There has been a lot in the news lately about whether all those educational videos are worth it for babies. Here are a few links to articles that explore the topic.
:: Babies and the Boob Tube (New York Times)
:: TV for Babies: Does It Help Or Hurt (Time)
:: TV Before Age Two Won't Boost Baby's Brain (WebMD)
:: TV Won't Improve Baby's IQ (San Francisco Chronicle)
> Related: the original study we posted on Monday.
One of SNL's best, Amy Poehler, participated in Thursday night's Saturday Night Live special and rehearsed up until Friday for the main production, but couldn't make it because of more pressing matters.
"Amy Poehler is not here tonight because she's having a baby," Seth Meyers said Saturday at the start of the "Weekend Update" newscast parody he normally cohosts with Poehler. "Now here are tonight's other top stories..."
Poehler and her actor husband Will Arnett are now the proud parents of Archie Arnett. In a statement, NBC said the baby weighed in at 8 lbs., 1 oz., and that mother, child and father were all healthy and resting comfortably.
The Saturday delivery caused SNL staffers to scramble to get the show ready. The bad news now is that Poehler's time on the show has ended. But what a memorable run - and political season - she's had. Her Hillary Clinton impersonation was as good as Tina Fey's Sarah Palin and her "Sarah Palin Rap" (below) will probably go do in SNL history as one of the best skits she's ever done. Throw in the fact she was eight months pregnant and it's brilliant.
Kate Gosselin, star of the reality series Jon and Kate Plus Eight, answered a few questions over at momtourage.com. Some of the topics include how she balances life, alone time and keeping eight kids on a healthy diet.
It took eight years and a new show with the same name to tie up some loose ends, but the secret is out. On last night's episode of 90210, it was revealed that Dylan Mckay is the father of Kelly Taylor's 4-year-old son.
Luke Perry (Dylan) has reportedly been non-committal about a possible return, but US Weekly says don't rule it out.
“(Luke) is in talks. The writers really want to do the Kelly-Brenda-Dylan plotline,” a source told the mag.
Today Show co-host Natalie Morales gave birth to Luke Morales-Rhodes yesterday and was announced on the morning program today. He was born a week early and weighed in 7 lbs., 4 oz. He is the second child for the 36-year-old Morales and her husband of 10 years, investment consultant Joe Rhodes. Their firstborn, Josh, is 4.
Deal or No Deal's very first million dollar winner is a 27-year-old pregnant stay-at-home mom. Jessica Robinson, a Utah native, is expecting a boy at the end of September. She turned down the banker's final offer of $561,000 and the rest is TV history. Robinson talked about her uncanny strategy this morning on the Today Show.
The Today Show's food contributor, Giada de Laurentiis, is back from maternity leave and showed off new baby pictures on the air yesterday. Giada gave birth to her first child, Jade Marie De Laurentiis Thompson, three months ago. She will begin taping her new Food Network show, "Giada at Home," almost immediately after returning home to Los Angeles.
So says Weekend Update co-anchor Seth Meyers, tongue-in-cheek. Amy Poehler is pregnant with her first child, which is due later this year.
New mom Giada De Laurentiis, three months after giving birth to her first child, Jade Marie De Laurentiis Thompson, is returning to her guest-hosting role at NBC's Today Show this week and feeling torn.
"I thought I would be so excited to get back to work, but I feel bad that I'm leaving her," says De Laurentiis, 37. "She's out of the 'blob' stage of just eating and pooping. She's starting to become a person; I see her character and personality coming out. And now I won't be around that much."
It's still hard to come to grips with the reality that Tim Russert is no longer with us, leaving that huge void on Sunday mornings. The tributes to Russert continue to pour in, but more and more they focus on his parenting instead of his TV triumphs. A newspaper columnist - and mother - says parents should not apologize for trying to stay close to their children.
What did you think of the show? Here's one review. Most that we've seen have been mixed, including this one: some teens are saying the show barely delivers.
NBC's newest reality show, "The Baby Borrowers," premieres tomorrow night. When the series was first announced months ago, critics were up in arms. At least one critic says the show is not nearly as creepy as it sounds.
"It could be educational for some naive teens," wrote Jeanne Ostrow, a television critic for the Denver Post. "The Baby Borrowers," according to Ostrow, "turns out to be both more supervised and less harrowing than advertised."
Ostrow continues: "Consider the fact that the actual parents who lent their children to the producers for this project were across the street, watching on monitors, and able to enter the house to talk to the teen couples at any time. Consider, too, that nannies were on-site, although instructed not to intervene except in the case of an emergency, which happens in one episode when a baby wakes up, crying, to an empty house."
Would you turn over your child for a "social experiment?" One woman, who turned over her two children to the show, said she has no regrets.
"I didn't look at it as loaning my kid to a TV show," said Natalie Nichols, a 31-year-old mother who got married and pregnant on purpose at 17. "I looked at it as a very important teaching project. It was a way to get a message out."
