Alas, there will come a time when we parents are no longer able to perform myriad duties and routines we’ve created for our families, for any number of reasons, and we will need to give up control of making sure everyone’s holiday expectations are met. This could come in form of a health crisis, monetary crisis, time-crunch crisis … take your pick. This is time to delegate responsibility of be-all, do-all parent and shift our focus to relishing our time with family and friends more so than relishing accomplishments of others and our expectations of us. We are in midst of a joyous and sacred time of year when our hearts and minds should be filled with love and good will, not with a frenzy of get-it-done anxiety.

I wish you all joyful holiday season, filled with love and happiness. Give yourselves a break and allow one or more of details to slip by if need be. Being there for your family in sound mind, body and spirit is ultimately more important.

Rexanne Mancini is the mother of two daughters. She maintains an extensive yet informal parenting and family web site, Rexanne.com – http://www.rexanne.com -Visit her site for good advice, award-winning Internet holiday pages and some humor to help you cope. Subscribe to her free newsletter, Rexanne’s Web Review, for a monthly dose of Rexanne: http://www.rexanne.com/rwr-archives.html

Routine circumcision is obviously not malicious intent to senselessly cause pain to an infant, however, there is much information available today, most of which supports case against circumcising. Not at least questioning this practice is burying one’s head in sand no matter how parents choose to proceed.

Consider recent poll numbers obtained by American Baby magazine on circumcision:

57% chose to circumcise 42% chose not to 2% were undecided 20% said it was a hard decision to make.

Granted, as life decisions go, circumcision is not one of most enormous in relation to impact it will have on our babies. I believe it is more an issue of questioning generally accepted practices that no longer serve logical purposes. As neonatal circumcision is still performed on majority of boys, (at least in United States), this controversy should continue for a number of years. It will be interesting to see how our culture progresses and what poll numbers will be like ten years from now.