Back in the day when the only birthing training available was Lamaze, my husband and I dutifully attended classes to prepare for our first child. It was never openly admitted in class, but I had ascertained from TV and movies that giving birth hurts very, very, very much and the silly-sounding breathing exercises (Hee! Hee! Hee! HAW!) were the best diversionary tactics available to distract one from the pain in her nether regions.

Then I had to have a C-section and all that training went to waste.

A recent study in Sydney, Australia queried mothers on their views on complications ranging as minor as prolonged birth and superficial tears to as major as anal and urinary incontinence, vaginal prolapse and severe tearing and compared these opinions with those of doctors and midwives. The results were that first time birthers were much more willing to take risks in order to have a natural birth than were the doctors or midwives.

One out of every 4 UK pregnancies results in a C-section due to potential complications like the baby lying in the wrong position for natural birth.

According to Philip Steer, editor of the journal where the study was published, the clinical responses may, "indicate that doctors are biased by their inevitable involvement in complex cases, or labors where things have gone wrong."

I think another word for that is "experience." Sure, women have given birth unassisted thousands of years on their own, but it's important to remember that many of them (and their babies) died in the process. Stuff can go wrong, doctors realize what that stuff is, and try to keep it from happening to their patients. I personally didn't have a problem with that when my birthing situation went awry, because at the end of the proceedings, I was alive and so was my baby.

In an era of malpractice lawsuits, it's understandable why a doctor may go ahead and suggest a C-section rather than take risks. As a society, we've essentially backed the medical field into this corner and the result is C-sections that may not all be necessary and even though the mom may be willing to give it the old college try.

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A study commissioned by the toy company, Hearthsong has been weighing heavily on my mind. By querying over a thousand parents of kids under the age of twelve, it was found that although 99% of those surveyed believe play was important to childhood, only 38% spent at least six hours a week in active play with their own kids.

Even more troubling, one in six parents didn't even spend an hour a week with their kids, which averages to less than10 minutes a day in playtime with their sons and daughters.

Hearthsong sells toys, but playing with kids doesn't mean you're confined to Legos and tea parties. There are lots of fun things you can do with your child that don't require plastic items at all. I believe and if both parties are having fun and actively engaged, it counts as play too.

Something even the busiest of families can do for entertainment/play is round-robin stories. This costs absolutely nothing, can be done many places including around the dinner table or when trapped traveling in the car together.

One person starts a story ("Once upon a time, there was a giant onion" ) passes it on to the next person, who adds their own spin to the adventure ("and he accidentally wandered into this village that turned out to be where the Iron Chef competitions were held....") and then passes it on again. It's a simple activity that stretches kids' imaginations and can provide some pretty memorable family moments at the same time For a time, we had a child who had exceptional prowess at working a pirate into every tale and it became a challenge to make a pirate-proof.

Any mundane activity can be turned into play with a little bit of imagination: play catch with the newspaper as you're bringing it the house, or a quick game of tag while waiting for another sibling to be done with track practice, monkey-in-the-middle-of-laundry is done by tossing dirty clothes into the proper sorting pile over a leaping child, playing charades to try and guess what's for dinner or what exciting things happened that day are all ways to incorporate fun into a busy schedule.

Blogger Blackbird has older kids and for some people that makes family time a bit more challenging, but she brilliantly enlisted her children's help to make a list of fun things they wanted to do as a family this summer. The list is genius in it's simplicity: making a fire, creating something with paper mache, working at a soup kitchen, eating S'mores.

It's easy to forget in the daily scramble to get everything thing done, but kids really aren't kids forever. With that in mind, I'm off for a kite-flying session with mine. (Sadly, our first all summer.)

The key to a successful kid joke for the younger crowd is keep it simple.

Those first few weeks at home with a newborn baby, applying makeup is pretty much an exercise in futility. Nothing is going to cover under-eye circles of that magnitude and even the strongest lipstick will just end up on your itty bitty baby from the thousands of kisses you'll be giving.

Mothers who return to work have a reason to try to look good when they head out in the morning but for the stay-at-home mom, it's easy to fall out of your former daily beauty routine. When the only adult interact you have to look forward to is the Wiggles and perhaps, the mailman, you might as well conserve that concealer.

For years after staying home with my babies, I was mostly bare-faced. I didn't really know what to do with the makeup brushes, felt too busy to bother with it, didn't want to invest much money in something that seemed so frivolous, and had the power of youthful good skin on my side.

Then I got older and went with girlfriends for a professional makeover and discovered the power of eyeliner and a good lipstick. Now I put a little color and concealer on my face every day, even if I'm just working around the house. I don't wear a lot and can do my entire routine in 6 minutes but it really make me feel better and more professional, even if I'm just folding laundry and scrubbing out the bathtub. There's also the added bonus of not looking quite as frumpy if someone droops by unexpectedly.

Inquiring minds want to know, what has motherhood done to your makeup routine?

Many of today's parents grew up with the daily query, "Did you remember to take your vitamin?" and would dutifully trudge back to the kitchen and pop that Flintstone chewable.

Today there is a vast ocean of choice when it comes to children's vitamins. You can choose between omega3, immunity support, zinc & echinachea, extra iron, or extra C in liquid, swallow-able, or chewable in the traditional chalky version, gummy-bear, or bubblegum variety forms.

But are vitamins still an necessary part of a children's daily diet? A British website did a study on children's multivitamins and found only five out of 14 brands of supplements contained all 12 essential vitamins and stated that some have little more nutritional value than candy.

Even experts seem to disagree whether multivitamins are necessary for all children. The American Academy of Pediatrics only giving supplements if your pediatrician advises you to, but the same organization also says a daily vitamin isn't likely do any harm, unless it exceeds the recommended daily allowance amounts of a vitamin or mineral.

With so many of today's common food and beverages being fortified (Who could have imagined that calcium could be added to orange juice?!) even finicky children are probably getting a lot more vitamins and minerals than parents realize. We're pretty lackadaisical on the multivitamin front in our house. What about you?

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Mr. Ripley might be talented, but he's is also getting grossly outnumbered by the fairer sex in his household!

The addition of a new daughter to the family means Matt Damon will now have to negotiate with four women in order to get a little time in the bathroom: wife Luciana, stepdaughter Alexia, two-year-old Isabella, and newborn daughter Gia Zavala.

Little Gia was born on Wednesday. Damon's rep reports that the newest Damon girl is healthy and beautiful and that she and her mother are doing well.

As for Matt Damon, the sexiest man alive doesn't appear to mind living in an estrogen-filled environment in the least. "[I'm] taking the rest of the year off," he told USA Today. "I'm just hanging out with my family."

Now that's some sexy talk right there!

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The list of infractions resulting in kids as young as middle school getting suspended could curl your hair: drugs, bringing in weapons, bomb threats, physical violence, having sex under the bleachers, etc.

So hearing about a kid getting suspended due to having pink hair seems a bit ....tame.

Twelve-year-old Amelia Robbins lost her father to cancer six years ago. In his honor, she had pink streaks put in her hair at the end of the school year. School administrators warned her not to do it again, but Amelia, with her mother's permission, started out this year at her Missouri school with a full head of pink . To Amanda, pink is the "cancer color. " To the school administrators, however, pink hair is a distraction and the seventh grader has been suspended.

There are many things that can cause distractions in middle school. A little girl with pink hair seems pretty low on the list and it's not even dangerous or a life changing decision like having unprotected sex or doing drugs.

Stupid things banned by schools(click thumbnails to view gallery)

Kids have surprisingly short attention spans and after the murmurs the first day, pink hair probably wouldn't even be noticed among the student body. Amelia had a reason for the color (to honor her father) it's not harmful to others, and she had parental permission. Even if the entire school ends up being comprised of kids with rainbow-colored locks, will it really affect their education? When it comes to picking battles, I'm not sure this one is worth fighting.

It's hair, not heroin. But what do you think?

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It's a sad fact that not every young man has a positive male role model in his life, making it all too easy for kids to believe lyrics like "Smack my bitch up" is actually an acceptable way to treat a woman.

The Coaching Boys Into Men program is working to overcome harmful views by providing information, literature, and ideas on what adults can do to help counteract negative influences and help boys learn early on that violence is unacceptable.

Some easy ideas for men to use, from the website:

• Listen to how the boy and his friends talk about girls. Ask him if he's ever seen abusive behavior in his friends. Is he worried about any of his friends who are being hurt in their relationships? Are any of his friends hurting anyone else?
• Let him know how you think he should express his anger and frustration and what is unacceptable behavior. Talk with him about what it means to be fair, share and treat others with respect.
• Teach him ways to express his anger without using violence. When he gets mad, tell him he can walk it out, talk it out, or take a time out.
• Watching TV or listen to his music with him. If you see or hear things that depict violence against women, tell him what you think about it. Don't hesitate to let him know you don't approve of sports figures, jokes, video games and song lyrics that demean women. And when it comes time for dating, be sure he knows that treating girls with respect is important.
• Be a role model by modeling behavior that is respectful of others in trying situations.

As a society, we seem to have forgotten that good men aren't just born, they are created. It's nice that Coaching Boys Into Men is providing instructions on how to do that.

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Help get your child motivated for a great school year by helping them create an inspiration board, a gathering of clippings, quotes, photographs and treasures to provide a reminder of what is important and most of all, what is possible.

To start, work with your child to determine where an inspiration board could fit in their room. Is wall space available? If so, you could:

• hang a purchased cork bulletin board
• create your own custom-made version with an old frame and corkboard
• homasote is also a great material for creating a bulletin board
• chicken wire, either stapled inside an old frame or attached directly to a wall (with sharp edges carefully folded over) in conjunction with clothes pins makes a quick and inexpensive bulletin board

If wall space is unavailable, set aside some real estate on a desk, dresser, shelf, or floor for:

• a purchased easel that could safely support a bulletin board
• make an easel out of cardboard that could support something lightweight like poster board or a piece of foam core
• an old music stand

Once the display has been created is when the kid fun begins! Anything from old magazine clippings to candy bar wrappers that inspire can be attached to the board. If there seems to be an absence of motivational sayings, it can be a fun parental project to explore the words of others, whether it be Spongbob Squarepants or Eleanor Roosevelt and see if anything resonates. A trip to the library or internet search can turn up plenty of quotable quotes.

If your child needs a hero outside the family for inspiration, look no further than Beijing. Here are a couple of Olympic athletes that seem worthy of emulation for their deeds:

• Michael Phelps- An ADHD kid growing up to be "the greatest athlete of all time" is pretty awesome all on its own. But what I found particularly impressive was Phelps' humble words after winning that 8th gold medal, "Without the help of my teammates, this [wouldn't have been] possible."
• Dara Torres- While many athletes block out the world to prepare for a race, Dara Torres used her time before a semi-final race helping rival Therese Alshammar of Sweden deal with a torn swimsuit. When Torres noticed Alshammar was missing from the march into the area, she asked officials to delay the race. As if that wasn't good sportsmanlike enough, Torres also told the other swimmers what was going on so they wouldn't get anxious during the delay and was always the first to congratulate those around her once the race was finished, even when she lost the gold medal by 1/100th of a second.
• Jason Lezak- Michael Phelps got most of the press, but it was Lezak's amazing anchor leg that won the Men's 400 Relay and helped Phelps get his gold medal count to 8.

An inspiration board can serve as more than a motivational tool and gathering place for your child's favorite things, it can also provide parents a glimpse of their dreams.

Has enough dirt accumulated under your child's fingernails to grow a garden this summer?