This article below was taken from the New York Times and it cracks me up because it showcases a group of tight-ass, self-involved former DINKS (double-income, no kids), having to make design concessions now that they’re breeding. And the whining and the hand-wringing over their things getting messed up is unreal. Enjoy.

Parent Shock: Children Are Not Décor

Beckett Jarecke-Cheng, with his father Kipp Cheng, enjoys a Noguchi coffee table as a play space. Some parents wonder whether having children will mean the end of their high-design dream.

By JULIE SCELFO

Published: February 14, 2008

 WHEN Jacqueline Brown and her husband, Gavin Friedman, were in their early 30s, they lived in a condominium in Santa Monica, Calif., with a black leather Ikea couch Mr. Friedman had bought for law school, a few modest pieces from Pier 1 Imports and assorted hand-me-down furnishings. Within a few years, though, having acquired professional and financial stability — both were litigation associates at prominent law firms — they bought a house in Cheviot Hills, an affluent neighborhood in West Los Angeles, and began remodeling and decorating.

Brian Ajhar

Evan Sung for The New York Times

SOFT SURROUND Sandra McLean and Bob Stratton put down cork flooring, giving Vin (with skateboard) and Fia soft landing places.

Chester Higgins Jr./The New York Times

Brooke and Cole Bernstein with their parents, Hartley Bernstein and Debra Cherney.

Chester Higgins Jr./The New York Times

Brooke and Cole Bernstein have free rein in the dining room.

During two renovations, each costing more than $100,000, they built a two-sided fireplace to separate the living and dining rooms, put in a wine cellar and installed a sleek maple and granite kitchen. They bought molded-wood chairs in the Arne Jacobsen style, Murano glass pendant lamps and a custom walnut entertainment unit. Ms. Brown, who had become obsessed with interior design in law school, poured heart and soul into the projects.

But just as Ms. Brown and Mr. Friedman were establishing their first truly grown-up residence — she was 38, he 37 — Ms. Brown gave birth to their first child, Harrison, a boy who turned out as bouncing as most.

Suddenly they were confronted with a question that had never before occurred to them: given the way baby gear and toys take over households, the uncivilized habits of toddlers and the dangers posed by sharp-edged contemporary furniture, could Ms. Brown and Mr. Friedman continue to live their high-design dream?

It is a question they are not alone in facing. As Elizabeth Gregory, director of women’s studies at the University of Houston and the author of the recent “Ready: Why Women Are Embracing the New Later Motherhood” (Basic Books), pointed out, “being a later parent has become part of the mainstream.” (In 2005, Ms. Gregory says in her book, 10 times as many women had their first child between age 35 and 39 as in 1975, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and 13 times as many had their first between 40 and 44.)

At the same time, people age 35 to 44 are the most dedicated group of furniture consumers, outspending adults of all other ages, per household, according to Jerry Epperson, who tracks the American furniture market for Mann, Armistead & Epperson, an investment banking and corporate advisory firm in Richmond, Va. “That’s what these people are willing to invest in,” Mr. Epperson said.

And when the investment has been not in cribs or other nursery furniture but in the classic “double income, no kids” fantasy of a pristine, high-style home for grown-ups, the transition can be hard.

“Going from being a couple to becoming a parent, your whole world changes,” said Robin Gorman Newman, who four years ago started a support group called Motherhood Later … Than Sooner in New York (it now has chapters across the country), after becoming a first-time mother at 42, 10 years into her marriage. “Once you become a parent, your home is not your own,” she added. “I think you mourn your previous life, at least for a while. You’re never going to have what you had.”

Nevertheless, some people try. Ms. Brown and Mr. Friedman — who of course were thrilled to have a child, like all the later-in-life parents interviewed for this article — were also determined not to let Harrison “take control of the house,” Ms. Brown said. They went ahead with putting in flat-front lacquered maple cabinets in the kitchen, even though they soon had to watch a professional babyproofer drill 300 holes in them for safety latches. (Ms. Brown still cringes.) They put up silk Shantung draperies in Harrison’s bedroom, knowing that they might well end up stained, as they soon did — with yogurt. And they held onto the molded-wood chairs, which were not an easy transition from the highchair. “They have a very sleek bottom,” Ms. Brown explained. “He slides off it.”

OTHERS, like Debra Cherney, 49, and Hartley Bernstein, 56, were more resigned to giving up control. They were possibly even happier than most late parents at the birth of their twins, a boy and a girl named Cole and Brooke, in 2003, having lost their daughter Raine to respiratory failure in 2001. When the twins became mobile, the couple realized that they would need to create a designated play space in their prewar Park Avenue apartment. Still, the room they sacrificed — the formal dining room — was tough.

“I’m pretty sensitive aesthetically, and it does something for me when I look at a pretty room,” Ms. Cherney said. “Looking at what the room used to be was the visual equivalent of listening to Bach or Mozart. Now it’s the visual equivalent of listening to Barney.”

She felt the full impact when she and Mr. Bernstein put their 18th-century mahogany dining table and chair set in storage. “When I bought the table I was envisioning these beautiful, lovely dinners with fine china,” she said. “Once you have kids and once you give up those things, it was like, ‘Who was I kidding?’ I remember thinking this room will look nice again — in about 18 years.”

The issue of safety, too, can pose vexing choices for parents in thrall to design. Even before Kipp Cheng and his partner of 15 years, Mark Jarecke, arrived home with their son, Beckett, last March, they could see that many of the furnishings in their Maplewood, N.J., colonial house, including a set of four Barcelona chairs and a glass-top Noguchi coffee table, were accidents waiting to happen. But they weren’t eager to act.

“We are both small-town guys who lived in the city and tried to establish an aesthetic point of view that was largely modernist and minimalist,” said Mr. Cheng, 40, a playwright and a publicist for the American Association of Advertising Agencies. “But when you become parents, you kind of have to throw that out the window.”

As difficult as the prospect of change was for Mr. Cheng, who recalls the details of nearly all the couple’s furniture purchases, it was even harder for Mr. Jarecke, 37, the creative director of CondéNet, the Web division of Condé Nast.

“We spent years collecting meaningful, quality pieces,” he said. “Getting those kinds of pieces — the handmade silk pendant lamp, the teak Danish sideboard — it’s a huge project. Basically each room was finally done, and then it all got blown apart.”

Among the most troubling matters was the fate of the Barcelona chairs, whose “corners are basically razor blades,” Mr. Cheng said. After much deliberation, they put three in the garage and wrapped the corners of the fourth in foam so it could stay in the living room. “It was just sad,” Mr. Cheng said.

As for the coffee table, they avoided doing anything until Beckett gave them no choice: while learning to walk last summer, he used it as his main training prop. “He’d cruise and trip and hit his face on the table’s edge,” Mr. Cheng recalled.

Mr. Jarecke initially refused to discuss parting with or altering the table in any way, but they eventually compromised and decided to wrap the edge of the top in foam. “As I’m taping it,” Mr. Cheng said, “I’m saying, ‘I’m taping over what makes the difference between this being a Noguchi table and a Kmart table.’ ” Mr. Jarecke was even more distraught. “It transformed this beautiful modernist piece of furniture into a piece you’d find in a ’70s rec room,” he said.

FOR some design-minded parents, certain compromises are too much.

In 2004, Bob Stratton, a design technologist who specializes in home automation, and his wife, Sandra McLean, 50, a food activist and writer, bought a former tool and die factory in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn, and set about turning it into a two-story, 4,000-square-foot loftlike home appropriate for themselves and their son, Vin, and daughter, Fia, then 2 and 5.

“We spent many, many hours designing a place that would be kid-friendly as well as sensitive to our need to live in a well-designed adult environment,” said Mr. Stratton, 48. Construction took a few years, and the family settled in last March.

They built a kitchen and dining area in the center of the first floor, using durable Corian for both the cabinets and a Parsons-style dining table designed by Mr. Stratton. “I wanted the Corian top so there would be no repeat of the famous carving incident,” Mr. Stratton said, referring to the time when Fia, at 4, used a pen to carve her name into a cherry dining table just delivered from France. (“I thought I would die,” Ms. McLean said.)

They put down cork tiles throughout, as protection for glassware and other breakables, including the children themselves, and they set up a 500-square-foot play area in the basement, with a trade-off that some parents would consider draconian: “They can play with a toy in the main living area, but it has to go away when they’re done,” Ms. McLean said. “I’m very concerned with what’s in my visual space. When people come into the house, I very much do not want them being bombarded with toys.”

She also refused to babyproof furniture when the children were younger. She was “never one of those mothers” who put safety corners on coffee tables, she said. “That stuff is just gross, and I don’t feel you have to sacrifice living space to that degree.” And she decided not to install wire railings on the open side of the floating walnut staircase Mr. Stratton designed to connect the first- and second-floor living spaces.

“We couldn’t bear it,” she said. “It was too ugly. So basically what we did was we trained the kids to hold onto the handrail, and it’s worked. No one’s ever fallen off.”

Still, even extreme devotees of design seem to end up relaxing their standards over time. After several expensive pieces from Ligne Roset were delivered to the McLean-Stratton home last June — a brown microsuede one-arm sofa, a low white leather swivel chair, a white shag carpet and an arched chrome floor lamp — Ms. McLean instructed Fia and Vin not to eat on the couch, and told them half-jokingly not to “sit on it, stand near it or even look at it.”

But in the last several months she has grown to appreciate how the children delight in wrestling on the rug and using the swivel chair as an oversize Sit ’n Spin. “You know what?” she said. “They jump all over it, but it’s good furniture, and it actually holds up fine.”

I’ve never been a fan of plastic baby dolls in general. In fact, I find them downright scary and alarming, with their glassy-eyed stare and those eyelids that click open and shut. So you can imagine how I feel about these “reborn” dolls, which take the average baby doll to that next, Frankenstein level of horrifying.

These “reborn” baby dolls are undoubtedly the creepiest, disturbing and most macabre things I have ever seen. According to Wikipedia, reborn baby dolls are vinyl baby dolls which are customized and enhanced to resemble a real baby. This process includes applying a color wash to mimic the translucent, veined skin tone of a newborn. Pellets made of glass and silicone are added to give realistic weight and heft to these dolls and optional enhancements include umbilical cords, heartbeat simulators, heat packs and even breathing simulators.

On ebay, do a search for “reborn dolls” and you’ll find a frightening number of these terrifying toys for sale with vivid descriptions of noses opened up and backed with black felt “so they would appear to breathe” and other gruesomely graphic details gushing about “awesome squish factor” and “fat folds.”

So, who the f*ck buys these dolls? Channel 4 aired a documentary series titled My Fake Baby, which explores the lives of the women who buy (at exorbitant prices), love and care for these babies as if they were real. I watched the clip of the show online and felt my face and body go numb with creeping horror and sadness. One woman was clearly trying to find a substitute for a baby she lost, while another missed being a new mom and all the attendant attention, and yet another simply wanted a baby without all the muss and fuss. Whatever their reasons, watching them lovingly pushing them around in strollers and tenderly treating these babies as if they were real, was beyond disturbing.

The maternal instinct is powerful indeed, but when it is thwarted or goes awry, women go bananas! I don’t know if re-borning babies will become the next scrapbooking, but if you’ve got a touch of the mad scientist, there are plenty of reborning kits for sale on ebay.

I received an email from Urban Baby Daily about this new site selling glam hospital gowns called girliegowns. Their website cheerily quips, “Because your delivery should be girlie not grungy.” In a perfect world, we could just sneeze and pop out our little cherubs without messing up our expensive blowouts. Unfortunately, there’s no getting around the grunge factor in labor and delivery.

In theory, I totally get why women want to upgrade that dingy hospital gown on D-Day. It’s a momentous occasion, one that will be photographed or videotaped by your significant other. A revolving door of visitors consisting family and friends will coo over your newborn and take their own pictures. It’d be nice to look presentable on the big day.

But the reality is oh-so-different. Sure, a pretty hospital gown sounds like a good plan. But it’s about as practical as using couture toilet paper. Sure, it looks nice, that is, until you get crap all over it. And I guarantee that in addition to crap (mostly your own), you will get every conceivable body fluid all over your gown from just about every orifice. Birth may be miraculous, but it’s mostly messy.

The open ties in front and back, however ugly and revealing, are essential for easy access to epidurals and exams. Between the leaking amniotic fluid, the peeing and the pooping on the delivery table, the ensuing blood, the sweat, the vomit, tears and melting ice chips, the gown you deliver in will need to be peeled off of you and incinerated. You will change into another clean gown after the nurses sponge you off, but you will be bleeding so much you will need a diaper under gargantuan mesh undies to stem the flow. And even those diapers will leak.

If you’re breastfeeding, your nipples will crack and bleed when they’re not leaking colostrum. A dab of sticky Lansinoh is pure heavenly relief, but it’s one more yucky thing that inevitably gets on your gown. Not to mention the postpartum night sweats. Remember all the water you retained while pregnant? Well this is your body’s way of getting rid of the excess and you’ll soak through your nightie in no time.The frilly nightie I packed in my bag never saw the light of day.

In my opinion, the real workhorse of any new mom’s hospital wardrobe is a pretty robe. You can cover up and look presentable when visitors come and it covers your bare ass when you’re strolling the halls with your newborn. Wear the ugly hospital gown underneath to absorb all the yuck seeping from your body and top it off with a pretty new kimono or dressing gown instead. Problem solved.

LINKS: girliegowns and pajamamania

We’ve recently finished reading “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” to my 6-year-old son Jonah and as a parent, I’ve come to appreciate this book (and movie) on a whole new level. Now that I’m a mom, the monstrous character of Veruca Salt fills me with indescribable horror and fear. Not because I’m totally repulsed by her obnoxious greediness, but because now I realize what a daunting task it is to raise a child who does NOT act like that. Her constant refrain of “I want” is the mantra of most children (including my son) and no wonder. Almost every family activity, whether it’s a museum, amusement park, party or concert has a effin’ gift shop or a gauntlet of merchandise or “souvenirs” you’re forced to run through.

Judging from my previous rants about out-of-control birthday parties and their crazy goody bags, and our society’s affliction with “affluenza,” it should come as no surprise that I seriously dig this new website that focuses solely on family activities and cause-based adventures which benefit others in need.

The Acme Sharing Company was created by my genius girlfriend, philanthropist, author, and mom-extraordinaire Meredith Alexander. Their mission statement is to provide “a place where parents can find activities for spending family time with meaning. Exposing our children to cause-based adventures is a wonderful way to make giving a part of their lives now and for the future.”

One of my favorite innovative ideas includes an alternative to the traditional birthday slumber party. Instead of presents, the guests bring a pair of new pajamas and/or books to donate to Pajama Program in a pillowcase, so that abandoned and displaced kids living in group homes can have something cozy to wear to bed and a book to read. This raises awareness that other children aren’t so lucky to have a mom or dad to tuck them into a comfy bed and read them a story. Decorating the pillowcases is a fun and easy craft and afterwards, the donations can be stuffed into each personalized pillowcase.

If you liked this idea, there are oh-so-many more at the website. Check it out and spread the love by spreading the link!

The Veruca Salts are taking over the world while there are too many Charlie Buckets who continue to live in neglect and poverty within our own neighborhoods.

LINKS - Acme Sharing Company , Pajama Program

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If you’re like me and most parents, your home is a fire hazard overflowing with bins and boxes of toddler-created artwork. It’s totally out of control, but you hate to throw it away. In an effort to reclaim my closets again, I’ve taken to editing these masterpieces to the top 10 ever year. Let’s face it, not every painting or craft is keepsake worthy. But I’ve never known what to do with these paintings. Do I just throw them into a rubbermaid bin in the hopes that someday I’ll look at them again?

And not every mom is into scrapbooking or other crafty, creative presentations preserving our children’s precious memories. One very clever and crafty idea is to create a coffee table book of your child’s artwork. Not only does this reduce the clutter, it displays your child’s work and preserves it for years to come.

But for the craft-impaired like me, you can now outsource this task and PetiteArtwork will do the heavy lifting for you. Simply send them your child’s work, craft, sculptures, what-have-you and they will photograph, document, organize and create a custom coffee table book filled with their art. The creator of this ingenious service, Wendy Bendoni, is a mom and former fashion director who is applying her experience in visual merchandising to great effect.

LINK: PetiteArtwork

For controlling, overbearing moms like me, there’s little else as anxiety-producing as the prospect of leaving your ankle-biters behind for the weekend. Goodness knows I’ve had my moments where I’ve wanted to take advantage of the Safe Haven laws and leave both my boys on the nearest fire station doorstep (but who hasn’t had those illicit fantasies)? But for the most part, I’m besotted with my two mama’s boys and look forward to the day when they grow up and live in my basement.

But my husband and I have to leave town and we can’t take the kids with us. So between my in-laws and babysitter, we’ve managed to cobble together child care for 36 hours. I know they’ll be in good, loving hands but I’m still a nervous wreck and sweating all the little details about their daily routine. My eldest son will be 7-years-old in 2 months and I’m not concerned about him. He’s always proven to be an adaptable, sunny-tempered kid and he adores his grandparents. My 17-month-old…not so much.

I worry that they won’t feed him enough. I worry they’ll feed him too much crap.  I’m planning on being really anal and shopping for all his favorite foods from Trader Joe’s and depositing them at my in-laws house. Their fridge is bare except for a few condiments, wilted veggies, diet coke and eggs that have had more birthdays than my sons.

I worry my boys will miss me and cry for me. I worry that they won’t miss me at all.

I worry they’ll get sick while I’m gone.

I labor under the delusion that my micro-management of their daily lives is the mysterious mojo that keeps them alive. But the truth is, they’ll be just fine without me. And I could desperately use a break, even if it’s for business. But the preparations for the weekend away, may very well cancel out the benefits. My to-do list is out of control and I don’t know how I’m going to fit everything in under the wire, especially since my husband is back on the tv show full-time now that the writer’s strike is over AND will be leaving two days before me (I’m meeting up with him later).  My nerves are in a sorry state and unfortunately for me, I don’t smoke, drink, snort, self-medicate, binge and/or purge, or indulge in other popular celebrity self-soothing rituals.

Well, it appears that there’s yet another job that’s been successfully outsourced to India.

Here’s a link to a story in the opinion section of the New York Times by Judith Warner regarding the outsourcing of surrogate mothers to India. Childless couples are increasingly going to India in droves and it’s now estimated to be a $445-million a year industry.

I’m not sure what the fuss is all about. I know that critics have decried this as exploitative and dehumanizing. I’ll admit that there is something very “Handmaid’s Tale” about images of clinics full of bloated pregnant women lying in hospital beds as mere hosts for infertile couples. But neither of the participants - the surrogate nor the childless couples are complaining.

The Indian surrogate gets paid $6,000 to $10,000 for her service (which is worth 10 to 15 years of income in India - so it’s a small fortune).  The Indian women don’t feel victimized and receive the best medical care during their pregnancy and live a posh existence (for them) in a dormitory with prepared meals. In fact, women are lining up at clinics to qualify as a surrogate because the chance to receive real medical care, live in a high-end facility with running water and electricity and get paid enough to support their families in comfort for years to come is a dream come true for them. And all the “work” they have to do is bring forth a much-wanted life into the world? Very few transactions in life are so win-win and generate so much joy.

Despite the ethical quandaries, the bottom line is that nobody is getting hurt and everybody benefits in the end, so what’s the harm? How could something so mutually beneficial be unethical? But that’s just my humble, uninformed opinion.

The incomparable, TMBG are back again with their new cd/dvd , Here Comes the 123s available on amazon.com. In addition, they’re offering a free weekly video podcast featuring new songs with animation.  Wiggles - eat your spandex-clad hearts out!

LINKS: TheyMightBeGiants via GeekDad

In response to a previous blog entry about the uselessness of nursing covers, SheKnows Parenting Editor Gina LaGuardia, sent me this hilarious link to the MoBoleez Modern Breastfeeding Bonnet.

Not only is this hat seriously ugly, it doesn’t even achieve its intended purpose. Instead of preserving your modesty, it actually draws attention to your breast like a giant bullseye or some enormous stripper pasty. The only thing this hat is missing is a pocket for passersby to stuff singles into. Also, this hat would never stay on your baby’s head. Only a catonic child or one with serious developmental delays would leave that floppy hat on its head without ripping it off before s/he even latched on.

Talk about a serious wardrobe malfunction.

I’m starting to suspect that the women who actually use these nursing covers/smocks/bonnets/tents are not so demure and modest after all. In fact, I think they’re really closet exhibitionists. They’re not fashion and they don’t function, so what’s the point?

So I’m curious, all you breastfeeding moms or former breastfeeding moms. What do you think of nursing covers? Have you ever used them? Why or why not? Am I missing something here?

Does it seem like all the temporary tats for kids are either character-based (Dora the Explorer or Thomas the Tank Engine) or plain old age-inappropriate with images of Harleys?

Apparently two other moms of tat-loving toddlers noticed the same thing and combined their skills (one’s a teacher and the other a graphic designer) to create Tattoos for Tots.

Not only are these tats fun and colorful, they are also educational because each image is labeled with a word and teaches associations between letters and sounds. They’re way better than stickers for the toddler set since they’re wearable without posing a choking hazard.