The Sneaky Chef

Most moms will tell you that at some point, their child is a picky or finicky eater. There are only so many meals of mac and cheese, hot dogs, and chicken nuggets you can manage before you start looking for help. You want your child to eat more nutritional foods, but when they snub everything except what they've decided to eat, it makes it nearly impossible! The The Sneaky Chef by Missy Chase Lapine has the perfect solution for any mom looking for a way to get their picky eaters to include more nutritional foods in their diet.

In addition to being a recipe book filled with kid-friendly foods that they love, The Sneaky Chef explains how issues of control are what empowers the picky eater. Children don't have to eat poorly. They can enjoy nutritional and tasty food, which will help them fend off the childhood obesity monster that is creeping its way into the American household. Lapine gives many examples and reasons for "sneaking" the good stuff into their favorites, while making it easy for mom.

The book is arranged in a fashion that is easy to read and easy to reference. It includes lists of foods that kids believe to be the good, the bad and the ugly. More lists include staples to buy, important foods to buy organic if possible, the most contaminated foods, and the tools you need to make your sneaking work best. Plus, in Chapter Five, you will read all about "The Sneaky Chef's Bag of Tricks," where you will learn to be the queen of sneaking nutritional foods into their favorites. Tricks include methods to combine foods (the sneaky way, of course), the health benefits of those tricks, and even how to make the food visually appealing for children so they dive right into their meal! There are thirteen total methods used to make your child's favorites into something healthier! It's a win-win situation!

The second half of the book covers actual recipes you can use for breakfast, lunch, snacks, dinner, treats and drinks. These are things that kids already love, but prepared in a way that makes you feel better about what they are putting into their mouths. Imagine your children eating things like peanut butter cookies, burgers, fries, pizza, pasta, chicken, meatloaf and even cheese dip without cringing from the lack of nutrition making it past their lips! The recipes are easy to follow, aren't full of ingredients you've never heard of (or rarely use), have nutritional highlights and many have variations you can use to tweak to your liking.

Not only is this clever book a good educational reference, but it's a must have for every mom on the block. Please your children (and their palate) while giving them vitamins, vegetables, protein, fiber... and the list goes on! The Sneaky Chef is a book that lives up to its name, and then some!

The Second Nine Months: One Woman Tells the REAL Truth About Becoming a Mom. Finally.

The excerpt below is from The Second Nine Months: One Woman Tells the REAL Truth About Becoming a Mom. Finally.
by Vicki Glembocki

Book Description from Amazon.com: In the spirit of Anne Lamott's Operating Instructions, a reality check for new moms. I want to walk out of Target and leave Blair there, wailing.... Nice people work at Target. Surely someone would take her home and care for her and buy her pretty things. So begins Vicki Glembocki's brutally honest yet hilarious memoir of her agonizing transition into motherhood. Why agonizing? Because no one told her how tough it would be. Finally, Glembocki lays out the truth about those first months with baby: the certainty that you're doing everything wrong; the desire to kill your husband, your mother, your dog; the struggle to balance who you were with whom you've become--a mother. Unlike any other book on motherhood, Glembocki breaks the New Mother Code of Silence, proving that "maternal bliss" is not innate, but learned. Funny and wise, she connects with new moms on a shockingly intimate level, letting them know that they are not alone.

Excerpt From The Second Nine Months: One Woman Tells the REAL Truth About Becoming a Mom. Finally.
by Vicki Glembocki

Two weeks later, I push the stroller down a street I've never been on before. This is the first walk the baby and I are taking together. There is probably a line in the baby book my mother gave me, the one that's still in its plastic box in one of the many piles on our dining room table, where I'm supposed to document this moment-First Walk In Stroller. Taking this walk is supposed to be relaxing. The Girlfriend's Guide to Surviving the First Year of Motherhood said so-"Get out and get fresh air…it does wonders for your spirit." My spirit is supposed to be inhaling the warm, late-March air, feeling invigorated while I maternally point out the many things the baby is seeing for the first time. The buds on the maple trees. The trail from an airplane. The tabby cat sunning itself on the back stoop of the white house we just passed. But I am not. Because the baby is crying.

I push faster.

She keeps crying.

I hum The Alphabet Song.

She keeps crying.

I shift the angle of the canopy, in case the sun's shining in her eyes.

She keeps crying.

I reach down the back of her neck, under the cotton blanket she's swaddled in, under her lavender one-piece body suit with the yellow butterfly on it so I can finger the tag, in case there's a plastic, price-tag holder sticking out of it. Or an open safety pin. Or a pickax. There's nothing.

She keeps crying.

No matter what I do, she keeps crying.

What I should do is turn the stroller around. I should not be in public. I should go home. But I can't go home. Because, a block away, there is a Laundromat, and in that Laundromat are the quilt from our bed and the afghan from our couch, tumbling in an industrial dryer, a task that was on my "List of Things To Do Before The Baby Comes" because the quilt and afghan-too large for our washer and dryer-had fused with zillions of sharp, blonde, burrowing dog hairs, discarded by Levi, our 80-pound Lab, hairs that I was certain would break free, lodge in the baby's throat, and choke her. I need to finish this job. I have two hours between each nursing so there's time to finish this job. I feel along the sides of the baby's swaddle to make sure her fingers aren't bent the wrong way. I tuck the blanket under her feet, in case her feet are cold.

She keeps crying.

What am I doing wrong?

I pull out my cell phone and dial Thad's office line.

"I can't do this," I say, before he even says "hello."

"What happened?" he asks. I hear the wheels on his office chair roll across the floor and his door close. I tell him about the afghan and the Laundromat and the crying. About how I can't stop the crying.

"Is she hungry?"

"No."

"Is she wet?"

"No."

"Maybe you just tried to do too much, sweetie. Maybe you should just go home," he says in his new mellow tone, the one he's been using in the middle of the night for the past two weeks, every time I nudge him awake and declare that I'm certain the baby is dead.

"She's not dead," he always says, calm and patient, just like he was when I woke him up with the same worry roughly 13 seconds before.

"How do you know that?" I always ask.

"I know."

"How do you know?" And Thad flips the covers onto me, staggers over to the Pack 'n Play at the foot of our bed, and leans over so his cheek is next to Blair's tiny mouth, waiting until he feels a few bursts of warm air.

"She's not dead," he whispers, climbing back into bed. I always lie there for a few seconds. Then I get up and check myself, resting my hand lightly on Blair's chest, swaddled so tight I wonder if the receiving blanket is the only thing holding her fragile body together, until I feel it rise, up and down, up and down.

Now, though, in the light of day, his soothing "everything's okay" tenor makes me clamp my teeth together, as if he didn't just suggest I go home, but instead told me to do the very opposite, to suck it up, to finish the damn bedspreads and then make a meatloaf.

You can purchase The Second Nine Months: One Woman Tells the REAL Truth About Becoming a Mom. Finally. at Amazon.com!

The Coming China Wars

The excerpt below is from the book The Coming China Wars
by Peter Navarro
Published by FT Press; May 2008;$15.99US/$17.99CAN; 978-0-13-235982-5
Copyright © 2008 Peter Navarro

Author Bio: Peter Navarro, a business professor at the University of California-Irvine, is the author of the best- selling investment book If It's Raining in Brazil, Buy Starbucks and the path-breaking management book, The Well-Timed Strategy. Professor Navarro is a widely sought after and gifted public speaker and a regular CNBC contributor. Prior to joining CNBC, he appeared frequently on Bloomberg TV, CNN, and NPR, as well as on all three major network news shows. He has testified before Congress and the U.S.-China Commission and his work has appeared in publications ranging from Business Week, the L.A. Times, and New York Times to the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, and Harvard Business Review.
http://www.peternavarro.com/
http://www.comingchinawars.com/

Assassins in Toyland
by Peter Navarro

Apparently when you tickle Elmo he's not laughing, he's having a seizure. --Jay Leno

In an attempt to assure the world's children that millions of Chinese-made toys currently being recalled for containing toxic lead paint and tiny choking hazards can no longer hurt them, high-level Chinese officials announced Tuesday that millions of playthings are being rounded up and immediately put to death . . . According to the Xinhua News Agency, in the past three days alone, factory owners roused an estimated 365,000 Barbie dolls from their dream homes in a violent series of raids. During these raids, the Barbies were separated from their Kens, stripped naked, and had their heads shaved. They were then taken to an undisclosed area, leaned against the wall and shot by a firing squad as toy soldiers were forced to watch. --The Onion

These satirical treatments of China's toy recall crisis from America's top banana, Jay Leno, and parody newspaper, The Onion, provide at least some comic relief from a situation that has been extremely troubling, particularly to parents with young children. Although most people are already well aware of many of the details of this crisis, it is worth at least briefly recapping the extent to which America's toys have been turned into instruments of death by unscrupulous
Chinese manufacturers. Here's just a brief scorecard of the kinds of toys that have been recalled from the shelves by the likes of Toys "R" Us, Target, and Wal-Mart:

• 3.8 million Magnetix magnetic building sets that can kill by perforating the intestines if the magnets are swallowed

• 1.5 million Fisher-Price lead-contaminated toys, including popular Sesame Street characters such as Giggle Grabber Soccer Elmo, Chef Dora, Rev & Go Cookie Monster, Ernie and Bert, and Oscar the Grouch

• 1.5 million Thomas & Friends lead-painted wooden trains, and 1 million Hasbro "Easy-Bake" ovens that can trap children's fingers in the Oven and burn them

• 253,000 of Mattel's die-cast cars modeled after "Sarge" in the cartoon movie Cars, and 90,000 units of Mattel's GeoTrax locomotive line

• 31,000 "Skippy" plastic fish that can break and slash a child's hands, and 15,000 Laugh and Learn Kitchen Toys posing a choking hazard

For concerned parents and grandparents shopping for toys, it is critical to point out that whereas well-known brand companies such as Mattel and Toys "R" Us have had their fair share of had headlines, the bigger problem is often with those ultra-cheap, "no brand" toys that wind up at deep-discount stores. It is precisely in stores such as these that a variety of Halloween toys have been found to represent far more tricks than treats. Here's just a small sampling:

• 142,000 purple witch buckets, 63,000 green Frankenstein cups, and 55,000 candy-filled skull pails posing a lead hazard

• 120,000 "Creepy Cape" costumes capable of bursting into flames, and 97,000 Mr. Potato Head "Make a Monster Pumpkin" sets deemed a choking hazard

It is precisely these kinds of statistics that raise this overarching question: How can China's toymakers turn something as innocent and pure as children's toys into a profanity of poisons and choking hazards?

Baby Signing 1-2-3

When my son was born, I knew nothing about baby signing. The older he got, the more I started seeing topics on the internet about the benefits of baby signing. As mothers, we want our children to be the smartest, most intelligent child on the block. However, I thought I had cheated him out of this language skill because I didn't start him as soon as I could have. Then I was introduced to Baby Signing 1-2-3 by Nancy Cadjan, and to my surprise, it really doesn't matter when you begin baby signing because children of all ages will benefit from the use of ASL (American Sign Language).

Baby Signing 1-2-3 is arranged in a very comprehensive way. The first part of the book addresses your child's developmental stages and the appropriate signing that can be used during that time. For those with children who develop at a slower pace either mentally or physically, an entire chapter is designed on how to modify the signing used during that child's individual development. The actual signs used during the developmental stages are contained in the second half of the book, and those same words are bolded in the text in the chapters from the first half of the book. This design makes it incredibly easy to reference the stage you are in with your child.

Since my son is four now, the stages of development aren't the most important parts of the book for our situation, but he can still learn signs in the order in which he would have if I had introduced ASL to him as an infant. Much like our children's own speech development and their capacity to understand, learning the signs he would have learned from stage one still applies. Words like mommy, daddy, milk and more are great starters even for the older child. The best thing is we can learn more signs at a quicker pace now that he is older.

Baby Signing 1-2-3 has been a great tool for my both my son and myself, and we've both enjoyed sitting down and learning signs together. He actually picks up the book and asks for me to help him learn. The added benefit is that once our next child is born, both my older son and I will be able to help baby learn ASL at a much younger age with the great help of Baby Signing 1-2-3. I highly recommend Baby Signing 1-2-3 for any individuals who are new to ASL and want to teach themselves and their children this life long, beneficial communication tool.

Emotionally Healthy Twins

Mom to twins? Me too! Well, at least in utero. I still have some time before my twins are born, and I am already hearing phrases that make my ears ring in pain. It's amazing how the moment you become pregnant with more than one child, others seem to lose a sense of couth (if they ever had it to begin with) and say things like "better you than me," "are they natural?" or "double the trouble." The list goes on, and if you are a mom to twins, it is certain you've heard even more offensive or hurtful words. It all goes back to the stigma attached to twins. The stigma of always being a twin, being compared to someone else, having to always share the spotlight with a sibling that just happened to be born on the same day. I suppose if you aren't a twin yourself, you may not think about these things until you become a mom to twins. To go even further, parenting and raising twins to not feel that stigma could be the challenge of a lifetime.

Goodbye stigma; hello to Joan A. Friedman, Ph.D. Friedman is a twin, is a mother to twins, and is author of an amazingly insightful book, Emotionally Healthy Twins: A New Philosophy for Parenting Two Unique Children. This book covers parenting from pregnancy into adulthood, and couldn't have come at a better time for me!

Over the past year I've listened to my best friend talk about her twins. From their birth she's made a conscious decision to never compare the two - but it's easier said than done. It just seems to happen naturally. However, her goal falls in line with the first chapter in Friedman's book, being a mom to two unique children, identified by their own individual likes, dislikes and personalities. Two children not identified as "the quiet one" or the "more active one." These kinds of comparisons begin in utero and can follow each child into adulthood. Combating the comparisons is immediately addressed in Friedman's book. Even though the world around us glorifies twins by making them seem more intriguing or appealing (think Double Mint commercials), we as parents can and will silence the glorification and focus on each child individually, making sure they grow into emotionally healthy adults.

Emotionally Healthy Twins is arranged in a way for parents with twins of any age to simply pick up and start reading and learning ways to help each twin feel unique and separate. For me personally, and for my husband, this book is providing strategies to view our children as two individual children long before they are born. We've already learned to use phrases like "the babies" instead of "the twins" to ensure the separate and unique ideal we will want to follow after they are born. It is easy little changes in the way we are thinking that will make huge differences for them in the future.

As for those with older twin children, relative guidance is given to parents with children in their preschool years, elementary school years, preteen and teen years, and young adulthood. Each age and stage brings new situations to the table, from friends in school and those rebellious years, to forming meaningful and emotionally healthy relationships with people and potential spouses in young adulthood. Emotionally Healthy Twins really hits on all the basic, yet pertinent stages of raising a child who is happy with themselves and happy with their relationship to and with their twin.

So whether you've just found out you will be having twins, or have twins already into their teen years, Emotionally Healthy Twins: A New Philosophy for Parenting Two Unique Children has something to offer moms and dads alike. Even if you haven't overcome the stigma, there are ways to move from it and Friedman offers the tools you'll need to raise two unique children who share the same birth date.

You can learn more about this book at Amazon.com or http://www.emotionallyhealthytwins.com/.

An Intimate Understanding of America's Teenagers: Shaking Hands with Aliens

As a thirty-something mom to a kindergartener and twin infants, I face daily challenges that test not only my parenting skills, but my negotiation skills, time-management skills, communication skills and a laundry list full of other skills needed to make my family and home a happy and safe place to be. As a step-mother to a sixteen year old, I have to work from a completely different playbook. Although I feel like it wasn't that long ago I was actually a teenager myself, I am reminded of just how far removed I am from those teenage years. It is almost as if I am an outsider looking at something completely foreign to me… something so different from what I remember my teenage years as being… something completely alien.

Bruce J. Gevirtzman has appointed himself as the expert on teenagers, and rightly so. He's spent more than 30 years teaching teens, being active in their lives in many different ways, and his hands-on experience has given him the ability to bridge the gap of understanding between teens and their parents. An Intimate Understanding of America's Teenagers: Shaking Hands with Aliens is the ultimate guide for understanding and communicating with teens. Not only is it appropriate for parents to read, but Gevirtzman speaks directly to teachers and teens in the book as well. If teens came with a user's manual, this would be it!

Although my husband's daughter doesn't live with us and I don't have a lot of contact with her, Gevirtzman's book and the topics discussed have shed a much needed light upon some of the concerns I've had in understand where she is coming from. I've also gotten a glimpse into the future of what I will be facing, because as Gevirtzman points out quite clearly, although times have changed and some issues are more serious with teens than they were when we were that age, teens are facing the same issues as before and they always will.

An Intimate Understanding of America's Teenagers is broken down into chapters that revolve around one specific topic each, beginning with communication and the unique language of each generation of teens, to the topics of self image, athletics and other extra curricular activities, sex, controlling parents, and a large array of other topics that make up the life of America's teens. In many of the chapters, Gevirtzman presents different answers to straight-shooting questions that teens themselves have provided. Answers to questions like what they see when they look into a mirror, why they participate in sports, would they tell a friend's parents if they knew their friend was doing drugs or other illegal activities, and even why males pierce their ears. It isn't necessarily the questions that will shock parents. Actually, it is quite the opposite. The questions are the same questions we as parents should pose to our teens at some point. The truthful answers are in part quite shocking when we realize that finally, teens are being honest and open (mostly), as this peek into their reality is very telling to their situations. All of this is provided in a way that only Gevirtzman could supply. His intimate knowledge of teens, from public faces they put on for the world to see, to private challenges they face every day, these teens share with him a slice of their lives that many parents and teachers never see or are just to pre-occupied to notice.

As Gevirtzman points out, being a teen is such a small snippet in time compared to the long life many of us have. However, the drama and effects of those few short years can not only last a lifetime, but it can also help (and often does) shape who we are for the rest of our lives. One off-the-wall incident in our teen years could change our very core and affect how we respond to things decades down the road. So why aren't we spending more time with teens, understanding them, so we can help make this time better for them? An Intimate Understanding of America's Teenagers does exactly that. It truly is a handbook for the ins and outs of the American Teenager.

Gevirtzman's shares countless stories of tragedy and triumph from the lives of the teens he's known over his three-plus decades of experience. An Intimate Understanding of America's Teenagers is also as funny as it is endearing and educational. Gevirtzman's experience as a playwright creates a page-turning book with the comic relief needed to make the seriousness of
the topics easier to swallow.

So whether you've got a teen, pre-teen, a tween or even a toddler, An Intimate Understanding of America's Teenagers has the information you need to make it through those few tough years that challenge even the most solid and stable families. Be sure to either read it with your teen if you have one, or ask them to take the time to read it too. It will benefit you both in ways that will not only makes those tough years a little easier to manage, but as Gevirtzman points out, the information he provides will help open those much-needed lines of communication that are key to having a good and loving relationship with the person most important in your teen's life… you.

More on An Intimate Understanding of America's Teenagers...

An Intimate Understanding of America's Teenagers: Shaking Hands with Aliens
By Bruce Gevirtzman

Gevirtzman takes us inside the minds of today's youths and contrasts them with teens of decades past. Including interviews with fellow teachers, Gevirtzman's book is threaded with one recurring truth: "Sadly, instead of parents and teachers and lawmakers and the public looking out for our kids, today's kids are largely left to fend for themselves," he concludes.

The New Mom's Survival Guide

I don't really consider myself a "New Mom" per se. Rather, I refer to myself as a "Renewed Mom." I just recently gave birth to two beautiful twin girls, which is almost five years since the birth of my first and only son. A renewed mom has to go through the same questions and concerns that a new mom has to go through. After five years, I had forgotten about all the things that happen after birth, and all the questions I have about those things. From my hair falling out to strange skin issues I had never had before.

The New Mom's Survival Guide, by Jennifer Wider, M.D. addresses just about any and every question a new or renewed mom has about their body, health, sanity and yes, even their sex life. As she mentions in the book, we (and baby) are the center of attention when we are pregnant. We are in regular contact with a physician or someone of the like, always interested in how we are feeling. However, after birth, all the attention is then shifted to our new little blessings and we are left to fend for ourselves. All the while, our bodies are changing, our lives have turned upside down, and even our own focus is pointed outward.

ike every other women that's been pregnant, a few months after giving birth, my hair started falling out at a frightening rate. It's actually completely normal, but not everyone knows that. The New Mom's Survival Guide addresses this topic directly, along with so many other normal issues and questions like "What's up with My Feet," which was an issue I had after the birth of my son. In all the pregnancy books I had read while pregnant, not one of them discussed this phenomenon, and I was completely shocked when my shoes didn't fit anymore! That's right - I didn't know that your feet can grow in width due to pregnancy hormones. And as Wider answers in the book, not only will they most likely stay this new size, but we now have a valid excuse to go out and buy new shoes - a form of shopping therapy many new and renewed moms can appreciate!

The New Mom's Survival Guide also addresses tougher questions and answers regarding the mental health of the postpartum mom. From common Baby Blues to more serious issues of Postpartum Depression and even Postpartum Psychosis, The New Mom's Survival Guide answers the questions related to each, making certain the reader understands that these are issues that can be addressed by professionals if necessary, and aren't abnormal experiences for a new mom.

In the introduction of The New Mom's Survival Guide, Jennifer Wider, M.D. expresses her desire to "have created a sold, well-researched health guide for new moms that addresses their concerns about themselves" while swimming in a sea of information about their children. Not only has Wider successfully achieved this goal, but she does it in a way that isn't just straight-forward, but also in the way of making the reader feel as if the answers to her questions are coming from a good friend - not only a medical professional.

So for all the new and renewed moms out there with the lingering questions about their body, mind and spirit, The New Mom's Survival Guide, by Jennifer Wider, M.D is the prefect postpartum manual to have on hand. Without it, your questions may be lost in the whirlwind we call parenthood!

More on The New Mom's Survival Guide:

The New Mom's Survival Guide
How to Reclaim Your Body, Your Health, Your Sanity, and Your Sex Life After Having a Baby

By Jennifer Wider, M.D.

Description

The New Mom's Survival Guide Answers These and Many Other Questions:

Why can't I lose the extra weight?

I'm just too tired to have sex -- and It hurts. What should I do?

Can I catch croup from my child?

At last your baby has arrived, and you're experiencing all the joys that come with being a new mom. But you may not have bargained on acne and varicose veins, not to mention constipation, vaginal pain, mood swings, or perhaps one of the more serious conditions that pregnancy can trigger. In this compassionate, comprehensive guide, Dr. Jennifer Wider, a physician as well as the mother of two small children, delivers up-to-date medical information, candid answers to a host of questions, and expert advice on a range of postpartum issues, including:

• When the baby blues are more than just a phase
• Feelings of isolation for the stay-at-home mom
• Feelings of guilt for the back-to-work mom
• Cracked nipples and other breast-feeding concerns
• Thyroid problems, anemia, diabetes, urinary incontinence, and other conditions that can show up during or after pregnancy

From redefining yourself to taking care of yourself while caring for your baby, The New Mom's Survival Guide contains such a wealth of practical help that new moms will turn to it again and again.

Author Bio

Jennifer Wider, MD, is a doctor, author, and radio personality who specializes in women's health issues. She is the medical advisor to the Society for Women's Health Research in Washington, D.C. Dr. Wider is a regular contributor to Cosmopolitan magazine and hosts a weekly segment on Cosmo Radio for Sirius Satellite. She has appeared as a health expert on The Today Show, CBS News, Good Day NY, Fox News, and a variety of cable channels. She lives with her physician husband, and their daughter and son, in Fairfield County, Connecticut.

Visit the author at http://www.drwider.com/.

Reviews

"Practical, upbeat, and medically accurate . . . like having a wise and experienced doctor at your fingertips." --Christiane Northrup, M.D., author of The Wisdom of Menopause and Women's Bodies, Women's Wisdom

"This book offers the kind of excellent advice, guidance, and reassurance that every new mom could use." --Brooke Shields, author of Down Came the Rain