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Amy Vernon joined The Journal News in 2000 as education editor for the Westchester and Putnam editions. She came to Rockand as metro editor in 2001. Raised on Long Island, Amy is a graduate of Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill., and has worked in South Florida and the Phoenix metro area. She lives in New Jersey with her husband, two sons and very understanding mother-in-law. She watches entirely too much television, but is trying hard not to let her children do the same. She is as big a fan of Curious George on PBS as she is of many of her favorite "grown-up" shows. Reach her at avernon@lohud.com or 845-578-2425.
E-mail Amy Vernon at avernon@lohud.com
When Rafael was still a toddler, we didn’t make him sit with us at the dinner table through every meal. The adults in this house would sit and talk and argue and often discussions reach high decibels, depending on who was around for dinner.
We lived with my mother-in-law and, for a while, my brother-in-law as [...]
Sorry I’ve been so lax in blogging lately, but it’s been a pretty busy time in my house.A week and a half ago, my oldest, Rafael, started attending pre-kindergarten.
We’re very fortunate in that our school district in New Jersey has universal pre-K. He could have started when he was 3, but we decided to wait [...]
Having been on “vacation” this week, I’ve been around my children far more than usual and, therefore, have observed their eating habits in far more situations than I generally do.
What I’ve realized is probably incredibly obvious to most people, but sometimes you need to hit me over the head with an obvious stick for me [...]
We’ve all done it: Opened the package of cheese, noticed a little whitish substance on it, looked over our shoulder, scraped it off and served it.
But we’ve also wondered if that was the right thing to do. And with little ones in the house, that concern has deepened.
So what’s a mom or dad to do? [...]
The latest in news of the obvious is a recent Federal Trade Commission report is that, in 2006, food and drink companies spent $1.6 billion marketing to children.
The commission studied spending directed at children ages 2-17. Spending on soda marketing came to $492 million, with the vast majority of that spending directed toward adolescents. Restaurants [...]
Anyone who reads this blog even occasionally knows that I’m always looking for ways to feed my children healthy food (that they’ll eat) and inexpensive is always helpful.
So reading Divine Caroline recently, I stumbled upon “The 20 Healthiest Foods for Under $1,” and I found it interesting that so many of the items on this [...]
From pretty early on, we took Rafael to restaurants. He was very well-behaved until he became a toddler, and even then he so effectively charmed all waitstaff that they just smiled and cooed over him anyway.
And even at his worst, he was never too bad. Yeah, lots of Cheerios ended up on the floor, but [...]
This weekend was instructive on several levels when it came to nourishing my children.
First: Our parents were right when they said we shouldn’t run around while eating.
Markus was snacking on cashews when he and Rafael started horsing around, climbing up Mt. Mommy. (That’s what we call it when I’m sitting on the floor in front [...]
More and more teens and children are suffering from caffeine poisoning.
A recent study by Richard Church, a toxicologist at University of Massachusetts Medical School, tracked 4,600 caffeine-related calls to poison control throughout the nation in 2005.
According to a report on the study by WCVB-TV (via KETV), half those calls involved those either 19 and younger [...]
I saw the headline, Toddlers who dislike spicy food racist, say report, and said, “What the?” Is it political correctness run amok?
At first blush, it certainly seemed to be.
The Telegraph newspaper in the U.K. was quoting a story about a study published in book form by The National Children’s Bureau that said if a child [...]
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As most parents soon discover, feeding a family is rarely that easy, whether its nursing a fussy newborn or trying to get a hot meal into a squirming toddler (or attempting both at the same time.) And that's not even the days when work runs late, the main course burns, or your adventurous little sushi eater announces from now on she will only eat food that is pink. As parents ourselves, we've been there, done that, even learned a few tricks along the way. And we're pretty sure so have you. Maybe together we can make eating together as a family -- gulp! -- fun again.     Hema Easley has been a reporter for The Journal News since July 2002, first covering municipal government and then nonprofit agencies, women's issues and the South Asian and Muslim community in the Lower Hudson Valley. In her previous job, Hema was a correspondent for the Associated Press in South Asia. She lives with her husband and two sons in Orange County. Katie Ryan O'Connor, a Journal News editor and 35-year-old mother of three, never quite appreciated the work that went into feeding kids until she had to do it herself as a mother. If she had a food-and-kids philosophy it would be something like this: try your best to offer as much healthy food as possible, but sometimes fruits just have to be counted as vegetables and there are far worse things than chicken and spaghetti. Again. Tracey Princiotta, a 37-year-old mother of one, loves to cook, bake and eat, and is relieved that her son appears to be equally willing to chow down -- even if it's baby food and formula right now. Despite her husband's intense aversion to vegetables, she has high hopes of nurturing a true chowhound who will try everything at least once. And if all else fails, she's not above sneaking veggies into other foods. Marcela Rojas has been a municipal reporter with The Journal News since January 2003. She is a native of Putnam County and grew up eating Peruvian food. She didn't realize until she was 13 that rice did not come with everyone's meal. After several years of living in Los Angeles -- where she grew a fondness for Thai food -- she returned to Putnam County where she now lives with her husband and daughter. Zyla (rhymes with Lilah) just turned 1 in March and, so far (her mother is pleased to note), loves to eat everything. Swapna Venugopal Ramaswamy, a Journal News reporter, started her career as a journalist in 1999 after graduating with a master's degree from New York University. Before joining the paper in 2006, Swapna worked as a municipal reporter for the Home News Tribune in New Jersey, and took a baby sabbatical to care for her two children, now ages 7 and 5. She has currently outsourced feeding her children and husband to her mother, who is visiting from India. Her friend and colleague Katie O'Connor, informs Swapna that she wouldn't mind being fed Indian food by her mother, too.
 Randi Weiner has been a reporter with The Journal News since 1989, having covered police, government and schools in Westchester and in Rockland. An Ohio native and 1976 graduate of Bowling Green State University, she worked for daily newspapers in Ohio and Michigan before moving east. She has tended bar and danced in a beledi troup and sat on the boards of two community theaters. She plays mandolin with the Shamrogues, ConnecticutÕs largest Irish band. Randi lives in Connecticut with her husband and has three children. |
Copyright ©2009 The Journal News, a Gannett Co. Inc. newspaper serving Westchester, Rockland and Putnam counties in New York.
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