Snowmen in April?

Take a moment to enjoy this picture. No, I am not the great mom who went outside with my kids to enjoy the last snow of the year. But I did see the mom I wanted to be! I just didn't have the energy! This is my neighbor's house. I love this picture because I took it as the sun was going down and all you can see is the remnants of a fun-filled day. The snowmen look so out of place surrounded by green grass. What a great memory of the winter that seems like it will never end! I sent it to Lee Ranson for a weather picture. I think he plans on using it tonight (Tuesday.)

Did any of you play in the snow on Monday?

-NewsAnchorMom Jen

Afraid to wear shorts? Do you have unwanted hair? Embarrassed by unsightly varicose or spider veins? NOW is the time to get your legs ready for summer! You don’t have to be afraid to wear shorts because of unwanted hair or unsightly varicose or spider veins. Call 674-SKIN to schedule your FREE leg vein or hair laser consultation at Soderstrom Skin Institute, and you’ll be ready to show off your beautiful legs this summer!

Soderstrom Skin Institute is positioned to be a comprehensive, full service, skin care facility. Visit www.soderstromskininstitute.com to learn what Soderstrom Skin Institute can do for you.

Can you eat colored Easter Eggs?

This is a picture explaining why my five-year-old was up late last night. Yes, we colored some festive eggs. He said they were beautiful when we took them out of the food dye. He absolutely loves hard boiled eggs. So now we have a ton of them and I am asking you, "Can we eat the colored eggs?" I assumed they were fine to eat. So I gave him one for breakfast. After taking off the blue shell, we quickly realized the entire egg was blue, not just the shell. This did not look appetizing to me and my son gave me the funniest look (so I am sure he was thinking the same thing.)

Now we have all these beautiful eggs that are pink, orange, blue and yellow all the way through. What is a family to do? According to my friend google, they can be eaten if the dye is non-toxic. I guess I will be digging through the trash looking for the box tonight. Has anyone else had this dilemma? Do you eat your colored hard-boiled eggs? This is kind of a breakfast emergency, so please let me know!

-NewsAnchorMom Jen

Afraid to wear shorts? Do you have unwanted hair? Embarrassed by unsightly varicose or spider veins? NOW is the time to get your legs ready for summer! You don’t have to be afraid to wear shorts because of unwanted hair or unsightly varicose or spider veins. Call 674-SKIN to schedule your FREE leg vein or hair laser consultation at Soderstrom Skin Institute, and you’ll be ready to show off your beautiful legs this summer!

Soderstrom Skin Institute is positioned to be a comprehensive, full service, skin care facility. Visit www.soderstromskininstitute.com to learn what Soderstrom Skin Institute can do for you.

OMG Breastfeeding mix-up!

This sounds like an April Fool's joke, but it's a true story. It is unbelievable! I can't imagine a hospital doing this. What are the odds that there is a mix-up and the mother has a terminal, contagious illness. Unreal!

FROM NBC: A mix-up at a New Hampshire hospital has the parents of a newborn fearing for its life. A nurse at Portsmouth Regional Hospital gave a mother the wrong baby to
breastfeed.

Now the parents of that baby are having it tested for hepatitis and HIV, since both can be transmitted through breastfeeding.

The hospital expressed regret and released this statement: "...We launched a full investigation and are taking steps to avoid a similar event from occurring in the future."

I would love to know the reputation of this hospital. I would guess the baby will be just fine, but I would still be more than furious if I were that baby's parents. We will have to wait and see.

-NewsAnchorMom Jen

Afraid to wear shorts? Do you have unwanted hair? Embarrassed by unsightly varicose or spider veins? NOW is the time to get your legs ready for summer! You don’t have to be afraid to wear shorts because of unwanted hair or unsightly varicose or spider veins. Call 674-SKIN to schedule your FREE leg vein or hair laser consultation at Soderstrom Skin Institute, and you’ll be ready to show off your beautiful legs this summer!

Soderstrom Skin Institute is positioned to be a comprehensive, full service, skin care facility. Visit www.soderstromskininstitute.com to learn what Soderstrom Skin Institute can do for you.

Financial Help for Special Needs Families

There is a woman in Illinois who helps families of special needs children/adults develop a financial plan for the future. Will your child be able to live independently as an adult? One thing the organization does is discover where your child could potentially live if you passed away. They also look at how to get grants to make that happen and even find resources to help your child get closer to independence. Protected Tomorrows can also help you find the best and most affordable place for an aging parent to live. Children with special needs become adults with special needs and most of the programs stop when the child turns 18 years old. It's a scary reality for a lot of parents. Here's the gist of what Protected Tomorrows does: (I believe the cost depends on what services you end up using, but I am not sure)

Protected Tomorrows, Inc. is an advocacy firm that enhances the lives of people with special needs through a comprehensive life planning process. Our nationwide network of Advocates creates Future Care Plans™, which addresses the needs of the individual with developmental disabilities, mental illness, physical disabilities, or cognitive and neurological diseases in the following areas:

• education
• residential
• financial
• legal
• health care
• government benefits
• employment
• recreation

The Future Care Plan is a comprehensive way to approach and address the fears, hopes and dreams of families with a special needs member whether that member has a developmental disability like autism, cerebral palsy, Down syndrome or Angelmans syndrome; mental illness; or other diseases such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, Lou Gehrig’s (Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis), and Multiple Sclerosis.

Here's a story on Protected Tomorrows from ABC7 in Chicago. On a side note, it is so cool to me that the station has a reporter who is hearing impaired doing this story.

ABC7 story

About the Founder of the program: Our founder, Mary Anne Ehlert, CFP, had a successful career in financial planning when she decided to act on her lifelong desire to specialize in serving the families of the disabled. The source of her inspiration was very dear to her heart. Mary Anne herself had come from such a family. Her younger sister, Marcia, to whom she felt especially close, suffered severe mental handicaps due to cerebral palsy. And, although their parents were naturally determined that Marcia should get the best possible care, they had also for years been understandably confused how best to plan and provide for her future, especially financially.

-NewsAnchorMom Jen

Afraid to wear shorts? Do you have unwanted hair? Embarrassed by unsightly varicose or spider veins? NOW is the time to get your legs ready for summer! You don’t have to be afraid to wear shorts because of unwanted hair or unsightly varicose or spider veins. Call 674-SKIN to schedule your FREE leg vein or hair laser consultation at Soderstrom Skin Institute, and you’ll be ready to show off your beautiful legs this summer!

Soderstrom Skin Institute is positioned to be a comprehensive, full service, skin care facility. Visit www.soderstromskininstitute.com to learn what Soderstrom Skin Institute can do for you.

Autism Acceleration Act

NEW YORK, NY (April 2, 2009) – Groundbreaking Autism Treatment Acceleration Act (ATAA) legislation introduced today. Originally drafted by then-Senator Barack Obama and introduced by Senators Richard Durbin (D-IL), Robert Casey (D-PA), and Robert Menendez (D-NJ), ATAA is comprehensive federal legislation that addresses several critical challenges facing the autism community, including increased funding for scientific research, treatment and services. The ATAA incorporates provisions from the Expanding the Promise of Individuals with Autism Act (EPIAA) originally proposed by Senator Hillary Clinton (D-NY).

To help address the unique needs of adults with ASDs, the bill would create a demonstration project with one-year planning grants and multi-year implementation grants for the provision of service for adults with autism. These services would address important issues such as education and employment, housing, nutrition and wellness, social activities, and transportation and personal safety.

-NewsAnchorMom Jen

Afraid to wear shorts? Do you have unwanted hair? Embarrassed by unsightly varicose or spider veins? NOW is the time to get your legs ready for summer! You don’t have to be afraid to wear shorts because of unwanted hair or unsightly varicose or spider veins. Call 674-SKIN to schedule your FREE leg vein or hair laser consultation at Soderstrom Skin Institute, and you’ll be ready to show off your beautiful legs this summer!

Soderstrom Skin Institute is positioned to be a comprehensive, full service, skin care facility. Visit www.soderstromskininstitute.com to learn what Soderstrom Skin Institute can do for you.

High Chair Recall

cpsc.gov: Evenflo is recalling around 90 thousand of their majestic high chairs. The chair has plastic caps and metal screws that can loosen and fall out, posing a choking hazard and they could even allow your child to slip out.

The chairs were made between January 23rd, 2007 and December 31st of last year.

Contact Evenflo at 1.800.233.5921 for additional information.

I do not have this high chair, but I do have an Evenflo high chair. It's about 6 years old now. This recall makes me wonder if it's safe! I will have to check it out when I get home.

-NewsAnchorMom Jen

Afraid to wear shorts? Do you have unwanted hair? Embarrassed by unsightly varicose or spider veins? NOW is the time to get your legs ready for summer! You don’t have to be afraid to wear shorts because of unwanted hair or unsightly varicose or spider veins. Call 674-SKIN to schedule your FREE leg vein or hair laser consultation at Soderstrom Skin Institute, and you’ll be ready to show off your beautiful legs this summer!

Soderstrom Skin Institute is positioned to be a comprehensive, full service, skin care facility. Visit www.soderstromskininstitute.com to learn what Soderstrom Skin Institute can do for you.

Child Labor in India

This is a sad one folks, but I promised I would pass it along.

Hello Jen, Although heartbreaking, I feel as though your readers might appreciate this story. India's missing children. Hundreds of thousands of destitute children disappear every year. Here is the story of one.

“According to police data, about 13,000 children have been reported missing throughout India since three years ago, when the discovery of a serial murderer who targeted poor children inspired the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR) to investigate the issue. But both grassroots workers and officials are convinced that this is only the tiniest tip of the iceberg.”

NEW DELHI — Meena, a careworn mother of six children whose wrinkled face and stringy limbs make her look much older than her 30 years, takes a tiny cloth purse from around her neck and gingerly opens it to take out a wallet-sized photo of an 18-month-old girl.

To look at it, there is nothing extraordinary about the picture, an instant, one-by-four-inch print from one of thousands of photo booths. But two things make this photo important. This picture, taken nearly three years ago, is the only one that Meena has of her daughter, Neeta. Neeta, now four years old, disappeared last September.

With tears in her eyes, Meena begs me to help her find her little girl, whom she believes was sold into a life of prostitution — possibly with the connivance of the girl's alcoholic father. Even if Neeta's father was involved, the police should, by law, treat it as a case of child trafficking. But Meena claims there's no equal justice for the poor in India.

“Every day I look at this picture, I look at my daughter's little clothes, and I go to the police station to beg them to help me,” Meena says. “But often the police just close the gates and refuse to let me in. They've told me to give up, that it will be better for me if I think of my daughter as dead.”

It is stories like this one that make me feel guilty about complaining about the little problems in life. I wish I could just take all the suffering kids home with me!

-NewsAnchorMom Jen

Gardasil Worries?

I am looking for a parent/child to interview who is thinking about getting the Gardasil vaccine to protect against HPV.

I am also looking for some parents who give their children vitamin D supplements each day. If you live in Central Illinois, please contact me at newsanchormom (at) gmail (dot) com.

Thanks a ton!

-NewsAnchorMom Jen