Kangaroo care is where a mother holds an infant very close to her chest to keep it warm, skin-to-skin, make the baby feel safe, talk softly, and cover it with Mommy’s love.  This hug recently saved a preemie newborn’s life in Australia.

Kate Ogg gave birth to twins at 27 weeks into the pregnancy, but the hospital staff pronounced baby Jamie to be clinically dead.  The midwife handed over the wee baby to his Mom so she could say goodbye.

Ms. Ogg, however, had read about kangaroo care… where a mother’s tender touch and nurturing can be the deciding factor on whether a premature baby lives.  She and her husband David spent two hours cuddling the dying baby, telling him that his twin Emily wanted him, and loving him when a miracle occurred.  Their touch through Kangaroo Care brought him back.

If you want to watch the touching video and Today Show interview, go here.  It’s truly a beautiful piece on how love can save a life.

Photo from New York Daily News.

My daughter always jokes about the names she plans to eventually give whatever babies she has (Umserriah for example).  She also jokes that she plans to call me Meemaw (um, no).  However, one set of parents seriously named their child Adolf Hitler.

And now they’ve officially lost custody, according to Ron at PopFi,

CPS officials maintain that the children aren’t being removed from parental custody due to their parents’ Nazi beliefs, but due in fact to allegations of mistreatment by Joseph Campbell against his wife and three children.  Despite no evidence of physical abuse, there are notes from Jeannie Campbell where she says she fears for her life, and little Adolph Hitler is displaying unusual aggression (albeit not for a child with that unfortunate name).

While I wholeheartedly disagree with their political and world views, people do have unalienable rights - including raising their children if they are not being harmed or neglected.  Of course you could argue that even naming their children what they’ve named them is damaging, but are they fed?  Do they go to school?  Are they safe?  It will be interesting to see how all this plays out.

My mother in law was watching an episode of 19 kids and counting and said, “It looks like a hoarder’s house. Except they hoard kids.”

I don’t know why that tickled my funny bone, but it did.

We are still in flood recovery mode here in Tennessee.  People have felt a little bruised by the national media virtually ignoring the water event in favor of something that almost happened (Times Square).  But now voices are speaking up about how that felt.  Here are two of the most eloquent and beautiful,

Nashville Knucklehead,

So y’all go on about what you’re doing and we’ll go on about what we are doing. But I just want to let you know, right now this is the strongest city in America. Right now this is the proudest city in America.  So, after we clean up, come see us sometime. Y’all are always welcome.

Kate O’Neill,

We were dealing with the rising river and the rising panic of the possibility of whole neighborhoods submerged if a levee broke or the river crested higher than expected, and every passing minute seemed vitally important. And strangely, no friends or family from outside the area were calling to check in and be sure we were fine. They simply didn’t know.

We will recover here. Promise!

With apologies for not writing until now this week, I am in the middle of the forgotten news story of early May.  I live outside of Nashville and we experienced massive flooding this weekend.

Many famous places sustained serious water damage including the Grand Ol’ Opry, Opryland Hotel, LP Field where the NFL Titans play, Bridgestone Arena where the NHL Predators play, the Country Music Hall of Fame, and many more.

On a more personal level, I’ve been helping my friend and her family clean.  Today we moved their furniture to a storage facility so we could finish tearing out floors.  Tomorrow, we’ll move more and then clean and bleach floors.  After that, I don’t know.  Except I’ll help her paint because I love painting and she doesn’t.

Please say some prayers for Middle Tennessee.  The main stream media seems to have forgotten us with the oil spill in the deep south, the near-bomb in New York, and the Arizona lawmakers addressing illegal immigrants.

Kids really are cruel enough without someone like PETA joining in on the verbal (or visual) assault.  From Vegansaurus, the new campaign against fat kids in Kentucky is paid for with promises of vegan burgers to a school system,

I know getting upset about PETA’s press releases is completely futile* but still I rise. Can you imagine a little fat kid (who, btw, is already teased mercilessly because kids are the motherflipping MEANEST) coming to the playground and seeing those teeter-totters? Stunts like this don’t turn kids vegan but I bet they could turn them suicidal. Further, how many fat kids do you know who venture near a teeter-totter anyway, it’s already ground for public humiliation. Way to know your audience, PETA!

Self image is so important to our kids growing up.  Heck even to adults, a positive self image is vital.  Big sigh.

According to the State-Journal in Frankfort, Kentucky, the ads may not be accepted,

The animal rights organization sent a letter to Superintendent Harrie Buecker Thursday morning, “offering to provide the district’s students with a free veggie-burger lunch in exchange for advertising space on school teeter-totters,” according to a press release.

But Buecker said Thursday that the Board of Education doesn’t support direct advertising to students. The board must approve any advertising from outside organizations that appears on school property.

Thankfully, the school system encourages teachers to discuss proper nutrition with students rather than assailing them with pictures of fat kids.

Thanks again for the H/T brittney.

I just returned from training at the Sommet Center (actually it is now officially the Bridgestone Arena) to work concessions as a fundraiser for a friend’s daughter.  What I initially dreaded turned out to be a very informative evening.  75 to 80 percent of the workers in the concession stands there are “volunteers”, working for money that goes directly to their organization.  What a great way to give back to the community.  Some groups have earned over $50,000 in a year’s time.  Yes, it takes a commitment of time and effort (and Advil for the leg and foot cramps from being on your feet for hours), but considering today’s economic struggles, it’s a welcome relief to many people.  I spoke with several parents this evening who said that without this extra “income”, they would be forced to withdraw their children from their activities.  Many thanks to the people who make all this possible.  I guess sometimes it does take a village!

A sweet little message to help from a 7-year old British boy sparked a lot of news coverage and nearly $200,000 in donations from around the world.  Charlie Simpson wanted to ride his bike five miles to raise donations.  His UNICEF page says,

My name is Charlie Simpson, I want to do a Sponsored Bike Ride for Haiti because there was a big earthquake and loads of people have lost their lives.  I want to make some money to buy food, water and tents for everyone in Haiti.

Donations are pouring in from throughout the world… $5 to $30 (and more) at a time.  If you want to give through Charlie’s page, click here.   What a generous heart and huge spirit little Charlie has!

Photo from London’s Daily Mirror.

I suppose this must be “let’s talk about celebrities” week with the Conan O’Brien post yesterday.  Today I have to comment on a news article I read about the MTV show Teen Mom.  I started watching it when it was 16 and Pregnant and was fascinated by the decisions these young women made.

I greatly admire Catelynn and Tyler for how mature they were when they made the decision together to give up baby Carly for adoption.  They stood united in their decision to try to give the infant a better life than they had while everyone in their families pressured them to keep the baby.

Like Catelynn, Maci has shown extraordinary maturity as she has blossomed as a young mother.  Her priority is her son Bentley.

I don’t even want to judge because I can’t imagine the enormous stress these young mothers must be carrying, yet after seeing Amber hit her boyfriend and now reading about Farrah fighting with her own mother (who was subsequently arrested for suspicion of domestic abuse) I am deeply bothered by the example they are to young people who watch the shows.

I posted earlier about the Signs that Your Teen is in a Bad Relationship.  It’s sad when the mother is allegedly the person with whom violence occurs.  It concerns me that there’s the potential for the violence to pass down to the next generation.  This Child Abuse site offers links and information about how to recognize child abuse and how to prevent it.

As I continue to watch Teen mom (and I will), I recognize that it gives viewers the opportunity to talk to our own children about premarital sex, the consequences of getting pregnant, the impact an infant has on the path of life you thought you were following, and now… domestic violence.  I am sorry these young mothers have to experience the hardships that lay before them, but I will take the opportunity to talk to my own 14-year-old.

Photo from MTV’s Teen Mom site.

Anyone who has visited Facebook in the last couple of days has noticed that people have been posting one word color updates.  I had no idea what was going on until I finally commented on one that a good friend of mine wrote asking, "What’s with these color updates?"

At the risk of betraying women everywhere, here’s the answer that came in a private message,

Some fun is going on…. just write the color of your bra in your status. Just the color, nothing else.  Then, send this message on to ONLY girls, no men …. It will be neat to see if this will spread the wings of cancer awareness. It will be fun to see how long it takes before the men will wonder why all the girls have a color in their status.  Pass it on & be sure to do your breast self-exams!

I probably broke some secret rule of women but I told all people about it when they asked - men and women alike.  Why?  Because if you’re going raise breast cancer awareness, I’d venture to say men are equally affected by this terrible disease.  Some men do get breast cancer.  Others have mothers, sisters, wives who’ve suffered with, survived, or died from it.

Mary Carmichael blogging at Newsweek wrote ,

You know what I didn’t do? Think about breast cancer. That, however, was supposedly the point of the exercise. No one yet knows who started the meme, but apparently, someone kicked it off a few days ago with a chain-letter-style Facebook message to a bunch of women, asking them to virtually flash the world in the name of supporting medical research, and to forward the note only to other female friends, and to be aware of breasts. Sorry, breast cancer. Right.

Maybe people didn’t think about breast cancer and maybe it is a cutesy thing to do.  However, we are discussing it now.  And when my 14-year old Erin asked, "What’s with that?"  I told her.  Then I told her about how important it is to perform a breast examination every month. So even though the thought of this mini-meme seems silly on the front end, it did open a door for me to talk about breast cancer with my daughter.  I hope other women also talked to their own daughters.

pink. blue. white. paisley. nude.

People are talking about it. At the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation, they’ve seen a spike in "fans" according to The Washington Post ,

Whatever it is, its impact was immediate and dramatic: As bra colors went flying around the net, something strange happened at the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation. After two years of intensive efforts to boost its profile through social networking, hiring two full-time people to do solely that, within two hours Friday morning, their fan base on Facebook exploded from 135 to 700.

Maybe our silly colors are helping raise awareness.  And in case you want to know, mine is pink.

I live in the South, but because I spent many years farther North (4 years in North Dakota and 2 years in Indiana), I still scratch my head as I watch my fellow residents of this warmer weather state go crazy when we are put under a winter weather advisory.

The weather report is calling for snow tomorrow evening - from one to three inches!  And people have gone completely NUTS!  The kids are hoping for a snow day even though they only went back yesterday from winter break.  The grocery stores are already crowded with people stocking up on bread, milk, and cheese.  And the finagling has begun at my own house over who gets to drive what car on Thursday.

I can’t be too quick to judge, though.  In the south, snow sometimes turns to ice.  Here’s what it looked like at my brother’s house just a little north of us in Kentucky last January.

And here’s how some of the trees now look in that area (I took this picture on my way back home on New Year’s Eve… the devastation is still apparent).

Sorry the picture is so fuzzy but you can definitely get an idea of just how bad it was by the missing tree branches which were snapped off by the weight of the ice.

Be safe out there, my friends.  Dress warmly, drive carefully.