first feeding

See Ya Later, Alligator

Cookie Magazine — Wed, 16 Jan 2008 11:18:17 -0500

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]

Hair Fairies To The Rescue

Cookie Magazine — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 11:45:14 -0500

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]

Hipster Alternatives To Disneyworld

Cookie Magazine — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 11:07:40 -0500

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.

Couples of the Week

Cookie Magazine — Mon, 14 Jan 2008 17:09:49 -0500

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...

Separated at Birth, Brought Together in Marriage

Cookie Magazine — Mon, 14 Jan 2008 15:30:44 -0500

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]

Grown-Up Flicks For Kids (Too)

Cookie Magazine — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 13:04:20 -0500

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]

These Are Your Parents On Drugs

Cookie Magazine — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 12:34:17 -0500

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]

Mr. Potato Head's New Best Friend

Cookie Magazine — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 11:17:29 -0500

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.

A Slow News Day

Cookie Magazine — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 12:00:37 -0500

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]

Study Refutes Autism, Vaccine Link

Cookie Magazine — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 11:58:32 -0500

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]