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"I would also advise against drugging your child. I tried this once with disastrous result."

I bet you tried Benadryl and I bet your child has a not uncommon paradoxical reaction to Benadryl! If it works, though, it's not really a bad idea for a long overseas flight. I'd test my child's reaction to Benadryl with a small dose beforehand, like on a day when 4 hours of hyper won't be such a big deal.

All this with your pediatrician's okay, of course -- there are various reasons not to give antihistamines to certain children. And under 12 months there's enough question about antihistamines and SIDS that I'd probably just tough it out, even with my pediatrician's approval. 35,000 feet is about the last place you want your baby to stop breathing (the first being four feet outside a NICU).

Tamyu, we almost lost Truman at 25 weeks. But we didn't because of our medical team. So, yeah, damn straight. Modern perinatology is amazing and should never be written off with this sort of cavalier attitude: it's all so cold, it's so impersonal, doctors think they know better than nature, whatever. If you want a more natural birth pursue both tracks, so that harsh, cold modern medicine is there to bail you out when nature takes a shot at you.

Oh come on folks, with very, very few exceptions what you say online or anywhere has 1st Amendment protection. Even insulting the principal. Problem is, there is precedent here. You insult the principal to his face, you can be punished for it. You have the right to say it, you can't be held criminally liable for saying it -- again, with precious few exceptions -- but you can be punished for it.

I think this is more about execution than speech in general. If you write in an online essay on your blog that your principal is not well suited to his role as an educator for reasons a, b, c it's unlikely you'll be officially punished. Call him, on a social networking site, a dickhead who should be murdered in his sleep with his family, well then you'll be punished. And maybe you'll eventually learn to express yourself in some sort of civilized manner that might actually accomplish something some day.

Pre-term birth is on the rise, too, for reasons yet to be determined.

Also, not that you state specifically otherwise, byt medicine if properly practiced *is* an art, and childbirth assistance as art is not the exclusive domain of those providers without medical degrees, now or ever.

Jenifer, we've been having trouble getting our 28-month-old Apsley to sleep. We finally took him to our pediatrician to get a professional evaluation; he said since what is going on with him -- he just won't go to nap or bed; he can sleep -- is not a sleep disorder they won't medicate him. Then he said you can give him some Benadryl now and then to establish routine -- just like you did. He said he doesn't really even consider Benadryl a medicine in the context of sleep. This guy has been a family friend for 30 years -- he was my pediatrician when I was a child -- and one of the top pediatricians in the southwest in perhaps the top practice in our state. He's just an incredible physician. He's been there for me during a couple of tough and scary times with our two boys. So no guilt for you on the Benadryl. If she's sleeping according to your family schedule it's better for all of you, and of course ultimately better for her.

As for the nutjob with the bong and the kid, I'd have rather seen her do the 5 years. And I don't even think marijuana is a dangerous drug. But for an 18-month-old? Everything is potentially dangerous to infant physiology.

Dawn, your husband is perhaps being over-cautious but not unnecessarily so, especially if you're feeding it to kids. Frozen and canned products are -- almost always -- cooked before they are packaged. Proper cooking kills E. coli O157:H7 -- despite what US FDA is telling people. Canned and frozen spinach is safe although it won't hurt you not to eat it right now -- and if it will worry you, just don't eat it.

But to take things a step further, I wouldn't eat *anything* grown or processed in the Salinas Valley. (I think they growly mostly leafy greens in this area.) I think they'll discover that some of the irrigation water is contaminated with E. coli O157:H7, or that all of it is intermittently contanimated. To put it in simple terms, there's cow poop in the water. This not the first time in a decade there has been an E. coli contamination with greens grown in the Salinas Valley. It's like the tenth.

As far as I know there are few if any federal standards for testing irrigation water. It is so simple to periodically culture a water sample that there is absolutely no excuse for not doing it -- it's even cheap. The problem here is that if something is discovered correcting the issue may not be cheap at all. 166 six with a mortality rate around 1% is in the scheme of things not a big deal, but if this can be avoided by some high-school level lab work, let's get after it.

The best way to motivate companies operating farms in the Salinas Valley to implement standards is to stop buying *all* produce from the Salinas Valley.

It is tragic. It was not my suggestion that this was the family's fault per se. It was to make the case that nothing is safe, and should not be taken as safe, or "think they won't choke on it". Kids can and do choke on the padding in disposable diapers. Most of these tragic accidents with children are just that, accidents. Accidents by implication meaning no one is at fault, not the parents or the kids or probably even the toy manufacturer.

I'm not sure where I said I couldn't see how it could happen. I said I could see how the nails could occlude a child's airway but not how an adult couldn't get it out. I was making the case for vigilance -- no matter what age rating some manufacturer slaps on the packaging. It is a pain in the ass checking them every 5 minutes but I haven't discovered any other way to prevent a lot of accidents.

Apsley has one of these, since he was 18 months old. There are also numerous other things in his room that could probably lodge in his throat and suffocate him. These two incidents are of course tragic but you'd have to have one of these nails in your hand to know what I'm talking about, but it's highly unlikely that one of the nails could occlude a toddler's trachea in such a way you couldn't pull it out with your fingers. I know it's obvious to most of us, but you have to watch them and check on them all the time. It's why we get nervous when we *don't* hear anything from them.

Being prudent of course I'll send them back.

You know I don't get the whole flag thing. The flag is the symbol of this great country. Burning it is symbolic of what makes this country great.

Rachel, I was going to say the same thing, although it may be a stretch to say that *all* chem teachers are trained in classroom safety, at least the teachers should be familiar with the materials in question, their physical properties, their reactivity and their toxicity.

I do disagree however; I think this guy *could* have done it safely. He could have contacted the local fire marshall's office and asked them to dispatch someone to plan the event and provide emergency back up.

But come on folks, this is Kentucky; it was all about *what* he burned. Had he doused 50 copies of The New York Times with kerosene and set *that* on fire they would have given him a medal.