People Magazine reports that the former Saturday Night Live star and his wife, Viveca Paulin, are expecting a third child.

The star, 42 and Ms. Paulin, 40, already have two sons, Magnus, 5 ½, and Mattias, 2 ½. The third child is expected to be a boy.

You’ve got to hand it to the mom. Jumping around with Will Ferrell alone has to be exhausting. I can’t imagine a house full of four of him.

The new baby is in January 2010, according to Ferrell’s representative.

Ferrell starred in last summer’s Land of the Lost. He also had a Broadway show early in 2009, featuring his George W. Bush impersonation that was nominated for a Tony Award.

Spa Baby European-style baby tub let’s you large baby in a natural way for the baby. Covers the baby with water rather than allowing baby to get cold while water is spread over baby.

$45 for translucent and new Eco version made out of recycled plastic.

Features fill line to control water level for baby.

I was skeptical about this category but after seeing this and Tummy Tub, this looks like a better alternative to the horizontal bath tub.

Innovation allows small pets to pass through. Baby n Pet Gate – $24.99

Baby monitors are one gadget that mom’s give dad permission to buy. The technology is advancing rapidly. Here are three new ones that might get you excited about outfitting the nursery:

1.
DECT Baby Monitor SCD 520/00 does the regular listening stuff but also monitors the temperature in the baby’s room so there’s one less thing for mom to worry about on cold winter nights. $150

2.
Best View Handheld Color Video Monitor has a 2.5 inch screen and a strong digital image. The camera in the baby’s room is controlled on the monitor side and you can pan, zoom and swivel it to take in the whole room. $199

3.
r Mini Baby Mo Mini Baby Monitor vibrates and makes noise when baby makes a sound so you can strap it on and “hear” the baby even during a party or while vacuuming. $100

This just in from the Armenian Medical Network website (story available also in Russian).

I love the “failure to launch” reasoning.

Italian men become fathers at a later age than any other nationality, and do little or nothing to help their wives once their babies are born, statistics office Istat said Thursday.

Italian men have their first child at an average age of 33, compared with younger than 31 for fathers in Spain, France and Finland, Istat said.

Part of the problem is that many Italian men live with their parents for longer than elsewhere in the world, with 40 percent of 30-34 year-old Italian males still staying at home.

[From And the world’s oldest first-time fathers are… - Gender: Male -]

I can’t find the average age of first time fathers in the U.S. It’s 32 in the U.K.

Our friends at DadLabs.com are at it again with a new book that tries to put in prose what they do so well in video. And, they do a great job, with tongue in cheek article son everything about pregnancy through Year 1 (subsequent volumes will treat older kids).

The new book is DadLabs Guide to Fatherhood. It has many practical tips on subjects like picking a baby name and how to change a diaper, just as you will find on DadLabs TV, but much of the value of this book is the ability to laugh at the early stages of parenthood, just as your pregnant partner is taking it so seriously. There is a time for soulful feelings about incipient fatherhood, but also a time for having a beer and making some crude jokes using all the new vocabulary you’ve just learned in Childbirth class.

Recommended for nervous dads who need to see the lighter side, or as a fun shower gift (you are throwing a man shower, right?).

$16.95 on Amazon and other fine booksellers.

For you men hoping to have a baby at a more advanced age, here are a list of your potential heroes:

David Bowie (at 53), Mick Jagger (at 57), Michael Douglas (at 58), Rod Stewart (at 60), Paul McCartney (at 61), Eric Clapton (at 59), Pierre Trudeau (72), Charlie Chaplin (at 73), Saul Bellow (at 84), Pablo Picasso (at 68), David Letterman (at 56), Larry King (at 65 and 66), Woody Allen (at 51), Warren Beatty (at 62), Dennis Quaid (50) and Jack Nicholson (at 53)

This one hits closer to home since I was already 43 when w had our first.

A recently released study finds that children of older dads score lower on IQ tests even after weighing socioeconomic factors.
Australian and US researchers analyzed test results of more than 33,000 US born children born to fathers between the ages of 14 and 66. The tests included reasoning, concentration, learning, memory and speaking and reading skills, at eight months, four years and seven years.

[From Fatherhood Examiner: Older Dads Father Dumber Kids?]

The lead author, John McGrath says that he was surprised by the results, since a lot of the “blame” for DNA errors usually goes to older eggs in the mom. Luckily, McGrath says the “effect we see is very small.”

Despite my advanced age, my kids are still among the smartest, most beautiful and well-behaved on the planet.

Fatal Distraction: Forgetting a Child in the Backseat of a Car Is a Horrifying Mistake. Is It a Crime?

The charge in the courtroom was manslaughter, brought by the Commonwealth of Virginia. No significant facts were in dispute. Miles Harrison, 49, was an amiable person, a diligent businessman and a doting, conscientious father until the day last summer — beset by problems at work, making call after call on his cellphone — he forgot to drop his son, Chase, at day care. The toddler slowly sweltered to death, strapped into a car seat for nearly nine hours in an office parking lot in Herndon in the blistering heat of July.

It was an inexplicable, inexcusable mistake, but was it a crime? That was the question for a judge to decide.

[From Fatal Distraction: Forgetting a Child in the Backseat of a Car Is a Horrifying Mistake. Is It a Crime? Gene Weingarten Reports. - washingtonpost.com]

This is a particularly chilling article on how leaving babies in the back seat of cars to die in a closed car is a tragedy that happens to all sorts of people. As a society, we demonize these poor people who already have suffered the worst event that could ever happen to a mom or dad. And then, we subject them to criminal prosecution. The truth is that this is a horrible unintended consequences of an unrelated safety issue. When airbags were put in cars, new laws required babies and children to move to the back seat, putting them out of sight, and sometimes tragically, out-of-mind.