Baby & Maternity Issue 2016
“Gentle” C-Sections; First Birthday Cake; Belly Art; Rapping with Raffi
Forget the Treehouse — Put This VW Bus Cupola on Your Barn
Say you’re building a barn. From the roof, there’s a great view. Then say you know someone selling a busted 1980 Volkswagen Vanagon. And a guy with a crane. These things may seem disparate, but not if you’re Dave Shinnlinger. He’d owned several Vanagons in high school and dreamed of integrating one into a building.…
A Thrifty Place to Shop for New and Expecting Moms
Newborns might be tiny, but they require a lot of stuff. From bouncy seats to strollers to baby carriers to high chairs, it can add up fast. Twinklings, a secondhand store stocked with maternity and baby items, aims to defray some of those costs. The one-room shop, which opened in early March, sells maternity clothing,…
Jane Lindholm’s New Podcast Answers Kids’ Burning Questions
Parents know all too well that kids have endless questions. But Why, a new podcast from Vermont Public Radio’s “Vermont Edition” host Jane Lindholm and producer Melody Bodette, hopes to provide some illuminating answers. The first 22-minute episode, released last month, tackles a question from 4-year-old Finn of Hinesburg about bears’ hibernation. Lindholm’s conversation with…
Local Mom Crafts Products that Feed Kids’ Imaginations
Carey Bunker, a Brandon graphic designer and mom of three, began selling art prints for kids’ rooms nearly two years ago. Her drawings featured two main characters: bookish big sister Addie and her energetic little brother, George. She soon expanded her offerings to include items that would activate kids’ imaginations and encourage them to commune…
‘Most Interesting Man in the World’ Lends a Hand to Make-A-Wish Vermont
Make-A-Wish Vermont wants to make their mission clear, and they’ve enlisted the “Most Interesting Man in the World” to help. Manchester resident Jonathan Goldsmith — best known as the debonair, silver-haired gentleman of Dos Equis beer commercials and internet meme fame — costars with Make-a-Wish teen Jamie Heath in a PSA that began airing last…
Can’t Beet It: Baby’s First Birthday Cake
For my oldest son Eli’s first birthday, my dad bought him a cake from a fancy upstate New York bakery. The beautiful confection — a double-chocolate affair with ganache frosting — was so rich that I was afraid to let Eli dig in. I knew his little belly couldn’t handle all that cocoa. He managed…
Getting Artsy With Pregnant Bellies
When you’re pregnant, nine months can feel like an eternity. Yet in the grand scheme of things, it goes by in an instant. Want to immortalize the experience? We talked with three local artists whose work gives women a way to remember their pregnancies long after baby is born. Belly Henna Rebecca Freedner has been creating…
Out to Eat: Rickie’s Indian Restaurant
I grew up in the San Francisco area, so I’ve frequented some pretty amazing Indian restaurants. For years it was my go-to comfort food. Since moving to Burlington, I’ve yet to find comparable fare, so I resigned myself to going without. Then I got pregnant with my second child and not having Indian food was…
How a Dairy Farmer and a Baby-Sling Entrepreneur Juggle Business and Kids
Nancy and Bob Sunderland are a classic Vermont pair: a small-business entrepreneur and a fifth-generation dairy farmer, respectively. While she checks her inbox and fills orders for ring slings, he tends to the cows and fields on their Addison County farm. Their backgrounds are just as different as their jobs. Nancy grew up in suburban…
Meet the Diblings: How Two Moms and Their Kids Discovered an Extensive Extended Family
The most unusual thing about our family is not that our sons have two mommies. Here in Vermont, that rarely raises eyebrows nowadays. No, here’s the part people have trouble bending their minds around: Our sons are part of a connected tribe of 40 half-siblings, scattered all across the country, all conceived with sperm from…
Board Books Perfect for Little Hands
Some board books are so simple they leave parents feeling, well, bored. But their sturdy pages are perfectly suited to little hands. We asked Kristen Eaton, marketing and events manager at Phoenix Books, to recommend books that are durable enough for busy babies and toddlers — and fun for parents, too. Move! by Lolly Hopwood…
A Pint-Size Ornithologist Earns His Bird-Watching Cred
NAME: ISAAC WOOD-LEWIS TOWN: BURLINGTON AGE: 9 Isaac Wood-Lewis loves birds. So much so that he once covered himself with leaves and birdseed and lay in the woods for 45 minutes waiting for one to land and eat. Lauren Akin, director of Crow’s Path Field School, thought of the experiment. And when she needed a…
How to Improve Your Chances of Getting Pregnant Again
Parents often assume that because they’ve had at least one child, it will be easy to get pregnant again. However, some couples experience what’s known as “secondary infertility,” or difficulty conceiving again or carrying another fetus to term. This month, Dr. Jennifer Brown, an infertility specialist with Northeastern Reproductive Medicine in Colchester, explains how —…
Bouncing Around at Get Air Vermont
I’ve been semi-stalking Get Air Vermont’s Facebook page since I learned several months ago that the chain trampoline park was expanding to Williston. So when a post appeared in mid-March announcing opening weekend, I jumped at the chance to try it out. Get Air Vermont has set up shop in a nondescript office park near…
A Pregnant Pause
My two pregnancies weren’t complicated, but I didn’t breeze through either one of them. When I was pregnant with almost-9-year-old Mira, a concerning genetic screening led to an amniocentesis, where a medical technician uses a needle to sample amniotic fluid. That procedure turned traumatic when the guy in charge had a difficult time inserting the…
Camp Nurses Treat Kids and Find Community
When someone suggested that Roxana De La Rosa apply for a nurse position at Camp Birch Hill in New Durham, N.H., two years ago, she balked. “I was like, ‘No, thanks. That doesn’t sound like fun to me at all,'” she remembers. The prospect of working solo, around the clock, without parents as buffers between…
More Tough Choice$: Readers Respond to our April Cover Story About the “Benefits Cliff”
We hoped to get people talking with the cover story of our April issue, “Tough Choices: Vermont parents are opting out of work to retain their benefits.” Mission accomplished: Dozens of comments started rolling in at kidsvt.com and on social media the day our Money Issue was published. Writer Katie Titterton definitely struck a chord…
Sing So Free: Children’s Entertainer Raffi on Bernie, Music and Inspiration
Since the release of his first children’s album in 1976, Singable Songs for the Very Young, there hasn’t been a more enduring and successful kids’ entertainer on the planet than Raffi Cavoukian — better known simply as Raffi. In 1992, the Washington Post called the Egyptian-born Canadian songwriter “the most popular children’s singer in the…
AcroYoga Builds Strength and Parent-Child Bond
Finding an activity that parents and preteens can enjoy together might feel like a stretch. But sometimes, that’s exactly what’s required. Recently, my 12-year-old son, Adam, and I worked together in a remarkable way: We learned to fly. No, we didn’t grow wings. But he did lift off the ground, performing daring aerial maneuvers as…
C-Change: Women are Pushing for “Gentle” Cesarean Sections
When I was pregnant with my son seven years ago, I was fascinated by the sensations of him kicking and hiccupping inside me. And my plan was to push him out into the world naturally. So it was tough for me to hear that I needed a cesarean section — that his birth would be…
