As the mom of a 14 year old, there’s always pressure to enroll my kid in the latest “enrichment” activity… Summer reading, music lessons, sports lessons… Fortunately, after a few years, you realize there are only so many hours in a day — and so many dollars in a budget — and you find a happy balance.

But woe to the soon-to-be new parents out there, who are now being told they need to enrich their child before he even has a chance to take his first breath. Take the BabyPlus Prenatal Education System, a product that straps onto Mom’s bulging belly, emitting 16 varied sounds that resemble a mother’s heartbeat.

For $149, your unborn baby has class twice a day for an hour, and the sonic pattern introduces her to a sequential learning process, based on the natural rhythms of the womb. (So the natural rhythms of the womb aren’t enough?) The rhythms of the sounds increase incrementally as the pregnancy progresses. Until what? The baby pops out snapping his fingers, doing calculus and demanding an iPod?

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Note to any parent who is thinking that taking their kids to a “swine flu party” is a dandy idea: I wish you could have seen my then-13-year-old son in early November. (Matt gave me his OK to talk about his bout with H1N1 because he thinks purposely exposing a child to this virus is the craziest thing he’s ever heard of.)

My healthy, baseball-playing, junior-lifeguard son was fine one day and had a fever of 102.5 the next. (Full disclosure: Matt did get the H1N1 vaccination, but it takes about two weeks to be fully effective, according to his doctor, and he got sick before it became fully effective.)

He got so sick he developed a form of vertigo that was so severe he couldn’t roll over in bed without the room spinning. He ended up in the ER with pneumonia. He missed almost two weeks of school. Taking your listless child to the ER is as scary thing. Seeing him hooked up to IVs with fluids and antibiotics isn’t fun, either. (more…)

Yep, I know, I look like a dweeb going for a walk with a fanny pack. But sometimes I have so much little stuff with me when I walk:  iPod, keys, cell, lip balm…

Then I received a free sample, for review, of a new product called SPIBELT (Small Personal Item Belt). The compartment looks too tiny to hold much of anything, but it’s stretchy (and actually holds all my necessities) and it also doesn’t bounce around when I walk — a major improvement.

There are several different styles, starting at $19.95. As a busy mom, I’m always looking for ways to make life easier. This definitely does the trick when I’m walking the dog in the morning, and it would make a great holiday gift for a parent, teen or tween.

Now if it would only pick up the dog poop!

American Idol semi-finalist Danny Gokey tweeted this yesterday:

“I just got my teeth cleaned & now their getting whitened. This whitening is long over due! Btw I’m also on invisalign. Its a mouth makeover”

OK, spelling issues aside… People, isn’t this just a bit TOO MUCH INFORMATION? I guess I like a bit of mystery in my pop idols, actors, etc.

Made me wonder what it would have been like to see Elvis on Twitter:

@TheKing Eating a fried peanut butter and banana sandwich. Yum. Just shot another TV. That Ricky Ricardo made me crazy. LMAO!

If you’re a parenting blogger like me, you may not think you need to know all that much about marketing. But author Shiv Singh has something for all of us in his new book, Social Media Marketing for Dummies.

You’ll learn how to better reach your audience via Facebook and Twitter, you’ll learn about online influencers and you’ll figure out how to make the most of YouTube. That’s just for starters.

Is this book aimed squarely at parenting bloggers? Nope. But there are definitely some gold nuggets in this book with your name on them. Check it out.

Somewhere in your parents' spare bedroom, up on a closet shelf — or in your grandmother's attic, in a dusty cardboard box — is your life.

The shot of you, your little brother and the world's best pup in a sea-green fishing boat.

The photographic proof that your grandpa once sat on the floor with you and your brother and played Tiddlywinks. 

The picture of you winning a beauty contest. (True, in my case it was winning "Miss Laurel Drive" when I was 9 years old. And the crown was made from aluminum foil. But still.)

Of course, those memories become increasingly fuzzy as the years go by, as that beloved Grandpa passes away, as your own child or grandchild enters first grade, as you try to remember, "Did we go to the Grand Canyon before or after we got the dog?"

When my parents entrusted me with three metal boxes full of slides a number of years ago, I carefully put them on a closet shelf — and then worried about them from time to time. If we had a fire, hundreds of family memories would be gone. Poof.

Plus, we really weren't enjoying the photos. Who had time to look at them, one by one, in my crummy little slide viewer? And who has a slide projector these days?

So there they sat.

Then I discovered a wonderful El Segundo, Calif. company, ScanDigital. They scanned my slides on their state-of-the art equipment, and created a DVD containing beautiful .jpg photos.

What a treasure it is to have these digital photos! In fact, my husband, son and I got to bed waaay too late last night because we couldn't stop looking at the photos. (And certain people had entirely too much fun having a giggle over my fashion choices at age 13.)

It's easy to do. Just gather your photos, slides or negatives. Organize, pack and ship them to ScanDigital. (They will send you shipping materials and instructions.)

They'll scan, crop and color-correct the photos. Then they'll create a CD or DVD containing your photos at no additional
cost and they'll ship your original photos back to you. (In the Los Angeles area, you can drop them off or have them picked up.)

You can also purchase
additional CDs or DVDs for family and friends. (By the way, in this photo, that's me in the yellow dress and white sweater, boarding the school bus for the first day of first grade. Thanks, Mom, for taking that picture!)

Prices start at $0.48 each for 300-dpi paper photos. Negatives and slides are slightly higher. The quality is terrific, especially when you're talking about starting off with slides or photos that have, in many cases, been sitting around for decades.

ScanDigital also creates an online gallery for your photos at no extra charge. I love the idea that there's an electronic copy of my photos securely stored somewhere outside my home. (For free!)

You can also organize photos online, create albums, share them with friends and family, and purchase reprints and other photo items like t-shirts, mousepads, calendars and photo books.

If you want to do this for the holidays, you'll need to move quickly. The deadline for holiday orders is Dec. 15. You can also give ScanDigital gift cards. The deadline for those Dec. 19.

I'm hoping my parents don't read this post… because this Christmas they'll be getting two kids in a boat with one very happy dog, a little girl riding her first bike, a trip to the Grand Canyon, and a hot game of Tiddlywinks — all courtesy of Miss Laurel Drive.

When our son, Matthew, was born, my husband and I had so many questions. Car seats, in particular, were confusing. What to get? Where to look for safety ratings? Would a particular car seat work in our car? Sheesh! Just the kind of hassles sleepless parents need, right?

Well, that whole thing just got a bit easier. A new government rating system grades child-safety seats on ease of installation. U.S. Transportation Secretary Mary Peters and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) have released ratings for 78 child-safety seats currently available.

NHTSA says 7 out of 10 child-safety seats are either the wrong size for the child or are seriously misused, reducing their effectiveness in a crash. (When properly used, child-restraint systems reduce fatal injury by 71 percent for infants and 54 percent for toddlers in passenger cars. In light trucks, fatal injuries are reduced by 58 percent for infants and 59 percent for toddlers.)

For a complete list of the new rankings, visit www.nhtsa.gov and click on “Child Seat Ease of Use Ratings” under “Quick Clicks.”

Wish this had been around back in the day!

Last month we talked about how to make thank-you notes more fun for kids to write. Well, I just came across a website that has the most adorable personalized stationery I’ve seen in a long time.

The cards aren’t cheap: $35 for 25 notes plus envelopes. But they’re darned cute for thank-you notes to grandparents and other special people.

Fabulousstationery.com was advertised in Blueprint magazine, which is part of Martha Stewart’s empire. Not being a big Martha fan myself, I had never picked up the magazine before. But when you’re bored in the doctor’s-office waiting room…

I was surprised by how many articles caught my eye. And the ads aren’t all for matching shrimp forks! Check out these cute notecards. It’s not too late to write those holiday thank you notes!

"Mom, can I do PlayStation?" It’s a phrase I hear all too often, even though we limit "screen time" at our house. Of course, I don’t completely despise video games (although they do seem to suck the brain cells from my 11-year-old son’s skull, right before my eyes). That black box comes in handy when Mom and Dad are in need of a privilege to take away when a certain kid crosses the line.

Sure, Matt spends plenty of time doing homework, hanging with friends and playing sports, too. But what I’ve been wanting, this holiday season, is a gift that will replace video games when Matt wants to noodle around with something electronic around the house. Something educational and also fun. (That will be just between us. Dare I use the words "educational" and "fun" in the same sentence? Not around Matt, who’€™s sure he gets enough education at school.)

DIGITAL MUSIC MAKING TO THE RESCUE

Finally, I’ve found the answer: Creating and recording music on our home computer. Specifically, using GarageBand (approx. $99 as part of the iLife ’08 Family Pack), which we have installed on our Mac. You can also find similar software for Windows, such as Cakewalk Sonar Home Studio (approx. $100) M-Audio Pro Tools (approx. $249), Sony ACID Pro (approx. $40), etc.

Matt has been taking piano lessons since first grade, but he was never able to combine his love of music with his love of pushing buttons and messing with games and all things digital. Until now.

Chris "Sharpie" Sharp, 37, of Midland, Texas, knows just a little bit about this whole digital-music thing — on a somewhat grander scale. As the monitor engineer for Rob Thomas on his recent solo tour and for the upcoming Matchbox Twenty tour this January through March (he’s also worked with Nickelback, Usher, Evanescence and others), this guy understands music and the digital world. (If, like me, you need a definition of what a monitor engineer does, Sharp is the guy off to the side of the stage who mixes the sound that the band hears in their earpieces while they’re playing.) I couldn’t think of a better-qualified person to ask about all this electronic stuff because he is not only musically and technically savvy — he’s also a devoted dad.

GEARING UP

Sharp and his wife, Rinda, 32, have two kids, 15-year-old daughter Destinie and 15-year-old son C.J., so he knows all about the allure of video games. But he thinks my husband and I might be onto something by deciding to get Matt a MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface) controller to use with GarageBand. 

This keyboard-like device (prices start at around $200) doesn’€™t record sound waves like a tape recorder does. It digitally encodes the start of a note, its pitch, length, volume and musical attributes, such as vibrato. As a result, MIDI music files take up a lot less space than digitized sound files. (So there might actually be some room left on the computer for Matt’s book reports…) Soon Matt will be able to write and record his own songs and send MP3 files to his friends.

Using a MIDI controller with computer software like GarageBand can open up a whole new world of creativity for a kid, Sharp says. And today’s digital technology means that you don’t need an entire board, like the monster board he uses on tour, to record your own music. A kid can do it at home. Pretty cool.

GOING FISHING

While he agrees that many parents can barely tolerate the video games that their kids crave, music is something where we can meet our kids halfway, Sharp notes. "Music speaks to each person," he says, adding that he tries to share in the types of music that interest his kids while also subtly sharing his favorite music with them. (And in his line of work, he’s definitely on the "hip-dad" side of things, which helps.) "It’s sort of like fishing. You can’t force your kids to be interested in a certain thing, but you can try different types of bait." So you’ll hear hip hop, rock, Tejano and other types of music around the Sharp home.

Sounds like good advice. And while my husband and I love to share our favorite music with Matt, and we love to learn about what he likes, we’re looking forward to hearing him make and record some fun music of his own very soon. Because with today’s technology, a kid’s desire to play with electronic stuff and push buttons can be satisfied while he’s also learning about computers, music and all things digital.

Take that, Dragon Ball Z!

When I was pregnant, I was sometimes floored by the nerve of the strangers who offered unsolicited advice. I was told how to do everything "correctly" from breastfeeding to Lamaze to epidurals. Seems everyone knew the best way to do everything and insisted on sharing it with me — while standing in line at Target.

I mean, really, do I need to hear about what to do about sore nipples when I’m minding my own business, buying laundry detergent?

Apparently I’m not alone in thinking "hey, butt out!" Now pregnant women can express how they feel with a new line of hip maternity t-shirts called Mommy Trends. The stretchy t-shirts ($36) sport lines such as "Big &
Beautiful," but the best seller is a shirt that says "No Unsolocited Baby Advice."