iBeth

Are You Parenting an Infant, Toddler, or Preschooler?

If your child is age 3 or younger, please consider participating in this research study:

We need mothers with children aged 0-3 to fill out an anonymous online questionnaire regarding infant  feeding choices.  It takes only 10 minutes.   If you would be willing to pass this link onto any friends who  have children 0-3, it would be great.  Of course, you can also fill it out yourself if you are in that category.

Does caching last forever?

Let's say I wanted to change the names I used to refer to my children on this blog.  Let's say that daughter #1 wanted me to call her and her sister something other than the names I've chosen to use here.  Let's say I went through my site and manually edited every single reference to them.  Would the names I used originally live forever in a cache on yahoo or google somewhere?  Thereby making it pointless to use different names?  (Lesson--take a little more time to think through these decisions before starting to blog *sigh*)

Cell Phones in the News

Via Textually,  an interesting collection of stories about cell phones:

A Korean university professor has created software to detect mobile phone use, as a way to forestall cheating. I can see the benefits. Still, my husband reports using a more old-fashioned method: on test days, students are required to leave all their belongings at the front of the room.  The only thing they may bring to their desks is a pencil.

Modern technologies like IM and closed captioning are making deaf culture fade away, some fear.  I can't help think of the arguments made repeatedly by foreign language departments that sign language shouldn't be considered a "foreign" language because it "doesn't provide a window to another culture."  Will that claim become less false in the future?  Or will deaf culture simply look different (and how?)  I suspect the latter, but don't really know enough about the subject to speculate further.

A French company created an adorable cell-phone for kids (targeted at children my daughter's age--eek!) but the product is now being pulled from the market because of the danger the radiation poses to young brains.

But younger children can supposedly benefit from cell phones after the phones have been transformed into baby monitors.  I don't get this.  If your baby is crying loud enough to trigger an alert, why wouldn't you go to her to see what is wrong?  If you need to call your crying child to comfort her, your house is too big.  Far better to just turn your cell phone into an amazing developmental toy and leave it in her crib--maybe she'll be less likely to cry.

(Not that our baby needs a cell-phone at night for any reason--we have a family bed.)

1992 House

As someone who was completely absorbed by Manor House and Frontier House, I just cracked up at this New Yorker article "1992 House." (via Library Dust).  The tone is exactly right for a student paper, too:

In conclusion, 1992 was clearly a very confusing, difficult time in which to live in the United States of America. Having to use landlines and eat carbohydrates were hardships for the people to endure, but Americans are nothing if not resilient. If I had been a teen-ager in 1992, I would have been really challenged to find alternative ways to keep my life interesting, stay thin, and communicate with my peers.

The irony: had I not married someone who appreciates good electronics, I might still be living in the 1992 house.  Well, except for the computer.

Joyous Grammar Description

I truly enjoyed the joyous discussion of the teaching of writing from this article by Philip Pullman in The Guardian:

The most valuable attitude we can help children adopt - the one that, among other things, helps them to write and read with most fluency and effectiveness and enjoyment - I can best characterise by the word playful.

 

Why Do Women Pay More?

Recently, the girls and I had our hair cut again.   Last time, I was so overwhelmed by the fact that it was Amelia's first professional cut that I didn't pay much attention to the price.  This time, I realized that not only do kids haircuts cost $14 (!),  this children's salon also charges women $2 more than men for a haircut!

How can anyone POSSIBLY think that price structure is fair?  My hair is much easier to cut than my husband's.  I ask for my hair to be cut to all one length, period.  No styling, no blow drying.  I'm pretty low maintenance, really, and when I have the girls with me, I'm even more so because I'm devoting all my attention to making sure they aren't getting into trouble.  By contrast, my husband's hair is layered and he has cowlicks and he is much pickier than I am. 

When I complained, the stylist responded that I could ask for a "mother child" special and save $2, but still, the "father child" special was even cheaper.

It's bad enough that women earn less.  We also generally pay more for everything from cars to dry cleaning.  And while we should ask more often to be treated better, merchants in this country really should be ashamed of themselves.

Anyway, I'm definitely not going back to that salon.  My husband and I decided we'd rather just cut the kids' hair ourselves.  So if you notice they're not looking quite as well turned out in the future, hey, at least they're not perpetuating gender injustice either.

Another Lefty

I guess it had to happen after we took her to a Kerry rally--Amelia apparently is left-handed.   (I say "apparently" because many children do not develop a strong hand preference until age 7 or 8.  She has favored her left hand for awhile now, but who knows?  Maybe she will switch.)

I've found some interesting resources for lefties:

Loving Lefties: How to Raise Your Left-Handed Child in a Right-Handed World book for parents . . . also available in e-book format.

Gauche! overview of research on handedness from a biological anthropologist, M.K. Holder

Famous Left-Handers  (compiled by M.K. Holder)

Great pages of links: Left-Handed World and Left-Handers Day (it's August 13)

Juniata College scholarship for left-handers

Online stores: Anything Left Handed and The Left Hand

Anyone have advice on raising a left-handed child in a right-handed family?

UU Blog Awards

I'm truly astounded and grateful that this blog been nominated in the First Annual Unitarian Universalist (UU) Blog Awards.  I suspect that, as I'd expect in a "first annual" award, the nominees comprise a relatively small group because iBeth has been nominated in several categories:

• Best Writing
• Best Design
• Best Links
• Best Anecdote or Narrative
• Best Review or Cultural Commentary

It feels terrific to know that people read and appreciate what I write here.  Even better is the opportunity to discover other wonderful, thought-provoking and uplifting blogs.  I've added them all to my UU blogroll.  Please check them out.

Wonder What Emma Is Reading?

And Emma's latest artwork: 

Color Wonder Fingerpaints

I've shown lots of Emma's art lately--here's Amelia's latest opus, created with Color Wonder fingerpaints.

For the record, I have mixed feelings about the Color Wonder products.  On the plus side, they allow kids to create without needing such close supervision, because the markers/paints only work on special paper.

On the other hand, the products don't seem as satisfying as regular markers/paints.  There's a delay between making the mark and the color appearing, and the fingerpaints don't "smear" like regular paints do.  Even worse, the color wonder coloring books will not allow a child to color outside the lines.  That just seems wrong to me.

I say all of this, but we do have an entire studio's worth of these products, and Amelia plays with them every day.  The invention is a neat idea, even if the execution isn't absolutely perfect yet.