Smokers-and your children--beware. Even though you may smoke outside, or roll down the window to let in fresh air when you're smoking in the car, toxins remain in your hair and on your clothes that can ultimately poison your kids. Sound scary? well, it is, but turns out it's also true. Third-Hand Smoke, as it's being called, is so new a phrase that most people haven't heard of it and don't know what it means. In a recent study published in the January edition of the journal Pediatrics, it was determined that while most people are aware of the dangers of second-hand smoke, they are unaware that the residue left over from smoking on their clothes, furniture, carpets--OK, everywhere--is toxic and can linger long after they put out that cigarette. Only 65% of non-smokers polled for the study agreed with a statement that breathing air in the same room someone smoked in the day before was harmful to the health of infants and children. That rate was a mere 43% for smokers.

Dr. Philip Landrigan of Mount Sinai in New York agrees strongly with the findings and the hazards of third-hand smoke. Says Landrigan, "There are carcinogens in this third-hand smoke, and they are a cancer risk for anybody of any age who comes into contact with them." In fact, eleven of the compounds found in third-hand smoke are highly carcinogenic, some of which are radioactive. Yes, you read that correctly, RADIOACTIVE.

So, it's not enough to turn on the fan or use one of those little smokeless ashtray thingees. The smoke, and the toxins, are still there. To protect your kids you'll have to shower and wash your hair every time you have a cigarette, as well as clean the entire room and all its contents. Might just be easier to stop smoking!!! And, hey, look--I KNOW it's hard to stop smoking, trust me. But when things like this keep coming out, now more than ever, maybe it's time to go cold turkey. After all, it is New Year's!

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Do men determine the sex of their babies? This question is a little more complicated than the old "XX, XY" scenario. We've long known that the father supplies the sex of the baby to be in his sperm by providing either an additional X or Y chromosome. But, it turns out, the daddy may be responsible for keeping the population unbalanced with too many of either sex. How is this possible, you ask? Well, I'll tell you:

Ghastly as it sounds, it is believed a lot of males are lost to war and a lot of females are lost to selective abortion in certain cultures. According to researcher Corry Gellatly of Newcastle University, men contain a gene that decides whether they will father more males, females or an even number of each. (Women contain the gene as well but it remains unexpressed.) Allegedly the gene makes them more likely to attract a mate and father daughters when females are in short supply, and more likely to father males when men are in short supply.

Gellatly reviewed the family trees of nearly 1,000 North Americans and Europeans and created a computer simulation of how his gene would affect gender outcome over 500 generations. The results from the actual family trees and the computer simulations were the same. According to his hypothesis, the gene is expressed as either male/male that produces more sperm that leads to males; female/male which leads to a 50/50 chance of either sex; or a female/female that leads to making more little girls. Gellatly is quick to point out that while this gene would make a stronger case for a male or female offspring, the mother does contribute something to the gene which "dilutes" it. Thus, the pattern caused by the gene is a subtler one.

Hmm. Interesting indeed. Makes me wonder, though, if this isn't just another step toward some creepy Brave New World thing where people get to choose the sex of their babies!

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Are today's little girls being brainwashed by marketers trying to sell toys? After a study of young girls' speech patterns revealed that many of them refer to the color pink as "Barbie", some parents are convinced that their daughters are suffering from "pink plague".

The phrase "pink plague" was coined by Sue Palmer, author of the book Toxic Childhood. "You can't find girls past the age of three who aren't obsessed with the color. It's just so insidious and it shows how commercial forces can get under their skin even by that age. You can't seem to get anything that's not pink for girls, whether it's clothes, books or toys," said Palmer.

What is wrong with a commercial-driven preference for pink? Palmer believes it is an indication of a larger problem -- one that results in an ever-widening gender gap and influences the way girls feel about themselves. 'It is brainwashing,' said Palmer. 'The pink is just the vehicle. There are other things that become very subtly associated with pink like obsession with appearance and body image and the idea of what female sexuality is.'

Of course marketers are trying to infiltrate our kid's minds. That is what they get paid to do and they've been doing it forever. And while I think blaming "pink plague" for our girls' problems might be oversimplifying things a bit, I get Palmer's point. Kids - boys and girls - receive messages about themselves and each other beginning at a very young age. It is a parent's job to ensure that the messages they receive are the right ones. That gets harder to do as they get older, but limiting a 3-year-old's exposure to marketing messages isn't that difficult: turn off the television.

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After much ado about public vs. private and tony vs. progressive, the First Kids are set to start classes at Sidwell Friends School this Monday. (FYI: It's all of the above save the public part.)

Changing schools in the middle of the year is tough, changing schools without the benefit of your big (or little) sister in the same building is even tougher. With campuses in two locations -- the lower school is in the suburbs of Bethesda and the upper grades in northwest DC -- it doesn't look like second-grader Sasha will be with fifth-grader Malia.

The hardest part, we fear, is that these two sweet and poised girls will live the next four, eight or more years under the microscope of a collective mind with a seemingly unquenchable jones for schadenfreude. Though presidential kids generally escape the curse of the childhood spotlight, let's not overlook the public service of remembering that Malia and Sasha are just kids and allow them to grow up "normal."

Just how would you advise the Obamas do that?

A New York City program that pays parents for getting their kids a library card, taking them to school or to a medical check-up has paid out more than $7.6 billion so far.

The program has been in place since September 2007, and is completely funded with private donations. It costs about $53 million annually, and experts say it is too early to tell whether the incentive of cold, hard cash in return for responsible parenting is making a difference for poor kids.

However, out of 5,700 participating children, 3,000 have gotten library cards, 3,600 had an annual physical check up, and roughly the same number have close to perfect school attendance records. City officials plan to compare these numbers with a "control group" of families who are not participating.

New York City pays families $200 per medical check up and $50 for each library card. There is a cap on the amount of money "good" parents can earn -- each participating family can receive an annual maximum of $5,000.

I'm all for teaching good parenting skills, especially to moms and dads who may not have great role models. On the other hand, what kind of message does it send to fork over fifty bucks just because you took your kid to the library? I have to wonder who came up with this plan. Has society fallen so far that the only way to create good parents is to pay them?

What do you think? Should parents be paid for doing what should be expected? And who benefits? Do the kids really see a difference in their lives?

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If your New Year's resolutions include cutting costs this year, here's how to save $100 a month ... painlessly. -- AlphaMom

Speaking of saving money -- Here's Kate Gosselin talking about how she juggles the family budget. -- AlphaMom

On the other hand, if your 2009 goal is weight loss, learn how to lose the weight without fad dieting. -- MomLogic

And while we're talking about cleaning up our eating habits, here are five healthy snacks that aren't so healthy. -- The Motherhood

Then again, before you make any New Year's resolutions, you might want to read this. -- Work It, Mom!

Here's a surprising finding: Lesbian teens are more likely to get pregnant than their hetero peers. Wonder why? Lemondrop has the scoop. -- Lemondrop

General Hospital's Ingo Rademacher talks about his son's unique name, Peanut Kai: "....people always end up with nicknames, so we just gave him a nickname." I wonder how Peanut will feel when he's 25? -- Celebrity Baby Blog

Thinking of taking a movie in this weekend? LilSugar reviews Bedtime Stories. -- LilSugar

Campbell's shows their support of LGBT families with a new full page ad in the Advocate. The American Family Association, of course, objects. Read all about it here. Does a company's support (or lack thereof) of an issue like this one affect your buying habits? -- Offsprung

Parents should never have to bury their children. It's supposed to be the other way around. So we always grieve a little harder when a mom and dad have to plan their son's or daughter's funeral. Our hearts and our prayers go out to John Travolta and Kelly Preston on the death of their 16-year-old son, Jett.

The family had been vacationing in the Bahamas over the New Year when Jett, according to some reports, suffered a seizure and hit his head in the bathroom. Attempts to revive him failed. Ms. Preston had earlier shared the news that Jett suffered from Kawasaki Syndrome, a little known illness that involves the swelling of arteries which can lead to seizures.

As a father who held his daughter while she died, I know first hand how devastating this time can be. When there's no target for blame, sometimes anger can be directed inward. 80% of all marriages fail when a child dies and depression can linger for years.

Let's keep the whole family in mind, including Jett's sister, Ella, and the extended family as well.

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Remember in high school sex ed class when you had to take care of an egg? The experience was supposed to give you a little taste of what parenthood was like, as you tried to keep the egg from getting lost or broken. Now that I'm a parent I can say that experiment was nothing even remotely like having a baby. So how do you know you're really ready for parenthood, or if you'd make a good parent in the first place? For a growing number of women who yearn for something more than this season's must-have handbag, the answer lies in the swaddles of the reborn baby doll, "Reborns" are dolls that look and feel just like the real thing, so much so that the general public can't tell the difference. Call them cute, call them creepy, but these lifelike infant dolls give women the opportunity to try on motherhood -- or a simulation of it -- without any worse consequence than a few odd stares.

I see it as the no harm, no foul approach to trying out parenting. Of course, this approach doesn't prepare you for actual parenthood either -- these fake babies don't cry or wake you up in the middle of the night screaming and don't impress with their capacity for projectile bodily liquids. Yet perhaps the reborn babies take the fear out of holding a fragile little baby, of wondering and worrying if, indeed, someone is ready to take that next step towards pregnancy.

There are also those of us who've had our children and are decidedly not having anymore. I just had my second baby and now have two kids under the age of two to put through daycare and college. I don't know that I'd have the time or the resources to have yet another child. Yet every time I hear about a baby being born I think how nice it would be to cradle another little new bundle of joy, perhaps one that won't spit up on my last clean shirt. Really, though, I consider myself blessed to have children--but what about women who are unable to have children and don't want to or cannot adopt?

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When her baby started crying during a midnight service at a Memphis church, Jewell Anderson tried to soothe her with a pacifier. But when the baby continued to scream, she took her into another room to change her diaper.

Imagine her surprise when that simple diaper change revealed the surprising cause of the baby's distress: a bullet.

Let me say that again -- she found a bullet in her baby's diaper. And didn't die of shock on the spot.

Authorities believe the bullet came from New Year's party goers outside the church, who were shooting off guns at midnight -- evidence that you may need a license and a background check to own a gun, but you still need a brain to know when and where to use it appropriately.

Thankfully, this baby gives new meaning to the phrase "dodged a bullet" and was unharmed.

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Yesterday, Sandy Maple wrote about teaching her daughter to blow her nose and the Kleenex website that could help. Today, I offer another alternative -- a school that is teaching kids how to blow their noses properly. Unfortunately, it's in England, in Manchester, but maybe the idea will catch on with schools here.

The nose-blowing lesson is part of a larger curriculum covering proper behaviour when one has a cold, of course. Not everyone is happy about this, however. One parent called the lessons "a complete waste of time" and went on to say "I send my kids to school to learn, not for someone to show them how to blow their nose." The school also recommends that students visit the Kleenex website Sandy mentioned when they go home.

Actually, it makes sense to me. Sure, your kid may know how to properly sneeze or cough and that they should wash their hands afterwards, but not all kids do and teaching the other ones means your kid will get sick less.

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