The surgeon’s knife, that is.

Statistics show that the number of teens undergoing cosmetic surgery continues to rise, with more than 244,000 American teens going under the knife for breast implants, nose jobs and other procedures in 2006, according to an MSNBC report in 2007. Also, USA Today reported a spike in breast-reduction operations among boys, with more than 14,000 a year.

This week, The Hastings Center, a bioethical think tank in Garrison, raised the alarm, announcing a series of essays in its current newsletter addressing the issue. The essays address, among other topics, the surgical procedure that “Westernizes” the eyes for Asian patients. Of course, with some 11.7 million cosmetic surgical procedures among all residents in 2007, it’s not hard to figure out who’s setting the example.

Remember the old days, when you had to turn the radio up high and wait for the long alpabetical list of school closing to find out if yours was cancelled for the day? No longer.

Now, most school districts have invested big bucks in automated calling systems. In our home, that means that the phone rings at 5:25 a.m., with a chipper recorded message telling us that school is closed.

Nice to know. But I wish that the phone didn’t have to wake me out of a deep sleep at 5:25 a.m.

We had a feeling that today would be a snow day. So late last night, I put the ringers on all the phones in my house on silent. When the alarm went off at its usual time of 6:30 a.m. this morning, I checked my voice mail. Sure enough, there was a recorded message from the schools at 5:25 a.m.

I didn’t wake the kids up to tell them. But they found out soon enough. My older daughter got out of bed and checked the school Web site.

“No school!” she said happily as she woke up her sleeping sister to share the great news.

Luckily their dad was able to stay home with them today. I had to go to work. I wish I had a snow day.

You don’t necessarily set out in life to start a blended family. Some of us simply find ourselves in a place where you’re a candidate for it. You start you first family, have a kid, then things don’t work out and you go through a divorce or a split.

As I’ve blogged before, I’ve been fortunate in my situation because my ex and I do remain friends, and split parenting duties amicably. But there’s always a loss, and that primarily comes in the loss of a sense of family — something kids in divided homes will almost always want to recapture as well.

In our case, my ex and I have been lucky: She’s remarried and I live with my girlfriend and her little boy, so we’re both a part of blended families now. In fact, we’re part of a growing trend that, right or wrong, is reshaping the American family. Census statistics say that 75% of divorced people remarry, and 43% of all marriages constitute a remarriage for at least one partner. Yet, there’s still no guarantees: 60% of remarriages end in legal divorce.

Is it a case of, “if at first you don’t succeed, try and try and try again?” Perhaps. But I think single parents in particular legitimately covet that feeling of family for themselves and their children — a growing number of single parents, in fact. Given all this, I want to put a few questions out there:

• What do you think about the changing family dynamic in America?

• Given the percentage of failed remarriages, do you feel children of single parents are generally better off with a lone parent or in a new, blended family?

• What is your gut reaction when someone tells you they’re a single parent?

It was my turn to work Saturday. So my husband took the kids ski tubing at a small ski resort in Orange County. Wouldn’t you know that my assignment for the day was to cover a candle light vigil for a 13-year-old girl who died last week while snow tubing?

Aleyris Martinez died when the snow tube she and a friend were riding in crashed into a tree on the Haverstraw town-owned golf course. She shouldn’t probably shouldn’t have been there. Town officials were quick to point out after the tragedy that there were ‘No trespassing’ signs posted at the golf course.

But is a sign really going to keep a kid away? Should it? I’ve let my kids go sledding at public parks. Do we really want to stop kids from a fun, outdoor activity like sledding?

I’m not the kind of parent who panics at every scare. I’d hate to tell my kids they can never sled again. But looking at the grief of the hundreds of people who attended the vigil for Aleyris, I can easily understand why some parents would put sledding on the forbidden list.

Maybe the answer is to create safe zones—public areas with no trees or other obstructions where kids can sled under some type of supervision.

In an early post on this blog, I talked about my family’s experience with dyslexia, specfically our first son’s reading troubles. Dyslexia is frustrating thing for child and parent, but we found an excellent tutor through a wonderful organization, the International Dyslexia Society. We saw the tutor every Saturday at her home and practiced specific skills in our home five days a week.

My son hated this most of the time. Since much of the practice involved writing with a marker on one of those wipeable boards, my son frequently wielded a marker, a dangerous thing in the hands of an easily frustrated kid. Helpful hint: Though these markers are described as erasable, they are difficult wipe from skin or clothing after your child uses one as a weapon against you.

However, I never did talk here in Parents Place about our second son and his experience with dyslexia. So hear goes. A couple of years after the first son finished with his dyslexia tutor, our youngest son was diagnosed with dyslexia. For a family that makes its living reading and writing – and that’s most of us these days – the double dyslexia was a downer.

We were now experienced parents of dyslexic children, however, something that led us to pick up on the problem sooner, somewhere around the end of first grade-begining of second. We tried a different dyslexia tuto one who said she who already taught in our neighborhood and would be available to come to our house after school, freeing up more than two hour spent every Saturday visiting the earlier tutor. The rest of the drill remained the same, though: We practiced the skills five days a week and read together every night.

The results were disappointing, however; My second son was making little progress and we were quite troubled. I’ll pick up this story in another post soon.

When my son was just a few months old, our pediatrician promised he’d be sleeping through the night by the time he was 6-months old.

Okay maybe she didn’t promise. But we should have had her define ‘through the night’. His version is nothing like what we were led to believe.

Now 13 months, he goes to bed between 6 and 7 pm, depending on how many times he interrupts his bottle or book reading to march back and forth across his room waving a piece of paper, or a block, or his teddy bear or whatever else is at hand. 

When he finally has enough milk, one of four things happens: the bottle is finished and he has fallen asleep and we put him in the crib; the bottle is finished, he pushes it away and goes off on another marchfest; the bottle isn’t finished but he’s asleep and we put him in the crib; the bottle isn’t finished, he pushes it away and goes off on another marchfest. 

Options 1 and 3, we love. Options 2 and 4 usually extend bedtime by 30 to 45 minutes. But its OK. He’s adorable and usually in good spirits at this point. 

He routinely wakes up after that sometime between 10 and midnight. 

There is nothing cuter than the half-asleep pose he assumes sitting there in a corner of his crib. There is nothing more frustrating than not knowing what it is he wants since he’s not talking to us yet (I mean, he’s talking but we have no idea what he’s saying). Sometimes, it takes another bottle, sometimes a diaper change, sometimes a walk around the apartment in the stroller. 

I’ve heard people put their young kids into the car and drive around the block a few times. I live in Manhattan. I’ll do anything for my son short of give up a parking spot.

Getting back to ‘through the night’, the hardest part is when he wakes up for good, usually between 4 and 5 in the morning. Through the night should mean ‘until it’s light out’ or at least when I can raise the blinds and show him something other than the bread and newspaper trucks.

When I’m really, really, really tired I put on a DVD of one of the original Sesame Street episodes, stick him in the Pack n’ Play and slink off back to bed. He usually cries for a few minutes but then gets that deer in headlights look when he’s mesmerized by a television show. 

One morning the reprieve lasted just 24 minutes. When I went to the living room to see what had happened, I realized I had put on Jack’s Big Music Show instead of Sesame Street. Lesson of that day was to always make sure to set him up with an hour-long show.

It seems this issue has been around forever. In 2006, a group of parents and advocacy groups threatened to sue Kelloggs and Viacom, Nickelodeon TV’s parent company, over the peddling of unhealthy food on commercials during shows like Spongebob Squarepants. In 2007, Kelloggs agreed to get more health-aware, and the suit was dropped.

But with Spongebob still flipping greasy crabby patties, and sugar-laced cereal still being plugged on the tube, it seems a lot of parents and advocates are still up in arms. The current issue of Best Life, put out by Men’s Health Magazine, takes issue with corporate cartoons and lists how to fight back. In October, the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood took issue with the whole health thing as well. And I understand the concern, as kids’ waistlines are growing and growing. But aren’t we missing the point?

I mean, isn’t this whole thing about parenting? It seems to me the best thing I can do to make my son healthier is to buy him healthier foods to eat, and perhaps to eat healthier myself — something my girlfriend has had an incredibly positive influence on. If the kids want fruity-sugar cereal, you just say no. Am I off on this?

Both my kids watched the historic inauguration of President Barack Obama in school yesterday. Their reactions were positive – but not for the reasons their teachers would have liked.

My seventh grade daughter thought the televised spectacle was great. But not because it was a day of huge historic importance.  She loved watching it because it got her out of social studies.

My second grade daughter was happy that Obama, her choice in her school’s mock election, was sworn in as president. But she wants to know why it’s taking him so long to get a dog.

I tried to explain to her the historic importance of Obama becoming president.

“When you’re a grandmother, you can tell your grandchildren that you watched Barack Obama become president,” I told her.

“Me? A grandmother,” she said. “Ewww. I don’t want to be a grandmother.”

So much for history.

Ethnic identity has been sort of a complicated issue for my son. He’s always known that his mom is Jewish and I’m Cuban, which makes him half Jewish and half Hispanic. But a Cuban guy with an Irish last name always has another story to tell, so he’s got the Anglo thing mixed in there from a few generations back, and his mom’s family is originally from Eastern Europe. The Jewish end has mostly dictated his faith, as his mom has been more observant of her faith than I have been of mine. At least we’re all white, so there’s no confusion with race.

Obviously, most of us are mutts these days anyway. But the real complication has always come in how my son is to refer to himself. He had to choose a culture to write about for a recent school project and he chose, with my encouragement, to report on his Jewish heritage. But what exactly is he when you mix it all in?

Well, thank God for the Urban Dictionary, which points out that my son is a Jewban. We even got confirmation on this from Wikipedia, just to make sure we were on the right track. Armed with our new resource, we were able to take it one step further and determined that I’m not just Cuban: I’m Cubish.

Now, we don’t really subscribe to labeling people as a general rule, but it’s just nice to know in a pinch. If only we can get the U.S. Census up to speed we’d be good to go.

Snow is still covering the ground, but many parents, myself included, are starting to make plans for the summer. For many kids, that means camp. Brochures are starting to arrive from local camps. The prices on many are eye-popping.

The Girl Scouts, long one of the less expensive options, has increased its prices by 17 percent. A week at Camp Addisone Boyce, in the wooded, rural, Rockland community of Tomkins Cove, cost $300 per week last year. This summer, the cost has soared to $350 per week.

While the price is still lower than fancy, private camps, that’s a big increase (in the midst of a recession) especially for kids who would normally attend for all six weeks.

I sent an e-mail last week to the head of Girl Scouts Heart of the Hudson, which includes Westchester, Rockland and Putnam, asking why the price has gone up so much.

So far, no answer.

I bet the 17 percent price jump will keep many girls from attending this summer as their parents struggle in this bad economy.

I’m sure that camp will be on the casualty list for many families dealing with unemployment and financial uncertainty this summer.

If your kids are anything like ours, there’s no toy more magical—or time-tested—than Legos. Well, my colleagues at LoHud’s Politics on Hudson blog came up with a good and timely link. The folks at Legoland in California put together an impressive Legos display of Barack Obama’s inauguration today. Politics on Hudson just posted this link with tons of photos of the display published online by the Telegraph of London.

Personally, I can’t wait to get home to show my son the link tonight. Seems we’re always sharing this link or that one that we stumble upon these days. When I was a kid my parents and my brother would always be sharing an article, a book or a song they came across. This is obviously the computer-age version of that. Seems the more things change the more they stay the same. Kinda cool, huh?

It’s hard to miss the sad state of our economy right now: Layoffs everywhere, furloughs here and throughout the working world, etc. But do the kids really need to be in on it all? Granted, I hope I don’t get to the point where I have to tell my son that times are going to be hard because dad’s out of work. But until then, I wonder if we need to go there. Or am I naive?

Let me back up a sec to the more dire situation. I appreciate that there’s advice out there to help parents talk to their kids in the worst-case scenario. A couple of good ones come from Parents Press, as well as from Kiplinger .com and a good one for parents of teens from Businessweek

Fast-forward to where we are. I think we should all be telling our kids to be frugal anyway, and teaching them that a dollar wasted is, well, a waste. And my 11-year-old son sees the news, so the has a mild sense of it. But I think some worries belong largely with the parents until its unavoidable. Or am I wrong?

So, my New Year’s resolution was to get busy blogging again and write an essay about why I fell off in my frequency so badly. But then life struck. We have been sick in my house for the past two weeks. It’s hard to express how miserable we’ve all been first with the stomach flu and now with nasty colds. I’ve had lots of good blog fodder coming into my head, though, at 3 a.m. when the child wakes up miserable. Sadly, though, so far no energy to write it up. Some thoughts:

• I can’t help but feel a bit like a failure as a mother because I just CAN NOT deal with vomit. Sorry. Can’t do it. During the worst vomit days, my husband bore the brunt. Fortunately for me, Pumpkin did her sick-making in the evening primarily, so I was off the hook when it came to cleaning up. Who does the dirty job in your household?

• Who doesn’t like Saltine crackers? They are the least offensive food I can imagine. But Pumpkin is turning her nose up at them and about 30 other foods as she slowly recovers her appetite. Worst of all, she is wishy-washy about what she wants. She says, “I’m hungry.” I say, “What do you want?” She says, “You pick it.” Then we go through every food in my fridge and pantry and I try and tempt her taste buds. Tonight, after turning down almost everything when I was ready to put her to bed even as she kept insisting she was hungry, I finally asked if she wanted peanut butter on bread. She ate three slices—crusts off. Go figure.

• She refuses to let me use saline to clear her nose or ChapStick on her lips, which are cracked and dry from the runny nose. My mother thinks I let her get away with too much. I dunno: Does your 3-year-old have autonomy? Mine seems to.

I realize this isn’t exciting stuff, but it’s my life these days. I have other stuff I will get into as soon as I’m not in a sick fog, like the awesome talent show we had on New Year’s Day with Pumpkin’s cousins. Pumpkin sang “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” by heart. I also want to talk about having had the quintessential parent experience: Staying up until 2 a.m. Christmas Eve putting together a toy, in our case a play kitchen. I also want to put in some time trying to explain why blogging about being a mom got a little bit painful when I felt I wasn’t having enough time to BE a mom. Now I regret all the entries I didn’t post because I’ve missed out on sharing all the common and wonderful experiences I’ve had. I’ve also missed out on your reactions, dear blog readers, which is the best part of this gig.

So, here’s to a year of blogging. I’ll be here if you will … after I get over this darn cold, that is.