Welcome! Come meet Alicia

Welcome.

My name is Alicia Castelli, and I’m going to be the moderator/blogger/jack of all trades for this Web site. (It doesn’t sound all that different than being a Mom, does it?)

Since I’m playing host, I thought I ought to share a few things about me so you know my background.

Who am I? Isn’t that a question for the ages.

In nearly four decades, I’ve yet to fully figure it out. How do you define a person or sum up a person’s life?

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Breastfeeding hits highest rate in 20 years

By MIKE STOBBE AP Medical Writer

ATLANTA — More than 3 out of 4 new moms now breast-feed their infants, the highest rate in the U.S. in at least 20 years, according to a a government report released Wednesday.

About 77 percent of new mothers breast-feed, at least briefly, up from 60 percent in 1993-1994, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said.

“It looks like it is an all-time high” based on CDC surveys since the mid-1980s, said Jeff Lancashire, a CDC spokesman.

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Two teens accused of abusing 3-year-old

By Stephen Szucs The Chronicle-Telegram

LORAIN —The two Lorain teens accused of abusing a 3-year-old child by holding her head in a public toilet and videotaping the act have each been charged with child endangering.

Sierra Sanchez, 19, of Lorain, and a 16-year-old Lorain girl were charged after the girl’s father found a cell phone with three separate videos depicting the abuse.

The girl’s mother, 18-year-old Alisha Wicker, was friends with Sanchez, and a cousin of the 16-year-old, according to Lorain police, and will not be charged.

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Being a parent — the highs and the lows

The surreal, almost elemental love I felt for my son made all of his foibles worthwhile, if occasionally irritating.

The rose-colored glasses were permanently off, however, and I found I did not miss them. The gritty reality of parenting made me realize that the joy of parenting is born out of its trials and tribulations.

My parents, however, took an evil delight in certain aspects of my enlightenment. Stories of my own clinginess as a baby, as well as my own screaming fits if my mother left the room circulated at family gatherings as I sat glassy-eyed, content just to be sitting for a few moments as grandma or grandpa entertained Ryan.

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A beef with my doctor

While a practice with several doctors is nice because you quickly learn which doctors you like and which you don’t, I do have a beef with my current pediatrician’s office.

After moving back to Cleveland last summer from

Marietta, I had to have the records for my three children transferred to their new doctor’s office. The day care center also needed their shot records, and those records were faxed from my old doctor’s office.

Of course, my daughter was due for her 2-year shots, and I realized over the weekend that her records may not have been transferred to the doctor’s office yet so they might not know which shots she needed. I phoned the day care center and asked if I could pick up a copy of her shot record from them to take with me.

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Adding a sibling isn’t always easy

Our first son, Ryan, was the absolute center of our lives for the first three and a half years of his life. Then I had to go and have another baby – another boy we named Ethan.

We researched how to prepare a child for a new baby and we followed all the guidelines. We talked about the baby often, Ryan would talk to my ever-expanding belly on a daily basis, and we let him help pick things out for the baby.

We also needed more room, so one month before I was to deliver, we moved into our first home. That was very upsetting for Ryan because his best friends had lived right next door and he was constantly insisting we move back to the old house we’d been renting. We had his...

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How to stop biting and hitting?

When my oldest child, Ryan, was around 2, he started hitting.

My husband, Dan, and I were not sure how to deal with this beyond firmly telling him “no” and putting him in time out. It had no effect.

If he got mad, he lashed out and even began hitting us. It had to stop, but I just couldn’t see telling him that hitting was wrong and then spanking him or smacking his hand. Seemed like a terribly mixed message to me.

Then I had one of those days. I was a stay-at-home mom at this time, and my husband was working 12-hour days. I was stressed, to say the least, and there wasn’t a moms’ group where I lived, so I was fairly isolated as well.
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Let the potty training begin

I read everything I could get my hands on about babies when I was expecting our first child. I paid particular attention to articles about sleeping, potty training and feeding. I figured these three areas would encompass the majority of my world for a while, and I wasn’t far off base.

The first few months still seem like a blur of spit-up, stale milk, and soiled diapers. Flipping through photo albums and watching one of our many, many videotapes proved I had other kinds of interaction with our son, but I was so sleep deprived that I had few clear memories of them.

(That’s a whole other column anyway.)

I read suggestions on how to toilet train, and many seemed to...

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Potty training — Round 2

So Round 1 of toilet training went to our son. (Notice how this had gone from helping our son master a new skill to feeling like a pitched battle?)

Round 2 began again a couple months before his third birthday. No bribes, posters or stickers this time. We finally realized this whole thing was up to Ryan. He’d do it when he was good and ready to do it and not one second sooner.

Compounding this dilemma was a difficult pregnancy for me. It was often all I could do to get through the day with my eyes open, let alone continually ask our son to sit on the toilet. Such requests were always met with a steadfast refusal anyway, unless it was bedtime. Then he could sit on that darn toilet for hours.

We...

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Potty trained — finally

My husband and I finally decided we’d had enough after trying to potty train our first child, Ryan, off and on for nearly a year and a half. He was going to be 4 in three months and was still using his pull-ups almost exclusively.

After doing still more reading and Internet research, as well as consulting other parents almost everywhere I went, I decided to simply take his pull-ups away during the day.

What followed is a three-day blur of pee and poop the likes of which I hope to never encounter again. Not only did our little genius simply pee and/or poop wherever he happened to be, he was not shy about doing it right in front of us.

No more hiding in corners, behind...

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