Blog Posts by BabyCenter

The best defense for when your kids start hurling, "Mom, I'm bored" bombs your way, is to come heavily armed with crafty ammunition. BabyCenter has an impressive database filled with craftastic activities to help save the day!

Regina Clarkinia

What you need

10 recycled water bottles of similar size, colored electrical tape, small ball

Instructions

Wash bottles and remove labels as best you can. Use tape to decorate bottles with stripes to resemble bowling pins. Set up bottles on smooth floor, hallways are best, in V-formation. Use ball to bowl over bottles.

Additional tips

Find someone who knows how to keep bowling score. Watch out for the cat!

Regina Clarkinia

What you need

Clean socks, ribbon, number tags, dried beans, white construction paper, rubber bands, bucket

Instructions

Fill socks with beans, leaving room at the top to secure with tightly-tied ribbon. (Tie ribbon in knot.) Make number tags

After waiting for over two hours in a Paw Paw, Michigan courthouse on Tuesday, Natalie Hegedus noticed that her 5-month-old son, Landon, was hungry. So she nursed him.

As Murphy's Law dictates, Hegedus was feeding her baby when she was finally called to the stand to contest a boating ticket before Judge Robert T. Hentchel. According to Hegedus, when she asked for a moment to collect herself, the judge questioned her about the appropriateness of feeding a baby in the courtroom. wikimedia commons

Hegedus replied that, under the circumstances - her baby was hungry and sick with an ear infection, and public breastfeeding is not illegal - she didn't think it was inappropriate.

At that, Hegedus says the judge informed her that in "his court" and under "his law," feeding her baby was not appropriate. When she got to the stand, Hegedus says she saw a note, written by a court aide, that said, "A woman is breastfeeding in court. My God!"

After waiting to hear the judge's ruling on the boating

On September 11, 2001, as I listened to minute- by- minute coverage of the terrorist attacks on the radio, I was six months pregnant. I remember rubbing my swollen belly and wondering what made me think bringing new life into this world was such a great idea.

Since that time, we've been a country at war. And in those ten years, 250,000 women have been deployed. Half of those soldiers are mothers.

Providing our children with short bursts of ecstasy is easy - simply hand over a chocolate bar or the latest must-have toy. But eventually, that joy bubble pops. The chocolate is eaten, the toy becomes not so cool, boredom ensues. And then we realize that true happiness - the ability to maintain a love of life, to weather challenges with grace, to feel good about one's own essential being - can seem as elusive as a 3-year-old's mid-afternoon nap.

How can we help our children achieve genuine happiness? According to BabyCenter, the answer lies in helping them build up their inner resources. Here, five ways to do just that.

Make time for free play

You've heard it before: Free play - that is, unstructured time for a child to use his imagination without a coach or teacher breathing down his neck - is integral to development. But what you might not know is that it also helps children lay a foundation for future happiness.

Through free play, your child can discover what brings

For the last month, you and your 2-year-old have been in potty training hell. Your days are filled with poop, wet pants, and Lysol; his days are filled with ambivalence toward his "big boy underwear."

Then your sister calls. Her voice is jubilant as she tells you that her 20-month-old just accomplished potty training - in three days. Lickety-split, the diapers are quit.

Is she mistaken? Deluded? Simply lying?

Nope. It can be done, according to this BabyCenter article featuring Julie Fellom's Diaper Free Toddlers program.

The program includes some fairly radical components, but Fellom claims they're pretty much guaranteed to work, particularly in children 28 months or younger. Some of the more interesting parts of the approach:

Three months of bare bottoms

For the first three months after your "potty training weekend," the child should be naked from the waist down whenever she's at home. That's right - no diaper, no pull-up, no underwear, no pants, no skirt,

There are few things worse than seeing your child ill and in pain - and there are few things better than getting some sound advice from your child's doctor.

But how do you know the advice is sound? Unfortunately, the initials "MD" don't necessarily stand for magnificent doctor. Here are four red flags to look for:

Apathetic or patronizing attitude

Listening is a huge part of assessment. If

Five-year-old Kaye loves to make mud pies; her best friend Faye prefers to play with dolls. Kaye usually puts on outfits straight off the floor or out of the hamper; Faye chooses only freshly washed and pressed threads. Kaye rarely brushes her hair and has to be bribed to take a bath; Faye bathes daily in strawberry-scented bubbles and owns a different comb for every day of the week.

Now for the quiz: Which child is more likely to get head lice?

Answer: Neither. Or rather, either.

As BabyCenter reports, head lice are "equal-opportunity parasites" who don't give a flying flip how clean your hair is, how nice your clothes are, or even how much your house costs.

The idea that lice are of the result of poor hygiene or poverty is a myth - one that has been around for generations. "I used to associate lice with 'dirty,' because that's what my grandmother taught my mother, so it's what my mother taught me," says one BabyCenter mom. "It wasn't until my sister got lice that

As the 10 th anniversary of 9/11 draws closer, media coverage is kicking into high gear. Even if you do your best to shield your child from the disturbing images of the planes crashing into the twin towers, chances are your child will catch a glimpse of the news footage or hear about the attacks at school or from other adults. So how do you talk to your kids about what they may see or hear?

Family therapist and BabyCenter expert Alison Ehara-Brown has some tips to help parents reassure their children when they're exposed to frightening news reports.

Limit access to the news

It's tough to completely insulate your child from coverage of major news events like the 9-11 retrospectives (or the recent fears over Hurricane Irene). Try your best to limit what your child sees when you're not around, and be available to talk if your family chooses to watch any anniversary coverage. Don't forget about newspapers with disturbing photos that may be lying around the house or what's on