If Oscar could talk, he’d echo what our same-gender-loving brothers and sisters have been trying to tell us: the formula for family is simple.

Who you love  + Who loves you back = Family.

Dreamworks’ 2011 blockbuster, The Help, applies this simple equation to the transracial, intergenerational relationships between a cadre of 1960s black mammies and the white mothers who love (and also hate) them.

If there were such things, the job descriptions in the mammy training manual and the mommy training manual would certainly overlap — a competent caregiver of either stripe must clean the dirty, feed the hungry, and hush the distressed.

Halloween night can be a carnival of chaos for babies and young children.

It’s no surprise that the odd sights, and sounds, a first encounter with a (possibly) itchy costume, along with the new tastes and aromas, can quickly overload each of your little one’s five senses.

Autumn brings families lovely weather, festivals, and other exciting activities.  But at times, Halloween can be a little too exciting for your baby or young child.

An infant who has just discovered the joys of stranger anxiety is in no mood to put up with a bunch of folks who look even stranger than usual for a few days in October.

Keep reading to see what you can do to help your child weather this season.

It’s always a little surprising when we realize how wild our babies really are.

I don’t mean the “prefers to go barefoot” version of untamed. Not even the rather cute “my child really likes nuts and berries” kind of wild.

Nope, I mean the poop-whenevah-wherevah-you-want wildness. The snatch or be snatched toy ethics, and the take a nap any-dang-where mode of savagery. Survival of the stubbornest, child bite child.

You’ve seen playgroup. It’s a jungle in there.