According to an article, written by Deborah Netburn of the Chicago Tribune, sleep consultants for babies are all the rage.  Zombie like new parents everywhere are saying to heck with the recession and seeking the advice of baby whisperers who run between $200 to $800.

Although all types of people seek out sleep consultants, Dennis' clients tend to be high-performing professionals, mostly in their late 30s and early 40s. "It's funny and cute at the same time," she said. "Most of them run companies or are heads of major corporations, but they cannot figure out how to get a little person to sleep."

I guess I just don't run with the same type of crowd, because most of the people I know ask their friends, pediatricians, or maybe even buy a book to help get their kids to sleep better. That's what I did. No one ever told me I could outsource sleep training.  Hey, if it works I think it's probably money well spent.

Now, what else can I outsource? Is there someone I can hire for that birds and the bees lecture. That's really something I am dreading.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/features/family/la-hm-sleep-coaches-20100710,0,6156961.story

YouTube Link

Marshall is a 10-year old boy doing an online documentary called Portion Size Me.  The documentary chronicles his 31 day journey to better health through healthier eating. He is currently on day day 27.

You go Marshall! I think what you are doing is awesome. 

You can see all of his broadcasts here: Link

A Detroit teenager was found stripping at another adult club.  The teen has admitted to dancing at up to 4 different strip clubs.  Allegedly, at least one of the places she worked at knew they were hiring a child.

What's shocking to me is not that the parents lost control. That happens all the time.  What is really disturbing is that she was able to get work as an exotic dancer at multiple locations.

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Terry Shin of Oklahoma  keeps exotic and endangered tortoises as pets. Some he has had for over 30 years.  A few weeks ago six of them went missing from his backyard.

As a news crew was out interviewing Terry Shin about his loss some neighborhood boys showed up and returned 5 of his missing tortoises.  The happy moment was caught on tape. The boys said they found the tortoises in the street and had been caring for them since.   The boys received a $500 reward and their own baby tortoise.

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Hello Neatoramanauts and welcome to our very first Decipher The Doodle Contest.  This doodle was created by my almost-4-year old daughter.  I dare you to delve into the mind of this pint-sized artist and tell me what her doodle means.

We will award 2 prizes. One for the most correct answer and one for the funniest but ultimately wrong answer. Please leave your guess in the comment section. One guess per comment, but you are welcome to enter as many as you would like. Important: Please choose your own prize from the NeatoShop. You can pick any one item in stock, $25 or less. Write your item selection along with your guess, or you forfeit the prize, mmkay? Good luck!

Oh, and yes - I do know what the doodle means. Maddy explained it to me in great, great detail. I can't believe I was so stupid as not to see it in the first place. Stupid Mommy!

Update 7/15/10: Contest time is up! Congratulations to WrexLabs  for coming up with the closest answer and daikoneklectik for the funniest but ultimately wrong answer: Silly Mommy! It means "Don't attempt to limbo when fireballs are forming under the pole." Even tho you're wearing your vest that shoots blue laser beams from your chest, it's very dangerous considering the circumstances.

The real answer is: No little brothers playing with my jewelery! It is a sign she made to tape on her door after her little brother went intentionally went into her jewelery box just to annoy her.

Thank you everyone for participating. We hope you had as much fun with this contest as we did.

Chamara Washington, a Capital One call center worker, is a hero.  While making routine calls she came across  a crying 4-year old boy.  The little boy on the phone asked for help and told her the person watching him would not wake up.   Chamara listened to her motherly instincts and notified the police.

Georgia police  found the little boy all alone with a deceased caregiver.  The boy had already been alone for several days.

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Jennifer Senior of New York Magazine wrote a fascinating article on parenting.   It's titled All Joy and No Fun.  The article touches on a lot of the research out there that basically says if you want to be happy don't bother being a parent.   So I wondered how many of you really do hate parenting.  This is not to say you don't love your kids. Loving your kids and hating being a parent are two very different things.

Let me give a perfect example of people who love their kids, are great parents,  but hated being parents.  My parents.  My Dad tells me at least once a week that he was never meant to have a family.  He was really meant to be,  "A crack whore living in an apartment with the view of the ocean."   Yes, those are his exact words. My Mom, bless her, just nods.  The reality, however, is that she didn't like parenting anymore than he did.  These parents, who I adore, think raising my sister and I was akin to torture.

When both my sister and I announced we were going to have children our parents weren't as much excited as they were baffled. Why would we trade travel, money, leisure time for raising kids.  Had they taught us nothing? Didn't we realize that this experience was going to cost us hundreds of thousands of dollars? That this process was only going to break our hearts, because if we did our jobs well these kids were only going to fire us and move on with their own lives?  They obviously had raised idiots.

OK, I agree with my parents that there are lots of times that parenting can extremely suck.  Yes, it's expensive, time consuming, exhausting, and very gross.  Regardless,  I love it.   After reading the article I started to wonder if maybe I love it, because my parents  gave me such low expectations of the process.  I always knew it was going to suck, but what I didn't realize was also how awesome the highs were going to be. Then again maybe it's really too early to tell if I am going to hate parenting too. You see,  my kids are still small and one of the studies mentioned did say that people are happier when their kids are small.   Perhaps how crappy parenting is just hasn't sunk in yet.

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My baby is a thumb-sucker. She is the only one of my three kids to have this habit. Strangely, she only sucks her left thumb. She sucks her thumb when she is tired or cranky.

I will be honest, I have always found the baby's thumb sucking habit to be very endearing.  It's uniquely her.  Then again she is only 10 months old and I find everything about her to be fantastic. You know what they say about a Mother's love.

I have never stressed about thumb sucking. I have often told amused family and friends that I was sure by the time she went to college she would no longer be sucking her thumb.  Even the dental implications of the habit have never fazed me.  Given my husband's and my genetic backgrounds she is likely to need braces anyway.  See, I have always assumed that one day she would just grow out of thumb-sucking. That is until now.

A few weeks ago I came across a funny little piece by Betsy Shaw. Betsy sucked her thumb as a baby and toddler.

I continued to suck my thumb all through Kindergarten, grade school, high school and college…..

You see, Betsy is a well adjusted and happy Mother of 2, wife,  writer, and thumb-sucker. According to Betsy this pacifying habit that I find so sweet  is  something the baby may do forever. At first I was shocked.   This news goes against everything I have ever been told about the habit. Do some people really never outgrow thumb sucking?

Some time has passed and I have had a chance for this new information to sink in.  Will I eventually try to place the baby in thumb sucking rehab? Maybe.  I'm guilty of letting peer pressure get the better of me from time to time.  For now though, I think I am OK with the fact that I have a little thumb-sucker even if the habit is here to stay.

What are your feelings on thumb sucking?

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This post is for all you avid golfers out there. A 9-year old Michigan boy just hit his first hole-in-one and he has only been playing golf for a few weeks. He hit the ball from about 71 yards out.

David Crankshaw recorded a hole-in-one on Monday at the Georgetown Country Club in Ann Arbor. Bruce Crankshaw, his father, has been playing golf or more than 40 years, and he is still searching for his first hole-in-one. David, on the other hand, has been golfing for only a few weeks. Maybe it was the SpongeBob SquarePants golf ball that helped David.

The Dad is super excited and hoping his son will give him some pointers.

Do you think there will be a run on SpongeBob balls now?  The balls are available on  Amazon. Not that any of you would be willing to try anything so silly to get a hole-in-one.

http://www.clickondetroit.com/community/24183371/detail.html

I am no fashionista, but  I do have a soft spot for vintage clothes.  Many vintage pieces just seem to be made better.   The fabric choices down to the stitches tend to reflect  a level of care you don't see very often anymore.

If you love vintage clothes like I do you should check out Belle Heir's amazing collection of vintage baby clothes.  The clothes they offer are just beautiful.  Most of their one of a kind pieces are beyond my budget, but that doesn't mean I don't enjoy window shopping. Their amazing finds kind of make me want to hit the flea market and see what wonders I can come up with.

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Ideapaint lets you turn your boring walls (or a section of your wall) into a dry-erase board.  What a great idea for a playroom.

I currently have a kitchen door painted with chalkboard paint for the kids to play on while I cook.  The kids and I love the chalkboard.  They get to color on the chalkboard and I get to leave notes up there. The whole top part of the board is dedicated to emergency phone numbers.  The downside of the chalkboard is that the colors are pretty muted.  Chalk can also leave dust around.  I imagine a dry-erase board door would be just as fun and functional without some of the mess.

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Some dentists (with parental approval and probably funding) are giving young Twilight fans fangs. Would you let your teen get semi-permanent vampire teeth?

Oh, I think it should be noted that dentists seem to disagree on the safety of these unusual veneers.

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A Minnesota couple found a 3-year old boy wandering the highway at 2:45 a.m.  The couple believes the boy was sleepwalking.  The little boy did fall  fast asleep in his rescuers arms just minutes after they found him.

"The investigation revealed that the child walked down two flights of stairs from where he was sleeping," Officer Danielle Anselment of the Eagan Police Dept. told KARE.

"He walked out into the garage and pushed the button for the garage door opener, which was located on a wall within his reaching distance. Then he let himself out of the garage."

It was later found that the boy had walked about half a mile away from the home he was staying.

This story is a good reminder to all parents that toddlers are natural little escape artists.   We had to install a chain on our front door to keep our little guy in the house.

Link

Photo: Clipart

Logan Fisher isn't your typical 8-year-old. When his Minnesota home was broken into he headed to a city council meeting and gave a speech.

"These criminals are stalkers and cowards walking and driving our streets waiting to strike," he told council members and those in the audience.

"We need to get mean and we need to mean it," he went on to say.

Logan gave the council several ideas on how to curb crime in the city. He suggested the S.W.A.T truck drive around town to intimidate criminals. He told them to institute a three strikes and you're out rule for crooks. He even asked citizens to get involved and call police when they see something unusual in their neighborhoods.

Leave it to an 8-year old to remind adults of their civic duty to keep their town safe.  I love kids like this.  I'm thinking little Logan has a very bright future ahead of him, possibly in politics.

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Thieves broke into the Angels in Arms daycare in Ocala, Florida.   It's not the break-in that has people surprised.  It's what was not stolen that has left people scratching their heads.

Hilty can't believe somebody broke in, but the thieves apparently weren't looking for money. They raided the pantry and stole several boxes full of diapers and dozens of jars of baby food. They also took a stroller and grabbed a computer.A total of $1,300 worth of items was stolen. But it's the baby food that has police puzzled. They took 190 jars of fruit flavors, but left behind all the meat and vegetable varieties.

These are some picky burglars.  I can understand passing on the meat. Maybe they are  vegetarians.  What's the deal with the veggies?  Do criminals not feed their kids vegetables?

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Photo: Clipart