Sleep deprivation is a normal part of early parenthood. But for David and Shannon Lamb, sleep issues have taken on a whole new meaning. Their three-year-old son, Rhett, hasn't slept at all -- not a night, not a nap -- since he was born.

Rhett has a rare condition called chiari malformation, which his doctors believe is the cause of his sleeplessness. Patients with chiari malformation have a skull that is abnormally formed and puts pressure on the brain, causing it to protrude through the bottom of the skull. People with chiari malformation may have muscle weakness, vision problems, or coordination issues. Symptoms can range from nonexistent to severe.

Alan and Marie Walsh have been married for 23 years. They have three children together and have lived in San Diego for the last ten years. Alan Walsh described his wife as an honorable woman who cared deeply about her family. Federal marshals, however, described her as an escaped convict and a wanted woman.

It turns out that more than thirty years ago, Walsh -- whose real name is Susan LeFevre -- escaped from the Detroit House of Corrections after serving only a year of her ten to twenty year sentence for drug-related charges. "We're still just getting over this but it's been a tremendous shock to us," said her husband.

LeFevre told detectives that her family did not know of her past. "Our family is threatened to be destroyed by something that happened to her as a 19-year-old teenager 34 years ago in Michigan," said Alan Walsh. I can't condone what LeFevre did or her escape, but I have to feel for her family.

Are they funny? Are they creepy? Are they a little bit of both? Yeah--that last one. Pictures of manbabies have surfaced on the web, and they're a hit. Ah, what will they think of next?

This is the kind of thing that, when I see it, gives me a chuckle but also lets me know I have too much free internet surfing time on my hands. Still, these pics are pretty funny and perhaps worth a look. The idea is to take a picture of a man and his baby and switch their heads. The head of the baby is made bigger and the head of the man is made smaller to match the body sizes of both. Weird but true!

PopSugar was the first I've seen to get hold of the photos, which you can check out in a slideshow here. Want to get in on the action? All you have to do is provide your own family photo. While this seems more appropriate for Father's Day than the impending Mother's Day holiday, I thought it best to alert you to this site for your viewing enjoyment asap. ENJOY! Or, should I say, "Manjoy?"

And, yes, that is a normal picture of a man and his baby. You'll have to check out the ManBabies website if you want the real thing.

One of my favorite teachers back in high school was Mr. Dorchester. He was a little quirky and absentminded, but he made studying history fun. He was a new-agey kind of guy who often drifted off subject with incredible tales of his own travels and experiences, but he always managed to impart the lessons we needed to learn. In short, he was a good teacher because he kept us alert and interested.

It sounds like the same could probably be said for Jim Piculas, a substitute teacher at Rushe Middle School in Land O'Lakes, Florida. Except he will not be allowed to continue teaching. Officials at Pasco County School District say Mr. Piculas was fired for failing to follow lesson plans, allowing his students to use unapproved computers and leaving a student in charge of his class. Piculas says he was fired for being a wizard.

The wizard accusation came after Piculas did a magic trick for his class in which he made a toothpick disappear and reappear. He says he later got a call Pat Sinclair, who is in charge of substitute teachers. According to Piculas, Sinclair told him he was being let go because he had been accused of wizardry.

Even though district officials say the magic trick was far down on the list of reasons why Piculas was let go, I can't help but wonder why it was on the list at all. What is wrong with a little magic in the classroom?

After getting married, many women take their husband's last name. Other women hang on to their own name, or hyphenate to make a new, combined surname. It's unusual, however, to find a man who adopts his new wife's name as his own. Still, it's possible, right?

That's what Michael Buday of Los Angeles thought when he promised his fiancee that he'd take her surname after they got married, so that their kids would carry on her father's name. It turned out not to be so simple. Though women can change their last names for a $50 to $90 application fee, for Michael Buday to change his, he'd have to pay $300 in court fees, advertise his intentions, and go before a judge.

Instead, Buday took the state of California to court. With the help of the ACLU, Buday filed a sex discrimination suit. Today, he picked up his new driver's license, and the citizens of California now have the right to take on the name of their spouses and domestic partners, regardless of sex.

Our plan for the birth of kid number three is to go to the hospital, then have the baby. It seems they do things differently down in Southern California. Seventeen-year-old Xochitl Parra was getting ready for school at 5:30 in the morning last Wednesday; alone and in the shower, she felt the contractions start. "I felt his head coming, so I sit down and pushed so he could come out," she said.

Her phone was disconnected and it was too early to bother the neighbors, so instead of calling for an ambulance, she got dressed and walked eight blocks to the hospital, carrying her newborn son, still attached by his umbilical cord. "She still had the placenta and the baby was still attached, so of course everyone said, 'Don't move!'" said Dr. Jose Perez, director of the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit.

Despite the odd circumstances of the baby's birth and the subsequent trek to the hospital, the 8 pound, 3 ounce baby boy named Alejandro is normal and doing fine. Parra hadn't told anyone about being pregnant because she was worried about her mother's response. She is a sophomore in high school and didn't want to get kicked out of the house. Since the birth, however, her mother has come to accept the situation and will help take care of the baby so her daughter can continue her schooling.

Even though Parra -- still a kid herself -- seems like she's not really prepared to have a kid of her own, it also appears that this is going to work out okay. "We hear so much negative with teenagers throwing their babies in the Dumpsters," said Perez. "This baby is fine, and hopefully there will be a happy ending with the extended family." Good luck to Parra and to little Alejandro!

Earlier this week, Angie wrote about Japan's crying baby contest. Though that contest may not be something you'd see in America, it's obvious that it's a fun, loving tradition for the families involved and that the babies aren't harmed or traumatized by it.

Today, however, I came across the Indian baby dropping ritual, and I think it falls (no pun intended) in a completely different category. Muslims of Western India practice a 500-year-old ritual of dropping their babies off a 15 meter building, to be caught on a white sheet. They say that the tradition helps their babies to be strong and healthy.

Participants claim that no baby has ever been hurt during the ritual, which is surprising to me. I can't imagine being a mom and watching my child go through this, tradition or not.

What are all you pregnant women eating out there? A recent survey by gurgle.com found that one third of respondents reported craving non-food items such as coal, soap, toothpaste, and sponges. Tell me, what happened to pickles and ice cream?

Eating non-food items during pregnancy (or anytime, really) is known as pica. It's of course, generally recommended that you stay away from non-food items that could be toxic (coal? really?) and try safer items, like ice, instead.

Beyond soap and sponges, women in general were far more likely to report having food cravings during pregnancy than in generations past. Up to 75% of women reported a strong desire for one food or another, while 50 years ago, that number sat at about 30%. Experts don't have an explanation for this trend, except possibly that food is just easier to come by now than it was then.

What about you -- did you have strong cravings during pregnancy? What's the weirdest thing you craved?

When Kristoff Wennersten decided he wanted Carolyn Campbell to be his date to the prom, he didn't want to just walk up and ask her. That would be too simple, too straightforward, too normal. He needed something spectacular. Something that would impress the object of his desire and guarantee she said yes.

So the Huron High School senior enlisted the help of his lacrosse teammates and together these brilliant guys came up with a surefire way to get her attention: spell out the invitation on their bare bottoms and display them during a game. Because nothing says "you are special" quite like a row of butt cheeks with writing on them.

Surprisingly, it worked. When Campbell saw "Will You Go To The Prom With Me? Yes or No?" spelled out on the backsides of the 13 players, she responded by tapping on the back of the guy with "yes" on his butt. Not surprisingly, the display got the lacrosse team in trouble.

"Inappropriate is inappropriate," athletic director Dottie Davis said. "It disrespects women, and that's the clear message we need to have the students understand - what may be fun to them isn't necessarily fun to everyone else."

In addition to a receiving a one-day suspension from school, the team members involved must sit out an undetermined number of games and perform 20 hours of community service. Wennersten is unrepentant. "I enjoyed every bit of it," he says.

I don't know what ever happened to the time-tested tradition of just asking a person to be your date, but apparently that is passé.

A couple of years ago, a woman got a picture from her ultrasound and was very surprised to see the face of Jesus hovering over her baby. Now a woman in Ohio has apparently witnessed the second coming. Well, the second appearance of Jesus in an ultrasound, anyway. Instead of seeing her daughter in the ultrasound, Monet Sledge spotted what appeared to be the Jesus on the cross.

What Sledge is actually seeing in the picture is her daughter's outstretched leg bones with the still-developing knees forming Jesus' head. Still, Sledge sees the illusion as a good omen. "People say maybe my baby is gonna be blessed and maybe it is a good sign," said Sledge. "I don't know, I've done wrong in my life, maybe he's forgiven me early."

I dunno... I never saw anything in an ultrasound but bits and pieces of my various rugrats. Maybe I'm just not as blessed. Anyone else ever see something other than a baby in their ultrasound?

I have spent entire years of my life trying to keep babies smiley and happy, but sumo wrestlers in Tokyo hold a yearly contest to make babies cry.

During "crying sumo," a pair of babies is held up in the air by amateur sumo wrestlers until one cries. In the event of a simultaneous freak-out, the winner is determined by which baby bellowed the loudest.

The annual event isn't meant to be mean spirited, though. In Japan, crying is considered beneficial for babies and the ritual is held as a wish for the children's healthy growth. The photos of the giant sumos holding tiny, wailing babies are a little sad, but kind of neat at the same time.

I would have had to leave the room during the competition, but I'm pretty sure my kids could have kicked some major crying sumo butt when they were small!

At least four students at an Oregon high school have fallen victim to a rather unfortunate fashion trend: vertical lines shaved into the eyebrows. This look was popularized by hip-hopper Soulja Boy, but police say gang members have adopted it for themselves. Because of this gang connection, school officials at Centennial High School have prohibited these students with self-inflicted bare spots in their eyebrows from attending classes.

"We don't dictate policy for any schools," Officer David Schmidt of the East Multnomah County Gang Enforcement Team said. "We just tell them what we see the latest trends are. This is a way for them to identify each other. In a school setting, it intimidates other kids."

Until somebody invents an eyebrow toupee, the only way to get rid of the so-called gang symbols is to shave the eyebrows entirely. And that is exactly what school officials want these students to do. One student found a way around that by putting band aids on the eyebrows. That student has returned to school, but the other three are still sitting out, presumably waiting for their hair to grow.

One of the students, Andy Gonzalez, claims he's not a gang member and only shaved his brows to impress girls. I wonder how impressed the girls will be when he shows up with NO eyebrows.

A few weeks ago, Christopher Ratte took his 7-year-old son Leo to see a ballgame in Detroit. Upon arriving at Comerica Park, they bought some refreshments - a beer for dad, a lemonade for Leo - and settled into their seats to watch the Tigers. But what should have been a fun day of father-son bonding turned into an unbelievable nightmare when a security guard spotted Leo and his lemonade. Turns out that what dad purchased wasn't regular lemonade, but hard lemonade. If you don't know about hard lemonade, you are not alone. Christopher Ratte had no idea that the beverage his son had been sipping on for nine innings contained 5% alcohol.

Ratte explained his mistake to the security guard who promptly confiscated the lemonade and called the cops. Leo was taken to a hospital where he was examined and found to have no alcohol in his blood.

"Obviously, I made a mistake in buying this lemonade, which I didn't realize was alcoholic," Ratte said. "I probably should have read the label carefully, so I'm not critical of the police who were concerned. I just thought they overreacted terribly."

Just how much did they overreact? Instead of releasing Leo to his parents, he was taken into custody by Wayne County Children's Protective Services and spent the weekend in foster care. When he was finally released to his mother, his father was ordered to move out of the house. Christopher Ratte spent spent two weeks in a hotel before the case was dropped and he was allowed back home with his family.

CPS may have dropped the case, but Christopher Ratte has not. He and his wife have filed a formal complaint with the CPS ombudsman's office claiming the treatment they received was excessive.

This story makes me angry, sad and a little scared for families living within the reach of Wayne County Child Protective Services.

Los Angeles Galaxy soccer star David Beckham was just trying to be a nice guy when he passed his sweaty soccer jersey to a young fan in the stands after a game in Honolulu last February. He had no way of knowing that his kind gesture would end the friendship of two boys and have their parents threatening legal action against each other.

Only Beckham knows for sure who he meant to have the jersey, but Eric and Yoshika Kerr are certain it was intended for their 10-year-old son. They say he lured Beckham over by holding up a sign during the game. When the game was over, Beckham came over to where the boys were sitting together, pointed at their son and handed up the jersey.

Wilfred and Yoshika Ho have a different story. They say their 9-year-old son got his hands on the jersey first and therefore it is his. "My son got the shirt, their kid started trying to pry it away," said Wilfred Ho.

Enter the lawyers. After a failed attempt at sharing the jersey, a lawyer for the Kerrs' sent a letter to the Hos' demanding the return of the jersey. The Hos' responded through their own lawyer, stating they are the legal owners.

The Galaxy's general manager, Alexi Lalas, regrets the situation and has come up with his own solution: "My suggestion is that the judge get a pair of scissors, cut the thing in half and give half to each," he said.

If that doesn't work, maybe they could all just grow up, realize it's just a shirt and LET IT GO.

I've been wanting to build a treehouse for my kids for quite a while now, but after reading this story I think there's one feature I'm definitely going to add -- a lock. A father in Florida went out to check on the treehouse he'd built for his daughter and found something rather unexpected waiting for him: a bag containing guns and ammunition.

Along with the pistol, rifle, and sawed-off shotgun were two knives, empty cigar containers, and an empty Crown Royal whisky bag. It sounds like someone was having a party up there and not the good kind, either. "I feel threatened," said Tom O'Connell, who built the treehouse for his thirteen-year-old daughter and her friends.

It's fortunate that it was O'Connell who found the cache and not his daughter. "Some kids could have got a hold of this and there could have been a very tragic ending here," said Bob Carpenter of the Charlotte County Sheriff's Office. The handgun was reported stolen last December.

In addition to pointing out that, sadly, even treehouses need locks these days, this shows that we, as parents, need to make sure our kids know what guns are and what to do if they come across one. Even if you don't approve of gun ownership and would never have one of your own, kids still need to know that guns are dangerous and are definitely not toys.