A Detroit toddler alerted her family Friday night to possible suffocation. Chelsea Coleman, 2, crawled into her parents’ bed and complained of feeling ill. As Ronald and Danielle Coleman tended to her, they heard their 16-year-old fall in another room. That moved them to investigate what was making the family ill. The apparent culprit: a broken pipe that was spewing carbon monoxide, an odorless but toxic gas.
“I’m still in shock, but I’m just thanking God that everybody made it out OK,” Danielle Coleman said. “This could have been such a tragedy for our family.”
She told the Detroit Free Press she is grateful that Chelsea, who suffered a heart defect at birth, crawled into her bed to warn her something wasn’t right. “That was so befitting of her because I call her my miracle baby,” Coleman said.
To find out more about how to spot signs of carbon monoxide poisoning and how to keep your family safe, click here.
It is the second family murder-suicide this week that might have been prompted by the bad economy.
Mark Meeks, 51, who had worked at a Honda dealership’s service garage, shot his wife, 8-year-old daughter and five-year-old son at their home near Columbus, Ohio, before turning the gun on himself, police said. The shooting happened on Wednesday afternoon, the Columbus Post-Dispatch reported.
Meeks’ boss told the newspaper that Meeks had been laid off, but then recently got his service-adviser job back. Police said there was a suicide note, but declined to release details. His wife, Jennifer Dallas-Meeks, was a stay at home mother. Both children, Abigail and Jimmy, had been home that day because of the snowstorm.
Earlier this week, a Los Angeles man who had been fired from his job at a hospital killed his wife and five children. Ervin Lupoe, mired in about $850,000 in debt, then shot himself in the head. Just before the Tuesday shooting, Lupoe and his wife had planned to move closer to family members in Kansas.
Angry at her mother-in-law, Sandra Price allegedly threw a Christmas tree across the room. The mother-in-law tried to pick it up, but then Price said she couldn’t have it, Illinois police said.
The two women wrestled over the four-foot-tall tree, and unfortunately Price’s little girl got in the way. Part of the tree hit the 21-month-old child and injured her left eye. She had to undergo surgery and it’s unclear whether she will lose the vision in the eye, authorities said.
On Monday, Price, 28, was arrested and charged with reckless conduct, the Telegraph newspaper of southern Illinois reported. The incident happened on Christmas Eve in Madison County, Ill., and the charges were made after a police investigation and review by prosecutors.
The fight occurred in a motel where the family had been staying because a fire displaced them from their home earlier in the month.
Here’s a little visual inspiration from Martha Stewart when you’re planning your own Thanksgiving feast with little ones. (This photo comes from the holiday maven’s Halloween collection of food-themed baby costumes, but we found it perversely fitting.)
A few Thanksgiving safety tips: Before you bake that pumpkin pie, be sure to check that the oven is not one of those that has been recently recalled by GE. If you’re heading over the river and through the woods to grandmother’s house, take note that Thanksgiving is the most dangerous holiday for driving, so try not to drive long distances at night after the big meal. And if you’re flying with the kids this year, remember that the Transportation Security Administration has introduced “family lanes” at all security check-points.
Have a safe and wonderful holiday! We’re taking a short holiday, too, but will be back posting before the Thanksgiving leftovers are eaten.
A week ago Sunday, the pastor of a megachurch in Dallas challenged his parishioners to have sex seven nights in a row to help strengthen their marriages.
“I think it’s one of the greatest things you can do for your kids because so goes the marriage, so goes the family,” Ed Young, who has four children with his wife of 26 years, told the Associated Press. Young, who is pictured above with his wife Lisa, preaches to about 20,000 congregants at the nondenominational Fellowship Church in Dallas.
Did the good pastor practice what he preaches? Young said he planned to: “We’re going to give it a try.” No word yet on how that worked out for him.
It was a typical family vacation scene. Three-year-old Alaina Pitton and her cousins stood in front of an overlook at an Oregon state park to pose for a picture. Behind them was a rocky cliff dropping 150 feet down to the Pacific Ocean.
Just before the photo was snapped, Alaina stepped backward and toppled through the gap between the fence rails. Luckily, she held onto some plants to keep from immediately going over the edge. An adult cousin jumped over the fence and rescued her.
The fall happened a few months ago at Ecola State Park, but the Pitton family is now publicizing the dramatic video of the accident, which you can see here. Charlotte Pitton says she can’t understand why a safer fence wasn’t installed. “It was so, so scary,” says the blond-haired Alaina in an interview with KATU News in Portland, Ore. “I nearly fell down there.”
Parks officials told the TV station on Wednesday that changes would be made to the fence.
Photo from KATU.com
Instead of trying to figure out who’s going to watch the kids while you’re voting this Tuesday, why not take your children to the polls with you?
At the Geek Dad blog on Wired.com, Matt Blum calls on parents to give their kids a civics lesson while casting their ballots: “It’s a unique opportunity for them to see citizens — and, more specifically, you — exercise their right to participate in government. It’s the sort of experience that can stick in their heads and help foster an interest in government and politics.”
Blum, the father of a six-year-old and an eight-year-old, speaks from experience, since his parents took him to the polls pretty much every year when he was a kid. This year, Blum took his own two future voters to the polls with him when he cast an early ballot in Virginia.
Even the youngest patriot, who can’t yet tell a hanging chad from a butterfly ballot, loves to wear mom or dad’s “I voted” sticker.
Photo by Jeff Turner
How would you like your baby boiled tonight?
Apparently, Martha Stewart isn’t the only one who thinks food-themed costumes are a good idea for the youngest trick-or-treaters, never mind the overtones of cannibalism. A list of “10 Weird Outfits for Babies” on Divine Caroline includes several more tasty morsels, such as this quarter-pounder with cheese:
Want fries with that?
England has one of the highest rates of teen pregnancy in Europe, so the government is taking action by mandating sex ed for all school children starting in kindergarten.
“It’s vital that this information doesn’t come from playground rumor or the mixed messages from the media about sex,” Schools Minister Jim Knight said Thursday when he announced that sex ed would be added to the national curriculum, according to the Associated Press.
Lest parents fear that explicit mechanics of intercourse will be taught to five-year-olds in between finger-painting and story-time, Knight hastened to add that kindergartners will learn age-appropriate concepts, such as the names of body parts.
Not all British mothers and fathers were sanguine about even that level of sexual information being imparted in the classroom: “I am not the parent who calls her son’s penis a wee-wee. But I should decide if the word penis enters my child’s vocabulary at 5 or not,” said Elizabeth Talbot of London, who has two sons, ages 4 and 6 months old.
But given the country’s high teen pregnancy rates, other parents believe that the government needs to do more: “When parents fail to educate their kids properly, the government has every right to step in,” said Gayla Coil, a Londoner and mother to two kids ages 13 and 10. “Me, I welcome the help.”
Delta Enterprise is recalling 600,000 drop side cribs for repairs due to equipment failure, and 985,000 drop side cribs to replace missing safety pegs. At least two eight-month-old babies have suffocated to death because of the defective cribs, according to the Consumer Product Safety Commission.
For more information on exactly which cribs pose a hazard, and what to do if you have one, click here.
There have been so many crib recalls within the last year that the feds issued new safety tips for all cribs on Tuesday:
1. Parents should not use any crib with missing, broken or loose parts.
2. Hardware should be inspected from time to time and tightened to keep the crib sturdy.
3. When using a drop side crib parents should check to make sure the drop side or any other moving part operates smoothly on its track.
4. Always check all sides and corners of the crib for disengagement. Any disengagement can create a gap and entrap a child.
5. Do not try to repair any side of the crib without manufacturer approved hardware or with tape, wire or rope.
6. Putting a broken side up against the wall does not solve the problem and can often make it worse.
