Parenting and The End of The World

I find it very annoying that people willingly hurt their children and especially babies. No one reading this will deny that second hand smoke is a major health risk for children, but that doesn’t appear to stop people from doing it. Is it that they just don’t care about their children or their children’s health? If you know without any doubt that smoking internally injures your child, what would possess you to continue?

A new report has just been released by Tokyo’s respected Tobacco Control Journal which has carried on an 8 year study following 7,402 children of smokers. A third of the children who had parents smoking within 10 feet of them within their first few months of life ended up in the hospital before they were even 1 year old. There was a significant decrease in their immune system that made them vulnerable to infectious and potentially lethal diseases. 45% of the children that were exposed to smoke within their first 6 months of life had to be treated for infectious disease before the 8 year study was completed.

Even with the onslaught of educational videos and commercials on TV and radio against smoking, it doesn’t appear to be enough since there are many parents simply ignoring the warnings and willing to take the chance of giving their child a potentially fatal infectious disease thanks to a decreased immunity.

Being an ex-smoker, I understand how difficult it is to quit and I plan on releasing a post about how I successfully quit without the use of any drugs or patches. And I had kids, but I never smoked around them. I always went outside to smoke regardless of what the season. So I implore you, not just for your own health, but also for your children. If you don’t respect your body and wellness, respect theirs and leave the house if you can’t control your habit. It’s not fair to a defenseless child that you injure them through your elected ignorance.

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Please be warned that if you are sensitive to child abuse stories, this one is not going to be good for you to read.

Mr. Christopher from the Corner Stork Baby Blog once again with some disturbing news. Fox News reported today that a woman is caught on video pulling into an Orlando car wash facility, putting money into the car wash while another woman drags her daughter out of the car and sprays her with the high powered water sprayer.

The car wash owner, Marlene Diaz saw it happening and immediately called the authorities to report the incident. Diaz overheard the lady telling the child in Spanish, “You’re not gonna disrespect me, don’t worry I’m not gonna hit you. I’m just gonna get you with cold water, you’re gonna learn to respect me. You’re not gonna treat me bad,” So even though the child was being sprayed with a sprayer that has enough force to rip off your first layer of skin, the child was consoled that she wouldn’t be hit. How nice. The woman then proceeded to grab the little girl when she was trying to get away and then held her arm as she sprayed the toddler about the legs, body and even a few times across her face. Diaz went to assist as she heard the girl screaming, but by then it was too late and they had already left.

Orange County, Florida authorities are looking for this woman or for any information leading to her whereabouts and have officially opened an investigation into the video. She was seen driving a White Hyundai Elantra in the Orlando area. The little girl is between 3 and 4 years old. More information can be found at MyFoxOrlando by clicking this link.

I could spend days discussing this subject, but small children under the age of 3 should never be struck or sprayed down with skin ripping water hoses. While I believe in a quick smack on the butt if children are getting out of hand, this type of parenting stoops to an all new low. If you have ANY information on this matter, please use the video above for contact information and help give this woman the punishment she deserves.

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Mr. Christopher here from the Corner Stork Baby Gifts blog. Canadian researchers performed a study on 987 children from infancy to age 6 to answer the question, “Are nightmares hereditary?” and “Can babies have nightmares?”. Any laymen like you or I could simply say that “Yes, a baby can have nightmares dependent on their environment.” If a child lives in a home with loud noises like yelling and screaming, fighting, or simply bad parents shaking them when they cry or hollering at the baby when they’re not cooperating, is going to cause their baby to have bad dreams or nitghtmares. As disturbing as that sounds, it’s more common than you may think. Just ask any DFAC’s agent.

But the scientists also found something else very interesting. Personality can also play a part in their nighttime visions also. Of the 987 children, a good bit of them had an occasional nightmare, but there some that had very frequent nightmares all the way through preschool and it happened primarily among children who were anxious or “difficult” as babies.

It suggests that young children that have bad dreams “are trait-like in nature and associated with personality characteristics measured as early as 5 months,” as reported in the medical journal called Sleep. One of the researchers, Dr. Tore Nielson was able to predict which children were going to have bad dreams simply by noting their anxiety levels between 5 months and 17 months. Babies that cried a lot at 5 months and were difficult to calm down typically always fell into the “bad dream” group more than the scattered few from the calm and peaceful babies. When they get old enough to communicate, Dr. Nielson says that having the children “draw the dream” onto paper when it’s fresh on their mind normally helps get to the root of the problem.

Help create a peaceful environment for your babies to help avoid putting them in a negative or stressful environment. If you and your spouse need to argue or raise your voices, step out of the room out of ear shot of the baby. If there are loud noises that startle your infant, remove them from the racket and find a quiet and comforting place in the home until the the noises stop. Not only will this increase the chances that your baby will not fall into the “bad dream” group, but it will also help the baby’s brain development and avoid the onset of timidity later in their toddler stages. Head to Corner Stork Baby Gifts at http://www.cornerstorkbabygifts.com and view some great unique baby gifts to make bedtime more peaceful like the Plush Moonlight bear. Help your child avoid becoming a statistic.

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Mr. Chris for Corner Stork Baby Gifts Blog with some truly disturbing news.  It really makes you wonder what is going through people’s minds when they take a child’s life with their own hands.  What kind of things are going through your head during a murderous act and where is the point where you say to yourself, “This will forever haunt me for the rest of my life with every step and every breath I take from this breath all the way until the last breath I take.”  That’s why I could never be a cop because as a police officer, you have to see passed all of that twisted wickedness and get right to the issue.

According to ABC News, some Texas fishermen along with Texas authorities had to be thinking the same thing.  This past Monday night, some fishermen from Texas made a gruesome discovery of a baby girl locked into a plastic Sterilite container. She was wearing a pink pullover top, a “broom-style” skirt in a matching color made of seersucker material, and a pair of Velcro sneakers. Police are now treating the case as a homicide since “Baby Grace” (as they’re calling her) was found with a fractured skull which may have been the cause of her death.  They plan on releasing a composite sketch of her along with this photo of the shoes she was wearing.

Because of the level of decomposition, the examiners are having a difficult time identifying the time and date of death. But you can be sure of one thing.  The person that committed this heinous crime was just reminded of their dirty deed and has to be running scared.  Have you ever been in a position where you’re about to be caught for something that you did? The heart races, your blood starts pumping and you’re scared to death.   Sheriff’s officers increased the visibility of this case nationwide and have received hundreds of calls as a result, but they’re waiting for that call that solves this horrendous case.  And right now, that person who did this is running through every possible detail of that day remembering all of the places that they may have screwed up.  And for this child’s sake and her parents sake, I hope they made a HUGE mistake.  They describe Baby Grace as a white girl with blond hair between the ages of 3 and 5. She stood a little less than 3 feet tall and weighed about 30 pounds.

Hopefully once the sketch has been released, someone will have good information to go on to solve the situation, but for now, we all just have to sit and wait and wonder what could be going through somebody’s mind to commit such a horrific crime.  There’s a special place in hell for whoever they are.

WARNING! Please be advised that the following blog piece discusses issues regarding racism. Even though we have starred out offensive words, you’ll still know what they say. So if you are offended by the usage of profanity or racial slurs, please note that they are only used within the context of quotes from external sources and that we do NOT condone the usage of them and that this blog piece is presented by an individual and is NOT representative of the company the individual is employed by.

Mr. Christopher from the Corner Stork blog, tuning into my first home here at WordPress. I see my blog has stayed extremely active here clocking in hundreds and hundreds of views. Very nice. Well, when something big breaks, I have to come over to this neck of the woods to get your opinion. This week, racial commentary.

Should it be of any surprise that places like TMZ, National Enquirer, Star magazine and the likes would eventually break a juicy story that gets people talking? When you’re in people’s faces 24 hours a day 7 days a week, someone will eventually crack and blow it somehow. Just ask Lindsay, Britney, and now, just ask Duane Chapman, aka Dog the Bounty Hunter.

In a taped telephone conversation, Dog is chastising his son Tucker for dating a black girl by the name of Monique Shinnery. In the conversation he admits that the N word is used often in their daily business rantings and says that he essentially doesn’t want to be labeled as a racist simply because he uses the word. He says, “I don’t care if she’s a Mexican, a whore, whatever. It’s not because she’s black. It’s because we use the word Nigg*r sometimes here. I’m not going to take a chance ever in life of losing everything I’ve worked for, for 30 years, because some fu*k#n Nigg*r heard us say Nigg*r and turned us into the Enquirer magazine. Then our career is over. I’m not taking that chance at all. Never in Life. Never….We’re not taking a chance on losing everything we’ve got because of a racial slur.“

Well, Dog must be some kind of telepathic future-seeing dude, because that’s EXACTLY what happened! The National Enquirer got a hold of the audio tape of this conversation between Dog and Tucker and posted it on their website! Sweet. If you’d like to hear the conversation, click the following link BUT BE AWARE that this conversation has profanity and multiple usage of the N word throughout and is NOT EDITED! If you understand that, then click for here for the audio.
If you’re not sure you can handle that type of conversation and want to hear the edited version, BUT the FULL conversation, click here. He claims that he’s not a racist and that he just uses the N word loosely and doesn’t want to be seen as a racist and he explains, “When we say Nigg*r, we don’t mean you fu*#in scum nigg*r without a soul, we don’t mean that sh*t. But America would think we mean that.”

Actually Dog, when you say Nigg*r, we actually just think you’re using a derogatory word to refer to an African American. We don’t think you’re saying you fu*#in scum nigg*r without a soul. THAT would be awful and we would never think that’s what you meant. To make matters worse, in the same conversation where he’s defending himself that he’s not a racist, literally seconds later he tells his son, “I’ll help you find another job, but you cannot work here unless you break up with her.” That was the nail in the coffin that has A&E postponing any more recording of the series until this is resolved. Who would have thought that the National Enquirer would actually do a story that’s true?

And now guess who’s coming to dinner?! That’s right! Civil rights leaders Al Sharpton and Roy Innis are working to get to the bottom of it. But who can blame them? Between the Imus incident, the Katrina debacle, the Kramer slur, the Jena controversy and now this, one has to wonder what the heck is going on here? It seems that at least once a month another new HUGE racial headline hits the airwaves. While we could talk all day long about the various racial elements involved here, this article is about Dog the Bounty Hunter.

I want to hear your thoughts. Answer these questions for me. How do you think this tape got into the hands of the National Enquirer? Was it his angry son making a hasty decision to ruin his father because his Dad didn’t approve of his girlfriend? Was it the girlfriend who got a hold of the tape and was hell bent on ruining Dog? Does it even matter? The fact is that this is a guy who is on TV capturing criminals playing the good guy, holding hands and praying for protection before they go out to capture law breakers. Now that you hear Dog in all of his glory here, it proves that all of the righteous crap he exudes on television is a big, fat ugly facade.

All of these civil rights pundits like Sharpton and Innis have to be feeling a tad bit validated. They’ve been yelling that racism is alive and well in the U.S. of A. and it appears as if they have plenty of ammunition to prove their case. We have some serious issues here folks. Tell me what you’re thinking.

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Mr. Chris from Corner Stork Baby Gifts with a touching family story that’s yet to be resolved. Ok, I saw this story yesterday on the morning news and thought it would be a passing thing, but obviously, that’s not the case. It appears that Ellen plans to fight if necessary to make this situation right. For those that aren’t aware of what all the hub bub is about, here’s the scoop. Ellen Degeneres adopted a dog from a pet adoption agency called Mutts and Moms. One of those little black curly haired pooches. The agency is very strict about what happens to the animals it adopts out and has some pretty strict rules. One of the rules is that if you decide not to keep the pet, you must bring it back to the agency.

So Ellen brings the dog home, spends thousands of dollars getting its shots updated and having the dog neutered and essentially taking loving care of the pooch. Well the dog is just way too high strung for Ellen’s cats and is basically bouncing off the walls. So Ellen tells the story to her hairdresser and her hairdresser says, “We’ll take the puppy.”. So Ellen gives the puppy to her hairdresser who has a very nice home with a nice big privacy fenced backyard, two loving kids (ages 12 and 13) and that was that. One would think. Mutts and Moms had a heartattack insisting that Ellen had broken the rules of the agreement. Then they demanded to see the home the dog was sent to. Upon arriving at the people’s home days later, the rep from the agency picks up the dog and refuses to let go of the dog until the police arrive. The police arrive and find that the microchip in the dog’s neck still says the dog is registered to the agency, so the cops allow the dog to be taken by the agency even though the dog has been in this family’s home for 2 weeks.

At this point, the family is very upset and man oh man, so is Ellen. Ellen can’t even make it through the taping of her next TV show because she is sobbing and emotionally distraught that the agency has been so cruel (click the photo on the left or here for the video). They were hollering at her and basically telling Ellen how awful she is for breaking the rules. Ellen could barely talk during her show pleading for the agency to give the dog back to the family. The agency simply has ignored her pleas and the website makes no mention of the scenario and has even pulled their telephone numbers to avoid the onslaught brought on by all of this negative publicity.

So here we are two days later and this is still a very big issue around the water cooler. The new breaking news is that the agency has no proof that Ellen actually signed those papers that they have been so animate about. Plus, the only reason why the microchip still had the agencies name on it was because the agency had failed to update the chip. So what now? I’m sure we haven’t seen the end of this story for a long while until this gets resolved. TMZ took a poll and over 95% of the poll takers think the agency should give the dog back. This seems like an obvious problem that could be resolved by simply giving the dog back. The agency is bringing all of the bad press on themselves for dragging their feet. Kudos to them for protecting animals, but bad juju is surely coming their way if they don’t fix this fast.

If you love reading about great entertainment news that relates to babies, parenting and family matters, be sure to check out the new home for this blog at http://blog.cornerstorkbabygifts.com. It will be the same zaniness that thousands of people have grown to love here, but now at a new location.

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 Update 12-11-2007: The video on Youtube was moved.  I found another. Enjoy.

Mr. Christopher once again. You know, I typically like to spread the news out, but sometimes the quality of material is so scathing you just have to let go. Many of you have heard, but I like to break news after it’s broken and put my spin on it. After Britney’s horrid performance, one would expect that her PR people would figure out some spin on it and sure enough Sarah Silverman is the official scape goat.

According to X17Online.com, Britney overheard Sarah’s monologue that referred to Britney’s kids as “the cutest mistakes ever”. Britney after hearing the monologue went literally ballistic and threatened to not do the performance at all. Her friends insisted that she go ahead and do the show as planned. Britney was a little tipsy, but it’s reported that most of the awkwardness everyone saw was unfiltered rage at the words that were about to come out of Silverman’s mouth about her kids and her mind racing a mile a minute. Click here or on Sarah’s picture to see her monologue.

Well, I’m going to take the stance of “I don’t buy that.” If anyone has seen the video of the performance, that was a “I am wasted and can’t keep my balance and have forgotten the words to my song” performance. Needless to say, Britney has vowed never to appear on MTV again if Sarah made comments about her kids and forbid her to ever mention her kids again. MTV agreed that it was over the top of acceptable, but at that point it was too late since Sarah had already done her monologue.

So it appears that Britney officially has found a way out of that awful performance by shifting everyone’s focus to Sarah Silverman. It’s ingenious. Now if we could just forget how she leaves her kids with nannies for days at a time while she goes out to get drunk and hangs out at clubs, dresses in skimpy underwear writhing around on stage using profanity laced in her songs and even came on stage at MTV with the intro “It’s Britney, B*tch”.

Everyone makes Sarah the scapegoat here, but she was doing her job which was to be ruthless and scathing. They don’t hire her for family friendly entertainment. Additionally, she didn’t make any stabs at the kids, she made the stabs at Britney and the bad decisions that she’s made. If Britney isn’t ready to parent her children and they are interfering with her partying, then there’s no case here. As a parent of 3, I can tell you, once you have kids, the party is over. They require and need to have your undivided attention if you want them to be productive citizens. Or you could just let Hollywood raise your kids and hope that works out. Britney chose the latter. Was Sarah cruel and heartless? Absolutely, but that’s why she’s paid the big bucks. That’s just my point of view.

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Mr. Christopher from Corner Stork Baby Gifts bringing you the latest baby news. Boy oh boy. These entertainment photographers just keep on getting worse and worse. Liev Schreiber of “Scream” fame got very irritated at photographers while dining with his wife Naomi Watts and their infant.

Upon arrival at the Taverna Tony restaurant, 2 photographers came up behind Liev while he was holding a baby carrier and got a close up picture of his baby. That didn’t go well at all with Liev who handed off the carrier to Naomi and chased the photographer and gave him a good push, yelling “You F**cking disgust me and I have one f**king foot” referring to his ankle injury that has him hobbling. Was that the end? Of course not.

Liev then approached the second photographer on the scene including a lady that appeared to be taking pictures for herself. She screamed “Don’t touch me!” as Liev approached her. Liev left her alone, then turned to chase the rest of the photographers all the way out to their cars.

He then went and finished dinner with his wife. However when they left, the ignorant photographers decided it was time to see if they could get him to snap on film and get the next “Brad Garret” story. Liev’s blood sugar was obviously back to normal now that he had eaten and he just ignored them as they yelled “You better sit down before I knock your a** out.” While Liev ignored, they got to Naomi though and she showed them the third digit.

Do you guys feel like these photographers are going way too far nowadays? They are constantly pushing and pushing. And to make matters worse they get paid big bucks if they can make them lose it. And taking pictures of someone’s child is a definite no no. I’d probably lose it if someone took a picture of my kid without my permission. What are your thoughts on these idiots?

9/20/07 UPDATE: First, sorry about the outdated video link to Brad’s scuffle. The YouTube owner changed the URL, but I found another copy of it on Brightcove and it’s below. But secondly, let me say that I am so proud. I hadn’t seen this, but Brad Garrett appeared on Conan’s show and has verified what we saw in the video about the paparazzi being in his dates way. While everyone else was crying foul, we saw the truth. Thank you Brad Garret for confirming what we saw and reported. This just makes us even more legitimate as your trustworthy entertainment news source. See Brad’s confirmation here. Now back to the original post.

Mr. Chris from Corner Stork back in the mix again with your latest entertainment gossip. It appears that the giant 6′ 8″ Brad Garrett from the hit series Everybody Loves Raymond got a little irritated at one of TMZ’s infamously pushy photographers and gave him a camera in the face, but TMZ is obviously confused about the reason behind it.

According to a report on TMZ.com, Brad Garrett made a comment last week in front of several witnesses commenting to a black photographer saying “”I didn’t know there were black people in Malibu. Go back to where you came from.” It was obviously a light hearted joke, but not nearly as career killing effective as Kramer’s. Either way, the comment wasn’t taken well by the photographer from the FAME photo agency.

As Brad exited the Nobu restaurant around 11:30, the photographers were crowding him and his date as he walked to the car. The entire time he walked to his vehicle, the unnamed black photographer kept calling him a racist over and over again. Obviously trying to get him irritated. It wasn’t working and Brad just ignored him. The highlight came as Brad approached a TMZ photographer and shoved the camera in his face and down to the ground.

TMZ claims that Brad was striking out at the photographer making the “you’re a racist comments” and had mistakenly targeted the TMZ photographer as the person doing the taunting. But maybe TMZ should look a little closer at the video. You’ll see Brad walk to his car and open the passenger door, but no one gets in. Why is that? That’s because TMZ is so busy getting in Brad’s face that they have effectively blocked his date from being able to get in the car. You can see Brad notice this act of rudeness, push the photographer out of the way and then escort his date to the car. Watch the video and judge for yourself. This push has nothing to do with the racist comments at all. He knows where those comments are coming from because he even banters with the black photographer back and forth. But he’s not stupid enough to strike a black photographer whose calling him a racist on video. We’ll give Brad a little more credit than that. That would be big trouble and Brad knows it.

This has nothing to do with any racist comments, but simply yet another case of photographers being obnoxious, nosy and blatant opportunists to the point where they are just plain rude. So our hats off to Brad Garrett for being a gentleman to his lady. TMZ’s photographers should apologize for being inconsiderate instead of expecting an apology from a man who did nothing but be chivalrous. Brad should head over to My Wedding Favors at www.myweddingfavors.com and pick up this lovely gift set of an elegant pearl with crystal accents for his lady and maybe she’ll forget about that rude photographer and give him another chance.

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Yeah, I know that you’ve heard this before, but the video for this great occurrence is tough to find since Faith Hill’s PR folks had it yanked down off of YouTube. But leave it to Mr. Christopher from Corner Stork to find it for ya! Husband Tim McGraw and Faith Hill are on a concert tour together called Soul 2 Soul and country music fans are coming out in droves to catch these two doing their thing. But Tim McGraw has been getting a LOT of attention and it’s upsetting his wife Faith Hill big time.

Faith is not really known for her “grace under pressure”. You only have to witness the clip of her losing it at the CMA’s when Carrie Underwood won the award instead of her. She freaked out with a look of shock and shouted “WHAT?!” as if to say, how in the world can Carrie Underwood win? I’M the best, not HER!

Well, obviously fans are out to get Faith because someone in the audience recently took Tim McGraw’s ring off of his finger while he was shaking hands with fans from the stage. He even stopped the songs and demanded his ring back from the fan. Then as he was making his way off the stage at another show in Louisiana, a fan grabbed Tim’s crotch. That was the straw that set Faith off the worst as she chastised the fan from the stage yelling at the fan saying, “Somebody needs to teach you some class, my friend. You don’t go grabbin….somebody’s husbands ba*ls, you understand me? That’s very disrespectful.” And the whole time she’s finger pointing at the lady in front of thousands. And dancing to boot.

The fact that she actually found it necessary to handle it this way, in my opinion, was completely unprofessional. You are married to one of country musics most famous hunks. Crazy fans like this are everywhere and she better figure out how to deal with it and quick. Even her PR folks knew that this was not good and had the video pulled from wherever they could find it. So for those that want to see this painful display, you better click here to watch it now. Because it’ll be just a matter of time before it gets yanked.

Meanwhile, far be it from me to let this piece of news get away without plugging an appropriate product. So let us suggest that Faith head on over to Corner Stork Baby Gifts at www.cornerstorkbabygifts.com and pick up these Mini Pro Soft Sports Rattles. These are soft balls that you can shake around when you’re starting to get rattled.