The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission has announced the recall of about 44,000 Phil & Teds e3 Single Buggy, e3 Twin Buggy and sport v1 Single Buggy Strollers due to a laceration hazard. The manufacturer has received nine reports from consumers who have cut their fingers on the hinge locking mechanism when folding or unfolding the stroller. In May of 2006, 425 e3 Twin Buggy Strollers were also recalled.

Made in China and imported by Regal Lager Inc., of Kennesaw, Ga., the strollers were sold at baby furniture and baby products stores nationwide from August 2003 through August 2008 for between $400 and $650 each.

The single strollers have metal frames with three wheels, a cloth seat and canopy. The twin strollers have a metal frame with four wheels, side-by-side cloth seats and double sun canopies. They were sold in various colors including red, orange, green, black, charcoal and navy. The Phil & Teds logo is located on the crotch piece of the harness.

If you have one of the recalled strollers, you should stop using it immediately and contact Regal Lager to obtain a free hinge cover repair kit and instructions. You can reach them by calling (877) 242-5676 between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. ET Monday through Friday, or by visiting their Web site.

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We're pretty new to the lunch packing thing at our house, just having survived our first week of kindergarten. But so far, my five-year-old eats her whole grain sandwich, her side of fresh fruits or veggies, and brings home the very small treat I've stuck in her lunchbox each day because she's "too full." All things parenting should be this easy.

But I know it won't always be so easy. The CDC's recent national Youth Risk Behavior Survey found that a whopping 80% of teens aren't meeting their fruits and vegetable goals for the day. Young children, I think, are easier to feed because the outside influence is kept to a minimum. But when they get older, there's potential for battles over snack foods, sodas, and the vending machines at school.

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Chances are, if you weren't saving money hiding under a rock this summer you heard, perhaps one time too many, about the values and virtues of the 'staycation.' A staycation is exactly what it sounds like--a 'vacation' where you and your family stay at home. And, more often than not, a staycation is also how it sounds--boring!

Americans spent a lot of time watching the Dow plummet and the prices of gas jump through the roof. Just because they're back down to $3.69 a gallon does not mean things are going well. Still, many families got too stir crazy to sit around their houses all summer. Just try keeping the kids in the house during summer vacation, when they're supposed to not have to worry about anything but having fun and enjoying the long days and nights that make it great to be a kid. Sure, you don't have to travel to enjoy those things, but it does help to get out of the house. After all, the house is generally filled with chores and the projects no one ever gets around to because they're hard or boring or both.

In direct response to the staycation, I know a lot of families who did their best to get the heck out of dodge. They became very creative when it came to outings and spending. In fact, some of them had the trips of their lives. they visited parks. They saw relatives. They engaged in discovering places that were within a three- to five-hour drive from home. And, of course, during all of this they spent quality time together. Some of them said to heck with it and took the longer trips anyway, visiting foreign lands or at the very least, Florida. They were clearly tired of hearing about the merits of the staycation.

What did you do? Did you say to heck with it all and packed the kids in the car for that Griswold family vacation anyway, or did you suck it up, stay at home and watch the paint dry?

Pic by Manchester Library.

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Some people claim that cloth diapers are safest for babies, but there's one family in Brazil that thinks a disposable diaper can be a lifesaver -- literally. Eighteen-month-old Caua Felipe Massaneiro fell thirty feet from a window in his family's third floor apartment and lived to talk about it thanks to his diaper.

The boy fell but instead of hitting the ground directly, his diaper got caught on a security spike embedded in the concrete wall that surrounds his apartment building. Caua hung there for a moment and then "the diaper opened and the baby fell to the ground, but at a much slower speed," said one police officer. "The diaper obviously lessened the impact of the fall and saved the baby's life."

Caua was taken to the hospital to be treated for minor fractures, but is doing well and is in stable condition. It is unclear at this time whether or not the diaper was in need of changing.

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Ah, kids these days. And their parents too. I remember when I was a kid trying to impress people by getting my room clean as quickly as possible or hitting a badminton birdie farther than my dad. Clearly, as an eleven-year-old I had nothing on the girl in this video. Woah. Not only does she dismantle the AR-15 (it's a gun, it's a weapon, it's a killing machine) in fifteen seconds, she puts it back together after that for a combined total time of 53 seconds. The kicker? Not so much that she's a tween or pre-tween herself, but that her father was the one who taught her how to do this, and he's the one who filmed the video.

Both father and daughter seem very pleased by the girl's abilities. My husband summed it up best when he asked me, after I was visibly shocked by the footage, when they took the girl into custody. Who the heck really keeps guns in their house when they have children? And who the heck teaches them how to use them? Better yet, who keeps an AR-15 in the house and teaches his eleven-year-old daughter how to use it?

Who's to say whether there is a mom around, whether she saw the video, and whether or not she knows or cares that her daughter has the technical skills of an assassin. Perhaps it was supposed to be funny, but the video is more terrifying than anything. Children and guns, of any kind, do NOT go together. Plain and simple, guns kill people. And, sadly, more often than not, they kill children.

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Most machinery works best when kept cool, be it mechanical, electronic, or even biological. Your car's engine has a cooling system that's pretty darn important (he writes with an experienced air) and your computers really belong in an air-conditioned room. So what about that baby factory potential dads have? Shouldn't that be kept cool for best results?

It turns out the answer is a definite yes. What's more, the proliferation of heated car seats is a step in the wrong direction. Sitting in a car to begin with heats things up more than they should be; heated seats increase the problem by a full degree Fahrenheit after just an hour. Them boys be cookin' down there!

So, perhaps the guy who takes public transit to work (and stands so others can sit) is the better choice for father material than the guy stuck in traffic in that fancy new beemer, eh?

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A new, more natural c-section developed in the UK may soon be in clinical trials to see if it will improve the birth experience for mothers and better help newborns ease their way into the world. Researchers say that the traditional c-section procedure, currently focused on a speedy delivery, allows less room for family bonding. In an uncomplicated delivery, they say, speed is usually unnecessary.

The new "natural" procedure starts in the same way, making a cut and delivering the head of the baby. But then the area is cleaned and the curtains are taken down so that both parents can eventually watch the rest of the delivery. Instead of removing the infant right away, doctors stand back and let uterine contractions do their thing.

I'm all for any procedure that makes childbirth more warm and fuzzy and less cold and sterile. But yet, I'm not sure how I'd feel about watching my baby be delivered this way. I've never had a c-section, so moms out there who have, tell us this: Would it be weird to watch your baby emerge from your abdomen? Or would the overwhelming feelings that accompany childbirth outweigh the fact that you're in the middle of major surgery? Is a delivery a delivery no matter the method? Share your thoughts with us in comments.

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It's been a week of historical firsts in United States politics! Yesterday's nomination of Barack Obama as the Democratic nominee marks the first time in U.S. history an African-American has been chosen to be a contender for the position of president of the United States.

And earlier today, John McCain made Sarah Palin, the governor of Alaska and mother of five, his choice for vice president. While Palin is not the first woman to be selected as a running mate, (that honor belongs to Geraldine Ferraro), she is the first to do it with a baby at home. Palin's youngest son Trig is only ten months old!

The photogenic Palin has appeared in Vogue magazine, but she's definitely not a wimpy woman. The Alaskan governor returned to work a mere three days after giving birth to Trig, and her hobbies include hunting and ice fishing (one of the most frigid and miserable ways I've ever spent an afternoon) and is facing the deployment of her oldest son to Iraq in September.

It wasn't terribly long ago that blacks and women weren't even allowed to vote to vote in this country. There's no way to erase that embarrassing past, but we at least we can now celebrate how far we've come!

Telegraph has an interesting article about the length of a mom's work day. The average mom, according to a recent poll, has a "work day" of 15 hours, 5.5 of it working at their job and the rest spent grocery shopping, cooking, doing household chores, shuttling kids to school and activities, and caring for their children. Seventy five percent of women reported wishing they had more time to themselves. Don't we all.

The idea here, of course, is that working moms are doing far more than their share and are in desperate need of a break. Honestly, this is something I worry about when I think about going back to work full-time. As a SAHM, I've taken on the bulk of the household responsibilities. Will we be able to balance daily tasks in a healthy way when the time comes for me to go back to the 40-hour work week? I hope so, but I think it will take time.

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Thanks to The Joys of Motherhood for this lovely photo - we are always suckers for sweet kisses between little ones.

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