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Sex Challenge!
Here’s a link to send to your spouse, especially if you’re ready to try anything to get “sex” back in the phrase “sex life.” Mrs. Young (obviously a pseudonym), in her most recent column, as she always does, refers to the sagging love lives of new parents. She suggests reading such recent books as
365 Nights and Just Do It, both books on couples who made planned effort to have sex every day for an extended length of time. If you mentioned these books to your wife as well, you likely got the same nonplussed reaction I did. It sounded more like a desperate trick than a real romantic plan for greater intimacy.
Well, maybe then, this “challenge” from Cookie Magazine is more in the range of at least conceivable. First of all, it’s coming from a “girl magazine,” so it might have more street cred than if you leave a copy of Men’s Health lying around so that she sees their promotion of every other day ejaculation for a healthy prostate. Second, there’s a prize attached! Three days in Jamaica just for having sex seven times in seven days. Of course, the prize is a sweepstakes that will be won by some woman who has entered the contest without performing the requirements, but you don’t have to tell her that.
win a trip to jamaica! Enter for a chance to recharge your love life with a three-night stay at Jake’s in Jamaica. Airfare provided by
Air Jamaica. Also, take the Mrs. Young Sex Challenge Survey! [From Community: Cookiemag.com]
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Preparing kids for the challenges of the first days of school
It’s hard to imagine what goes on in a little one’s mind when he goes to the big school, but you can help him overcome some fears by talking to him before hand.
For example, many kids at pre-school and even kindergarten level, are nervous about the bathroom. Reassure your child that he can ask to go any time. Some kids have accidents at school, and he should be aware that this type of thing can happen, and does happen to a lot of kids. If you have given him strict instructions on other people touching him in the bathroom, make sure he is aware of how changes in caregiving my change that policy, for example if a teacher has to wipe him. Some kids will time their bowel movements to avoid school time. Discuss this with your doctor if it becomes and issue.
Buy clothes for your child with easy closures. No child at this point wants to have to ask their teacher to help them button their pants. Just at the moment you are trying to teach them autonomy, don’t burden them suddenly with shoelaces that need to be tied by an adult.
School is an ideal time to teach about making friends. You don’t have to be a car salesman to know the value of walking right up to someone, pointing to something you have in common (your love of sand or the color of your tennis shoes) and introducing yourself. This is not a skill that comes easily, but kids can learn these skills to, especially if you show them how it works, by introducing yourself to other moms and dads.
Lunchtime might also be stressful, if your child has never had to eat on her own. Many kids get stressed at lunchtime because they don’t have the leisure to drag it out like they do at home. Make sure your child has items that are easy to manipulate on her own rather than complicated foods that need to be reheated and might be hard to eat.
Your child may be scared of other small details that don’t worry you at all. He might think the school nurse means lots of shots. Or the school bus looks like a big scary tunnel he might get lost in and never find his way back home. Explore and discuss things like this with your child by asking him about his likes and dislikes about the school.
With a very small amount of putting yourself in their shoes, you can easily take steps to ease into the transition to school.
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Don’t let this happen to you! – Man arrested for leaving child in car during late-night movie
I always feel horrible for the parents who are arrested for doing something all of us have done at one point: drove without a seatbelt, left the car seat at home, and the worst, left the car seat on the car and pulled away with baby on top. Some of these stories are so sad and injust, just compounding a tragedy that has had major costs to a family. Any harried parent with multiple children has to sigh, and think, “there but for the grace of God…”
However, when you read stories like the following, you have to wonder how some folks made the decision to be parents in the first place.
A man anxious to see the new Batman movie missed out on the ending after police arrested him for leaving his child in the car. The 2-year-old boy was found sitting in a car in the parking lot of the theater Saturday night.
Even though it was dark outside, temperatures in the car were still high, and that wasn’t the only threat facing the child.
This happened in South Salt Lake at 1:00 in the morning. The child had been in the car for well over two hours in a parking lot that has signs that say “park at your own risk.”
[From ksl.com - Man arrested for leaving child in car during late-night movie]
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Parents to our parents – What one daughter wishes she had done differently with an aging parent
When you have kids of your own, you sense the changing of the generations. I hope your parents are young and you have thirty years before you have to think of elder care, but likely they are old enough you have to at least imagine the need some day. This article, written by a New York Times writer specializing in old age issues, still feels she made several mistakes in caring for her older mother.
What I Wish I’d Done Differently
By JANE GROSS
Looking back on the last few years of my mother’s life, with 20/20 hindsight and the belated knowledge that came from four years of reporting about aging for The New York Times, my single biggest mistake was not finding a doctor with expertise in geriatrics to quarterback her care and attend to the quality of her life, not merely its length.Given the crisis in supply and demand — too many old people and too few geriatricians — I may not have succeeded. But if I had, many of our crises might have been avoided. Those include unnecessary trips to the emergency room that left her in worse shape than she had been beforehand. It also includes surgery to remove a benign tumor from the outside of her spinal cord after it had already done the worst of its damage and with no regard for her advanced age.
[From What I Wish Id Done Differently - Caring for Elderly Parents – The New Old Age blog – NYTimes.com]
Her other three mistakes were:
2. accepting the “conventional wisdom” that nursing homes are uniformly bad and barely fit for a dog, and to be avoided at all costs. While she liked assisted living, it did not provide enough care as her mother got older, necessitating many changes, all of which were added work and destabilizing to her mother and the family.
3. thinking that a move out of the home to assisted living was the best choice. Once the move is made out of the home, you lose all opportunities for home care, and a nursing home becomes the only option when assisted living is no longer possible.
4. not fully understanding the limits of her $7000/year long term care insurance policy. It would have paid for 24/7 in-home care, but helped very little for assisted living. Once her mother was in a nursing home, the money went directly to the nursing home along with all of her savings until she ran out of money (when Medicare took over because she was “impoverished.”
As Jane Gross, the writer, points out, it’s hard to know how to avoid any mistakes since the sands are rapidly shifting in elder care and benefits, but her biggest words of advice are to research the situation now before you need it, since “haste, often the result of panic, is the enemy.
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Sick house? Tips for cleaning the air in your house
There has been a lot of talk about sick houses — houses that actually make you sick because of construction materials, cleaners, paints, solvents and pesticides. It might be hard to change houses, but there are things you can do to to make a house less toxic for you and your kids.
1. Get an air purifier and put new allergy rated filters on your furnace every 6 months. Whole house air filter systems work better than portable units. Ideally, use built-in or window unit air-to-air-heat exchangers in rooms where people spend the most time.
2. Get lots of plants. Experts recommend at least two tropical houseplants for every 12×12 foot area to clean up airborne toxins. Use ferns, spider plants, bamboo, and palms close to breathing zones like next to your bed, or TV chair.
3. Open the windows wide. Turn off heat or A/C and open the windows for 10 minutes each day to help rid the house of indoor pollution. Caveat: your allergist may tell you to keep all windows and doors closed during allergy season.\
4. Keep new pollutants out of the house. Every new TV, appliance, or laminate/particle board-based piece of furniture is a source of new toxins into the house. Environmentalists suggest setting these items in the garage a few days to air them out before bringing them into the house.
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