Sometimes I'm embarrassed for my nation. I'm not an Obama supporter, for policy reasons, but this type of blind ignorance is frightening: Misconceptions of Obama fuel Republican campaign - 13 Oct 08. Unfortunately this blind ignorance and prejudice has provided fuel to stoke the fires of yet more prejudice, that between the Muslim world and the United States.
I'm a Republican. I have been my whole life. But my fellow Republicans need to get over it. Barack Obama is probably going to be our next president. We as Americans need to make peace with that collective national decision.
Sometimes I'm embarrassed for my nation. I'm not an Obama supporter, for policy reasons, but this type of blind ignorance is frightening: Misconceptions of Obama fuel Republican campaign - 13 Oct 08. Unfortunately this blind ignorance and prejudice has provided fuel to stoke the fires of yet more prejudice, that between the Muslim world and the United States.
I'm a Republican. I have been my whole life. But my fellow Republicans need to get over it. Barack Obama is probably going to be our next president. We as Americans need to make peace with that collective national decision.
I was sent this via email this morning:
Study Suggests Fan Use Cuts SIDS Risk in Babies
... and it's not just a small decrease, it's a SEVENTY-TWO PERCENT drop in risk. If the room is over 69 degrees Fahrenheit the drop is 94%! (Of course, you already have a higher risk of SIDS if your room is warmer)
That's really wild and awesome.
Courtesy of today's Stone Soup:
.... now where did it go??
Pre-Mommy Brain?
Analytical scrutiny reveals how complex fluid nourishes infants and protects them from disease
"WHEN IT COMES to feeding infants, the mantra is "breast is best." A diet of breast milk for babies is correlated with benefits including less diarrhea as well as lower incidence of diabetes or asthma when compared to formula-fed babies. But precisely how breast milk confers those advantages is unclear. Scientists know the basic ingredients of breast milk but don't fully understand how exactly they work to provide optimum nutrition for infants and protect against disease.
We headed out together to Quincy, MA the day after Mark arrived home from his 10-day motorcycle adventure and business trip (North Carolina, Cherokee, Deal's Gap.... good times with Al and Moose!).
Sunday we drove all the way to Quincy, MA and visited the Adams' Family Home - which was awesome, by the way! And then we continued on to see the ocean in Hull, MA. How wonderful a visit that was.
Guilderland Public Library (or any public library!)
http://www.guilderlandpublic.info/
Has story times throughout the week, to include an evening story
time, usually Mon at 6:30pm. Free movies on some weekends. Book clubs
etc. They have a good Parent-teacher section, lots of homeschooling
books.
Guilderland YMCA - this can get expensive, as I talked about
yesterday, for us, it's worth the cost as there are anywhere between
2-6 children in my house at any time. Full membership entitles full
use of the facility, to include a good share of yoga/aerobics/water
fitness classes, childcare for 1.5 hours per day per child, pool,
I've added more photos to Flickr the last few days. I think it's mostly August and September photos that have gone up.
I have also started putting videos on YouTube!!! iMovie makes it incredibly easy to upload photos directly to YouTube, don't even have to enter a web browser to do so! I'm psyched.
2008 BF Challenge
Or, as it is known in the Philippines; The Breastfeeding Olympics
What: A fun event to challenge geographic areas to see who can get
the most babies breastfeeding at one time. The winners are determined
by a percentage of birthrate.
When: October 11, 2008
Time: 11:00 am your time
Why: To celebrate breastfeeding, to educate the general public, to
develop peer support, and to just have fun!
Location/Site: Anywhere you can get 2 or more moms together. Some
sites are in someone's home. Other sites are in hospitals. Sites can
be in a park, at a clinic, at City Hall, on the Capitol grounds, in a
Hi Smallbany! So... you know my husband, know Amy and Ray, the three of them went to your wedding 8 years ago?! Now you're big into the LLLI group locally, have two kids, I'm married to Mark, and somehow you found our blog and have been following it and seen photos of Ezra, etc. And I went to a LLL meeting 3 months ago that you were at, and we're sitting next to each other at the NENY Regional Perinatal Forum Breastfeeding Subgroup! With our babies!
Well hi!
And Saturday night at River Street Cafe (I linked to Dish and Dirt because... well... I enjoyed the food, but felt as though dining there WAS overly complicated!
When running Ruby on Rails in a war using the GoldSpike servlets and context-param jruby.standalone is set to true you will need to use the jruby-complete jar file. Rails requires Gems in order to boot strap. I found that using the jruby jar file caused Rails to fail in initializer.rb when it tried to require 'logger' which is included in the ActiveSupport gem.
Also be sure to copy your required gems into WEB-INF/gems.
[EDIT: Better yet use ruby gem install --install-dir WEB-INF/gems. ]
Model Auto CompleterFollow-up to the beginning of the last post (Train of thought):
Pediatricians are usually required to take ONE nutrition course, a couple developmental courses, and a briefing on breast feeding. The whole well-child visits idea came from the need to ensure all children in the US were receiving on-time vaccinations. The well-visits correspond with a schedule of vaccinations.
The health promotion/preventive medicine aspect of the visits is after-the-fact, and pediatricians are asked to provide parenting advice and preventive medicine care, when their education has largely been based on ILLNESS and disease. Western medicine is non-holistic and based on treatment rather than prevention. Yet MDs trained in treatment are being asked to provide all sorts of recommendations that end up being largely anecdotal and rarely evidence-based.
In one of my online discussion forums, the topic of pediatricians and parenting advice comes up over and over again. Every day there's another mom saying, "My pediatrician said ______!! But from everything I read and researched, speaking with other professionals, and following my mom instincts, I should be doing something else! What do I do?!"
It ranges from breastfeeding/nutrition advice to ... more breastfeeding and nutrition advice! Sleeping and schedules also come up often.
After reading yet another post and reassuring yet another mom that she doesn't have to start cereal RIGHT NOW with her four-month old, that he WILL learn to swallow food (what neurologically intact baby doesn't develop that ability once their extrusion reflex goes away later on!), that she shouldn't limit breastfeeding (since that's his main source of nutrition for the first year), that solids are more about practice and experimentation, not particularly nutrition, I decided to write this post.
I just found some disturbing information, given that when Mark and I traveled with Ezra to Madison, WI, we were considering renting a car seat from Hertz when we rented the car, though we ultimately bought Ezra his own seat on the plane and brought his car seat with us.
Evidently, in the past 9 months, several parents have attempted to rent car seats from Advantage Car Rentals with absolutely miserable experiences... unsafe, extremely expired seats (at least 12-22 year-old seats!!), dirty, missing parts, and worse.
Check out one traveling family's experience in December 2007 at the San Diego airport Advantage Rent-A-Car, and then.. the follow-up.
Mark and I are in the process of rehabbing the house next door and we hope to move in within 2 months... at least move into the 2nd floor (grin). Lots of work to be done... and both our handymen are unreliable to an extreme. In fact, we can't count one as a handyman... he's never showed up! The other hasn't been around in a year. Ugh. And there's so much work to be done!
Asking around with our neighbors has only turned up one or two leads, and looking on CraigsList is OH SO SKETCHY.
But today, in one afternoon, from three individuals, came the phrase, "Angie's List." Angie's List? Oh, yes. Rate your services. Anything from a hair salon (yes, I just took the time to review mine!) to dog walkers to hardwood floor repair to kitchens and baths... you name it, that service is probably listed. They've recently branched into reviews of healthcare providers, which is great, because nothing I've seen out in the www does that job well.
