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From the Kennedy Center to COCA

If you’re looking for a delightful way to spend some time together as a family in January, especially if you have young children, take in COCA’s production of Knuffle Bunny: A Cautionary Musical.
 

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Art Was the Answer

Greg Miller and his wife, Heather, first founded My Handyworks in Broken Arrow, Okla., in the mid-2000s soon after the birth of their first child. At that time, the couple was creating lion and fish designs using handprints and footprints, and selling their creations via craft shows.
 

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My Application to Become a Real Housewife

To Mr. Andy Cohen, Senior Vice President of Original Programming and Development for Bravo:

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Battle of the Video Games

Worried about how many video games your kids have played over the holiday break?  Based on conversations at the Y’s family swim this afternoon, my mom friends practically had to drag their sons out for some actual exercise.

My boys went to the pool willingly enough – probably because they’d had their fill of Wii hockey and Angry Birds (and they can’t find the Nintendo DS). It’s kind of amazing how much time they can spend with screens if you let them.

And while you should boot your kids off the couch now, there are plenty of benefits of computer games.

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Baby Blues and the Powerful Placenta

Like 85 percent of new moms, Erica Heslop suffered the baby blues after the birth of her first child. When she became pregnant with her second, this mom and nurse vowed not to let post-partum gloom steal a moment of happiness again.

Explained Heslop, “After I got pregnant with Drew, I looked back on my first weeks with Jay and realized that my mood swings, fatigue and tearfulness had clouded my early time with him. My husband even referred to the shower as my ‘sobbing box’ because every time I would shower, I would cry. I wanted the time after our second child’s birth to be less crying and more joy.”

Heslop’s solution: placenta encapsulation.

Now, in all honesty, when Heslop mentioned the practice to our moms’ group, I gagged a little. All I could picture was a placenta simmering in the crockpot with some Lipton’s onion soup mix. But the more she shared the benefits of encapsulation, the more I began to respect the practice. Instead of serving up the placenta with a side of au jus, Heslop explained, it’s cooked, dried and formed into caplets for taste-free ingestion, restoring necessary hormones that are lost within three to five days of giving birth and helping reduce the risk of the blues.

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Six Stories About Teens That Captured Our Attention in 2010

By Russell Hyken

My work with teenagers and their families provides a unique perspective on the state of the world. I spend days listing to the profound, as well as the improbable, reasonings of 14-year-olds, and I find that most teens have a sense of the bigger picture. I also believe that most will go on to do truly great things.

Many Top 10 (or in this case, Top 6) lists mention stories about teens that have caught the nation’s attention. These are stories that caught my attention as a counselor – they got teens talking and shaped the culture of 2010.

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Counting the Calories in Three Glasses of Holiday Sangria

Last night my mom and I indulged in a pitcher of spiced apple cider sangria at Onesto in South City. It was so tasty that we each drank several glasses, and before we knew it, we’d polished off the whole thing. About three glasses each.

After the very pleasant buzz wore off, I started wondering if we’d overdone it. Not in terms of alcohol – it wasn’t that strong, and we left the alcohol-infused apples in the pitcher! – but in terms of calories. Would I have to short myself on cookies for a day or two to make up for all the sangria?

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Top Pop Culture Moments of 2010 According to Mom

It’s that time of year again. Magazines, newspapers and blogs are packed with Top 10 lists spotlighting the best and worst of 2010. As a mom who finds little time to break free from the house or crack open a magazine, my list probably isn’t as edgy or cool as others, but hopefully it’s one parents can identify with. Especially if you’re the kind of parent who thinks Real Housewives of Atlanta and a Hostess cherry pie is a rockin’ good time. And if you are that person, wanna hang out sometime?

Tangled hits theaters – It’s hard to find a “girl” movie that boys like too, but Tangled is packed with enough action, adventure and humor to thrill the Y-chromosome sector. I especially liked it for Rapunzel’s spunky hairdo at the end of the film. So much so, that I was about to take a picture of it to my hairstylist, but thought basing my look on a Disney character was borderline obsessive.

Miley smokes the salvia – Like many little girls her age, MJ is a huge Miley Cyrus fan, yet I rarely let her watch Hannah Montana because I’m disgusted by the way Hannah talks back to her dad. However, for any adult with a TV and Internet access, there’s no escaping Miley’s classy stripper pole dancing, 40-year-old man grinding and salvia smoking. MJ, what about liking that nice Demi Lovato? Wait – scratch that.

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A Healthy Holiday Season Despite Asthma

There are lots of reasons to grumble about the weather lately, but for those with asthma, this wintry weather is especially aggravating. Their airways went from 70-degree days to wind chills below zero in just a few weeks. Add that to the usual holiday asthma triggers — dust mites on decorations pulled from storage, mold spores on live trees, fragrances in potpourris and candles — not to mention the usual wintertime upper respiratory infections going around, and it’s no wonder Dr. Susan Berdy’s phone is ringing off the hook.

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The Top 3 Ways to Safety Proof Your Holiday

The season of joy and good tidings also brings some potential safety issues for children of all ages. Dr. Matt Dougherty, Dr. Matthew Doughertypediatrician at South County Esse Health on Tesson Ferry, has some tips for keeping kids safe while celebrating.
 
1. Mind the Decorations

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Cookies and Cupcakes and Then Some

I have a friend who says there are two kinds of people in the world: cooks and bakers. And while my daughter is more of a cook (she prefers her more imaginative concoctions), she loves to help with the baking - cracking the eggs, using the electric mixer, spooning batter into muffin cups. Her interest is beginning to range beyond muffins and brownies these days. In an effort to encourage this, I sought out a good children’s baking cookbook for her - a task that proved more difficult than I expected.

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A Recipe for Creating Traditions from a St. Louis Master Chef

The smells of gingerbread and chocolate chip cookies wafting through house officially signal the arrival of the holiday season. Baking absolutely stands out as a cherished holiday tradition, albeit one that some of us must moderate in order to stay in our current jean size.
 
Vicki Bensinger, a local cook who also teaches in-home culinary classes and has her own cooking blog, says that cooking with your children provides lots of benefits during the holidays and throughout the year. “What I found was that it creates tremendous bonding among all of us,” says Vicki. “My children (now 21 and 24) wouldn’t bicker with each other during our baking times. They would be focused and creative in their own way and have fun together.
 

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When Your Personal Chef Takes a Holiday

The holidays are a busy time for us parents. If shopping and decorating weren’t enough, now you want us to bake?

We all have these perfect Norman Rockwell holiday dinners in our heads. But the truth is, those dinner tables loaded with a glistening ham and homemade eggnog are hard to achieve for any one with toddlers underfoot – unless Ina Garten invades our kitchen or we steal Jessie Spano’s caffeine pills.

In the quest for perfection, we often neglect to focus on what’s really important during the holidays – spending time with family instead of the stove. So instead of stressing, follow a few tricks to ease the baking rush.

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The Developmental Benefits of Baking Cookies

As my fellow blogger Andrea mentioned yesterday, baking with kids is messy. A one-hour cookie project can easily take just as long to clean up!  I thought it would get better when my boys got older, but it hasn’t. Every time they master a skill, like measuring, they want to do something tougher, like separate eggs.

The upside to all the cleanup is that baking is excellent for kids’ healthy development.

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A St. Louis Mentoring Program on the National Stage

It’s incredible how the dream of one woman can make dreams come true for hundreds of St. Louis kids.

For 15 years, Christine Reams, the force behind the Lutheran Family and Children’s Services of Missouri (LFCS) Children’s Alive Learning Leadership (CALL) program, has made an impact on the futures of area children. An impact so strong that it earned her national recognition as an Encore Careers Purpose Prize Fellow for 2010, an award that honors those who make a difference in their communities in their second half of life.

CALL has been a labor of love for Reams. As a social worker with LFCS, Reams spent much of her time providing families in need with one-time financial assistance. However, it was the children of these families she felt lacked a solid foundation — both from an educational and a social aspect — to build the diverse skills needed to be competitive in today’s global economy. Reams believed a mentoring program could be the solution these children needed.

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New Dance Company Hits the Local Art Scene

For art lovers in St. Louis, the region offers a vibrant array of opportunities to find our creative fix. Now we can boast one more incredible organization. In 2011, St. Louis Dance Theatre, the region’s first professional jazz dance company, will kick off its inaugural season, introducing audiences of all ages to dance and offering local dancers a new stage on which to showcase their talents.

Like many dancers from St. Louis, Morgan Cameron trained for years to perfect her craft but eventually joined dance companies in other cities due to limited opportunities in the St. Louis region. After returning to St. Louis, Cameron started a family and a business with her husband and founded a part-time dance company. However, beginning in 2011, StLDT will allow her and her fellow dancers to fulfill their dreams full time right here in the region.

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Sea Lion Shows at the Saint Louis Zoo

See the Zoo's California sea lions perform acrobatic and athletic feats, including Olympic-style dives on a high-diving platform, flipper walks, frisbee tosses and plenty of surprises. While on stage with the sea lions, the Zoo's trainers explain sea lion behavior and positive-reinforcement training, in addition to the need for conserving the sea lion's ocean habitat.

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Festivals & Fireworks to Celebrate July 4th in St. Louis

It's time to celebrate Independence Day in St. Louis, and because this year July 4th falls on a Friday, your family can look forward to a full weekend of festivals and fireworks. Check out these family-friendly celebrations that include carnivals, fantastic fireworks and lots more.

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Why Summer Camp is Great for . . . Parents

Being able to focus on yourself, your partner, and other people in your life who mean a lot to you is no small matter. As parents, we’re used to being responsible providers and caregivers. However, there’s so much more to a person: we’re also partners and friends. These are important parts of our identities that we need to cultivate. Sending your kids to summer camp may bring out your more playful side that you haven’t shown for a while.

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7 Signs Your Kids Are Ready For Their First Sleepaway Camp

It’s time to decide whether to send your kids to sleepaway camp, but how do you know that's the right thing to do? How can you tell whether your kids are ready for their first extended stay away from home? Here are 7 important signs that experts say should inform your decision.

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Want Your Kids to Learn? Teach Them It’s Okay to Make Mistakes

It’s normal for parents to want to protect their children from failure. It’s also normal to want them to achieve, win, and do their best. But here’s the truth: We don’t learn anything new without making mistakes. I’ll say it again. Making mistakes is a crucial step in learning. If we’re fearful of making mistakes, learning comes to a screeching halt.

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10 Ways to Improve Your Child's Listening Skills

Focused listening is one of the most important skills your child will ever learn. Children with strong listening skills do better in school, sports, relationships and, eventually, in their careers. But many children lack this important skill and parents are rightly concerned. First, listening is much more than just hearing.

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