News — Family

Your brachial plexus is a connection of hard-working nerves that can be prone to injury. Here’s how to keep yours safe. The brachial plexus is an important collection of nerves in the neck, responsible for sending signals from your spinal cord to your shoulder, arm and hand. “Injuries that occur either at birth — associated with delivery — or later on in life can sometimes stretch the brachial plexus,” said Jay Wellons, M.D., a surgeon in Monroe Carell Jr. Children’s Hospital at Vanderbilt’s Division of Pediatric Neurosurgery. “Most of the time, a stretch will get better, but a severe stretch...

I've been absolutely useless in keeping up with the boys' siblings updates now they've gotten older, although I do still capture a picture of them together every month. I think it's important though, to document their days together during this very strange time we're living through. It's now 9 weeks since the boys were in school and I look back astonished now at how naive I was when the schools first closed, thinking that they'd probably just have two weeks off and be back again. It's now looking like they won't be back before September, and possibly even later than...

We’ve been in lock-down now for well over a month. This is a strange unprecedented period in my lifetime, at least, and certainly in my children’s. Suddenly, we are told to stay home, not take kids to school and avoid other people at all costs. The first week or so, we found stressful and confusing. My kids weren’t sleeping well, and nor were we. We didn’t know what was happening day to day. Do we go to school tomorrow? Do we stay home? Are we allowed to visit friends? There were lots of question marks. Week after week, though, we’ve...

And while we appreciate the online storytimes, educational activities, virtual field trips and unprecedented amount of time to actually play with our kids, the idea of just buying something that we know they’ll love (and maybe even play with independently) is very appealing. If you’re already making a shopping list—whether it’s for an online retailer that will deliver or your local toy store (for curbside pickup), here are a few things to consider adding to your list: baking soda and vinegar: volcanoes and other fun science experiments await! food colouring kit baking kits: check the (virtual) clearance aisles at the grocery store...

“Mom, I just got back from the grocery store… when did everyone start baking bread?” I apparently wasn’t the only one who had the great bread baking obsession. I had just made my third trip to the grocery store looking for flour. I combed the racks, even risking my life attempting to climb to the top shelf (disregarding the sign that said not to). I knew that’s where they hid the overstock. It’s been 3 weeks now, and the stores are still out of flour. I scrolled through Facebook, and recognized the problem immediately. There was not one, nor two…...