Around my house, Saturdays tend to get lost in housekeeping, errands and even leftover work from the office. Sometimes the chores spill over into Sunday, which is sad because the weekend is the only time for my husband, Pumpkin and I to do family stuff together. If this scenario sounds familiar to you, consider chucking it all today to celebrate the Worldwide Day of Play with your kids.

The idea behind the event is getting children outdoors in parks, playgrounds and community centers instead of inside watching TV or playing a video game while mom and dad do their own thing.

One of the event’s sponsors, the children’s TV network Nickelodeon, will stop broadcasting for three hours today, from noon to 3 p.m.

The Worldwide Day of Play is also sponsored by the Alliance for a Healthier Generation, a joint initiative of the American Heart Association and the William J. Clinton Foundation. The goal of the alliance is to get kids healthier by encouraging them to engage in outdoor activities that get the blood moving.

The weather is supposed to be pleasant and mild — perfect for some early fall family fun. So, get out there and play with your kids. The dust, bills and laundry can wait.

There’s something about a new baby’s name that makes proud moms, pops and grandparents yearn to see it emblazoned on everything from birth announcements to bibs. And once a child gets older, chances are she or he will be equally thrilled to see those magic letters in print — and just might end up scrawling it all over your house. (My husband can flip over his mom’s coffee table and show where he left his mark 30-plus years ago.)

Recognizing the universal appeal of a baby’s name, Pound Ridge resident Lisa Brotmann, a mom of two, started a Web-based embroidery business called kidzthreadz. Lisa embroiders burp cloths, towels, blankets, bibs and T-shirts with a child’s name as well as a favorite design, including cars, flowers, butterflies, ice cream cones and hearts. (The towel and washcloth you’re seeing here are an example of her work.)

“Parents love to see their child’s name in print because that is one of the major decisions when you have a baby. I can remember looking in tons of books and online for names, their meanings, the history and backgrounds of the name,” she said.

Gifts with a baby’s name often become special keepsakes. “I remember our first baby gift with my son’s name was a white fleece blanket with a moon and ‘Sam’ on it. I loved it. It was the only thing we received with his name on it,” she said. “That gift was what gave me the idea to start my business.”

Around her house today, there are plentiful blankets, towels, stepstools and shirts with both Sam’s and daughter Lucy’s name. “And of course, their room doors have their names on it,” said Lisa, who recently started a new Web site called Polka Ducks to sell other baby gifts such as oilcloth splat mats for under the high chair.

Since I decided to write this post, I’ve been thinking about what items we have with my daughter’s name on them, and I’ve only come up with two: her beach towel and a pop up book featuring a mouse who just happens to share a name with my girl.

When I was little, I had a record with songs all featuring the name Julie. I loved it.

What about the rest of you? Do you enjoy items with the kids’ names? Anyone have a ton of stuff around the house?

My 8-year-old son is having a spate of forgetfulness. He has become notorious for leaving his homework, his jacket, his lunchbox or other assorted items at either his school or the community center he attends after school.

As a result, I’ve just about forgotten how to have patience.

I have to admit, I’ve enabled him for a while. Since school began earlier this month, he’s forgotten things at least twice. Most often, it’s homework that’s left behind, so after I leave work and pick him up, we make a dash to his school, where he and I disturb the janitors cleaning the school and ask them to let us in the classroom to retrieve his stuff. I make sure that he thanks the janitors profusely (And I’ll remember them at holiday time). While I’m not happy about picking up his slack, I really feel compelled to get his homework, so that he doesn’t fall behind.

But when he forgot a homework sheet at school on Monday, I didn’t take him back to school and lucky for him, he was able to complete the work without the worksheet. I’m still waiting to see whether he’ll find the jacket he left at school that same day.

We made a deal last week: If he remembers to bring everything home for five days straight, I’ll buy him a bag of marshmallows — his favorite snack. He remembered everything for two days before his memory slipped again. As a result, he has lost TV privileges for this coming Friday night, and we have restarted the challenge. Now, we’re counting on him to be on point through Monday, or risk losing more privileges.

Are we being too tough? Or not tough enough?

Today is Family Day throughout the United States, according to the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse (CASA) at Columbia University. That means that today, in particular, families are urged to make a date with each other for dinner.

I’m not sure whether this makes me happy or sad. While the idea of encouraging families to spend more time together is certainly a good thing, the fact there is now a day set aside to make sure what we’re sharing meals with our children is somewhat pathetic. But I suppose that without such a day, some families would miss the point of how important “together time,� whenever it occurs, actually is.

“CASA’s Family Day — A Day to Eat Dinner with Your Children”:http://www.casafamilyday.org/ began nationally in 2001 to demonstrate how family dinners can help deter substance abuse among children. According to report released by CASA in August, teenagers who eat with their families fewer than two times a week are twice as likely to smoke, drink or use drugs, compared with teens who eat with their families five times a week or more.

Sounds pretty simple, right? You eat dinner with your children every night and they turn out OK. But in many families, that’s much easier said than done. With homework, kids’ after-school activities and jobs, parents’ nighttime jobs and other impediments, the notion of sitting down to dinner as a family just isn’t feasible. Sometimes, it’s simply impossible. But the point isn’t about dinner, really. Rather, it’s about spending time talking — and listening — to our children. If that can’t be done at dinner, maybe it can be over breakfast. Or maybe while you’re tidying up the kitchen at night. Or perhaps just before bedtime. The point is not the meal, really; it’s the time you spend as a family.

My family is a bit of a rarity: We eat together about six nights a week. Now that’s not to say that we eat perfectly balanced, home-cooked meals on fine china every night, but we do sit down together most nights. My husband and I are fortunate enough to be able to be home at night and even though we eat later than most families (My husband and I can only cook so fast after working all day), we try to plug in to each other over dinner.

How often do you eat with your family? What are your thoughts on Family Day?

I am allergic to cats in a big way, so there is zero chance my child will ever have a real kitty as a pet. I’m going to save today’s story on reptiles as pets by consumer reporter Alison Bert in case Pumpkin ever asks me for a snake or gecko.

Somehow I just don’t think that I’m up for keeping frozen mice in my refrigerator or having dozens of crickets around the house. And vegetarian reptiles can be even more of a fuss because they like a wide variety of special veggies.

Alison’s report is a great primer for anyone who is tempted to say “yes” when a child begs for a reptile. And if you decide to open your home to a reptile, you’ll at least know what you’re getting yourself into.

Since Pumpkin only speaks about 10 words, I haven’t been pestered yet to get a specific toy, but I know that day will come.

For parents with children whose vocabularies already include the words “I want,” that day is here. Alas for those moms and ads whose kiddies are hankering for the new T.M.X. Elmo doll.

Although the doll only came out on Tuesday, most stores, even online, are sold out. People who simply must have the doll are spending a premium that ranges from tens to hundreds of dollars on eBay, Craigslist and other Web sites.

Knowing the doll would be popular, other people went out on Tuesday and Wednesday and bought up multiple Elmos — no doubt contributing to the shortage. Some stores imposed a two-doll limit per customer to squelch this.

When I was reporting a story about the phenomenon for today’s paper, I even learned about an incident when police were called to a Target store in Mount Kisco after a customer tried to get other customers to buy dolls for him to circumvent the store’s limit.

A brand manager at the doll’s maker, Fisher-Price, told me the instant popularity of T.M.X. was a surprise to the company and to retailers. He said more dolls are in the warehouse and will be coming out of the factory. Even so, one toy industry expert told me that parents will need to be diligent about visiting the toy store often if they hope to get an Elmo for a holiday present this year.

These kinds of toy crazes seem to come up every few years. Parents of older kids will remember the Furby mania of 1998 and the hype around the original Tickle Me Elmo in 1996. Going back, there was the whole Cabbage Patch Kids hysteria in the 1980s.

I checked Amazon.com’s list of the top sellers in toys today, and although T.M.X. Elmo was No. 1 — and the cross-marketed Barbie-T.M.X. Elmo combo was No. 3 — I was interested to see that favorites from my own childhood in the 1970s, like Trouble, Scrabble, Monopoly and Legos, were on the list.

In a LoHud.com forum on the T.M.X. Elmo craze, one reader made a great point about the kids probably being more amused with the box than the doll!

What about you all: Do you tend to buy the year’s hot toy? What are your strategies for getting one when there are shortages? And if you don’t buy one, how do you resist your children’s entreaties?

I love my sons. I play with them, read to them, listen to them, feed them, clothe them, soothe their fears and try to make sure that one day, they will grow to be men who emulate their father, grandfathers and uncles.

The one thing I will never be is their friend. I have no interest in being their pal, comrade or homegirl. I’m Mom/Mommy and that elevates me to a level that will never be on par with them. And for that I’m thankful. They realize that their parents, just because we’re their parents, are entitled to respect and honor.

Certainly, every now and then, my sons might forget who they’re talking to and address me like one of their buddies. And whenever they do, I have a standard response: “I am not your friend.�

I’m glad to see that I’m not alone. According to “a news article”:http://www.lohud.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060920/NEWS02/609200360&SearchID=73257457461927 in today’s Journal News by Melissa Klein, there are more than a few psychologists, parent coaches and others who say that moms and dads who blur the parent/child boundaries will likely be sorry. As sorry as I imagine Anne Marie Ciarcia must be, right about now.

Ciarcia is the 46-year-old Yorktown mom who was allegedly driving drunk early Monday morning on the wrong side of the Saw Mill River Parkway, heading home from a punk rock party at a Manhattan club. Also in the car were her teenage daughter, Alexa, and her daughter’s 16-year-old friend, Emily Cornish. A head-on collision left Emily dead, Alexa injured and Ciarcia held in jail. For more details, see “this story”:http://www.lohud.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060920/NEWS07/609200371&SearchID=73257457570991 from today’s paper.

Over and over, I’ve asked no one in particular, “What was this woman thinking? Who takes teenagers to a club on a Sunday night and then brings them home at dawn? What kind of adult drinks and then drives their kids — and their kids’ friends! — while they’re probably sleepy and tipsy?� And I have yet to hear any kind of reasonable answer.

The whole thing is beyond nightmarish. Parents entrust their children to other adults, usually believing that the adults will act like, well, adults. I would be horrified to know that an adult caring for one of my children — and her own child, too! — was trying to be a pal, rather than a parent.

I would love to know what you think. Share your thoughts in a reply.

Now that school has resumed, my husband and I find ourselves once again getting our PDAs in synch to determine who’s taking which son to which event and when. There’s so much to keep track of: soccer and football practices, piano lessons, orthodontist appointments, not to mention birthday parties.

While we do a decent job of keeping most of it straight, a calendar that we recently received will make life even easier.

“Mom’s Family Calendar 2007â€? and the companion desk calendar, created by children’s author/illustrator Sandra Boynton, are two items no mom should be without.

You probably already know Boynton’s work – it’s everywhere from greeting cards to books to plush toys. But the coolest thing about these calendars is that they have room for MOM’S appointments and events (first!) and then space for Mom to list everyone else’s activities. There are also stickers to make note of birthdays, dance recitals and sports games. Even better, the desk calendar includes tear-out cards to be used as “To Do” and grocery lists. Smartly, “chocolate” maintains a permanent spot on the grocery list. There’s also an Emergency Telephone Number card to stick on the fridge. The calendars are useful and fun. And the fact that Boynton’s familiar cartoon characters are sprinkled about makes them seem, well, comfy.

I’m sure they would also make welcome holiday gifts for all the busy moms we know.

For more about the calendars, visit “Sandra Boynton’s Web site”:http://www.sandraboynton.com. You can also find the calendar at several online retailers, like Amazon.

If yer lookin’ fer a way t’ entertain yer wee lads an’ lasses, ye might want t’ know that today be International Talk Like a Pirate Day.

Pepper yer gab with an “avast” or an “ahoy.” Tell your scallywags to “do yer chores, or ye’ll end up in Davy Jones’ Locker.”

A holiday dreamed up by two average guys over a game of racquetball back in 1995, Talk Like a Pirate Day started to live up to its “international” name after columnist Dave Barry took up the cause in 2002. The humorist still promotes the event in his blog.

The popularity of 2003’s “Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl” and this year’s “Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest” have put pirates on the treasure map for the rest of us.

And, let’s face it, it’s fun to talk like a pirate. Arrr!

Check out the official Talk Like a Pirate site for links to pirate-themed children’s books, comics, games, songs, ring tones and gear.

If yer not up on yer pirate slang, check out this translator to turn yer boring everyday English into “pirate” speak.

The fathers of Talk Like a Pirate Day also have made a very funny video that explains the “five A’s” of pirate speech: Ahoy! Avast! Aye! Aye aye! And, of course, Arrr!

Well, I be sayin’ arrrr fer now. I be havin’ t’ swab the decks.

Two premature babies just days old died of massive internal bleeding over the weekend after they received an adult dose of a blood thinning drug.

My heart stopped when I read the news, and I just had to sit down and cry for a minute for the tiny babies and their families.

The Indianapolis Star is reporting today that four other infants are recovering from the mistake.

The Star reports that a series of errors began when a staff member, likely from the hospital pharmacy, put a vial with the wrong dose in a drug cabinet in the neonatal unit. When a nurse removed the drug, he or she didn’t double-check the dose before filling the syringes.

Pumpkin spent nine weeks in the neonatal intensive care unit at White Plains Hospital Center after she was born prematurely. During that time, I had to put my absolute faith in the medical team of doctors and nurses.

The decisions about her care were so beyond my ability to influence that I wasn’t even consulted before the doctors began new treatments.

What made it possible to leave my baby in the hospital while I went home to sleep was a belief that she was safe in the hands of competent and compassionate professionals.

In a few weeks, we’ll be attending the hospital’s annual NICU reunion, and I’ll be thanking the doctors and nurses for giving me the best gift of my life. My sympathy goes out to all the moms and dads with babies in hospitals today as the story of these deaths makes the news. I know that it has made it much harder for them to go home and get much-needed rest.

The leaves on the trees in my front yard are starting to turn red, the temperatures are dipping into the chilly 50s at night and the time for all things summer is past — including Pumpkin’s play clothes.

But, oh! It’s hard to pack away the sweet little outfits I picked out just this past spring. Plus, there are all the wonderful clothes Pumpkin received as gifts. It’s not because of the clothes themselves (cute though they might be) — but because I’ll be saying goodbye to the little baby who wore size 6-12 months.

It seems like last week, not a season ago, that I was shopping for summer clothes and anticipating all the fun she would have in them. She met her cousins for the first time on Easter in a yellow checked one-piece. She celebrated her first birthday party and went to her first movie in a pink plaid dress. She went swimming for the first time in a red bathing suit. And she cried to go home on her first vacation in fruit-patterned bike shorts.

These are the clothes she wore when she took her first steps and ate her first ice cream and gave me her first kiss. I simply can’t say goodbye to them, so I’ll wash them and gently fold them away and keep them in a handy place where I can take them out and look at them from time to time.

I know other people are more generous with their children’s outgrown clothes — I’ve been the recipient of some very nice outfits from friends and family. But I’m just too sentimental to let them go. I remember this bittersweet feeling from the spring when I put away her winter clothes, and how sad and happy I was to pack up those little pants in size 3-6 months.

My intention is to eventually sew the clothes into a quilt. I can imagine Pumpkin and I sitting and talking about each square of the quilt and the milestones and memories they represent.

I already know what I’m going to be for Halloween this year: a doting mom. I got to try out the role last year on Pumpkin’s first Halloween.

Even though she was a baby and the closest she came to milk chocolate was, well, milk, we had a frightfully good time. As you can see, she was a pea in the pod. I dressed up as a new mom, which didn’t involve changing out of jeans and my around-the-house top (or styling my hair for that matter).

Dad came home from work in time for a stroll around the neighborhood so we could practice for holidays to come when she’ll be begging for candy door to door.

You may ask why I dressed up a tiny infant who hadn’t a clue what was going on. One answer: Because I can! The real answer: To make memories.

I already have Pumpkin’s costume for this year in the house. It arrived about a week ago from mail order. I’ll share a photo on the big day, but here’s a hint: We’re trying to teach her to say Bzzzz.

If you’re planning your family’s Halloween, check out a story that consumer reporter Alison Bert wrote this weekend about the money people are lavishing on costumes.

And if you’re not in the mood yet — despite all the bite-size candies and ghoulish decorations in stores — stop by Wikipedia’s Halloween page.

There once was a time, B.C. (before children), when I longed to have a child so that I finally go to see animated movies without looking like a weirdo.

And then that time came. And I took my kids to see all of those movies. Some of our favorites were “Lion King,� “Antz,� “Toy Story,� “The Prince of Egypt,� “Finding Nemo.� Basically, if the main characters were drawn, we probably saw it.

Then, my kids’ tastes matured, and amazingly, so did mine. Both of my boys suddenly became interested in real-life stories with real-life people in real-life color. For that my husband and I are grateful, because it’s a hard fight for either of us to sit through an animated feature now. Take the SpongeBob SquarePants movie. Please. I can’t sit through the 30-minute show, so there was no way that I’d make it through an 87-minute movie. (Although I do think it’s slightly humorous and pretty clever.) Instead, we waited until a baby sitter came over and happily suggested that she take the boys to see that movie, which all three of them enjoyed. Better her than us.

For the rare occasions when our 8-year-old son lapses into technicolor land, my husband and I toy with the idea of sneaking a pocket “book lightâ€? into the theater so that we can catch up on some reading while he watches the movie. We haven’t followed through on that … yet.

Instead, we push for seeing more real-life movies. So far, we’ve enjoyed “Because of Winn-Dixie,â€? “How to Eat Fried Wormsâ€? (although I was a little queasy afterward) and “Mad Hot Ballroom.â€? They’re solid stories about real people and they often impart good messages. And seeing these movies—and having a Netflix membership—made my husband and I think back to when we were pre-teens and what movies we enjoyed with our parents. So far, we’ve brought back “Sounder,â€? “Cornbread, Earl and Me,â€? (subject matter was a little intense, but we got through it) and are thinking of watching “Claudineâ€? (with some editing) with our boys.

Do you have any other ideas? What kinds of movies do you enjoy watching with your children?

Well, it happened: We had our first taste of food allergies. The culprit? Mayonnaise.

It happened the other night when my mom, my husband and I were sitting down to take Liz Johnson’s advice and enjoy BLTs with lovely farm-fresh late-summer tomatoes for dinner.

Of course, we didn’t make Pumpkin a BLT. But when she saw and smelled our dinners, she rejected her macaroni and cheese in her favorite way — by deliberately dropping the pasta off the side of her high chair.

I made her a slice of whole-wheat toast, and instead of slathering it with butter as usual, I spread a nice thick coating of mayo. No surprise, she loved it. She quickly gobbled up half a slice with greasy little fingers.

There were cute little gobs of mayo on her chin and just above her lip. I was happy to see her enjoying her toast so much. Then when I broke out the wet wipes and cleaned her off, I noticed the skin where the mayo had touched was red. I recognized the classic sign of a reaction.

She seemed just fine and wasn’t breathing heavily or breaking out in a rash, so I didn’t panic, but I put a call in to the pediatrician’s service to be safe. He called back in about five minutes and, after asking a few questions, told us to give her some Benadryl if the red spots didn’t go away in five or 10 minutes.

I washed her face and watched. After about 15 minutes, the red areas were back to normal.

I don’t know what triggered the reaction. It might have been the egg, a classic allergen, but Pumpkin has eaten scrambled eggs probably a dozen times without any reaction at all. It’s possible that it was another ingredient. I looked up the recipe at Hellmann’s Web site, and saw that the Light Mayonnaise I served includes a wide array of ingredients not normally found in mayonnaise, including modified corn starch, sorbic acid, xanthan gum, phosphoric acid and artificial flavors.

I wouldn’t normally serve Pumpkin a “light” product, but I made the mayo toast on a whim. It’s ironic, because I go to some effort to ensure that all of the dairy she consumes — milk, butter, cheese and yogurt — is organic. (Then I go and give her bowdlerized mayonnaise and she has a reaction — Duh!)

I’ll probably wait at least a few months before I serve her mayonnaise again — and next time it will be real mayo.

I hope she’s not allergic to eggs. Although, even if she is, I was comforted to read that most children outgrow egg allergies by age 5.

According to the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology, 8 percent of children under age 6 experience food intolerances. About 2 percent to 4 percent have allergic reactions. Six foods cause 90 percent of the allergy reactions in kids: Milk, egg, peanuts, wheat, soy and tree nuts.

I found some good sources of food allergy information online from the Food Allergy Project, the Food Allergy Initiative, the Food Allergy & Anaphylaxis Network, the National Institutes of Health and the Mayo Clinic.

I also found an allergy blog you might want to check out: Allergy Alert Stuff lists recalls of foods and other news.

Parents of allergic kids might also want to visit AllergyKids.com. The site focuses on allergy awareness and has introduced a symbol that makes it easy to identify children with allergies on the playground, at parties or at school. The symbol is a light green stop sign with an exclamation point. The site sells stickers and other merchandise with the symbol (a pack of 100 stickers costs $9.99 and wristbands are $14.39 for 10).

This brush with food allergies puts me in awe of the moms and dads who must constantly police their kids’ diets to prevent contact with common foods like peanuts, eggs and wheat.

Does your child have a food allergy? How did you find out, and how are you coping?

Pumpkin and I went to our first “Mother Goose” story hour at the library this morning, and one thing became immediately clear: I need a remedial course in nursery rhymes — likety split.

The other moms, grandmas and nannies all somehow seemed to know just what to do when the librarian began to lead us in a series of songs that all involved some mixture of heads, ears, eyes, toes and knees.

They waved their arms in all the right places. They touched their shoulders. They sang along. It was just me and the 1-year-olds who couldn’t follow along.

Now, as I’ve mentioned before, we listen to a lot of music in our house and there’s a big stack of board books we read almost every day. But somehow, I forgot to sign us up for Nursery Rhymes 101.

I had an inkling that I was missing something two weeks ago at a family Labor Day party when my sister-in-law played “I’m a Little Teapot” with Pumpkin. She loved it, and we’ve been playing it almost every day since. (She’s a thrill-seeker, though, and mostly seems to enjoy the big dip she takes when it’s time to “tip me over and pour me out.”)

Is this just something everyone learns by osmosis? Or should I go to the bookstore this weekend and get a big fat book? Maybe a CD? DVD?