The Dangerous Book for Boys by Conn and Hal Iggulden is like a brain scan of a twelve year old boy 30 years ago. It's filled with fun and educational information like The Greatest Paper Airplane in the World, The Five Knots Every Boy Should Know, Slingshots, Making a Bow and Arrow, Timers and Tripwires, Famous Battles-Including Lexington and Concord, The Alamo, and Gettysburg, Spies-Codes and Ciphers, Navajo Code Talkers' Dictionary, Stickball, Fossils, The Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, and Skimming Stones; the stuff every kid used to know and now it seems like none do.

If you live in the city, you may be wishing your child had a backyard so you could take advantage of this kind of fun. But, I believe that this stuff is just as doable in the city, and maybe even more important for city kids. Just about any of the activities in the book are just as doable in NYC as anywhere. Go skim stones in central park, fishing in the Harlem Meer, or stickball in the schoolyard. Kids used to own the streets of NYC. Maybe it's about time they took them back.

Encouraging kids to get back outside playing traditional games, The Dangerous Book for Boys is finding itself part of a wider resurgence to restore the innocence of childhood and child play. In these days of earlier and more frequent high-stakes testing, over-scheduled childhoods some parents are starting to push back. Several groups have been formed to promote the slowing down of childhood. New York Voices for Childhood is a group of parents and educators that have joined together to lobby the schools to make old-fashioned play part of the curriculum. I don't know if it's appropriate or ironic that they don't have a website, but if you are interested in joining or finding out more you can find their contact information here.

When we had our second child we were stricken with second child guilt in all the familiar places. No, our number two doesn't have a baby book, I have no clue how old he was when he rolled over, I'm even a little shaky on what his first word was. There's no video of his first steps, um, there may be no video of him at all.

He ate candy before his first birthday, I nursed him 4 months less than I nursed number one...in fact perhaps the only thing I may have done right with number two was getting a new cell phone.

That doesn't sound right, but for my birthday I received a new Motorola KRZR K1 Phone with a 2 megapixel camera and it has made all the difference between the great likelihood that my second child's toddlerhood would go completely unrecorded and feeling a little bit guilty that I may now take more pictures of him than my older child.

I thought it might be nice to put together a list of NYC kid-related blogs, but it's been surprisingly challenging to find other NYC parenting and mommy blogs. Over the last couple of months I've been adding to my list, but if you have a NYC parenting blog or know of mommy blogs I've missed please add them to the list. And if you have a blog invite your readers to come over and add their blogs. I think it will be great to have a roll call here that we can all see who else is out there. I've found some great sites and I'm looking forward to finding more.

Sorry the posting came to a halt there. I've actually been tied up creating some exciting new advertising for one of my clients. So we'll be right back, after I get theses ads wrapped up.

I am going to try to get back to posting more often, but I also welcome and encourage readers to contribute. If anyone out there is interested in writing about living with kids in NYC, ideas of things to do or even general ideas on enriching our lives with children please email me.

It was not so long ago that Earth Day was just a day some tie-dyed college students sat around all day with a banner. With Laurie Berkner headlining the NYC Earth Day celebrations in Central Park there's no question that Earth Day is now a mainstream affair with loads of great family activities.

Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner is a book that’s been around for a while, but I figure if I’ve just gotten around to reading it there are plenty of others who haven’t read it either. I had heard the buzz about this book, but hadn’t really paid much attention to it until one of my fellow PTA uber-moms told me that the book says that being on the PTA is the most significant thing you can do to assure academic success for your children. Well, that got my attention.

It turned out that her interpretation was a little bit self-serving, but it got me to read the book, and it is a great book, so I forgive her. If you haven’t read Freakonomics I highly recommend you pick it up.

You could say Freakonomics is either a book that takes a unique look at the world through the eyes of an economist, or is a unique take on economics by using it to look at the world - depending on whether you are an economist or a civilian. If you are a parent, especially an obsessive, urban parent, you will be quite anxious to read the chapter entitled, "What Makes a Perfect Parent?"

I had to create a list of NYC food blogs for a project I am working on and, even though food blogs have nothing to do with parenting, I thought it might be interesting to Mommy Poppins readers. Hey, we all eat, drink, shop and cook. It's good reading. Enjoy.