Ah, the holidays....and kids and crap

It's been awhile hasn't it? Well, between my other blog, Christmas, work, some knitting in my spare time and sleep, I haven't had much time.

Rosalyn is almost walking. I do not quite support this. She is not quite 10 months, which equals, not quite smart enough to NOT walk into the coffee table. (Of course, my 2.5 year old still does that so....) This morning, Rosalyn was crawling around, and stopped over my foot. At this point, she decides to slam her head down. On my big toe.

As some friends can vouch for, I'm not big on trimming my nails. Truth be told, I forget until my socks get holes in them. I do not spend an inordinate amount of time looking at my nasty feet. So of course she cuts herself (just a little scratch)

And BOY does she scream. Yes ladies and gents, that's my child. Mensa material I swear.

Vivian on the other hand, has learned that coffee DOES mean timbits. The girl LOVES Donuts. It's disgusting. She also loves to do dishes, as evidenced by the play kitchen I got her for Christmas. 100$ on other crap, and she LOVES the $10 sale kitchen. Go figure.

Vivian says she loves me all the time. It ROCKS.

The dorf has been off work due to a REALLY bad cold. Soon, I shall kill him.

BUT, he did get Christmas right, with a very cool sweater, my FAVORITE sex book of all time and a pedicure. SMART BOY. AND my Dad got me an easy button.

Blah blah blah. I'll post later in the week with something less like this. No free time with him working though!

CUTENESS

Oh, got to kittens and scroll down.

CUTEOVERLOAD!

This made my day. Oh, and the EASY button I got for Christmas.

No KIDS Allowed

I TOTALLY AGREE

I love this man. I shouldn't be able to take my kids everywhere, cause when I go out with my husband WITHOUT my kids, I want the quiet....

To him, it was a simple reminder to parents to keep an eye on their children and set some limits. But to some parents in his North Side Chicago neighborhood, the sign may as well have read, "If you have kids, you're not welcome."
That one little notice, adorned with pastel hand prints, has become a lightning rod in a larger debate over parenting and misbehaving children.
"It's not about the kids," says McCauley, the 44-year-old owner of A Taste of Heaven cafe, who has no children but claims to like them a lot. "It's about the parents who are with them. Are they supervising and guiding them?
"I'm just asking that they are considerate to people around them."
While he has created some enemies in his neighborhood, McCauley has received hundreds of calls and more than 600 letters, the overwhelming majority of them supportive. One letter-writer from Alabama typed out in bold letters: "In my opinion, you're a hero! Keep it up."
It is a sentiment that people feel increasingly comfortable expressing. Online bloggers regularly make impassioned pleas for child-free zones in public, while e-mailers have been forwarding a photograph of a sign in an unidentified business that reads, "Unattended Children Will Be Given an Espresso and a Puppy."
While it is common policy for upscale restaurants to bar children, owners of other types of businesses also are setting limits on kids.
The Wynn Hotel in Las Vegas, for instance, does not allow visitors who aren't guests to have strollers; hotel officials say it is to prevent crashes with other pedestrians. The Bellagio Hotel does not take guests younger than 18 without special permission.

McCauley has received hundreds of supportive phone calls and letters.
Some parents are fine with the limit-setting and complain that too many of their peers take their kids to places traditionally meant for adults, such as late-night movies and rock concerts.
Robin Piccini, a 42-year-old mom in Bridgewater, Massachusetts, gets annoyed when she has hired a baby sitter for her daughter, only to end up seated at a restaurant next to unruly kids.
"I am paying the same price so that I can have a relaxing dinner, but because there are lazy parents out there, my dinner has to be stressful and tense," she says. "How fair is that?"
Still, while they agree that some parents push the boundaries too far, other weary parents feel under siege -- and misunderstood.
"Don't get me wrong. As a parent, I have an arsenal that includes the deadly stare, loss of privileges and 'We're going back to the car, RIGHT NOW!"' says Angela Toda, a 38-year-old mother of two small children in College Park, Maryland. "But the bottom line is, there are certain moments that all kids and parents have -- and sometimes your kid is going to lose it in a public place."
She says she does not usually respond well to other people's interference, "unless it is a sympathetic look."
Parents in Port Melbourne, Australia, also were upset last year when a sign appeared on the restaurant door at the Clare Castle Hotel stating that children were welcome only if they stayed in their seats. The establishment has since changed hands and dropped the policy, which new owner Michael Farrant says makes no sense in a neighborhood filled with young families.
"I like the kids running about," says Farrant, a father of three, including a 2-year-old. "I know what it's like with a little one. Sometimes, there's no controlling them."
Still other business owners are creating separate spaces for kids and families, in an attempt to accommodate as many generations as possible.
All Booked Up in Suffolk, Va., is among bookstores that have separate sections where kids can play and rest. Many ballparks have alcohol-free "family sections." And a few restaurants have added separate dining areas for parents with children.
Zulema Suarez, a professor who studies parenting, applauds attempts to strike a balance.
"There needs to be a give and take," says Suarez, an associate professor of social work at Adelphi University in Garden City, New York. "Children don't need to be allowed to run wild and free, but they do need to be allowed to express themselves."
Too often, though, our cultural emphasis on freedom and individual rights gets taken to the extreme, becoming "a kind of selfish entitlement that undermines our ability to function as a civil community," says George Scarlett, a professor of child development at Tufts University in Boston.
"The rights of any one individual -- whether he or she be a parent, child or stranger -- do not negate the rights of others."

If they only had a brain

We need to get a little activated about this. This is CRAP.

Morning-after pill privacy concerns raised

Canadian pharmacists are being advised to collect a woman's name, address, phone number and sensitive details about her sexual activity before dispensing the so-called morning-after pill.
The guidelines, put out by the Canadian Pharmacists Association, have drawn concern from women's health groups, which say the rules are discriminatory and raise privacy issues.
Anne Rochon Ford, co-ordinator of Women and Health Protection, a coalition of groups concerned about drug safety and funded by Health Canada, said she's not aware of any other behind-the-counter drug where pharmacists are asked to gather data before dispensing it, which "makes (the drug) look suspect and very loaded."
But Janet Cooper, senior director of professional affairs for the pharmacists' association, said the information is necessary to determine whether the pill will be used appropriately and effectively, since it doesn't work if taken more than three days after intercourse.
She said the information is to be kept in the pharmacy's computer "so that if she came in a month later for another one, that would mean she probably needs to be advised to get better contraception."
"We've been concerned about this since day one," said Abby Lippman, chair of the Canadian Women's Health Council and an epidemiologist at McGill University. "I think it's an invasion of privacy — why should women have to go through this?"
Pharmacists are also charging a "counselling fee" of about $20 on top of $20 for the pill, putting it out of reach for many women, she said. The fee is government-paid only in Quebec, Saskatchewan and British Columbia.
Health Canada moved the emergency contraceptive levonorgestrel, or Plan B, from being a prescription to a behind-the-counter drug in April, making it available to women of any age. A woman is required to ask the pharmacist for it so she can be counselled about its use.
The pharmacists' association immediately posted guidelines on its website. They include giving women a screening form to fill out that asks for personal identification, the time when they last had unprotected sex, the number of times they have had unprotected sex since their last menstrual period, and what form of birth control they use. The information should be stored in the pharmacy's computer, the guidelines state.
"These are highly personal, interrogative questions, and it's disturbing," Ford said. Women taking this pill are already under stress, and "the last thing they need is this kind of interrogation," she said.
"We are a bit stumped why they have gone to this degree," she said. "This is just so over the top, unnecessary and unproductive."
Most pharmacies don't have a private place to counsel women, so it must be done in public.
It should be up to the woman to ask for advice about taking it, Ford said.
The working group and the Canadian Women's Health Network are advocating that the drug be taken off the drug schedule completely so it could be made available at grocery and variety stores. That has the support of the Society of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and other groups, Ford said.
Cooper said the guidelines aren't mandatory but "this is considered best practice. As an association, we can give guidelines but we can't dictate. If a woman actually did not want to provide this information, a lot of pharmacists are going to use their best judgment.
"If a woman was really uncomfortable, the first thing I would do was tell her that there is a code of privacy and the pharmacist has to keep it absolutely private," Cooper said, adding the goal is to make the drug available without a prescription but at the same time allow women to get advice from pharmacists.
While pharmacists have a privacy code, "nothing is private anymore" when information goes into a computer, said the health council's Lippman. "It's not a drug people are going to be abusing; it's not regularly used and it's not harmful if it's taken too late and she's already pregnant. The side effects are nausea and vomiting — nobody would want to take it regularly. There's just no reason for this."