When I was pregnant with Jacob, Jeremy and I took a bunch of classes from the hospital where I delivered at in Louisville, including their Infant and Child CPR class. I am really happy I took this class so I have a general idea of what to do if something happened. We have been very lucky not to need this information, but it is something that I think every parent should know. Of all of the classes we took, when we finished this one, we thought it had the most useful information in it. It may not be information you need every day, but it is critical when you do need it.

I was contacted on behalf of The Mile High chapter of the Red Cross recently, they are trying to get out information on their Infant and Child CPR Classes and are even offering a 15% discount. The classes they offer are only 5 hours and cover a variety of information including: Recognizing an emergency, check-care-call, caring for a choking child, prioritizing care, and cardiac emergencies. If you have already taken an infant/child CPR class yourself, it may be worth having your babysitter or another caregiver take the class.

The listing of Colorado Red Cross Infant and Child CPR classes available click here. And to receive the 15% discount use the coupon code BLOGGER.

Jeremy and I picked up the latest Michael Pollan book Food Rules: An Eater’s Manual this weekend which we intend to pass onto his mom who showed an interest in it after watching Oprah.  We took a quick peak at it the night we bought it, and by quick peak I mean we read the whole book out loud in about an hour while making dinner.  If you haven’t heard already, it expands on the list of rules he originally published in In Defense of Food – eat food, mostly plants, not too much.  There is a brief paragraph or two explanation of each rule following, and a total of 64 rules.

Our favorite rule was rule 57, “Don’t get your fuel from the same place your car does.”  And our favorite quote came from rule 8, “Avoid food products that make health claims,”  with the quote, “Don’t take the silence of the yams as a sign that they have nothing valuable to say about your health.”  We are doing pretty well overall on the rules, the one we are going to try to do more of is rule 43,  “Have a glass of wine with dinner”  (the sacrifices we are willing to make for our health).  Jeremy was particularly smug about the rules relating to eating slowly, because he is probably the world’s slowest eater, and has been teased a lot because of it.  Rule 3 is “Avoid food products containing ingredients that no ordinary human would keep in the pantry,” as one example he lists xantham gum which we currently have an entire bag of in our pantry… I guess we are no ordinary humans.  (We have xantham gum because it is used in gluten free baking often).

If you have read In Defense of Food, there isn’t any new information here, but if you are looking for a concise list of rules he thinks you should follow you’ll find it here.   It is a pretty entertaining read, with some funny old sayings to help you remember what to do, and is also in paperback for $5.00 brand new.