand.

If the drug never makes it to market, guys, no worries. In a couple of decades, experts predict we'll be having sex with robots. Whether they will also cook and clean is another story.

UVA Tests Drug to Increase a Woman's Libido [cbs4.com]

The whole world agrees that Japan has the best educational system on the planet. The whole world except Japan.

The Japanese, who are reeling from a recent fall off in the ranks of its students from the tippy top in international tests, have turned their educational sights on India. Unlike China's image in Japan as a cheap manufacturer and tech imitator, India's success in software, the Internet and knowledge industries has set off a craze for Indian learning techniques.

Japanese bookstores are filled with titles like "Extreme Indian Arithmetic Drills" and "The Unknown Secrets of the Indians."  The Japanese are also clamoring at the doors of the few Indian international schools in Japan. Places like Little Angels Kindergarten, where

2-year-old pupils are taught to count to 20, 3-year-olds are introduced to computers, and 5-year-olds learn to multiply, solve math word problems and write one-page essays in English.

So, um, where does that leave us? Far far behind, I'm afraid. America's aspirations for educating its kids -- its future -- are neatly summed up by President Bush's signature education program, No Child Left Behind. In other words, we're not looking to excel, just not to suck so bad.

Losing an Edge, Japanese Envy India's Schools [New York Times]

By now everyone knows about the fatal tiger mauling on Christmas Day. (Where the hell was First Feeding anyway? Stuffing my face and opening presents, thank you very much, and thoroughly enjoying my time offline.)

In case you were AWOL as well, this is what happened: A Siberian tiger named Tatiana escaped from her enclosure at the San Francisco Zoo last week, killed a 20-year-old guy and mauled two of his friends.

Stuff like that makes parents' danger detectors beep and chirp like peepers in spring. So, should we steer clear of zoos, and their pissed off, bored, snarling beasties? Or not worry too much about it, because it's clear that the victims -- three 20-year-old guys -- were asking for trouble? Or maybe we should just avoid the San Francisco zoo, which seems to have alotta problems, including a security wall around the tiger exhibit that's 4 feet short of the National Recommended Daily Allowance of Wall Footage for Tiger Enclosures?

This blog drags her kid to the zoo all the time, and probably still will. (I checked and the last NYC fatality was in 1987, when two polar bears at the Prospect Park Zoo killed an 11-year-old boy who climbed into their enclosure.) Maybe I'll end up facing the toothy end of a tiger with nothing but my Furla bag to protect me (after having, somehow, thrown my kid into a dumpster--sorry, kiddo).  But I doubt it.  It's a day out in the fresh air and a nice break from the 17 thousanth viewing of "Barbie in the 12 Dancing Princesses." And though I'm not a huge fan of zoos, maybe it will help my daughter to better understand that we share this planet with many other life forms and should strive to do so responsibly. Including, of course, tigers.

I'm curious what you think...

Tiger grotto wall shorter than thought, may have contributed to escape and fatal attack [SF Chronicle]

When I was pregnant with my first and only child, I was relieved to learn that my baby was a girl, for two reasons. First, my husband and I had already agreed on a girl's name. As for the boy's name, my husband was fixated on "Norris." Which wasn't even a real name, as far as I could tell. 

And second, we wouldn't have to argue over circumcision.

The U.S. has the world's highest rate of circumcision for non-religious reasons. Circumcision peaked in 1965, "at which point the genital integrity rate was just 15 percent." Today, the U.S. newborn male population breaks down into 57% acorns, 43% pods.

Geographically speaking, 2004 rates look like this:

• Midwest: 80 percent  
• Northeast: 68 percent
• South: 59 percent
• West: 32 percent

In an odd twist, according to the Jewish Daily Forward, more and more non-Jews are using a mohel, or ritual circumciser, to have their sons circumcised. The supposed rationale:

A desire for cleanliness (mohels operate outside of hospitals) and adding a bit of spiritual pizazz, even if the pizazz comes from outside a family's own religious tradition.

I went to my first bris two years ago. All I can say is ... I will never go to another one.  I practically choked on my bagel and lox.

But far be it for me to shove my opinion down your throat. There are other websites for that. Here's one that's pro-circ.

Check out the pic from the website (right). This is what life is like for circumcised men.

Because, according to the website, 71-83% of "mothers of sons" prefer sex with the acorn style of penis, vs. the pod. Because (a) it's so cute and (b) it's not so nasty.

Here is an anti-circ site. Their motto: A trombone plays more notes than a bugle.

The anti-circ folks call themselves "intactivists." They sell t-shirts, teddy bears and mugs to support their cause and spread the word. They have lots of icky footage of circumcisions and stories of the horrors of the unkindest cut of all.

Anyway, that's enough talk for now. Let's take a YouTube break.

Saturday Night Live - Royal Deluxe II TV commercial [YouTube]

In the spirit of outsourcing, the world's first official baby making factory is now open for business in --where else? -- India.

In the western city of Anand, more than 50 women are pregnant with the babies of infertile couples from around the globe. For their nine month contribution, the surrogates get paid around $5,000, or the equivalent of 15 years of the average Indian salary.

The cost to the couple is about twice that, plus travel expenses.

Unlike other surrogate arrangements, Anand offers a one-stop-shop. Couples provide only sperm, egg, and a credit card.

But there is a catch: You supposedly have to prove that you are seriously fertility-challenged. Simply not wanting to go through the hassle of pregnancy won't cut it.

Still, it sounds like a pretty cool option to me. Of course, the practice raises all kinds of ethical issues, which First Feeding is contractually forbidden from discussing. Too deep. That's what Salon is for, my friends.

World Outsources Pregnancies to India [Washington Post]

Looking for Hannah Montana tix? Here's a tip: Don't do what Priscilla Ceballos did.

Priscilla managed to snag 4 precious tickets. The ecstasy!

But then, just as quickly, she lost them. The agony...

Here's what went down. Priscilla and her 6-year-old daughter wrote a heart-wrenching essay about how the girl's father died April 17 in a roadside bombing in Iraq, and entered the essay in a local contest in Dallas.

The essay started thusly:

My daddy died this year in Iraq.

Tears welling in their eyes, the judges awarded the poor child 4 tix to the sold-out Jan. 9 Hannah Montana concert in Albany, NY.

But as mom matter-of-factly noted later, daddy happens to alive and well.

We did the essay and that's what we did to win. We did whatever we could do to win. But when [they] asked me if this essay is true, I said 'No, this essay is not true.'

The judges didn't like that. Their sobs turned into howls of rage. They unrewarded the tix.

Sorry 'bout that, Priscilla. But as a consolation prize, you will be pleased to learn that you are now eligible for the coveted First Feeding's Parent of 2008 prize. Stay posted!

Girl loses Hannah Montana tickets for lying [USA Today]

OK, this actually happened in '07, but I just learned about it today, so as far as I'm concerned, these parents qualify for the coveted First Feeding's Parents of 2008 award.

A New Jersey couple in a hurry left behind their six-month-old infant in a stroller on the New Brunswick train platform.

Each one blames the other for being so effing stupid.

After a quick check on board -- suitcase, diaper bag, laptop, baby ... BABY!!! -- they realized what had happened. They alerted the conductor, who alerted the cops and dad got off at the next stop, took a cab back to the station and retrieved junior.

This is what can happen when you haven't slept for six months. That's why when my daughter was born, my husband and I both had "Got Baby?" tattoed across our foreheads. Worked like a charm.

Parents forget baby at N.J. train station [New York Daily News]

First Feeding was recently given a glimpse into the lives of American teenagers courtesy of certain relatives and friends. Here's what I learned:  Teenage girls spend 95% of their free time texting, with the remaining 5% spent on Facebook and phone calls. Even when sitting next to each other in the back seat of a car, they would rather text than talk. Teenage boys spend 99% of their free time playing video games, with the remaining 1% spent texting a girl they like, if and when that situation arises.

How do kids segue out of the physical world (with some TV thrown in) and into the virtual world of the teenager? Web-tertainment companies are hard at work to make the transition as seamless as possible.

In other words, steel yourself for the onslaught of Get-A-Life virtual worlds for the rugrat set. Club Penguin and Webkinz are just the beginning of the beginning.

"Get ready for total inundation," said Debra Aho Williamson, an analyst at the research firm eMarketer, who estimates that 20 million children will be members of a virtual world by 2011, up from 8.2 million today.

As a blogger, I guess I should be ok with this. What's the diff if kids' play is virtual or real? They're still using their imaginations, learning social skills, etc. Put on Dance Dance Revolution for some exercise once in a while and they're set.

Plus there's a lot less mess to clean up.

OTOH, there's only one computer in this house. And it's mine mine mine. So it's off to the dollhouse for my daughter; I've got eBay auctions to bid on.

Web Playgrounds of the Very Young [New York Times]

Welcome to 2008! First Feeding has a bazillion resolutions for the new year, and I'm proud to say that so far, I haven't broken any of them. Just 364 days to go!

In the spirit of fresh starts, here's five tips for keeping your relationship with your S.O. strong. (Or shoring it up if it's just limping along.)

(And yes, DH, I totally see myself doing the don'ts.)

Don't confront -- communicate:  Take a deep breath to get past our natural "fight or flight" response to unpleasant situations. Then start talking.

Don't coach -- cheer:  "No one's telling you to pick up a pair of pom-poms, but if your face is constantly scrunched up like an umpire's, it's time to introduce some praise into the game." Nicely put, and so so true.

Shut up:  We're talking about the negative stuff. Research shows that successful couples stay in the 5-to-1 zone: five positive interactions to every negative one.

Open up:  If you feel like talking to your S.O. is boring or uninteresting, create new things to talk about by taking up at least one new thing together.

Give a hug: Studies show even a 20-second hug raises the level of oxytocin -- the "cuddle hormone" -- and helps us feel calm and connected to our partner.

5 important talking rules for couples [MSNBC]